Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2016-04

Announcements

Wikilegal Copyright of Political Speeches

meta:Copyright of Political Speeches has just been published by the WMF Wikilegal team. In short, copyright very likely exists in speeches unless they are 100% adlib. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:08, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Emend: This posting concerns political campaign speeches, and not speeches made once in office. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:49, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Which I believe is the approach that we have been taking in recent years, and to which we removed speeches by non-presidents, and similarly in replies to the state of the union addresses. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:40, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Proposals

Neutralize the superfluous message of the {{nop}} Gadget

I propose that the message No trailing {{nop}} was found on the previous page. Add one? which appears when the sidebar gadget is used — to be neutralized, but retain the message which informs of the existence of a {{nop}}. The gadget is titled Add a toolbar button to check for and insert a paragraph-breaking {{nop}} at the end of the previous page. in the Development section. — Ineuw talk 04:15, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Don't change. From my perspective I want a response whenever I click the tool. I can't see that the tool is adding a nop unless I check the previous page or go to Recent Changes. If I have to check the previous page, I might as well have gone back and added the nop myself. Clicking something with no feedback makes me think that the link I clicked does nothing or is broken. The way the gadget is set up at the moment gives feedback, it also gives me a chance to change my mind about adding the nop. In other words, I don't believe the message to be superfluous. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:07, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I see what you mean Ineuw (although, I got momentarily confused about 'neutralizing' and was looking for some non-neutral bias in the messages hehe). But I think I agree with Beeswaxcandle, the current messages work well for making sure we know what's going on. The only change I would ask for (although I suspect it's not popular) is to move the button to the toolbar (I never understand why the sidebar is preferred for things that aren't navigation). But let's keep the message boxen as they are. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 23:11, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

• I'm with BWC that I am wanting to know, and I cannot say that I have no issue with the prompt. It can useful if one elucidates on a problem rather than state a solution, so your reasoning for the value of removing the text can help us to understand your issue. Maybe what you are wanting is something that adds the nop if it is not present and says, ADDED; and where it is present, it gives the warning message. The ADDED functionality would need to do the fading trick like "page saved" text, otherwise it is a change that makes no difference. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:44, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Neutralizing meant to disable the code segment. I disagree with my distinguished colleagues, because the message is no indication that the template was applied, unless it's clicked twice. Furthermore, the editor's contribution history displays the marked pages. The problem is that paginating through some hundreds of pages a volume is a slow process even with high speed connection, and the message further slows one down. Please reconsider. — Ineuw talk 06:22, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Ineuw, you can copy the gadget code to your personal Common.js page, and edit your own custom version of it. This might be beyond your expertise but there are people here who I'm sure would be happy to help. Hesperian 11:49, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Hesperian, thank you, will do that!!! — Ineuw talk 00:41, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

yes, i just add them manually. now if it was on the edit toolbar… Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 23:39, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Don't change. This helps with multiple proofreaders by indicating if the previous page (done by someone else) has had a nop added—the message A trailing {{nop}} was found on the previous page. comes up. Zoeannl (talk) 02:44, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

It is superfluous and redundant to ask the user, "Do you want to add it?" It seems logical that if the option is already clicked, the the user wants it. I made a copy and modified it as Hesperian recommended, whereby if {{nop}} doesn't exist, it just adds it, if it exists then it lets me know as before. I would also like to know when it's added by flashing a color, but not stop with a question and wait for a reply. For this to happen in my personal version, I am turning to our erstwhile roving expert to advise me how I can add a flashing color when the template is added. — Ineuw talk 04:02, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Two comments (aside from your entirely inaccurate assignation of expert status):

1. I believe Ineuw is referring to the confirmation-to-proceed message, and Zoeannl to the change-log message written after a successful {{nop}} addition, which Ineuw was not proposing changing from its current value of "Adding trailing {{nop}} to break paragraph at the page boundary." Unless I am mistaken there is no conflict here.
2. You are going to sort of love at least this, but the logic to display a "flash" much as you describe is already within both MediaWiki:Gadget-NopInserter.js and Inew's copy thereof; yet appears to have been broken due to internal labels having at some point morphed in name. I am referring to this fragment of code:

   			if ( data && data.edit && data.edit.result == 'Success' ) {
   				$('#ca-prev').css({'outline':'2px solid green'});
   				setTimeout(function() {
   					$('#ca-prev').css({'outline':''});
   				}, 2000);
   

   (the line numbering refers to the "official" gadget.) Unfortunately symbol #ca-prev does not exist currently, so I shall presume the "last page" arrow was intended (#ca-proofreadPagePrevLink) instead. To "blink" the last-page arrow (if using the "Vector" skin; or tab if using "Monobook") with a green outline when a successful {{nop}} update has been made, substitute the above code fragment with:

   			if ( data && data.edit && data.edit.result == 'Success' ) {
   				$('#ca-proofreadPagePrevLink').css({'outline':'2px solid green'});
   				setTimeout(function() {
   					$('#ca-proofreadPagePrevLink').css({'outline':''});
   				}, 2000);
   

AuFCL (talk) 06:21, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @AuFCL:. In the fog and mist of distant memory, I now recall that the color flash was functioning in an earlier version. Why this was changed, I have no clue unless someone searches Inductiveload's conversations. — Ineuw talk 18:52, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

One portal for various fictional works?

