User talk:Tommyang/Archives/2016/3

Tech News: 2016-10

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

Recent changes

• Files on Wikimedia Commons can now be 2 GB big. The old limit was 1 GB. [1]
• Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [2]
• The Wikimedia memory cache servers in the Eqiad cluster have now been upgraded to Debian 8 (Jessie). Some users might have had to log in again because of this. [3]
• It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [4]
• Bare attributes in tags now parse according to the HTML5 specifications. <pages from= to= section=1> will parse as <pages from="to=" section="1"> instead of <pages from="" to="" section="1"> as it used to. Please use <pages from="" to="" section=1> or <pages section=1> instead. This is mostly likely to affect pages on Wikisource projects. [5]

Problems

• Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [6]
• The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [7]
• The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [8]
• You may see falsely formatted edit links on both mobile and desktop devices. Mobile devices can also show incorrect formatted table of contents. This should be fixed soon. [9]
• Templates using TemplateData that were edited with the visual editor might have some problems in wikitext mode. This can be fixed by editing and saving the page by using the visual editor without making any changes. [10]

Changes this week

• Cross-wiki notifications will be enabled as a beta feature on all wikis on 10 March. You will be able to get notifications when something happens on another Wikimedia wiki. [11]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
• Wikivoyages will get the Kartographer extension. Kartographer will allow <mapframe> and <maplink> tags in an article to insert an interactive map and overlay it with different markers. You can add ideas and suggestions to the Maps talk page. If you find any bugs, you can report them in Phabricator. [12]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [13]
• The Wikimedia technical operations team plans to do some server work on 22 March. This could cause some problems, for example make it possible to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a short period of time. The date for this might change. [14]

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

20:24, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #199

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Events/Blogs/Press
  • Oscars 2016: Movies that got the most attention on Wikipedia (followup with most famous cats)
  • Statements per item
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • COOL-WD has been announced to help assess the completeness of various parts of the knowledge base
  • You can apply for a grant as part of the Inspire Campaign around the topic of content review and curation
  • Wikimedia was accepted for Google Summer of Code. If you're a student this can be your chance to work on Wikidata code this summer.
  • A catalog of Uruguayan authors has been added to Mix'n'match
  • Listeria bot now has experimental support for references (example)
  • Self-portraits of women through the ages, powered by Wikidata
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: Québec cultural heritage directory people identifier, grammatical option indicates, Statistics Indonesia language code, Statistics Indonesia ethnicity code, village code of Indonesia, has phoneme, INSEE departement code, INSEE region code, Australian Wetlands Database Directory of Important Wetlands Reference Code, distance from Earth, J. Paul Getty Museum object id, BabelNet id, Baltisches Biographisches Lexikon digital ID, studied by, studies, admissible rule in, UCSC Genome Browser assembly ID, measures, National-Football-Teams.com player ID, number of out of school children, Twitter hashtag, uncertainty corresponds to, Saros cycle of eclipse, contact times of eclipse, repealed by, amended by, ECHA InfoCard ID, global-warming potential
  • Query example: French heads of government by length of service, Metro stations in Paris
• Development
  • Lucie and Charlie handed in their Bachelor theses on the Article Placeholder and Editing Wikidata from Wikipedia. Work on both topics will continue. We'll publish both theses soon. A big congrats to both of them!
  • More work on the first prototype for Commons support (phabricator:T125822)
  • Continued working on improving language support for monolingual text and labels/descriptions/aliases (phabricator:T125066)
  • Conversion of properties from string to external identifier datatype is ongoing
  • Experimenting with putting query results on a map in query.wikidata.org (earthquakes, ski resorts)
• Monthly Tasks
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item
  • Help translate or proofread pages in your own language!
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 20:39, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 02 March 2016

• News and notes: Tretikov resigns, WMF in transition

• Featured content: This week's featured content

• Traffic report: Brawling

• Recent research: Wikipedia and paid labour; Swedish gender gap; how verifiable is "verifiable"?

