User talk:Varnent/Archive 1

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Hello Varnent/Archive 1, and welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- 23:29, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Spread Wikikultur

Hello, you added your signature into the Wikikultur interested people list, thank you very much for showing your support. To give the project even more credit, you could help spread the word to other wikimedia contributors you know, on other project wikimedia projets you are contibuting, asking interested people to to add their signature. --Psychoslave (talk) 14:30, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Affiliations Committee is looking for members

Hi,

Thank you for signing up for updates about the Affiliations Committee, we are currently accepting applications for members. You can apply until January 12, 2013. Let me know if you have any questions. –Bence (talk) 12:39, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Pride

Hi, Varnent. Your addition of Wiki Loves Pride to the WALRUS agenda made me curious. Is there a page with additional information? --Another Believer (talk) 16:30, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

There is as of yesterday.  :) Wiki Loves Pride --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 02:15, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Submission

Hi,

Thank you for the reminder. I'll complete the submission soon. Simon Villeneuve 14:00, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

No problem - you have plenty of time left. We are just trying to stay ahead of the rush.  :) --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 14:19, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you think we can now consider that my submission is complete and that we can delete the headband ? I'm not really good in English and I'll try to find someone to help me correct it, but I think the main ideas are there. Simon Villeneuve 16:39, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not aware which part of my submission is incomplete, since it was deemed complete last year (WM2012). If you could pinpoint it, I would gladly complete it. ✒ Bennylin 12:38, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Nothing major, just - as noted on the page - it is missing an abstract and a track selection. While it is true you did not submit an abstract last year, you did select a track. Basically the abstract is just a 2 sentence blurb we can use in various places. I suspect last year someone just wrote it for you once it was accepted, but if that can be at all avoided, we prefer the people submitting it enter the summary (abstract). It would have been considered incomplete last year, but we were not using the "incomplete" tag last year. Once the deadline is passed, all submissions (complete or incomplete) are considered, and generally if a submission was only missing something minor like the abstract, it was not a problem (although the committee reserves the right to reject based on missing items or any other valid criteria for that matter). So being incomplete only means we're not adding it to the review table until the deadline, or until it is complete. In other cases, not yours, an incomplete is also a warning to the person submitting that there are concerns with their submission. Last year these problems just resulted in submissions being rejected, the hope is that this year using this template it will motivate people to improve their submission before it is rejected. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 14:16, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

OK. Thanks for the lengthy reply. I'll try to complete it as soon as possible. Cheers :) ✒ Bennylin 14:21, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the length - I was utilizing your question to answer some additional questions from others all at once.  :) --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 14:35, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the Help

Thanks for the reminder!! I was stuck with my academics, so I completely forgot bout this submission thanks to your message i am completing it--Suyogaerospace (talk) 08:31, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Excellent! And you are most welcome for the reminder. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 17:00, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks..

...for doing the overview pages for the AffCom reports and budgets. –Bence (talk) 15:53, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

No problem - always enjoy a little wiki housecleaning to destress during the day.  :) --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 15:55, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

AffCom charter

Are you aware who wrote the AffCom charter? odder (talk) 00:51, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

As it appears here - yes. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 00:53, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Wrong answer. I think Charter is the page you were looking for (not sure about the exact link). odder (talk) 01:01, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay - all of this matters why? --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 01:08, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

It's just to show you that throwing quotes from a document that I wrote myself doesn't make any sense. odder (talk) 01:11, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

You're right - I would have thought you'd know it better. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 01:12, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Definitely better than you, who were not even able to find the right link to see who authored the document. odder (talk) 01:16, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay - you got me - again..all this matters why? --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 01:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I should point out I'm a non-originalist. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 01:42, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from July 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for July 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

• Wikimedia Foundation highlights
  • Mobile editing
  • Wikipedia Zero comes to India
  • VisualEditor beta launch
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other movement highlights
  • Winners of "Wiki Loves Public Art" announced
  • New Board of Trustees member: Ana Toni
  • Buenos Aires edit-a-thon in former military prison

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 16:06, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Flood flag

Hi Varnent. We (= the people on IRC) wondered why you used the flood flag for regular edits... Regards, Trijnstel_talk 20:16, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

It was a couple of edits in the middle of some page moves - I switched it off before I finished the bulk of edits - was more accidental couple of edits while I was setting up some mass moves. If folks in IRC would rather it not be used for bulk moves - I'm fine with that.  :) Otherwise I will be more intentional about not doing any edits between moves in the future. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 20:20, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations, Dear Temporary Administrator!