I was just reading this thread and was reminded that I came across a red link to The Bloody Thumb on this page, which I assume is an imaginary work, and was puzzled about how it should be handled. Reading through all the ideas in that thread, I got the idea that it might work out well to have a portal that would list up various fictional works, and then any fictional work mentioned in one of our texts could be linked to that portal via a redirect. Or if there were an actual work entitled The Bloody Thumb, that had no relation to the one in Father Brown's world, there would be a disambiguation page listing the actual work, as well linking to its listing in the fictional work portal, as well as the mention of the fictional work in the other text. Any thoughts? Mudbringer (talk) 08:30, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I think fictional references to fictional works should not be linked. Hesperian 12:39, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I think it depends. References to w:The Necronomicon could be common enough to warrant a link to the Wikipedia article, so there are at least some fictitious works that readers may believe are real, or at least seek more information about. However, I am not convinved that a portal would be the best means of accommodating this issue. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:45, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

My first impulse was to remove the link, but when I saw who linked it I decided to leave it. Later when I read EncycloPetey's comment in that thread about biblical authors: If the "casual proofreader" has created the link because they did not bother to do any research, and someone then does the research, it would be irresponsible and wasteful to then not make use of that research. I started thinking about what it could link to, and the idea of a portal was one idea that occurred to me. If the imaginary work were famous enough to have a wikipedia article that would be fine, but most wouldn't. I think an imaginary work portal could be a very interesting page if enough people were willing to contribute to it. Mudbringer (talk) 23:47, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Other discussions

Clarification on copyright of a book and its images.

I noticed the description of this image on Wikipedia and I am confused about the banner about the possible copyright of this image, and that the picture cannot be moved to the Commons. The original publication was 1893.

On searching, it seems that a publishing house "Weis" may have reprinted this book in 1996. The old publication exists on Hathi Trust and Google books.

I strongly believe that this image (and the book), is in the public domain. Could someone kindly advise? Thanks  — Ineuw talk 09:34, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

i agree however, need to also check engravers dates (anonymous). there are a lot of these held on english, due to anti-commons animus. (i see fastily bot changed do not transfer 4 days ago). and why illustrations not shown at google book [1] don’t see it at internet archive. Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 23:08, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into it. So far, this is what I know. Google "harvests" and removes images from public domain books in the hope of future reversal of copyright policy, in any case if they removed the images I wouldn't want the book. They also removed the images, except drawings from PSM Vol 75. I knew that the book in question is not on IA which was a surprise. What I don't understand, is that publishers or "engravers" would apply for copyright?  — Ineuw talk 00:45, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

i did not see a good scan at hathi, only bibliography. when you don’t have everyone safely dead 70 years, the cautious deletionists feel bold. good candidate to visit library and make scan, and upload to IA. i’ve been threatening to do some at library of congress, but keep getting distracted. https://lccn.loc.gov/98902766 Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 04:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again for looking into it. The LOC copy was published by Asian Educational Services, New Delhi in 1996, so that copy wouldn't be for us in any case, unless the publishers just scanned the original. Most if not all the copies for sale floating on the web (Amazon, etc.) are from India, since they figure prominently in republication of pubic domain material. I think we should just let sleeping dogs lie. It will eventually turn up at IA.  — Ineuw talk 04:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Slowking4, @Ineuw: The DLI version has images. Pdf version here. Hrishikes (talk) 13:34, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks to all. Downloaded both files. The .tiff file is damaged and unusable. The .pdf file is a scanned copy and the reprint is the scan by Wise Publications in Srinagar, Kashmir in 1996, noting the original publication date as 1893. So, I don't think it's uploadable to the commons. This, I decided to look for another old copy here in Canada. There are possibilities. — Ineuw talk 18:28, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Just a note... a reprint of a public domain book can not have a copyright in the United States as it has no new material, or very little new material that isn't eligible for copyright (dedication page, etc.). This is unlike a book that has a new preface, in which case the preface is under copyright but the remainder of the book is in the public domain. "Collections" of public domain material tend to fall under copyright, while the individual works still do not. I haven't seen this 1996 reprint, but if this image was in the original and the original is in the public domain, the reprint of the image is as well. As for things "showing up" at IA, it's because many of us upload books there. Haz _talk 15:24, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

The tif version is not damaged, it needs a tif viewer. Anyway, copyright info for 1996 print available here. Hrishikes (talk) 16:45, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

@Ineuw, @Slowking4, @Hazmat2: Reprint copyright discussion: c:Commons:Deletion requests/File:ভানুমতী (Bhanumoti).pdf Hrishikes (talk) 16:27, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-07

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

Recent changes

• You can now edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [2]
• You can now use the Math extension to write chemistry formulas. [3]

Problems

• A few editors might have been logged in as someone else because of a bug. For security reasons everyone was logged out on 9 February. If you have seen this bug, you can report it. [4][5]

Changes this week

• There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. The plan was to have it leave beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. It will happen on 16 February instead. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [6][7]
• Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [8]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).

