Wikipedia:Kofan al'umma/Archives/2017
Boko & Ajami[gyara masomin]
The Latin-based transcription, known in Hausa as Boko, is the currently dominant standard in print, instruction, and the internet, in Nigeria and Niger, so that should be the choice here. That said, there are many people who know or use the historically older Arabic-based Ajami transcription to one degree or another, and there are efforts to accommodate this in ICT (one aspect is meeting character needs in Unicode, which I understand to be complicated a bit by the fact that Ajami usage is not standardized in the same way Boko is). In the ideal world there should be both - maybe eventually with the elegant technofix of a transliteration feature between the two - but go with the Boko now and provide alternative space for Ajami if/when/as the interest is manifested.
--Picaroon (t) 00:24, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Small request[gyara masomin]
Hello! I am a Polish wikipedian and I would like to ask you for your help - writing a new article about former Polish President who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 – Lech Wałęsa. I have looked for his biography in your Wikipedia but without success. Polish Wikipedians will be grateful for your help. Thank you so much in advance! PS you can find the English version of the article here. Best wishes from Poland, Patrol110 16:33, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Wikimania Scholarships[gyara masomin]
The call for applications for Wikimania Scholarships to attend Wikimania 2010 in Gdansk, Poland (July 9-11) is now open. The Wikimedia Foundation offers Scholarships to pay for selected individuals' round trip travel, accommodations, and registration at the conference. To apply, visit the Wikimania 2010 scholarships information page, click the secure link available there, and fill out the form to apply. For additional information, please visit the Scholarships information and FAQ pages:
Yours very truly,
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
Language support group for Hausa[gyara masomin]
The Wikimedia Foundation has brought together a new team of developers who are dedicated to language support. This team is to support all the languages and consequently it is not realistic to expect that the team members can provide proper support for your language. It is for this reason that we are looking for volunteers who will make up a language support team.
This language support team will be asked to provide us with information about their language. Such information may need to be provided either to us or on a website that we will indicate to you. Another activity will be to test software that will likely have an effect on the running of the MediaWiki software. We are looking for people who clearly identify their ability. Formal knowledge is definitely appreciated.
As much of the activity will be concentrated on translatewiki.net, it will be a plus when team members know how to localise at translatewiki.net.
Thanks, Gmeijssen
Call for image filter referendum[gyara masomin]
The Wikimedia Foundation, at the direction of the Board of Trustees, will be holding a vote to determine whether members of the community support the creation and usage of an opt-in personal image filter, which would allow readers to voluntarily screen particular types of images strictly for their own account.
Further details and educational materials will be available shortly. The referendum is scheduled for 12-27 August, 2011, and will be conducted on servers hosted by a neutral third party. Referendum details, officials, voting requirements, and supporting materials will be posted at Meta:Image filter referendum shortly.
Sorry for delivering you a message in English. Please help translate the pages on the referendum on Meta and join the translators mailing list.
For the coordinating committee,
Philippe (WMF)
Cbrown1023
Risker
Mardetanha
PeterSymonds
Robert Harris
Trademark discussion[gyara masomin]
Hi, apologies for posting this in English, but I wanted to alert your community to a discussion on Meta about potential changes to the Wikimedia Trademark Policy. Please translate this statement if you can. We hope that you will all participate in the discussion; we also welcome translations of the legal team’s statement into as many languages as possible and encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please see the Trademark practices discussion (on Meta-Wiki) for more information. Thank you! --Mdennis (WMF) (talk)
Call for comments on draft trademark policy[gyara masomin]
Hi all,
The Wikimedia legal team invites you to participate in the development of the new Wikimedia trademark policy.
The current trademark policy was introduced in 2009 to protect the Wikimedia marks. We are now updating this policy to better balance permissive use of the marks with the legal requirements for preserving them for the community. The new draft trademark policy is ready for your review here, and we encourage you to discuss it here.
We would appreciate if someone would translate this message into your language so more members of your community can contribute to the conversation.
