A reminder - applications for scholarships for Wikimania 2016 in Esino Lario, Italy, are closing soon! Please get your applications in by January 9th. To apply, visit the page below:
A reminder - applications for scholarships for Wikimania 2016 in Esino Lario, Italy, are closing soon! Please get your applications in by January 9th. To apply, visit the page below:
The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has launched a consultation to help create and prioritize WMF strategy beginning July 2016 and for the 12 to 24 months thereafter. This consultation will be open, on Meta, from 18 January to 26 February, after which the Foundation will also use these ideas to help inform its Annual Plan. (More on our timeline can be found on that Meta page.)
Apologies for English, where this is posted on a non-English project. We thought it was more important to get the consultation translated as much as possible, and good headway has been made there in some languages. There is still much to do, however! We created m:2016 Strategy/Translations to try to help coordinate what needs translation and what progress is being made. :)
If you have questions, please reach out to me on my talk page or on the strategy consultation's talk page or by email to mdennis@wikimedia.org.
The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has launched a consultation to help create and prioritize WMF strategy beginning July 2016 and for the 12 to 24 months thereafter. This consultation will be open, on Meta, from 18 January to 26 February, after which the Foundation will also use these ideas to help inform its Annual Plan. (More on our timeline can be found on that Meta page.)
Apologies for English, where this is posted on a non-English project. We thought it was more important to get the consultation translated as much as possible, and good headway has been made there in some languages. There is still much to do, however! We created m:2016 Strategy/Translations to try to help coordinate what needs translation and what progress is being made. :)
If you have questions, please reach out to me on my talk page or on the strategy consultation's talk page or by email to mdennis@wikimedia.org.
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.
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.
The single edit tab project will combine the "Keisti" and "Redaguoti vikitekstą" tabs into a single "Keisti" tab.
This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Keisti" 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 Redagavimas tab of Special:Preferences:
Prisiminti mano paskutinį redaktorių,
Visada pateikti vizualų redaktorių, jeigu įmanoma,
Visada pateikti kodo redaktorių, and
Rodyti man abi redaktoriaus korteles. (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.
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? Does typing in these languages feels natural in the visual editor? Language engineer David Chan needs to know. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org.
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. Ačiū!
Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) program is accepting proposals until April 12th to fund new tools, research, outreach efforts, and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers.
Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), IEGs can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.
The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its newest data center in Dallas.
This will make sure 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 new data center on Tuesday, 19 April.
On Thursday, 21 April, 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 15 to 30 minutes on Tuesday, 19 April and Thursday, 21 April, starting at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT).
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 a code freeze for the week of 18 April.
No non-essential code deployments will take place.
Compact Language Links has been available as a beta-feature on all Wikimedia wikis since 2014. With compact language links enabled, users are shown a much shorter list of languages on the interlanguage link section of an article (see image). Based on several factors, this shorter list of languages is expected to be more relevant for them and valuable for finding similar content in a language known to them. More information about compact language links can be found in the documentation.
From today onwards, compact language links has been enabled as the default listing of interlanguage links on this wiki. Using the button at the bottom, you will be able to see a longer list of all the languages the article has been written in. The setting for this compact list can be changed by using the checkbox under User Preferences -> Appearance -> Languages
The compact language links feature has been tested extensively by the Wikimedia Language team, which developed it. However, in case there are any problems or other feedback please let us know on the project talk page or on this discussion thread. It is to be noted that on some wikis the presence of an existing older gadget that was used for a similar purpose may cause an interference for compact language list. We would like to bring this to the attention of the admins of this wiki. Full details are on this phabricator ticket (in English).
Due to the large scale enablement of this feature, we have had to use MassMessage for this announcement and as a result it is only written in English. We will really appreciate if this message can be translated for other users of this wiki. Thank you. On behalf of the Wikimedia Language team: Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) 07:04, 24 birželio 2016 (UTC)[atsakyti]
Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Įterpti" menu and click the "Nuorodų sąrašas" 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 "Įterpti" in the dialog to insert the Nuorodų sąrašas. 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.
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 "Keisti" and "Redaguoti vikitekstą" tabs into a single "Keisti" 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 "Redagavimas" 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.
The "Išsaugoti puslapį" button will say "Išsaugoti puslapį". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
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.
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. Ačiū!
The Editing team is planning to change the name of the “Išsaugoti puslapį” button to “Išsaugoti puslapį” and “Išsaugoti pakeitimus”. “Išsaugoti puslapį” will be used when you create a new page. “Išsaugoti pakeitimus” will be used when you change an existing page. The names will be consistent in all editing environments.[1][2]
This change will probably happen during the week of 30 August 2016. The change will be announced in Tech News when it happens.
If you are fluent in a language other than English, please check the status of translations at translatewiki.net for “Išsaugoti puslapį” and “Išsaugoti pakeitimus”.
The main reason for this change is to avoid confusion for new editors. Repeated user research studies with new editors have shown that some new editors believed that “Išsaugoti puslapį” would save a private copy of a new page in their accounts, rather than permanently publishing their changes on the web. It is important for this part of the user interface to be clear, since it is difficult to remove public information after it is published. We believe that the confusion caused by the “Išsaugoti puslapį” button increases the workload for experienced editors, who have to clean up the information that people unintentionally disclose, and report it to the functionaries and stewards to suppress it. Clarifying what the button does will reduce this problem.
Beyond that, the goal is to make all the wikis and languages more consistent, and some wikis made this change many years ago. The Legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports this change. Making the edit interface easier to understand will make it easier to handle licensing and privacy questions that may arise.
Any help pages or other basic documentation about how to edit pages will also need to be updated, on-wiki and elsewhere. On wiki pages, you can use the wikitext codes {{int:Publishpage}} and {{int:Publishchanges}} to display the new labels in the user's preferred language. For the language settings in your account preferences, these wikitext codes produce “Išsaugoti puslapį” and “Išsaugoti pakeitimus”.
Please share this news with community members who teach new editors and with others who may be interested.
From September 13th on, RevisionSlider will be available as a beta feature in your wiki. The RevisionSlider adds a slider view to the diff page, so that you can easily move between revisions. The feature fulfills a wish from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well in your work!
Greetings! The Project Grants program is currently accepting proposals for funding. There is just over a week left to submit before the October 11 deadline. If you have ideas for software, offline outreach, research, online community organizing, or other projects that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers, start your proposal today! Please encourage others who have great ideas to apply as well. Support is available if you want help turning your idea into a grant request.
Hello! I'm writing from the Wikimedia Foundation to invite you to give your feedback on a proposed move from CC BY-SA 3.0 to a CC BY-SA 4.0 license across all Wikimedia projects. The consultation will run from October 5 to November 8, and we hope to receive a wide range of viewpoints and opinions. Please, if you are interested, take part in the discussion on Meta-Wiki.
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.
Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[4] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[5]
Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[6]
At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department is adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more at mediawiki.org.[7]
The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[8] In the future, the "Išsaugoti puslapį" button will say "Išsaugoti puslapį". 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.[9]
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.
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. Ačiū!
We are having a problem with attackers taking over wiki accounts with privileged user rights (for example, admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, checkusers). It appears that this may be because of weak or reused passwords.
Community members are working along with members of multiple teams at the Wikimedia Foundation to address this issue.
In the meantime, we ask that everyone takes a look at the passwords they have chosen for their wiki accounts. If you know that you've chosen a weak password, or if you've chosen a password that you are using somewhere else, please change those passwords.
We in the Wikimedia Foundation's Editing department are responsible for making editing better for all our editors, new and experienced alike. We've been slowly improving the visual editor based on feedback, user tests, and feature requests. However, that doesn't work for all our user needs: whether you need to edit a wikitext talk page, create a template, or fix some broken reference syntax, sometimes you need to use wikitext, and many experienced editors prefer it.
Consequently, we've planned a "wikitext mode" for the visual editor for a long time. It provides as much of the visual editor's features as possible, for those times that you need or want wikitext. It has the same user interface as the visual editor, including the same toolbar across the top with the same buttons. It provides access to the citoid service for formatting citations, integrated search options for inserting images, and the ability to add new templates in a simple dialog. Like in the visual editor, if you paste in formatted text copied from another page, then formatting (such as bolding) will automatically be converted into wikitext.
All wikis now have access to this mode as a Beta Feature. When enabled, it replaces your existing wikitext editor everywhere. If you don't like it, you can reverse this at any time by turning off the Beta Feature in your preferences. We don't want to surprise anyone, so it's strictly an opt-in-only Beta Feature. It won't switch on automatically for anyone, even if you have previously checked the box to "Automatiškai įjungti daugumą beta funkcijų".
The new wikitext edit mode is based on the visual editor, so it requires JavaScript (as does the current wikitext editor). It doesn't work with gadgets that have only been designed for the older one (and vice versa), so some users will miss gadgets they find important. We're happy to work with gadget authors to help them update their code to work with both editors. We're not planning to get rid of the current main wikitext editor on desktop in the foreseeable future. We're also not going to remove the existing ability to edit plain wikitext without JavaScript. Finally, though it should go without saying, if you prefer to continue using the current wikitext editor, then you may so do.
This is an early version, and we'd love to know what you think so we can make it better. Please leave feedback about the new mode on the feedback page. You may write comments in any language. Thank you.
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:
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
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:
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).
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.
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.
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-electionswikimedia.org.
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.
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.
From May 9, the Two Column Edit Conflict View will be available as a beta feature on all wikis. The Two Column Edit Conflict View is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page. It highlights differences between the editor's and the conflicting changes to make it easy to copy and paste pieces of the text and resolve the conflict. The feature fulfils a request for a more user-friendly edit conflict resolution from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well!
Did you know that you can review your changes visually?
When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "Peržiūrėti pakeitimus".
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.
