Talk:Diff (blog)/Archive 2

https://diff.wikimedia.org/about/

The about page has a typo: Phabircator in stead of Phabricator. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 15:53, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Ad. I fixed it. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Motivation?

What was wrong with the previous three platforms? Or is it more about different content scope and editorial process? Pelagic (talk) 21:55, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Hey @Pelagic: I don't think anything was wrong with the previous platforms, just things have changed over time. The Wikimedia Blog became more of a external-facing publication and then was stopped all together. Wikimedia Space was a prototype blog and forum, and was shut down. Diff is a continuation of both, with lessons learned and adapted to community needs in the present time. So like you said, more about content scope and editorial process – and the ability for us to support! The move of my team from Community Relations to Communications helped make an argument for, and bolster the support needed, to take on a community blog with an open editorial process. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:16, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Search bar

Suggestion: On https://diff.wikimedia.org/, the search bar is towards the end of the page, which doesn't give a smooth experience. Generally search is at the top of a page, so that users can quickly search and get to wherever they want to on a website. For a while, I thought there was no search feature at all, and no way to reach the post I wanted to, however, I later used Google Search. It would be better if it is at the top. --KCVelaga (talk) 07:05, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks @KCVelaga: for the feedback. I'll past along to the design folks to consider. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:16, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Great, thank you. KCVelaga (talk) 19:18, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Any update on this? --Gnom (talk) 22:09, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes! I've added a search box to the top nav. :) Ckoerner (talk) 15:53, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you! --Gnom (talk) 16:16, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Great, thanks. KCVelaga (talk) 16:25, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Question about Diff

At [1] it states that there are "editors," which can approve posts and are from the Wikimedia community. I don't see this mentioned anywhere else on Diff though. Is this still being developed? Sam-2727 (talk) 00:25, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Hello Sam-2727. Yes, this is something we wish to develop with community members who are interested. It was part of the plan for the Wikimedia Space prototype and continues with the work on Diff. [2] CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Notifications?

I didn't find a possibility to get notifications when new posts are published. Personnaly I would like to get an email once a week. --Hadi (talk) 16:07, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Hello Hadi. I too want to have notifications on Diff. We're working on a solution that meets our legal and security needs and I hope to have an update for you in the near future. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:40, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Still no e-mail notification button available. How come? Any updates on this since August? EMsmile (talk) 07:20, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi EMsmile, I'm working on it still. :) The difficulty comes in making sure our use of email addresses are inline with the privacy policy. We want to make sure we're inline with what we have now or if we need to consider updating. Thankfully I think we're ok on that end. I've been working with security to make sure that we have assessed any risks of the email addresses being used (accidentally or not) for anything other than the subscription feature. That all takes time (coupled with vacation, holidays, and a lowered expectation of how many hours we're all working in light of the global pandemic) and means we're in November and don't have it setup yet. The good news is that I just talked to Security this week to tackle a few final (crosses fingers) details. I have the feature configured and ready hit the big "Turn On Subscription" button. I'm hopeful I'll have some news in the near future and appreciate you keeping me honest on this feature. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Hadi, EMsmile, and others, I have good news. You can now subscribe to receive new Diff posts by email. Learn more about the feature on Diff. If you have feedback/thoughts/kind words, please let me know. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Content categories

At Editorial Guidelines – Categories and tags, it says that categories “mirror the taxonomy of the Discuss side of Diff”.

Is Diff going to have a “discuss side”? Is this a statement brought across from Space that doesn’t/won’t apply to Diff? [Update: I found a copy of the equivalent Space page on Meta, via the Phab task below, and it does have the same sentence, but with “Space” in place of “Diff”.]

T226759 Document taxonomy for Space blog isn’t clear about whether (or how) the categories would have matched between Blog Space and Discuss Space.

I suspect you just need to delete the sentence, but I’m not going to create a Diff account just to suggest copy-edits, hence posting here.

–Pelagic (talk) 23:34, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

@Pelagic: This was a indeed a sentence that accidentally survived the migration from Space to Diff. I have removed it. Thank you for spotting it and report it. Qgil-WMF (talk) 06:59, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Diff is a weird, nerdy title

I am wondering if there is any chance that the title of this blog might still be changed? Was the name "Diff" derived after a long structured process? We discussed it amongst Wikimedians for Sustainable Development and one of the other members pointed out (and I agree with her): "Clearly they weren't thinking in massive audiences when they came up with that name. I didn't understand that it had some connection with wiki at all -- I first thought it was the diff from the software world. The reference seems kind of obscure to me, and it's also very hard to translate." Just wondering if you've already discussed this to death or if there is any scope to potentially come up with a better name for this blog? EMsmile (talk) 07:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

