User talk:John Broughton/Archive 20 2016-2018
Tech News: 2016-02
16:59, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
The article has a dedicated section called "Restoration Hardware Lawsuit". There is a discussion on the Talk page about whether an individual lawsuit should have a dedicated section like this. Was hoping you could take a look if you have a minute? David King, Ethical Wiki (CorporateM) (Talk) 20:09, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-03
17:56, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-04
16:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Next up: Bi-directional switching
All yours. As usual, please direct any and all complaints about or desire for extra screenshots to me.
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:20, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): Okay, back to you. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:57, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
- I'm not getting a confirmation (from the browser) that I want to lose all my work when I switch from VE to WT. It happens WT to VE, but not the other way. Is it working for you? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): What you're seeing is what I saw, yesterday. That's why the VE user guide only mentions a confirmation once (WT to VE) rather than twice. I guess for some reason I thought that was the way things were supposed to be (not sure why); apologies for not mentioning it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:53, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
- So phab:T123960 is a one-way bug. I've added that information to the bug report.
- I don't know what they're going to do about it; it'll probably get triaged next week. I suspect that this may be one of those "harder than it looks" problems. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
- Whereas the docs match reality, I'm declaring this one "done". mw:VisualEditor/Single edit tab is my next project, which means that my next User guide project is going to be delayed a bit. I was thinking that the next one should be dealing with the citation mess; does that sound best to you? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): What you're seeing is what I saw, yesterday. That's why the VE user guide only mentions a confirmation once (WT to VE) rather than twice. I guess for some reason I thought that was the way things were supposed to be (not sure why); apologies for not mentioning it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:53, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
- Sounds fine; I tend to go where you point me. (More constructively: you have a much better handle on what has changed and what needs more or better explanation.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:08, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-05
21:02, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-06
18:58, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 03 February 2016
- From the editors: Help wanted
Help us continue to publish on a weekly (-ish) basis.
- Special report: Board chair and new trustee speak with the Signpost
New member María Sefidari joins the Board of Trustees.
- In focus: The Knight Foundation grant: a timeline and an email to the board
James Heilman speaks out about the events leading up to his dismissal from the Board.
- Op-ed: So, what’s a knowledge engine anyway?
Examining the issues at the heart of recent Board disputes.
- News and notes: Harassment survey 2015; Luis Villa to leave WMF; knowledge engine background
A survey released, another major departure from the Foundation.
- Arbitration report: Catching up on arbitration
More cases, more problems.
- Traffic report: Bowled
Some sort of sporting contest tops this week's traffic.
- Featured content: This week's featured content
Newly promoted content.
Links
A new addition. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:22, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-07
16:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 15
Books & Bytes
Issue 15, December-January 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs)
- New donations - Ships, medical resources, plus Arabic and Farsi resources
- #1lib1ref campaign summary and highlights
- New branches and coordinators
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:20, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-08
18:22, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #1—2016
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter


Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.
Recent changes
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.
Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.
The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:
- Remember my last editor,
- Always give me the visual editor if possible,
- Always give me the source editor, and
- Show me both editor tabs. (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)
The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers would like to know how well the visual editor works in your language. They particularly want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect the following languages: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic and others.
Let's work together
- Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
- Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Language engineer David Chan needs help from people who often type in these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Report your results on wiki (Korean – Japanese – all languages).
- Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Join the Tech Talk about "Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology behind it" with Sebastian Karcher on 29 February 2016.
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thanks!
– Whatamidoing (WMF) 17:47, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-09
20:12, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-10
20:24, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-11
18:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-12
16:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-13
19:43, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
Is my "fixed link" edit an improvement?
Could you glance at my recent edit and let me know if this is a valid change. I'd like to do other (similar) edits, but only if I know that I'm not barking up the wrong tree. (Sorry for this sloppy message; I don't know why the link in my message isn't working.) Thanks CWBoast (talk) 03:32, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
- @CWBoast: Well, the wikilink now works, and it links to the right place, so you've definitely improved the page. (Thanks.)
- However, the edit isn't as clean as it could be. Here's what you created:
- [[Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Editing,_creating,_and_maintaining_articles/Setting_up_your_account_and_personal_workspace]]
- (I've left off the part of the wikilink at the end that you didn't change)
- Here's what the wikilink should look like, in the best of all worlds:
- [[Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Editing, creating, and maintaining articles/Setting up your account and personal workspace]]
- The difference is that underlines have been changed to spaces. Underlines do work in wikilinks, but they aren't needed. This can be confusing because underlines are required in external links - external links are basically URLs with single brackets around them, and a URL with an internal space is a non-functioning URL.
- So, for example, when pointing to an edit, you use a diff - which is an external link. Here's the diff (link) for your edit:
- [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual/Editing,_creating,_and_maintaining_articles/Setting_up_your_account_and_personal_workspace&diff=712583107&oldid=695459726]
- There isn't any way that I know of to create a wikilink (double brackets) that points to an edit, because (by definition) a wikilink points to a specific page, while an edit is the difference between two pages.
- (I hope that helps.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:42, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
- @John Broughton: Thank you. I improved my previous edit and made another edit using what you said. But now I notice another, more abbreviated, method to link (to a section within the same article) in the "Uses for your user page" section, namely: "(see the section about userboxes)". (One difference may be that the "tooltip" doesn't show anything in the "more abbreviated method" -- but maybe showing nothing is better than showing what the tooltip shows in the fully-spelled-out method.) Which method do you think is preferable? (By the way, is my use of the "reply to" template inappropriate, since we are "talking" on your talk page?) CWBoast (talk) 11:34, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
- @CWBoast: You're correct in thinking that the "reply to" template isn't needed when you're posting to someone else's user talk page; the MediaWiki software automatically notifies the user when anything is posted to his/her talk page.
- You're also correct that when linking within a page, only a # sign and the section heading is needed, as:
- [[#Userboxes|the section about userboxes]]
- There are pluses and minuses to using the full wikilink - it's more robust in the sense that if the text is copied to another page, the wikilink still works. On the other hand, when someone looks at the wikitext (in edit mode), having the full page name does make the wikilink a bit more difficult to understand. But, as you point out, the tooltip behaves differently [which I find odd - that's a bug in the software, I'd argue] - what is shown when there is a full wikilink is much better than what is shown with just the # (anchor) text. (I'm seeing something in both cases, but what shows in the abbreviated version pertains to the page as a whole, not to the section being linked to.) So until the software is changed, I'd recommend a full wikilink even if the link is to a section on the same page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:02, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
SUL username collisions detector
In the IP addresses change section of "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" there is a reference to a "SUL username collisions detector". Clicking on his doesn't work. It appears that the software to which this refers is no longer located where it used to be. Is there a way to fix this reference? Thanks CWBoast (talk) 22:21, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
- @CWBoast: It's no longer possible to have a user name collision - the Wikimedia Foundation eliminated all existing "collisions" a few years ago, as well as putting software in place that prevents future collisions. So the collision detector isn't relevant [which is presumably why it no longer exists - although everything on the toolserver is either at another site - WMF labs, I believe - or is defunct].
- I've updated WP:TMM accordingly. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:36, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
- "Tool Labs". See wikitech:Labs labs labs for Ops' preferred naming scheme. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:52, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Change
We are going to have to change mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide#Opening the visual editor.
The central page is mw:VisualEditor/Single edit tab. The enwiki-specific information is now at WP:VPM#Single edit tab. And I'm beginning to think that every time James F says something will get simplified, that the user guide will need another hundred words and three screenshots to explain the "simple" thing. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-14
22:13, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice
The editing interface will be changed soon. When that happens, editors who currently see two editing tabs – "Edit" and "Edit source" – will start seeing one edit tab instead. The single edit tab has been popular at other Wikipedias. When this is deployed here, you may be offered the opportunity to choose your preferred appearance and behavior the next time you click the Edit button. You will also be able to change your settings in the Editing section of Special:Preferences.
You can choose one or two edit tabs. If you chose one edit tab, then you can switch between the two editing environments by clicking the buttons in the toolbar (shown in the screenshots). See Help:VisualEditor/User guide#Switching between the visual and wikitext editors for more information and screenshots.
There is more information about this interface change at mw:VisualEditor/Single edit tab. If you have questions, suggestions, or problems to report, then please leave a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Whatamidoing (WMF) 19:22, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-15
20:44, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 April 2016
- Op-ed: Should prison inmates be permitted to edit Wikipedia?
They do have plenty of time on their hands
- News and notes: Denny Vrandečić resigns from Wikimedia Foundation board
More turnover in the foundation
- In the media: Wikimedia Sweden loses copyright case; Tex Watson; AI assistants; David Jolly biography
Copyright laws, prisoners, and the future of technology
- Featured content: This week's featured content
Featured content
- Traffic report: A welcome return to pop culture and death
American politics seem to have finally bored people
- Arbitration report: The first case of 2016—Wikicology
The drought is finally over!
- Gallery: A history lesson
A look at political satire, brought to you by Wikipedia and Commons
Books & Bytes - Issue 16
Books & Bytes
Issue 16, February-March 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs)
- New donations - science, humanities, and video resources
- Using hashtags in edit summaries - a great way to track a project
- A new cite archive template, a new coordinator, plus conference and Visiting Scholar updates
- Metrics for the Wikipedia Library's last three months
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:17, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-16
20:40, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 April 2016
- News and notes: Lunar project; steering group formed to search for next executive director
Maybe the rover could find an ED on the moon...
- Op-ed: Knowledge Engine and the Wales–Heilman emails
When is competing with Google not competing with Google?
- Special report: Update on EranBot, our new copyright violation detection bot
Help wanted!
- Traffic report: Two for the price of one
What's better than one traffic report? Two!
- Featured content: The double-sized edition
10 articles, 6 lists, and 11 pictures have been promoted in this cycle
- Arbitration report: Amendments made to the Race and intelligence case
When it rains, it pours
Tech News: 2016-17
21:02, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-18
20:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-19
23:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-20
16:01, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-21
18:40, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 May 2016
- News and notes: Upcoming Wikimedia conferences in the US and India; May Metrics and Activities Meeting
Dates and venues for WikiCon USA 2016, WikiCon India 2016, 2016 Glam Boot Camp and 2016 Wikimedia Diversity Conference
- Special report: Compensation paid to Sue Gardner increased by almost 50 percent after she stepped down as executive director
Sue Gardner appears to be earning more money as the WMF's special advisor than she did as its executive director
- In the media: The perils of Wikipedia's monopoly; Wikipedians' fragility; Street Sharks hoax
Not everything you read online is fact
- Featured content: Eight articles, three lists and five pictures
Another eight featured articles, three featured lists and five featured pictures
- Op-ed: Journey of a Wikipedian
Mental health carries a powerful stigma. The more we are open about it, the less that weighs all of us down
- Arbitration report: Gamaliel resigns from the arbitration committee
Gamaliel and others case nears its end, and there are new 30/500 rules
- Recent research: English as Wikipedia's Lingua Franca; deletion rationales; schizophrenia controversies
Round-up of recent Wikipedia research
- Traffic report: Splitting (musical) airs / Slow Ride
We've recently come into possession of a new tool.
- Blog: Freely licensed magic at Eurovision
Albin Olsson has been right there with them, capturing dramatic images of singers from around the world.
Tech News: 2016-22
16:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-23
20:51, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-24
18:41, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 17
Books & Bytes
Issue 17, April-May 2016
by The Interior, Ocaasi, UY Scuti, Sadads, and Nikkimaria
- New donations this month - a German-language legal resource
- Wikipedia referals to academic citations - news from CrossRef and WikiCite2016
- New library stats, WikiCon news, a bot to reveal Open Access versions of citations, and more!
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:36, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-25
19:14, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-26
15:42, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Editing News #2—2016
Editing News #2—2016 Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