Deutsch | English | español | français | italiano | 한국어 | Nederlands | português | Türkçe | русский | العربية | Tiếng Việt | edit

An offering for our new temporary administrator from your comrades... (our budget is smaller than Commons)

Varnent, congratulations! You now have the rights of temporary administrator on Meta. Please take a moment to read the Meta:Administrators page and watchlist related pages (in particular Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat, and Meta:Requests for deletion, but also Talk:Spam blacklist and Talk:Interwiki map), before launching yourself into page deletions, page protections, account blockings, or modifications of protected pages. (If you were only "approved" for AffCom-related actions, then ignore that. But I think you can do those actions.) The majority of the actions of administrators can be reversed by the other admins, except for history merges which must thus be treated with particular care.

Please feel free to join us on IRC: #wikimedia-admin @ irc.freenode.net. You may find Commons:Guide to adminship to be useful reading although it doesn't always completely apply here at Meta.

Please also check or add your entry to Meta:Administrators#List of administrators and the Template:List of administrators.

Congrats! PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:35, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Closed RfD?

Hi. Why did you remove the RfD template, but not close the RfD itself as 'keep'? PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:35, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Accident. Will fix when I get home. Apologies. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 19:08, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Done - thank you for the polite nudge.  :) --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 00:20, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Um, but it was a wrong closure and I re-opened it, see here. Besides, this is not why you got your *temp* admin rights. Trijnstel_talk 14:55, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I disagree on both accounts - but do not feel strongly about this image - so battle on. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 15:00, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

You disagree on what? This is not where you got the temporary admin rights for. Trijnstel_talk 15:36, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I doubt we will agree and would rather avoid an unnecessary debate. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 16:14, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I have to say I find your answers utterly unsatisfying. You were granted temporary adminship for an (IMO) vague reason; "There are some sysop required moves I'd like to make, possible imports, and some other maintenance tasks - mostly related to my work on AffCom and as a developer." There was no consensus for permanent adminship, though various users supported temporary adminship for usage in the scope you presented. However, I can't possibly see how closing an RfD falls within that scope, nor many others of the actions you have performed so far. Your lack of interest shown by your refusal to give a proper answer to the concerns raised here seriously makes me doubt about your abilities to be a temporary admin, not to speak about a permanent one. Cordially, Savh^ñ 15:20, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate your feedback and concerns. As you indicated, I did state that I would help with other maintenance tasks - mostly (implying not entirely) related to affiliates work. I was killing some time and helping with a few other maintenance tasks by request. I agree with the folks and admins that feel this RfD should be closed, but as I said, it is not something I feel strongly about, so will defer to others. I did not want to engage in a debate as a disagreement over the closing of a RfD, and temp admins helping out, hardly seems making a lot of fuss of. As to why I did not answer more, we are all busy volunteers, and this is not a topic I feel strongly enough to debate about. You two believe that temp admins helping with general maintenance is beyond scope, I talked with others first and they disagreed - as do I. However, now that I know how you feel, I will be mindful of it. I talked with others about the RfD and there was agreement that the image was okay, apparently other admins disagree and want to talk more - I am fine with that as I have already said. Ironically, I was asked to look into this photo by someone that wanted to use it in an affiliates related material - so my involvement stemmed from helping affiliates - which is what I said I was planning on doing (I wound up helping them find another photo after the RfD was reopened). However, I still believe that temp or not, admins should be allowed to help when they desire. I do not believe in elitism or "classes" of admins (temp or otherwise). Also, it came up that I may only do affiliates related tasks, so I was encouraged by some to help beyond that if I wanted admin rights beyond one-year. There seems to be some conflicting views on that, again, not a debate I want to engage in right now - also something beyond just me and so probably better for discussion someplace other than a user talk page. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 15:49, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

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Good to meet you

We seem to be discussing an 'interesting' piece of humour.