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. [10]
You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [12]
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. [13]
The Kategorijos item has been moved to the top of the Puslapio parinktys menu (from clicking on the "hamburger" icon) for quicker access. [14] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [15]
You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [16]
Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [17]
The Specialusis simbolis menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [18]
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. [19]
There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations: Control+Shift+K on a PC, or Command+Shift+K on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which is Control+K or Command+K respectively. [20]
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. [21]
The kind of button used to Rodyti peržiūrą, Rodyti skirtumus, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding &ooui=1 to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [22]
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Ačiū!
RevisionSlider will be available as a default feature for all users on all wikis from May 17. The RevisionSlider adds a slider view to the diff page so that you can easily move between revisions. The slider view is collapsed by default, and will load by clicking on it. It can also be turned off entirely in the user preferences. RevisionSlider has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia for 6 months and a beta feature on all wikis for 8 months. The feature fulfills a wish from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Thanks to everyone who tested RevisionSlider and gave valuable feedback to improve the feature! We hope that RevisionSlider will continue to serve you well in your work.
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:
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.
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
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.
The MediaWiki developers have been slowly improving the accessibility of the user interface. The next step in this transition will change the appearance of some buttons and may break some outdated (non-updated or unmaintained) user scripts and gadgets.
You can see and use the old and new versions now. Most editors will only notice that some buttons are slightly larger and have different colors.
Comparison of old and new styles
Buttons before the change
Buttons after the change
However, this change also affects some user scripts and gadgets. Unfortunately, some of them may not work well in the new system. If you maintain any user scripts or gadgets that are used for editing, please see mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons for information on how to test and fix your scripts. Outdated scripts can be tested and fixed now.
For the initial deployment, the feature will be available to Google Chrome browsers on Android. Support for other mobile browsers to come in the future. For Chrome, the feature will use the native Android print functionality. Users can choose to download a webpage as a PDF. Mobile print styles will be used for these PDFs to ensure optimal readability for smaller screens.
Did you know that you can now use the visual diff tool on any page?
Sometimes, it is hard to see important changes in a wikitext diff. This screenshot of a wikitext diff (click to enlarge) shows that the paragraphs have been rearranged, but it does not highlight the removal of a word or the addition of a new sentence.
If you enable the Beta Feature for "⧼visualeditor-preference-visualdiffpage-label⧽", you will have a new option. It will give you a new box at the top of every diff page. This box will let you choose either diff system on any edit.
Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.
In the visual diff, additions, removals, new links, and formatting changes will be highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.
This screenshot shows the same edit as the wikitext diff. The visual diff highlights the removal of one word and the addition of a new sentence.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
The 2017 wikitext editor is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. It has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. The team have been comparing the performance of different editing environments. They have studied how long it takes to open the page and start typing. The study uses data for more than one million edits during December and January. Some changes have been made to improve the speed of the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual editor. Recently, the 2017 wikitext editor opened fastest for most edits, and the 2010 WikiEditor was fastest for some edits. More information will be posted at mw:Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.
The visual diff tool was developed for the visual editor. It is now available to all users of the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. When you review your changes, you can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. You can also enable the new Beta Feature for "Visual diffs". The Beta Feature lets you use the visual diff tool to view other people's edits on page histories and Special:RecentChanges. [24]
Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and other communities may have the visual editor made available by default to contributors. If your community wants this, then please contact Dan Garry.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Ačiū!
From May 8, AdvancedSearch will be available as a beta feature in your wiki. The feature enhances the search page through an advanced parameters form and aims to make existing search options more visible and accessible for everyone. AdvancedSearch is a project by WMDE Technical Wishes. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well in your work!
I'm preparing a change in who can edit sitewide CSS/JS pages. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which are executed in the browser of all readers and editors.) Currently all administrators are able to edit these pages, which poses a serious and unnecessary security risk. Soon, a dedicated, smaller user group will take over this task. Your community will be able to decide who belongs in this group, so this should mean very little change for you. You can find out more and provide feedback at the consultation page on Meta. If you are involved in maintaining CSS/JS code, or policymaking around adminship requests, please give it a look!
To improve the security of our readers and editors, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which contain code that is executed in the browsers of users of the site.)
A new user group, interface-admin, has been created.
Starting four weeks from now, only members of this group will be able edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage).
You can learn more about the motivation behind the change here.
Please add users who need to edit CSS/JS to the new group (this can be done the same way new administrators are added, by stewards or local bureaucrats).
This is a dangerous permission; a malicious user or a hacker taking over the account of a careless interface-admin can abuse it in far worse ways than admin permissions could be abused. Please only assign it to users who need it, who are trusted by the community, and who follow common basic password and computer security practices (use strong passwords, do not reuse passwords, use two-factor authentication if possible, do not install software of questionable origin on your machine, use antivirus software if that's a standard thing in your environment).
as announced previously, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed: only members of the interface-admin (Sąsajos administratoriai) group, and a few highly privileged global groups such as stewards, can edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage). This is done to improve the security of readers and editors of Wikimedia projects. More information is available at Creation of separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS. If you encounter any unexpected problems, please contact me or file a bug.
The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data centre. 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 do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre 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, 12 September 2018.
On Wednesday, 10 October 2018, they will switch back to the primary data center.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop when we switch. 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 up to an hour on Wednesday, 12 September and Wednesday, 10 October. 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 13 September and Thursday 11 October).
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 10 September 2018 and 8 October 2018. 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:Johan(WMF) (talk)
This has been posted here because your wiki allows local file uploads. Prašome padėti išversti į jūsų kalbą.
Commons will no longer allow uploads of photos, paintings, drawings, audio and video that use the GFDL license and no other license. This starts after 14 October. Textbooks, manuals and logos, diagrams and screenshots from GFDL software manuals that only use the GFDL license are still allowed. Files licensed with both GFDL and an accepted license like Creative Commons BY-SA are still allowed.
There is no time limit to move files from other projects to Commons. The licensing date is all that counts. It doesn't matter when the file was uploaded or created. Every wiki that allows local uploads should check if bots, scripts and templates that are used to move files to Commons need to be updated. Also update your local policy documentation if needed.
The decision to allow files that only have a GFDL license, or not allow them, is a decision all wikis can make for themselves. Your wiki can decide to continue allowing the files that Commons will no longer allow after 14 October. If your wiki decides to continue to allow files after 14 October that Commons will no longer allow those files should not be moved to Commons. — Alexis Jazz, distributed by Johan using MassMessage
The Community Wishlist Survey. Prašome padėti išversti į jūsų kalbą.
Hey everyone,
The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.
The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can post technical proposals from now until 11 November. The communities will vote on the proposals between 16 November and 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.
The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Ačiū!
Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web
Prašome padėti išversti į jūsų kalbą
Hello,
In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.
What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.
The Community Wishlist Survey. Prašome padėti išversti į jūsų kalbą.
Hey everyone,
The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.
The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. The communities have now posted a long list of technical proposals. You can vote on the proposals from now until 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.
Advanced Search will become a default feature on your wiki on November 28. This new interface allows you to perform specialized searches on the search page, even if you don’t know any search syntax. Advanced Search originates from the German Community’s Technical Wishes project. It's already a default feature on German, Arabic, Farsi and Hungarian Wikipedia. Besides, more than 40.000 users across all wikis have tested the beta version. Feedback is welcome on the central feedback page.
These new requirements will apply to new accounts and privileged accounts. New accounts will be required to create a password with a minimum length of 8 characters. Privileged accounts will be prompted to update their password to one that is at least 10 characters in length.
These changes are planned to be in effect on December 13th. If you think your work or tools will be affected by this change, please let us know on the talk page.
Love is an important subject for humanity and it is expressed in different cultures and regions in different ways across the world through different gestures, ceremonies, festivals and to document expression of this rich and beautiful emotion, we need your help so we can share and spread the depth of cultures that each region has, the best of how people of that region, celebrate love.
Wiki Loves Love (WLL) is an international photography competition of Wikimedia Commons with the subject love testimonials happening in the month of February.
The primary goal of the competition is to document love testimonials through human cultural diversity such as monuments, ceremonies, snapshot of tender gesture, and miscellaneous objects used as symbol of love; to illustrate articles in the worldwide free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects.
The theme of 2019 iteration is Celebrations, Festivals, Ceremonies and rituals of love.
Sign up your affiliate or individually at Participants page.
To know more about the contest, check out our Commons Page and FAQs
There are several prizes to grab. Hope to see you spreading love this February with Wiki Loves Love!
A new beta feature will soon be released on all wikis: The FileExporter. It allows exports of files from a local wiki to Wikimedia Commons, including their file history and page history. Which files can be exported is defined by each wiki's community: Please check your wiki's configuration file if you want to use this feature.
The FileExporter has already been a beta feature on mediawiki.org, meta.wikimedia, deWP, faWP, arWP, koWP and on wikisource.org. After some functionality was added, it's now becoming a beta feature on all wikis. Deployment is planned for January 16. More information can be found on the project page.
As always, feedback is highly appreciated. If you want to test the FileExporter, please activate it in your user preferences. The best place for feedback is the central talk page. Thank you from Wikimedia Deutschland's Technical Wishes project.
You will not be able to edit the wikis for up to 30 minutes on 17 January 07:00 UTC. This is because of a database problem that has to be fixed immediately. You can still read the wikis. Some wikis are not affected. They don't get this message. You can see which wikis are not affected on this page. Most wikis are affected. The time you can not edit might be shorter than 30 minutes. /Johan (WMF)
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.
We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.
We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.
We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.
You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:
Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.
Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.
You will not be able to edit most Wikimedia wikis for up to 30 minutes on 11 April 05:00 UTC. This is because of a hardware problem. You can still read the wikis. You can see which wikis are affected. The time you can not edit might be shorter than 30 minutes. /Johan (WMF)
10:56, 8 balandžio 2019 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Medium-Term Plan feedback request
The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:
The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.
Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how:📲 Try Edit Cards.
Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.
Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to the team about how editing can be improved.
Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.