It is a nerdy title EMsmile. We are, at least in my opinion, an inherently nerdy movement. :) You are right, the name does come from the software world. It's a direct reference to the Diff view, a critical component to many editor workflows. In our discussions we thought that it was something that was uniquely "wiki", consistent across languages, and familiar to our communities. We did consider many names. Looking at my old notes it took us nearly 3 months to come up with this name. (Other contenders were "The Link", "Movement News", and I even see a "The Village Pump" on my brainstorming list). We did consult with volunteers, general Foundation staff, and other folks on the Communications team (which I'm part of and who are responsible for keeping Diff humming along). Changing the name and URL would not be a small amount of work. It took us quite a bit of work to get all of the old Wikimedia Blog and Wikimedia Space blog posts migrated over! I hope this provides some transparency in our thinking, and I do appreciate your feedback. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

If I may add, Diff is also a memorable four letter word. People don't need to understand its technical meaning or origin in order to click the links that will lead them to stories published on Diff (this is how most users land in new websites these days). "Google" is actually a very nerdy term if you look at their origin, but who cares. The names of the top internet services that gazillion people are using everyday tend to have names connected to but detached from literal meanings. And, well, "Wikipedia" was beyond nerdy when it was created and look now. "Diff" as a concept has a strong connection with our movement, and I think that this is what matters. For the rest, it's four memorable letters relatively easy to pronounce for speakers of many languages. Although we have heard other persons giving us this type of feedback, most people pick the name instantly and just use it. So far the feedback about Diff as a whole has been very positive, and people use its name often. Qgil-WMF (talk) 18:08, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Fix broken image in old post

Hi, I'm not sure if there is a better place to ask this, but can someone help me fix the broken image at the end of my 2019 post? Thanks, --Gnom (talk) 16:10, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

This is a perfect place to ask. I've fixed the image. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:20, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Great, thank you. --Gnom (talk) 21:58, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

need correction

Hi, this post needs correction? please replace সব উইকিতে অল্প সময়ের জন্য, আপনি পড়তে সক্ষম হতে হবে, কিন্তু সম্পাদনা করতে পারবেন না। with সব উইকিতে অল্প সময়ের জন্য, আপনি সম্পাদনা করতে পারবেন না, তবে আপনি উইকি পড়তে সক্ষম হবেন। (in header & in the main body). Thanks. --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 20:29, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I translated that writing but i didn't notice that grammatical error at that time. Kindly help. --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 17:45, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

User:CKoerner (WMF) could you help? --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 17:47, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I missed your comment here. Yes, I can fix that and have done so. Thank you for the correction. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm testing the new Reply tool and forgot to ping you. @আফতাবুজ্জামান CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Spaces in page topic

The following blog entry

• https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/03/08/sailing-steady - how-you-can-help-keep-wikimedia-sites-error-free/

is using two hair spaces U+200A around en-dash. Well, should have been en-dash, but is ASCII hyphen with U+002D.

• When linked by Interwiki, various spaces are resolved as  _.
• wmfblog:2021/03/08/sailing-steady - how-you-can-help-keep-wikimedia-sites-error-free/
• [[wmfblog:2021/03/08/sailing-steady - how-you-can-help-keep-wikimedia-sites-error-free/]]G

Page is unavailable via hair spaces and does need encoded:

• https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/03/08/sailing-steady%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Ahow-you-can-help-keep-wikimedia-sites-error-free/

Please move blog entry to an appropriate name, and create a redirect blog entry, or vice versa.

• A redirect blog entry might look like template:soft redirect or en:template:soft redirect.
• @user:jdlrobson: FYI.

Greetings --PerfektesChaos (talk) 15:39, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Ack, that's not good. Thanks @PerfektesChaos. I'll work on getting this fixed. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:15, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I think I have this fixed. At least for this one post. There are over 3,000 in the archive and fixing them would take time. I'll leave the task open so that we can address this more systematically in the future.

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/03/08/sailing-steady-how-you-can-help-keep-wikimedia-sites-error-free/

wmfblog:2021/03/08/sailing-steady-how-you-can-help-keep-wikimedia-sites-error-free/ CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T278024

Traffic stats

Hi! What do we know about how much traffic Diff gets — both overall, and for a typical individual post?--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:48, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Sage (Wiki Ed). I'm so glad you asked. We have some stats that tell us basic traffic information in accordance with our privacy policy. Since Jan 1, 2021 we've published a little over 143 posts on Diff from about 50 authors. Nearly a post a day on average. The site has seen 212,000 visits from approximately 150,000 visitors (unique devices) across 212 countries. About 200 folks have signed up for email subscriptions. The largest single knowable referrer of traffic is search engines, followed by Hacker News (!), but there's a long long tail of traffic beyond. For instance, the bottom ~2,000 referrers resulted in 77,000 views, while Google itself generated 79,000 views.