Not sure how your talk page rules work when I do most of my talking on en:wp.

If you want to find more about me (and why would you?) google my name and look under Youtube. Timtrent (talk) 15:51, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Gay

This redirect is even worse than GAY. Perhaps redirect it to Wikimedia LGBT? PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:10, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Good call. It seems odd that Editing Restriction Policy redirects there as well. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 18:09, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

The page was moved to Editing Restriction Policy a few times, probably because others either found the "friends of gays" name offensive or wanted to generalize it to the other catgories of users listed there (e.g., typing students). PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:13, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Why did you change the Friends of gays redirect? That one actually seems plausible (if the page is kept) PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:21, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Seemed like the notion of "Friends of gays" taken outside the context of this article was a bit deceiving. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 20:16, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I've reverted your edit to Friends of gays. This essay is over nine years old and it's cited pretty heavily on the English Wikipedia (and likely other projects). It may be appropriate to hijack these redirects if the essay is deleted, of course.

Re: the hatnote on Wikimedia LGBT, same thing. You can't simply remove redirects to content you happen to disagree with, especially in the middle of a deletion discussion. You know that. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:09, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

It was a shortcut that was not being used and was clearly not what one would expect when you type that shortcut in. YOU should know better than to add a hatnote to a project page for a group you are not a member of (although again - I want to invite you to join) that arguably offends members of that group - especially just to prove a point. We both know that we are familiar enough with "the rules" to play the "you should have" game all day long - I am more interested in practicality and reality. The reality is that the shortcut change had nothing to do with the deletion debate - it had to do with the use of that shortcut. There was nothing using the shortcut that I could find. If you could logically argue that the shortcut is a better fit for that article than Wikimedia LGBT - I will change it and agree it should be reviewed before a change. My thought and logic - and checking with a few others - led me to the conclusion that no - that shortcut was not best suited pointing to a humor article versus an active project. So I did as you often do (ahem - hatnote to piss off the LGBTs?) and was bold. If your argument is strictly about timing, I disagree with its validity and would argue it's a moot point anyway. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 04:19, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I should also note that I said on that discussion I was changing it. No one objected (and they have objected to plenty else in that discussion). So that was not exactly done in secret or without an opportunity for others to comment. Although I feel like by typing this I'm just inviting an absurd discussion there - but whatever. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 04:23, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

What is this "nobody objected" nonsense? You changed the redirect like yesterday. How fast, exactly, were you expecting an objection? Within minutes? And, of course, you now have at least one objection, so saying "nobody objected" is even more foolish.

Regarding links, you're mis-counting, as I just explained to you elsewhere. Meta-Wiki is a global project, but only local links are tracked. A few simple searches (in addition to the page view statistics) make it clear that this redirect is used. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:26, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I think the suggestion that we make it a Disambig page makes the most sense. I had done a search, and agree saying nothing linked to it was a hyperbole, but the only uses I found were random Userpages and old archived discussions (two to be exact). I still do not see how using the shortcut for a humor article (I don't care if Jimbo himself wrote it - it's a humor article) has more value or logic than redirecting to an active project page. I still haven't seen any argument that addresses that practicality. As a sidenote, I do appreciate that you showed more restraint and respect than elsewhere - but you are smart enough to know that condescension is not going to persuade the target. If convincing me wasn't the goal - hashing this out elsewhere makes more sense IMHO. In any case, the public discussion did garner a good suggestion, so I think we should compromise on that. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 16:01, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit to GAY. Looks good. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:26, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed (who says we're too disagreeable?). Pleasure doing business with you - as always.  :) --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 17:43, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Page move without leaving a redirect