Meetings

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

Future changes

• The search function on Wikimedia wikis will get a completion suggester that tries to find the right pages as the user is typing. It will also recognize some typos. This will probably happen in March. It is currently in beta. [9]

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

16:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

In case anybody noticed the brief two-and-a-half weeks in which it actually worked, <ce> is broken again (already.) On the upside (graveside humour?) it is equally broken on WikiPedia and so maybe might receive a little bit of appropriate developer-loving? AuFCL (talk) 20:23, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Partial answer to my own issue above (T128950 tangentially refers.) The <math> extension is currently unreliable when Preferences/Math/PNG images is chosen. Use "Preferences/Math/MathML with SVG or PNG fallback" instead. The situation is clearly in flux as yesterday's failure was CSS based; today fails in a visually similar fashion, yet the HTML is different—invalidating yesterdays stop-gap solution. AuFCL (talk) 00:35, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Letter case of book's title

I thought that book's title should be capitalized. But when discussing whether The madman, his parables and poems should be moved to The Madman: His Parables and Poems, I was told that "[i]f there is no indication of the style in the text, the default is sentence case; this was decided by someone ages ago". It's difficult for me to find this decision made by someone ages ago. Could this be clarified in Wikisource:Naming conventions to avoid future mistakes made by editors like me? --Neo-Jay (talk) 16:16, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

It does say at WS:MOS that "Sentence form (most words lowercase) is preferred, unless an original capitalisation is consistently used. Normal exceptions, such as proper nouns, apply." I'm not sure why this is the preferred form; it seems counter-intuitive to me, but there it is. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:20, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Looks like Pathoschild is the one who made the decision: "The 'sentence form' guideline is particularly aimed at titles like 'Presidential radio address of November 2003 (George W. Bush)', which should not be 'Presidential Radio Address...'." See Wikisource talk:Style guide/Archives/2006-06#Capitalisation —Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:24, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

@Beleg Tâl: Many thanks for your information! But according to this guide, it seems to me that The madman, his parables and poems should still be capitalized, not in sentence form. --Neo-Jay (talk) 17:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, not really... the guide itself says "unless an original capitalisation is consistently used", and the original capitalization appears to only be given as "THE MADMAN <br> HIS PARABLES AND POEMS". Thus, the choice according to the wording of the style guide is to use sentence case or all-caps. Based on the talk archives, this doesn't appear to have been Pathoschild's intention, though I'll leave that to them to clarify if they choose to. Nevertheless, that's what the style guide says. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:08, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, I think that the context that "an original capitalisation is consistently used" in is the running text of all sources that mention the title, not the original book cover, which often uses all-capitalized words. I mean, we need to consider all the sources in which the title is mentioned, such as articles, newspapers, other books, etc.. That is why titles like "Presidential radio address of November 2003" should be in sentence form. And therefore I think that in this case The Madman: His Parables and Poems is the right choice. If we only consider the book cover, then the only choice is the all-caps "THE MADMAN HIS PARABLES AND POEMS", which is apparently absurd. --Neo-Jay (talk) 17:34, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

The Library of Congress and Hathi Trust have both "The madman, his parables and poems" and "The madman : his parables and poems" (granted, these are catalog entries, and not headings—I do not know if that makes/should make a difference). That is not to say we must follow the lead of other libraries, but that much may be left to interpretation, and some flexibility may be called for/allowed. WS guidelines/policy is fair game for discussion or proposal... from any contributor/s. Londonjackbooks (talk) 17:49, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

More precisely speaking, the Library of Congress even removes "The" from the beginning of titles, i.e., "Madman, his parables and poems", and "Madman : his parables and poems" (please also notice that there is even a space before colon in "Madman :"). And it seems that the Library of Congress catalog uses sentence form (lowercasing all words except proper nouns) for all book titles. I don't think we should follow this style. But if the community like it, it's fine for me as long as it is clarified in Wikisource's manual of style. --Neo-Jay (talk) 18:39, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

@Neo-Jay: What say we propose a change in policy/guidelines? It seems pretty clear to me that title case is more appropriate for this kind of work. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:46, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

@Beleg Tâl: I agree with you. --Neo-Jay (talk) 18:51, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

The Library of Congress (and probably other libraries) put a space behind a colon that's added between title and subtitle, as to distinguish between it and any colons in the original title.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:30, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Found another discussion, including proposal: Wikisource talk:Style guide#Naming policy —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:06, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Can we take a step back? What is trying to be achieved, and why are you trying to achieve it? If the argument is about capitalisation, I think that you are going to end up with an argument about which titling style, from which period, with which authority, and an argument of lesser importance. Get the title right, and use the case that suits your work. If someone has chosen the title/url/capitalisation for the work, we would generally leave it as it is unless it is problematic, and create redirects as required. The general principles have been 1) accuracy to a work; 2) consistency within a work. 3) where someone has a variation then discuss — we have guidance on style that allows for thoughtful variation, not a strict adherence to a policy; 4) if someone has purposefully chosen a style, then think hard before changing it, unless there are clear problems, or the community has made a consensual change of practice.