The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
Last month, the Wikimedia Foundation's Trust & Safety team announced a future consultation about partial and/or temporary office actions. We want to let you know that the draft version of this consultation has now been posted on Meta.
This is a draft. It is not intended to be the consultation itself, which will be posted on Meta likely in early September. Please do not treat this draft as a consultation. Instead, we ask your assistance in forming the final language for the consultation.
For that end, we would like your input over the next couple of weeks about what questions the consultation should ask about partial and temporary Foundation office action bans and how it should be formatted. Please post it on the draft talk page. Our goal is to provide space for the community to discuss all the aspects of these office actions that need to be discussed, and we want to ensure with your feedback that the consultation is presented in the best way to encourage frank and constructive conversation.
Please visit the consultation draft on Meta-wiki and leave your comments on the draft’s talk page about what the consultation should look like and what questions it should ask.
Thank you for your input! -- The Trust & Safety team 08:03, 16 rugpjūčio 2019 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Foundation wants to work on two things that affect how we patrol changes and handle vandalism and harassment. We want to make the tools that are used to handle bad edits better. We also want to get better privacy for unregistered users so their IP addresses are no longer shown to everyone in the world. We would not hide IP addresses until we have better tools for patrolling.
We have an idea of what tools could be working better and how a more limited access to IP addresses would change things, but we need to hear from more wikis. You can read more about the project on Meta and post comments and feedback. Now is when we need to hear from you to be able to give you better tools to handle vandalism, spam and harassment.
You can post in your language if you can't write in English.
In a recent statement, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees requested that staff hold a consultation to "re-evaluat[e] or add community input to the two new office action policy tools (temporary and partial Foundation bans)".
Sveiki. The Readers Web team at the WMF will work on some improvements to the desktop interface over the next couple of years. The goal is to increase usability without removing any functionality. We have been inspired by changes made by volunteers, but that currently only exist as local gadgets and user scripts, prototypes, and volunteer-led skins. We would like to begin the process of bringing some of these changes into the default experience on all Wikimedia projects.
We are currently in the research stage of this project and are looking for ideas for improvements, as well as feedback on our current ideas and mockups. So far, we have performed interviews with community members at Wikimania. We have gathered lists of previous volunteer and WMF work in this area. We are examining possible technical approaches for such changes.
We would like individual feedback on the following:
Identifying focus areas for the project we have not yet discovered
Expanding the list of existing gadgets and user scripts that are related to providing a better desktop experience. If you can think of some of these from your wiki, please let us know
Feedback on the ideas and mockups we have collected so far
We would also like to gather a list of wikis that would be interested in being test wikis for this project - these wikis would be the first to receive the updates once we’re ready to start building.
When giving feedback, please consider the following goals of the project:
Make it easier for readers to focus on the content
Provide easier access to everyday actions (e.g. search, language switching, editing)
Put things in logical and useful places
Increase consistency in the interface with other platforms - mobile web and the apps
Eliminate clutter
Plan for future growth
As well as the following constraints:
Not touching the content - no work will be done in terms of styling templates or to the structure of page contents themselves
Not removing any functionality - things might move around, but all navigational items and other functionality currently available by default will remain
No drastic changes to the layout - we're taking an evolutionary approach to the changes and want the site to continue feeling familiar to readers and editors
After this round of feedback, we plan on building a prototype of suggested changes based on the feedback we receive. You’ll hear from us again asking for feedback on this prototype.
What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!
Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team wants your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.
The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.
The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.
The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.
Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The Editing team hopes to share results in November. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.
The 2020 Community Wishlist Survey is now open! This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on November 11, 2019, or comment on other proposals to help make them better.
This year, we’re exclusively focusing on smaller projects (i.e., Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews). We want to help these projects and provide meaningful improvements to diverse communities. If you’re a member of any of these projects, please participate in the survey! To submit proposals, see the guidelines on the survey page. You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals!
Wiki Loves Love is back again in 2020 iteration as Wiki Loves Folklore from 1 February, 2020 - 29 February, 2020. Join us to celebrate the local cultural heritage of your region with the theme of folklore in the international photography contest at Wikimedia Commons. Images, videos and audios representing different forms of folk cultures and new forms of heritage that haven’t otherwise been documented so far are welcome submissions in Wiki Loves Folklore. Learn more about the contest at Meta-Wiki and Commons.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Development team is seeking to learn more about the way volunteers learn and develop into the many different roles that exist in the movement. Our goal is to build a movement informed framework that provides shared clarity and outlines accessible pathways on how to grow and develop skills within the movement. To this end, we are looking to speak with you, our community to learn about your journey as a Wikimedia volunteer. Whether you joined yesterday or have been here from the very start, we want to hear about the many ways volunteers join and contribute to our movement.
To learn more about the project, please visit the Meta page. If you are interested in participating in the project, please complete this simple Google form. Although we may not be able to speak to everyone who expresses interest, we encourage you to complete this short form if you are interested in participating!
Sorry, for writing this text in English. If you could help to translate it, it would be appreciated.
You might know the new interface for edit conflicts (currently a beta feature). Now, Wikimedia Germany is designing an additional interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This interface is shown to you when you write on a discussion page and another person writes a discussion post in the same line and saves it before you do. With this additional editing conflict interface you can adjust the order of the comments and edit your comment. We are inviting everyone to have a look at the planned feature. Let us know what you think on our central feedback page! -- For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm (WMDE)14:15, 26 vasario 2020 (UTC)[atsakyti]
The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
a rich-text visual editing option, and
other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.
This issue of the Editing newsletter includes information the Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily.
Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature is called "Diskusijų įrankiai". The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing @. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster now. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.
Sveiki. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Prašome padėti išversti į jūsų kalbą if necessary. Ačiū!
There are a lot of conversations happening about the future of our movement names. We hope that you are part of these discussions and that your community is represented.
Since 16 June, the Foundation Brand Team has been running a survey in 7 languages about 3 naming options. There are also community members sharing concerns about renaming in a Community Open Letter.
Our goal in this call for feedback is to hear from across the community, so we encourage you to participate in the survey, the open letter, or both. The survey will go through 7 July in all timezones. Input from the survey and discussions will be analyzed and published on Meta-Wiki.
Thanks for thinking about the future of the movement, --The Brand Project team, 19:52, 2 liepos 2020 (UTC)
Note: The survey is conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement.
Seven years ago this month, the Editing team offered the visual editor to most Wikipedia editors. Since then, editors have achieved many milestones:
More than 50 million edits have been made using the visual editor on desktop.
More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
The visual editor is increasingly popular. The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has increased every year since its introduction.
In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers (logged-in editors with ≤99 edits) used the visual editor. This percentage has increased every year.
Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia, a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.
This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May 2020 [1] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.
The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.
As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation [2]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.
It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project, and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.
We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.
There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list [3]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.
The FileExporter and FileImporter will become a default features on all wikis until August 7, 2020. They are planned to help you to move files from your local wiki to Wikimedia Commons easier while keeping all original file information (Description, Source, Date, Author, View History) intact. Additionally, the move is documented in the files view history.
How does it work?
Step 1: If you are an auto-confirmed user, you will see a link "Move file to Wikimedia Commons" on the local file page.
Step 2: When you click on this link, the FileImporter checks if the file can in fact be moved to Wikimedia Commons. These checks are performed based on the wiki's configuration file which is created and maintained by each local wiki community.
Step 3: If the file is compatible with Wikimedia Commons, you will be taken to an import page, at which you can update or add information regarding the file, such as the description. You can also add the 'Now Commons' template to the file on the local wiki by clicking the corresponding check box in the import form. Admins can delete the file from the local wiki by enabling the corresponding checkbox. By clicking on the 'Import' button at the end of the page, the file is imported to Wikimedia Commons.
The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data centre. 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 do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre 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 centre on Tuesday, September 1st 2020.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. 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 up to an hour on Tuesday, September 1st. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 19:30 IST, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday September 2).
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 week of September 1st, 2020. 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.
Sveiki. Apologies for cross-posting, and that you may not be reading this message in your native language: translations of the following announcement may be available on Meta. Prašome padėti išversti į jūsų kalbą. Ačiū!
We are excited to share a draft of the Universal Code of Conduct, which the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees called for earlier this year, for your review and feedback. The discussion will be open until October 6, 2020.
The UCoC Drafting Committee wants to learn which parts of the draft would present challenges for you or your work. What is missing from this draft? What do you like, and what could be improved?
Please join the conversation and share this invitation with others who may be interested to join, too.
To reduce language barriers during the process, you are welcomed to translate this message and the Universal Code of Conduct/Draft review. You and your community may choose to provide your opinions/feedback using your local languages.
Sveiki. Please help pick a name for the new Wikimedia wiki project. This project will be a wiki where the community can work together on a library of functions. The community can create new functions, read about them, discuss them, and share them. Some of these functions will be used to help create language-independent Wikipedia articles that can be displayed in any language, as part of the Abstract Wikipedia project. But functions will also be usable in many other situations.
There will be two rounds of voting, each followed by legal review of candidates, with voting beginning on 29 September and 27 October. Our goal is to have a final project name selected on 8 December. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at meta-wiki. Ačiū! --Quiddity (WMF)
21:26, 29 rugsėjo 2020 (UTC)
Call for feedback about Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws changes and Board candidate rubric
Sveiki. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Prašome padėti išversti į jūsų kalbą.
Today the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees starts two calls for feedback. One is about changes to the Bylaws mainly to increase the Board size from 10 to 16 members. The other one is about a trustee candidate rubric to introduce new, more effective ways to evaluate new Board candidates. The Board welcomes your comments through 26 October. For more details, check the full announcement.
The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. 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 do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre 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 back to the primary data center on Tuesday, October 27 2020.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. 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 up to an hour on Tuesday, October 27. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (14:00 WET, 15:00 CET, 10:00 EDT, 19:30 IST, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 03:00 NZDT on Wednesday October 28).