Top 10 posts for this year (so far, and some of which are posts from years past) with approximate view counts:

• Wikipedia is getting a new look for the first time in 10 years. Here’s why. - 47,000
• Stepping down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation - 15,600
• Introducing the Wikimedia Enterprise API - 7,800
• You are invited to… Wikipedia’s 20th birthday party! - 7,200
• The first smile and photobomb ever photographed - 6,000
• Happy Public Domain Day 2021! - 3,000
• Why does Venezuelan photographer Wilfredo Rodríguez donate his work to the world? - 3,000
• Introducing the unique devices dataset: a new way to estimate reach on Wikimedia projects - 2,900
• Why it took a long time to build that tiny link preview on Wikipedia - 2,500
• International Workers' Day: Nine people who made lives better for workers - 1,900

Take all this with a grain of salt. I'm happy to share more detail to anyone who asks, within reason. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 17:33, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

CKoerner (WMF): Super helpful, thanks! What about traffic stats for something like the median post, and/or what I'm sure are posts at the low end of the tail like my last post? --Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:39, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Good question. This took a bit of digging to figure out. If I look a the traffic from the beginning of this year the median for a blog post is about 75 views. Average is 398. That's for all posts including those in the archive*. For all posts that were published on Diff in the same time frame, the median view is about 112. Average is 430.

Lots of caveats there. For example we don't know how many people read the site outside a "visit" (say via RSS or email subscriptions). I also can only pull the top 500 pages from the stats so it might be possible the medians are a little lower if we include the longest part of the long tail. The last post in the top 500 saw 27 views in 2021.

As for your last blog post, we didn't have stats in place until mid-December 2020, a few months after you post was published. :( So I can't share any stats for it as I'm limited by the top 500 pages and that post did not appear in the list. I'm sure it saw more than 27 views initially after being published though. With the exception of "evergreen' stories (like some of which show up in the list above) we see the most traffic to blog posts immediately after publishing.

Unsolicited thoughts on all this: I think getting more visibility into Diff is important and something we're working on. It's kinda "over there" for many folks and the time and energy I've had in promoting its existence and use is much less than I would have liked over the last year. That's changing a bit as our team has grown and Diff is being used more by the Foundation and community alike. I've also been investing time as part of our teams work to integrate Diff into on-wiki spaces with things like being able to pull an RSS feed of headlines into a wiki page (demo) and integrating a community calendar. I want to be thoughtful in how we use these metrics, to ensure we don't just hunt numbers and growth in a mindless way, but use them to inform and improve. Thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole. :)

• 3,984 posts from (Wikimedia blog (2008-2018), Wikimedia Space (2019-2020), and community-facing blog posts from WikimediaFoundaiton.org (2018-2020)) CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:11, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Gah, using the new reply too. Forgot to "@" you @Sage (Wiki Ed). CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for working on this! This is just the kind of thing I was hoping to learn. Getting more visibility for it across the movement seems like a big task, but a valuable one. :D --Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:26, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

404 on Carmen Alcázars interview page

I am getting a 404 on Carmen Alcázars interview page: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/08/13/meet-carmen-alcazar-wikimedian-of-the-year-2021-honourable-mention-winner/. Could you let me know when it is fixed, I would like to link to it from our site. Thx! MichellevL (WMNL) (talk) 10:10, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

@MichellevL (WMNL): Fixed! The correct address is https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/08/15/meet-carmen-alcazar-wikimedian-of-the-year-2021-honourable-mention-winner/ Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 13:15, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @CKoerner (WMF):, hope a lot of people will be inspired by her amazing work. MichellevL (WMNL) (talk) 15:08, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Even moar customization of calendar?

Hiii. So I'd like to be able to refine the results I get at https://diff.wikimedia.org/calendar/list/. Basically, the tags for Day and Time already allow me to select more than one option: I wish the same also applied to the others. Hope this makes sense. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:26, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

That's a good idea. I can't add it for every filter option, but I have enabled it for the options that allow for it! Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:45, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Related posts don't seem that related

I wonder how the blog picks them? For instance, the ones appearing under https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/14/introducing-the-new-wikimedia-foundation-ceo/ are 1 about when we hired Janeen, and the other 2 are even more random and dating back to 2010 and 2011. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:31, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Elitre (WMF) share your question. As well, in those three month since your input, I even can't differenciate what is Post or what is Page...

@User:CKoerner (WMF), hey, cap, do we have separate index page for each? Or is it to in-discriminate between those two? As a translator myself, I would prefer insights as we apply to conversation with local communities... IMHO fits better as a corner/column title to whichever group of posts that accept non-Foundation official release. Cheers, -- Omotecho (talk) 04:59, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

The related posts are automated. You can read a little about how it works. Since @Elitre (WMF) asked the suggested articles have changed for the Introduction post. :) Sometimes it does a really great job (like in this post) other times it's doing its best with the metadata we provide it.

@Omotecho, Diff has three content types. Posts (individual blog posts), pages, and events. There are only a handful of pages on the site as we only use them to document how the site works (See this list). Anyone can login to create an event and submit a post. I hope that helps clarify the distinction between them. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 21:02, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi there, yes, I finally could log in and read those insightful pages. Thank you indeed to reply me so fast. Cheers. -- Omotecho (talk) 21:47, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Translation requires rights?