Sometimes we do find ourselves changing some things to an updated style or changing what was an experimental style. That can be important to do where there have been suitable improvements in web technology, or a community decision, or the experiment was a problem. Conversely one can find when into a work that it may be an unwise decision (in reflection) to change the style; or we are told that it was purposeful that a style was chosen to reflect something that may have not been obvious. Hopefully neither party will take it as an issue to return styling, and hopefully the return of styling is done with helpful comment, not acerbic blame statements, or straight reversion (both unhelpful).

Colons in titles can be problematic for wikis, as it has a semblance of a reserved character. Em and en dashs, apostrophes, etc., can also be problematic due to unicode or encoding, or not present on keyboards. The community long ago went with an approach of simplification works well, if possible.

To the specifics of the subject at hand. The modern approach appears to remove capitalisation as a source of problem [10], though we have references/citations in old books that use an old and different style, so we need to cater to both. We have users who have preferences for either, or don't care. For the purposes of functionality we can cater for both, and in the end for us both can be correct for our work. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:20, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I can't speak for Neo-Jay, but when I create works I use title case unless specified otherwise in the scan (with some exceptions, like hymns that go by first line more commonly than any title). I only recently discovered that my practice was contrary to the WS style guide. It is my understanding that title case is the usual standard for titles in modern practice, which is why I do it that way. I am not familiar with modern style guides that suggest titling a work using sentence case. It seems to me that e.g. The Madman: His Parables and Poems is the correct capitalization for the title of this work, and The madman, his parables and poems is not correct. Therefore, the former is preferable.

I am more interested in guidelines for future additions; I don't really care about works that are already hosted on pages named in sentence case. For The Madman, I would leave it well enough alone..

My intention in this discussion is to either a) determine whether there is a really good reason to use sentence case instead of title case, even though title case appears to be more correct; or b) if title case is actually preferable (as I understand it), to modify the style guide to suggest title case instead of sentence case unless it is inappropriate; or c) if it really doesn't matter, to modify the style guide to say that it really doesn't matter and you can use title case if you prefer unless it is clearly inappropriate. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:46, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

This is not a case of right or wrong, it is just a case of difference. Trying to express it as a case of righteousness is unhelpful, and we need to consider it more in terms of acceptability. The link that I provided, (here overtly https://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/cataloging/training/bpcr/245.html#proper) covers your examples for how PSU gives their instruction on their cataloguing. So here is my opinion on what is acceptable

• The madman, his parables and poems Y
• The Madman: His Parables and Poems Y
• THE MADMAN HIS PARABLES AND POEMS N
• ThE MaDmAn HiS PaRaBlEs AnD pOeMs N

now and into the future. There is no need to not accept a broad reasonable approach, that has been the community's consensus through time. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:34, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I think that good goals from this discussion should be (1) assess the variety of titles and situations under which we create page names for those titles (especially now that we have more members and a broader range of sources), as well as (2) draft an updated set of guidelines. The current guideline is too short and, apparently, confusing in the way that it is worded. It also does not present guidelines for naming pages when disambiguation is necessary, or when a title starts with "The" (at the least a DEFAULTSORT would be needed). It would also be good to add information concerning the need (or lack of need) for redirects under certain conditions. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:53, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Reviewing and updating our guidance is always a good thing. Examples are valuable. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:34, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

A useful example I've come across: The Loeb translation of Philippe-Ernest Legrand's book on the New Comedy of ancient Greece. Its title is rendered in sentence case on IA as The new Greek comedy, which is misleading. That capitalization implies that the book is about some general comedy that was new, or perhaps a particular new comedy play. In fact, New Comedy was an artistic movement, and as such usually is capitalized just like Renaissance or Impressionism. So this could serve as an example of a title for which sentence case perhaps isn't the best choice.

Likewise, when a title consists of just two words and the first is an article, sentence case doesn't look right: "The frogs", "The choephori". When the primary word in the title would be the only one not capitalized, title case is likely preferrable. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:41, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Graphing page view data

Hi all. Following someone else playing with page view data elsewhere, I have pulled a copy of the template to enWS, and put together some page links, with links currently promoted on the main page. You can view the example at

• User:Billinghurst/GraphViews

I haven't played with this beyond what you see, and I definitely haven't thought about the pages that we wish to view/monitor, nor the scope of the monitoring. This note is as others may wish to play. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:20, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Interesting! Do you think there's any way to make it aggregate page views of subpages of a work? — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 23:20, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Cool. Though it doesn't seem to display graphs for subpages of works. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:57, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

From whence I copied the template, I have asked the author to explore where subpages are part of a graph view. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:34, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Subpages seem to graph now. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:37, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

The template is attempting to categorize all pages with the template in Category:Pages with graphs, which is a non-existent category. Should we create the category, and if so, where should it reside? --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:37, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

{{interwiki-info}} non-functional

I was just looking at The Raven (Poe) and in the raw text it utilises {{interwiki-info}} and it currently does nothing. I cannot remember how it is even meant to work, and there is no imagery that I can find, and not well-explained in the doc page. Where someone is more aware of this matter, it would be great if they could explain to the community what is meant to be happening and then we can look to a solution. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:09, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

It labelled multiple links to each sister, such as the two translations by Baudelaire and Mallarmé at fr.wikisource. There is now four translations listed at fr:Le Corbeau (Edgar Allen Poe). CYGNIS INSIGNIS 04:27, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Well it definitely isn't doing that. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:24, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it is Wikidata that overuns interwikis. phab:T57090 is related to this issue. -04:20, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016: call for posters, discussions and trainings

Hi people,
the calls for posters, discussions and trainings for Wikimania 2016 are officially opened, you can find all the relevant links on the conference wiki:

https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions

The calls will be closed on March 20.