When you do this to a page, please clear out WhatLinksHere first. - dcljr (talk) 23:01, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I thought it was only in use one place when I checked that - did I miss a place? --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 23:04, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

You beat me to it. - dcljr (talk) 23:13, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Apologies - I did the transclusion first and got distracted before finishing my check on the other references. Thank you for being so quick to catch it! --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 23:15, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

That was only because I was watching the page with e-mail notifications turned on, because One Of These Days I was going to implement the changes outlined at Meta talk:Babel#Multilingual instructions. Fortunately, Steinsplitter did it instead. - dcljr (talk) 03:25, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia LGBT

I don't believe we have met formally, on-wiki or off-wiki, but I imagine we might start working together more frequently. Please feel free to shoot me an e-mail for offline introductions and discussion. Thanks! --Another Believer (talk) 16:27, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Very nice to make your e-acquaintance! --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 16:30, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Please see Wikimedia LGBT/Participants. I added names from the Proposed Board list to the general list of project participants/supporters, in the order in which they added their name to the Board list (based on time stamps, when possible). This brings the total count to 15. If you had included yourself in the 16, would you mind signing the general list of supporters as well? I will post the same request to Wikitanvir. My reason for doing this is that the Board section might change, sooner or later, so it is good to have supporters listed below as well. Thank you. --Another Believer (talk) 22:20, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Done and also updated Wikimedia LGBT/Participants/Template to use # instead of *, not sure how that will work out when it has multiple folks with the spaces between each that method creates - will ponder that a bit... --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 13:06, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Just figured the numbered list is better for keeping count, even if it requires some manual work. --Another Believer (talk) 13:47, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable and good idea to me. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 13:53, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Regarding this edit: I see that the ThOrg page was moved, but not the User Groups page. --Another Believer (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

That move will be done very soon - soon enough that it seemed time saving to just make that revision then. It is the proper case - I am simply waiting for my Meta admin rights or another admin to get around to it. It has many subpages attached - so it's not a simple move. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 19:55, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Gotcha! Thanks for the fast response. --Another Believer (talk) 20:16, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for marking LGBT for translation. I had no idea how to do that. All I could think to do was approach one Spanish-speaker about his of her willingness to translate (which I did). Hopefully now others will be more inspired to translate. --Another Believer (talk) 18:37, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

What's up with the formatting of the template here? I do not know how to fix this. --Another Believer (talk) 16:33, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! --Another Believer (talk) 18:21, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-40

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

New features

• Special:Listfiles can now display old versions of files a user has uploaded. A new link was also added (Special:AllMyFiles) that gives a list of all files the current user has ever uploaded (that haven't been deleted).
• There is now an Android application to contribute to translatewiki.net from mobile devices. [1]

VisualEditor news

• VisualEditor now has a new toolbar with drop-down menus for advanced tools. [2]
• Many bugs were fixed, some related to copy-and-paste. [3]
• You can now move references, list of references, templates and other elements with the mouse ("drag-and-drop"). [4]
• You are invited to comment on designs for the interface to add references in VisualEditor.

Future

• Developers are looking for ideas of small technical projects that new developers could work on. Please add your ideas. [5]
• Developers are looking for wikis who would accept to try using secure links (HTTPS) for all users. [6]
• You can join an IRC discussion about "Beta features", a tool to try new features, on October 3. [7]
• You can join an IRC discussion about Flow, the new wiki discussion tool, on October 17.

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

20:12, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Diversity Conference

I am really glad you are able to attend. Congrats, enjoy, and represent! --Another Believer (talk) 23:08, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from August 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for August 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

• Wikimedia Foundation highlights
  • Foundation staff report on their work at Wikimania
  • Wikipedia Education Program in the Arab World completes its third term
  • HTTPS by default for logged-in users
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other movement highlights
  • Wikimania
  • Wikimedians and pilots cooperate to photograph Israel from the air

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 09:11, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-42

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

New features

• You can now choose which language to show for SVG files that contain several languages, using the "lang" option, like [[File:Gerrit_patchset_25838_test.svg|lang=de]] for the German layer of File:Gerrit patchset 25838 test.svg.
• Developers are looking for wiki communities to try the new search system. [8]

