Whatamidoing (WMF)

Great news! I'm so happy.

Congratulation WAID!. I just saw Philippe create this on recent changes and I can't tell you how happy I am. I was going to suggest something similar on enwp, but never got around to it. Ever since Maggie joined, I was thinking you'd be a great addition. Really happy. Can you tell I'm excited? Anyhoo, I just wanted to say congratulations and I'm very pleased to have you helping the WMF. Thanks for joining up. 64.40.54.72 01:34, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! It still seems a bit unreal. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of that. I bet it does feel different, but you're in good company with Maggie, Oliver and more recently Marc over at WMF Labs. I remember Oliver said something like "The Foundation should give us a t-shirt with a bullseye on it when they bring us on board." shortly after he joined. I'm sure it was tongue-in-cheek, but there's also some truth to that. You know how the community is. Anyhoo, I'm really glad the Foundation is continuing to bring on board people from within the community—and you certainly top the list of helpful and knowledgeable editors. I know people keep saying there's a rift between the community and the Foundation—and they've been asking about it in the Board elections too. I never felt that was the case, but the either way, bringing people from the community on board will certainly answer those concerns. And I'm really happy you were chosen. I'm going to take a guess that you're a liaison between the community and engineering for Echo and VE. Are you allowed to confirm that at this early stage? I don't want to jump the gun if there's an announcement planned. It was just sheer luck that I happened to see Philippe create your account, so I know I'm a bit early here. I'm just really excited that you're helping the WMF. Thanks much. Woo Hoo! Go Team! 64.40.54.181 03:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Just saw en:User:Whatamidoing (WMF) which answered my question. Thanks again for all the help you've provided to the community. Kind Regards. 64.40.54.181 03:31, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

There's supposed to be an announcement, but I'm not sure exactly who is making it or where. So far, all I've gotten to do is paperwork, and there's still more to do. It's possible that they're waiting until the paperwork is finished, or they might be hoping to announce several at once. (Or it may have been announced, and I just didn't see it yet!) I think there are three or four of us joining just for this project. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 14:45, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

3 or 4? WOW! That's great news. Go Team! Obviously, I went digging around to see what I could find I'm curious that way but didn't find anything. I'm sure you can't say much, but are you allowed to say if they're veterans from enwp? I don't want to spoil the surprise, but my curiosity has been piqued. Best. 64.40.54.139 02:23, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

outdent It was in this weeks Signpost and the maillist. I knew 3 of 4, so that's great. 64.40.54.119 04:00, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

+1 on the matter of happiness. Good luck in this role. Try not to let it keep you from enjoying your own wikiwork. :) –SJ talk  07:40, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, and congratulations in your re-election. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 08:20, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations. I hope you enjoy your new work here. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 02:59, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The current plan is to deploy VisualEditor as the default at the English Wikipedia next Monday afternoon (California time), so I'll probably find out next week whether or not I'll enjoy it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:17, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:46, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Blall Ayobi (talk) 08:26, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Caught in filters

I see that you got caught by one of my anti-spambot filters. I will have a look to see what I can do to resolve that matter. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:58, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. May I also suggest that the error message provide a link to an explanatory page? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 13:12, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

FYI I saw that there is now a phabricator has a new ticket about talk pages for all abuse filters, or it was something like that.  — billinghurst sDrewth 22:29, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Category:Wikimedia Foundation staff

Hi, Whatamidoing (WMF), just to let you know on this category, it seems as if your User talk is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation staff. Should this be changed? Lotje (talk) 03:33, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I hadn't noticed, but I've fixed it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:06, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Selective archiving

If you're going to archive a page to make it shorter, do it in a content neutral manner. Shoving stuff you'd prefer to ignore onto a separate page is unacceptable and hostile to the community. --98.207.91.246 17:34, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not really "archiving", because I hope that these discussions will continue in their proper places. I do hope that we can agree that it's silly to have comments about VisualEditor in the middle of a discussion about Media Viewer. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

But that's not all you were doing. You were also moving talk about the very reasonable position that the WMF should disable Media Viewer by default as per community consensus in three RfCs. Just because the WMF has rejected this doesn't mean discussion about this is off-topic. I must insist you restore such conversations or do a topic-neutral archive. --98.207.91.246 17:42, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

And you keep on doing it! STOP --98.207.91.246 17:48, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit confliect) Yes, you're right: in order to get the talk page down to a reasonable size, I'm splitting discussions into two types: suggested technical changes for people who are actually using it, and discussions about procedural stuff (including, but not limited to, stuff that can only be changed in a technological sense through the invention of a time machine). If you had read what you kept reverting, especially the words "begin with", you'd know this, of course.

We need to have both of these discussions. There is no obvious reason why they have to happen on the same page. The main alternative is to put everything on one page and set a 24-hour timer on an archiving bot, in which case nearly everything will get lost. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Or we could leave things as they were. I don't think the page was too long to begin with. The front page of meta is 642 KB alone. If you really cared about slow load times, there are bigger fish to fry than large chunks of text. --98.207.91.246 18:01, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd be happy to keep you in mind the next time someone complains to me that they can't join a discussion because the page is too long; perhaps you will be willing to explain to them that it's all just fine.

I guess you didn't know this, but mobile uses a different main page to keep the size under control. At en.wp, for example, it omits DYK and a couple of other sections. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Edit wars

To my understanding, and each wiki can establish its own policies, edit warring is always a policy, with a discussion of what an edit war is and how to approach disputes. Normally a bright line is set at three reverts by the same editor in 24 hours, but that is only to take direct action and does not define what an edit war is. The word war, of course, refers to an act of war, and that is only one action, which would be not the first revert, which is more like a questioning of an edit, but the second revert, and the first revert that restores the "bold edit". How many reverts make up an edit war? Well by definition, two. By policy? Not normally specified. Normally a policy on edit warring will say that waiting 24 hours to make a revert does not make it not an edit war, and you are still in an edit war without yet making three reverts yourself. We often restrict pages or editors to 1RR - only one revert. Hope this helps. Saying that "BRD is not a policy", is to me like saying "the sky is not really blue". Not really relevant. Meta can be expected to not have a whole lot of policies, because it has relatively little use, and everyone coming here is more familiar with the policies of their own home wiki. The Golden Rule, though, always applies everywhere. Apteva (talk) 17:46, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

So let me reply as a volunteer, because as a volunteer, one of my main areas is writing policies at en.wp. Each wiki can and does establish its own policies. Meta has very few. For better or worse, a policy against edit warring is not one of them here.

On the English Wikipedia, I can tell you that there are at least two admins who believe that a single reversion can constitute an edit war, and that there is one who has stated that every single edit (after the first one to create a page) is a revert. (Yes, he actually means that if I write a stub, and you correct a typo I made, then you have "reverted" my misspelling, and that you may be an edit warrior for doing that.) I believe that this is nonsense, but efforts to more precisely define the terms were rejected. The idea that reverting every 24 hours is okay has been rejected by en.wp's policy: a slow-motion edit war is still an edit war.

BRD is not a policy because it actually shouldn't be used in every case. If you read BRD at en.wp, you'll see that it describes itself as a technique that is not apprppriate for every circumstance or every editor. In this particular case, it's a bit silly to be promoting BRD as the ideal, because if you'll check the page history, you'll find that the first action was "D", not "B". The original source of the reversions was that the logged-out editor didn't read the talk page before he jumped to conclusions and started reverting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

The page grew way to fast to keep up with it. A lot of pent up anger, apparently. The English Wikipedia has millions of users and has relatively well developed policies, but some are clearly nothing but garbage, yet we all still have to follow them. What concerns me the most is that since 2007 we have been gaining readers but losing editors. And even though that is when I started editing regularly I certainly can not be blamed for the change. And I hope that as WMF staff no one is being fooled by the decline in readership this year - people are just getting our content from Google, instead of having to get it directly from us - and Google has no content other than what we create for them. Many enclopedia accesses do not require reading the whole article - you just want to find the author of a book, or the year someone was born or died, for example, and you can get that from the snippet that comes up when you google the subject.

Like this:

Ernest Hemingway
Author
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a 
strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later 
generations. Wikipedia
Born: July 21, 1899, Oak Park, IL
Died: July 2, 1961, Ketchum, ID
Spouse: Mary Welsh Hemingway (m. 1946–1961), More
Children: Jack Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway, Gregory Hemingway
Movies: The Killers, Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man, More

Some of the policies and guidelines though, are extremely well written and well thought out, and are more like feature articles in their quality. Others are nothing but the product of constant edit wars about them, and are just the flavour de jour. That lack of editors troubles me, but I am an example of a good editor who is blocked there for no reason, and I am certain there have to be thousands of editors who have been driven away for many reasons. It would be very interesting to discover exactly what happened though, in 2006 or 2007 to see why an exponentially increasing number of editors suddenly became an exponentially decreasing number of editors, while the number of readers was continuously increasing (Who left and took all their friends with them? Did editing become pointless after all the Pokemon articles were created?). As to edit wars, though, I would agree that a relatively small number of reverts is an edit war - and by definition two reverts by different editors is an edit war - but what you do about an edit war is where policy comes in. I do prefer to follow the BRD cycle and would simply call it common sense, rather than a policy or guideline. And I would caution against even bringing up that it is not a policy because that is nothing but Wikilawyering and completely misses the point of whoever brought it up. Apteva (talk) 03:06, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, I agree with you that people are getting what they need from Google, although that isn't necessarily filled by our content. Google's infobox-style summaries on disease-related searches appear to come from the NIH, for example.

There's been some research done on the editor decline. Perhaps you've seen some of it? Anyway, it appears that one of the biggest drivers of the editor decline is automation. Consequently, "the editor decline" mostly happens at large projects like the English Wikipedia, where bots and scripts are commonly used. Projects like Hebrew, Estonian, and Catalan do not seem to have this problem.

The overall story works like this: I'm new and screw up. In 2007, when I screwed up (as a new editor, I thought that [[Category:Example]] and {{Example}} were duplicates), Arcadian just quietly cleaned it up, usually taking the opportunity to refine one or the other. Eventually, I noticed what he was doing, I learned the difference between templates and categories, and I stopped screwing up. Today, I probably would have encountered another editor, someone focused on anti-vandalism rather than wikignoming, who would have just reverted my change (producing an Echo notification to make sure that I noticed it) and given me a warning about "test edits" or "non-constructive" edits without trying to help me or to improve the article. I think I would have been discouraged by this impersonal and unpleasant response, and apparently that reaction is not unusual.

Also, since a good deal of the obvious work is done by bot now, there's actually a need for fewer edits by wikignomes and anti-vandalism patrollers. ClueBot reverts poop vandalism faster than humans; back in 2006, just months before ClueBot began anti-vandalism work, we had hundreds of editors whose main activity was reverting obvious vandalism. ClueBot effectively put many of them out of a job.

There's no easy solution for this. If we use bots and scripts to maintain quality on the large projects—the projects that are too large for a couple of people to personally review all the changes—then we have a better product now, but shaky future. If we don't use bots and scripts to maintain quality, then we have a mess now but a stronger future. What we really want is a better product now and a better future.

BTW, if you're interested in this, one approach that might help is to try w:en:WP:SNUGGLE as a more encouraging way to clean up mistakes created by promising newbies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:51, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I would look for some "critical mass" phenomenon. Look for a similar pattern of rise and fall of editor participation at all other projects, to see if it is just related to the maturity of the projects - when there are less red links are there less editors? Define 10,000 essential articles, and compare the size of those articles in every Wiki. Do the number of editors start to decline when those articles reach a critical mass of maturity? As to my editing EN, I will have to wait until I get unblocked there. I do not even check to see if I am unblocked though, because there are hundreds of other projects to work on. I do a lot of RCP, but eschew automation of any type, and prefer to issue personalized warnings instead of canned ones. I look for more nuanced issues that cluebot is unable to identify. Some of the routine tasks that I perform that could be automated but only with a relatively high level of automation are repairing dead or broken links and formatting external links. I noticed that there was some unfortunate blowback when one of our more prolific bot writer was blocked for a year for using a spreadsheet to format some data. How that was construed to be "automation" is beyond me. Were they only supposed to edit Wikipedia with paper and pencil, and not use a keyboard? It is true that you can look at a Wiki, and think there is nothing left to do, but look more closely, and there are tons of things that need to be done. We have four million articles, and many of them are just stubs, ten years later. We could probably delete half of them with no loss of content, actually. I would say that mostly I am a content creator and copy editor, though, and spend a great deal of time updating out of date articles. I actually have a list of calendar dates throughout the year to update certain pages monthly and annually based on when certain sources tend to update their information. Unfortunately many of those are now sorely in need of updating, due to the fact that they have not been noticed by anyone else, and I can not fix them. I recently discovered one error that has been there since 2012, and who knows how long it will be there until I get unblocked and can fix it. But personally I think the editor decline is due to one major factor - the editor climate - treating editors as if they were scum, instead of welcoming them. Even the worst vandal can learn to contribute positively, and that is the approach that is necessary. Helping them learn how to contribute instead of vandalize. Apteva (talk) 18:19, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

You do seem to have accumulated a bit of a block log. I think you're right about the climate. Automation isn't inherently evil, but I think it tends to promote that climate: Don't waste your time leaving a personalized message or thinking about what the user might have been trying to accomplish; just hit the Twinkle button and move on.