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 week of October 26, 2020. 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. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.
Sveiki.
Reminder: Please help to choose the name for the new Wikimedia wiki project - the library of functions. The finalist vote starts today. The finalists for the name are: Wikicode, Wikicodex, Wikifunctions, Wikifusion, Wikilambda, Wikimedia Functions. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-wiki.
Ačiū! --Quiddity (WMF)
The 2021 Community Wishlist Survey is now open!
This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on 30 Lapkritis, or comment on other proposals to help make them better.
The communities will vote on the proposals between 8 Gruodis and 21 Gruodis.
The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors.
You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals!
Sorry for sending this message in English. Translations are available on this page. Feel free to translate it in more languages!
As you may know, you can include changes coming from Wikidata in your Watchlist and Recent Changes (in your preferences). Until now, this feature didn’t always include changes made on Wikidata descriptions due to the way Wikidata tracks the data used in a given article.
Starting on December 3rd, the Watchlist and Recent Changes will include changes on the descriptions of Wikidata Items that are used in the pages that you watch. This will only include descriptions in the language of your wiki to make sure that you’re only seeing changes that are relevant to your wiki.
This improvement was requested by many users from different projects. We hope that it can help you monitor the changes on Wikidata descriptions that affect your wiki and participate in the effort of improving the data quality on Wikidata for all Wikimedia wikis and beyond.
Note: if you didn’t use the Wikidata watchlist integration feature for a long time, feel free to give it another chance! The feature has been improved since the beginning and the content it displays is more precise and useful than at the beginning of the feature in 2015.
If you encounter any issue or want to provide feedback, feel free to use this Phabricator ticket. Thanks!
The ceremony of the 2020 Wikimedia Coolest Tool Award will take place virtually on Friday, December 11th, at 17:00 GMT. This award is highlighting tools that have been nominated by contributors to the Wikimedia projects, and the ceremony will be a nice moment to show appreciation to the tools developers and maybe discover new tools!
We invite all registered users to vote on the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. You can vote from now until 21 December for as many different wishes as you want.
In the Survey, wishes for new and improved tools for experienced editors are collected. After the voting, we will do our best to grant your wishes. We will start with the most popular ones.
We, the Community Tech, are one of the Wikimedia Foundation teams. We create and improve editing and wiki moderation tools. What we work on is decided based on results of the Community Wishlist Survey. Once a year, you can submit wishes. After two weeks, you can vote on the ones that you're most interested in. Next, we choose wishes from the survey to work on. Some of the wishes may be granted by volunteer developers or other teams.
This is the announcement for the Project Grants program open call that started on January 11, with the submission deadline of February 10, 2021. This first open call will be focussed on Community Organizing proposals. A second open call focused on research and software proposals is scheduled from February 15 with a submission deadline of March 16, 2021.
For the Round 1 open call, we invite you to propose grant applications that fall under community development and organizing (offline and online) categories. Project Grant funds are available to support individuals, groups, and organizations to implement new experiments and proven ideas, from organizing a better process on your wiki, coordinating a campaign or editathon series to providing other support for community building. We offer the following resources to help you plan your project and complete a grant proposal:
Weekly proposals clinics via Zoom during the Open Call. Join us for #Upcoming_Proposal_Clinics|real-time discussions with Program Officers and select thematic experts and get live feedback about your Project Grants proposal. We’ll answer questions and help you make your proposal better. We also offer these support pages to help you build your proposal:
Program officers are also available to offer individualized proposal support upon request. Contact us if you would like feedback or more information.
We are excited to see your grant ideas that will support our community and make an impact on the future of Wikimedia projects. Put your idea into motion, and submit your proposal by February 10, 2021!
You are humbly invited to participate in the Wiki Loves Folklore 2021 an international photography contest organized on Wikimedia Commons to document folklore and intangible cultural heritage from different regions, including, folk creative activities and many more. It is held every year from the 1st till the 28th of February.
You can help in enriching the folklore documentation on Commons from your region by taking photos, audios, videos, and submitting them in this commons contest.
Please support us in translating the project page and a banner message to help us spread the word in your native language.
In this GRFC, I propose that two-project shortcuts for project names will become a default alias for the project namespace. For instance, on all Wikipedias, WP will be an alias to the Wikipedia: namespace (and similar for other projects). Full list is available in the GRFC.
This is already the case for Wikivoyages, and many individual projects asked for this alias to be implemented. I believe this makes it easier to access the materials in the project namespace, as well as creating shortcuts like WP:NPOV, as well as helps new projects to use this feature, without having to figure out how to request site configuration changes first.
As far as I can see, Wikibooks currently does not have such an alias set. This means that such an alias will be set for you, if the GRFC is accepted by the global community.
Sveiki. Padėkite pasirinkti naujos „Wikifunctions“ wiki logotipo dizaino koncepciją. Balsavimas prasideda šiandien ir veiks 2 savaites. Jei norite dalyvauti, tada prašome sužinoti daugiau ir balsuoti dabar „Meta-Wiki“. Ačiū! --Quiddity (WMF)
Универсальный кодекс поведения (УКП) обеспечивает универсальную основу приемлемого поведения для всего движения Викимедиа и всех его проектов. В настоящее время проект находится на фазе 2, где намечаются четкие пути правоприменения. Вы можете прочитать больше о проекте на странице самого проекта.
Фонд Викимедиа набирает добровольцев для подключения их к комитету по разработке процесса, чтобы сделать кодекс применимым. Добровольцы в комитете будут посвящать от 2 до 6 часов в неделю с конца апреля по июль и снова в октябре и ноябре. Важно, чтобы комитет был разнообразным и инклюзивным, и имел широкий спектр опыта, включая как опытных пользователей, так и новичков, а также тех, кто получил или ответил на них, также тех, кто был ложно обвинен в преследовании.
С 5 апреля по 5 мая 2021 года во многих проектах Викимедиа будут вестись дискуссии о том, как обеспечить соблюдение УКП. Мы ищем добровольцев для перевода ключевых материалов, а также для проведения консультаций на их родных языках или проектах с использованием предложенных ключевых вопросов. Если вы заинтересованы в добровольном участии в любой из этих ролей, пожалуйста, свяжитесь с нами на любом языке, который вам наиболее удобен.
Подробнее об этой работе и других обсуждениях, читайте в разделе УКП/Консультации 2021.
From April 15, you can enable line numbering in some wikitext editors - for now in the template namespace, coming to more namespaces soon. This will make it easier to detect line breaks and to refer to a particular line in discussions. These numbers will be shown if you enable the syntax highlighting feature (CodeMirror extension), which is supported in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors.
From April 29, it will be possible to suggest values for parameters in templates. Suggested values can be added to TemplateData and will then be shown as a drop-down list in VisualEditor. This allows template users to quickly select an appropriate value. This way, it prevents potential errors and reduces the effort needed to fill the template with values. It will still be possible to fill in values other than the suggested ones.
More information, including the supported parameter types and how to create suggested values: [1][2]. Everyone is invited to test the feature, and to give feedback on this talk page.
Welcome to the first issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code, and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.
Please note, this is the first issue of UCoC Newsletter which is delivered to all subscribers and projects as an announcement of the initiative. If you want the future issues delivered to your talk page, village pumps, or any specific pages you find appropriate, you need to subscribe here.
You can help us by translating the newsletter issues in your languages to spread the news and create awareness of the new conduct to keep our beloved community safe for all of us. Please add your name here if you want to be informed of the draft issue to translate beforehand. Your participation is valued and appreciated.
Affiliate consultations – Wikimedia affiliates of all sizes and types were invited to participate in the UCoC affiliate consultation throughout March and April 2021. (continue reading)
2021 key consultations – The Wikimedia Foundation held enforcement key questions consultations in April and May 2021 to request input about UCoC enforcement from the broader Wikimedia community. (continue reading)
Roundtable discussions – The UCoC facilitation team hosted two 90-minute-long public roundtable discussions in May 2021 to discuss UCoC key enforcement questions. More conversations are scheduled. (continue reading)
Phase 2 drafting committee – The drafting committee for the phase 2 of the UCoC started their work on 12 May 2021. Read more about their work. (continue reading)
Diff blogs – The UCoC facilitators wrote several blog posts based on interesting findings and insights from each community during local project consultation that took place in the 1st quarter of 2021. (continue reading)
Wikimania 2021 will be hosted virtually for the first time in the event's 15-year history. Since there is no in-person host, the event is being organized by a diverse group of Wikimedia volunteers that form the Core Organizing Team (COT) for Wikimania 2021.
Event Program - Individuals or a group of individuals can submit their session proposals to be a part of the program. There will be translation support for sessions provided in a number of languages. See more information here.
Please note that the deadline for submission is 18th June 2021.
Announcements- To keep up to date with the developments around Wikimania, the COT sends out weekly updates. You can view them in the Announcement section here.
Office Hour - If you are left with questions, the COT will be hosting some office hours (in multiple languages), in multiple time-zones, to answer any programming questions that you might have. Details can be found here.
Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.
The key results were:
Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.
These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.
Looking ahead
The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. 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 do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. 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 up to an hour on Tuesday, 29 June 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday 30 June).
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 week of June 28. 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. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.
The Committee is expected to represent diversity in the Movement. Diversity includes gender, language, geography, and experience. This comprises participation in projects, affiliates, and the Wikimedia Foundation.
English fluency is not required to become a member. If needed, translation and interpretation support is provided. Members will receive an allowance to offset participation costs. It is US$100 every two months.
We are looking for people who have some of the following skills:
Know how to write collaboratively. (demonstrated experience is a plus)
Are ready to find compromises.
Focus on inclusion and diversity.
Have knowledge of community consultations.
Have intercultural communication experience.
Have governance or organization experience in non-profits or communities.
Have experience negotiating with different parties.
