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VisualEditor News #6—2015

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Did you know?

A new, simpler system for editing will offer a single Edit button. Once the page has opened, you can switch back and forth between visual and wikitext editing.

If you prefer having separate edit buttons, then you can set that option in your preferences, either in a pop-up dialog the next time you open the visual editor, or by going to Special:Preferences and choosing the setting that you want:

The current plan is for the default setting to have the Edit button open the editing environment you used most recently.

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 fixed many bugs and expanded the mathematics formula tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages such as Japanese and Arabic, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements

You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing.

The LaTeX mathematics formula editor has been significantly expanded. (T118616) You can see the formula as you change the LaTeX code. You can click buttons to insert the correct LaTeX code for many symbols.

Future changes

The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, like the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as a cookie for logged-out users and as an account preference for logged-in editors. Logged-in editors will be able to set a default editor in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences in the drop-down menu about "Editing mode:".

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the following Wikipedias in early 2016: Amharic, Buginese, Min Dong, Cree, Manx, Hakka, Armenian, Georgian, Pontic, Serbo-Croatian, Tigrinya, Mingrelian, Zhuang, and Min Nan. (T116523) Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. The developers would like to know how well it works. Please tell them what kind of computer, web browser, and keyboard you are using.

In 2016, the feedback pages for the visual editor on many Wikipedias will be redirected to mediawiki.org. (T92661)

Testing opportunities

• Please try the new system for the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You can edit while logged out to see how it works for logged-out editors, or you can create a separate account to be able to set your account's preferences. Please share your thoughts about the single edit tab system at the feedback topic on mediawiki.org or sign up for formal user research (type "single edit tab" in the question about other areas you're interested in). The new system has not been finalized, and your feedback can affect the outcome. The team particularly wants your thoughts about the options in Special:Preferences. The current choices in Special:Preferences are:
  • Remember my last editor,
  • Always give me the visual editor if possible, 
  • Always give me the source editor, and 
  • Show me both editor tabs.  (This is the current state for people using the visual editor. None of these options will be visible if you have disabled the visual editor in your preferences at that wiki.)
• Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).

If you aren't reading this in your favorite 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!

Whatamidoing (WMF), 00:54, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Look what you started....

See here ;) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:27, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Cool. Andrewa (talk) 11:33, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #1—2016

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Did you know?

Among experienced editors, the visual editor's table editing is one of the most popular features.

If you select the top of a column or the end of a row, you can quickly insert and remove columns and rows.

Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.

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 fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.

Recent changes

You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.

Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.

You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.

The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.

Future changes

The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:

• Remember my last editor,
• Always give me the visual editor if possible,
• Always give me the source editor, and
• Show me both editor tabs.  (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)

The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers would like to know how well the visual editor works in your language. They particularly want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect the following languages: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic and others.

Let's work together

• Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
• Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Language engineer David Chan needs help from people who often type in these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Report your results on wiki (Korean – Japanese – all languages).
• Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Join the Tech Talk about "Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology behind it" with Sebastian Karcher on 29 February 2016.

If you aren't reading this in your favorite 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. Thanks!

– Whatamidoing (WMF) 17:46, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Club Penguin

Could you add project super secret on Club Penguin page because its launching this year --109.144.187.43 (talk) 20:36, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice

How to switch between editing environments

Click the [[ ]] to switch to the wikitext editor.

Click the pencil icon to switch to the visual editor.

The editing interface will be changed soon. When that happens, editors who currently see two editing tabs – "Edit" and "Edit source" – will start seeing one edit tab instead. The single edit tab has been popular at other Wikipedias. When this is deployed here, you may be offered the opportunity to choose your preferred appearance and behavior the next time you click the Edit button. You will also be able to change your settings in the Editing section of Special:Preferences.

You can choose one or two edit tabs. If you chose one edit tab, then you can switch between the two editing environments by clicking the buttons in the toolbar (shown in the screenshots). See Help:VisualEditor/User guide#Switching between the visual and wikitext editors for more information and screenshots.

There is more information about this interface change at mw:VisualEditor/Single edit tab. If you have questions, suggestions, or problems to report, then please leave a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.

