Swept in from the pub

This is a message from the Wikimedia Foundation. Translations are available.

As many of you know, January 15 is Wikipedia’s 15th Birthday!

People around the world are getting involved in the celebration and have started adding their events on Meta Page. While we are celebrating Wikipedia's birthday, we hope that all projects and affiliates will be able to utilize this celebration to raise awareness of our community's efforts.

Haven’t started planning? Don’t worry, there’s lots of ways to get involved. Here are some ideas:

• Join/host an event. We already have more than 80, and hope to have many more.
• Talk to local press. In the past 15 years, Wikipedia has accomplished extraordinary things. We’ve made a handy summary of milestones and encourage you to add your own. More resources, including a press release template and resources on working with the media, are also available.
• Design a Wikipedia 15 logo. In place of a single icon for Wikipedia 15, we’re making dozens. Add your own with something fun and representative of your community. Just use the visual guide so they share a common sensibility.
• Share a message on social media. Tell the world what Wikipedia means to you, and add #wikipedia15 to the post. We might re-tweet or share your message!

Everything is linked on the Wikipedia 15 Meta page. You’ll find a set of ten data visualization works that you can show at your events, and a list of all the Wikipedia 15 logos that community members have already designed.

If you have any questions, please contact Zachary McCune or Joe Sutherland.

Thanks and Happy nearly Wikipedia 15!
-The Wikimedia Foundation Communications team

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery, 20:59, 18 December 2015 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Help[reply]

There are lots of ways to get involved. But anyway, Happy Birthday in advance. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:25, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Dear users,
the call for proposals for Wikimania 2016 is open! All the members of the Wikimedia projects, researchers and observers are invited to propose a critical issue to be included in the programme of the conference, which will be held in Italy, in Esino Lario, from June 21 to 28.
Through this call we only accept what we call critical issues, i.e. proposals aiming at presenting problems, possible solutions and critical analysis about Wikimedia projects and activities in 18 minutes. These proposals do not need to target newbies, and they can assume attendees to already have a background knowledge on a topic (community, tech, outreach, policies...).
To submit a presentation, please refer to the Submissions page on the Wikimania 2016 website. Deadline for submitting proposals is 7th January 2016 and the selection of these proposals will be through a blind peer-reviewed process. Looking forward to your proposals. --Yiyi (talk) 10:21, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The deadline for the call for proposals for Wikimania 2016 has been moved on 17th January 2016, so you have 10 days to submit you proposal(s). To submit a presentation, please refer to the Submissions page on the Wikimania 2016 website. --Yiyi (talk) 09:32, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Hi everyone,

The 2015 Community Wishlist Survey is over, and now the Community Tech team's work begins on the top 10 features and fixes.

In November and December 2015, we invited contributors from all Wikimedia projects to submit proposals for what they would like the Community Tech team to work on for the purpose of improving or producing curation and moderation tools for active contributors.

634 people participated in the survey, where they proposed, discussed and voted on 107 ideas. There was a two-week period in November to submit and endorse proposals, followed by two weeks of voting. The top 10 proposals with the most support votes now become the Community Tech team's backlog of projects to evaluate and address.

You can see the whole list with links to all the proposals and Phabricator tickets on this page: 2015 Community Wishlist Survey.

For everybody who proposed, endorsed, discussed, debated and voted in the survey, as well as everyone who said nice things to us recently: thank you very much for coming out and supporting live feature development. We're excited about the work ahead of us. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 21 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Did you know?

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

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

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

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

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

Recent improvements

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

Future changes

The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, like the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398, T58337) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as a cookie for logged-out users and as an account preference for logged-in editors. Logged-in editors will be able to set a default editor in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences in the drop-down menu about "Editing mode:".

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

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

Testing opportunities

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

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

Elitre (WMF), 00:06, 25 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Table of Content still keeps appearing on random pages, I am even beginning to think it is happening when there is no edit of an article. I would hate to get rid of the drop down functionality we now have in the page banner but beginning to think it may be the price to pay to not have the TOC appearing in articles. Should be go back to the old method or someone have an idea how to fix the problem? --Traveler100 (talk) 10:55, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I was told that this problem is related to page cache. Cache has to be purged globally, on every page, after some changes in the software. I added a small patch to Common.js. It purges cache automatically when the page is loaded, and it seems to solve the problem efficiently. --Alexander (talk) 12:52, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I saw it once or twice yesterday, and I kind of wished I could turn it on all the time. I always have to stop and remember where the TOC is on Wikivoyage. Traveler, if you see it again, I'd be very interested in knowing which article is appeared on (and more specifically, whether that article had recently been edited with the visual editor). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, "It purges cache automatically when the page is loaded" -- does this mean we're bypassing the cache on every page? That's very bad. Powers ^(talk) 22:15, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm... I imagine the Wikimedia techies will grumble but let it go because Wikivoyage is such a small piece of their traffic, but I'm pretty sure they're not amused by that patch :-) I've seen the issue a bunch of times too. Wouldn't it make sense to not patch it for now but keep track of where and when it happens, in order to find the exact issue? It's not such a huge issue that it needs an instant fix, does it? JuliasTravels (talk) 23:26, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have not seen any issues related to this patch. The only problem with "by-passing the cache" is that loading time increases, but it's not a problem at all.