The Committee is expected to start with 15 people. If there are 20 or more candidates, a mixed election and selection process will happen. If there are 19 or fewer candidates, then the process of selection without election takes place.
Will you help move Wikimedia forward in this important role? Submit your candidacy here. Please contact strategy2030wikimedia.org with questions.
These guidelines are not final but you can help move the progress forward. The committee will revise the guidelines based upon community input.
Comments can be shared in any language on the draft review talk page and multiple other venues. Community members are encouraged to organize conversations in their communities.
There are planned live discussions about the UCoC enforcement draft guidelines:
Thank you for participating in the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election! Voting closed August 31 at 23:59. The official data, including the four most voted candidates, will be announced as soon as the Elections Committee completes their review of the ballots. The official announcement of the new trustees appointed will happen later, once the selected candidates have been confirmed by the Board.
6,946 community members from 216 wiki projects have voted. This makes 10.2% global participation, 1.1% higher than in the last Board elections. In 2017, 5167 people from 202 wiki projects cast their vote. A full analysis is planned to be published in a few days when the confirmed results are announced. In the meantime, you can check the data produced during the election.
Diversity was an important goal with these elections. Messages about the Board election were translated into 61 languages. This outreach worked well. There were 70 communities with eligible voters voting in this election for the first time. With your help, next year’s Board of Trustees election will be even better.
21:00, 1 rugsėjo 2021 (UTC)
The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey will happen in January
We hope all of you are as well and safe as possible during these trying times! We wanted to share some news about a change to the Community Wishlist Survey 2022. We would like to hear your opinions as well.
In the past, the Community Tech team has run the Community Wishlist Survey for the following year in November of the prior year. For example, we ran the Wishlist for 2021 in November 2020. That worked well a few years ago. At that time, we used to start working on the Wishlist soon after the results of the voting were published.
However, in 2021, there was a delay between the voting and the time when we could start working on the new wishes. Until July 2021, we were working on wishes from the Wishlist for 2020.
We hope having the Wishlist 2022 in January 2022 will be more intuitive. This will also give us time to fulfill more wishes from the 2021 Wishlist.
Encouraging wider participation from historically excluded communities
We are thinking how to make the Wishlist easier to participate in. We want to support more translations, and encourage under-resourced communities to be more active. We would like to have some time to make these changes.
A new space to talk to us about priorities and wishes not granted yet
We will have gone 365 days without a Wishlist. We encourage you to approach us. We hope to hear from you in the talk page, but we also hope to see you at our bi-monthly Talk to Us meetings! These will be hosted at two different times friendly to time zones around the globe.
We will begin our first meeting September 15th at 23:00 UTC. More details about the agenda and format coming soon!
Brainstorm and draft proposals before the proposal phase
If you have early ideas for wishes, you can use the new Community Wishlist Survey sandbox. This way, you will not forget about these before January 2022. You will be able to come back and refine your ideas. Remember, edits in the sandbox don't count as wishes!
The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. 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 do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre 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 back to the primary data center on Tuesday, 14 September 2021.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. 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 up to an hour on Tuesday, 14 September 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday, 15 September).
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.
We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.
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. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.
The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes without attribution will be taken and published on Meta-Wiki. The presentation (first three points in the agenda) will be given in English.
We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, and Spanish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the Community Wishlist Survey talk page or send to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.
Voting for the election for the members for the Movement Charter drafting committee is now open. In total, 70 Wikimedians from around the world are running for 7 seats in these elections.
Voting is open from October 12 to October 24, 2021.
The committee will consist of 15 members in total: The online communities vote for 7 members, 6 members will be selected by the Wikimedia affiliates through a parallel process, and 2 members will be appointed by the Wikimedia Foundation. The plan is to assemble the committee by November 1, 2021.
We are piloting a voting advice application for this election. Click yourself through the tool and you will see which candidate is closest to you! Check at <https://mcdc-election-compass.toolforge.org/>
The Board of Trustees is preparing a call for feedback about the upcoming Board Elections, from January 7 - February 10, 2022.
While details will be finalized the week before the call, we have confirmed at least two questions that will be asked during this call for feedback:
What is the best way to ensure fair representation of emerging communities among the Board?
What involvement should candidates have during the election?
While additional questions may be added, the Movement Strategy and Governance team wants to provide time for community members and affiliates to consider and prepare ideas on the confirmed questions before the call opens. We apologize for not having a complete list of questions at this time. The list of questions should only grow by one or two questions. The intention is to not overwhelm the community with requests, but provide notice and welcome feedback on these important questions.
Do you want to help organize local conversation during this Call?
Reach out if you have any questions or concerns. The Movement Strategy and Governance team will be minimally staffed until January 3. Please excuse any delayed response during this time. We also recognize some community members and affiliates are offline during the December holidays. We apologize if our message has reached you while you are on holiday.
You are humbly invited to participate in the Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 an international photography contest organized on Wikimedia Commons to document folklore and intangible cultural heritage from different regions, including, folk creative activities and many more. It is held every year from the 1st till the 28th of February.
You can help in enriching the folklore documentation on Commons from your region by taking photos, audios, videos, and submitting them in this commons contest.
You can also organize a local contest in your country and support us in translating the project pages to help us spread the word in your native language.
Feel free to contact us on our project Talk page if you need any assistance.
The Call for Feedback: Board of Trustees elections is now open and will close on 7 February 2022.
With this Call for Feedback, the Movement Strategy and Governance team is taking a different approach. This approach incorporates community feedback from 2021. Instead of leading with proposals, the Call is framed around key questions from the Board of Trustees. The key questions came from the feedback about the 2021 Board of Trustees election. The intention is to inspire collective conversation and collaborative proposal development about these key questions.
Greetings from the EWOC Newsletter team and the education team at Wikimedia Foundation. We are very excited to share that we on tenth years of Education Newsletter (This Month in Education) invite you to join us by subscribing to the newsletter on your talk page or by sharing your activities in the upcoming newsletters. The Wikimedia Education newsletter is a monthly newsletter that collects articles written by community members using Wikimedia projects in education around the world, and it is published by the EWOC Newsletter team in collaboration with the Education team. These stories can bring you new ideas to try, valuable insights about the success and challenges of our community members in running education programs in their context.
If your affiliate/language project is developing its own education initiatives, please remember to take advantage of this newsletter to publish your stories with the wider movement that shares your passion for education. You can submit newsletter articles in your own language or submit bilingual articles for the education newsletter. For the month of January the deadline to submit articles is on the 20th January. We look forward to reading your stories.
Older versions of this newsletter can be found in the complete archive.
Welcome to the fifth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News (formerly known as Universal Code of Conduct News)! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board elections and other relevant MSG topics.
This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly or bi-weekly to subscribers. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive these updates.
Call for Feedback about the Board elections - We invite you to give your feedback on the upcoming WMF Board of Trustees election. This call for feedback went live on 10th January 2022 and will be concluded on 16th February 2022. (continue reading)
Universal Code of Conduct Ratification - In 2021, the WMF asked communities about how to enforce the Universal Code of Conduct policy text. The revised draft of the enforcement guidelines should be ready for community vote in March. (continue reading)
Movement Strategy Implementation Grants - As we continue to review several interesting proposals, we encourage and welcome more proposals and ideas that target a specific initiative from the Movement Strategy recommendations. (continue reading)
The New Direction for the Newsletter - As the UCoC Newsletter transitions into MSG Newsletter, join the facilitation team in envisioning and deciding on the new directions for this newsletter. (continue reading)
Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about MSG on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)
The Community Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation is supporting the creation of a global, community-driven Leadership Development Task Force. The purpose of the task force is to advise leadership development work.
The team is looking for feedback about the responsibilities of the Leadership Development Task Force. This Meta page shares the proposal for a Leadership Development Task Force and how you can help. Feedback on the proposal will be collected from 7 to 25 February 2022.
Greetings from Wiki Loves Folklore International Team,
We are pleased to inform you that Wiki Loves Folklore an international photographic contest on Wikimedia Commons has been extended till the 15th of March 2022. The scope of the contest is focused on folk culture of different regions on categories, such as, but not limited to, folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, folk activities, etc.
We would like to have your immense participation in the photographic contest to document your local Folk culture on Wikipedia. You can also help with the translation of project pages and share a word in your local language.
and improvements in the syntax highlighting extension CodeMirror (4, 5) (which is available on wikis with writing direction left-to-right).
All these changes are part of the “Templates” project by WMDE Technical Wishes. We hope they will help you in your work, and we would love to hear your feedback on the talk pages of these projects.
A vote in SecurePoll from 7 to 21 March 2022 is scheduled as part of the ratification process for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement guidelines. Eligible voters are invited to answer a poll question and share comments. Read voter information and eligibility details. During the poll, voters will be asked if they support the enforcement of the Universal Code of Conduct based on the proposed guidelines.
There are events scheduled to learn more and discuss:
A community panel recorded on 18 February 2022 shares perspectives from small- and medium-sized community participants.
The Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team is hosting Conversation Hours on 4 March 2022 at 15:00 UTC. Please sign-up to interact with the project team and the drafting committee about the updated enforcement guidelines and the ratification process. See the Conversation Hour summaries for notes from 4 February 2022 and 25 February 2022.
You can comment on Meta-wiki talk pages in any language. You may also contact either team by email: msgwikimedia.org or ucocprojectwikimedia.org
Sincerely,
Movement Strategy and Governance
Wikimedia Foundation
The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire movement. The revised enforcement guidelines were published 24 January 2022 as a proposed way to apply the policy across the movement. You can read more about the UCoC project.
You can also comment on Meta-wiki talk pages in any language. You may also contact the team by email: ucocprojectwikimedia.org
The Movement Strategy and Governance team of the Wikimedia Foundation would like to invite you to the next event about "Regional and Thematic Hubs". The Wikimedia Movement is in the process of understanding what Regional and Thematic Hubs should be. Our workshop in November was a good start (read the report), but we're not finished yet.