There is a correlation between size and editor decline, but this seems to be (to the extent that I've heard about the studies; I'm not an expert in it) more correlation than causation. Bigger projects—bigger in people-size, not number-of-stubs-size—have more automation and worse retention of new editors. (The decline is almost entirely due to losing promising new editors; once someone has thousands of edits, s/he almost always sticks around until real life intervenes. That's why meatball:GoodBye manifestos are so often met with skepticism.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:19, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

That "block log" that you are referring to is all complete BS. I was blocked once early on for 3RR, before I knew about it, and a warning would have sufficed, and been more effective. I am only here to help the project and have done nothing but that. Most of the blocks are because I noticed that we were not following proper protocol - the MOS does not affect content, article titles is content, and can not in any way be influenced or affected by the MOS, something that I went through proper channels to point out. The correct response would have been "thank you for the suggestion, we will consider it", instead of spending half a million characters deciding whether I should be blocked (trust me if it takes over 2,000 characters you are wasting everyone's time by even asking, and the answer is no). I have a list of many necessary edits that I can not do because I have been blocked. And the allegations Sockpuppetry are totally false. Yes I use an alternative account - and have since 2007. The tagging of sockpuppetry is very recent and simply "discovered" that I have an alternative account - I do that to maintain my privacy, and can not edit certain subjects from my main account, so I created this alternative account, and have been happily making those edits for years (maybe 3,000 edits from one account and 8,000 from the other). Until some one thought I needed to be watched more carefully to see if I was changing hyphens to endashes or vice versa - which is total, sheer, nonsense. The only affect being that I was locked out of my main account on that Wikipedia and so hundreds of articles that I would have maintained got more and more out of date. Yes some people have picked up the slack on some of them, but there are many edits that are simply not getting done without me there to do them. I could make a list of all the edits that I see that need to be made but it is better for whoever sees them to just make them, unless they have a conflict of interest. So I wait patiently to be unblocked and to have all restrictions removed so that I can get on with updating them and creating more articles. I always follow all guidelines and policies. That has never been an issue. The issue was that editors were raw from yelling at each other about the MOS issue - and just wanted to silence my legitimate concerns without taking them up.

Blocking me, and putting restrictions on what I can do, just makes no sense at all, and only hurts Wikipedia. Nothing else. It is as if someone is terrified that I might bring up the fact that we have the wrong name for the Mexican-American War article, which is totally preposterous (98% of books and encyclopedias call it the Mexican War, and of the 2% that call it the Mexican-American War, 98% use a hyphen, while we use an endash, putting us in the extreme minority, so there is absolutely nothing wrong with bringing it up anyway). But I only want to be able to update pages that need updating and correct errors that everyone agrees on. If they want to call it the Sasquash***War I would not make any comment on the subject. I have long ago moved on. Someone else can pick up the torch of noticing that the MOS has absolutely nothing to do with article titles, other than it says to make the article title bold in the first sentence of the article, if convenient.

I have found hundreds of other things to do in the meantime while I am blocked on that one project, but that one project is making a huge mistake to not let me participate there as well - I find something that was copied from EN to SV, and I can fix it on SV, but not on EN???? How is that supposed to make any sense? Apteva (talk) 05:04, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

It's complicated, isn't it? We also have editors that get kicked out of one project for being rude, but fit right in with another project, where rudeness is just more common (or their skills are more needed, so people are willing to put up with more). Then there's the inconsistency: multiple editors can take the same type of action, and some get blocked, some get warned, and some get ignored. And that's just for new-ish people, not counting the people for whom there seem to be "special rules". I don't think that we'll ever be perfect, but I do hope that we'll get better. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:07, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

The way we treat our editors certainly needs to change. We have rules about how blocking is used, but do not follow them. We have a rule WP:IAR, that says that if it benefits the project, you ignore all rules, which is what anyone who is blocked does if they create a sockpuppet to make a necessary edit. Yet instead of being thanked, they are blocked and chastised. Blocking is preventative, not punitive, and the fact is that we need all changes for the better no matter by who, where, or how they are made. I am not blocked for any legitimate reason, and any reasonable person would have looked at the witch trial that blocked me and immediately unblocked me, and chastised everyone who voted to block me. But now I have so much other work to do that I would have only made less than ten edits in August on En:wiki even if unblocked, but those edits would have been valuable, undeniably valuable. They were not made, so there are half a dozen or more errors, broken links or whatever that are still there simply because of - nothing but the fact that a good editor is inappropriately blocked. Apteva (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

The question on my mind at the moment is why you stay at all. Most people, when they're treated very unfairly (according to their own assessment, regardless of what you or I might make of their situation), just leave. What do you think is different about you, that you haven't given up entirely in disgust? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:45, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

To me that is a pretty silly thing to ask. You might as well ask why does Wikipedia still exist and why has it not vanished into antiquity? As long as there is a body of knowledge for people to use, and as long as I am alive and able, I will always help to improve that body of knowledge. It is impossible for me to leave and say, it does not matter if a word is wrong in Wikipedia, or that there is a broken link to a reference. If I see it, I will fix it. "Leaving" is not an option. Not for me at least. Leaving would mean that someone would not find what they were looking for, or what they found might be wrong. You might not care about that but I do. And unfortunately not everyone cares as much as I do about others, and does not mind if errors exist (the only possible reason I am blocked, is not caring about that). Bear in mind that there are real life constraints to how much volunteer time anyone has available, and there are months or even years where everyone has no time at all available, but there are other months or years when some time is available. So while it is impossible to drive me away by treating me like dirt, neither is it appropriate for anyone to try to do that. There has never been anything wrong with any of my edits, or my ability to collaborate/cooperate/contribute and so on. The only issue was some editors simply did not want to hear the truth. We are spelling things wrong because we are not following our own policies. The MOS does not affect content, and article titles are content. Fix that one itsy bitsy thing and we will go back to spelling things correctly. Like a Bald Eagle is a Bald Eagle, it is not a Bald eagle or a bald eagle. Look it up if you doubt me. The references in the article say it is a Bald Eagle, and not a bald eagle. Does capitalization and punctuation matter in a name? Obviously. Do we cater to all the goofy capitalizations or punctuations that people use when they name things? Not in the title, but we always note them in the article. No where do we note that a bald eagle is actually called a "Bald Eagle". This was a recent long fought battle that went on for almost a decade, and was very poorly resolved by forcing the non-correct but more common name, bald eagle. There may only be 1,000 bird experts in the world, but they are the ones who get to choose what birds are named, we only report what that name is. And having a vote on Wikipedia to decide the name is ludicrous and violates our own naming policy. Basically, if you want anyone who knows anything about birds to help with our articles, you will let them use proper names for birds, meaning capital letters, in articles about birds, and use lower case in the rest of the encyclopedia, which is what we have done for years. As a minimum, we absolutely need to indicate the correct name in parentheses along with the species name: The bald eagle (Bald Eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, from Greek hali- = sea, aiētos = eagle, leuco- = white, cephalos = head) is found mostly in North America. It would help to use the correct name at the top of the info box too, "Bald Eagle". Apteva (talk) 08:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary, it's an important thing to ask if I want to figure out how to keep editors who feel mistreated.

I spoke to someone else about some of the editor research. There were (I think) four categories of editors, and the only one I remember was the "something is wrong on the internet" category. I remembered that one because it describes me. Do you think you'd put yourself in the same category? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Without knowing what the other three choices were I would not be able to select any of the four choices. Wikipedia needs to recognize that it has an obligation to accept corrections no matter where or how they are presented. They can not block anyone from contributing. What they can do is block people from causing destruction, but if that person indicates that they are going to stop doing that, they must be unblocked - and have an opportunity to prove themselves right or wrong. We can not have any standards for who can contribute, but we can have standards for how they can contribute. For example, we often require COI contributions to be made on the talk page, where they can be made by someone who is not influenced by that COI. We simply have a responsibility to our readers to invite all contributions, or we fail to present correct and complete information.

The category that I can say that I am in, is a quality editor who was inappropriately blocked, to the detriment of the project. That must not be allowed to happen. Wikipedia can not consider itself to be a little club of 500 people who all know each other and require a secret handshake before entrance to the club is granted to anyone else. Wikipedia is an open website that is edited by millions of contributors, and everyone needs to be encouraged, not discouraged, from editing. Apteva (talk) 21:33, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

"The original source of the reversions was that the logged-out editor didn't read the talk page before he jumped to conclusions and started reverting." Don't make assumptions about what I did and didn't read. If you had bothered to read the page you were sanitizing, you'd see that the kinds of edits you made had already been made by another WMF employee and there was pushback. Despite this, you went ahead and cut out stuff you deemed off topic. And you continued after I objected to your edits without a chance for discussion. Yes, I read your stated motivations. That still doesn't justify anything beyond a topic-neutral archiving. Your selective archive, no matter your real motivations, served to segregate a class of opinions the WMF has chosen to ignore. You should not make it any easier for your bosses to ignore the very real opposition to Media Viewer. --98.207.91.246 23:14, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Despite the link being duplicated in the 'archive' box, Talk:Community Engagement (Product)/Media Viewer consultation/General discussion is not an archive. There are a couple of discussions happening there now. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:19, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

You retroactively declared a discussion off topic and moved it to where it can be hidden from sight. The only discussion there consists of a comment by you and someone elaborating on an earlier discussion that you apparently didn't read when you moved it about how actions similar to yours were inappropriate. You basically killed any chance of the discussions you moved continuing in any meaningful sense. Maybe the term archiving doesn't strictly fit, but you really should stop shunting things away to places where they'll be ignored. --98.207.91.246 04:34, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Nor did it help to link to those pages only in the "Archive" box, indicating that no edits could be made to them. That at least has been corrected, but it has long been known that if you move a discussion to a subpage you effectively kill it - not always, but often. Apteva (talk) 05:04, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, the date-based archives created by ArchiverBot are archives (the first even said so at the very top, and I confirmed that this was the plan on the talk page). The non-archive pages are the other two–the two that this logged-out editor didn't want to exist, even to avoid the necessity of rapid archiving for page size control. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:23, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Imputation of motives

This comment [1] is untrue and unacceptable. Please withdraw it as soon as possible. Deltahedron (talk) 19:09, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Deltahedron, did you really like with the answer you received? Are you actually happy that the WMF is leaving mathematics software entirely to volunteers? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

You know perfectly well what I meant, so don't waste my time by pretending you don't. Of course I did not like the result, but I am prefectly capable of distinguishing the process, or lack thereof, from the answer. The fact that I had to go all the way to Jimmy Wales to get a response is not a process, and I cannot believe that you seriously maintain that it is. Your comment was intended to denigrate my response, and to offend me. This is not how a responsbile member of WMF staff should treat a member of the community who has put, and is continuing to put, a lot of effort into doing things that staff members could and should be doing.

Well, you have your wish. I will not continue to put in any more effort into suggesting ways to fix the broken relationship between the WMF and the users. Congratulations. I hope you're happy. Deltahedron (talk) 21:10, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Okay: I said that you didn't like the answer you received, and you say that you didn't like the answer you received, and the problem is that telling the obvious truth offends you? That acknowledging the existence of months of previous discussions and your persistence in promoting your vision for WMF control of mathematics development offends you? Most of the people participating in that discussion have a particular motive or goal, and there's nothing discreditable about your goal. A response from you along the lines of "Of course I didn't like the answer I received, and I think the WMF is making a mistake" might be more sensible than "How dare you acknowledge the obvious fact that I didn't like the answer I received".

You didn't actually need to go to Jimmy Wales to get an answer. What Jimmy told you is what you had been told several times by other people. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue further. You know what you said, you know why you said it, you know why it was dishonest, and you know why it was offensive. You should be ashamed of yourself. Deltahedron (talk) 21:39, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm sad that you think that saying obviously and admittedly true things is dishonest. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

On your user page, you say "The major part of my job description is to support these changes by 'ensuring that our community is represented in the decision-making process and that our planned software adequately reflects user needs'". In your comment linked above, you say "I have previously told you exactly what my job entails: supporting exactly one product, and specifically supporting a product that is not mathematics rendering." I think it would help avoid misunderstanding if you harmonized the statement on your user page with what is said in your comment, because they are very different. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 19:25, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I do make sure that our community is represented–for the one product that I'm currently assigned to. (It would be more accurate to say "multiple communities", because there isn't just one.) Deltahedron's main complaint is with the other half: CLs work on "planned software", not "all software", and his complaint is that improving mathematics support is not currently planned at all by the WMF. Nothing that I write on my user page is going to resolve his actual complaint. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

• I do not have time to pursue this issue with you. I am willing to accept that we have different opinions on the subject if you are, and drop the issue. If you contradict me again, I shall conclude that you are deliberately harassing me, and formally complain to WMF management. On second thoughts, I don't care. I have things to do which are actually important, as opposed to trying to fix things here. Deltahedron (talk) 19:00, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
  • We both agree and disagree, depending on the question. When the question is "Did you get the results you want?", we both agree that the answer is obviously no. When the question is "Does math support need to be improved significantly?", we also fully agree that the answer is yes. We even agree that what you want is not entirely unreasonable. It is only when the question is "Did you get an answer about the WMF's role in mathematics software support when you followed the usual, de-centralized, community-based process?" that we appear to disagree. You have received answers, and the answers have been the same from every source and at every stage: The WMF does not currently have a program or a plan for mathematics editing, and does not have the capacity to take this on any time soon, but they'd be happy to fund it if you wanted to apply for a grant to hire external developers to do it. I wish you would reconsider your refusal to pursue an IEG to make this happen, but, as you say, you have other things to do, and I admit that the IEG process requires a significant commitment. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Change in renaming process

Hi! I changed the corrected message since there is a Hungarian translation for it (and it is the Hungarian speakers' noticeboard). Best regards, Samat (talk) 17:32, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! The MassMessage script unfortunately believes that everything at Commons should be in English. I really appreciate you doing that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Community organisers!

Hi! I was wondering where I might find people interested in being community organisers for this potential IEG: Grants:IdeaLab/Tools_for_using_wikidata_items_as_citations. Any ideas? Also contractors who are half-time or less are eligible ^-^ Mvolz (talk) 18:51, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

I saw a discussion on this a while back, and now I can't remember who was in it. I'll look around and let you know. Feel free to ping me again if I don't get an answer to you in the next day or two. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Marielle, here are some of the discussions on this subject during the last year or so. I think you'll be able to find the names of several supporters in them: [2][3][4][5] There's at least one more discussion that I couldn't find today, so perhaps I'll have another link for you later. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:23, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Bad day?