• Blog: Wikimedia Foundation details requests to alter or remove content in new transparency report

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:00, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 March 2016

• News and notes: Katherine Maher named interim head of WMF; Wales email re-sparks Heilman controversy; draft WMF strategy posted

• In the media: Wikipedian is break-out star of International Women's Day; dinosaur art; Wikipedia's new iOS app and its fight for market share

• Op-ed: A modest proposal for Wikimedia’s future

• Featured content: Five articles, four lists, a topic, and five images were promoted this week.

• Technology report: Wikimedia wikis will temporarily go into read-only mode on several occasions in the coming weeks

• WikiCup report: First round of the WikiCup finishes

• Blog: The new alchemy: turning online harassment into Wikipedia articles on women scientists

• Systemic bias: Revenge of "I can’t believe we didn’t have an article on ..."

• Traffic report: All business like show business

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:53, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-11

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

Recent changes

• The mobile web interface no longer suggests HiDPI thumbnails. This is to take up less bandwidth on slow or expensive connections. [15]
• The search engine on wikipedia.org has been updated. [16]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 22 March and 24 March. This could be postponed to April 18. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. Because of a test, there will also be a couple of minutes where you can't edit the wikis on 15 March starting 07:00 UTC. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
• Administrators and other users with advanced permissions will need to have an 8-byte long passwords. This change takes place on 15 March. Users with too short passwords will be asked to change password the next time they log in. This was decided in a discussion on Meta and is because they can use tools that can hurt the wikis. [17]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [18]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 15 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are backlog and thumb API. The meeting will be on 16 March at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #200

Wikidata weekly summary #186

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Events/Blogs/Press
  • Upcoming: WikiArabia
  • Upcoming: Wikimedia Hackathon
  • Upcoming: digikult.se
  • Wikidata Tour Down-Under
  • Open culture session at Open Belgium
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Coming to Wikimania? Consider submitting a Wikidata related poster, training or discussion! Deadline is on the 20th.
  • Wikidata has passed the milestone of 1 Billion Datapoints (Triples) on Wednesday, 9th of March.
  • Wikidata Graph Builder now supports arbitrary SPARQL queries (example)
  • ESWC 2016 has a new Wikidata Bonus Challenge
  • Playing with Wikidata in BigQuery
  • There will be server maintenance work next week on all Wikimedia servers that will prevent editing for a short time.
  • Wikidata external ID resolver now uses SPARQL and supports lookup of properties via English name (fragment)
  • iSpecies now has multilingual summaries and links to Wikidata (example)
  • Awarder lets you add awards to a biographical item, or use the Wikipedia text of the award to add all recipients]
  • A new version of the Wikidata nuclide chart is online
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: thickness, World Heritage criteria (2005), Valencian Property of Local Relevance id, BookBrainz creator ID, PlayStation ID, ČSFD person ID, Kinopoisk person ID, Kinopoisk film ID, Hockeydb.com player ID, Eurohockey.com player ID, Geni.com profile ID, block size, serial number, Gram staining, culture, maximum gradient, Latvian Olympic Committee athlete ID
  • Query examples: Number of museums by U. S. state on map, Film directors ranked by number of sitelinks multiplied by their number of films, all museums in Barcelona with coordinates, women mushers, women scientists, women artists, air accidents, Twitter accounts of biologists, torture devices, public art in Paris, Locations of Pablo Picasso works
• Development
  • We reduced the loading time of items significantly. Enjoy a faster Wikidata :)

    

    Faster!!!