Whatamidoing (WMF) 19:22, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Requested move: George Shelley

I wasn't able to respond to your comments at Talk:George Shelley (singer)#Requested move 5 March 2016 before the discussion was closed, so I thought I'd comment here. Per WP:PTOPIC, the primary topic is typically determined by two factors: usage and long-term significance. Usage, in this case, is clearly in the singer's favor. For comparison sake, the other two topics combined total 6 views per day, on average, as opposed to the singer's 250/day. Long-term significance, on the other hand, is more debatable as you've aptly pointed out. My comments in the discussion were supported entirely by one major factor and possibly by the other with additional discussion; though both are not always required in order to determine the primary topic. A good case can be made that the singer establishes enough support under the guideline to be considered the primary topic. Obviously, consensus has formed a different decision here, even if it was only from a handful of editors.

Also to clarify, I wasn't suggesting that the other two competing topics weren't notable. I was merely pointing out that their limited notability (and coverage in reliable sources) would make a good case to have one or both merged into another relevant article as opposed to having a standalone article for each. Yes, I agree that is a debate more appropriate for an AfD discussion. However, noting the limited coverage is important in determining the primary topic, and therefore is relevant to move discussions. Your google search link doesn't really change that mindset, as quite a few of the hits overlap one another. For example, a single book by George Shelley will result in dozens if not hundreds of hits at various online retail outlets. If you look closely, there isn't much in the way of genuine coverage on the author, and in fact many of the hits I combed through were regurgitations of the content that appears on Wikipedia.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that I did not initiate the move, nor did I know who this singer was prior to seeing the move request. It's also not something worth dwelling on for me, but I didn't want to leave you hanging awaiting a response. --GoneIn60 (talk) 23:26, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid I disagree with much of this. You did for example suggest merging the articles. Why was this, if not for a lack of notability? They're both good stubs apart from that possibility. And I think you're misquoting me so far as the two criteria go. The usage criterion is one of likelihood of searching, not simply of page stats. Page stats are easily obtained. Their relevance is not nearly so clear. See User:Andrewa/The Problem With Page Views.

I'm sure the issues you raised will continue to be contentious. You might like to comment at User talk:Andrewa/The Problem With Page Views. Andrewa (talk) 21:39, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Talk:The Godfather (wrestler)

I was gonna vote "oppose" until you closed it. How else am I gonna contest this besides reviewing the closure? Also, there is a load of WWF stuff. --George Ho (talk) 11:32, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

@George Ho: Well, it's gone through the process. It was in the backlog. It could have been closed more than 24 hours before I did it, and there was no case for closing it other than as move, IMO.

You could make a case here for opposing the move, I suppose. I'd be interested. But it would need to be very persuasive for me to support reversing the move. What harm has it done? The damage is, at worst, trivial and debatable, and more likely none at all. I think the best way of improving Wikipedia now is for us all to move on.

I don't think a move review would succeed. The fact that you wanted to oppose the move but didn't get around to it is not relevant IMO. But feel free to try. If you do raise it at MR, please link there to this discussion, to save me needing to restate my position.

Yes, there's lots of WWF stuff, with similar arguments. Several I've looked at seem justified (including this one). None are particularly critical IMO, but it's not my job as admin to evaluate that. It's my job to apply the criteria for closing the MR, and close it if I can. See WP:correct for some of my thinking on this.

But thanks for your input. Happy to answer further questions.

Just for clarity:

1. I suggest you don't contest this, as there's no obvious way to do so constructively.

2. Yes, there's a lot of WWF stuff. It needs to be processed, but best not to spend unnecessary time on it IMO.

Happy to discuss further. Andrewa (talk) 16:17, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm close to filing a review, but I can't until I could no longer persuade you. LM2000 and Feedback are very dedicated WWE/WWF fans apparently and frequented at related RM discussions. A move based on just one vote is not enough. I even opposed the move at Talk:John Tenta because the subject, like Charles Wright, had multiple stage names. I relisted the discussion because there is not enough discussion. --George Ho (talk) 18:50, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

I see. Or at least I think I do. You say A move based on just one vote is not enough. I take this to mean that, if there's no opposition and only one support, you don't think the move should go ahead? And logically, if there's no opposition but no votes either way, it shouldn't go ahead either?