Over the last weeks we conducted about 16 interviews with groups working on establishing a Hub in their context (see Hubs Dialogue). These interviews informed a report that will serve as a foundation for discussion on March 12. The report is planned to be published on March 9.
The event will take place on March 12, 13:00 to 16:00 UTC on Zoom. Interpretation will be provided in French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Portuguese. Registration is open, and will close on March 10. Anyone interested in the topic is invited to join us. More information on the event on Meta-wiki.
International photographic contest Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 ends on 15th March 2022 23:59:59 UTC. This is the last chance of the year to upload images about local folk culture, festival, cuisine, costume, folklore etc on Wikimedia Commons. Watch out our social media handles for regular updates and declaration of Winners.
The writing competition Feminism and Folklore will run till 31st of March 2022 23:59:59 UTC. Write about your local folk tradition, women, folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, folk activities, folk games, folk cuisine, folk wear, folklore, and tradition, including ballads, folktales, fairy tales, legends, traditional song and dance, folk plays, games, seasonal events, calendar customs, folk arts, folk religion, mythology etc. on your local Wikipedia. Check if your local Wikipedia is participating
A special competition called Wiki Loves Falles is organised in Spain and the world during 15th March 2022 till 15th April 2022 to document local folk culture and Falles in Valencia, Spain. Learn more about it on Catalan Wikipedia project page.
The ratification voting process for the revised enforcement guidelines of the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) came to a close on 21 March 2022. Over 2300 Wikimedians voted across different regions of our movement. Thank you to everyone who participated in this process! The scrutinizing group is now reviewing the vote for accuracy, so please allow up to two weeks for them to finish their work.
The final results from the voting process will be announced here, along with the relevant statistics and a summary of comments as soon as they are available. Please check out the voter information page to learn about the next steps. You can comment on the project talk page on Meta-wiki in any language. You may also contact the UCoC project team by email: ucocprojectwikimedia.org
After reviewing vote results and accompanying comments, the Community Affairs Committee decided to launch a fresh round of community consultations. After that, the refined text of the Guidelines will be put for another vote.
The comments have shown that community members unequivocally support creating a safe and welcoming culture that stops hostile and toxic behaviour, supports victims of such actions, and encourages good-faith people to be productive on the Wikimedia projects.
While the results did show that support for the UCoC Guidelines exceeded the required 50%+1 vote, the comments highlighted that further revisions would be required to have strong community support to follow through with enforcement.
Therefore the Committee instructed the Foundation to:
Conduct another round of community consultations, and put the newly-refined Guidelines for a community vote.
The WMF team will seek feedback on four topics that stood out among the voter comments. You can learn more about the four topics and the Committee's findings on this Meta page.
Welcome to the sixth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board of trustees elections and other relevant MSG topics.
This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while the more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.
Leadership Development - A Working Group is Forming! - The application to join the Leadership Development Working Group closed on April 10th, 2022, and up to 12 community members will be selected to participate in the working group. (continue reading)
Universal Code of Conduct Ratification Results are out! - The global decision process on the enforcement of the UCoC via SecurePoll was held from 7 to 21 March. Over 2,300 eligible voters from at least 128 different home projects submitted their opinions and comments. (continue reading)
Movement Discussions on Hubs - The Global Conversation event on Regional and Thematic Hubs was held on Saturday, March 12, and was attended by 84 diverse Wikimedians from across the movement. (continue reading)
Movement Strategy Grants Remain Open! - Since the start of the year, six proposals with a total value of about $80,000 USD have been approved. Do you have a movement strategy project idea? Reach out to us! (continue reading)
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is All Set! - The Committee of fifteen members which was elected in October 2021, has agreed on the essential values and methods for its work, and has started to create the outline of the Movement Charter draft. (continue reading)
Introducing Movement Strategy Weekly - Contribute and Subscribe! - The MSG team have just launched the updates portal, which is connected to the various Movement Strategy pages on Meta-wiki. Subscriber to get up-to-date news about the various ongoing projects. (continue reading)
Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about Movement Strategy on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's operations. Community-and-affiliate selected trustees and Board-appointed trustees make up the Board of Trustees. Each trustee serves a three year term. The Wikimedia community has the opportunity to vote for community-and-affiliate selected trustees.
The Wikimedia community will vote to fill two seats on the Board in 2022. This is an opportunity to improve the representation, diversity, and expertise of the Board as a team.
Hello, more changes around templates are coming to your wiki soon:
The template dialog in VisualEditor and in the 2017 Wikitext Editor (beta) will be improved fundamentally:
This should help users understand better what the template expects, how to navigate the template, and how to add parameters.
The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at the 20 Wikipedias that participated in the test. You will be able to turn it off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.
The Movement Strategy and Governance team is looking for community members to serve as election volunteers in the upcoming Board of Trustees election.
The idea of the Election Volunteer Program came up during the 2021 Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election. This program turned out to be successful. With the help of Election Volunteers we were able to increase outreach and participation in the election by 1,753 voters over 2017. Overall turnout was 10.13%, 1.1 percentage points more, and 214 wikis were represented in the election.
There were a total of 74 wikis that did not participate in 2017 that produced voters in the 2021 election. Can you help increase the participation even more?
Election volunteers will help in the following areas:
Translate short messages and announce the ongoing election process in community channels
Optional: Monitor community channels for community comments and questions
Volunteers should:
Maintain the friendly space policy during conversations and events
Present the guidelines and voting information to the community in a neutral manner
Do you want to be an election volunteer and ensure your community is represented in the vote? Sign up here to receive updates. You can use the talk page for questions about translation.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's operations. Community-and-affiliate selected trustees and Board-appointed trustees make up the Board of Trustees. Each trustee serves a three year term. The Wikimedia community has the opportunity to vote for community-and-affiliate selected trustees.
The Wikimedia community will vote to fill two seats on the Board in 2022. This is an opportunity to improve the representation, diversity, and expertise of the Board as a team.
The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) project team has completed the analysis of the feedback accompanying the ratification vote on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines.
Following the completion of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines Draft in 2022, the guidelines were voted on by the Wikimedian community. Voters cast votes from 137 communities, with the top 9 communities being: English, German, French, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Italian Wikipedias, and Meta-wiki.
Those voting had the opportunity to provide comments on the contents of the Draft document. 658 participants left comments. 77% of the comments are written in English. Voters wrote comments in 24 languages with the largest numbers in English (508), German (34), Japanese (28), French (25), and Russian (12).
A report will be sent to the Revision Drafting Committee who will refine the enforcement guidelines based on the community feedback received from the recently concluded vote. A public version of the report is published on Meta-wiki here. The report is available in translated versions on Meta-wiki. Prašome padėti išversti į jūsų kalbą
Again, we thank all who participated in the vote and discussions. We invite everyone to contribute during the next community discussions. More information about the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines can be found on Meta-wiki.
On behalf of the Universal Code of Conduct project team
We'd like to provide an update on the work on the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct. After the conclusion of the community vote on the guidelines in March, the Community Affairs committee (CAC) of the Board asked that several areas of the guidelines be reviewed for improvements before the Board does its final review. These areas were identified based on community discussions and comments provided during the vote. The CAC also requested review of the controversial Note in 3.1 of the UCoC itself.
Once more, a big thank you to all who voted, especially to all who left constructive feedback and comments! The project team is working with the Board to establish a timeline for this work, and will communicate this next month.
Wikimedians have provided many valuable comments together with the vote and in other conversations. Given the size and diversity of the Wikimedia community, there are even more voices out there who can give ideas on how to improve the enforcement guidelines and add even more valuable ideas to the process. To help the Revisions committee identify improvements, input on several questions for the committee’s review is requested. Visit the Meta-wiki pages (Enforcement Guidelines revision discussions, Policy text revision discussions) to get your ideas to the Committee - it is very important that viewpoints are heard from different communities before the Committee begins drafting revision proposals.
We'd like to provide an update on the work on the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct. After the conclusion of the community vote on the guidelines in March, the Community Affairs committee (CAC) of the Board asked that several areas of the guidelines be reviewed for improvements before the Board does its final review. These areas were identified based on community discussions and comments provided during the vote. The CAC also requested review of the controversial Note in 3.1 of the UCoC itself.
Once more, a big thank you to all who voted, especially to all who left constructive feedback and comments! The project team is working with the Board to establish a timeline for this work, and will communicate this next month.
Wikimedians have provided many valuable comments together with the vote and in other conversations. Given the size and diversity of the Wikimedia community, there are even more voices out there who can give ideas on how to improve the enforcement guidelines and add even more valuable ideas to the process. To help the Revisions committee identify improvements, input on several questions for the committee’s review is requested. Visit the Meta-wiki pages (Enforcement Guidelines revision discussions, Policy text revision discussions) to get your ideas to the Committee - it is very important that viewpoints are heard from different communities before the Committee begins drafting revision proposals.
We are happy to share with you winning images for this year's edition. This year saw over 8,584 images represented on commons in over 92 countries. Kindly see images here
Our profound gratitude to all the people who participated and organized local contests and photo walks for this project.
We hope to have you contribute to the campaign next year.
An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.
Here is the timeline for the Election Compass:
July 8 - 20: Community members propose statements for the Election Compass
July 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements
July 23 - August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements
August 2 - 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements
August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision
The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August. The Elections Committee will oversee the process, supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance team. MSG will check that the questions are clear, there are no duplicates, no typos, and so on.
An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.
Here is the timeline for the Election Compass
July 8 - 20: Community members propose statements for the Election Compass
July 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements
July 23 - August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements
August 2 - 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements
August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision
The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August. The Elections Committee will oversee the process, supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance team. MSG will check that the questions are clear, there are no duplicates, no typos, and so on.
Best,
Movement Strategy and Governance
This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee
Welcome to the 7th issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! The newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the implementation of Wikimedia's Movement Strategy recommendations, other relevant topics regarding Movement governance, as well as different projects and activities supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The MSG Newsletter is delivered quarterly, while the more frequent Movement Strategy Weekly will be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.