I wish to translate a page on Diff per request from jawp community, but stack at when I tried to search for that Page as instructed, I am not eligible to search that exact page which link I already know. There is no Post with that title.

1. Is it because it's less than an hour since I logged in to Diff with CentralAuth?
2. has anyone tried to translate, and made it through to publish?

Any wisdom welcome! -- Omotecho (talk) 17:30, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

@Omotecho, you should be able to login and translate any post into your language of choice. First, log in to Diff. Then start a new draft. In the panels next to the editing interface, look for the “Languages” option. From the dropdown menu, select the language you want to write in. You can then also enter the title of the existing post in the list of languages. That helps "pair" language versions of posts so readers can switch between them. Once you have your translation written, if you click the "Publish" button it will be submitted to myself and the rest of the team to review. I think our directions might be a little out of date on the site itself, so please let me know if that works (or not!) and I can update them. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 21:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

New Diff post pitch

Hi, I'd like to contribute a piece on Diff sharing the experience from finishing a recent project to record pronunciations of 50K (now over 53K and growing) words in the Odia language, which also includes over 3.5K words in the northern dialect of Odia, and all the recordings are available under CC0 1.0 License (equivalent to Public Domain). This also happens to be the largest voice data in the language in any open license, and by that definition, under Public Domain. The project involved building: a. unique wordlist through a series of interconnected processes (web-scraping, crowdsourcing, encoding conversion of text typed using legacy encoding systems and cleaning up such data partly through manual and partly through semi-automated workflows), b. expanding headwords/lemmas into forms using concatenation forumae, and c. recording forms, and d. now getting into entering the lemmas (along with definitions and forms) into Wikidata lexeme. I think the tips based on the learning and the overall strategy might be of use for the wider community, especially languages with complex scripts and other non-Latin based languages, and low-resource languages. Would love to hear any inputs and the next steps. Thanks in advance! Psubhashish (talk) 05:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

@Psubhashish. That is a wonderful pitch idea. I agree that the learnings of the project would be useful to others in the movement. As a first step, I suggest starting a draft blog post. You can do this as a wiki page somewhere, a google doc, or in Diff itself. Right now there's a bug effecting Diff so I might suggest a Meta page or sharable doc first until this issue is resolved. You'll need a good headline, a photo or image to go along with the post and let us know how authorship should be assigned. We have some outlines that might be helpful in structuring a post too. Once you have a draft ready, please reach out, either here on the talk page or at diffwikimedia.org and we can help from there! Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:56, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@User:CKoerner (WMF), great then. Thanks for sharing these details. They are very helpful as things have changed a lot since I last contributed (that was when Diff was Wikimedia Blog!). I will draft and connect soon. TGIF! --Psubhashish (talk) 17:04, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

New feature?

Clicking on the Diff link, it automatically sends me to the Italian version, https://diff.wikimedia.org/it/. Now, I wouldn't know how many people in the same situation would figure that those I am seeing (mostly, old articles) are mostly translations and that the English version features waaay more content. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:26, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Great minds think alike. We're working on a set of updates that will do a few things in this regard. One, when viewing a language version of the site that is not English we want to show that there are other posts in English. So for example, you can be looking at the Italian version of the site, see all the posts that have an Italian version and the English posts for those that are not translated. Second is figuring out a way to better highlight to readers that articles can be translated. Right now there are quite a few steps involved. Maybe a notice at the bottom of every article without a translation? Or a notification when the browser language is set to another language other than English when viewing a post in English? We're still thinking on this one. Third, we want to make it easier for folks to make translations. Ideally they would see the invite to translate, click a button to login and then have a copy of the article they were just reading in the editor ready to translate. Fourth, somewhat related, the Foundation – as you may know :) – is trying to be better in sending out major announcements in multiple languages, not just English. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 21:11, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Adding Wiki loves... challenges etc. to calendar?

Hi diff team, I was wondering if it would be possible to also add the different Wiki Loves challenges to the diff calender. It would be great if we could have all the things happening in the movement in one place (especially because the diff calender can be added to my google agenda)! Also, how do I add an event to the calender and what are the requirements? Best wishes, MichellevL (WMNL) (talk) 06:47, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Ciao MichellevL (WMNL)! Not on Diff team, but I bet Diff (blog)/Calendar has everything you were looking for and more? Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:14, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Hey @Elitre (WMF) you stole my thunder! :) That page is a great resource. We also have some practical instructions on how to use the calendar on Diff itself. @MichellevL (WMNL), these Wiki Loves challenges are more than welcome to be added to the calendar. What a great idea! If the documentation isn't clear or the software gives you any trouble, please feel free to reach out. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 15:04, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi @User:Elitre (WMF) and User:CKoerner (WMF), thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I will add the challenges. Best wishes, MichellevL (WMNL) (talk) 06:09, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Permanent index of posts on Meta?