Posters will be reviewed just to make sure that there aren't things which are too much out of scope. Since we have a whole village we will surely find places to attach them, even if we they will be a lot!

Discussions will be managed by a guiding committee who will work on the wiki to meld all the proposals and suggestions.

Trainings will be reviewed by the programme committee. Please note that we request that each training has at least 3-5 interested attendees in order to be put in the programme.

By the beginning of April we will have a first list of all the accepted proposals.

If you have questions we suggest you to ask them on the discussion pages on wiki, so that everyone will be able to see them (and their answers, of course).

We are looking forward to read your ideas! --Yiyi (talk) 13:29, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Training presentation

I would hope that we would be able to at least have a basic training session about Wikisource for those with an interest, though I am uncertain whether it should be in English or Italian. @Aubrey, @Nemo bis, @Micru: others? do you have an opinion? Not having been to enough WMs, I would only be guessing. I would think that the basics would cover:—

• Style guide, transcription, templates, Wikisource for Wikipedians
• Namespaces (Index:, Page:, Main, Author:, Portal:, Help: and Wikisource:)
• Upload to Commons, use of {{book}}, image clean up
• Create an Index, <pagelist>
• What you see is what you transcribe, managing errors (Page: ns)
• Transclusion, <Pages>
• Basic tools, including book tools (epub, mobi, pdf), music notation
• How we relate to Wikidata

Other thoughts? — billinghurst sDrewth 05:40, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Once there is general agreement we can add something to [[wm2016:Training sessions/Proposals/Wikisource]] — billinghurst sDrewth 05:44, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Good idea. We (Wikimedia France) will may be bring the book scanner. Pyb (talk) 22:40, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-09

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

Recent changes

• Thanks to the Graph extension and Pageview API, we now have {{Graph:PageViews}} templates that can show pageviews for any wiki page for any of the wikis. See the examples.
• The Capiunto extension is installed on test wiki. Capiunto provides flexible infobox functionality for Scribunto and generates HTML for infobox features such as headers and rows. It is designed for clean and modern infoboxes that are driven by data from Wikidata, easily usable across different language versions, and easily extensible.
• The visual editor now follows the TemplateData format setting announced in November. When you edit or add a use of a template, the wikitext will be laid out in one of the two ways. [11][12]
• The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [13][14]

Changes this week

• On wikis where the visual editor is available in single edit tab mode, red links may open the visual editor instead of the wikitext editor, depending on user preferences. [15]
• Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [16]
• Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [17]

Meetings

• Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [18]
• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:12, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Everything is probably going to "break" for 10 or 15 minutes later this month

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T124671

This is early notice for everyone, and a request to share the news:

The Ops team is planning a major change to the servers, (very) tenatively scheduled for Tuesday, 22 March 2016. One probable result is that when this happens, all wikis will be in read-only mode for a short time, likely less than 15 minutes for all editors. You will be able to read pages, but not edit them. "All wikis" means all of the WMF wikis, including Meta, Commons, the Wikipedias, and all the sister projects, including all of the Wikisources. It may affect some related sites, such as mw:Wikimedia Labs (including the Tool Labs). There will also be no non-emergency updates to MediaWiki software around that time.

Many details are still being sorted out. I am asking you to please share the word with your friends and fellow contributors now. This will be mentioned in m:Tech/News (subscribe now! ;-) and through all the other usual channels for Ops, but 99% of contributors don't follow those pages. If you are active in other projects or speak other languages, then please share the news with your fellow contributors at other projects, so that whenever it happens, most people will know that everything should be back online in 10 or 15 minutes.

Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Update

The Wikimedia Technical Operations department is planning an important test of the new "full" data center in Texas. The test will result in about 30 minutes of downtime for all the wikis, including Meta, Commons, all Wikipedias, all Wikisources, etc., on two days that week. This work was originally scheduled for this coming week, but has been postponed until the week of 18 April 2016. The official schedule is kept on Wikitech; more information is at m:Tech/Server switch 2016. More announcements and notifications for editors are planned.

If you experienced problems with the five-minute read-only test on Tuesday, 15 March around 07:05 UTC, or if you have suggestions for places to announce this, then please contact me directly at w:en:User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF). Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:57, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Inspire Campaign: Making our content more meaningful

The second Inspire Campaign has launched to encourage and support new ideas focusing on content review and curation in Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia volunteers collaboratively manage vast repositories of knowledge in our projects. What ideas do you have to manage that knowledge to make it more meaningful and accessible? We invite all Wikimedians to participate and submit ideas, so please get involved today! The campaign runs until March 28th.