It's quick and easy to insert a references list.

Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).
If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references.
Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.
Recent changes
The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.
The single edit tab feature combines the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.
Future changes
The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.
The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Let's work together
- Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
- Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Watch the Tech Talk by Sebastian Karcher for more information.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 21:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
Help:Collapsing. listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Help:Collapsing.. Since you had some involvement with the Help:Collapsing. redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Steel1943 (talk) 03:53, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 04 July 2016
- News and notes: Board unanimously appoints Katherine Maher as new WMF executive director; Wikimedia lawsuits in France and Germany
News from Wikimania and the courts
- Op-ed: Two policies in conflict?
Paid-contributions disclosure vs. outing
- In the media: Terrorism database cites Wikipedia as a source
Reliability worries
- Featured content: Triple fun of featured content
Six articles, nine lists, one topic and thirteen pictures promoted
- Traffic report: Goalposts; Oy vexit
European football and politics dominate the top-10
- Blog: Jimmy Wales names Emily Temple-Wood and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight as Wikipedians of the Year
From the Wikimedia Foundation blog
Tech News: 2016-27
19:45, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-28
15:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
Help - In creating new article for Edelweiss Tokio Life
Hello,
Hope you are doing great.
As per your suggestion, I tried to find out paid users who can write article for us but no luck.
Now I am planning to go with other way, where I would create a draft from my side and submit to you for review, once you give approval then only I would go ahead and submit for review.
Please suggest if this approach seems fine to you.
Best Regards, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Risingguns_007
Hi John,
As suggested I have made the changes in draft, please review it and suggest the next step.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Risingguns_007/Edelweiss_Tokio_Life_Insurance — Preceding unsigned comment added by Risingguns 007 (talk • contribs) 10:28, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Hi John,
As suggested I have made the changes in draft, if you get time please review it and suggest the next step. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Risingguns_007/Edelweiss_Tokio_Life_Insurance
Risingguns 007 (talk) 04:29, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-29
12:01, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 21 July 2016
- News and notes: Board faces diversity and skill-base issues in new FDC appointments
Four seats to be filled in top WMF grantmaking body; General Counsel and Secretary Geoff Brigham leaves Wikimedia
- Discussion report: Busy month for discussions
New ArbCom restrictions; genetically modified food safety
- In the media: Women in science editathon gets national press; Wikipedia "shockingly biased"
Female scientists in India; Cracked.com probes Wikipedia's weaknesses
- Featured content: A wide variety from the best
Promotions in four featured-content forums
- Traffic report: Sports and esports
Northern summer makes sport the winner
- Arbitration report: Script writers appointed for clerks
Plus a clerk appointment and two motions
- Recent research: Using deep learning to predict article quality
Plus navigating the Chinese Wikipedia, and talkpage sentiment
Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance Wiki Page
Hi John,
As suggested I have made the changes and saved in draft, please review it and suggest the next step. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Risingguns_007/Edelweiss_Tokio_Life_Insurance
Risingguns 007 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:43, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
Hello John,
Hope you are doing great.
As per your instruction, I have added more citation in my draft. Can you please review it and suggest what to do next.
Draft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Risingguns_007/Edelweiss_Tokio_Life_Insurance
Thanks, Risingguns 007 (talk) 10:21, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-30
19:54, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-31
21:48, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
New screenshots, new work
Hi John,
ScreenshotBot is fixed, and there's new updates to make. I've noted a few additions to the Insert menu and will work my way down the page as and when I can. Please feel free to follow after me and clean up the mess that I'm making. ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
Here's a few notes (numbered for your convenience):
- The bit that runs "To change or remove an existing link, click within the text for that link, then press the "Link" icon that appears near it" has changed significantly.
- They moved the Cite button into the Insert menu for a lot of non-Wikipedias. I don't know what the default for non-WMF wikis is. But this may affect the plans we still hadn't implemented for the ref stuff.
- The bit that I changed for the Insert menu says that it shows everything, but it doesn't. It shows what's available at the English Wikipedia. Maps is available at some wikis, and some wikis have the ref stuff in there.
- The "Basic reference" and "Re-use reference" labels have changed, and I can't find the right replacement. The pieces are:
- Basic "basic"
- Re-use "re-use"
- $1 reference "reference"
- but the last item expects the first two to get passed as parameters or something, and I don't know how to do that in wikitext. (Maybe User:Guillom does.)
That's as far as I'm going to get today. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): I've done a bit of tweaking today, though not much. I did look at #1, above - lots of rewriting, as you say. Could you add an image showing what the edit dialog looks like (that is, what the user sees after he/she clicks on "Edit")? If you do, I'd like the existing image tied to just the first paragraph, and the new image tied to the other three paragraphs.
- Also, regarding #3, could you tell me the places in the list where (on wikis other than the English Wikipedia) the items for Maps and for ref stuff? I'd like to add just a mention of these two, in the right places. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:50, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
For #3, the end of the Insert menu at Wikivoyage runs like this:
- gallery
- formula
- map
- graph
- your signature
- reference list
- basic reference
- re-use reference
-end of list-
I'd be happy to split #1, and will ping you when I get the screenshots made (guaranteed not to be for the next several hours, and feel free to ping me if it takes more than a few days). Thanks! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
- John, did you look through the diffs? I just saw that this one has a huge minus sign for the number of bytes, and I seriously do not remember making some of these edits. I don't think that I touched the divs, for example, and the "just do it" language at one point doesn't sound like something I would write. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): Nope, I didn't look through the diffs, so I didn't see the big deletion. I did comment, in my edit summary for this edit, that I was putting some deleted stuff back in, but hadn't researched why it was deleted. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:07, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-32
15:41, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-33
19:37, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-34
21:18, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-35
16:01, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 18
Books & Bytes
Issue 18, June–July 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi, Samwalton9, UY Scuti, and Sadads
- New donations - Edinburgh University Press, American Psychological Association, Nomos (a German-language database), and more!
- Spotlight: GLAM and Wikidata
- TWL attends and presents at International Federation of Library Associations conference, meets with Association of Research Libraries
- OCLC wins grant to train librarians on Wikimedia contribution
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-36
17:12, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-37
18:04, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-38
22:08, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-39
18:07, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
Nomination of Harry Welty for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Harry Welty is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harry Welty until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Bearcat (talk) 00:08, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
New newsletter for Notifications
Hello
You are subscribing to the Notifications newsletter on English Wikipedia.
That newsletter is now replaced by the monthly and multilingual Collaboration team newsletter, which will include information and updates concerning Notifications but also concerning Flow and Edit Review Improvements.
Please subscribe!
All the best, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:51, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-40
21:30, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-41
20:30, 10 October 2016 (UTC)
Editing News #3—2016
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscribe or unsubscribe on the English Wikipedia

Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?

Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.
Recent changes
- You can now set text as small or big.[270]
- Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[271] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[272]
- Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[273]
- At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department are adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more on MediaWiki.org.[274]
- The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[275] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
- Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[276]
Future changes
The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.
The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.
Let's work together
Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-10
Tech News: 2016-42
16:42, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-43
17:39, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-44
16:18, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 19
Books & Bytes
Issue 19, September–October 2016
by Nikkimaria, Sadads and UY Scuti
- New and expanded donations - Foreign Affairs, Open Edition, and many more
- New Library Card Platform and Conference news
- Spotlight: Fixing one million broken links
19:07, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-45
23:01, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-46
19:17, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2016-11
16:32, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-47
15:33, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
Hello, John Broughton. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
In-editor help
Hi John,
I just ran through the wishlist proposals, and I think that we don't really need people to vote on your proposal (and wait at least six months before the wishlist "winners" will be addressed anyway). How do you feel about a quicker, easier system? You decide where the in-help system (the little (i) buttons) should go, and what the box should say when you click on them, and the devs just add them? They'll of course do a sanity check to make sure that a button won't break the workflow, but I think they'd be happy to implement them. You'd only need to file a phab task with the location and text, tagged with "VisualEditor" so that they'll be sure to see it. Will that work for you? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): I think that's a great way to make quick progress. So I apologize if I seem to be quibbling, but I'd only want to move forward on this if the boxes can contain wikilinks, and if clicking on such a link opened a new tab or window. Would that be a problem? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 05:31, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
- Maybe. MediaWiki: items can be translated (plus-good), but they can't contain wikitext (insert technical handwaving here) – or so I've been told. But it's got to be possible to include wikilinks, because MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning contains some. I'll ask around and see if I can get a definitive answer. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:14, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
- So the answer seems to be "kind of". The help messages are strictly plain text, and there's apparently all kinds of internationalization and accessiblity reasons (especially on mobile) behind this. But if you wanted one link, then they could set up a "Read more" system, which would definitely open in a separate tab. So something like "You need to use reliable sources" isn't feasible, but "You need to use reliable sources. Read more" would be possible. Would that be sufficient? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): I think that a "Read more" link would be fine, but I'd generally want to open a "bridging" page rather than directly link to an existing page. For example, for citations, I'd want to provide links for both reliable sources (a guideline) and the section of the user manual related to citations (technical help). So that bridging page might be at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Help system/Citations, and have a shortcut of WP:VE/HS/CITE. Such pages probably would be fairly short - just enough information so that the editor isn't surprised by what opens if he/she clicks a link on that such a page.
- So the answer seems to be "kind of". The help messages are strictly plain text, and there's apparently all kinds of internationalization and accessiblity reasons (especially on mobile) behind this. But if you wanted one link, then they could set up a "Read more" system, which would definitely open in a separate tab. So something like "You need to use reliable sources" isn't feasible, but "You need to use reliable sources. Read more" would be possible. Would that be sufficient? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
- I'm guessing that it doesn't matter what the "Read more" link is to, so that bridging pages wouldn't be a problem. If they're not [perhaps I missed something?], then I think we're ready to try out this out. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:45, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
- I don't think that they truly care what the link goes to, so long as it's sensible. Would you prefer centralizing those links (e.g., a help page on mw.org) or making them wiki-specific (each Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, etc. chooses its own, knowing that most won't have/create a relevant page)?
- They'll have to build the "Read more" system for you, but it didn't sound like a particularly complicated thing. Do you want to write up one (perhaps simpler) task to start, and see how that works out? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
- I'm guessing that it doesn't matter what the "Read more" link is to, so that bridging pages wouldn't be a problem. If they're not [perhaps I missed something?], then I think we're ready to try out this out. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:45, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 November 2016
- News and notes: Arbitration Committee elections commence
An overview of the English Wikipedia ArbCom election; brief notes as Asian and African initiatives wind down
- In the media: Roundup of news related to U.S. presidential election and more
Election prompts media to explore themes important to Wikipedians, including news literacy, privacy, and data security
- Blog: The top fifteen winning photos from Wiki Loves Earth
115,000 images were submitted as part of the annual competition.
- Gallery: Around the world with Wiki Loves Monuments 2016
A sampling of photo submissions to the annual photography campaign
- Featured content: Featured mix
Eight articles, two lists and nine pictures were promoted
- Special report: Taking stock of the Good Article backlog
A close examination of the efficacy of the GA Cup contest, a longstanding effort to reduce the backlog of articles awaiting review
- Op-ed: Fundraising data should be more transparent
Empowering volunteers and local chapters to engage with fundraising would yield varied benefits
- Traffic report: President-elect Trump
Someone is likely to dominate traffic for a long time
Tech News: 2016-48
21:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
Please double-check the user guide
See this, which worries me because I think that this is a simple paste error (click inside a file name and paste, rather than select-and-click the file name to replace it), but it might instead mean that we've lost an entire row (or more) of the table.
Also, are you satisfied with this on the musical score?
If you're happy with these changes, then please {{ping}} me and tell me to mark the page for translation. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:26, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): To answer the second question first - yes, the musical score addition is fine, except that it would be good to crop/replace the screenshot of the Insert menu - there isn't any reason to show the bottom half of the menu, the part below what is being selected.
- As for the first question, I'll get back to you on that by Wednesday. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:19, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-49
18:07, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-50
19:29, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2016-12
10:09, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-51
20:33, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 December 2016
- Year in review: Looking back on 2016
Roundup of the year's news from the Wikimedia world, featuring Wikipedia's 15th anniversary and organizational disarray at the Wikimedia Foundation
- News and notes: Strategic planning update; English ArbCom election results
WMF reflects, to some degree, on its past approaches to strategic planning
- Special report: German ArbCom implodes
The German Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee loses more than half its members amid political feud
- In focus: Active user page filter prevents vandalism and harassment
A proposal from the Inspire Campaign to address harassment was recently implemented to prevent unconstructive and malicious editing on user pages
- Op-ed: Operation successful, patient dead: Outreach workshops in Namibia
Even a well executed outreach event can yield disappointing results
- In the media: In brief: Coverage of gender gap initiatives, banner fundraising, and more
Wikipedia women in the news, and media reacts to 2016 ad banner campaign
- Featured content: The Christmas edition
Twenty-three articles, ten lists and twenty-one pictures were promoted
- Technology report: Labs improvements impact 2016 Tool Labs survey results
And a roundup of recently-added tools
- Traffic report: Post-election traffic blues
Four weeks of popular article analysis
- Blog: Wiki Loves Monuments contest winners announced
Winning photos in world's largest photography contest reveal a world of monuments—and the volunteers who love them
- Recent research: One study and several abstracts
Privacy and Tor, and several other studies
Tech News: 2017-02
19:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
New page reviewer granted

Hello John Broughton. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia, if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various deletion criteria. If you need more help or wish to discuss the process, please join or start a thread at page reviewer talk.
- URGENT: Please consider helping get the huge backlog (around 15,000 pages) down to a manageable number of pages as soon as possible.
- Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
- You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
- Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
- Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.
The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:18, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Share your experience and feedback as a Wikimedian in this global survey
- ^ This survey is primarily meant to get feedback on the Wikimedia Foundation's current work, not long-term strategy.
- ^ Legal stuff: No purchase necessary. Must be the age of majority to participate. Sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation located at 149 New Montgomery, San Francisco, CA, USA, 94105. Ends January 31, 2017. Void where prohibited. Click here for contest rules.
Tech News: 2017-03
23:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Hello
Hello. I noticed you added a Page Curation script that I had made to your common.js page. It seems you have added more than the required part of the script. I would suggest undoing that edit. To install the page curation script, simply copy the following into your common.js page.
importScript('User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js'); // Linkback: User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js
Note: You will need to manually bypass your cache after installation. Visit Wikipedia:Bypass your cache to see how to do this.
Thanks. Lourdes 10:05, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 20
Books & Bytes
Issue 20, November-December 2016
by Nikkimaria (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs), Samwalton9 (talk · contribs)
- Partner resource expansions
- New search tool for finding TWL resources
- #1lib1ref 2017
- Wikidata Visiting Scholar
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:00, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-01
18:16, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-04
20:15, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-05
18:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
New Page Review - newsletter No.2

- A HUGE backlog
We now have 874 New Page Reviewers!
Most of us requested the user right at PERM, expressing a wish to be able to do something about the huge backlog, but the chart on the right does not demonstrate any changes to the pre-user-right levels of October.