I like the small infobox of recent posts. Could we generate a permanent archive of post titles / authors / dates? That would add useful context to some meta searches, and provide a nice view of the Diff flow over time. –SJ talk  14:31, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sj, interesting idea. I mean, it's just the small matter of programming. :) Is the idea here that Wikimedians might be searching using the Meta search box on a topic/subject and not find what would be on Diff? I wonder if we'd ever get to the idea of showing Diff results alongside on-wiki search results like we do across projects. Ah, one can dream. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 16:11, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

@CKoerner - Yes, exactly that! Motivated by all this recent talk about new Forums and the increasing fragmentation of "where people write" [we write more than ever, but less and less of it is on a single coherent project -- we have 1000 projects, 1000 off-wiki side projects, everyone also uses Google Docs and Etherpad and personal outliners, &c].

I think we're actually running out of time to cohere our different streams of writing and thinking: I already see each month people working on the same projects who don't know one another exist, or talking past one another, or publishing papers that aren't aware of the state of the art on [one of our wikis].

Unified search is great. Unified RecentChanges likewise. A single meta-space that summarizes the brilliant outpourings on Diff is also good and that (and the updates to it visible in the feed) would serve as a nice window into it for those who don't realize it exists. This also helps ensure people know to track down the Diff original if it ever goes offline. (I think of anything other than Meta our core [mostly wiki] projects that are upgraded and archived together as 10x to 100x less archival: it will disappear once the maintainer goes away, be hosted on a dark server on an under-recognized format, be invisible to researchers mining the archives or people using Search APIs, &c. Most of our non-mediawiki side projects eventually go dark in this way, not unlike the web itself, unfortunately). –SJ talk  20:16, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Ok, @Sj, you nerd sniped me. :) Here's a first go at an archive. I'll commit updating this every quarter as we move forward. I'll talk more with my team to see if we have any resources that can improve on this and maybe automate it.

This was a fun problem to tackle. I had to use a command line utility to export the data from Diff's database and clean it up with some spreadsheet magic. Getting other metadata (like the author) is a bit more tricky (as those are stored as ID values).

"I already see each month people working on the same projects who don't know one another exist, or talking past one another, or publishing papers that aren't aware of the state of the art on [one of our wikis]."

This is one of the reasons I personally work hard on Diff. I like to think of it as a way of bringing together all the great work folks are doing and sharing it with others that might not be aware!

Thanks again for the suggestion and your encouragement. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 18:36, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Hurrah! I love it :) Now I can also watchlist that page as a reminder to browse. –SJ talk  19:45, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

This blog seems to be quite hidden.

I came across Diff from a tweet, but as far as I can tell, there's no links to it from the main Wikimedia site or Meta. Considering this is a blog from the communications department, I feel it should be a bit more visible than that. KaraLG84 (talk) 23:29, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

@KaraLG84: There are tons of them, actually. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 23:55, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the support @NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh.I'd love to take credit for all those links, but I can't. Diff has the archive of all Wikimedia blog posts going back to 2008. :)

@KaraLG84, I’d love to hear any suggestions for improvement. One thing we have planned in this coming year is to figure out a way to highlight Diff posts (and Diff itself) better. One thing we’re working on is how to pull relevant blog posts from Diff onto the Foundation site. Not all of them, as many are very inward-facing to activity within in the movement, but those posts that might be useful to folks reading about Wikimedia on the Foundation site. We're also talking about how we might better introduce Diff into different regions of the world with events and partnerships with user groups and affiliates. It's probably a bit of work, but I'd love to see the RSS extension expanded so folks could customize a feed of information from Diff to display on-wiki (like you see on the Diff (blog) page. Maybe it could be filtered by category, or author, or even language‽ Again, if you have suggestions or ideas, please let us know. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 16:00, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Promotion of proprietary software

A recent article reads like a flyer for nonfree software. One would hope that Wikimedia Foundation resources wouldn't be used to promote proprietary software. Nemo 22:21, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

PheedLoop excels at what it does. There is nothing wrong with explaining why that outstanding platform was chosen, especially since you seem to think it shameful to use proprietary software.

I support the free and open source software movement. I not only use some open source software, but I contribute money to the developers of software I use. In olden days, I paid for every shareware program I used. I also contribute to money to Wikipedia and other causes.

However, most of the software I use in the business I own is proprietary: Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel; Adobe Acrobat DC Pro and Photoshop; and sundry other programs. They are worth what I pay for them because of their features, performance, and support. Finell (talk) 01:04, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

@Finell: Wikimedia is not a business. Per Wikimedia Foundation Guiding Principles#Freedom and open source, "The Wikimedia Foundation is deeply rooted in the values of the free culture and free software movements. [...] As an organization, we strive to use open source tools over proprietary ones, although we use proprietary or closed tools (such as software, operating systems, etc.) where there is currently no open-source tool that will effectively meet our needs."

The WMF should not be using proprietary software, when possible. The WMF certainly should not promote its use. Proprietary software is Bad, and it is shameful to use it. --Yair rand (talk) 03:21, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

This talk page is about the Diff blog and how it works and this thread is getting a little off-topic. A few points and a suggestion to take this conversation elseware.