All proposals are welcome - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive, positive feedback on ideas is appreciated, and collaboration is encouraged - your skills and experience may help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign and help your project better represent the world’s knowledge! I JethroBT (WMF) 19:55, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Lucifer Myth and other pages

I think that User:Calebjbaker needs some help and advice, as the pages they are creating and then linking from enwiki (at least) don't seem appropriate. Thanks Doug Weller (talk) 18:52, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

I explain my rationale for including 2 analytical works here. Calebjbaker (talk) 21:58, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Matter being handled at WS:PD no need for further discussion here. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:46, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-10

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

Recent changes

• Files on Wikimedia Commons can now be 2 GB big. The old limit was 1 GB. [19]
• Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [20]
• The Wikimedia memory cache servers in the Eqiad cluster have now been upgraded to Debian 8 (Jessie). Some users might have had to log in again because of this. [21]
• It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [22]
• Bare attributes in tags now parse according to the HTML5 specifications. <pages from= to= section=1> will parse as <pages from="to=" section="1"> instead of <pages from="" to="" section="1"> as it used to. Please use <pages from="" to="" section=1> or <pages section=1> instead. This is mostly likely to affect pages on Wikisource projects. [23]

Problems

• Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [24]
• The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [25]
• The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [26]
• You may see falsely formatted edit links on both mobile and desktop devices. Mobile devices can also show incorrect formatted table of contents. This should be fixed soon. [27]
• Templates using TemplateData that were edited with the visual editor might have some problems in wikitext mode. This can be fixed by editing and saving the page by using the visual editor without making any changes. [28]

Changes this week

• Cross-wiki notifications will be enabled as a beta feature on all wikis on 10 March. You will be able to get notifications when something happens on another Wikimedia wiki. [29]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
• Wikivoyages will get the Kartographer extension. Kartographer will allow <mapframe> and <maplink> tags in an article to insert an interactive map and overlay it with different markers. You can add ideas and suggestions to the Maps talk page. If you find any bugs, you can report them in Phabricator. [30]

Meetings

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

Future changes

• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [31]
• The Wikimedia technical operations team plans to do some server work on 22 March. This could cause some problems, for example make it possible to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a short period of time. The date for this might change. [32]

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

06:33, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Immediate notice

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T108134

We will need to address the issue about <pages> and get a bot fix in place. I will see what I can do when I have time, nothing immediate. Also to note that I am pretty certain that if we use a tag in the mode of
{{#tag:pages||index=pagename.djvu|from=1|to=2|fromsection=sectionname|tosection=sectionname}}>
that it will work fine. We should review our instructions pretty quickly too. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:38, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Although not explicitly discussed in T108134 it is almost certain that <pagelist> inside Index: pages will similarly be affected. Also Phe's suggested python script omits "include" and "exclude" attributes of <page>. AuFCL (talk) 08:17, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

@Phe: is it right that you have a script to run for main ns pages? — billinghurst sDrewth 10:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

No script, but I gave the way to handle <pages in the bug opened about that trouble. — Phe 21:10, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Adding the bug number overtly above. RL-interruptus here, so cannot tell when I can get to anything. I do note that I saw an example of <pages index="pagename.djvu" from=nn to=nnn /> and it displayed fine. To note that Subhu has confirmed that if we use {{#tag:pages||...}} that we will have no issue, and while it has a component of difference, it is worth our consideration whether that is a better means to progress rather than advocating <pages ...="nn" ="nnn" ... />. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:57, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

 Comment From my quick observations it appears that the issue is only related to the non-quoting of the fromsection= and tosection= and less so with the page numbers, though happy to be shown an example that contradicts this, eg. Farren, Elizabeth (DNB00) is
<pages index="Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu" from=236 to=237 fromsection="Farren, Elizabeth" tosection="Farren, Elizabeth"/>
and displays fine. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Popular Science Monthly/Volume 36/April 1890/Obituary Notes is an example of non-quoted fromsection which seems to work O.K. (<pages index="Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu" from=884 fromsection=B884 to=884 /> Perhaps this change is more liberal than my initial reading of it suggested. Is the real issue in fact only tags containing attribute values with unquoted omitted values, not unquoted given values at all? AuFCL (talk) 06:50, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Totally correct, I have reread Subhu's email to me more carefully, and it says … those without any value after the = sign will change how they are parsed. … — billinghurst sDrewth 12:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

More about xwiki enhanced notifications

“	As you may have noticed on the last Tech News issue, Collaboration team is please to announce that Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a Beta feature on all wikis by March 20th10th. Cross-wiki notifications will help you know about some activity on another wiki. How does it work? Imagine someone thanks you on Commons - the next time you open a page on your local wiki, you'll see that notification from Commons! We hope this will help everyone who is active on multiple wikis. You will find more information in the documentation (translations still welcome). Of course, it is a Beta Feature. We have tested many possible cases on test wikis, and then release that feature one month ago on MediaWiki.org, Commons, Wikidata, French and Hebrew wikis. That first release allowed us to solve encountered problems, but if you experience some bugs (and we are sorry about that), please report them on the dedicated page (in any language). That page is also dedicated to feedback and suggestions. To activate the feature, you will have to go on the 20th10th of March to your preferences, Beta tab, and select the "Enhanced notifications" checkbox (or the equivalent in your language). You will then receive Notifications when they happen on any other wiki. You will receive these notifications only on the wiki where you have activated the feature. If you do not activate it, nothing will change on your Notifications panel. If you have any questions, please leave me a message on any wiki, I'll be notified with cross-wiki notifications. Please spread the word! :) Thanks, Benoît	”
—User:Trizek (WMF), Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list