Universal Language Selector will be enabled by default again on this wiki by 21 February 2014[gyara masomin]
On January 21 2014 the MediaWiki extension Universal Language Selector (ULS) was disabled on this wiki. A new preference was added for logged-in users to turn on ULS. This was done to prevent slow loading of pages due to ULS webfonts, a behaviour that had been observed by the Wikimedia Technical Operations team on some wikis.
We are now ready to enable ULS again. The temporary preference to enable ULS will be removed. A new checkbox has been added to the Language Panel to enable/disable font delivery. This will be unchecked by default for this wiki, but can be selected at any time by the users to enable webfonts. This is an interim solution while we improve the feature of webfonts delivery.
You can read the announcement and the development plan for more information. Apologies for writing this message only in English. Thank you. Runa
Changes to the default site typography coming soon[gyara masomin]
This week, the typography on Wikimedia sites will be updated for all readers and editors who use the default "Vector" skin. This change will involve new serif fonts for some headings, small tweaks to body content fonts, text size, text color, and spacing between elements. The schedule is:
- April 1st: non-Wikipedia projects will see this change live
- April 3rd: Wikipedias will see this change live
This change is very similar to the "Typography Update" Beta Feature that has been available on Wikimedia projects since November 2013. After several rounds of testing and with feedback from the community, this Beta Feature will be disabled and successful aspects enabled in the default site appearance. Users who are logged in may still choose to use another skin, or alter their personal CSS, if they prefer a different appearance. Local common CSS styles will also apply as normal, for issues with local styles and scripts that impact all users.
For more information:
- Summary of changes and FAQ
- Discussion page for feedback or questions
- Post on blog.wikimedia.org
-- Steven Walling (Product Manager) on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation's User Experience Design team
This is a message from the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.
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Greetings,
I am pleased to announce that nominations are now being accepted for the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections. This year the Board and the FDC Staff are looking for a diverse set of candidates from regions and projects that are traditionally under-represented on the board and in the movement as well as candidates with experience in technology, product or finance. To this end they have published letters describing what they think is needed and, recognizing that those who know the community the best are the community themselves, the election committee is accepting nominations for community members you think should run and will reach out to those nominated to provide them with information about the job and the election process.
This year, elections are being held for the following roles:
Board of Trustees
The Board of Trustees is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long term sustainability of the Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. There are three positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the board elections page.
Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC elections page.
Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) Ombud
The FDC Ombud receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC Ombudsperson elections page.
The candidacy submission phase lasts from 00:00 UTC April 20 to 23:59 UTC May 5 for the Board and from 00:00 UTCApril 20 to 23:59 UTC April 30 for the FDC and FDC Ombudsperson. This year, we are accepting both self-nominations and nominations of others. More information on this election and the nomination process can be found on the 2015 Wikimedia elections page on Meta-Wiki.
Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections -at- wikimedia.org
On behalf of the Elections Committee,
-Gregory Varnum (User:Varnent)
Coordinator, 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, 05:03, 21 April 2015 (UTC) • Translate • Get help
Pywikibot compat will no longer be supported - Please migrate to pywikibot core[gyara masomin]
Sorry for English, I hope someone translates this.
Pywikibot (then "Pywikipediabot") was started back in 2002. In 2007 a new branch (formerly known as "rewrite", now called "core") was started from scratch using the MediaWiki API. The developers of Pywikibot have decided to stop supporting the compat version of Pywikibot due to bad performance and architectural errors that make it hard to update, compared to core. If you are using pywikibot compat it is likely your code will break due to upcoming MediaWiki API changes (e.g. T101524). It is highly recommended you migrate to the core framework. There is a migration guide, and please contact us if you have any problem.
There is an upcoming MediaWiki API breaking change that compat will not be updated for. If your bot's name is in this list, your bot will most likely break.
Thank you,
The Pywikibot development team, 19:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Pywikibot compat will no longer be supported - Please migrate to pywikibot core[gyara masomin]
Sorry for English, I hope someone translates this.