A non-profit corporation, which is what the Foundation is legally, is still a form of business. Just ours is for public benefit, not one that generates profit. :)

As Yair highlights, "we use proprietary or closed tools (such as software, operating systems, etc.) where there is currently no open-source tool that will effectively meet our needs."

It is not shameful to use proprietary software out of necessity and as a community we should not shame anyone for using it. I do agree that we (everyone in the movement) should be constructive and encouraging of open-source uses when possible.

The Core Organizing team for this year's Wikimania included many well-respected community members who were aware of the decision to use the PheedLoop platform. I sincerely suggest folks concerned over this matter consider becoming involved in planning for next year's event to influence the decisions being made about the topic of the blog post in question. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 14:45, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Authentification de son compte pour écrire sur Diff

Abiba Pauline (talk) 20:27, 26 September 2022 (UTC)Bonsoir ! Je voudrais savoir comment procéder pour authentifier son compte pour avoir accès à Diff. Aussi comment faut-il pour avoir un compte média wiki ?

Bonjour @Abiba Pauline (Excusez la traduction automatique). Vous avez déjà un compte Wikimedia ! C'est le même que celui que vous avez utilisé pour écrire votre commentaire :) Vous pouvez vous connecter à Diff pour soumettre un article de blog à ce lien. Utilisez le bouton appelé "Login with Mediawiki".

English: You have a Wikimedia account already! It's the same one you used to write your comment. :) You can login to Diff to submit a blog post at this link. Use the button called "Login with Mediawiki" Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 18:13, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Adding new language for translation

Hello! I wanted to translate an article in Latvian (lv), but the language is not available. How can it be added? A quick search in Phabricator did not return any similar requests. Papuass (talk) 11:23, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello @Papuass, we don't have a formal process other than asking. :) I've added Latvian to the list of languages. Please feel free to use this option and let us know if you have any questions. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:37, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Papuass (talk) 08:45, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

[Enquiry] Draft post pending review

Dear Diff Admin,

I created a draft post titled "Implementing Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom to Improve Media and Information Literacy Skills of Secondary School Students in Nigeria" on the 3rd of Dec. and I am yet to receive any update as it is still pending review. May I know the recent update regarding it?

Hope to hear from you soon. kind regards, Bukola James Bukky658 (talk) 14:56, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Just following up here. @Bukky658and I talked via email and we worked together to get the post published. You can find it on Diff (and anyone reading this message should check it out!) Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:39, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I sent this earlier before reaching out via mail. Thanks for your help Bukky658 (talk) 18:31, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

2 cents

I came to this page to figure out how to get a post started, and I can't really say the page helped me (or encouraged me much FTM). I believe https://diff.wikimedia.org/about/ had the info I was looking for and gave me more a sense of "yes, you too can help and this is how". --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:38, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Missing links in diff blogpost about new skin

On the page https://diff.wikimedia.org/wikipedias-new-look/ there is section "Learn more about the project", but it's only a bunch of pictures with captions - the links are missing. Can't leave comments there, and this seemed like the best place to report this issue. I hope someone here knows people responsible for publishing to Diff blog. 185.79.217.61 18:32, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@OVasileva (WMF) fyi (in case the page was created by you; at least other blog posts about the desktop improvements are) --Johannnes89 (talk) 19:25, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Obscure error message

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T331536

"Publishing failed. Sorry, you are not allowed to edit the jetpack_post_was_ever_published custom field." This was while trying to add an entry to the calendar - hopefully the draft is still there. (A note that a direct link from the Calendar page to either the Calendar help page or something seems to be in order.) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:16, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Oh no! This appears to be a bug with some folks' accounts. The issue causes problems when they try to publish events. I'm looking into why this is happening. We recently updated the calendar software and that did not seem to fix the issue. Even more frustrating is that other folks' events have been published without issue.

In this instance I manually duplicated your draft event and published it. Please let me know if there are any issues with it.

https://diff.wikimedia.org/event/wiki-based-business-process-tooling-at-nasa-the-need-for-open-csp/ Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 22:00, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

On the second bit, yes, let me add a "Calendar Help" link to the calendar itself. Good idea. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 22:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

There is now a "Need help?" link at the bottom of every calendar page. :) Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 21:51, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Add fist bump emoji here. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:55, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I also had the same problem. Can I get help, @CKoerner (WMF):? I'm not sure if the draft is saved. The title is "Javanese Wikisource Competition" and I might have saved it twice (or none). I also submitted a bug in phabricator before I saw this message. ✒ Bennylin 14:44, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

It has been aswered in task T331536. Thanks! ✒ Bennylin 15:48, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Urdu missing

Hello, can the Urdu language be included please? ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 14:47, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi @TheAafi, Urdu should be a target language option when writing a blog post. Have a look at this help page on how to select a language when writing or translating a post. You can see the posts we do have in Urdu at this link: https://diff.wikimedia.org/ur/ Please let me know if that helps, or if not, how I can be of further service. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 21:50, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Correct error on post