The backlog is still steadily growing at a rate of 150 a day or 4,650 a month. Only 20 reviews a day by each reviewer over the next few days would bring the backlog down to a managable level and the daily input can then be processed by each reviewer doing only 2 or 3 reviews a day - that's about 5 minutes work!
It didn't work in time to relax for the Xmas/New Year holidays. Let's see if we can achieve our goal before Easter, otherwise by Thanksgiving it will be closer to 70,000.
- Second set of eyes
Remember that we are the only guardians of quality of new articles, we alone have to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged by non-Reviewer patrollers and that new authors are not being bitten.
- Abuse
This is even more important and extra vigilance is required considering Orangemoody, and
- this very recent case of paid advertising by a Reviewer resulting in a community ban.
- this case in January of paid advertising by a Reviewer, also resulting in a community ban.
- This Reviewer is indefinitely blocked for sockpuppetry.
Coordinator election
Kudpung is stepping down after 6 years as unofficial coordinator of New Page Patrolling/Reviewing. There is enough work for two people and two coords are now required. Details are at NPR Coordinators; nominate someone or nominate yourself. Date for the actual suffrage will be published later.
Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:11, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 6 February 2017
- Arbitration report: WMF Legal and ArbCom weigh in on tension between disclosure requirements and user privacy
The two statements prompt extensive community discussion; plus, our updates on recent ArbCom decisions
- Special report: Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing
Undisclosed paid editing by a financial broker mired in scandal spans years, impacting Wikipedia's editors and readers
- News and notes: Official WMF rebuke to Trump policy; WMF secures restricted funds
Foundation's latest foray into political waters, and grants funding structured data and anti-harassment measures, met with enthusiasm and concern
- In focus: WMF strategy consultant brings background in crisis reputation management; Team behind popular WMF software put "on pause"
Several developments in the $2.5 million strategic planning process explored, and a team within the software production department is sidelined
- WikiProject report: For the birds!
Our second interview with the productive WikiProject Birds crew
- Op-ed: How to make editing workshops useful, even if participants don't stick around
Veteran editing workshop leader responds to a previous Signpost op-ed
- In the media: Presidential politics, periodic table, and our periodic roundup of updates
Wikipedia's response to Trump inauguration and a fruitful, public "edit war" lead our media updates
- Technology report: Better PDFs, backup plans, and birthday wishes
Plus the latest scripts, bots, and tech news
- Traffic report: Cool It Now
Three weeks of the most popular Wikipedia articles
- Featured content: Three weeks dominated by articles
Twenty-eight articles, seven lists, two topics and four pictures were promoted
- Forum: Productive collaboration around coordinated protest marches; Media and political personalities comment on Wikipedia at its 16th birthday celebration
Women's marches on seven continents attracted strong Wikipedia engagement; Media luminaries and a presidential candidate joined WMF boss Katherine Maher at a New York gathering
Tech News: 2017-06
19:45, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-07
18:06, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-02
09:40, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
New Page Review-Patrolling: Coordinator elections
Your last chance to nominate yourself or any New Page Reviewer, See Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination. Elections begin Monday 20 February 23:59 UTC. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:17, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-08
19:25, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
New Page Review - newsletter No.3

Voting for coordinators has now begun HERE and will continue through/to 23:59 UTC Monday 06 March. Please be sure to vote. Any registered, confirmed editor can vote. Nominations are now closed.
- Still a MASSIVE backlog
We now have 874 New Page Reviewers but despite numerous appeals for help, the backlog has NOT been significantly reduced.
If you asked for the New Page Reviewer right, please consider investing a bit of time - every little helps preventing spam and trash entering the mainspace and Google when the 'NO_INDEX' tags expire.
Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
Your feedback matters: Final reminder to take the global Wikimedia survey
Tech News: 2017-09
19:55, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
UI changes
It looks like they're planning to change some icons at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116417
BTW, they'll probably do an automated update of screenshots in a month or so (most likely after the visual diff system has landed). I expect that most of the changes will be on the right half of the toolbar. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
P.S. Your talk page exceeds half a million bytes. Do you want to archive 2015? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-10
23:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-11
15:25, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-03
17:02, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-12
22:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-13
14:46, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-14
17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 21
Books & Bytes
Issue 21, January-March 2017
by Nikkimaria (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs), Samwalton9 (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)
- #1lib1ref 2017
- Wikipedia Library User Group
- Wikipedia + Libraries at Wikimedia Conference 2017
- Spotlight: Library Card Platform
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:54, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-15
18:35, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-16
19:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-04
13:04, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-17
16:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-18
19:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-19
02:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Editing News #1—2017
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know that you can review your changes visually?

In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.

Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.

The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.
Recent changes
A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.
A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [470]
The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [471]
Other changes:
- You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [472]
- The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [473]
- The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the
icon) for quicker access. [474] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [475] - You can now create
<chem>tags (sometimes used as<ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [476] - Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [477]
- The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [478]
- A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [479]
- There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations:
Control+Shift+Kon a PC, orCommand+Shift+Kon a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which isControl+Kon a PC orCommand+Kon a Mac. [480]
Future changes
- The VisualEditor team is working with the Community Tech team on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of
<ref>tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [481] - The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding
&ooui=1to the end of the URL, like this: The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [482] - The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [483]
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-20
21:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-05
15:19, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
New Page Review - Newsletter No.4