Pywikibot (then "Pywikipediabot") was started back in 2002. In 2007 a new branch (formerly known as "rewrite", now called "core") was started from scratch using the MediaWiki API. The developers of Pywikibot have decided to stop supporting the compat version of Pywikibot due to bad performance and architectural errors that make it hard to update, compared to core. If you are using pywikibot compat it is likely your code will break due to upcoming MediaWiki API changes (e.g. T101524). It is highly recommended you migrate to the core framework. There is a migration guide, and please contact us if you have any problem.
There is an upcoming MediaWiki API breaking change that compat will not be updated for. If your bot's name is in this list, your bot will most likely break.
Thank you,
The Pywikibot development team, 19:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (June 2015)[gyara masomin]
Hello Wikimedians!
Today The Wikipedia Library announces signups for more free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:
- Taylor & Francis — academic publisher of journals. The pilot includes two subject collections: Arts & Humanities and Biological, Environment & Earth Sciences. (30 accounts)
- World Bank eLibrary — digital platform containing all books, working papers, and journal articles published by the World Bank from the 1990s to the present. (100 accounts)
- AAAS — general interest science publisher, who publishes the journal Science among other sources (50 accounts)
New French-Language Branch!
- Érudit (en Francais) — Érudit is a French-Canadian scholarly aggregator primarily, humanities and social sciences, and contains sources in both English and French. Signups on both English and French Wikipedia (50 accounts).
- Cairn.info (en Francais) — Cairn.info is a Switzerland based online web portal of scholarly materials in the humanities and social sciences. Most sources are in French, but some also in English. Signups on both English and French Wikipedia (100 accounts).
- L'Harmattan — French language publisher across a wide range of non-fiction and fiction, with a strong selection of francophone African materials (1000 accounts).
Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including an expansion of accounts for Royal Society journals and remaining accounts on Project MUSE, JSTOR, DeGruyter, Highbeam Newspapers.com and British Newspaper Archive. If you have suggestions for journals or databases we should seek access to make a request! Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 22:08, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
- We need your help! Help coordinate Wikipedia Library's account distribution and global development! Please join our team at our new coordinator signup.
- This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List
New Wikipedia Library Database Access (September 2015)[gyara masomin]
Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:
- EBSCOHost - this is one of our largest access donations so far: access to a wide variety of academic, newspaper and magazine sources through their Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete and MasterFILE Complete
- Newspaperarchive.com - historical newspapers from the United States, Canada, UK and 20 other countries, and includes an Open Access "clipping" feature (1000 accounts)
- IMF Elibary- a digital collection of the IMF's reports, studies and research on global economics and development (50 accounts)
- Sabinet - one of the largest African digital publishers, based in South Africa, with a wide range of content in English and other European and African languages (10 accounts)
- Numérique Premium - a French language social science and humanities ebook database, with topical collections on a wide range of topics (100)
- Al Manhal - an Arabic and English database with a wide range of sources, largely focused on or published in the Middle East (60 accounts)
- Jamalon - an Arabic book distributor, who is providing targeted book delivery to volunteers (50 editors)
Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including expanded accounts for Elsevier ScienceDirect, British Medical Journal and Dynamed and additional accounts for Project MUSE, DeGruyter, Newspapers.com, Highbeam and HeinOnline. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 19:42, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
- We need help! Help us coordinate Wikipedia Library's distribution of accounts, communication of access opportunities and more! Please join our team at our new coordinator signup.
- This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.
Harassment consultation[gyara masomin]
Kuyi ƙoƙarin fassara wannan saƙo zuwa Hausa
The Community Advocacy team the Wikimedia Foundation has opened a consultation on the topic of harassment on Meta. The consultation period is intended to run for one month from today, November 16, and end on December 17. Please share your thoughts there on harassment-related issues facing our communities and potential solutions. (Note: this consultation is not intended to evaluate specific cases of harassment, but rather to discuss the problem of harassment itself.)
This is a message regarding the proposed 2015 Free Bassel banner. Translations are available.
Hi everyone,
This is to inform all Wikimedia contributors that a straw poll seeking your involvement has just been started on Meta-Wiki.