  • Wikidata Query GUI now supports maps. Check it out with one of the example queries above. (Select Map under Display results menu).
  • Pywikibot now has SPARQL endpoint support.
  • We worked on getting the first pieces of Commons support on a test system. Nothing shiny to see yet but we're making progress.
  • Converted more identifier to the new identifier datatype. Still some to go but 450 properties have been converted by now.
  • Updated the data that generates suggestions when adding a new statement
• Monthly Tasks
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item
  • Help translate or proofread pages in your own language!
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 12:00, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 March 2016

• News and notes: Wikipedia Zero: Orange mobile partnership in Africa ends; the evolution of privacy loss in Wikipedia

• In the media: Wales at SXSW; lawsuit over Wikipedia PR editing

• Op-ed: Hard work needed to address Wikimedia’s leadership challenges

• Discussion report: Is an interim WMF executive director inherently notable?

• Featured content: This week's featured content

• Technology report: Watchlists, watchlists, watchlists!

• Traffic report: Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States

• Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #119: The Foundation and the departure of Lila Tretikov

• Blog: It “revolutionized the way German-speaking people inform themselves about the world”: Fifteen years of the German Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:13, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #201

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Discussions
  • New request for comments: Reforming the property creation process
• Events/Blogs/Press
  • Past: Color History with the Smithsonian!
  • Past: Accessibility Edit-a-Thon at the DC Public Library
  • Past: Admin meetup of the German-language Wikipedia
  • Automatic Extraction of Knowledge from Biomedical literature
  • Identifying problematic statements in Wikidata via multi-level modeling theory
  • Wikidata as a semantic framework for the Gene Wiki initiative
  • Adding disclosures to Wikidata with Bioclipse
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • Dutch language Wikipedia has a consistently low number of articles unconnected to Wikidata: Duplicity statistics for nlwiki
  • MusicBrainz now uses Wikidata to fetch images for their entities
  • The query service is now linked in the sidebar
  • Mix'n'match has new catalogs among them TED speakers
  • Maarten made some reports to make it easier to connect paintings on Wikidata with images on Wikimedia Commons
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: BBFC rating, German tax authority ID, ISO 9362 SWIFT/BIC code, DNF person ID, PASE ID, MetroLyrics ID, MEK ID, Companies House ID, Site of Special Scientific Interest (England) ID, ISO 15924 numeric code, Hungarian company ID, SHOWA ID, formatterURL for Wikidata ID, World Heritage criteria (2005), TED talk ID, TED topic ID, TED speaker ID
  • Query examples: distribution of public art by place
• Development
  • The query service now has Ctrl+enter as a shortcut to run a query
  • Started working on improving input for geocoordinates and dates (changing the advanced settings)
  • Worked on database performance improvements for the client (Wikipedia and co) (phabricator:T125838)
  • Experimenting with arbitrary access for Wikimedia Commons on http://commons.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org
  • Converted more identifiers from string datatype to identifier datatype
  • Worked on improved localization of dates that are very far in the past or future (phabricator:T127820)
  • Fixed undo actions going through abuse filter (phabricator:T126861)
  • Fixed issues in the query service with Internet Explorer 11
  • Improved query service display on small screens
  • Improved autocompletion in the query service
  • Fixed a bug with an add button for qualifiers being shown when it shouldn't (phabricator:T128317)
  • Further work on Wikimedia Commons support (Special Pages, API)
  • You can now add a default view to a query like here. This then shows the defined view (map, table, image grid) when executing the query.
• Monthly Tasks
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item
  • Help translate or proofread pages in your own language!
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 11:50, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-12

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

Problems

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. The Wikimedia Technology department planned to test it this week. This will take place the week of April 18 instead. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
• In Firefox, the visual editor would sometimes just jump down to the bottom of the page when you double-clicked on a table cell. This has now been fixed. [19]

Changes this week

• It will now be easier to list IP addresses that don't have to solve CAPTCHAs. [20]
• You will now be able to mark Echo notifications as unread. [21]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. This will happen on May 2. [22]

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

16:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 March 2016

• Interview: Exclusive: interview with interim ED Katherine Maher

• News and notes: Lila Tretikov a Young Global Leader; Wikipediocracy blog post sparks indefinite blocks

• In the media: Angolan file sharers cause trouble for Wikipedia Zero; the 3D printer edit war; a culture based on change and turmoil

• Traffic report: Be weary on the Ides of March

• Editorial: "God damn it, you've got to be kind."