Since rolling out the right in November, just 6 months ago, we now have 874 reviewers, but the backlog is still mysteriously growing fast. If every reviewer did just 55 reviews, the 22,000 backlog would be gone, in a flash, schwoop, just like that!
But do remember: Rather than speed, quality and depth of patrolling and the use of correct CSD criteria are essential to good reviewing. Do not over-tag. Make use of the message feature to let the creator know about your maintenance tags. See the tutorial again HERE. Get help HERE.
Stay up to date with recent new page developments and have your say, read THIS PAGE.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:43, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-21
22:06, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-22
12:18, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-23
19:04, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-24
15:29, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-25
15:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 22
Books & Bytes
Issue 22, April-May 2017
- New and expanded research accounts
- Global branches update
- Spotlight: OCLC Partnership
- Bytes in brief
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 23 June 2017
- News and notes: Departments reorganized at Wikimedia Foundation, and a month without new RfAs (so far)
While the English Wikipedia community produces no new requests for adminhood in June, the Wikimedia Foundation makes changes to the Product and Technology departments.
- In the media: Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill
The anatomy of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick's chest area has been the talk of the month. But so have high-profile edits, hacked articles, and one particular newborn growing up.
- Op-ed: Facto Post: a fresh take
Exploring sourcing issues in Wikimedia projects, a solution in Wikidata and fact mining, and a newsletter to continue the conversation.
- Featured content: Will there ever be a break? The slew of featured content continues
22 featured articles, 17 featured lists, 7 featured pictures
- Traffic report: Wonder Woman beats Batman, The Mummy, Darth Vader and the Earth
Summer blockbusters and sports, Trump and world events.
- Recent research: Utopian bubbles: Can Wikipedians create value outside of the capitalist system?
A researcher applies Marxist critiques of political economy to investigate whether gamification, a culture of altruism, and other anti-corporatist influences on peer production can create a sustainable gift economy in a project like Wikipedia.
- Technology report: Improved search, and WMF data scientist tells all
Search now can include sister projects; EpochFail
Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-06
08:41, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-26
15:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-27
15:31, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-28
15:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Backlog update:
- The new page backlog is currently at 18,511 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a a day.
- Some editors are committing to work specifically on patrolling new pages on 15 July. If you have not reviewed new pages in a while, this might be a good time to be involved. Please remember that quality of patrolling is more important than quantity, that the speedy deletion criteria should be followed strictly, and that ovetagging for minor issues should be avoided.
Technology update:
- Several requests have been put into Phabractor to increase usability of the New Pages Feed and the Page Curation toolbar. For more details or to suggest improvements go to Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements
- The tutorial has been updated to include links to the following useful userscripts. If you were not aware of them, they could be useful in your efforts reviewing new pages:
- User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js adds a link to the new pages feed and page curation toolbar to your top toolbar on Wikipedia
- User:The Earwig/copyvios.js adds a link in your side toolbox that will run the current page through
General project update:
- Following discussion at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers, Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Noticeboard has been marked as historical. Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers is currently the most active central discussion forum for the New Page Patrol project. To keep up to date on the most recent discussions you can add it to your watchlist or visit it periodically.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:48, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-29
22:59, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-30
15:58, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-07
16:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-31
21:45, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-32
21:45, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-33
23:29, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-34
18:01, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 23
Books & Bytes
Issue 23, June-July 2017
- Library card
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Spotlight: Combating misinformation, fake news, and censorship
- Bytes in brief
Chinese, Arabic and Yoruba versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:04, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Backlog update:
- The new page backlog is currently at 16,991 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a a day.
Technology update:
- Rentier has created a NPP browser in WMF Labs that allows you to search new unreviewed pages using keywords and categories.
General project update:
- The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team is working with the community to implement the autoconfirmed article creation trial. The trial is currently set to start on 7 September 2017, pending final approval of the technical features.
- Please remember to focus on the quality of review: correct tagging of articles and not tagbombing are important. Searching for potential copyright violations is also important, and it can be aided by Earwig's Copyvio Detector, which can be added to your toolbar for ease of use with this user script.
- To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:33, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-35
22:10, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-36
22:14, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-37
19:15, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-38
15:31, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Backlog update:
- The new page backlog is currently at 14304 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a day.
- Currently there are 532 pages in the backlog that were created by non-autoconfirmed users before WP:ACTRIAL. The NPP project is undertaking a drive to clear these pages from the backlog before they hit the 90 day Google index point. Please consider reviewing a few today!
Technology update:
- The Wikimedia Foundation is currently working on creating a new filter for page curation that will allow new page patrollers to filter by extended confirmed status. For more information see: T175225
General project update:
- On 14 September 2017 the English Wikipedia began the autoconfirmed article creation trial. For a six month period, creation of articles in the mainspace of the English Wikipedia will be restricted to users with autoconfirmed status. New users who attempt article creation will now be redirected to a newly designed landing page.
- Before clicking on a reference or external link while reviewing a page, please be careful that the site looks trustworthy. If you have a question about the safety of clicking on a link, it is better not to click on it.
- To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:16, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 September 2017
- News and notes: Chapter updates; ACTRIAL
News from Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Macedonia, and Wikimedia Israel's; Autoconfirmed article creation trial begins
- In the media: Monkey settlement; Wikipedia used to give AI context clues
Also: Jeopedia, Dubaipedia, shaping science, fake quote reused by scholarly sources
- Humour: Chickenz
The best that poultry has to offer
- Recent research: Wikipedia articles vs. concepts; Wikipedia usage in Europe
Plus the latest research publications.
- Technology report: Flow restarted; Wikidata connection notifications
Plus more tech news, and the latest scripts and bots
- Gallery: Chicken mania
Complimenting this issue's Humour about chickens...
- Special report: Two steps forward, one step backward: The Sustainability Initiative
Finally we're seeing some initial successes, but the Wikimedia movement is still far from being environmentally sustainable.
- Traffic report: Fights and frights
Boxing, hurricanes, clowns, and more!
- Featured content: Flying high
Newly featured birds, planes, and high achievers
Tech News: 2017-39
15:59, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-09
17:10, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-40
23:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-41
14:21, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
Wildfire
Your contributions have been very important to Wikipedia; and I hope you are safely weathering this exceptional fire season. Thewellman (talk) 21:31, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
- @Thewellman: Thanks for your posting. Fortunately I live in part of Sonoma County that hasn't been (and isn't likely to be) affected, but my wife and I have close friends who lost their house, and it's stunning to see all the devastation not that far from us. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:49, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Help design a new feature to stop harassing emails
Hi there,
The Anti-Harassment Tools team plans to start develop of a new feature to allow users to restrict emails from new accounts. This feature will allow an individual user to stop harassing emails from coming through the Special:EmailUser system from abusive sockpuppeting accounts.
We’re inviting you to join the discussion because you voted or commented in the 2016 Community Wishlist discussion or IdeaLab discussion about letting users restrict who can send them email.
You can leave comments on this discussion page or send an email to the Anti-Harassment Tools team.
It is important to hear from a broad range of people who are interested in the design of the tool, so we hope you join the discussion.
For the Anti-Harassment Tools team SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 21:48, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Please let us know if you wish to opt-out of all massmessage mailings from the Anti-harassment tools team.
COI Help
Hi John.
I have been trying to find an editor to collaborate with here on an IT security company page for a couple weeks now, but haven't managed to find anyone with an interest. I thought I would see if you have a mind to chip in. CorporateM (Talk) 17:04, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
- @CorporateM: Sure, I'll be happy to help, but things are a bit busy now. Would you mind pinging me again, three or four days from now? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:32, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-42
15:31, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 24
Books & Bytes
Issue 24, August-September 2017
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Star Coordinator Award - last quarter's star coordinator: User:Csisc
- Wikimania Birds of a Feather session roundup
- Spotlight: Wiki Loves Archives
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Kiswahili and Yoruba versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:53, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Backlog update:
- The new page backlog is currently at 12,878 pages. We have worked hard to decrease from over 22,000, but more hard work is needed! Please consider reviewing even just a few pages a day.
- We have successfully cleared the backlog of pages created by non-confirmed accounts before ACTRIAL. Thank you to everyone who participated in that drive.
Technology update:
- Primefac has created a script that will assist in requesting revision deletion for copyright violations that are often found in new pages. For more information see User:Primefac/revdel.
General project update:
- The Article Wizard has been updated and simplified to match the layout style of the new user landing page. If you have not yet seen it, take a look.
- To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:47, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-43
18:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-44
00:20, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
Forcepoint
Hi John. I was wondering if you had the time/interest in participating here. I disclosed my COI and shared a draft about a month ago. Another editor I know said he would take a look when they get a chance, but I don't think they ever got around to it. CorporateM (Talk) 13:38, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-45
18:45, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-46
19:19, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-47
19:19, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-11
15:35, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-48
20:30, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
ArbCom 2017 election voter message
Hello, John Broughton. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-49
17:51, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-50
17:58, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
New Page Reviewer Newsletter

Backlog update:
- The new page backlog is currently at 12713 pages. Please consider reviewing even just a few pages each day! If everyone helps out, it will really put a dent in the backlog.
- Currently the backlog stretches back to March and some pages in the backlog have passed the 90 day Google index point. Please consider reviewing some of them!
Outreach and Invitations:
- If you know other editors with a good understanding of Wikipedia policy, invite them to join NPP by dropping the invitation template on their talk page with:
{{subst:NPR invite}}. Adding more qualified reviewers will help with keeping the backlog manageable.
New Year New Page Review Drive
- A backlog drive is planned for the start of the year, beginning on January 1st and running until the end of the month. Unique prizes will be given in tiers for both the total number of reviews made, as well as the longest 'streak' maintained.
- Note: quality reviewing is extremely important, please do not sacrifice quality for quantity.
General project update:
- ACTRIAL has resulted in a significant increase in the quality of new submissions, with noticeably fewer CSD, PROD, and BLPPROD candidates in the new page feed. However, the majority of the backlog still dates back to before ACTRIAL started, so consider reviewing articles from the middle or back of the backlog.
- The NPP Browser can help you quickly find articles with topics that you prefer to review from within the backlog.
- To keep up with the latest conversation on New Pages Patrol or to ask questions, you can go to Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers and add it to your watchlist.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. — TonyBallioni (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 25
Books & Bytes
Issue 25, October – November 2017
- OAWiki & #1Lib1Ref
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Spotlight: Research libraries and Wikimedia
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Korean and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:57, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2017-51
15:27, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-12
14:31, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Your signature
Please be aware that your signature uses deprecated <font> tags, which are causing Obsolete HTML tags lint errors.
You are encouraged to change
-- <font style="font-family:Brush Script MT; font-size:15px;">[[User:John Broughton|John Broughton]] </font> [[User talk:John Broughton |(♫♫)]]: -- John Broughton (♫♫)
to
-- <span style="font-family:Brush Script MT; font-size:15px;">[[User:John Broughton|John Broughton]] </span> [[User talk:John Broughton |(♫♫)]]: -- John Broughton (♫♫)
—Anomalocaris (talk) 01:07, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
- Thank you for updating your signature! —Anomalocaris (talk) 08:41, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
New Years new page backlog drive