[6] makes me think you may need a break. Take care, Nemo 15:31, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

New VisualEditor special character tool

Hi! I would like to help test the special character tool. I know that my language doesn't have many diacritics that need to be specially inserted, but we do have to insert a lot of em dashes and German quotation marks („“) by hand, which has always been a hassle. So if you think this is needed, please feel free to contact me. --Gnom (talk) 09:33, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, thank you! I will be sure to let you know when it is ready. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Help request from Marathi Wikipedia

Hi,

From Marathi language wikipedia I have filed a bug T87771 There is a request from offline Marathi Wikipedian community to expedite implementation of the said bug on priority. Please guide me to whom to contact for this purpose.

Thanks and Regards Mahitgar (He who knows ,wants to know and and loves to keep others informed) (talk) 11:09, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Mahitgar. I'll ask around and let you know if I can find a way to move this along. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:12, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Process ideas update?

Hello, is there any update on what people are thinking about Community Engagement (Product)/Process ideas? Lots of good ideas there, and I know there was some work to sort ideas through an editor survey in at least en/es/de. Have any other communities started organizing their thoughts this way? Is there a synthesis of the public discussion & what out of that seems worth trying? I know some sister projects have organized similar feature lists in the past.

The most practical & scalable things that could be implemented may be ones that don't require new tools, and don't require staff to monitor and organize the resulting pages :) Warm regards, –SJ talk  19:15, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi SJ,

User:Quiddity (WMF) was hoping to sort through that page, but then the strategy consultation soaked up all of his time for several weeks. I don't think that he's been able to get back to it since then.

I've not seen any good summaries. I'm not aware of any communities with an organized, unified discussion on this particular subject, although I'm mostly stuck at en.wp right now, so I'm probably the least likely to see it. The conversations I see mostly happen in dribs and drabs, in association with some other project. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Questions regarding VE on German Wikipedia

Hi Whatamidoing, could you stop by at de:Wikipedia:Technik/Text/Edit/VisualEditor/Rückmeldungen some time these days? Thanks, --Gnom (talk) 07:20, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

correction for your user page

Hi, We moved to phabricator ... :) just a freindly nudge! Matanya (talk) 19:12, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Matanya. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Community Engagement (Product)/Process ideas

Please read and respond as a matter of urgency. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 12:10, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Translation tags

When you set up the translation tags like that, it breaks the edit links (phabricator:T58838). We're trying to do it the way described in the documentation (and as recommended by Nikerabbit). Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

When you leave the markup inside the translation tags, then the translators have to mess with it, and you risk malformatted wikitext if they're not careful. It's a question of whether you are trying to make it easier from the perspective of the original author (who should be done editing by the time the page is marked for translation) or from the perspective of the translators.

If the documentation recommends marking whole lists and long paragraphs in a single chunk, then the documentation needs to be changed. Small chunks are easier for the translators to deal with. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

This is an old thread, but for the sake of logging and for those who may randomly stumble on this section while passing by, the documentation does contain a good way to split the lists to small chunks. Personally I do split the lists all the time. And what was probably pointed by Ryan is how you marked the heading title. The new line before the closing translate tag is crucial there. As to the translators: some markup is necessary to show them in order to point them what they are dealing with. Like In English It Is Common To Write Headers Like This some other languages may have some nuances to consider as well. Same goes for lists. Besides we had that documentation for many years. It is better for translators when everyone follows the same way so there is no need to adjust to each and every specific page. Changing the documentation would mean changing all the existing pages using the current one. That is very very very tiresome and mostly manual work which would take months if not more of volunteer time (I am not exaggerating unfortunately, I have rather much experience retagging pages to know how much time it takes). Some parts could be automated probably a tiny bit but it still is an immerse amount of work even semiautomatically. --Base (talk) 12:41, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Office hour regarding informational Wikimedia video

Hi Whatamidoing and Jdforrester (WMF), I would like to invite you to the office hour that I mention in this draft blog post that will happen on Monday. --Pine'^✉ 23:08, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Coffee

Thanks for your participation in the office hour about instructional video! --Pine'^✉ 03:31, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Demonstrate the functionality of the new ce tag

Hi, I realized your potential interest in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T126272. If you have questions regarding this, please let me know. I'm happy to provide input, but I'm not planning to write a blog post on that as suggested here https://twitter.com/physikerwelt/status/698219110585528321 Since this is the first new tag, I'm courious to see what will be going on. Until now, I have the feeling that not too much is going on. --Physikerwelt (talk) 20:25, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Physikerwelt.

Is there any chance of w:en:Structural formulas being possible in the future? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

In the future defenitely, but not yet. --Physikerwelt (talk) 12:59, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. I am willing to wait. I hope that drawing the structural formulas will be more accessible for people who use screen readers. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Princess-in-residence

You're precious. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:03, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Regarding Editing/Publish

Hello. How can I translate the title of the section for this message? I really don't want this message to be posted with an English title in our wiki... Guycn2 · ☎ 01:18, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it can't be done, because it'll be delivered via MassMessage to Village Pump and similar talk pages, and MassMessage is incapable of coping with translated ==Section headings==. (That's why there's no section heading on the page.)

However, I'd be totally happy to have you manually replace the section heading as soon as you see it posted. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I will change it manually, but people may see it in English before I change. Thanks for the answer. Guycn2 · ☎ 18:49, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure what time it will be sent out, or I'd let you know in advance (and I won't be the person sending it, because I don't have MassMessage rights here). BTW, it looks like some of Verdy_p's recent changes have invalidated some of your translation work. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. I will take care of it now. Guycn2 · ☎ 19:10, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Save/Publish

A notice was just posted, from your account, that the "Save page" button is to be renamed to "Publish page". In the English Wikinews context, this would be blatantly wrong, extremely confusing, and actively misleading. For new users it would be especially confusing. Is there any way we can prevent our standard editing interface from being damaged in this way? --Pi zero (talk) 19:02, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Pi zero. Thanks for the note. I believe that it can be done, and that Wikinews (with its separate "publish" process) was on the list of potentially complicated setups (alongside things such as private wikis). This isn't going to happen for a couple of weeks, so I'll put it on the list for next week's regular meeting. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks. :-) --Pi zero (talk) 19:09, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

New question for you:

Are you familiar with the page status system for Wikisource? See this book as an example. Click any page number that's red or yellow, then click the edit button (and click past the VisualEditor dialog). The colored radio dots underneath the editing window are what I'm talking about. If you do a basic proofreading run, for example, then you tick the next one up. If you haven't done enough, then you leave it alone. Would something like that be useful or interesting at Wikinews?

(I have no idea how complicated it would be to set up, etc.; I thought I'd find out what you thought before I looked into it.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:04, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

This message is to follow up on your original question: There's currently nothing in the interface at Wikinews that clearly says that the instant you touch the Save button, your article (or changes to it) is going to be published (i.e., "made available to the public", to use the formulation in the policy at w:en:WP:SOURCES) immediately, in whatever form it's currently in, in the mainspace at Wikinews.

Do you think that the Wikinews communities could find a prominent place in the user interface to provide that information to the users, and to ensure that it is maintained permanently? I don't know if they'd actually let us add a sentence about this to the end of MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning, but something similarly prominent and difficult to overlook would probably work. What do you think? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

On en.wn, the word "publish" does not mean merely "make available to the public". "Publish" refers to a vastly more energetic event, and it would be deeply confusing and misleading to suggest to users that by committing their edits they would be "publishing" what they had written.

I can understand why lawyers would want people to be aware that when they "save" their changes the results become instantly visible to other people (not that I have unlimited patience with it; but I do understand the CYA attitude involved). However, the word "publish" would be a spectacularly wrong expression of this, in the en.wn context. Some other wording is called for. Two questions for you: can you suggest a hook whereby some acceptable words to the desired effect could be injected into the interface (since it probably couldn't be done by a simple change to the word on the save button); and do you have any suggestions on what such alternative wording (not using the word "publish") might be? --Pi zero (talk) 20:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that Wikinews reserves that term for a different meaning. My point is that "saving the page" seems to truly be publishing in the sense that (AFAICT) the lawyers care most about, which is the "made available to the public" idea. And I think that they care more about making the idea clear than the exact word used to describe the idea (even though publish as a term is important because of the its use, e.g., in copyright law, etc.). So I'm thinking that it might be possible to get a sentence added that says that the information will be made available to the public immediately upon saving the page, and then see if we could stick with "Save page" for the actual button. But that sentence would have to be easily visible, and the Wikinews communities would have to agree that they'd rather have this "unnecessary" sentence than have a change to the label on the button itself. As for what exactly to write, how about something like "Your contributions on this page will be visible to the public immediately upon saving. If you do not want your contributions to be available to the public immediately, then do not click the 'Save page' button."? That seems clear to me, but please feel free to propose alternatives.

On the technical end, the easiest thing would be to let us spam it into the copyright warning, because it's right there by the button. I'll ask if we could do that. The worst that can happen with that question is that someone says no.  :-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

The copyright notice (I think it's on that hook) says "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it." Either those words mean something, or they don't; and if they don't, then it would seem all words are a waste of time. If the lawyers think something more than that needs said, what more is it they imagine needs said?

To be clear: In the en.wn context, telling the user the button would "publish" their edits would be, patently, lying. Lawyers, we hope, don't want users to misunderstand; would lawyers want to deliberately lie to users? I'm inclined to believe lawyers get a bad rap, but if they would deliberately lie to users I would revise my opinion, precipitously downward.

I really do (btw) appreciate your help in untangling all this. --Pi zero (talk) 22:20, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Help me understand this, so I can explain it to other staff if I need to. Do we agree that clicking this button (whatever it's labeled) makes the user's contribution available to the public? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:55, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

The button does do that, yes. I'm having some... difficulty, with the idea that anyone could reasonably claim to be taken by surprise when it does so, although I would not suppose that people filing ludicrous lawsuits has anything to do with reason.  People at their worst (as any wiki admin knows) are awful. I — who am not a lawyer — would consider the passage I've quoted above to be fair warning. Nor can I imagine how anyone could claim any sort of hardship caused by their edit to a wiki page being saved to the page when they told the software to do that.

That said, I am all for things like changing a word in the interface in a way that makes things clearer; clarity is good. In this case, changing the label on that button from 'save' to 'publish' would not be clarity, it would be... falsehood, something broken that would need to be fixed. But a change that would actually make things clearer instead of making them blatantly wrong, sure. --Pi zero (talk) 00:34, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

So here I think is one of the "real world" things: in the newsroom, "publish" means this complicated thing involving some separation between the three main roles of reporters and editors and publishers. In the "real world", which in this (perhaps rare ;-) instance happens to be where the lawyers live, "publish" means something much less involved. In the real world, to "be published" only requires that the material be made available to the public. Example: In the newsroom sense of the word, if some kid posts a rhyming couplet about a political candidate on Twitter, then that's cute. In the real-world sense of the word, that kid truly did publish that couplet, and all sorts of legal and practical consequences ensue, e.g., effects of publication on copyright law and the possibility of a reporter contacting the kid to "newsroom-publish" something about it. What the kid did is no less "publishing" just because the news industry uses the same word to mean something else. And what this hypothetical kid did on Twitter is what all contributors are doing every time they hit the "Save" button here: They are making their changes available to the general public on the internet.

I understand that it seems strange for new contributors to be surprised by the effects of this button. After all, our first edits were a long time ago, and we figured it out. But I've had a couple of months to think about what "Save" means these days, and, as a result, it no longer seems strange to me. When you click "Save" in a word processor, do the contents get posted on the Internet? How about the "Save" button in your e-mail software? "Save" in your web browser makes a private copy of the web page on your hard drive. "Save" in your address book makes a private copy of someone's contact information. "Save" in photo editing software saves your changes to the photo; there's a separate button for sharing the picture on the internet. The "Save" button in WordPress and Blogger save a private, unpublished copy of your blog post. The "Save" button in Facebook's feed creates a private bookmark. None of these "Save" buttons make your information available to the general public.

When stuff is going public, there's a wide variety of labels used. E-mail services have standardized on "Send", and all sorts of similar actions fall under the category of "Sharing". Amazon's reviews and the NYT's comments section both use "Submit", which seems to imply professional review before actual publication – perhaps even the sort of review that might result in merciless editing. Comments may get "Post", "Comment", or "Reply" – but never "Save", unless you're able to make a private copy and come back to it later. WordPress, Blogger, Medium.com, and others use "Publish". Twitter famously uses "Tweet". There are very few things (mostly MediaWiki software and its derivatives) that use "Save" to mean "immediately provide this content to the general public on the internet". So given that "Save" means "make a private copy" on basically every program and every website that most people have ever encountered, I think it is not unreasonable for some people to be surprised that "Save" here means "post this forever on the internet". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:07, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Sorry to be blunt, but I don't think this conversation can support anything less direct.

What you say about users misunderstanding things is true and reasonable and all that, entirely in line with what I've been saying. What you say about the meaning of the word "publish" in the "real" world versus the newsroom is unmitigated bullshit, completely unhinged from reality and raising a rude finger to it. Simple fact: using the word "publish" on the button in a news setting would be lying to the user. Making believe it's not so, well, is just make-believe.

I am not advocating use of the word "save"; I don't care about it (actually, the phrase that comes to mind is that I don't give a rat's ass about it); but the worst I've heard anyone say about it is that it might be misunderstood. While I'm not excessively exercised about that, for the reasons I've explained (and could explain further, but find it a distraction here), I'm fine with a change that might be less misunderstood. Misunderstanding is irksome to users and therefore reducing it is a plus for the wiki. My point is that, factually, the word "publish" would be actively purveying a falsehood: lying. The chance of understanding correctly would go practically to zero, a problem in a whole different league from some piddling confusion over the word "save". The word "save" would be nice to improve on. The word "publish", were it foisted on us, would need to be fixed.

