Newsletter talk:Tech Showcase

Here you can ask any questions about Tech Showcase. You can also propose new links to be announced.

While interwiki links are not supported by the Newsletter extension (phab:T174664), we will create new topics to link to pages out of MediaWiki.org.

The FileExporter and FileImporter will become default features on August 5, 2020 on all Wikis. They help you to move files from your local Wiki to Wikimedia Commons, while keeping all original file information (description, source, date, author, and revision history) intact. The project to improve moving files to Wikimedia Commons originates from WMDE’s 2013 Technical Wishes survey, where it was voted into the top wishes for technological improvements by the German-speaking Wikipedia Community.

How does it work?

1. Step: If you are an auto-confirmed user, you will see a link “Export to Wikimedia Commons” in the toolbar on the local file page.
2. Step: When you click on this link, the FileImporter checks if the file can be moved to Commons. These checks are performed based on the wiki’s configuration page which is created and maintained by each local wiki community.
3. Step: If the file is compatible with Commons, you will be taken to a preview page on Wikimedia Commons, where you can update or add information about the file, such as the description. You can also add the ‘Now Commons’ template to the file on the source wiki by clicking the corresponding check box on the preview page on Wikimedia Commons. Admins can delete the file from the local Wiki by clicking the checkbox ‘delete file on source wiki in my name’. By clicking on the ‘Import’ button at the end of the page, the file is imported to Wikimedia Commons.

If you want to know more about the FileImporter extension or the Technical Wishes Project, follow the links. We are looking forward to answering your questions and getting your feedback on our central feedback page. --For the Technical Wishes Team

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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.)

Hello. Apologies for cross-posting, and that you are likely not reading this message in your native language: translations of the full announcement may be available at m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia/June_2020_announcement, and will be posted to all the wikis in the next few days. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has approved a new sister project, temporarily titled "Abstract Wikipedia". Its goal is to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages.

You can learn more at m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia/June_2020_announcement and also join the new dedicated mailing list.

Posted.

Screenshot of the new talk page edit conflict interface.

As posted on Tech Showcase earlier, the Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Germany was designing an additional user interface to be able to solve edit conflicts on talk pages more effectively. Good news is that it was deployed as default on Farsi, Arabic, and German Wikis on June 24, 2020.

A short recap: This interface is shown to you when you write on a talk page and another person writes a post in the same line and saves it before you do. With this additional edit conflict interface you can adjust the order of the comments by clicking on the button on the left side of the text fields, the indentation of the comments (by adding or removing colons) and you can edit your comment. If you'd like to know more about this feature, please visit the project page.

If you do not want to use the new interface, you can disable it in the preferences. If you already disabled the paragraph-based edit conflict interface (former two-column edit conflict interface), the new feature will not be activated for you.

This interface was created as a result of the Technical Wishes survey in 2015, in which the German Wikipedia community wished for a simpler way to resolve edit conflicts. For regular edit conflicts on article pages, the Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface was created, which is available as a beta version since November 2018 and became a default feature in March 2020 on the dewiki, fawiki, and arwiki.

We are inviting everyone to have a look at the feature and let us know what you think on our central feedback page!
Feedback is especially helpful for us if you describe exactly what you like about the function or what bothers you. Screenshots can also be very helpful. A big thanks to everyone who gave feedback so far. -- For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm

Posted.

Many Wikipedia language editions have large gaps in knowledge. We want to close these gaps by allowing to create and maintain content in one place and allow the Wikipedias to use this content if they choose so. This will allow more people to create, maintain, and read more knowledge in more languages.

In order to do this, we need to represent the content in a way that can be translated to many different natural languages. We do this by introducing a new Wikimedia project, Wikilambda, that allows to create, maintain, catalogue and evaluate functions as a new form of knowledge the communities work on. This will allow completely new use cases, and allow more people to share in more forms of knowledge.

The project proposal page leads to much more detail on the project. We are looking for feedback, supporting voices, questions, statements of opposition on the proposal talk page, and people to help with translating and disseminating the proposal page.

Announced.

I made a proposal for a new Wikiproject:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilambda

I tried to mark up the two main parts for translation and moved them to the beginning. I have no idea if I used the translation extension right, I haven't used it for half a decade.