VisualEditor news

• You can now create and edit references inside media captions. [9]
• You now need to press the "delete" key twice to delete a template, reference or image; the first time, they only become selected, to avoid accidental deletion of infoboxes and similar content. [10]
• When you resize images, you will now still see them, and their size will also be seen in the center. [11] [12]

Future

• The new notifications system ("Echo") will be added to almost all wikis that don't already have it on October 22. It will notify you of changes and events that affect you. [13]
• MediaWiki 1.22wmf22 was added to test wikis on October 17. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 21 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 24 (calendar).
• The interface to reset your password will soon be changed. [14]

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

09:30, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-43

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

New features

• The "Toolbox" section in the site sidebar is now called "Tools" in English. You can do the same in your language by editing the interface text on translatewiki.net. Someone else may have already done it. [15]

VisualEditor news

• On wikis with VisualEditor, you can now use it on pages in the File, Help and Category spaces. [16]

Problems

• On October 22 (UTC), an error in the site settings caused *.wikimedia.org sites (like Meta-Wiki and Commons) to redirect to wikimediafoundation.org for a few hours. [17]

Future

• MediaWiki 1.23wmf1 was added to test wikis on October 24. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 28 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 31 (calendar).
• In the next days, servers in San Francisco will start providing (cached) content to users located in Oceania. If you are in that area and notice problems, please tell us. [18]
• You will soon be able to test new features easily using the "Beta Features" view. VisualEditor will be in the list on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. Another example is a set of changes in the article text style.

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

09:58, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from September 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for September 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

• Wikimedia Foundation highlights
  • 22 proposals for Individual Engagement Grants submitted
  • FDC receives 11 proposals for annual plan grants, looks back on first year of operation
  • Community consultation about new privacy policy begins
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other movement highlights
  • Wiki Loves Monuments 2013
  • Indian Wikimedians and German university collaborate to digitize works of 19th century scholar
  • Australian government agency supports Wikimedia cooperation with Paralympic Movement

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 10:50, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-44

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

New features

• The style and colors for warning boxes, error messages, and success messages in all skins of MediaWiki has been changed. [19]

VisualEditor news

• You will soon be able to switch from editing in VisualEditor to editing wikitext directly without having to save the page. You can't yet switch from wikitext to VisualEditor but developers hope to make it possible in the future. [20]

Problems

• There was a problem on October 31 during the activation of MediaWiki 1.22wmf2 on test wikis. mediawiki.org was also broken, and if you had problems logging in, it was probably because of this as well.

Future

• Because of the problem with MediaWiki 1.22wmf2, the calendar has changed. It will be added to mediawiki.org and non-Wikipedia sites on November 4, and all Wikipedia sites on November 7.

JavaScript / Gadget developers

• Due to a recent change, gadgets and user scripts that use jQuery UI should explicitly load the appropriate modules, as they may not be loaded by default. [21]
• Developers have started to remove long-deprecated methods. You should check the JavaScript console (in debug=true mode) and look for deprecation warnings and their stack trace. [22]

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

10:48, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-45

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

New features

• You can now use the "Autonym" font of the Universal Language Selector (ULS) to display the name of languages (for example in navigation templates) in their correct script. To do this, add the CSS class "autonym" to the elements that include language names. Note that this font only works for the name of languages, not for any other text. [23]

Problems

• There was a problem with Parsoid (the program used by VisualEditor to convert wikitext to annotated HTML) on November 4, between 19:40 and 20:40 (UTC). Encoding issues caused non-ASCII characters (including those with diacritics, like "é") to be broken when converted to wikitext and saved to the page. [24]