Frankly, I find most of this conversation just sad. Useful would be devoting energy to finding ways to improve things. Wasteful is unproductively pointing out that some lawyer's misconceived change would be destructive. Although it's true that the WMF has consistently, over the years, done damage to the sister projects (even Wikipedia) by failing to comprehend that those actually on a project know more about it than the WMF does, telling the WMF so is a waste of everyone's time not only because the WMF is unpersuadable but because even if they could be persuaded, doing so takes time and energy that would be better spent on devising actual improvements. So:

Can you think of another rewording, that doesn't use the word "publish", that would be less misunderstood than the current wording? The current wording, I see, is, exactly, "SAVE PAGE". I'll try to scrape up some time to consider this conundrum myself. --Pi zero (talk) 11:24, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

(It bothers me that the above could be interpreted to accuse you of BS, which was not what I was thinking; I took you to be presenting the lawyers' perspective and addressed it as such. If the WMF's lawyers think publishing in the newsroom sense isn't legally distinct from "publishing" in the blog sense, they don't know about news; calling the blog sense "real" in contrast to the newsroom sense shows underawareness of the legal situation. Anyway, sorry if my phrasing on that point came off badly. --Pi zero (talk) 22:34, 19 August 2016 (UTC))

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Since the Wikipedia articles on the subject aren't the greatest (IMO), perhaps you and I should collect some sources and clean them up. It'd be interesting to explain how "publication" differs between various types of law: a private letter can be "publication" for libel (or is it defamation? You can tell that I'm not a lawyer ;-) but not copyright; a blog post is "publication" for copyright but not news, etc. (Also, I'd personally be happy if the articles talked less about book publishing and more about news media. The last time I worked on them, which was yearsr ago, it seemed practically like an ode to vanity presses, with a sideswipe at book publishers whose marketing departments didn't satisfy their authors.)

In the meantime, I think I have good news you! It looks like our compromise will work. The product manager will remove Wikinews from the list if and only if we add a warning about the contents being visible immediately to wikinews:MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. The Save page button will remain exactly as it is now, and acquire a new Save changes option, for subsequent edits to the same page.

Nobody has (so far) dictated the exact content of the necessary statement. Therefore, I conclude that the statement does not need to include the word publish – and I think we should avoid it if we can. Something like "Your contributions to this page will be visible to the public immediately. If you do not want your contributions to be available to the public immediately, then do not click the 'Save page' button." would probably work. I'm totally open to your suggestions, but please let me know soon so we can get moving on this.

We'd need to get translations basically a week from now, for all ~33 Wikinews languages. Do you think that's feasible? I can ask at translators-l as soon as you and I have agreed upon the ideal text, and either you or I can spam the Village pump pages for all the Wikinewses with this information. That could help with both getting translations and also making sure that nobody blanks the statement. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 13:45, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Well. Several thoughts.

• The wording you suggest seems reasonable to me, in English.
• This problem presumably doesn't exist on all Wikinewses. At a guess it probably doesn't exist on most Wikinewses, and it may even be unique to English Wikinews. It's tied to both the word usage and the project workflow. Some Wikinewses use flaggedrevs, others don't. (I suspect most don't; as I recall, somebody started to assemble a table of such cross-language-comparative data for Wikinewses a while back, which ought to be around somewhere but is probably incomplete and perhaps somewhat behind the times; basically the Foundation's institutional dissing of Wikinews eventually led to that user's giving up and leaving Wikinews.) And the subtleties of the English word "publish" might not be relevant in any given non-English language. So it's entirely possible English might be the only language where this concern actually arises.
• If there's something to be done across all-language Wikinewses, I don't think I'd be competent to do it, particuarly. That's just not within my repertory.
• If it seems like I had a rather violent reaction to the bit about contrasting Wikinews with the "real" world, I expect I've been sensitized over the years. Most of the sister communities recognize that different sisters are fundamentally different; it's mostly in Wikipedian communities (especially the very big ones) where one finds wikimedians who think the way their project works is the One True Way. I've gotten mortally tired of listening to some of the more rabidly anti-Wikinews Wikipedians blathering about how Wikinews articles are crappy because, in essence, they wouldn't be considered very good if they were Wikipedia articles. I can't help thinking, when I see that, of how extraordinarily low-quality any Featured Article on Wikipedia would be if measured by the criteria that matter on Wikinews. We generally don't waste our time objecting to such arguments, of course; I actually tried to engage one of those folks in rational conversation, once upon a time, and was rather disgusted when it became clear they weren't looking to think about the issues but rather to find excuses to turn any fact offered to them into a weapon against Wikinews. (What was really appalling was that they didn't seem to be aware they were doing that; but, water over the dam.)
• I am, of course, not a lawyer either. I reckon this is legal territory that hasn't been fully articulated — the law is a living thing, which we constantly struggle to grow in a healthy direction as it spreads into the new and hotly contested realms opened up by our new technologies. It's my understanding that in fact a letter would be under copyright of its author, actually, though I wouldn't expect that to be the area of law usually pursued in such cases; that under international law, everything is copyrighted unless one explicitly says otherwise (which also means that almost everything on the internet is under copyright). As for the difference between "publishing" on a blog (which I tend to see as usually more of a toy sort of "publishing" — but, keep in mind, Thomas Paine was essentially a blogger, just a blogger in an age with less ubiquitous technology for blogging) versus publishing on a news site. In my comments I had my eye on legal practicalities. It's a relatively unremarkable practice on blogs, for instance, to use rather large block quotes from news sources; then there's a somewhat stricter standard that applies to Wikipedia, and an even more stringent one we aspire to on Wikinews. Then there's the matter of legal action: commercial news sites have a vital economic motive to shut down blog sites that undermine their exclusive rights to their content; they make their livings off that content, after all. And then there are other legal responsibilities, including but not limited to libel (unless I've misjudged the legal sense of "libel"); there was a case... maybe, if I'm remembering right (I know who I'd need to ask to get the specifics right)... within the past few years where a news site in the UK had some image up for quite a short time when they first published an article and they were ultimately held by the courts to be legally culpable for that image even though they took it down quickly (not sure but may have involved polluting the potential jury pool for a murder case by planting some idea in people's minds). Presumably the standards would have been different if the party who put that image up had not been recognized by the courts as a news site rather than a blog, though of course a blog with a sufficiently massive following might start to take on some of that added level of legal responsibility. Still, that sort of thing should make clear why it's a very big deal to us on English Wikinews that we distinguish clearly between stuff some user saved onto a page on our project, and something we have certified as having passed our review process.

--Pi zero (talk) 17:26, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

• Then we can go with this wording unless and until someone suggests something else. I can ask a few people on my team, if you'd like to have more eyes on it.
• I don't know whether it makes more sense to treat all Wikinewses the same, or to try to pick apart the linguistic issues. Let me think on it for a bit (or ask around to find someone who knows more about these things than I do).
• It'd be interesting to do something like Tell us about your Wikipedia for other projects.
• I send messages to multiple projects all the time, so I can do that. It looks like 27 Wikinewses have a Water cooler page (per d:Q16503#sitelinks-wikinews). We'll have to figure out which ones (six?) don't.
• I haven't talked to Legal about this, but I believe that copyright law distinguishes between published and unpublished works. Otherwise, if you write a book and schedule it for publication 100 years after your death wouldn't have any copyright protection, and I understand that it does. So a letter is under copyright of its author, but it's not published for copyright purposes until it is actually disseminated to the public. (And there's even a provision, at least in some places, for retroactively declaring that something wasn't published, e.g., if it was distributed without the consent of the copyright holder).

Update: I pinged you to the en.wn message. I figured that you didn't really need 25 more pings, so I left your name out of the others. I've posted an update to every Wikinews that's linked in Wikidata's "Water cooler" list (and not closed. The actual list of wikis is at m:User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF)/Wikinews). We've already got a few translations, so the next step is probably waiting a day or two to see whether anyone has questions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

More translations

From eml.wikipedia: Please, Mr. Whatamidoing, let us know the right link to translate in Emilian-romagnolo language these two words "Publish page" and "Publish changes" in TranslateWiki, because it would be better, for our eml.wikipedia, to have all our keys in our specific language. Thank you in advance, --Glo (talk) 20:09, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

From min.wikipedia: Thanks for your notification. I added at translatewiki, "Publish page" would be "Tabikan laman" for the Minangkabau language. Regards, XoXo (talk) 05:52, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your messages. The links for translation are here: [7] and [8]. You must have an account at Translatewiki.net to add translations, and it looks like both of you do.

XoXo, I see that you have added the min. translation for the first one, but not the second. Can you add a translation for "Publish changes" as well?

Yep, it's done! Thanks, XoXo (talk) 09:55, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Glo, I think that these links will take you directly to eml translations: "Publish page" and "Publish changes". It should show the label in Italian, and if you click the "Edit" button, it should be set to get the eml translation. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:09, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Really good. Now it's done! Thank you, Whatamidoing, --Glo (talk) 09:54, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you both! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 10:02, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Save/Publish page

Hi Whatamidoing,

Could you please, fix Yoruba language wikipedia here. Thanks. Wikicology (talk) 20:58, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikicology, if you can tell me the best translation for "Publish page" and "Publish changes", then I can add it to the system. I don't speak Yoruba, and I would not trust machine translation. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 08:29, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Ṣàtẹ̀jáde ojú ewé (publish page) and Ṣàtẹ̀jáde àtúnṣe (publish change). I'm a translator at Transwiki. Keep me posted anytime you want to translate contents into Yoruba language. Wikicology (talk) 08:40, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

If you've already got an account at TWN, then I would prefer that you added the translations. That way, if anyone wants to ask a question, they'll be able to reach you directly. I can do it if you prefer (and I offered because it's often not worth the effort to create an account for a one-time translation), but since you already have an account, it's ideal for you to do it directly. "Publish page" and "Publish changes"

Also, are you on the translators-l mailing list? That seems to be the main way to reach translators these day. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:30, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Done. Yes, I am on the mailing list. Wikicology (talk) 10:00, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

additional powers

greeting, Since more than two months, i became the sole editor of the ar.wikiquote, I'm having a problem with vandals, who are pushing hard to empty pages, as well as the deployment of pages of no literary or scientific value, i asked Mr. Abdullah & called him for additional powers, to prevent vandals or delete pages, but did not respond to my request yet, regards --Uaemediaexpert (talk) 05:14, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your note, Uaemediaexpert. I understand that it is very frustrating. I recommend that you do two things:

• Leave a note explaning the problem and asking for help at the page for the volunteer Global sysops. They will be able to help you by giving you some advice, by blocking active vandals, and probably by telling you more about how to become a sysop (which is something that the volunteer Stewards handle).
• Leave a note at the Arabic Wikipedia (at their "Village Pump" or a similar popular page for announcements) that asks for editors to help you.

Good luck, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 08:34, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

• Hi, it was helpful .. thanks --Uaemediaexpert (talk) 09:13, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Discussion regarding Save/Publish

There has been some discussion regarding Save/Publish at Swedish Wiktionary. Could you have a look at it, please? "85" 21:55, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi, am from Tamil wikipedia. the Save/publish have not been translated to Tamil. How do I do it on Taranslate wiki ? --Rsmn (talk) 22:08, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Also on ang: (Old English Wikipedia) - better translations suggested.

I tried to get onto Translatewiki but while it lets a user log on, it does not seems to let me go any further! It is not an intuitive website. (It did let me try providing translatins, but I think they went onto the wrong language, so I will be barred there! Still, since I seem to be blocked even from the support page, I will assume I am not welcome.) Hogweard (talk) 23:05, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Rsmn and Hogweard: It's sometimes difficult to get started at Translatewiki.net. I'll check both of these later. If you don't have an account, then you can give me the correct ones, and I'll add them. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 12:42, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Regarding listing buttons in the toolbar of smaller Wikivoyages

Hello Whatmaidoing. Regarding the listing buttons in the toolbar of Spanish Wikivoyage, as you said in Wikivoyage Lounge, are showing the wrong icons and I don't know how fix this. Could you please tell us if you found a solution for this? Regards. --Zerabat (discusión) 01:38, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

I have not found a solution. We might have to ask at w:en:WP:VPT or a similar forum for help. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey

Hi,

You’re getting this message because you participated in the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey and we want to make sure you don't miss it this year – or at least can make the conscious choice to ignore if it you want to. The 2015 survey decided what the Community Tech team should work on during 2016. It was also the focus of Wikimedia hackathons and work by other developers. You can see the status of wishes from the 2015 wishlist at 2015 Community Wishlist Survey/Results.

The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey is now open for wishes. You can create proposals until November 20. You will be able to vote on which wishes you think are best or most important between November 28 and December 12. /Johan (WMF) (talk) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:17, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Global CentralNotice of Tech/Server switch 2017message

Hello,Will this message appear on the CentralNotice?——星耀晨曦 (talk) 16:09, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Hello, 星耀晨曦.

Yes, there will be a CentralNotice for two hours before each read-only period, from 12:00 to 14:00 UTC. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2017

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can review your changes visually?

When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "Review your changes".

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

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

The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history. You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

• A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.
• A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [9]
• The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [10]
• You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [11]
• The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [12]
• The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the "hamburger" icon) for quicker access. [13] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [14]
• You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [15]
• Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [16]
• The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [17]
• A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [18]
• There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations: Control+Shift+K on a PC, or Command+Shift+K on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which is Control+K or Command+K respectively. [19]

Future changes

• The team is working on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of <ref> tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [20]
• The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding &ooui=1 to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [21]
• The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [22]
• If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF)

17:59, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikidirectory and other proposals for new projects

Hello. You may want to vote on Wikidirectory, [[Wikijournall], and other proposals for new projects. Join in those discussions. --George Ho (talk) 08:29, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Update regarding Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons tutorial videos

• 
• 
• 
• 

Hello,

I regret to inform you that the series of motivational and educational videos project, which had been planned introduce Wikipedia and some of its sister projects to new contributors, is being discontinued.

There are multiple factors that have led to this decision. The initial budget and time estimates were far too small for a project of this scale and complexity. Also, my simultaneous involvement in Cascadia Wikimedians User Group was problematic due to the shortage of human resources for the user group, which resulted in my spending far more time trying to help the user group than I had planned, so my time and attention were diverted from this video project to assisting the user group.

You can find more information in the final report for the grant.

I regret that this project did not fulfill the hopes that many of us had for it, and I hope that in the future someone with the necessary resources will choose to resume work on it or a similar project. If you are interested in working on this or a similar project then please contact the WMF grants team.

On a personal note, I am retiring from the Wikimedia community. Perhaps I will return someday.