That's certainly not the way I and some other admins have interpreted the closing instructions. If there's no discussion at all, and the move seems consistent with Wikipedia practice, polity and policy, I do it. If there's only one vote and it's support, even more so. I have objected myself to closes on no discussion at all where, for example, the official name was the entire rationale for the move request, but some admins are happy to move even in that event. I've never taken it to MR and think it's a grey area, but personally I draw the line there. There needs to be some valid rationale, IMO.

If there's any controversy, I tend to be a bit more cautious and see whether I can cast a vote myself to work towards a consensus, as in the current discussion at Talk:Maurice Vachon, rather than casting what might be seen as a supervote in closing.

If you think that this approach should be tested, then MR is a good first port of call. I still don't think it has a snowball's, but if you do then go ahead by all means. It would clarify things a great deal if the move were to be overturned on the grounds of insufficient discussion, as you seem to be suggesting. Just to repeat, I don't think that will happen. I could be wrong.

On the other hand, if you can persuade @LM2000: to reverse their vote to oppose, then I'd be happy to reopen the RM to allow them to do so. That's probably a better course IMO, in that it doesn't waste time at MR. Andrewa (talk) 21:27, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Never mind. I checked sources, and the sources prominently used The Godfather. --George Ho (talk) 02:05, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm changing my mind again. But I need a response from LM2000. However, how long shall I wait his answer? George Ho (talk) 21:18, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I still support the move but I also think it may be for the best to reopen discussion to get more input. There have been quite a few wrestling RMs lately, the one at Talk:Ernie Roth did not get any input until it had been relisted. Perhaps with more feedback the results at this RM will be different.LM2000 (talk) 21:33, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the input.

I'm of two minds now on this. You had ample time to relist, and George had ample time to oppose and/or relist. George has given no reason for opposing the move, nor any valid reason for wanting the close overturned.

Admins are volunteers, and we are dealing with a backlog in the RM queue. This was in the backlog when I closed it... it could in my opinion have been closed as move more than 24 hours before I did, quite validly, if I and others who do this work had more time to attend to the queue. To reopen the move is more work than closing it was, and then it needs to be closed again in due course. And meantime there is still a backlog of other RMs needing action.

I've been very patient I think, but there comes a time to say, are you and George just wasting my time? This will have no chance at MR unless George has some justification that he has yet to reveal. There's no reason to think it will have any chance of being overturned if reopened at RM, again unless George has new evidence, it will probably just take longer, and take more time of admins and other volunteers who lurk on RM.

So I'm inclined now to say to both you and George, go to MR if you wish, or open a new RM, and present any new arguments or evidence you have there in either case. But please link to this discussion if you do, and note that (depending on these new arguments and evidence if any) I may well express an opinion there in either case that you are just wasting everyone's time... including your own.

Am I being unfair? Andrewa (talk) 23:09, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

You're not being unfair and I ultimately agree with the move. Should someone vehemently disagree with it then they can start another discussion but I think the results of that (presumably with more input) will only validate the move.LM2000 (talk) 05:45, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2016

Editing News #2—2016 Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

It's quick and easy to insert a references list.

Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).

If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references.

Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.

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 fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.

Recent changes

The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.

The single edit tab feature combines the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.

Future changes

The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.

The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

• Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.
• Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Watch the Tech Talk by Sebastian Karcher for more information.

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!

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 21:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for August 2

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Parody generator, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Chatbot. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:11, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Please claim your upload(s): File:Aadoublejackplug.jpg

Hi, This image was seemingly uploaded prior to current image polices, Thank you.

However, as part of ongoing efforts to ensure all media on English Wikipedia is correctly licensed and attributed it would be appreciated if you were able to confirm, that it was your own work, by marking it as {{own}}, amending the {{information}} added by a third party, and by changing the license to an appropriate "self" variant. You can also add |claimed=yes to the {{Media by uploader}} or {{Presumed self}} tag(s) if present to indicate that you've acknowledged the image, and license shown (and updated the {{information}} where appropriate).