As some of your might be aware, a small group of Wikimedia volunteers have proposed a banner campaign informing Wikipedia readers about the urgent situation of our fellow Wikipedian, open source software developer and Creative Commons activist, Bassel Khartabil. An exemplary banner and an explanatory page have now been prepared, and translated into about half a dozen languages by volunteer translators.
We are seeking your involvement to decide if the global Wikimedia community approves starting a banner campaign asking Wikipedia readers to call on the Syrian government to release Bassel from prison. We understand that a campaign like this would be unprecedented in Wikipedia's history, which is why we're seeking the widest possible consensus among the community.
Given Bassel's urgent situation and the resulting tight schedule, we ask everyone to get involved with the poll and the discussion to the widest possible extent, and to promote it among your communities as soon as possible.
(Apologies for writing in English; please kindly translate this message into your own language.)
Thank you for your participation!
Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery 21:47, 25 November 2015 (UTC) • Translate • Get help
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (December 2015)[gyara masomin]
Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:
- Gale - multidisciplinary periodicals, newspapers, and reference sources - 10 accounts
- Brill - academic e-books and journals in English, Dutch, and other languages - 25 accounts
- Finnish Literature Society (in Finnish)
- Magiran (in Farsi) - scientific journal articles - 100 articles
- Civilica (in Farsi) - Iranian journal articles, seminars, and conferences - 50 accounts
Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including EBSCO, DeGruyter, and Newspaperarchive.com. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 01:01, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
- Help us a start Wikipedia Library in your language! Email us at wikipedialibrary@wikimedia.org
- This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.
Prototype for editing Wikidata infoboxes on Wikipedia[gyara masomin]
Hello,
I’m sorry for writing in English. It’d be great if someone could translate this message if necessary.
One of the most requested features for Wikidata is to enable editing of Wikidata’s data directly from Wikipedia, so the editors can continue their workflow without switching websites.
The Wikidata development team has been working on a tool to achieve this goal: fill and edit the Wikipedia infoboxes with information from Wikidata, directly on Wikipedia, via the Visual Editor.
We already asked for feedback in 2015, and collected some interesting ideas which we shared with you in this thesis. Now we would like to present to you our first prototype and collect your feedback, in order to improve and continue the development of this feature.
We present this work to you very early, so we can include your feedback before and all along the development. You are the core users of this feature, so we want to make sure that it fits your needs and editing processes.
You will find the prototype, description of the features, and a demo video, on this page. Feel free to add any comment or feedback on the talk page. The page is currently not translated in every languages, but you can add your contribution by helping to translate it.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to follow all the discussions on Wikipedia, so if you want to be sure that your feedback is read, please add it on the Wikidata page, in your favorite language. Thanks for your understanding.
Thanks, Lea Lacroix (WMDE)
New notification when a page is connected to Wikidata[gyara masomin]
Hello all,
(Kuyi ƙoƙarin fassara wannan saƙo zuwa Hausa)
The Wikidata development team is about to deploy a new feature on all Wikipedias. It is a new type of notification (via Echo, the notification system you see at the top right of your wiki when you are logged in), that will inform the creator of a page, when this page is connected to a Wikidata item.
You may know that Wikidata provides a centralized system for all the interwikilinks. When a new page is created, it should be connected to the corresponding Wikidata item, by modifying this Wikidata item. With this new notification, editors creating pages will be informed when another editor connects this page to Wikidata.
This feature will be deployed on May 30th on all the Wikipedias, excepting English, French and German. This feature will be disable by default for existing editors, and enabled by default for new editors.
This is the first step of the deployments, the Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects will follow in the next months.
If you have any question, suggestion, please let me know by pinging me. You can also follow and leave a comment on the Phabricator ticket.
Thanks go to Matěj Suchánek who developed this feature!
Thank you! Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk)
Review of initial updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process[gyara masomin]
Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.
The Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. For 15 years, Wikimedians have worked together to build the largest free knowledge resource in human history. During this time, we've grown from a small group of editors to a diverse network of editors, developers, affiliates, readers, donors, and partners. Today, we are more than a group of websites. We are a movement rooted in values and a powerful vision: all knowledge for all people. As a movement, we have an opportunity to decide where we go from here.