Regards,

--Pine'^✉ 23:20, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Series director and screenwriter

Basque Education Program, slides marked for translation

Hi Whatamidoing (WMF), hope you are doing well! We keep going with the translations related to training modules/slides. You marked for translation some subsections, we would need now the rest of Editing too, could you mark it? Best regards --Iñaki LL (talk) 12:12, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2018

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Did you know?

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

Sometimes, it is hard to see important changes in a wikitext diff. This screenshot of a wikitext diff (click to enlarge) shows that the paragraphs have been rearranged, but it does not highlight the removal of a word or the addition of a new sentence.

If you enable the Beta Feature for "⧼visualeditor-preference-visualdiffpage-label⧽", you will have a new option. It will give you a new box at the top of every diff page. This box will let you choose either diff system on any edit.

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

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

This screenshot shows the same edit as the wikitext diff. The visual diff highlights the removal of one word and the addition of a new sentence.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode, which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and improving the visual diff tool. Their work board is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

• The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments. They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing. The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January. Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor. Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits. More information will be posted at mw:Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.
• The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs". The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges. [23]
• Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor. [24]
• The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be a bit tricky to set up. Your wiki can have this service. Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.

Let's work together

• The team will talk about editing tools at an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting.
• Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry.
• The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [25]
• If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF)

20:53, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Citoid statistics

Hi, can u give information that how many people are using citoid on mrwp? Can we have a statistics of it? --Tiven2240 (talk) 07:32, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any such statistics system, but perhaps it exists (or could be easily found). I'll ask around. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:00, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Ok notify me with a ping or talk when you find about it :) --Tiven2240 (talk) 06:19, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello, Tiven2240,

It looks like they don't keep records per wiki. The overall numbers are available on this dashboard. It's about 7,000 requests per day across all wikis, 99% of them starting with the editor pasting in a URL.

You might be able to estimate the use at mrwiki with a log-only edit filter (logging every edit that used the visual editor and added <ref>{{ or <ref name=":, for a couple of weeks, and then counting them up), but there's no easy way to get this information. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the information :) --23:11, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

The Community Wishlist Survey

Hi,

You get this message because you’ve previously participated in the Community Wishlist Survey. I just wanted to let you know that this year’s survey is now open for proposals. You can suggest technical changes until 11 November: Community Wishlist Survey 2019.

You can vote from November 16 to November 30. To keep the number of messages at a reasonable level, I won’t send out a separate reminder to you about that. /Johan (WMF) 11:23, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2018

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Did you know?

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

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.

You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.

Recent changes

• The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
• The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
• The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
• The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
• The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
• The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [26]

Let's work together

• The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
• The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
• If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!

—Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

14:15, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News

You added an item to Tech News, but I failed to properly mark it for translation. Since most of the time had already passed when I realised this and it was a piece of future news, I'm moving it to Tech/News/2019/30 to ensure people have translate the item, so it'll go out in a week rather than tomorrow. My apologies – entirely my fault. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

RE: Please translate the Editing newsletter

Done! :) Saludos, Rocío Mantis (talk) 19:05, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #1—July 2019

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Did you know?

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

Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon to start editing.

Edit Cards

This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.

Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.

Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.

Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:

Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?

If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.

Follow these instructions and share your experience:

📲 Try Edit Cards.

Recent releases

The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:

1. Section editing
   • The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
   • The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
2. Loading overlay
   • The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.

Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.

New and active projects

This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.

• Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how: 📲 Try Edit Cards.
• Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
• Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
• Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.

Looking ahead

• Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to the team about how editing can be improved.
• Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.

Learning more

The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

18:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

a moment to put your personal appreciation for my proposition.

Hi, I have finally requested for translator admin rights at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Requests/User_rights/Wladek92 . I would be glad if you could find a moment to put your personal appreciation for my proposition. Thank you. Christian.

Congratulations, User:Wladek92. It looks like the decision was taken very soon after you told me about it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Re: Invitations to translate

Hey! I've translated page you linked to Polish. I'm glad to help anytime :P

Best regards, Rail01 (talk) 19:41, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you SO MUCH, Rail01. I really do appreciate it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Translation request

I've noticed you are requesting many people to translate to their own/favorite language. Maybe you can give them some WikiLove as a starter incentive or even Barnstar if they have translated a lot of pages. Regards. Veracious (talk) 09:51, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Veracious, that's a good idea. Thanks for the note, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages

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Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.

Help

What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!

Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team wants your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.

Talk pages project

The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.

The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.

Mobile visual editor

The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

Edit Cards

What happens when you click on a link. The new Edit Card is bigger and has more options for editing links.

• On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
• There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
• Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.

Toolbar

The editing toolbar is changing in the mobile visual editor. The old system had two different toolbars. Now, all the buttons are together. Tell the team what you think about the new toolbar.

• In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
  • One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
  • New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
  • Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
• Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.

Wikimania

The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.

Looking ahead

• Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
• Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
• Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The Editing team hopes to share results in November. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

11:11, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Mobile version of main page on nds-nl.wikipedia

Hi there! You posted something about the mobile visual editor on the Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia. We are trying to get the main page up to date so that it's displayed correctly on the mobile version. I know that it's something totally different from what you posted, but I was just wondering if you could tell me where I could possibly get some assistance with that. There isn't a large community on the nds-nl.wiki, and among our active users we do not have a CSS programmer. MediaWiki has an article about how to go about updating the main page, but unfortunately it doesn't help much. Any advice/assistance would be highly appreciated. Servien (talk) 14:13, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello there Servien. I hear that these days Farhad (ping! Hi!) is available to help small communities wanting a dynamic homepage, so maybe he can look into yours as well? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the information! Servien (talk) 18:59, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools

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This early version of the Reply tool automatically signs and indents comments.

The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.

In a future update, the team plans to test a tool for easily linking to another user's name, a rich-text editing option, and other tools.

The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.

• On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
• The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
  • an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
  • a rich-text visual editing option, and
  • other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.

To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

19:05, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Reply tool and Swedish Wikipedia

You might want to be aware of w:sv:Wikipedia:Bybrunnen#Nya diskussionsverktyg, a discussion about asking to have the reply tool turned on. /Julle (talk) 07:31, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

There's no need to get involved unless you want to tell them that, no, we're absolutely going to refuse you no matter what you decide – just a FYI that it's happening. /Julle (talk) 07:32, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, Julle. The team has made no decisions about which wikis will be in the next group, or even which month the next group will likely happen in. I would be very happy to hear the result when the Swedish Wikipedia comes to a decision (either way). If they want to be in the next group, I'd be happy to propose it to the team for consideration. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I'll let you know what the outcome of the discussion is, of course. /Julle (talk) 18:00, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #2

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The new features include a toolbar. What do you think should be in the toolbar?

This issue of the Editing newsletter includes information the Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily.

• Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature is called "Discussion tools". The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing @. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster now. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
• New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
• New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
• Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

20:29, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

How are WMF/Community Consultations supposed to be run?

Hello,

I was hoping if you could answer a few questions on consultations and have part of an early discussion on the area. I had to pick someone's talk page, so I hope @Qgil-WMF: & @DannyH (WMF): won't mind taking a look here.

You were heavily involved in the Talk Page Rewrite consultation - in my view, probably the smoothest major consultation that's ever occurred between the WMF and the Community.

I'm sure you are eminently aware that they frequently do not go as smoothly as that - the current rebranding project being an example. I started a discussion there, but the Community anger on the general issue derailed the attempt to talk about the more general consultation issue.

I made an initial suggestion that two main problems came up:

1. Our general WMF/meta-Community consultations are often poor
2. Those doing the consultations often have been set unmovable goals and get stuck between an unhappy Community and a job requirement.

On point 1, I felt the Talk Page consultation, while not perfect, I think set a very good standard of cross-language, genuine engagement. Obviously we've yet to see the ultimate results, but it both gained backing and found helpful ideas. The structure of it - lots of translating, a category basis and genuine changes between each round of consultation, those were all well done. So that suggests a few early questions:

1. Why aren't all consultations on major changes run like that?
2. Is there a standard "template" for how WMF teams run consultations? Do individual teams have their own, or are they reinvented afresh each time?
3. Has there been any thought of specifically seconding team members to aid with advice/planning on setting up that initial consultation?

I felt that point 2 may be harder. Staff can engage actively and helpfully, but when the Community is near-unified on a point the employee can't decide on, they tend to get toasted, which doesn't help anyone. The IP Masking project comes to mind as an example. I'd suggested whichever level that was providing sign-off to the project be required to also provide periodic direct engagement with any community discussion, perhaps at dedicated stages where sticking points in the consultation stage up to that point could be considered.

Happy for this discussion to be moved somewhere else and anyone else with a stated interest to be pinged there, it just seems that adding it to an active dispute area would not bring helpful answers, questions, or suggestions. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:18, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello, @Nosebagbear, and thanks for the note. This page is a good place to talk about this, as far as I'm concerned.

I think that both of your suggested main problems are factors in some cases. On your first point, I think that some sort of movement charter would be helpful. Are you familiar with any of the business-style responsibility assignment matrixes? It's not unusual for different volunteers to have different ideas about what the volunteers' "correct" level of responsibility is, for any decision. If the question is "Where shall Wikimania be held?", there are volunteers who think they should be consulted, volunteers who are content to be merely informed, and volunteers who think that the final decision should be made solely by volunteers. Having a clearer understanding of respective roles would help: movement individuals could tell movement organizations "It says here that this is not your job, so we'll handle this", and vice versa.

For the second problem, clarity is probably the primary tool. If some options are off the table (e.g., budget constraints), then we should just say so. Clarity sometimes works, and sometimes it doesn't. As an example of it not working, I remember that the TPC2019 specified that "The status quo – Leaving talk pages exactly as they are" was originally listed as a non-goal. But there were half a dozen people insisting that it must be okay to do nothing. Because of problem #1, we lack a shared understanding about who gets to assign Product team to which tasks; because of problem #2, even when Product says "We're offering you a whole dev team for at least a year, and we promise not to cancel the project", there are volunteers demanding, effectively, that Product retain its right to cancel the project and reassign that team to something else. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:11, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

About your early questions, we could have a book-length conversation, but let me start with some shorter replies:

1. Why aren't all consultations on major changes run like that?
   • First, to talk about this in any detail, we'd have to define what "a consultation" is. My team has been encouraging staff to use that term only when volunteer feedback has a realistic chance of making a significant change. TPC2019 was a true consultation, but the server switch work was a set of announcements.
   • Even within a moderately strict definition of consultation, all consultations shouldn't be run like that. I loved the TPC2019, and I recognize that it was enormously costly in terms of both donor money (because staff time is not free) and (more importantly) volunteer time. TPC2019 was a huge consultation. The subject IMO deserved thousands of volunteer hours. Not every decision does.
   • Survey fatigue is real. The fact is that we can't get thousands of volunteer hours, or even hundreds of them, for every decision. Even if we could, that's time taken away from building the projects. So my team encourages staff to prioritize: Is this one of the biggest decisions for this year, for the whole movement? Does this actually affect everyone, or does this only affect a smaller group?
2. Is there a standard "template" for how WMF teams run consultations? Do individual teams have their own, or are they reinvented afresh each time?
   • Yes to all, even though that sounds contradictory. TPC2019 copied much of its distributed structure from the 2030 Movement Strategy process. The mw:Wikimedia Product Guidance sets up a very loose structure (e.g., creating a project page). The Legal department has two general approaches (for major vs minor changes), and their "major" consultation structure has been used as a template for other major discussions in the past. Individual teams, e.g., for grants, have processes that are specific to their own needs. If your previous approach didn't get you the information you needed, then we encourage you to try something new (e.g., add a mailing list message, post a link on social media, etc.). Some individual teams rarely have any need to get information directly from online communities, so anything they do feels like they're creating it from scratch.
   • The two most important parts of the consultation IMO are identifying what you need to learn and identifying your audience. For example, if you need to know more about new contributors to Wikisource in South Asia (which is a significant growth area), then you shouldn't be asking experienced editors at the English Wikipedia for their guesses about what people at a different project, in a different language, using significantly different (on average) devices, will need.
3. Has there been any thought of specifically seconding team members to aid with advice/planning on setting up that initial consultation?
   • Yes. My team does some of this, but more is needed, and setting up a small team that does nothing else is being discussed internally.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:40, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict - just covering your non-specific question answers) So I'm definitely familiar with RACI matrixes and their ilk. I dread to think quite how unpleasant the process of coming to any split would be - I'm an active editor but would be horrified at the idea that, for example, the WMF could consult with Wikimedia UK on anything outside Wikimedia events in the UK and think that that reduced the comparative criticality of consulting with me and the rest of the online community. There's an ongoing issue with the WMF consulting at Wikimania and placing importance on it, which given the massive non-representativeness of it as a group (not merely between projects or language variants, but within it, it's usually a less "WMF-sceptic" group than if you just polled 1000 random editors) is a non-supported approach. Nosebagbear (talk)

I would like to "just poll 1000 random editors", but nobody has built me phab:T89970 yet (just in case you somehow forgot the bug number, Danny. ;-) ). But let me say that if your goal is to prevent rebranding, then you probably don't want random editors with a question about the branding project. You probably want to poll a random selection of editors who are highly active, highly experienced, and identify with the largest Wikipedias. Newcomers are more likely to share the opinion of small donors than of editors who were around when the name Wikimedia was invented. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

What'd I'd like to do is find (I mean, best would just be "already be offered") an option that aids the "improve brand capital" goal of the rebranding team while not causing a morass of legitimate issues with a variety of editors. On variety of lingual variants, I was surprised by the breadth of projects outside the big 5/10 we have concerned editors from. My personal concerns are also significantly, though certainly not entirely, driven by my OTRS experience, not my en-wiki preferences. No doubt you're right that newer editors would be more likely to share a "scrap wikimedia name", but I wouldn't say it's "I was there" approach - I mean, I've only actively edited for less than 2 years. It's what the changes are to that are the issue for me. Nosebagbear (talk) 21:21, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I can see the Branding team's point: the current system is confusing to potential donors and partners, and the cost of fixing that (without changing the names of the movement organizations) is approximately a zillion dollars in advertisements about the foundation. I gather that only something that includes Wikipedia will address that problem (without spending a zillion dollars on ads).