This will assist those reviewing the many many "free" images on commons that have not yet been transferred to Commons. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 09:51, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Bathurst or Dubbo meetup

User:Jb-adder, User:Pyfan, User:Wayne Connor from Category:Wikipedians in the Central West, New South Wales (Wayne and Johannsenn I see from Dubbo)

User:BotheredByBees, User:BruMedNick, User:Cartman02au and User:Mrpulley from Category:Wikipedians in Bathurst, New South Wales

User:Mattinbgn, User:Cartman02au, and User:Bidgee who are mentioned at Wikipedia:Meetup/Bathurst (two at least I see being from Bathurst)

Would anyone be interested in a Central West meetup sometime? I'm at Hobbys Yards and quite happy to travel to Dubbo or Bathurst or some other mutually convenient location for one. Andrewa (talk) 04:50, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Valley of the Kings naming conventions

Hi Andrewa, I see you were previously involved in the attempt to set forward naming conventions for tombs in the Valley of the Kings (currently listed using the KV designation). It was difficult to follow exactly where this discussion went as it seems to have left the KV62 talk page and moved to a naming convention page. That page is currently inactive and the Village Pump proposal is inactive. I am interested in re-opening the topic for discussion and have started a new threat on the KV62 talk page. I'd appreciate your input either in that discussion or in providing further information on where that discussion lead and how I can contribute further. Thank you. Scoundr3l (talk) 03:34, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Dropping You a Line

Hello, Andrewa. You told me to drop you a line. So here it is. I do sign in the four-tilde way. Why wouldn't I? Anyway, I do not need your help. I know how to edit and contribute. I created my BDE1982 profile by accident. However, as I told you in the talk page for New York—yes, New York, not any of its redirects—this profile, bde1982, is my primary profile and the one I plan to use from now on. I am signing off now, with four tildes.—Bde1982 22:18, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Then there is something very strange going on, user:bde1982. Your sig above isn't formatted as it should be. Andrewa (talk) 22:55, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Okay. I will try again.—Bde1982 (talk) 23:07, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Then that is even stranger. It worked that time. What did you do differently? Andrewa (talk) 23:13, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I went in my preferences and unchecked the checkbox under "Signatures".—Bde1982 (talk) 23:16, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

OK. You've been overriding the standard signature with one that doesn't contain the expected links. Maybe we should update wp:sign to tell people not to do that.

wp:sign#Customizing how everyone sees your signature does read in part When customizing your signature, please keep the following in mind: A customised signature should make it easy to identify the username, to visit the user's talk-page, and preferably user page... (my emphasis). But you obviously either didn't read that, or didn't understand it. It's a bit buried and obscure.

How could we make it clearer? Andrewa (talk) 23:30, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Sydney Meetup next Thursday evening

You are invited to the Sydney Meetup!

• Thursday 15 September at 6PM at Petersham Bowling Club.

  (a) accessible by train - Petersham station

  (b) has some nice draught beers

  (c) has some nice food

  (d) has some quiet areas outside and inside...so people can chat without getting a hoarse voice by shouting over 100 decibels of muzak etc.

  (e) accessible by car with straightforward parking nearby

This message was delivered to the invitation list - to opt out of future invitations please remove your name from the list. 04:04, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for September 12

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Union Church (Australia), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Trust. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:34, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection

Hello, Andrewa. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.

In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:

• Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
• A bot will post a notification at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard of each use. MusikBot currently does this by updating a report, which is transcluded onto the noticeboard.

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:47, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Editing News #3—2016

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscribe or unsubscribe on the English Wikipedia

Did you know?

Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?

Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.

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 mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.

Recent changes

• You can now set text as small or big.[1]
• Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[2] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[3]
• Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[4]
• At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department are adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more on MediaWiki.org.[5]
• The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[6] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
• Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[7]

Future changes

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.

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! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Move

Hi, I would like to move Medicinal radiocompounds to radiopharmaceutical, but it is not possible via my current permissions. Would you please delete radiopharmaceutical to be moving possible? Thank you in advance--Sahehco (talk) 16:55, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Good catch.

I have raised an RM which I hope you will support. I decided to go the formal route. You need do nothing but wait, but a support !vote would be helpful to the closer.