Hello! I wrote a post on Diff and it was published today. For some reason, it was published as being in "Spanish", but it is written in "Portuguese". How can I correct it? Here is the link to the post - https://diff.wikimedia.org/es/2023/02/16/a-wikimedia-no-brasil-o-poder-e-os-desafios-do-conhecimento-livre/ Thank you for your help AJurno (WMB) (talk) 18:03, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Comment flagged as spam

I noticed that a comment I (the same username I'm using here) made at a post on March 21 was automatically flagged as spam and is hidden. Does someone periodically check for false positives, or do I have to find the right person and ask to review it? (the person who wrote the post?) My comment is in Japanese, and the blog post itself is in Japanese. It contains a link to Japanese Wiktionary. If that was the reason, I hope links to Wikimedia sites get whitelisted somehow in the spam filter the blog apparently has. whym (talk) 11:46, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

The comment remains removed. I think it was my first comment on Diff, and I logged in using my Wikimedia account. CKoerner (WMF) Is this something you can help with? whym (talk) 05:07, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry @WhymI missed your first comment. It looks like it was marked as spam due to the first post and that the comment included a link. It's been manually approved. I'll see if we can follow up with your suggestion to whitelist Wikimedia URLs. 172.13.199.59 14:11, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@CKoerner (WMF) Just to let you know, your IP has been revealed. And thanks for approving. whym (talk) 12:39, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

How?

Hi @CKoerner (WMF), I have noticed that we are able to share links from Diff blog as easy-to-read internal links on Wikimedia projects by just adding :wmfblog in the beginning, like Have you heard? Wikimedia has a Sound Logo. I'd be glad if the Diff team helps me have something similar for DCW Conversation Hour. We can subsequently use this on our affiliate's website dcwwiki.org, once it is live. Thanks in advance. ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 00:19, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Hey @TheAafi if you want to have something like that on-wiki, it's part of the Special:Interwiki links (documentation). I think the right way to ask for a new site to be added is to follow the directions on this talk page. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:06, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @CKoerner (WMF). I have made a request. Meanwhile could you please have a look at this? ─ The Aafī ^(talk) 20:23, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Adding an event with four official languages

I'm trying to add the African Librarians Week 2023 #AfLibWk 4.0 #1Lib1Ref to the diff calendar. It has four official languages Arabic, Portuguese, English and French. However I can only add one, is there a way around this? Also, when I searched for "English" I could only find "Englisc" (sic)... it might be a bug! --SEgt-WMF (talk) 16:45, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Just leaving a note here for talk page watchers. I replied to Silvia elsewhere. :) I do like this idea and will work on adding a "secondary language" option to events to provide more information to calendar users. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 17:24, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Language selector

When I went to https://diff.wikimedia.org/ for the first time it redirected me to https://diff.wikimedia.org/ca/, which is the Catalan-language version. I suspect this is because of my Canadian IP address. – bradv🍁 15:44, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Hey @Bradv, that shouldn't happen. :) If you use the language picker at the top of the page, you can set it back to English. The language detection works by looking at the language preferences of your browser. If there is no language set, it falls back to the site default, English. Your IP shouldn't be involved here at all. I will admit it does act a little strange if you are looking at an article in say French, then navigate to another page (say the home page), you'll then see the French homepage until you change the language or navigate to a post in another language. If this happens again, please let me know (and to any talk page stalkers, please let us know as well. I can investigate further. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 17:54, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree it shouldn't happen. ;) It still happens if I open in an incognito window though. In my main browser it goes to English as I've previously selected the language, but on a fresh browser with no cookies set it defaults to Catalan. I'm fairly confident in saying this is probably happening to all Canadians. – bradv🍁 19:05, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Bradv I've been looking into this. I can confirm that other folks from Canada are also experiencing some weirdness. It will take some time to figure out, but I'll get back to you here when I know more. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 15:19, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! – bradv🍁 16:09, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Diff Email Open Stats

Diff has a new feature. Well, the web stats software we use has a new feature. As you may know, anyone can subscribe to Diff to receive every* post as an email. We have about 880 folks who have signed up^ to have your articles delivered to their inbox! We can now see how many folks open those emails and assumedly are reading the articles within. Now if you ask for stats on how your post is doing, we can include these in the count of views.

As an example, the recent announcement of our partnership with the Flickr Foundation (thank you Giovanna Fontenelle and company) saw 1,549 direct views and 220 email opens. For an open rate of 42%. Which, according to MailChimp, a very popular email marketing company that hosts numerous email newsletters, is well above any industry standard.

It's still a new feature and we're getting our bearings on how to use it. It only applies to posts published after about June 1st. So far our open rates are not just impressive for heavily trafficked posts. For example, the Flickr post in Chinese** has seen 4 direct views on Diff, but 139 opens with a 27% open rate. This report from the Deoband Community from earlier this month has 71 direct views, and 242 with a 47% open rate.