Announcing the NPP New Year Backlog Drive!
We have done amazing work so far in December to reduce the New Pages Feed backlog by over 3000 articles! Now is the time to capitalise on our momentum and help eliminate the backlog!
The backlog drive will begin on January 1st and run until January 29th. Prize tiers and other info can be found HERE.
Awards will be given in tiers in two categories:
- The total number of reviews completed for the month.
- The minimum weekly total maintained for all four weeks of the backlog drive.
NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. — TonyBallioni (talk) 20:24, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-02
16:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-3
18:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-04
23:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-01
00:56, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-05
17:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 26
Books & Bytes
Issue 26, December – January 2018
- #1Lib1Ref
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Spotlight: What can we glean from OCLC’s experience with library staff learning Wikipedia?
- Bytes in brief
Arabic and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:36, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 5 February 2018
- Op-ed: Do editors have the right to be forgotten?
Should an editor's block history be a permanent "rap sheet", or does Wikipedia forgive and forget? A reform initiative has begun.
- Featured content: Wars, sieges, disasters and everything black possible
Exemplary content recognized between January 12 and January 20, 2018
- Recent research: Automated Q&A from Wikipedia articles; Who succeeds in talk page discussions?
Also: Polish quality, Russian political mythologization, and multilingual analyses
- Blog: New monthly dataset shows where people fall into Wikipedia rabbit holes
The Wikimedia Foundation's Analytics team compiles a clickstream dataset, now available as a series of monthly data dumps for English, Russian, German, Spanish, and Japanese Wikipedias.
- Interview: Interview with The Rambling Man, Wikipedia's top contributor of Featured Lists
Lessons on Creating a Featured List
- Traffic report: TV, death, sports, and doodles
The most popular articles for January 14 to 27
- Special report: Cochrane–Wikipedia Initiative
A partnership to improve and update Wikipedia's medical content
- Arbitration report: New cases requested for inter-editor hostility and other collaboration issues
Politeness and collegial behavior about to be taken up by Arbcom, and perhaps a revisit of the infobox question.
- In the media: Solving crime; editing out violence allegations
Also, did UCF really win?
- Humour: You really are in Wonderland
Enjoy the humour of another contributor
Tech News: 2018-06
20:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
New Page Reviewer Newsletter


Backlog update:
- The new page backlog is currently at 3819 unreviewed articles, with a further 6660 unreviewed redirects.
- We are very close to eliminating the backlog completely; please help by reviewing a few extra articles each day!
New Year Backlog Drive results:
- We made massive progress during the recent four weeks of the NPP Backlog Drive, during which the backlog reduced by nearly six thousand articles and the length of the backlog by almost 3 months!
General project update:
- ACTRIAL will end it's initial phase on the 14th of March. Our goal is to reduce the backlog significantly below the 90 day index point by the 14th of March. Please consider helping with this goal by reviewing a few additional pages a day.
- Reviewing redirects is an important and necessary part of New Page Patrol. Please read the guideline on appropriate redirects for advice on reviewing redirects. Inappropriate redirects can be re-targeted or nominated for deletion at RfD.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here. 20:32, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-07
21:59, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-08
22:55, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-09
19:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Editing News #1—2018
Read this in another language • Subscription list for the English Wikipedia • Subscription list for the multilingual edition

Did you know that you can now use the visual diff tool on any page?

Sometimes, it is hard to see important changes in a wikitext diff. This screenshot of a wikitext diff (click to enlarge) shows that the paragraphs have been rearranged, but it does not highlight the removal of a word or the addition of a new sentence.
If you enable the Beta Feature for "⧼visualeditor-preference-visualdiffpage-label⧽", you will have a new option. It will give you a new box at the top of every diff page. This box will let you choose either diff system on any edit.

Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.
In the visual diff, additions, removals, new links, and formatting changes will be highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.