Please note per phab:T129764 this feature is currently known to be broken on all wikisources. AuFCL (talk) 04:26, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

There are notes now against the ticket that some browser add-ons may cause issues for crosswiki notifications. Working for me in Firefox. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:41, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes I noticed because I made some of them! It appears various javascript blocking extensions might be a little over-enthusiastic and affecting cross-domain notifications. Two suspects have arisen so far (both firefox extensions) NoScript and Privacy Badger but there may be others as well. AuFCL (talk) 09:54, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Author pages linked to Wikidata items with several images

I seem to recall this issue happening before, and it's happening again: Author:Francis Xavier (as an example) is pulling a list of images from Wikidata and is not able to display them correctly. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:36, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

At Wikidata, you make one of the images the preferred image. There are grey ranking objects (three vertical squares), click on the edit for the one that you wish to be preferred, and it will present two boxes, and it is the one on the left. d:Wikidata:Glossary#Rank — billinghurst sDrewth 22:05, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Ah! so that's what those mysterious little boxes are for! --EncycloPetey (talk)

@EncycloPetey: and those on the right are where you can have a "no value" which I use regularly where an author is not in VIAF (just use qualifer of "Retrieved" adding the day's date). — billinghurst sDrewth 09:44, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Opinions sought about potential index do-over

A little early, but I would eventually like to nominate Pro Patria (1917) by Florence Earle Coates for April 2017 FT (it would mark a hundred year anniversary of publication, 'satisfy' Poetry Month as well as highlight Pres. Wilson's Address to Congress on 2 April 1917). The current Index is made up of individual jpg images, but I was thinking about a complete re-do using a different source (djvu). I would also combine the seven poems & Wilson excerpt into one MS page instead of using individual pages per item. I would like opinions on the prospect of doing this. It would involve page deletions and redirect updates, etc. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 15:43, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm all for it. It's a short work so it shouldn't be too hard. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:19, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

In the absence of objections, I'll go ahead with the new index and substitution. I can always apologize later! Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:44, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

A History of Costume (Kohler)

Found this on Archive.org - https://archive.org/details/historyofcostume00khle

Howevever being the sort of person I am I tried to find what the status was as it's a 1928 Publication. I can't seem to find a renewal for it 1955 through 1957. This is despite the front page indicating it's a US edition!, A physical edition I have is a later UK reprint which also gives a 1928 date, but with London as the publication location, and a different publisher.

I've also not been able to find any information as to the subsequent authors ( Kohler himself died in the mid 1870's it seems.), but the issue is if the translation/annotations are still in copyright.

Can we assume the US edition was simeltanous and thus OK for local upload?ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:03, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

hmm, LOC copy says London pub. 1928, versus scan new york 1930. [33] Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 03:57, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Curioser and curioser, Does the LOC give any indication of whether the 1930 New York edition was renewed? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:47, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

well, LOC has a london copy and no new york copy; the new york scan is from Wellesley College Library. translator alexander k. dallas born 1867 [34] if you could find an obit pre-1945 you would be good to go. Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 17:02, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

So far , I've not found a pre-WWII obit., but a rough reckoning would be that he'd have to be 100 in 1967 which seems unlikely. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:11, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Rechecked the CCE renewal lists Project Gutenburg holds, and I still can't see it, so this may be a case of a UK work later published in the US, for which I can't currently find a record. Do we have any details for the Translator? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:00, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Two questions about a book upload

Our copy The Art of Living in Australia of this book is from Gutenberg, but I also found and a nice clean copy on Internet Archive.

1. Should I transfer the IA version to the commons and create an Index page here, as recommended by the Gutenberg template on the book's talk page?
2. Can the current Gutenberg text be as the proofread text on the corresponding pages? — Ineuw talk 23:17, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Done uploaded

See notes at Help:Match and split for your second question. I used the current text once and then found that the two texts had different quotation marks throughout. It wasn't much fun fixing it. For the first, yes, the more we can get scan-backed, the more robust our collection will be. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 17:50, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks BWC. That was my concern, and will look it over carefully when proofreading. 17:56, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-11

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

Recent changes

• The mobile web interface no longer suggests HiDPI thumbnails. This is to take up less bandwidth on slow or expensive connections. [35]
• The search engine on wikipedia.org has been updated. [36]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 22 March and 24 March. This could be postponed to April 18. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. Because of a test, there will also be a couple of minutes where you can't edit the wikis on 15 March starting 07:00 UTC. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
• Administrators and other users with advanced permissions will need to have an 8-byte long passwords. This change takes place on 15 March. Users with too short passwords will be asked to change password the next time they log in. This was decided in a discussion on Meta and is because they can use tools that can hurt the wikis. [37]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [38]

Meetings

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

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

18:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Open call for Individual Engagement Grants

Hey folks! The Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) program is accepting proposals from March 14th to April 12th to fund new tools, research, outreach efforts, and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), IEGs can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.