Movement sustainability: Wikimedia Foundation's annual sustainability report has been published. (continue reading)
Improving user experience: recent improvements on the desktop interface for Wikimedia projects. (continue reading)
Safety and inclusion: updates on the revision process of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines. (continue reading)
Equity in decisionmaking: reports from Hubs pilots conversations, recent progress from the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, and a new white paper for futures of participation in the Wikimedia movement. (continue reading)
Stakeholders coordination: launch of a helpdesk for Affiliates and volunteer communities working on content partnership. (continue reading)
Leadership development: updates on leadership projects by Wikimedia movement organizers in Brazil and Cape Verde. (continue reading)
Internal knowledge management: launch of a new portal for technical documentation and community resources. (continue reading)
Innovate in free knowledge: high-quality audiovisual resources for scientific experiments and a new toolkit to record oral transcripts. (continue reading)
Evaluate, iterate, and adapt: results from the Equity Landscape project pilot (continue reading)
Other news and updates: a new forum to discuss Movement Strategy implementation, upcoming Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, a new podcast to discuss Movement Strategy, and change of personnel for the Foundation's Movement Strategy and Governance team. (continue reading)
You may see more information about the Results and Statistics of this Board election.
The Affiliate organizations selected representatives to vote on behalf of the Affiliate organization. The Affiliate Representatives proposed questions for the candidates to answer in mid-June. These answers from candidates and the information provided from the Analysis Committee provided support for the representatives as they made their decision.
Please take a moment to appreciate the Affiliate Representatives and Analysis Committee members for taking part in this process and helping to grow the Board of Trustees in capacity and diversity. These hours of volunteer work connect us across understanding and perspective. Thank you for your participation.
Thank you to the community members who put themselves forward as candidates for the Board of Trustees. Considering joining the Board of Trustees is no small decision. The time and dedication candidates have shown to this point speaks to their commitment to this movement. Congratulations to those candidates who have been selected. A great amount of appreciation and gratitude for those candidates not selected. Please continue to share your leadership with Wikimedia.
An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.
Here is the timeline for the Election Compass:
July 8 - 20: Volunteers propose statements for the Election Compass
July 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements
July 23 - August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements
August 2 - 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements
August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision
The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August
Best,
Movement Strategy and Governance
This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee
The Affiliate voting process has concluded. Representatives from each Affiliate organization learned about the candidates by reading candidates’ statements, reviewing candidates’ answers to questions, and considering the candidates’ ratings provided by the Analysis Committee. The selected 2022 Board of Trustees candidates are:
You may see more information about the Results and Statistics of this Board election.
Please take a moment to appreciate the Affiliate Representatives and Analysis Committee members for taking part in this process and helping to grow the Board of Trustees in capacity and diversity. These hours of volunteer work connect us across understanding and perspective. Thank you for your participation.
Thank you to the community members who put themselves forward as candidates for the Board of Trustees. Considering joining the Board of Trustees is no small decision. The time and dedication candidates have shown to this point speaks to their commitment to this movement. Congratulations to those candidates who have been selected. A great amount of appreciation and gratitude for those candidates not selected. Please continue to share your leadership with Wikimedia.
Thank you to those who followed the Affiliate process for this Board election. You may review the results of the Affiliate selection process.
The next part of the Board election process is the community voting period.You may view the Board election timeline here. To prepare for the community voting period, there are several things community members can engage with in the following ways:
Read candidates’ statements and read the candidates’ answers to the questions posed by the Affiliate Representatives.
An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.
Here is the timeline for the Election Compass:
July 8 - 20: Volunteers propose statements for the Election Compass
July 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements
July 23 - August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements
August 2 - 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements
August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision
The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August
Best,
Movement Strategy and Governance
This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee
Hello. To facilitate steward granting of bot access, I suggest implementing the standard bot policy on this wiki. In particular, this policy allows stewards to automatically flag known interlanguage linking bots (if this page says that is acceptable) or bots that fix double redirects. The policy also enables global bots on this wiki (if this page says that is acceptable), which are trusted bots that will be given bot access on every wiki that allows global bots.
This policy makes bot access requesting much easier for local users, operators, and stewards. To implement it we only need to create a redirect to this page from Project:Bot policy, and add a line at the top noting that it is used here. If you use or prefer to use a dedicated project page for handling bot flag requests, that is also acceptable. Please read the text at Meta-Wiki before commenting. If you object, please say so; I hope to implement in two weeks if there is no objection, since it is particularly written to streamline bot requests on wikis with little or no community interested in bot access requests. Thank you for your consideration. --Rschen775404:04, 31 liepos 2022 (UTC)[atsakyti]
Delay of the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election
I am reaching out to you today with an update about the timing of the voting for the Board of Trustees election.
As many of you are already aware, this year we are offering an Election Compass to help voters identify the alignment of candidates on some key topics. Several candidates requested an extension of the character limitation on their responses expanding on their positions, and the Elections Committee felt their reasoning was consistent with the goals of a fair and equitable election process.
To ensure that the longer statements can be translated in time for the election, the Elections Committee and Board Selection Task Force decided to delay the opening of the Board of Trustees election by one week - a time proposed as ideal by staff working to support the election.
Although it is not expected that everyone will want to use the Election Compass to inform their voting decision, the Elections Committee felt it was more appropriate to open the voting period with essential translations for community members across languages to use if they wish to make this important decision.
The voting will open on August 23 at 00:00 UTC and close on September 6 at 23:59 UTC.
The Movement Strategy Forum (MS Forum) is a multilingual collaborative space for all conversations about Movement Strategy implementation.
We are inviting all Movement participants to collaborate on the MS Forum. The goal of the forum is to build community collaboration, using an inclusive multilingual platform.
The Movement Strategy is a collaborative effort to imagine and build the future of the Wikimedia Movement. Anyone can contribute to the Movement Strategy, from a comment to a full-time project.
Join this forum with your Wikimedia account, engage in conversations, and ask questions in your language.
The Movement Strategy and Governance team (MSG) launched the proposal for the MS Forum in May 2022. There was a 2-month community review period, which ended on 24 July 2022. The community review process included several questions that resulted in interesting conversations. You can read the Community Review Report.
The Community Voting period for the 2022 Board of Trustees election is now open. Here are some helpful links to get you the information you need to vote:
Try the Election Compass, showing how candidates stand on 15 different topics.
If you are ready to vote, you may go to SecurePoll voting page to vote now. You may vote from August 23 at 00:00 UTC to September 6 at 23:59 UTC. To see about your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.
Best,
Movement Strategy and Governance
This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee
The Community Voting period of the 2022 Board of Trustees election started on August 23, 2022, and will close on September 6, 2022 23:59 UTC. There’s still a chance to participate in this election. If you did not vote, please visit the SecurePoll voting page to vote now. To see about your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.
If you need help in making your decision, here are some helpful links:
Try the Election Compass, showing how candidates stand on 15 different topics.
The Community Voting period for the 2022 Board of Trustees election is now open. Here are some helpful links to get you the information you need to vote:
Try the Election Compass, showing how candidates stand on 15 different topics.
If you are ready to vote, you may go to SecurePoll voting page to vote now. You may vote from August 23 at 00:00 UTC to September 6 at 23:59 UTC. To see about your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.
Best,
Movement Strategy and Governance
This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee
The Movement Strategy Forum (MS Forum) is a multilingual collaborative space for all conversations about Movement Strategy implementation.
We are inviting all Movement participants to collaborate on the MS Forum. The goal of the forum is to build community collaboration, using an inclusive multilingual platform.
The Movement Strategy is a collaborative effort to imagine and build the future of the Wikimedia Movement. Anyone can contribute to the Movement Strategy, from a comment to a full-time project.
Join this forum with your Wikimedia account, engage in conversations, and ask questions in your language.
The Movement Strategy and Governance team (MSG) launched the proposal for the MS Forum in May 2022. There was a 2-month community review period, which ended on 24 July 2022. The community review process included several questions that resulted in interesting conversations. You can read the Community Review Report.
The Committee collaborated to revise these draft guidelines based on input gathered from the community discussion period from May through July, as well as the community vote that concluded in March 2022. The revisions are focused on the following four areas:
To identify the type, purpose, and applicability of the UCoC training;
To simplify the language for more accessible translation and comprehension by non-experts;
To explore the concept of affirmation, including its pros and cons;
To review the balancing of the privacy of the accuser and the accused
The Committee requests comments and suggestions about these revisions by 8 October 2022. From there, the Revisions Committee anticipates further revising the guidelines based on community input.
Everyone may share comments in a number of places. Facilitators welcome comments in any language on the Revised Enforcement Guidelines talk page. Comments can also be shared on talk pages of translations, at local discussions, or during conversation hours. There are a series of conversation hours planned about the Revised Enforcement Guidelines; please see Meta for the times and details.
The facilitation team supporting this review period hopes to reach a large number of communities. If you do not see a conversation happening in your community, please organize a discussion. Facilitators can assist you in setting up the conversations. Discussions will be summarized and presented to the drafting committee every two weeks. The summaries will be published here.
Hello. I'm writing on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team. In two weeks, we would like to make the Vector 2022 skin the default on this wiki.
We have been working on it for the past three years. So far, it has been the default on more than 30 wikis, including sister projects, all accounting for more than 1 billion pageviews per month. On average 87% of active logged-in users of those wikis use Vector 2022.
It would become the default for all logged-out users, and also all logged-in users who currently use Vector legacy. Logged-in users can at any time switch to any other skins. No changes are expected for users of these skins.
[Why is a change necessary] The current default skin meets the needs of the readers and editors as these were 13 years ago. Since then, new users have begun using Wikimedia projects. The old Vector doesn't meet their needs.