This screenshot shows the same edit as the wikitext diff. The visual diff highlights the removal of one word and the addition of a new sentence. An arrow indicates that the paragraph changed location.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode, which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and improving the visual diff tool. Their work board is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor, and improving the visual diff tool.
Recent changes
- The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments. They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing. The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January. Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor. Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits. More information will be posted at mw:Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.
- The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs". The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges. [779]
- Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor. [780]
- The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. This tool has been used at the English Wikipedia for a long time. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be tricky for admins to set up. Other wikis can have this service, too. Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.
Let's work together
- The team is planning a presentation about editing tools for an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting.
- Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry.
- The
<references />block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. This has already been enabled at the English Wikipedia. If you want columns for a long list of footnotes on this wiki, you can use either<references />or the plain (no parameters){{reflist}}template. If you edit a different wiki, you can request multi-column support for your wiki. [781] - If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
—User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-02
11:29, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-10
17:12, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-11
19:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi John. I was hoping you might have the time/interest to get involved in this page. @DGG: said he would take a look a month ago, but no dice. I offered a draft, which @Spintendo: reviewed as part of the Request Edit process. However, I don't feel it is actually possible to improve the page while complying with his feedback on WP:AGEMATTERS (for example) disallowing using recent sources to cover Barton's early life. Therefore, I'm not sure how to improve the article from here. CorporateM (Talk) 05:15, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
- CorporateM, my apologies.The interpretation of WP:AGEMATTERS that was given was an absurd misreading. When dealing with the interpretation of history and similar subjects, new sources are in general more authoritative. (The still widespread WP use of the 1913 EB or even early Bible dictionaries is a disgrace--there is no topic whatsoever for which they are valid). What one uses are the best sources. When 21st century high quality sources do not exist, we use the best that there is, correcting for the expected bias. John, I'm too busy to do very much here, but please help on this and then I will take a look also. DGG ( talk ) 18:37, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
- @CorporateM: In this case, I'm inclined to handle this by my moving new information, with the appropriate source, into the article in a piecemeal way, while removing material that lacks a source, or at least a good source, and isn't being proposed for retention. That's not the normal way I participate in these discussions - I usually just focus on the draft replacement - but because this [unusually] involves WP:BLP issues and because I do a lot of editing of biographical articles in Wikipedia, I'm more comfortable with a piecemeal approach. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:03, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
- Sure thing. To clarify, are you asking me to propose content in a sentence-by-sentence fashion, or are you saying you'll review the draft sentence-by-sentence? I'll follow your lead either way. CorporateM (Talk) 23:01, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
- @CorporateM: In this case, I'm inclined to handle this by my moving new information, with the appropriate source, into the article in a piecemeal way, while removing material that lacks a source, or at least a good source, and isn't being proposed for retention. That's not the normal way I participate in these discussions - I usually just focus on the draft replacement - but because this [unusually] involves WP:BLP issues and because I do a lot of editing of biographical articles in Wikipedia, I'm more comfortable with a piecemeal approach. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:03, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi John. I just wanted to check-in and see if this was still on your radar. FYI - Dominic Barton's third and final term as Managing Director of McKinsey has come to an end as the firm's rules only allow him to serve up to three terms. Let me know if there is any way I can be of assistance. CorporateM (Talk) 16:35, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- @CorporateM: Among other things, I volunteer to do taxes for people (for free). Tax season ends 4/17, and I envision having the time, shortly thereafter, to finish working on the article. I apologize for the delay; thanks for your patience. And yes, the article should reflect Barton's current status. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:50, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
- Hi John. Hope tax season went well! I wanted to check-in and see if it was a good time to circle back on this. CorporateM (Talk) 23:02, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-12
15:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-03
12:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-13
20:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Signpost issue 4 – 29 March 2018
- Op-ed: Death knell for The Signpost?
Is The Signpost on its last legs?
- News and notes: Wiki Conference roundup and new appointments.
Wikimedia events, group recognition, and individual appointments are ongoing.
- Arbitration report: Ironing out issues in infoboxes; not sure yet about New Jersey; and an administrator who probably wasn't uncivil to a sockpuppet.
Arbcom considers new discretionary sanctions for infoboxes and an extension of 1RR.
- In the media: The media on Wikipedia's workings: the good and not-so-good
Diplomats join Wikipedia for International Women's Day, the perfect "Human", how fringe theories are sustained, and perennial plagiarism from our pages.
- Traffic report: Real sports, real women and an imaginary country: what's on top for Wikipedia readers
Wakanda still fascinates; the Oscars happened; Winter Olympics come to a close; and International Women's Day gets over a million page views.
- Featured content: Animals, Ships, and Songs
A plethora of content.
- Technology report: Timeless skin review by Force Radical.
Reviewing a browser skin providing equal emphasis on both content and editing tools simultaneously.
- Special report: ACTRIAL wrap-up.
Retrospective on article creation trial.
- Humour: WikiWorld Reruns
Nostalgia and trips down Memory Lane.
New Page Review Newsletter No.10
ACTRIAL:
- ACTRIAL's six month experiment restricting new page creation to (auto)confirmed users ended on 14 March. As expected, a greatly increased number of unsuitable articles and candidates for deletion are showing up in the feed again, and the backlog has since increased already by ~30%. Please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day.
Paid editing
- Now that ACTRIAL is inoperative pending discussion, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary.
Subject-specific notability guidelines
- The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
- Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies. A further discussion is currently taking place at: Can a subject specific guideline invalidate the General Notability Guideline?
Nominate competent users for Autopatrolled
- While patrolling articles, if you find an editor that is particularly competent at creating quality new articles, and that user has created more than 25 articles (rather than stubs), consider nominating them for the 'Autopatrolled' user right HERE.
News
- The next issue Wikipedia's newspaper The Signpost has now been published after a long delay. There are some articles in it, including ACTRIAL wrap-up that will be of special interest to New Page Reviewers. Don't hesitate to contribute to the comments sections. The Signpost is one of the best ways to stay up date with news and new developments - please consider subscribing to it. All editors of Wikipedia and associated projects are welcome to submit articles on any topic for consideration by the The Signpost's editorial team for the next issue.
To opt-out of future mailings, go here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:06, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-14
19:28, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-15
18:08, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-16
15:20, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 27
Books & Bytes
Issue 27, February – March 2018
- #1Lib1Ref
- New collections
- Alexander Street (expansion)
- Cambridge University Press (expansion)
- User Group
- Global branches update
- Wiki Indaba Wikipedia + Library Discussions
- Spotlight: Using librarianship to create a more equitable internet: LGBTQ+ advocacy as a wiki-librarian
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Chinese and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:50, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Select Survey Invite
I'm working on a study of political motivations and how they affect editing. I'd like to ask you to take a survey. The survey should take no more than 1-2 minutes. Your survey responses will be kept private. Our project is documented at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_%2B_Politics.
Your survey Link: https://uchicago.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9S3JByWf57fXEkR?Q_DL=56np5HpEZWkMlr7_9S3JByWf57fXEkR_MLRP_1HctmWNUdk64ldH&Q_CHL=gl
I am asking you to participate in this study because you are a frequent editor of pages on Wikipedia that are of political interest. We would like to learn about your experiences in dealing with editors of different political orientations.
Sincere thanks for your help! Porteclefs (talk) 17:05, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
- @Porteclefs: I don't remember the last clear conflict I had that involved a political article; it's certainly been more than a few years since anything memorable. My practice, now, is almost always to not look back after I've edited, relying on others to protect what I've added or changed. I'm scrupulous about including a source for every fact or sentence that I add to an article, which sharply reduces the likelihood of the text being (successfully) removed. More generally, I've focused most of my energy on things other than improving Wikipedia articles. So I'm not able to help with your survey - I started it, but couldn't get past the second page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:26, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-17
18:16, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-18
16:18, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-19
16:28, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-20
22:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-21
17:34, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 May 2018
- From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline
A busy office with minimal staff.
- Op-ed: Has the wind gone out of the AdminShip's sails?
Kudpung has some thoughts on the reasons for becalmed forums and the reluctance of candidates to (wo)man the rigging.
- Opinion: Integrating my many lives on Wikipedia
Thoughts on how looking for the truth on Wikipedia brings out unexpected things in the real world.
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals
After a recent Village Pump discussion, the Signpost looks at WikiProject Portals.
- Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals
A busy month for discussions on major topics.
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
Science, sportspeople, video games, and history feature heavily in the community's picks this month.
- Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics
Has an attempt to prevent historical revisionism become a content battleground?
- News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia
De-recognition of Brazil user groups; brute-force attack on Wikipedia; Wikimedia Conference 2018; and assorted other silly things.
- In the media: Wikipedia in Turkish politics; COI politics in Wikipedia; most cited work
And the burning question of the day, is the monkey selfie going to space with the rest of Wikipedia?
- Traffic report: We love our superheroes
No surprises here as the summer movie season begins.
- Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies
Improved mobile app, searching, citations, inline maps, voting, and more.
- Blog: Why I write about women on Wikipedia
Editor SusunW delves into reasons why she has created hundreds of articles about women.
- Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues
Too many women still don't know that Wikipedia is editable.
- Humour: Play with your food
Down the rabbit hole into the realm of third-grade mind.
- Gallery: Wine not?
May 25 is National Wine Day in the United States.
- From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost
The dark and twisted world of Wikipedia's most powerful media institution: The Signpost.
NPR Newsletter No.11 25 May 2018
ACTRIAL:
- WP:ACREQ has been implemented. The flow at the feed has dropped back to the levels during the trial. However, the backlog is on the rise again so please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day; a backlog approaching 5,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.
Deletion tags
- Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders. They require your further verification.
Backlog drive:
- A backlog drive will take place from 10 through 20 June. Check out our talk page at WT:NPR for more details. NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.
Editathons
- There will be a large increase in the number of editathons in June. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.
Paid editing - new policy
- Now that ACTRIAL is ACREQ, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. There is a new global WMF policy that requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.
Subject-specific notability guidelines
- The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
- Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
Not English
- A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, tag as required, then move to draft if they do have potential.
News
- Development is underway by the WMF on upgrades to the New Pages Feed, in particular ORES features that will help to identify COPYVIOs, and more granular options for selecting articles to review.
- The next issue of The Signpost has been published. The newspaper is one of the best ways to stay up to date with news and new developments. between our newsletters.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:35, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-22
12:40, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-23
21:54, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-24
21:55, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
NPP Backlog Elimination Drive
Hello John Broughton, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!
We can see the light at the end of the tunnel: there are currently 2900 unreviewed articles, and 4000 unreviewed redirects.
Announcing the Backlog Elimination Drive!
- As a final push, we have decided to run a backlog elimination drive from the 20th to the 30th of June.
- Reviewers who review at least 50 articles or redirects will receive a Special Edition NPP Barnstar:
. Those who review 100, 250, 500, or 1000 pages will also receive tiered awards:
,
,
,
. - Please do not be hasty, take your time and fully review each page. It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 06:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-25
21:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 28
Books & Bytes
Issue 28, April – May 2018
- #1Bib1Ref
- New partners
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Wikipedia Library global coordinators' meeting
- Spotlight: What are the ten most cited sources on Wikipedia? Let's ask the data
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Italian and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:33, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-26
23:10, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-27
00:46, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-28
23:09, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-29
16:00, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-30
09:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018
| Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. () |
Hello John Broughton, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!
- June backlog drive
Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers.
Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.
- New technology, new rules
- New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
- Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
- Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.
- Editathons
- Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.
- The Signpost
- The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 00:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Speedy deletion declined: Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department
Hello John Broughton. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: being part of a notable entity indicates significance, not to mention all the sources that BlackCurrantTea apparently had no problem finding. Thank you. SoWhy 07:56, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-31
14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-32
19:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-33
17:53, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-34
16:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Latest message for Collaboration team newsletter; Growth team's newsletter invite
Hello
Sorry to use English if that's not your favorite language.
You are receiving this message because you were reading the Collaboration team newsletter.
The Collaboration team doesn't longer exists. That team was working on building features that encourage collaboration. This is the latest message for that newsletter.
The Growth Team, formed in July 2018, supports some former Collaboration projects. The Growth Team's main objective is to ease new editors' first steps on wikis, through software changes. You can discover all objectives and missions of the Growth team on its page.
If you wish to be informed about Growth team's updates about easing new users first steps, you can subscribe to the new list to get updates. The first message from Growth –with a call for feedback on a new project– will be posted in a few days!
If you have questions or you want to share experiences made on your wiki about new users' first steps, please post them on the team talk page, in any language.
On behalf of the Growth team, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
Growth team updates #1
Welcome to the first newsletter for the new Growth team!
The Growth Team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects. We will be starting with Wikipedias, but we hope these changes will benefit every community.
8 ideas we consider: tell us what you think about them!
We are considering new features to build, that could retain new editors in mid-size Wikipedias. We will be testing new ideas in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, and then we'll talk to more communities (yours!) about adopting the ideas that work well.
We have posted the 8 ideas we are considering. We would really appreciate your thoughts and the thoughts from your community. Please share the ideas, and tell us what do you and your community think of those ideas before September 9.
Share your experiences with newcomers
We want to hear about what is working and what is not working for new contributors in your wiki. We also want to hear any reactions, questions, or opinions on our work. Please post on the team’s talk page, in any language!
Learn more about us
You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the first project we'll work on.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Books & Bytes – Issue 29
Books & Bytes
Issue 29, June – July 2018
- New partners
- Economic & Political Weekly–10 accounts
- Wikimania
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
Hindi, Italian and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-35
16:16, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-36
16:47, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-37
22:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-38
21:58, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018
Hello John Broughton, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!
The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.
- Project news
- The New Page Feed now has a new "Articles for Creation" option which will show drafts instead of articles in the feed, this shouldn't impact NPP activities and is part of the WMF's AfC Improvement Project.
- As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.
- There are a number of coordination tasks for New Page Patrol that could use some help from experienced reviewers. See Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination#Coordinator tasks for more info to see if you can help out.
- Other
- A new summary page of reliable sources has been created; Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources, which summarizes existing RfCs or RSN discussions about regularly used sources.
- Moving to Draft and Page Mover
- Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
- If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
- Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
- The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
- The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.
List of other useful scripts for New Page Reviewing
|
|---|
|
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-39
15:22, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-40
17:34, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
Growth team updates #2
Tech News: 2018-41
23:38, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-42
22:40, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018
| Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. |
Hello John Broughton, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!
- Backlog
As of 21 October 2018, there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.
- Community Wishlist Proposal
- There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding the drafting of a Community Wishlist Proposal for the purpose of requesting bug fixes and missing/useful features to be added to the New Page Feed and Curation Toolbar.
- Please join the conversation as we only have until 29 October to draft this proposal!
- Project updates
- ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
- There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.
- New scripts
- User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js(info) — A new script created for quickly placing {{copyvio-revdel}} on a page.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-43
23:11, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Books & Bytes, Issue 30
Books & Bytes
Issue 30, August – Septmeber 2018
- Library Card translation
- Spotlight: 1Lib1Ref spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and beyond
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
French version of Books & Bytes is now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-44
20:08, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Editing News #2—2018
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscription list on the English Wikipedia