I can see the core community's view: most of them self-identify with Wikipedia and feel like they have moral rights in it. (A minority are concerned with sister project erasure, which is a point that my team has made to the Branding folks on multiple occasions.) In some cases, it seems they believe that nobody except the people who self-identify as part of the online communities have any significant moral rights to Wikipedia's name.

My view is that I loathe naming things (I once proposed cancelling a project so we wouldn't have to have any more meetings about what to call it, in a "ha ha, only serious" way), so I'm glad that I don't have to be involved in the branding project. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:40, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Assuming that the status quo isn't going to trip legal requirements or something equally drastic like enable hacking attempts, I'd generally argue that if it's so clearcut that the status quo isn't acceptable then the WMF shouldn't need to rule them out as any reasonable engagement should convince a clear consensus of editors of that. It could have not been listed as a non-goal for the talk page consultation and it wouldn't have convinced a majority to go "nope, TP is perfect as-is". It's less clearcut on the rebranding, but at least earlier in the process, I reckon a majority were open to a rebranding effort, but with major concerns about potential options. If a phase 1 had gone: here's why we need to change; here are some things any change would have to meet; please give a bunch of ideas below and the reasons why you think they'd work, and people could back the ones they liked. Phase 2 could have had the WMF come back with ten that they'd run through and reckoned they could cope with (legally, practically, fiscally etc) and they could narrow it down there - run a full public consultation on the top three options and the Board can make it's decision on that, knowing the Community would at least accept the options in play. One of the best analogies I've heard of WMF changes are that they're like single-track railways - the only way the Community can act is to derail the whole thing, with all the secondary negatives that brings. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:47, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

> the WMF come back with ten that they'd run through and reckoned they could cope with (legally, practically, fiscally etc) and they could narrow it down there

But, @Nosebagbear, isn't that what they did?

It seems to me that you have an unstated assumption in here, which is that the universe must somehow be organized in such a way that the set of legally/practically/fiscally responsible options will include a realistic branding approach that does not use the name Wikipedia. What if that's not the case, and the only legally/practically/fiscally responsible options do include the name Wikipedia (in some fashion)? What then? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:06, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Onto the specific answers, for which thank you. How interesting that TPC2019 copied much of its structure from a process where there were (and remain) much bigger issues on how it was run! Like I mentioned in my above, cases which are less major don't need the whole process (the current Growth team work, with Marshall Miller, is an excellent example of a light-weight consultation running well), and critical changes on things like servers not being consultation-appropriate also make sense. However, I'd say there's issues with teams either deciding something isn't major or deciding that it's too critical to "tolerate" (which is how it's interpreted from our side) community feedback. The latter is a particular concern, especially outside the initial areas the WMF was formed to handle. Nosebagbear (talk)

Survey fatigue, plus lost time spent consulting are both absolutely genuine and genuine concerns. However, I have to dispute where the line is currently being drawn, after all, I've probably spent about 2 hours of my time on the TPC, but vastly more trying to avoid the rebranding issues, almost all of it after the WMF made a late statement clarifying that a change WAS going to happen, regardless of the RfC et al. A single wrong call outweighs several "false positives", plus editor unhappiness, Community/WMF hostility, uncivil contact with staff accounts, and the loss of trust - the latter is particularly sparse atm, and it's important to preserve that for unforseeable conflict issues. Nosebagbear (talk)

I don't think the problem with Strategy was the structure or how it was run, exactly. I think the problem was that editors can't figure out how it affects them. The primary beneficiary of strategy is affiliates seeking external grants. Once you work through the jargon and buzzwords, strategy is largely irrelevant to my day-to-day editing. We (the online editing communities) don't understand what the strategy is trying to accomplish, but the problem isn't that the discussion was distributed across multiple wikis, or having the discussions in people's preferred languages, or in combining in-person and on-wiki discussion, or with having a group of volunteers organize discussions and report back on the results. That's the structure. What bothers us about Strategy is the results, like someone getting excited about "new forms of knowledge" without bothering to define the term. "New forms" like better support for sign language? Sign me up. "New forms" like a genealogy database? It's not my cup of tea, but some editors may be happy about it. "New forms" like treating a recording of Grandpa talking about the war as being on par with a scholarly source? Absolutely not going to happen.

With the Talk pages consultation, we used the a scaled-down version of the Strategy structure (only we defined our terms ;-) ). Using talk pages, unlike Strategy, is for us and about us. We have firm convictions and a fairly coherent set of goals. There are some differences (e.g., zhwiki cares more about privacy than enwiki; some editors want something more like an internet forum than can be achieved on an unstructured text page), but overall there are things that everyone agrees on (e.g., everyone would like it to be faster for us to leave a short note on a talk page, and everyone would like it if the system was simple enough that new editors could figure out how to reply). I am absolutely loving the Reply tool (which, if you haven't seen it, you can enable at every wiki by copying the first bit from my global.js file. Just remember that you'll have to take it back out some day, when it's available in Special:Preferences). We are happy with the results: it's not Flow, and maybe some day, eventually, possibly years from now, it will be possible to watchlist a section of WP:ANI instead of the whole page.

I don't have a solution for the major/minor thing. My team has several times intervened when WMF teams were getting that wrong (in both directions). I don't think I've heard any staff say that a subject couldn't tolerate. I have (rarely) heard that a particular discussion won't be started because it would be pointless (e.g., if Legal insists upon a particular change), and of course there are things that should never be discussed in public, but I've never heard a team say that their project couldn't tolerate discussion. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:11, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

• A bit of a two-way pointer here, WhatamIdoing, I and a few others had a really productive chat during one of the clinics on this topic with Asaf (clinic summary available here). @Asaf (WMF): for when you have a few minutes spare to glance through the above I'd be interested if you had any thoughts. I also thought I'd make a quick note that one of the unhappier editors on the rebranding project was particularly pleased by the discussion and your comments in the clinic summary. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:28, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm glad to hear that you found the clinic productive. I think they're a great idea. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:52, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Hi, Nosebagbear. Apologies for the late response. I am also glad you found the clinic useful! To your invitation: I have read the above discussion, and do have some thoughts, but I think it is most productive for me to express them internally, within WMF (which I have, both before and after the recent friction), than to publicly opine about another Foundation team's work. I hope you understand. Asaf (WMF) (talk) 15:52, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Mass messages

The statement “We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.” is most likely a misunderstanding of causality. Users are active on talk pages because their activity triggers community interactions, and if they survive they will have more activity in mainspace. Users that don't interact are more likely to get their contributions deleted without further ado, and in statistics they will be more likely to disappear. In short the statement is a faulty representation of causality. 46.46.194.199 17:20, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

This is a statement of correlation, not causality. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #3

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More than 50 million edits have been made using the visual editor on desktop.

Seven years ago this month, the Editing team offered the visual editor to most Wikipedia editors. Since then, editors have achieved many milestones:

• More than 50 million edits have been made using the visual editor on desktop.
• More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
• The visual editor is increasingly popular. The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has increased every year since its introduction.
• In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers (logged-in editors with ≤99 edits) used the visual editor. This percentage has increased every year.
• Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
• On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor. 🚀 👩‍🚀
• Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

12:48, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Cannot make it

Hi. Whilst I was originally working from home tomorrow morning (my time), I am now needing to go in as one of my staff is ill. Sorry that I cannot make the editing party. :-(

I hope that your staff member feels better soon. Perhaps we'll get to see you another time. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:52, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I think that you start in 10 or so minutes. I will try and stick my head in for a while, and generally hover. Quiet at the minute and being in a video chat will surprise no one, only about a third of staff on site.  — billinghurst sDrewth 22:23, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Noise!

• https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/offtrack/

 — billinghurst sDrewth 00:16, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Billinghurst, thank you so much for the link and for being there. Having you there just made my day. (I'm listening to "Forest songs" right now.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

No problems at all, very welcome. I hope that the accent wasn't overly difficult, and that I didn't wander all over the place with discussion. I tried to hold my tongue. Lesson learnt being don't use bluetooth headphones with Windows 10 tablets at the last minute, too many places to unmute and too many permissions needed to get the mike working.  — billinghurst sDrewth 02:19, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

You were wonderful. People learned about a wider variety of things because you were there. Don't be surprised if I decide to do another, and to drag you into future ones, too. :-)

(Ugh, technology. On the one hand, I'm glad that it lets us communicate in real-time, from 12,000 km away. On the other hand, how hard can it be do DWIM in a conference call?!) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Maybe a wrong tagged translation page?

Hi, I've started to translate the next Visual Editor newsletter into Spanish, but it doesn't appear in the language bar. Is any issue in the English page?. This is the message when I clicked in some string to translate

Title does not correspond to a translatable message

Regards. Superzerocool (talk) 02:25, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

I have a similar issue with Arabic. The page is fully translated into Arabic, however it doesn't show in the list of languages. How to fix this? --Ahmed M Farrag (talk) 18:11, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Ahmed M Farrag, I don't see a page at VisualEditor/Newsletter/2020/August/ar. Superzerocool, VisualEditor/Newsletter/2020/August/es exists, and I see you've been editing it. Did you figure out a solution? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

After a few hours, the user Born2bgratis has translated all messages into Spanish, I proofread all strings. I don't know if Born2bgratis did something or it was only a bug in translate extension. Thanks! Superzerocool (talk) 19:25, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

yet, the strings are all translated to Arabic, check here. --Ahmed M Farrag (talk) 20:02, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

@Superzerocool and Ahmed M Farrag: re-marked for translation, it should now be fixed. See phab:T239921 and phab:T221119. Sgd. —Hasley 20:37, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Hasley. I really appreciate it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:38, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4

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Reply tool

The number of comments posted with the Reply Tool from March through June 2020. People used the Reply Tool to post over 7,400 comments with the tool.

The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.

• More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
• Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
• Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[27]

The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).

The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.

New requirements for user signatures

• The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
• Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.

Next: New discussion tool

Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

15:11, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Talk somewhen

Dear Whatamidoing, could we talk briefly in the following days? I would prefer an online call, which I think quicker and more effective than writing :) Thank you for your reply in advance, Samat (talk) 22:24, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Sure, @Samat. I'm not sure what your daily schedule looks like, but I'm going to assume that an evening call is better for you. 11:00 a.m. California time is 8:00 p.m. CEST. Would that work for you on Monday or Wednesday? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. It works for me both on Monday and Wednesday, but Wednesday is better, because working on Monday and Tuesday starts before 5 in the morning. (Local time is CET, summer is unfortunately over :)). Samat (talk) 07:51, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Wednesday the 25th works for me. I'll send you an e-mail message with details. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

need correction

Hi, do you have edit access to this? If yes, 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). If not, do you know who can help? --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 20:25, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

CKoerner (WMF) knows more about Diff than I do, so maybe he can help. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:04, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #1

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Reply tool

Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.

The Reply tool is available at most Wikipedias.

• The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
• It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.

Research notes:

• As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
• We have preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[28]
• The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[29] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
• A large A/B test will start soon.[30] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. You can still turn it on or off for your own account in Special:Preferences.

New discussion tool

Screenshot of version 1.0 of the New Discussion Tool prototype.

The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[31] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.

Next: Notifications

During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at notifications-talk.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

18:38, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Privacy policy/bn

Hi, i notice you added bengali translation here. Is it final version of translation? I want to correct some word there, otherwise i will wait. আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 15:33, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@আফতাবুজ্জামান, please feel free to correct it. If the translation is very bad (sometimes we get a "professional" translation that is just poorly edited machine translation), please let me know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Overall translations are good. It just some word they used that we don't like to use, probably they don't contribute on Bengali wiki projects so they don't know & thats ok. আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 16:09, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #2

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

When newcomers had the Reply tool and tried to post on a talk page, they were more successful at posting a comment. (Source)

Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.

The key results were:

• Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
• The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.

These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.

Looking ahead

The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.

The next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.

You can turn on "Discussion tools" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

14:12, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Privacy policy/ja

Hi, motivated by another comment here [32], I would like to give feedback on Privacy policy/ja. I regret to say, to my eyes, whoever translated the recent update to the Japanese page did a sloppy job.

• One segment is particularly problematic because it says "投稿内容は公式にデバイスのIPアドレスへ紐づけられます" ("the contribution will officially be associated with the IP address of your device") - which doesn't match the source text at all, at least within that segment, while failing to mention the password recovery process there.
• Also, I see many segments that had not been updated in English were revised in Japanese. That would be fine if it helps to make it more readable and natural, but it is questionable that they actually delivered that. When an inferior version replaces a stable version contributed by volunteers and used for years, it does not look good. I don't know why we want a hedge ("必要無いと思われます" - "it seems to us that [personal information] is not required", sounding as if the Wikimedia Foundation delegates the management of personal information to someone else) in the second sentence of T:31, for instance.
• Another segment, which again I don't think needed to be updated, ends with ':' and blank - it looks like 'privacy@wikimedia.org' was supposed to be added, but was left blank.

I won't discuss further specifics, but I have a hard time finding a single revision that I can vouch for among the seemingly unnecessary updates done only in Japanese, not in English. (And the segments that did need to be updated contain errors, too, such as the first example I gave above.) I understand it's unrealistic to expect outsourced translators to have specific domain knowledge about the Wikimedia movement, but the errors shown above seem to suggest a more general lack of attention, unless perhaps the errors were introduced in pre/post-translation processes (e.g. if they were given an old and incomplete draft). These might look minor errors and the gist of the document might remain understandable, perhaps, but errors are errors. whym (talk) 08:41, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Whym, I appreciate this message so much. If there is a sentence that doesn't match at all, then that is probably my fault. I apologize for that. I got the Japanese translation in a Google doc, and I tried to match it up with the policy on wiki, but if I accidentally copied the wrong line, or if I pasted the same one twice, I'd never know. I remember worrying that I'd "lost" one sentence in the middle of the Japanese translation, and having to sort through a large section to find my place again. If it would be helpful to you to see the original, please let me know which section you'd like me to pull up for you.