Future

• The Beta Features tool is now available on Commons and Meta-Wiki. With it, you can test new features before they're added for everyone. The plan is to add this tool to all wikis on November 21. [25]
• MediaWiki 1.23wmf3 was added to test wikis on November 7. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 12 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 14 (calendar). [26]
• The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [27]
• The button of the Search page will soon be changed to be blue and bigger (see the difference). [28]
• You will soon be able to add a page name as parameter for {{REVISIONID}}, {{REVISIONUSER}} and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and similar functions, by writing for example {{REVISIONID:Apple}}. [29]
• In the future, when you hide a CentralNotice banner on a wiki, it will also be hidden on other Wikimedia sites. [30]

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

13:20, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia LGBT page translations

Hi, Varnent. I have been recruiting people to assist with translating pages at Wikimedia LGBT. Someone responded on my talk page, requesting a link to start translating. Are there any links I need to provide? I'm afraid I am not too familiar with how page translations work, here at Meta or otherwise. I was hoping it would be obvious to translators once they reached Wikimedia LGBT, but perhaps more work is involved. Any assistance would be helpful. Thanks. --Another Believer (talk) 20:20, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for doing this and apologies for my delayed response - it has been a hectic month. The best resource that I could find is at: mw:Help:Extension:Translate/Translation example - which is itself a problem. I will ponder linking to that resource better from Meta-site. --Varnent (talk)^(COI) 19:05, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from October 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for October 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

• Wikimedia Foundation highlights
  • Pilot project for free mobile access to Wikipedia via text messages in Kenya
  • Video about South African students' grassroot efforts to get Wikipedia free on their cellphones
  • Planning the replacement of the Florida data center
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement
  • Science award for bot that imports multimedia from academic publications to Wikimedia Commons
  • New project encourages African communities to contribute local content to Wikimedia projects
  • Third "Iberoconf" summit in Mexico City

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 18:30, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-46

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

Problems

• There was a problem caused by too many requests to the database on November 14. [31]

Future

• MediaWiki 1.23wmf4 was added to test wikis on November 14. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 19 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 21 (calendar).
• The new Search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added to *.wikimedia.org, Wikimania and Wikisource wikis on November 19, and Wiktionary wikis on November 21 (except where it's already available). Once it is added, you can test it by adding &srbackend=CirrusSearch to the address of the search results page. It will become the main search engine on Wikivoyage wikis on November 21. [32]
• The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 19 instead of November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [33]

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

09:00, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :)

Varnent, thanks for re-marking up the Trademark policy for translation; it's appreciated. :) Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 00:12, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-47

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

New features

• The Beta Features announced before are now available on all Wikimedia wikis. You can test new features easily by changing your Beta preferences. VisualEditor is one of those features on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. There is also a new media viewer and changes in the article text style. [34]
• Tools developers can now create tools that use the OAuth protocol to connect to accounts on Wikimedia sites. As a user, you can use those tools to make edits and other changes with your account without giving the tool your password. [35]

Problems

• Wikis that are currently testing CirrusSearch had problems with search results on November 18 from 16:00 to 20:00 UTC.

Future

• There will be no major code changes on the week of November 25 because many developers will be on holiday for Thanksgiving.
• The editing interface of Page: pages on Wikisource (working with the Proofread Page extension) will soon also work without JavaScript. [36]

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

06:57, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-49

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

This newsletter is now posted using MediaWiki message delivery.

New features

• The CommonsMetadata feature was added to all wikis. It creates metadata information about multimedia files (like their license) that can be read automatically by computer programs. It not only works for Commons, but for all wikis, and you can use it for files on your wiki by editing templates used to describe metadata. [37]
• JavaScript code used on Wikimedia sites is now saved locally on your computer to load faster. [38]

VisualEditor

• You can now paste formatted content copied from external sources (not just as plain text) into VisualEditor; this includes copy/pasting from other VisualEditor windows. [39]
• You can now open VisualEditor by adding ?veaction=edit to the page URL, regardless of your user preferences. [40]
• Many bugs have been fixed, and VisualEditor should also look faster, for example when you save a page. [41]

Problems

• Due to issues, the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") was recently removed from wikis where it was enabled, then added again. [42]