This was borderline, I almost just boldly deleted the target for you, but I close a lot of RMs and was very glad of the practice of opening one for a change, just to keep in touch with the process! Hope that's OK, and feel free to make similar requests here in the future. Andrewa (talk) 19:12, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Bold or RM but not both please

I await your advice, thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:17, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Bering Sea Gold: Under The Ice

An article that you have been involved in editing—Bering Sea Gold: Under The Ice —has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you.  Paine  ^u/c 03:06, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

re: Hurricane Henri

Thanks for taking care of that page move. :) ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 17:50, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Likewise... you did save me time even counting what I spent messaging you, and we are critically short of admins at present... the last thing I raised at wp:ANI got consensus that action was required (from non-admins) but then was auto-archived before any action was taken. No closure, AFAIK no admin even looked at it. Andrewa (talk) 20:33, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copied text listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:Copied text. Since you had some involvement with the Wikipedia:Copied text redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Steel1943 (talk) 04:16, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:32, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

A new user right for New Page Patrollers

Hi Andrewa.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:46, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Andrewa. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. Mdann52 (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Nothing But the Truth

I invite you to an ongoing RM discussion. --George Ho (talk) 05:50, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Arbitrary break....

...is a useless heading when deciding whether one is interested in the discussion from ones watchlist and whether it is worth loading the full page. My edit just made it clear that these were all subsections of a parent article. Sorry that that caused confusion for you, but you are clearly not watching the page. It has multiple threads and rapid contributions. People don't necessarily want to read them all. There are other things to do. SpinningSpark 21:05, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Exactly. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss this.

These headings are an excellent idea. I often use them, in fact I was recently criticised for using too many of them... personally it seems like every time i look at this discussion Andrewa has added another section to it. [8]

And it's important to choose them well, as you have said. Agree. It's good not to have repeats... and on a page with extensive archives, even more important to avoid headings already in the current archive (to which the discussion will possibly itself be archived).

But changing any heading breaks any links pointing to it, and the change that I criticised did this needlessly, IMO. Andrewa (talk) 21:36, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Kudos

Sir, I am in awe of your measure, tact, and vocabularial (lexiconigraphical?) precision. Effective diplomacy has been of little RL use to me ever since I stopped sharing a room with my older brother, some thirty years ago. But I have a renewed interest in it as pertains to effective arguments at this project. Hopefully I will get to disagree with you on something sometime. Primergrey (talk) 03:44, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

All Four Engines Have Failed listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect All Four Engines Have Failed. Since you had some involvement with the All Four Engines Have Failed redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Richard 09:33, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Reboot

Its probably more productive to be clear on where we actually stand on MoS and what it means as a part of WP culture, than what you really meant by a particular comment and how well that aligns with others' reactions to it. I did some digging around, not even very far back, and was very surprised to see this comment of yours that I missed:

I think this cuts to the very heart of the issue. Any editor is perfectly entitled to argue to reinstate MoS-compliance solely on the basis that it is MoS-compliance. They have a prima facie case, and it's up to those who wish to depart from the MOS to justify the departure.
Similarly, any editor is entitled to boldly correct any non-compliance to the MOS, without discussion. It happens all the time. There's nothing wrong with it. If it's reverted then it should be discussed, but the onus of proof is on those who wish to depart from the MOS.
Am I missing something? Andrewa (talk) 19:12, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

This seems sharply at odds with the comment that lead to the big thread above (and with your take on the matter in the 2014 BIRDCON RfC). It also makes me want to have a completely different kind of conversation with you than the one we've been having, which now seems unnecessarily adversarial and possibly based on misinterpretation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:27, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, User:SMcCandlish, I was rather surprised that the particular post you quote didn't attract more support. How could it be better phrased? Is there anything it says that is even remotely controversial? I made several similar comments to the same effect, but that's one of the better phrased of them, in my opinion. What it leaves out is the link to wp:copyediting which at least one other post included.

Yes, if you interpreted anything else I said as being contrary to that then I think you have misinterpreted what I said. I certainly did not mean to contradict it in any way. You might like to check the essay at wp:correct for another expression of that same principle, which does not specifically mention issues of style but could, and I might add it when I get time.