I believe that the translator was working strictly from the (updated) English copy, which I think is inefficient and would result in more changes than necessary. One of my recommendations for next time is that they make sure the translators know that there are prior versions, and that these can and should be used.

My impression from your description is that some of the translations were suboptimal, but that they were not generally wrong – not, for example, a machine translation, or something written by a beginner student of Japanese. Did I understand that correctly?

Finally, the WMF's goal in providing professional translations for long documents is to save volunteers some time. As you say, there will be movement-specific details that may require some tweaks, but we do hope that it will be a net benefit overall. It sounds like this didn't work for the Japanese translations. I am sorry about that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I forgot to say: Yes, please correct the translations, even when that means completely removing the professional translator's version. I would really appreciate it. It is important to have good translations. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. To be fair, it would have been good as a starting point. If there was no previous Japanese translation for the document, and this one was the first version, I would probably quietly worked on it to revise where I disagreed (although the obvious errors like the ones I mentioned above seem a bit too many). I agree that outsourced translators should be encouraged to reuse older translated text where possible. I would make that abundantly clear - mere links to version history could easily be overlooked. I noticed that aside from errors, the translation seems rather liberally or creatively done. It makes me wonder the translator was specifically told to do so. Under the section titled "If the Organization is Transferred (Really Unlikely!)", the Japanese translation explains the unlikeliness with the analogy of "the probability of something equivalent of the world ending tomorrow" ("明日地球が滅亡するのと同じぐらいの確率"). It's not unheard of an analogy in Japanese, but not a fixed expression either. It seems unusual for a translator to do this if not specifically told to be creative. Also, this analogy is clearly something that current machine translation technology cannot produce (when it's not in the source text). whym (talk) 10:37, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@Whym, I haven't seen the instructions to the translation firm myself, but I believe it encourages a good translation rather than a strictly literal one. On the other hand, it's a legal document, which most people are afraid of making mistakes on, and in the translations for several other languages, I found that the translators were faithfully reproducing an inconsequential formatting oddity, which suggests that most of them were trying to follow the text very closely.

While I have your attention, would you take a look at foundation:Donor privacy policy/ja (diff) and foundation:Donor privacy policy/Supplement/ja (new page)? I don't know whether these were done by the same translator, but it sounds like the Privacy policy/ja has a distinctive style. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:17, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I see nothing odd in the two documents you linked, at least from a quick glance. The diff indicates that the translator knew the previous version well and avoided a full rewrite. It looks like the parts whose original are unchanged were left unchanged there, unlike the cases I reported above. As for the style, I can only say subjectively, but it's my impression that the way Privacy_policy/ja was done looks a bit too liberal. whym (talk) 11:19, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Whym. I really appreciate you taking the time to check the other pages and reassure me about those other pages. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Privacy policy translation into Italian

Hello, I saw you imported some translations: nice to see work in this area. Unfortunately, the translation was appallingly inaccurate, for instance it referenced non-existing variables and translated "individual" as if it were "donor". (I suppose this was a copy and paste error which happened at some point in conjunction with the translation of the donor privacy policy.) I hope Wikimedia Foundation can improve the process, because the result is terribly unprofessional. Nemo 11:27, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Hello, @Nemo bis. The WMF hires professional translators for larger documents, such as these. Sometimes the translations we receive are flawed; occasionally, the problem is a simple error when copying the translations out of Google docs and into mw:Extension:Translate. It is rare for any translation by a non-Wikimedian to be perfect. @Civvi (WMF) obviously speaks more Italian than I do, and might be able to help answer questions, but I would encourage you to be bold in improving the translations on Meta-Wiki, and to let me know if there are problems with the translation of the foundation:Donor privacy policy. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I realise that even with WMF's budget there are limits to how much Civvi-time one can afford to get. :) It would be great to improve the quality of translation by making sure the translators use proper tools: for instance, if they used the Translate extension they could be shown our translation memory, and avoid using strange translations for terms which have an established translation. Nemo 15:02, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

I am very much hoping that the next time they do this, they hire translators to put the translations directly on wiki (maybe not directly onto Meta-Wiki, if that seems too much for them, but directly into some MediaWiki wiki that has Extension:Translate installed. It would save me so much time and worry, and it would guarantee that the translators realized that much of this work had already been done. (Legal normally only updates a fraction of the sentences, but some translators did the whole thing from scratch.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

First of all WhatamIdoing sorry for "squatting" your talk page :-) @Nemo bis: there is a lot of "backlog" in the italian translations. There are also some pages translated with the help of Apertium suggestions which are sometimes (understatement) a little creative (understatement)... I also saw this edit, I agree with that but, for the sake of consistency and lack of time, I did not use or update it in other pages. Now Board elections are over and there is more time to start working sistematically also on old wrong translations (comitato elettorale is so from 2015...). Here I have started a list of translations, mainly of new terms coming from the movement strategy process but feel free to add other "brutture" you may find or would like to improve/correct. Please consider also that I am not a professional translator so, when there is a lot to translate (and sometimes there really is a lot) the result could ... have margins of improvement. Thanks! --Civvi (WMF) (talk) 07:44, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Custom signature validation

Hi, WhatamIdoing,

I have a question about what the proper venue would be, to raise a proposal to better vet users' custom signatures.

I tried to find a good venue (w:WP:VPR came to mind, but I don't know if WMF folks bother with it), so I came here after first finding your subpage /Custom signature in a broad but targeted search, and would've left a comment there, but the Talk page seems to be dedicated to a specific purpose.

Anyway, the brief version is, that we should do a better job at vetting users' custom sig, such as using an Html validator, because users not infrequently create something with invalid Html, which even if it renders something, may screws up the rest of the Talk page where it appears; with symptoms on the lower end like breaking w:syntax highlighting for the rest of the page, and on the higher end, eating levels, or comments, or other bizarre results from unbalanced tags or metacharacters. I don't see any reason that WMF software should allow defective Html to be saved in Preferences; and since it's an opt-in feature, I see no reason for us to be lax or forgiving in what we allow.

I couldn't find a WMF page that already discusses this; is there one? (ping me; thx!) Mathglot (talk) 22:53, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, @Mathglot. At the moment, new custom signatures cannot usually be saved if they contain invalid HTML. Existing ones are still accepted, but it won't let you create a new one with most HTML problems. See this discussion for more information about the situation at the English Wikipedia. Mostly, though, what needs to happen is that I need to write, find translators for, and send individual messages to several thousand editors. Once people have been properly warned, the devs will turn off the "grandfather" code, and old-bad sigs will be ignored (you'd get the standard/default signature instead of a broken custom one). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Question about IP masking

Which law is requiring the WMF to do IP masking? I'm genuinely curious about how things like this work.

If there's A Reason(tm) why you can't answer the question, what is it, if it's not people without law degrees declaring lawyers to be wrong on the internet? --I dream of horses (talk) 20:52, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@I dream of horses: (please imagine talk-page stalker template here) - WMF Legal has said that it's because of changing legal regulations, and that they can't answer because it would impair their ability to legally defend us. I (as a non-WMF member) like quite a few others, have interpreted this as "We are either definitely, or possibly, in breach of the law in at least one country and announcing it would get us sued/fined without being able to make a defence". That's the most recent reason, they for some reason claimed Legal privilege to start with, despite also being the client and thus not being bound by it. Nosebagbear (talk) 21:51, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I don't think that's quite how legal privilege works. The lawyers can't be their own clients. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:58, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): In this case, it would be their external counsel and the Foundation. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:03, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that WMF Legal is not external counsel. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): WMF Legal posted that they couldn't share the reasoning why because of legal privilege. That means they are either the client or the counsel. As you say, the lawyers can't be their own clients, and they presumably aren't privately advising someone outside the Foundation, so they're not the counsel. They are thus logically the client - the counsel could be either in the in-house legal team or external counsel. It doesn't actually matter, in either way the Foundation could waive the privilege. It was only when we pointed this out that the reasoning changed from "we can't disclose because of legal privilege" to "waiving would do too much harm to the projects and Foundation". I asked, three times, as did others, on why that initial defence was used and they have never answered. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:09, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

"The Foundation", but not WMF Legal, could presumably waive legal privilege. I assume that decision is up to the Board. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:01, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear So, there's a law on the books that we can't know about. Concerning, tbh. I dream of horses (talk) 22:01, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

@I dream of horses, I love that XKCD comic! It's one of the best. (Also, it explains why I started editing: someone had a typo on the internet, and the English Wikipedia at least let me fix it.)

I haven't followed the IP masking stuff, since it's not my project. Generally, whenever you want to know more about what Legal's doing, you can send e-mail to legal@wikimedia.org and see what they can tell you. One of my newer teammates has been assigned to this project; I'll let her know that you asked. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I dream of horses (talk) 21:58, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Right venue for clarifying the Privacy policy

This is probably way outside the scope of your duties, so I'll apologise in advance for bugging you with it, but I'm hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction without having to expend too much attention.

I've run into a need to propose a change or clarification to the Privacy policy, and I'm utterly failing to find any obvious venue for raising the issue. I considered bugging Fluffernutter et al, but this isn't really an obvious "T&S"-type issue; and just emailing legal@wmf seems a little excessive for something that certainly needs some discussion. So instead I'm bugging you: halp?

Feel free to ignore the way-too-much-detail version below unless you happen to have an interest in such issues:

For context, the issue is that the current text of the privacy policy is either "dumb" (as in, overzealous; imposing a restriction without attendant privacy benefit), lacks nuance (restriction provides privacy benefit in some scenarios, but not in others, and policy fails to reflect the distinction), or needs clarification (does not actually mean to say what it seems to say).

In particular, in the "Definitions" section, the definition for "Personal information" contains "your real name, address, phone number, email address, password, identification number on government-issued ID, IP address, user-agent information, payment account number;". The term "User Agent" is technical jargon stemming from standards communities (the IETF, W3C, etc.) that in lay terms refers to web browsers (but in a technical sense also to the "client" or requesting side of any computer code that speaks HTTP). The plain reading of "user-agent information" in the policy, especially in the context it is placed (ssn, phone number, passwords, etc.), is the kind of web browser data that the ad companies use to track people by uniquely identifying them: cookies, screen resolution, window size, and so forth.

However, the web standards also defines a header field in HTTP transactions called "User-Agent:". This contains things like Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/15.1 Safari/605.1.15. It says what web browser you're using (in this case, Safari), the version (15.1, with internal build number 605.1.15), the CPU architecture and operating system it is running on (MacOS 10.15.7 running on an Intel-based Mac), and that it asserts to be compatible with "Mozilla/5.0", "KHTML", and "Gecko" (all rendering engines). That is, it's version information for the particular web browser accessing the web server; and it is designed for 1) tailoring dynamic content to be compatible with that web browser, and 2) enabling the server owner to track down misbehaving user agents (malformed requests or similar). The content of the User-Agent header is purely technical, and based on usage numbers I'd say the above example would be unique to a group of several tens of millions (possibly north of 100 million).

If combined with enough other information (cookies, screen resolution, window size, etc.) it can narrow down the group, and ultimately identify a single individual. It needs to be combined with an IP address, email, or similar to actually identify a person; and in isolation its information content in terms of personal information is essentially nil. In other words, it would fall under the umbrella term "information about the user agent", but to take the User-Agent header alone as being equivalent in any way to "real name, address, phone number, email address, password, identification number on government-issued ID, IP address, …, payment account number" is entirely unwarranted. Its relevance is primarily technical, not privacy-related.

The current phrasing in the privacy policy is being read as if "user-agent information" is identical to "the HTTP User-Agent header", leading to developer and Steward action to forcibly remove code in Gadgets, local project Common.js/.css, etc. for the sole reason that it might expose the UserAgent header to a third-party (a non-WMF-controlled website). Which seems… excessive.

My entry to the issue was in relation to a need for a specific web font for enWS: one of the more promising solutions is to use the fontcdn tool (WMF-hosted, maintainer has signed the paperwork for non-public data), which proxies requests for webfonts to Google's font CDN. But since Google dynamically returns one of about five different font file formats (woff2, woff, ttf, ot, and svg as I recall) based on the request's User-Agent header, in order for the fontcdn tool to work it needs to forward that header to Google. In this scenario, the User-Agent header being sent to Google tells them that one of ~100 million Mac users wants to use the "Petite Formal Script" font, and that user is possibly a user of a Wikimedia project. The proxy reveals nothing else about the user: the IP address is the IP of the Toolforge host (it's a proxy), and no user name or password etc. is ever transmitted (not to Toolforge, certainly not to Google). It is, in other words, not a privacy problem in any real sense of the word; but it is being blocked by otherwise entirely reasonable readings of the language of the privacy policy due to the use of the ambiguous term "user-agent information" in the policy's definition of the term "Personal information".

I don't think the policy's intent is to say "HTTP User-Agent header == Personal information". I think the intent is to say that "the stuff Facebook uses to track you, like cookies and such", but instead they invented a term that turns out to be ripe for misunderstanding in a technical context. I think that the policy is intended to permit assessments like "the User-Agent header in isolation is fine, so long as it isn't tied to an IP or other identifying information", and the current bright-line interpretation is not what was intended. And I want to find some suitable venue to try to get this bit of the policy document changed, or the actual policy clarified through some other means (like the various statements from WMF Legal on issues like copyright over the years).

Oh, and if you actually read all the way down to here you're a special kind of crazy! :-) Xover (talk) 12:57, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@Xover, thanks for bringing me such an interesting question! I'll ping one of my favorite lawyers and see what they say. In the meantime, tell me more about this web font. Is this an every-single-page kind of thing, or are you trying to match the formatting in a particular document? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:06, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@Xover, they say to please send e-mail to privacywikimedia.org about this. They will be looking forward to hearing from you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:12, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you!

The use-case is Wikisource (enWS, but applicable to all) and proofreading (transcribing and formatting) books, magazines, newspapers, etc.. Mostly we do not sweat detailed typographic features because these are mere happenstance and artefacts of the printing process. But some times—for some works, parts of works, or periods of time, etc.—these features either reflect authorial intent, or are important to situate a work in its historical context. One prominent example is that for a long period of time in several northern-European countries, the norm for any "serious" work was to print them in Blackletter (and for most of that time, non-"serious" works did not get printed period). You also have extreme examples such as Franklin P. Adams's poem "No Trouble to Show Goods", where you might say the "medium" is literally the message.