• Featured content: Watch out! A slave trader, a live mascot and a crested serpent awaits!

• Arbitration report: Palestine-Israel article 3 case amended

• Wikipedia Weekly: Podcast #120: Status of Wikimania 2016

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:25, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #202

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.

• Events/Blogs/Press
  • Past: Wikidata intro at the École de Bibliothécaires Documentalistes (slides)
  • Upcoming: IRC office hour
  • Upcoming: MediaWiki hackathon
  • Migrating pKa data from DrugMet to Wikidata
• Other Noteworthy Stuff
  • A little Easter present for the WikiVerse from Magnus
  • The page for institutions, companies, etc who want to donate data to Wikidata has been reworked and expanded by John and Jens
  • WMDE is looking for a product management intern to work with Lydia
  • Arbitrary access for Commons is getting ready and needs testing
• Did you know?
  • Newest properties: next crossing downstream, next crossing upstream, SOATO ID, Google Knowledge Graph identifier, has parts of the class, discontinued date, variability of property value, corresponding template, Datahub page, alcohol by volume, units sold, tier 1 capital ratio (CETI), consumption rate per capita, target interest rate, topographic prominence, topographic isolation, Scoville grade, EU transparency register ID, FIFA World Ranking, Estyn ID, partnership with, CRICOS Provider Code, interested in, Cycling Quotient url (mens team), Cycling Quotient identifier (races for men), source of material, mirTarBase ID, mean lifetime, Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, FedCup player ID, Davis Cup player ID, Swimrankings.net swimmer ID, Filmportal ID, TV.com ID, RARS rating, Minkultury Film ID, number of parts of a work of art, model, geography, place of detention, Turner Classic Movies film ID, cost of damage
  • Query examples: Library and Information Science journals, number of statements backed by a reference with a DOI
• Development
  • You see that you can now show labels/descriptions/aliases for all languages that have been added to an item by clicking "more languages"
  • Preparation for arbitrary access on Commons
  • Getting ready for the hackathon in Israel
  • More work on making the extended input for geocoordinates and dates less complicated to understand
  • Worked on making scrolling of large items less laggy
  • Made the query service map visualization no longer show coordinates that are not on earth
  • Fixed a bug where the removal of a sitelink couldn't be done (phabricator:T129450)
  • Query service no longer restores previous query as requested
  • Fixed a bug where adding a statement would leave a stray "add qualifier" link (phabricator:T128317)
• Monthly Tasks
  • Hack on one of these.
  • Help develop the next summary here!
  • Contribute to a Showcase item
  • Help translate or proofread pages in your own language!
  • Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.

Read the full report · Unsubscribe · Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 16:21, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-13

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

Recent changes

• MediaWiki now supports the semantic web standards of Microdata and RDFa 1.0. On Wikimedia projects, a configuration change must be requested in order to enable RDFa 1.0. [23] [24]

Problems

• Adding references with Citoid was broken for approximately 6 hours on 24 March. This was fixed. [25]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
• You will be able to remove the header and footer style from User language (babel) boxes. This will make it easier to use them with other userboxes. [26]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with part of the Architecture committee, which will discuss a few topics. The meeting will be on 30 March at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• The Architecture committee has sent a summary of new and ongoing RFC discussions.

Future changes

• Commons will soon have improved access to Wikidata's data. It will then be possible to access data about any concept on any page on Commons. Assistance with testing this on the beta cluster is appreciated. [27]
• Wikibits.js will not be loaded by default anymore starting April 2016. Gadget and script authors should have already updated their code since the previous announcements, but there is another migration path available if needed. See wikitech-l for details.

Corrections

• Last week Tech News said the new MediaWiki version would come to wikis from 21 March to 23 March. The right dates were 22 March to 24 March.

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

19:43, 28 March 2016 (UTC)