You might like to also visit user:andrewa/creed for an even more general expression of where I'm coming from. But there's at least one word in it you may not like, search for sometimes for specifics.

You seem to be a very logical person and passionate about Wikipedia.

Andrewa (talk) 18:34, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

I think it was just timing; a lot of people were busy/away, and the discussion in question had been dragging and dragging, getting mired in bickering, so a lot of us stopped reading before that. I just left the discussion entirely, both at WT:MOS and at WT:FAC, for weeks, because it was all just falling on deaf ears, and I was being personally scapegoated and verbally attacked constantly. I wish I had seen that, though. Anyway, I do agree entirely with what you said in that post, and it doesn't seem inadequate in any way. They're all points I make myself frequently (but less concisely). Not sure the copyediting link would add much. The issue is a political one (in the general human sense); it's about control and territory, about local autonomy versus "enterprise-wide" results, or federalism versus states rights, or many other similar forms of centralization versus localized control dispute. These issues often make a lot of a real-world sense in many contexts, but they very rarely do on WP and appear to simply be hominid instinct.

I was once on the other side of this fence. My first year or so here I mostly worked on WP:WikiProject Cue sports, and developed most of its materials, and frequently found myself in conflict with every other process on the system, wanting to do things differently (ran into trouble at MoS, CfD, TfD, the old stubsorting process, you name it). I got over it and figured out that WP's strength is is vastness and inclusiveness, but many never seem to fully get that, and always treat it as something like GeoCities combined with WordPress.com. This insular defiance is usually topical, and naturally coalesces strongest in wikiprojects, but anti-centralization, anti-consistency knots form in various places, e.g. at WT:FAC, and at WT:CITE (which has really run off the rails; a faction there has PoV-forked CITEVAR from ENGVAR, DATEVAR, etc., so badly that the former explicitly permits people to make up fake citation "styles" out of their heads and prevent anyone from changing them without an RfC or some other big consensus process to overrule them. It's a WP:OWN factory. Ironically, many of the people in favor of this nonsense are the same ones that quite falsely accuse MoS of just making up fake style rules (what really happens is a well attested one that isn't the one they prefer got imported).

Anyway, I suppose I owe you an apology, then, for misinterpreting you and being so insistent about it. I think if I'd seen your above-quoted bit I would have interpreted the post that triggered all this in a very different light. All I had to go on at the time was the BIRDCON business, which was over two years ago. The chain of my reasoning is probably clear by now, but it was missing crucial data. It's a bit embarrassing to have my logic turned sideways by passion (I do have a lot of both, and they can certainly be oil and water at times). Sorry for gnashing my teeth so much. I'll check out your other pages, as linked above.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:17, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

As I have said above, I accept the peace offer without reservation. Let us regard it as rebooted. If you wish to comment further on the questions I've left above, that's fine, but if it will spoil the peace, let them go and so will I. Andrewa (talk) 06:51, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Nah, it's all good. I actually had to trim my response (got too much into analyzing the two ArbCom cases, and the 10-year history behind BIRDCON and the disruption that lead to it, and yadda yadda yadda).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:34, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

One of my most fruitful collaborations over the years has been with the caller of the bush band in which I play mandolin. He's clean shaven short back and sides, I'm bearded and let my hair grow a bit wild when we have an important gig coming up. I'm a former draft resister from the Vietnam War era, he's ten years younger and an officer (now retired) in the most elite unit of the Australian Army Reserve. He played in a brass band when younger and still listens to brass band music for pleasure, I played a home-built 400 watt double stack turned up to max and listen to Green Day and the like. We fight like cat and dog. But when we agree on something, it works. Andrewa (talk) 23:56, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I understand. Have a similar relationship with someone who has turned very conservative politically and we argue almost viciously about such stuff but get along well otherwise, including on tech projects. On WP, the now-retired Noetica and I really got into it once and quit talking to each other for 3 months, then got along famously after letting each other's complaints settle in. Have had a similar though less permanent-feeling truce build with an animal-breeds-focused editor. PS: Hope you're better at mandolin than I am. I was able to do a rudimentary "Greensleeves" and the melodies of a few U2 tracks like "October", but gave up on it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:38, 14 January 2017 (UTC)