Wikisource (well, in English, anyway; there may be more such needs that I am not aware of outside the Anglosphere) generally needs a few main categories of specialised fonts that are not language-specific. Blackletter, cursive, general serif and sans fonts (these are default and not an issue), Slab serif, and a specialized font for proofreading (a font designed specifically for legibility for transcription, ala. fonts designed to help dyslexics). A few other such variants. Except for plain serif and sans-serif fonts, we can't just specify the generic family because web browsers choose wildly different and sometimes inappropriate typefaces. The immediate trigger was cursive: it's supposed to reflect cursive handwriting, but web browsers end up choosing Comic Sans which, rather than suggest Italian Renaissance, is both so modern and childish that it actively offends both graphic designers and people with an interest in historical texts (seriously: we've had revert wars and acerbic edit summaries over it!).

The way you get web fonts on WMF wikis currently is through the Universal Language Selector, which maintains an internal web font repository for WMF wikis. It's got a long history (which, depending on what you paid attention to at the time, you may or may not be familiar with), and started out as, among several other components and efforts, a jQuery webfont plugin. Over time it's morphed into primarily being about internationalizing the MediaWiki UI, and providing font support for non-Latin scripts; and the Language team is resourced accordingly. That means we can get an updated font for Polytonic Greek (it's language related), but we can't get them to add, say, a Cursive font, because it's not language based and so outside their scope. And since ULS exists, it's impossible to even request anything else related to web fonts: it will either be referred to the Language team, which will decline it, or it will be nixed directly because ULS exists and we don't want to duplicate functionality. (real long-term fix: rename the language team, define web fonts to be explicitly within their scope, and give them the resources needed to take care of that scope)

We can't just use Google Fonts, because that really would be a clear and serious violation of the privacy policy. But there's a Toolforge tool that proxies requests to the Google Fonts service. It's not really formally an "anonymizing proxy", but it has the practical effect of anonymizing requests; all but the User-Agent, because that is used for content negotiation. That would let us solve this problem in a good practical and pragmatic way, without needing to rejig WMF team responsibilities and other Sisyphean tasks. That's where we were in the discussion when this privacy policy issue cropped up, and it turned into an immediate hard stop.

And since I'm one of those obnoxious people that won't let a little thing like global policy co-signed by WMF Legal stand in the way of a good pragmatic solution, I'm here bugging you for advice. In any case, thanks for your help (and patience with my rambling). I'll go bug the lawyers now, and see if they'll issue a clarification just to make me go away. :-) Xover (talk) 08:26, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for this, @Xover, and especially for the link to Adam's 1912 poem, which I'd never seen before.

I suspect that @Amire80 knows more about non-English fonts than I ever will, and this need might interest him, too.

I hope that the Privacy team is able to help. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:17, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@Xover, webfonts under a free license can be added to our own software, if needed. Just create a Phabricator ticket. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:44, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

@Amire80: See T166138. Extended discussion of the needs and why I think modifying/clarifying the Privacy Policy is the most realistic approach is available on request. Xover (talk) 13:05, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't see that it was discussed already. Sorry, I cannot add anything to that :( Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:10, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Docs for User:Whatamidoing_(WMF)/Sandbox

Hi Whatamidoing, I see the translate notification you sent, but I'm kind of confused about the meaning of "$1" in the text. For example, is the "$1" in sentence "Last comment: $1" a date or something else? And I suggest to write it clearly in the document page (the /qqq subpage). Thanks! Stang 19:55, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi, @Stang. The $1 is a software code for the date of the "Last comment", but the date itself is added automatically by the software later (and, of course, will be different for each conversation). The software replaces the $1 with the date, so you want the $1 to be in the translation wherever the date should be placed.

I know it looks a little strange on a wiki page. They do this because some languages might need the date in a different part of the sentence. It's the same idea with the other translation messages. If your language needs "4 comments" or "Comments 4", then you write $1 comments or Comments $1 in the translation. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Hebrew Wikipedia

Evening,

I have just noticed your last edit at the "Hebrew Wikipedia:Village_pump", and I thought to myself "Well, I might suggest my help translating your (and your co) messages before you trouble yourself writing in English and beg for someone to help you translate it."

So, um, I offer my help, if you (and/or your co) may accept it.

Niles Anderssøn (English or Hebew) 21:24, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

@אנדרסן, Thank you so much for your offer to help. I would love to have you translate any announcement I make at the Hebrew Wikipedia. I currently need a Hebrew translation for User:Whatamidoing (WMF)/Sandbox and mw:Help:Sample discussion. These are both related to mw:Talk pages project/Usability/Prototype, but that page is not ready for Hebrew translation yet. (We are trying this new style for three languages, and if it works, then I will want a Hebrew translation. But if it doesn't, then we will try something else.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Hello again. I sincerely HOPE I did fine at User:Whatamidoing (WMF)/Sandbox. I'm not sure though what should I've done at mw:Talk pages project/Usability/Prototype. Niles Anderssøn (English or Hebew) 20:45, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

It looks good to me! Thank you for your help.

Please don't do anything about mw:Talk pages project/Usability/Prototype this week. I might change it next week, and then you would have to start over.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Hello again. What about this week? May I help? Niles Anderssøn (English or Hebew) 15:49, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

The Product Manager made some more changes today. Maybe soon... Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:39, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

@אנדרסן, we are ready for translations. Would you mind starting with mw:Help:Sample discussion? Also, please pick common Hebrew names for the speakers. Once I have that, I can start making some screenshots. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi, I asked the Israelis for some Hebrew common names, and in the meanwhile I translated whatever I could. As soon as I get some names, I will add them. Niles Anderssøn (English or Hebew) 10:34, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Editing news 2022 #1

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New editors were more successful with this new tool.

The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at the 20 Wikipedias that participated in the test. You will be able to turn it off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

Whatamidoing (WMF) 18:43, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Editing news 2022 #2

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The [subscribe] button shortens response times.

The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) 23:35, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF), and Editing Team, congrats for your reaching the milestone and now everybody will be/not be notified they have a reply to their input. What an encouragement to know you are not left alone on the rocky road to become fluent wiki-wise.

Now, I know this is a tall challenge, tho, could we have your endeavor more visible by putting the progress offered in multiple languages? Have you had any OJT how to sandwich paragraphs with <translate>/</translate> tags?

Maybe write a digest and sum up the progress? Any short version you have already used anywhere? Or like case history type of dry but informative piece? In that case, I will feel much comfortable translating.

IMHO there is not a centralized translation room on WMF if you wish volunteer hands will join you for internationalization.

To speed up important subject read in multiple languages, Communications Team holds on fy2022/2023 and accepts your order for paid translation of course. That eats your budget and time to rank which project to buy translation or not, true esp for a busy team like yours.

Reading the backstage hard work will be a channel to think of joining the force as tech hands, and a great boost to finally dig into learning English as a second language. I see some heads nodding in your team! Goo cheers, Omotecho (talk) 04:01, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

@Omotecho, the newsletter is always translated. I see that you kindly translated it into Japanese; thank you. The Help: page is also translated. The Editing team doesn't normally request translations for the updates on their project page. It seems like it would be a lot of work (for you and other translators – it's easy for me), for few readers. Are you willing to translate it? If so, I'm happy to mark it up for you. Perhaps you would like the top of the page plus the one important update? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:38, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF), hi, yes, you read my mind again, wow. Are you up to give a very short summary as the first paragraph, something like what we offer on wikipedias perhaps? Then that will enhance more readersihp in more languages IMHO. Please weigh if it's worth the time/energy for both of us, focusing on the topic we talk about here. I guess you usually write such paragraph as for post mortem.

My cause is that ja community members suffer wide and deep by language barrier. Offering outline would give them boost/no excuse "I don't read English"/get serious about what they wish to realize. If it is an allergic reaction, then the cure or first aid would be supplying the outline, or maybe at least section titles (?).

Ja community members are so irritated of, and sadly, it's almost like a food allergy, not mortal but you hesitate to touch a dish you see displaying en contents (at least those keen to know what changes is based on which procedure/history.) I am aware maybe near 80% of users don't care to join discussion/give input on technology uplifts, as that is not among their agenda coming onwiki.

FYI: I was not able to catch up fully to support the feedback exchange for Vector 2022 upgrade, made me aware that 6+ years of English classes at schools is the "poison" causing English phobia/allergies. Is there anything to do and grind down the tallest hurdle endemic to ja community? Compulsory English classes, as a second language, offered for 13yrs-15yrs olds for over fifty years, then Mr.Abe made it also compulsory for 08yrs-12yrs olds, effective in 2022. May our future brighter. Omotecho (talk) 02:36, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea.

• mw:Help:DiscussionTools is translatable. It is not complete. It is important.
• mw:Talk pages project is currently translatable, but ☞ they might re-write it this month, so please wait.
• mw:Talk pages project/Feature summary is translatable. (Maybe the top of that should be merged to mw:Talk pages project.)
• mw:Talk pages project/Glossary looks neglected. (Or maybe the top of the /Feature summary page should be merged here.)
• mw:Talk pages project/Replying is about the [reply] button
• mw:Talk pages project/Usability is about changes happening later this year (some this month, in the Beta Feature)
• mw:Talk pages project/New discussion is about the ==New Topic== tool.
• mw:Talk pages project/Notifications is about the [subscribe] button.
• mw:Talk pages project/Mobile is about getting the [reply] and other tools on the mobile site.
• mw:Talk pages project/Deployment Status is partially translatable.
• mw:New requirements for user signatures is translatable (and may not happen this year).

I have marked two parts of /Notifications for translation. The top section seems ...useless. The other is about the A/B test.

If there are other pages/sections you would like to translate, please let me know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Update to commentlinks.js gadget

I am about to update my comment links gadget to link the comment's timestamp rather than add a separate [ link ] button. If you prefer the old style, that gadget will be available at commentlinks-v1.js. As before, this gadget is experimental and may stop working at any time, see T275729 for the task to make this a proper feature. Thanks, ESanders (WMF) (talk) 12:16, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Backing up Wikipaedias of any languages for purposes of civilizational preservation

@Whatamidoing (WMF):Recently I have started a discussion on Chinese Wikipaedia on backing up Wikipaedias of any languages like Chinese as payload for space missions for sake of civilization preservation. As soon as you appeared there, the Chinese Wikipaedia admins had implicitly directed us to this venue or so by closing the original discussion and topic as seen below (in Chinese and English):

• https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:%E4%BA%92%E5%8A%A9%E5%AE%A2%E6%A0%88/%E5%85%B6%E4%BB%96&oldid=74662680

With all due respect, in that old revision link there was the "off topic request" right below at "[ 回复 ] → 回复" containing the request to forward the suggestion to WMF for consideration, which will be thankful of.

CC: @Upload for Freedom:

2600:6C40:59F0:85F0:1CBD:5243:ED77:D219 06:04, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the note. Any language of Wikipedia can be downloaded for free by anyone, without getting special permission. I will ask a colleague if they know anything about this. If they talked to someone at the WMF, then someone might know which language (or how many languages) they copied. However, it's possible the company did this independently. If so, you would need to ask the company which language they chose. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): You're welcome. According to this VICE feature article, only the English version of Wikipaedia of then-current version was carried to the Moon onboard the Israeli lander which unfortunately had crashed there. It's entirely possible that they simply downloaded a copy through dumps.wikimedia.org website.

Unfortunately I didn't see any indications from that space company or elsewhere on planning to back up Wikipaedias of other languages which is why I started that discussion at Chinese Wikipaedia in the first place. As a start, campaigns can be initiated to include those written in all official United Nations languages on the 5D memory crystals for the space missions. Perhaps WMF can organise some editathons to fill up those incompleted articles which are more often found in Wikipaedias other than that of the English version.

Here are the dump links for Wikipaedias of the UN languages in case anyone else here is interested:

• English
• French
• Spanish
• Arabic
• Russian
• Chinese

Even though I am not a millionaire, I will help in this to the best of my ability and I will see if I can contact anyone at space agencies such as NASA, ESA or JAXA and request them to take this up for consideration.

2600:6C40:59F0:85F0:DC95:B594:BE91:D362 03:52, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Can I start translating?

Hello my friend, how are you? We have talked once, when I was helping translating pages here in meta from English to Portuguese, but now I'm the one with a request. I have submitted a request for a Usergroup, the page is called WikiLusofonia, and I would like to start translating the content to portuguese. Can you or someone give the green light for me to start translating? Thank you! Tuga1143 (talk) 22:12, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

@Tuga1143, your page is ready for you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so so much! Kind regards, Tuga1143 (talk) 22:20, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi again Whatamidoing, there is a problem in the page.

Now people can't click on "edit" in the last section "Users who support this group".

They are redirected to a page titled "Cannot find section"... is it something related to the "<!--T:99-->" codes? Tuga1143 (talk) 22:55, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh, that is caused by something about how the markup is handled (it's not the T:99 bit; it's where the <translate> tags are placed), but I'm not sure exactly how to fix it.

I do know how to avoid it, though. If you put the members' names on WikiLusofonia/Members (a separate page, not marked for translation), and transclude it (like a template) into the main page, then people can sign up there without worrying about markup.

Alternatively, you could leave a note at Meta talk:Babylon to see if someone knows a better way to do it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your help, i created a template. Thx my friend. Luís Almeida "Tuga1143 19:30, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Editing news 2023 #1

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This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

1. The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
2. They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

Some of the upcoming changes

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

Daily edit completion rate by test group: DiscussionTools (test group) and MobileFrontend overlay (control group)

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:18, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Thoughts on talk subject

Hi there, Whatamidoing! Just scrolling and bumped into your page. Thanks for your contributions and your passion. Wanted to leave this message for you. I'm staying tuned! – Purplesofi (talk) 04:51, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh

Talking publicly? Or ping me by normal means. Hope that all is well, and that this is exciting.  — billinghurst sDrewth  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:59, 29 September 2023 (UTC)