Let me know what else you need. I would really appreciate if you could help me to translate the text, and reach the communities to spread the word about the proposal and to gather feedback.

I am sorry if I made the request wrongly - please point me to how to do it right, and I will gladly try to comply.

Thank you!

Thanks for writing. Commenting on the last point only: no need to apologize.! Just take a look at the opening posts on Newsletter_talk:Tech_Showcase (i.e., WMDE's ones) to get a sense of what your announcement should look like - that is what gets sent to people.

Many Wikipedia language editions have large gaps in knowledge. We want to close these gaps by allowing to create and maintain content in one place and allow the Wikipedias to use this content if they choose so. This will allow more people to create, maintain, and read more knowledge in more languages.

In order to do this, we need to represent the content in a way that can be translated to many different natural languages. We do this by introducing a new Wikimedia project, Wikilambda, that allows to create, maintain, catalogue and evaluate functions as a new form of knowledge the communities work on. This will allow completely new use cases, and allow more people to share in more forms of knowledge.

The project proposal page leads to much more detail on the project. We are looking for feedback, supporting voices, questions, statements of opposition on the proposal talk page, and people to help with translating and disseminating the proposal page.

@Denny Could you re-post the text above as a separate topic? That will make more sense to readers than if I link to this conversation, and I think it's better that people can see this is coming from you than if I post it in my name.

@Johan (WMF)Thanks, I did so.

This is what the interface is planned to look like.

To be able to solve edit conflicts on talk pages more effectively, an additional interface for this situation was designed by the Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Germany.

This view is shown to you when you write on a talk page and another person writes a discussion post in the same line and saves it before you. With this additional editing conflict interface, you can adjust the order of the comments and edit yours. It is planned to be made available within the next two to three months. On the project page the interface is described in more detail.

The Technical Wishes team is looking forward to receiving feedback and questions about this on this discussion page, ideally by March 10, 2020. --For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm (WMDE)

Announced.

Example Refined Book Referencing

A new feature is now available on the beta cluster: It allows you to cite different parts of the same source without repeating the entire source every time. This feature also gives readers a way to identify which references originate from the same source.

For wikitext users, it is planned to make the feature available on first Wikipedias (as one of the many options to cite) beginning of 2020. More wikis will follow soon. At a later stage, it’s planned to also add implementation for Visual Editor.

This wish originated in the Technical Wishes project on German Wikipedia.

We’re inviting everyone to give the feature a try: Check it out on the beta cluster and let us know what you think on the central feedback page! If you'd like to know more about this feature, please visit the project page.

-- For the TechWish Team: Max

Link to example article on beta cluster: https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Draft:Cut_the_Crap#cite_ref-3

Announced.

Also adding an item about this to Tech News.

@Johan (WMF) Cool, thanks. :)

@Max Klemm (WMDE) You've got a question here: https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/tech-news-2019-week-50/2606

@Johan (WMF) Thanks. :D I will keep an eye on that page now. ;)

A new beta feature called Reference Previews is now available on all Wikipedias and on three Wikivoyage projects.

As the name already suggests, this feature gives you a preview of references in the article text. That means, you can look up a reference without jumping down to the bottom of the page. If specified, the preview also shows the type of a reference: whether it’s a web, journal, book or news reference. This can help readers evaluate the trustworthiness of a citation more quickly.

Reference Previews originated from a wish from the German-speaking wiki community to have the preview functionality that already exists in many wikis integrated into MediaWiki.

We’re inviting everyone to give the feature a try: Please activate the beta feature and let us know what you think on the central feedback page! If you'd like to know more about this feature, please visit the project page.

Announced.

The "active the beta feature" link doesn't work because it goes to Meta where the feature isn't active, it was pointed out to me. You can go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures on you preferred language version of Wikipedia to activate it.

If you speak Arabic, French, Japanese, Russian, Spanish: this week, please help the Research team test a new algorithm that recommends section titles for new articles! https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Expanding_Wikipedia_articles_across_languages/Inter_language_approach/Feedback/Message

@Johan (WMF), @Trizek (WMF), can anyone please send this out ASAP? Thank you!

 Done