Did you know?
Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.
You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.
Recent changes
- The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
- The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
- The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
- The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
- The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
- The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [983]
Let's work together
- The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
- The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
- If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-45
17:28, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Growth team updates #3
Welcome to the third newsletter for the new Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Two Growth team projects to be deployed in next two weeks
We will be deploying the "Understanding first day" and "Personalized first day" projects on Czech and Korean Wikipedias in the coming weeks. See the new project pages below for full details on the projects, and our project updates page for their progress.
- Understanding first day: learn about the actions new editors take right after creating their accounts. We will be careful with user privacy, and we hope to share initial results in December.
- Personalized first day: learn about new editors' objectives by adding some optional questions to the new editor’s registration process, and personalizing their onboarding. We hope to share initial results in December.
Third Growth team project begins
- Focus on help desk: direct newcomers to the local help desks where they can ask questions to help them make their first edits. We hope to have an initial experiment running in December.
Best practices for helping newcomers
We are going to direct newcomers to help desks. But what's the best way to reply to a newcomer there? We have gathered some best practices for successful interactions, based on community experiences and some external documentation. The page has also been reviewed by some experienced community members who suggested some changes. That page is now open for translations. Comments and suggestions are still welcome!
We are still looking for volunteers
Do you want to participate to our experiments? We are looking for new communities to work with us (especially a new mid-size wiki), and people to become ambassadors to help us to communicate with the different communities. Discover how you can involve yourself or your community.
Also, please share this update with your community and interested people!
Learn more about us
You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the projects we'll work on.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 13:29, 7 November 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Hi
Hi. I am Mossab a Wikipedia education program team leader at hashemite university in jordan. Recently i organized an MOU signing ceremony between the hashemite university in jordan and the Wikimedia foundation in that there will be a corner for Wikipedia inside campus in the university library so that I'd like to include your book Wikipedia – The Missing Manual in the Wikipedia corner. So could you please send me it as PDF so that i can print it and put it in the university library? Kind Regards--مصعب (talk) 17:20, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
- @مصعب: Mossab - I'm glad to hear that you're helping to improve Wikipedia, in Jordan, and I'm happy to help. The book I wrote can be printed without cost (that is, a copyleft version has been issued), but I don't have the book in PDF format. However, the contents were published at Help: Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, and have even been improved by changes made by other editors. So what's available to you is actually better than what is in the original version.
- I suggest that you or others simply print the published Help pages, in order, or, using Adobe Acrobat or similar, create and then combine all the separate PDFs into a single PDF for printing. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:06, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-46
19:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
NPR Newsletter No.15 16 November 2018
|
Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. |

Hello John Broughton,
- Community Wishlist Survey – NPP needs you – Vote NOW
- Community Wishlist Voting takes place 16 to 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools we need. This is very important as we have been asking the Foundation for these upgrades for 4 years.
- If this proposal does not make it into the top ten, it is likely that the tools will be given no support at all for the foreseeable future. So please put in a vote today.
- We are counting on significant support not only from our own ranks, but from everyone who is concerned with maintaining a Wikipedia that is free of vandalism, promotion, flagrant financial exploitation and other pollution.
- With all 650 reviewers voting for these urgently needed improvements, our requests would be unlikely to fail. See also The Signpost Special report: 'NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers', and if you are not sure what the wish list is all about, take a sneak peek at an article in this month's upcoming issue of The Signpost which unfortunately due to staff holidays and an impending US holiday will probably not be published until after voting has closed.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)18:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-47
23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
ArbCom 2018 election voter message
Hello, John Broughton. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-48
22:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-49
16:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Growth team updates #4
Welcome to the fourth newsletter for the new Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
We need your feedback!
We have two requests for community members:
- Now that data is coming in for the welcome survey, we are planning how to use that data to personalize the newcomer's first day. See our current thoughts here, and join the conversation here.
- Try out the help panel's interactive prototype, and read about how we're planning to roll it out, and post any thoughts or reactions here.
Two Growth team projects have been deployed (detailed updates here)
- Personalized first day (welcome survey) was deployed on November 20 on both Czech and Korean Wikipedias.
- The survey is now being shown to half of new users (A/B test). Responses are being recorded in the database. We'll report on initial results during December.
- We are planning to test a second version of the survey, called "Variation C", which we think will maximize the number of users who complete the survey and stay on the wiki.
- The original objective of this project was to give newcomers the materials they need to achieve their goals, and so now we are currently planning how we will use the information collected in the welcome survey to personalize the newcomer's experience. We hope community members will read our current thinking and join the conversation here. Some of the plans we are considering include:
- Making it easy for newcomers to see editing activity around the topic areas in which they indicated that they're interested.
- Connecting interested newcomers to experienced editors.
- Surfacing the help content most relevant to the reason for which the newcomers created their accounts.
- Understanding first day (EditorJourney) was deployed on November 15 on both Czech and Korean Wikipedias. It has been done after a longer security review and final testing than expected. Data is now being recorded for all new users on those wikis, and we've been auditing the data and preparing to make initial reports during December. Stay tuned for the next newsletter!
Help panel is under construction
- Focus on help desk (help panel) is planned to be deployed during the week of January 7 on both Czech and Korean Wikipedias.
- This interactive prototype is the best way to see the design and wording in the feature.
- We ran live user tests on the prototype, with results posted here.
- In addition to giving the ability to ask a question, the help panel will also contain a set of links to existing help content. Our ambassadors on Czech and Korean Wikipedias are determining the right initial set of most helpful links in this task.
- We encourage community members to try out the prototype and read about the rules for who will get the feature, and add any thoughts to this discussion.
We are still looking for volunteers
Do you want to participate to our experiments? We are looking for new communities to work with us (especially a new mid-size wiki), and people to become ambassadors to help us to communicate with the different communities. Discover how you can involve yourself or your community.
Also, please share this update with your community and interested people!
Learn more about us
You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project updates page for detailed updates on the projects we work on.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 09:31, 7 December 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Weighing in on Growth team work
Hi John Broughton -- thank you for weighing in when the Growth team was discussing ideas on what we would build. We've made a lot of progress in the last few months, and we're hoping you could take a look at some of our current work and post any thoughts you have. We're working on a "help panel" (comments can go here), and on the next steps for the "Personalized first day" project (comments can go here). Thank you for any time you give! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-50
17:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
NPR Newsletter No.16 15 December 2018
Hello John Broughton,
- Reviewer of the Year

This year's award for the Reviewer of the Year goes to Onel5969. Around on Wikipedia since 2011, their staggering number of 26,554 reviews over the past twelve months makes them, together with an additional total of 275,285 edits, one of Wikipedia's most prolific users.
- Thanks are also extended for their work to JTtheOG (15,059 reviews), Boleyn (12,760 reviews), Cwmhiraeth (9,001 reviews), Semmendinger (8,440 reviews), PRehse (8,092 reviews), Arthistorian1977 (5,306 reviews), Abishe (4,153 reviews), Barkeep49 (4,016 reviews), and Elmidae (3,615 reviews).
Cwmhiraeth, Semmendinger, Barkeep49, and Elmidae have been New Page Reviewers for less than a year — Barkeep49 for only seven months, while Boleyn, with an edit count of 250,000 since she joined Wikipedia in 2008, has been a bastion of New Page Patrol for many years.
See also the list of top 100 reviewers.
- Less good news, and an appeal for some help
The backlog is now approaching 5,000, and still rising. There are around 640 holders of the NPR flag, most of whom appear to be inactive. The 10% of the reviewers who do 90% of the work could do with some support especially as some of them are now taking a well deserved break.
- Really good news - NPR wins the Community Wishlist Survey 2019
At #1 position, the Community Wishlist poll closed on 3 December with a resounding success for NPP, reminding the WMF and the volunteer communities just how critical NPP is to maintaining a clean encyclopedia and the need for improved tools to do it. A big 'thank you' to everyone who supported the NPP proposals. See the results.
- Training video
Due to a number of changes having been made to the feed since this three-minute video was created, we have been asked by the WMF for feedback on the video with a view to getting it brought up to date to reflect the new features of the system. Please leave your comments here, particularly mentioning how helpful you find it for new reviewers.
If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, go here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:14, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
Tech News: 2018-51
20:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Greetings and Salutations

- To John Broughton:
- Hello!
- Congratulations!
- You have been included in my first, and possibly only, Very Early Christmas List!
- As an earnest fellow believer in Santa Claus, and possibly in Our Redeemer Liveth as well, you may wonder how you got on this list.
- I have no idea!
- That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
- Unless I tracked down the connection in our user talk archives, in which case you know who you are!
- Or not.
- All the best for you and yours this Christmas 2018 and New Year 2019!
Books & Bytes, Issue 31
Books & Bytes
Issue 31, October – Novemeber 2018
- OAWiki
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
French version of Books & Bytes is now available on meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:34, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