• Submit a grant request or draft your proposal in IdeaLab
• Get help with your proposal in an upcoming Hangout session
• Learn from examples of completed Individual Engagement Grants

Also accepting candidates to join the IEG Committee through March 25th.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) 23:01, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

For maintenance Category:Works with non-existent author pages

I was looking at Category:Works with non-existent author pages today, and it has 2.5k of pages in need of author pages. It is something to which we should be monitoring as that seems quite a high number. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:58, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

On a quick glance, we could knock 200-300 off that by doing Gems of Chinese Literature and Historical Tales and Anecdotes of the Time of the Early Khalifahs. Multiple items are chapters or sections from a single work. --EncycloPetey (talk) 06:27, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Special cases like those above (compilation of multiple author style publications) aside, I wonder to what extent this is due to users uploading scans to Commons, and then just "forgetting" that author details which may be present there or in WikiData do not spontaneously propagate to the wikisource referencing that upload? Perhaps the ballooning of this category is not so surprising as a consequence of that expectation? AuFCL (talk) 08:00, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-12

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

Problems

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. The Wikimedia Technology department planned to test it this week. This will take place the week of April 18 instead. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
• In Firefox, the visual editor would sometimes just jump down to the bottom of the page when you double-clicked on a table cell. This has now been fixed. [39]

Changes this week

• It will now be easier to list IP addresses that don't have to solve CAPTCHAs. [40]
• You will now be able to mark Echo notifications as unread. [41]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).

Meetings

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

Future changes

• URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. This will happen on May 2. [42]

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

16:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, a minor correction: The MediaWiki deployment dates are March 22–24, not 21–23. My apologies. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 08:29, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Importance of Author pages

Take a look at the following graph:

This is a record of page views for Author:Aeschylus. You'll notice an increase in the low-level views through February and into March, as well as three large spikes. At least some of the increase in low-level views is merely the result of my work expanding that page and adding new links recently. However, the three big spikes coincide with dates that translations of his plays were listed as {{New texts}}. On those dates, we had a sizeable surge in views.

It is clear, then, that Main page listings are in fact drawing views to our Author pages. So it behooves us to present the best Author pages possible when works by those authors will appear in the main page, in order to make a strong and lasting positive impression. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:56, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

i note there is a creator tool [43], maybe an author tool using wikidata would speed the work on the backlog? Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 11:13, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Rather than an author tool, I would prefer to progress use of exploitation of wikidata into the author template, similar to what we do with wikilinks, and images. If the value is empty, then use WD, if populated, use that data. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:55, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Internet Archive no longer creates DjVu-files!

Recently I discovered that a file I uploaded (Van der Goes for Dutch Wikisource) was not converted into djvu-format. Some checks of forums on IA show me that there are more people having trouble with that, and that an IA-official answers like: "nobody uses it." See this forumpost. Looks like a serious problem, to me. Does anyone know more about this? --Dick Bos (talk) 16:23, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

When IA lists available file types on their site, it doesn't list DjVu. You have to follow a special link to get the full list, including DjVu. If they're not getting much use from DjVu, it's may result because the average visitor isn't being told that such files are available. Hiding the listings will certainly bias their data. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:39, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, IA has stopped making djvu. Now, for new files, the IA upload tool can be used to add the pdf file to Commons, with in-built ocr layer. IA is correct from their angle. Djvu is not in general use among readers, except here in Wikisource; and here too, it is for background scan copy, readers see the transcribed document in mainspace. There is not much reader demand for djvu, like for pdf or epub. Therefore, if Wikisource requires djvu from IA, this should be specifically taken up with them. Editors here may like to see this post and this in IA. Hrishikes (talk) 17:25, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

ah well, there went that process. having lost the format wars so soundly, even the archivists can’t be bothered. i was wondering when they would get around to an NIE volume. guess it’s time to upload it. Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 14:13, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-13

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

Recent changes

• MediaWiki now supports the semantic web standards of Microdata and RDFa 1.0. On Wikimedia projects, a configuration change must be requested in order to enable RDFa 1.0. [44] [45]

Problems

• Adding references with Citoid was broken for approximately 6 hours on 24 March. This was fixed. [46]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
• You will be able to remove the header and footer style from User language (babel) boxes. This will make it easier to use them with other userboxes. [47]

Meetings

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

Future changes

• Commons will soon have improved access to Wikidata's data. It will then be possible to access data about any concept on any page on Commons. Assistance with testing this on the beta cluster is appreciated. [48]
• Wikibits.js will not be loaded by default anymore starting April 2016. Gadget and script authors should have already updated their code since the previous announcements, but there is another migration path available if needed. See wikitech-l for details.

Corrections

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

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

19:43, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: Microdata

We have tried to implement the microdata previously in our own ugly/manual ways in author and main ns. I propose that we request to have the configuration change by addition of $wgAllowMicrodataAttributes = true; as addressed at mw:Manual:Semantic_Web. This should give us the ability to supply WD microdata through our header and author templates. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:40, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

That's a great idea. Although, I guess most people wanting that data can just go straight to Wikidata? Still, for the time being (next ten years?) while we've got metadata split between here and Wikidata, it'll make things easier to re-use I think. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 01:36, 31 March 2016 (UTC)