This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve. We hope to design an inclusive process that makes space for everyone: editors, community leaders, affiliates, developers, readers, donors, technology platforms, institutional partners, and people we have yet to reach. There will be multiple ways to participate including on-wiki, in private spaces, and in-person meetings. You are warmly invited to join and make your voice heard.
The immediate goal is to have a strategic direction by Wikimania 2017 to help frame a discussion on how we work together toward that strategic direction.
Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Beginning with this message, monthly reviews of these updates will be sent to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.
Here is a review of the updates that have been sent so far:
- Update 1 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (15 December 2016)
- Introduction to process and information about budget spending resolution to support it
- Update 2 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (23 December 2016)
- Start of search for Lead Architect for movement strategy process
- Update 3 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (8 January 2017)
- Plans for strategy sessions at upcoming Wikimedia Conference 2017
- Update 4 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (11 January 2017)
- Introduction of williamsworks
- Update 5 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 February 2017)
- The core movement strategy team, team tracks being developed, introduction of the Community Process Steering Committee, discussions at WikiIndaba conference 2017 and the Wikimedia movement affiliates executive directors gathering in Switzerland
- Update 6 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (10 February 2017)
- Tracks A & B process prototypes and providing feedback, updates on development of all four Tracks
More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.
Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 20:31, 15 Faburairu 2017 (UTC) • Kuyi ƙoƙarin fassara wannan saƙo zuwa Hausa • Get help
Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process[gyara masomin]
Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.
As we mentioned last month, the Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve.
Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Each month, we are sending overviews of these updates to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.
Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:
- Update 7 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (16 February 2017)
- Development of documentation for Tracks A & B
- Update 8 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (24 February 2017)
- Introduction of Track Leads for all four audience tracks
- Update 9 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 March 2017)
- Seeking feedback on documents being used to help facilitate upcoming community discussions
More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.
Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:43, 9 Maris 2017 (UTC) • Kuyi ƙoƙarin fassara wannan saƙo zuwa Hausa • Get help
We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)[gyara masomin]
- This message, "We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)", was sent through multiple channels by Gregory Varnum on 15 and 16 of March 2017 to village pumps, affiliate talk pages, movement mailing lists, and MassMessage groups. A similar message was sent by Nicole Ebber to organized groups and their mailing lists on 15 of March 2017. This version of the message is available for translation and documentation purposes
Dear Wikimedians/Wikipedians:
Today we are starting a broad discussion to define Wikimedia's future role in the world and develop a collaborative strategy to fulfill that role. You are warmly invited to join the conversation.
There are many ways to participate, by joining an existing conversation or starting your own:
Track A (organized groups): Discussions with your affiliate, committee or other organized group (these are groups that support the Wikimedia movement).
Track B (individual contributors): On Meta or your local language or project wiki.
This is the first of three conversations, and it will run between now and April 15. The purpose of cycle 1 is to discuss the future of the movement and generate major themes around potential directions. What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?
We welcome you, as we create this conversation together, and look forward to broad and diverse participation from all parts of our movement.
- Find out more about the movement strategy process
- Learn more about volunteering to be a Discussion Coordinator
Sincerely,
Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams05:09, 18 Maris 2017 (UTC)
Please accept our apologies for cross-posting this message. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.
On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections.
The Board of Trustees (Board) is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long-term sustainability of the Wikimedia Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. More information about this role can be found on Meta-Wiki. Please read the letter from the Board of Trustees calling for candidates.
The candidacy submission phase will last from April 7 (00:00 UTC) to April 20 (23:59 UTC).
We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates from April 7 to April 20. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki.
Once the questions submission period has ended on April 20, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to beginning on April 21.
The goal of this process is to fill the three community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The election results will be used by the Board itself to select its new members.
The full schedule for the Board elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.
- April 7 (00:00 UTC) – April 20 (23:59 UTC) – Board nominations
- April 7 – April 20 – Board candidates questions submission period
- April 21 – April 30 – Board candidates answer questions
- May 1 – May 14 – Board voting period
- May 15–19 – Board vote checking
- May 20 – Board result announcement goal
In addition to the Board elections, we will also soon be holding elections for the following roles:
- Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
- There are five positions being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.
- Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson (Ombuds)
- One position is being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.
Please note that this year the Board of Trustees elections will be held before the FDC and Ombuds elections. Candidates who are not elected to the Board are explicitly permitted and encouraged to submit themselves as candidates to the FDC or Ombuds positions after the results of the Board elections are announced.
More information on this year's elections can be found on Meta-Wiki. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the election talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections
wikimedia.org.
On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation
Read-only mode for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May[gyara masomin]
Read this message in another language • Kuyi ƙoƙarin fassara wannan saƙo zuwa Hausa
The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data center in Dallas. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.
They will switch all traffic to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 19 April 2017. On Wednesday, 3 May 2017, they will switch back to the primary data center.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.
You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.
- You will not be able to edit for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 20 April and Thursday 4 May).
- If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.
Other effects:
- Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
- There will be code freezes for the weeks of 17 April 2017 and 1 May 2017. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.
This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:34, 11 Afirilu 2017 (UTC)
Wikidata description editing in the Wikipedia Android app[gyara masomin]
Wikidata description editing is a new experiment being rolled out on the Wikipedia app for Android. While this primarily impacts Wikidata, the changes are also addressing a concern about the mobile versions of Wikipedia, so that mobile users will be able to edit directly the descriptions shown under the title of the page and in the search results.
We began by rolling out this feature several weeks ago to a pilot group of Wikipedias (Russian, Hebrew, and Catalan), and have seen very positive results including numerous quality contributions in the form of new and updated descriptions, and a low rate of vandalism.
We are now ready for the next phase of rolling out this feature, which is to enable it in a few days for all Wikipedias except the top ten by usage within the app (i.e. except English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Turkish, and Chinese). We will enable the feature for those languages instead at some point in the future, as we closely monitor user engagement with our expanded set of pilot communities. As always, if have any concerns, please reach out to us on wiki at the talk page for this project or by email at reading@wikimedia.org. Thanks!
-DBrant (WMF) 08:41, 14 Afirilu 2017 (UTC)
New Page previews feature[gyara masomin]
New Page previews feature
Read this message in another language • Kuyi ƙoƙarin fassara wannan saƙo zuwa Hausa
Hello,
The Reading web team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been working to enable Page previews, a beta feature known previously as Hovercards, as opt-in behavior for logged-in users and the default behavior for logged-out users across Wikipedia projects. Page previews provide a preview of any linked article, giving readers a quick understanding of a related article without leaving the current page. For this project, we are expecting to collect feedback over the following few weeks and tentatively enable the feature in early May, 2017.
A quick note on the implementation:
- For logged-in users who are not currently testing out the beta feature, Page previews will be off by default. Users may turn them on from their user preferences page.
- For logged-out users, the feature will be on by default. Users may disable it at any time by selecting the setting cog available in each preview.
- For users of the Navigation popups gadget, you will not be able to turn on the Page previews feature while using navigational popups. If you would like to try out the Page preview feature, make sure to first turn Navigation popups off prior to turning Page previews on.
You can read more about the feature and the tests we used to evaluate performance, try it out by enabling it from the beta features page, and leave feedback or questions on the talk page.
Thank you, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:52, 19 Afirilu 2017 (UTC)
New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2017)[gyara masomin]
Hello Wikimedians!
The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access, accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:
- American Psychiatric Association – Psychiatry books and journals
- Bloomsbury – Who's Who, Drama Online, Berg Fashion Library, and Whitaker's
- Gaudeamus – Finnish humanities and social sciences
- Ympäristö-lehti – The Finnish Environment Institute's Ympäristö-lehti magazine
Expansions
- Gale – Biography In Context database added
- Adam Matthew – all 53 databases now available
Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, EBSCO, Taylor & Francis and Newspaperarchive.com.
Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 18:52, 2 Mayu 2017 (UTC)
- You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Aaron.
- This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.
Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2017 elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.