[Objective] The objective for the new skin is to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. It draws inspiration from previous requests, the Community Wishlist Surveys, and gadgets and scripts. The work helped our code follow the standards and improve all other skins. We reduced PHP code in Wikimedia deployed skins by 75%. The project has also focused on making it easier to support gadgets and use APIs.
[Changes and test results] The skin introduces a series of changes that improve readability and usability. The new skin does not remove any functionality currently available on the Vector skin.
The sticky header makes it easier to find tools that editors use often. It decreases scrolling to the top of the page by 16%.
The new table of contents makes it easier to navigate to different sections. Readers and editors jumped to different sections of the page 50% more than with the old table of contents. It also looks a bit different on talk pages.
The new search bar is easier to find and makes it easier to find the correct search result from the list. This increased the amount of searches started by 30% on the wikis we tested on.
The skin does not negatively affect pageviews, edit rates, or account creation. There is evidence of increases in pageviews and account creation across partner communities.
[Try it out] Try out the new skin by going to the appearance tab in your preferences and selecting Vector 2022 from the list of skins.
It's possible to configure and personalize our changes. We support volunteers who create new gadgets and user scripts. Check out our repository for a list of currently available customizations, or add your own.
If no large concerns are raised, we plan on deploying in the week of October 3, 2022. If your community would like to request more time to discuss the changes, hit the button and write to us. We can adjust the calendar.
During the 2022 Wikimedia Summit, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) presented the first outline of the Movement Charter, giving a glimpse on the direction of its future work, and the Charter itself. The MCDC then integrated the initial feedback collected during the Summit. Before proceeding with writing the Charter for the whole Movement, the MCDC wants to interact with community members and gather feedback on the drafts of the three sections: Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities (intentions statement). The Movement Charter drafts will be available on the Meta page here on November 14, 2022. Community wide consultation period on MC will take place from November 20 to December 18, 2022. Learn more about it here.
With the goal of ensuring that people are well informed to fully participate in the conversations and are empowered to contribute their perspective on the Movement Charter, three “Ask Me Anything about Movement Charter" sessions have been scheduled in different time zones. Everyone in the Wikimedia Movement is invited to attend these conversations. The aim is to learn about Movement Charter - its goal, purpose, why it matters, and how it impacts your community. MCDC members will attend these sessions to answer your questions and hear community feedback.
The “Ask Me Anything” sessions accommodate communities from different time zones. Only the presentation of the session is recorded and shared afterwards, no recording of conversations. Below is the list of planned events:
Asia/Pacific: November 4, 2022 at 09:00 UTC (your local time). Interpretation is available in Chinese and Japanese.
Europe/MENA/Sub Saharan Africa: November 12, 2022 at 15:00 UTC (your local time). Interpretation is available in Arabic, French and Russian.
North and South America/ Western Europe: November 12, 2022 at 15:00 UTC (your local time). Interpretation is available in Spanish and Portuguese.
On the Meta page you will find more details; Zoom links will be shared 48 hours ahead of the call.
Call for Movement Charter Ambassadors
Individuals or groups from all communities who wish to help include and start conversations in their communities on the Movement Charter are encouraged to become Movement Charter Ambassadors (MC Ambassadors). MC Ambassadors will carry out their own activities and get financial support for enabling conversations in their own languages. Regional facilitators from the Movement Strategy and Governance team are available to support applicants with MC Ambassadors grantmaking. If you are interested please sign up here. Should you have specific questions, please reach out to the MSG team via email: strategy2030@wikimedia.org or on the MS forum.
We thank you for your time and participation.
On behalf of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee,
The Wikimedia Movement Strategy implementation is a collaborative effort for all Wikimedians.
Movement Strategy Implementation Grants support projects that take the current state of a Movement Strategy Initiative and push it one step forward. If you are looking for an example or some guide on how to engage your community further on Movement Strategy and the Movement Strategy Implementation Grants specifically, you may find this community engagement package helpful.
The goal of this community engagement package is to support more people to access the funding they might need for the implementation work. By becoming a recipient of this grant, you will be able to support other community members to develop further grant applications that fit with your local contexts to benefit your own communities. With this package, the hope is to break down language barriers and to ensure community members have needed information on Movement Strategy to connect with each other. Movement Strategy is a two-way exchange, we can always learn more from the experiences and knowledge of Wikimedians everywhere. We can train and support our peers by using this package, so more people can make use of this great funding opportunity.
If this information interests you or if you have any further thoughts or questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us as your regional facilitators to discuss further. We will be more than happy to support you. When you are ready, follow the steps on this page to apply. We look forward to receiving your application.
Best regards, Movement Strategy and Governance Team Wikimedia Foundation
Hi everyone! The Ombuds commission (OC) and the Case Review Committee (CRC) are looking for members. People are encouraged to nominate themselves or encourage others they feel would contribute to these groups to do so. There is more information below about the opportunity and the skills that are needed.
About the Ombuds commission
The Ombuds commission (OC) works on all Wikimedia projects to investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy, especially in use of CheckUser and Oversight (also known as Suppression) tools. The Commission mediates between the parties of the investigation and, when violations of the policies are identified, advises the Wikimedia Foundation on best handling. They may also assist the General Counsel, the Chief Executive Officer, or the Board of Trustees of the Foundation in these investigations when legally necessary. For more on the OC's duties and roles, see Ombuds commission on Meta-Wiki.
Volunteers serving in this role should be experienced Wikimedians, active on any project, who have previously used the CheckUser/Oversight tools OR who have the technical ability to understand these tools and the willingness to learn them. They must be able to communicate in English, the common language of the commission. They are expected to be able to engage neutrally in investigating these concerns and to know when to recuse when other roles and relationships may cause conflict. Commissioners will serve two-year terms (note that this is different from past years, when the terms have been for one year).
About the Case Review Committee
The Case Review Committee (CRC) reviews appeals of eligible Trust & Safety office actions. The CRC is a critical layer of oversight to ensure that Wikimedia Foundation office actions are fair and unbiased. They also make sure the Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t overstep established practices or boundaries. For more about the role, see Case Review Committee on Meta-Wiki.
We are looking for current or former functionaries and experienced volunteers with an interest in joining this group. Applicants must be fluent in English (additional languages are a strong plus) and willing to abide by the terms of the Committee charter. If the work resonates and you qualify, please apply. Committee members will serve two-year terms (note that this is different from past years, when the terms have been for one year).
If you are interested in serving in either capacity listed above, please write in English to the Trust and Safety team at cawikimedia.org (to apply to the OC) or to the Legal Team at legalwikimedia.org (to apply to the CRC) with information about:
Your primary projects
Languages you speak/write
Any experience you have serving on committees, whether movement or non-movement
Your thoughts on what you could bring to the OC or CRC if appointed
Any experience you have with the Checkuser or Oversight tools (OC only)
Any other information you think is relevant
The deadline for applications is 31 December 2022 in any timezone.
Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any users who you think may be qualified and interested. Thank you!
We are inviting you to share your ideas for technical improvements to our tools and platforms. Long experience in editing or technical skills is not required. If you have ever used our software and thought of an idea to improve it, this is the place to come share those ideas!
The dates for the phases of the Survey will be as follows:
Phase 1: Submit, discuss, and revise proposals – Monday, Jan 23, 2023 to Sunday, Feb 6, 2023
Phase 2: WMF/Community Tech reviews and organizes proposals – Monday, Jan 30, 2023 to Friday, Feb 10, 2023
Phase 3: Vote on proposals – Friday, Feb 10, 2023 to Friday, Feb 24, 2023
Phase 4: Results posted – Tuesday, Feb 28, 2023
If you want to start writing out your ideas ahead of the Survey, you can start thinking about your proposals and draft them in the CWS sandbox.
We are grateful to all who participated last year. See you in January 2023!
In mid-January 2023, the Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct will undergo a second community-wide ratification vote. This follows the March 2022 vote, which resulted in a majority of voters supporting the Enforcement Guidelines. During the vote, participants helped highlight important community concerns. The Board’s Community Affairs Committee requested that these areas of concern be reviewed.
The volunteer-led Revisions Committee worked hard reviewing community input and making changes. They updated areas of concern, such as training and affirmation requirements, privacy and transparency in the process, and readability and translatability of the document itself.
The revised Enforcement Guidelines can be viewed here, and a comparison of changes can be found here.
How to vote?
Beginning January 17, 2023, voting will be open. This page on Meta-wiki outlines information on how to vote using SecurePoll.
Who can vote?
The eligibility requirements for this vote are the same as for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees elections. See the voter information page for more details about voter eligibility. If you are an eligible voter, you can use your Wikimedia account to access the voting server.
What happens after the vote?
Votes will be scrutinized by an independent group of volunteers, and the results will be published on Wikimedia-l, the Movement Strategy Forum, Diff and on Meta-wiki. Voters will again be able to vote and share concerns they have about the guidelines. The Board of Trustees will look at the levels of support and concerns raised as they look at how the Enforcement Guidelines should be ratified or developed further.
After 3097 voters from 146 Wikimedia communities voted, the results are 76% in support of the Enforcement Guidelines, and 24% in opposition. Statistics for the vote are available. A more detailed summary of comments submitted during the vote will be published soon.
From here, the results and comments collected during this vote will be submitted to the Board of Trustees for their review. The current expectation is that the Board of Trustees review process will complete in March 2023. We will update you when their review process is completed.
The Terms of Use (ToU) are the legal terms that govern the use of websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. We will be gathering your feedback on a draft proposal from February through April. The draft will be translated into several languages, with written feedback accepted in any language.
This update comes in response to several things:
Implementing the Universal Code of Conduct
Updating project text to the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license
Proposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing
Bringing our terms in line with current and recently passed laws affecting the Foundation, including the European Digital Services Act
As part of the feedback cycle two office hours will be held, the first on March 2, the second on April 4.
The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Išsaugoti pakeitimus". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can