Future

• MediaWiki 1.23wmf6 was added to test wikis on December 5. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 10 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 12 (calendar).
• The old Etherpad tool (replaced by a new version) will be removed on December 30, 2013. You can still save old pads before that date using the old address: https://etherpad-old.wikimedia.org. [43]

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

08:38, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from November 2013

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for November 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

• Wikimedia Foundation highlights
  • New support material for program organizers: Evaluation report about edit-a-thons, and a pattern library
  • "Beta Features" option allows users to test upcoming software changes
  • Open Source Language Summit in Pune, India
  • OAuth extension makes it easier to use third-party editing tools
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement
  • Tenth anniversary of Wikisource
  • Indian university releases encyclopedia under a free license
  • Diversity Conference
  • Photographer receives $17,000 Kickstarter funding to document video games on Wikimedia Commons

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 04:48, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-50

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

New features

• You can now see a legend on Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist that explains the symbols used. [44]
• If your wiki is testing the new search tool ("CirrusSearch"), you can now test it by adding "New search" in your Beta features preferences. [45]

VisualEditor

• The toolbar is now simpler; all text styles (bold, italics, underline, subscript, etc.) are in the same menu, and the "More" menu is called "Insert". [46]
• You can now use a basic tool to add special characters to your text. You can add more characters (useful in your language) by editing the MediaWiki interface on translatewiki.net.
• The tool to add and edit mathematical text is now called "formula". [47]

Problems

• There was a problem with the "Create a book" tool (Collection); books could only be exported to PDF format. The change has been undone. [48]
• The log-in system for external tools ("OAuth") was broken on wikis that tested the new search tool. It was fixed last week. [49] [50]
• Because of a bug, this newsletter is delivered to users using the new MediaWiki message delivery, and to community pages using the old EdwardsBot. [51]

Future

• MediaWiki 1.23wmf7 was added to test wikis on December 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 17 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 19 (calendar).
• You will soon be able to select the language of SVG images that have translations using a drop-down menu on the image page. (see example) [52]
• GLAMToolset, a tool to help GLAM groups (like museums) upload many pictures to Commons, will be added to Commons on December 17. [53]
• A Draft namespace will be added to the English Wikipedia to make it easier to create new pages. You will be able to use VisualEditor for drafts if you have enabled it. [54] [55]

Other

• You can read the summary of the technical report for November 2013 to learn more about VisualEditor, Mobile and other features. [56]

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

08:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-51

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on December 19. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on December 31 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 2, 2014 (calendar).
• You can now test the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") on all Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikimedia chapter wikis hosted on Foundation servers. Enable "New search" in your Beta features preferences. [57]
• There was a bug where notifications were not sent when the signature of the user leaving the message linked to a translated namespace. The problem was fixed in the software and will soon be fixed on Wikimedia sites. [58] [59]
• You can now use the log-in system for external tools (OAuth) on all Wikimedia wikis that use the unified login. [60]
• If your wiki adds stars or other icons to interwiki links for featured articles in other languages, you may need to change the JavaScript code. [61]
• You can thank other users for their edits even if your browser does not have JavaScript. [62] [63]
• All edits made through Flow, the new discussion system for MediaWiki, are now visible in user's contributions. You can test it on the Flow talk page on MediaWiki.org. [64] [65]
• You can test a visual tool that shows edits made to an article over time. It only works for English Wikipedia pages for now and is slow on long articles. [66]
• You can test the first version of the new mobile Wikipedia app for Android and iOS. [67]
• Translatewiki.net, the site where you can translate the MediaWiki software, now has a new main page for users without an account. [68]

Future software changes

• There will be no technical changes this week (December 23 to December 29) due to end-of-year holidays.
• When someone deletes, restores, uploads, or moves a file on Commons, pages on all wikis that use that file will be refreshed. [69] [70]
• New users will soon have their user and talk pages added to their watchlist as soon as they create an account. [71] [72].
• The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will not show the text of versions of a page that have been hidden. [73] [74]
• You will soon be able to see the raw HTML created by some wikitext by using the Special:ExpandTemplates tool. [75] [76]

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

08:22, 23 December 2013 (UTC)