The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 1 to 23:59 UTC May 14. Click here to vote. More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2017 Board of Trustees election page on Meta-Wiki.
On behalf of the Elections Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation
19:14, 3 Mayu 2017 (UTC)
Beta Feature Two Column Edit Conflict View[gyara masomin]
Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:42, 8 Mayu 2017 (UTC)
Editing News #1—2017[gyara masomin]
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Did you know that you can review your changes visually?
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[gyara masomin]
- 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. [1]
- 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. [2] - 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. [3]
- 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. [4]
- The Rukunoni item has been moved to the top of the Zaɓuɓɓukan shafi menu (from clicking on the "hamburger" icon) for quicker access. [5] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [6]
- You can now create
<chem>tags (sometimes used as<ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [7] - Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [8]
- The Hali na musamman menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [9]
- 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. [10]
- There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations:
Control+Shift+Kon a PC, orCommand+Shift+Kon a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which isControl+KorCommand+Krespectively. [11]
Future changes[gyara masomin]
- 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. [12] - The kind of button used to Sufar rigya-gani, Nuna sauye-sauye, 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=1to 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. [13] - 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. [14]
- 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!
18:07, 12 Mayu 2017 (UTC)
RevisionSlider[gyara masomin]
Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:44, 16 Mayu 2017 (UTC)
Join the next cycle of Wikimedia movement strategy discussions (underway until June 12)[gyara masomin]
The Wikimedia movement strategy core team and working groups have completed reviewing the more than 1800 thematic statements we received from the first discussion. They have identified 5 themes that were consistent across all the conversations - each with their own set of sub-themes. These are not the final themes, just an initial working draft of the core concepts.
You are invited to join the online and offline discussions taking place on these 5 themes. This round of discussions will take place between now and June 12th. You can discuss as many as you like; we ask you to participate in the ones that are most (or least) important to you.
Here are the five themes, each has a page on Meta-Wiki with more information about the theme and how to participate in that theme's discussion:
- Healthy, Inclusive Communities
- The Augmented Age
- A Truly Global Movement
- The Most Respected Source of Knowledge
- Engaging in the Knowledge Ecosystem
On the movement strategy portal on Meta-Wiki, you can find more information about each of these themes, their discussions, and how to participate.
Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation • Kuyi ƙoƙarin fassara wannan saƙo zuwa Hausa • Get help21:09, 16 Mayu 2017 (UTC)
m:Requests for comment/Global centralnotice for the blockade of the Turkish government[gyara masomin]
Hi, you are invited to participate in the discussion on the proposal to make a banner through m: centralnotice to inform more people around the world about what the Turkish government has done about Wikipedia, ie all the language versions of Wikipedia are You are obscured, so in Turkey it is impossible to view the * .wikipedia.org site. To hope that the Turkish government will remove the block, it is necessary to raise awareness of this fact around the world because it is important to succeed in this mission because Wikipedia can not be seen in Turkey. With this message also for those interested, I invite him to sign the Wikimedian appeal.
If you have any questions or questions do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks best regards. --Samuele2002 (Talk!) 17:40, 23 Mayu 2017 (UTC)
On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, we are pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson elections. Please read the letter from the Wikimedia Foundation calling for candidates at on the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.
Funds Dissemination Committee
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC elections page.
Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson
The Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC Ombudsperson elections page.
The candidacy submission phase will last until May 28 (23:59 UTC).
We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates until May 28. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki. Once the questions submission period has ended on May 28, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to.
The goal of this process is to fill the five community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and the community-selected ombudsperson. The election results will be used by the Board itself to make the appointments.
The full schedule for the FDC elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.
- May 15 (00:00 UTC) – May 28 (23:59 UTC) – Nominations
- May 15 – May 28 – Candidates questions submission period
- May 29 – June 2 – Candidates answer questions
- June 3 – June 11 – Voting period
- June 12–14 – Vote checking
- June 15 – Goal date for announcing election results
More information on this year's elections can be found at the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.
Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-electionswikimedia.org.
On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation
21:05, 23 Mayu 2017 (UTC)