We always thought (and hoped!) folks were getting value out of subscribing to Diff and reading all the varied and impressive blog posts, but now we know that they are in fact opening the emails!

*Yes, I realize this is A Lot of email. In fact, so far in 2023, Diff has published 778 posts. Finding a solution that we can implement and manage that would allow for more granular subscriptions is a challenge, but something we are thinking about.

^All organic, no paid outreach, since July 2020. 683 are email subscribers, 198 are WordPress.com subscribers.

**Kindly translated by User:Poplar at twilight! Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 22:29, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Cannot login by mediawiki

hi, i cannot login by media wiki. when i pressed the login button, it appeared the description "SSO Error: Cannot create a user with an empty login name."圍棋誒夢 (talk) 03:44, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi 圍棋誒夢, this is a limitation of WordPress, the software we’re using for Diff. It does not allow for certain characters in usernames. We are looking into a solution that would allow non-latin characters in usernames. For now, if you email us at diff@wikimedia.org we can manually create an account on Diff for you to use. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 05:43, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Translations broken

Hi @CKoerner (WMF):,

It seems that the translations on Diff are broken. Everytime I want to acces a page in a page different than English, I've got a « Oops! That page can’t be found. » error (IIRC, it was fine yesterday). Could you take a look?

Cheers, VIGNERON * ^discut. 07:46, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

This bug has been such a pain. We have a fix in place as of today that should resolve this issue. More information is in this phabricator task. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 18:12, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Help needed! Please enable Tyap for translation on Diff

Greetings! Can someone please help add the Tyap language (ISO Code: kcg) on Diff? I wat to be able to translate Diff articles to Tyap, as well as the interface language. Thanks for helping out! Kambai Akau (talk) 20:43, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I have added support for Tyap to Diff. You can now select this language when submitting a post and when translating articles. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:59, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

A temporary change to publishing Events on the Diff calendar

Hello all. We’ve seen a small increase in spam being submitted to Diff. Most recently a new account submitted 4 spam blog posts and a spam event. Unfortunately the spam event was published.

Given the recent slate of spam, we’re going to temporarily setup a review of Events. You can still log in to Diff and create an event, but either myself or Rae will need to click a button to allow it to be published. We’ll keep this extra step for a quarter in hopes that the attempts will die down. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 18:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

A temporary change to publishing Events on the Diff calendar

Hello all. We’ve seen a small increase in spam being submitted to Diff. Most recently a new account submitted 4 spam blog posts and a spam event. Unfortunately the spam event was published.

Given the recent slate of spam, we’re going to temporarily setup a review of Events. You can still log in to Diff and create an event, but either myself or Rae will need to click a button to allow it to be published. We’ll keep this extra step for a quarter in hopes that the attempts will die down. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 18:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Issue with 2FA using phone numbers

I got some issues whiles login into my Diff account, as I already have my 2FA enabled and I can't access it does to the fact that I do not receive any messages from the web to complete my 2FA. Is this a known issue? Song Ngư • 🗨️ • 🌐 10:01, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi Song Ngư, You're the first to notice an issue here. I've reset your 2FA so you should be able to login. Please try setting it up again. I suggest using the "Time Based One-Time Password (TOTP)" method as that is the more secure 2FA setup. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 21:08, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Unsubscribing

@CKoerner (WMF): I've been getting too much email from Diff and so wanted to unsubscribe some languages. I tried clicking the unsubscribe link in the emails but that didn't get me very far as it didn't recognise me. I tried logging into Diff directly and listed the subscriptions in my profile but the list is empty. Is there a troubleshooting guide for this please? Andrew D. (talk) 19:45, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi Andrew. Yeah, we post a lot on Diff and the emails can be a bit much. Something we're working on is more granular control over what you get in your inbox. I'm trying to figure out what is happening in your particular case. I too am getting a strange error when I click the "Manage your email settings or unsubscribe" link in the footer of the emails. Even more strange, when I log in to the interface to manage subscribers, I cannot find you!

I'm sorry for the frustration this is causing and I hate to ask more of. you, but I want to get to the bottom of this. The link in the emails Diff sends should take you the following address. When you go there, and assuming you can authenticate, what do you see? Is Diff listed as a subscription? This is what I see (Imgur link).

https://wordpress.com/read/subscriptions Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 21:04, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm talking to the folks who help host Diff. Small update. Still working on a cause of the error, but wanted to pass a long a note from my limited testing. It appears that clicking the link does unsubscribe you, but gives an error message (as I mentioned before). I can see when I visit my subscription page, I am unsubscribed. So the link is half working, it does unsubscribe folks, but doesn't put you on the correct page to confirm that it did (https://wordpress.com/read/subscriptions). Less than optimal. I'll keep working on this. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:50, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Good news, bad news. It appears to be an issue that is not only affecting us and Diff! However, as of this post a solution is yet to be found. I'll keep working on this. Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 16:31, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

There was a fix that was put in place that should resolve this issue. Please reach out if you're still stuck forever subscribed to Diff! Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 19:24, 10 April 2024 (UTC)