If you want to track this bug, please go, but don't be surprised when you find out that the same page is fine for those users who have logged in, and makes a problem for those who are logged out. --Alexander (talk) 06:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What the heck's the point of having a cache if we bypass it on every page load? This is a major change to the site architecture, implemented through a seemingly minor adjustment to the site Javascript. I strongly recommend we revert this change until such time as we can check with the developers for advice. Powers ^(talk) 14:15, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing to revert. No patch is used on English Wikivoyage at the moment. --Alexander (talk) 14:54, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Still a problem. Example Neunkirchen (Saarland), note date of edit. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:26, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How Wikipedia’s reaction to popularity is causing its decline From the abstract: "recent research has shown that the number of active contributors in Wikipedia has been declining steadily for years, and suggests that a sharp decline in the retention of newcomers is the cause."

I wonder to what extent that applies here. Certainly we are not entirely innocent when it comes to biting the newbies. Recent discussions on deleting stubs are one example. Pashley (talk) 18:59, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think that we are gentler than the English Wikipedia. There are some ways to encourage more people to click the edit button, which is a big step. Some other things that help are going easy on the undo button (can you keep any of those changes at all?) and personal welcoming messages to promising (non-spammy/non-vandal) registered editors – especially a welcome that says "If you post your questions HERE, then we'll answer them!"

If you wanted to try an experiment, then we could ask User:Jtmorgan and User:EpochFail for their suggestions on what might be most effective. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Suggesting that the discussions on deleting stubbs is an example of 'biting newbies' and thereby responsible to the sites decline is very disingenuous.

Generally speaking most editors on this site are accommodating to most contributions to articles. We do take hard lines in some areas, including touting and changing of regional structure without discussion. Yesterday I reverted quite a few edits on Asia and sub articles because it didn't match one anonymous editor's own view of the world.

Agree with WhatamIdoing in that we should use 'undo' with care, and if we do then explain why we undid as well as a message on the user page to say that we would like to work together. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:00, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am not suggesting it is responsible for a decline; I'm not even certain there is a decline.

However, I do think we sometimes bite newbies. Look at Wikivoyage_talk:Deletion_policy#Completely_empty_skeletons, for example and consider how the new contributors who created Catarman and Danao City would feel about deletion. Both are significant towns, around 100,000, and one is a provincial capital.

We have also banned a number of users — Alice, Frank, Tony, ttcf, 118.whatever, ... — who sometimes made useful contributions. Granted, there were reasons, but it might be worth looking at whether we should be more flexible in such cases. Pashley (talk) 05:41, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A point of correction - Tony is not banned. He was blocked for 3 days. It's been his choice not to contribute since then. Nurg (talk) 06:54, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that we should be welcoming, helpful and kind to new users unless they're obvious spambots, vandals or incorrigible touter/edit warriors; however, if it's really essential to revisit the controversies that cost so much time, ill feeling and the departure or drastically reduced contributions by several extremely valuable editors, I will simply observe that some former editors, though helpful in a variety of ways, have made this site much more peaceful and pleasant through their absence. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:31, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed with Ikan. Let's not rewrite history here. The accounts Pashley cites above collectively represent two individual editors whose contributions to the site were partially constructive and partially not. Holding off for as long as we did on banning their accounts caused us to lose three editors whose contributions were wholly constructive. If we had held off longer, it is likely that we would have lost even more editors. Best practice in terms of editor retention would have been to ban the problem accounts far sooner than we in fact did. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:23, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I personally think that my treatment of (some) newbies may have resulted in them leaving. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:33, 3 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think the key point to extract out of this is not to simply accept or reject a new edit. Except in obviously bad cases edits should be enhanced not deleted and accompanied by some personalized advice on the users page. Traffic is small enough on this site we are not in the same zone as Wikipedia.--Traveler100 (talk) 21:55, 3 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that sounds like a constructive, simple, low-risk suggestion that anyone can do. Let's try it out. It can't hurt. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Hello, all.

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.)

Your input is welcome (and greatly desired) at the Meta discussion, 2016 Strategy/Community consultation.

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 [email protected].

I hope you'll join us! Maggie Dennis via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:06, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

In February, I'm undertaking a three-week tour of Australia, giving talks about Wikidata, and Wikimedia's GLAM collaborations. Do join us if you can, and please invite your Wikimedia, OpenData, GLAM or OpenStreetMap contacts in Australia to come along. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:33, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What is GLAM? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:19, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Probably the GLAM-Wiki initiative. Peter Chastain (talk) 01:21, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:48, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, Andy is coming to Australia. I dont know how many wikivoyage editors identify as being Australian based, but judging by the standards of most australian voyage articles, I suspect we have very few current active editors. Andy is obviously enthusiastic about his travelling here, and is clearly canvassing any Australian editors who might be able to attend his various talks, with any interest in the various Open-source projects he is interested in.

I dont know if we specifically know how many wikivoyage editors there are in Australias larger cities, but Andy will be in some of the cities in his tour. The hope from such a post as this, would be you never know unless you post...

For those who live mainly in the world of voyage, and dont wander into the sister projects much, the GLAM or Galleries Libraries Art galleries and Museums project for the larger wikimedia movement, is where such institutions collaborate with wikimedia organisations to improve and add materials to commons, and the various wikipedia projects. They do this by having wikipedians-in-residence, and also whole range of specific projects to increase collarborations and raise awarenes of the wikimedia projects.

A good overview of GLAM material is at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Case_studies - to give an idea...

The linkages between wikidata and wikivoyage would be something well worth looking at to see at what stage things are at. I edit in both, but havent seen much that suggests that there specific tie ins yet. If someone wants to enlighten us... JarrahTree (talk) 14:15, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Postscript. User:Andrewssi2 Andrews has noticed a posting on wp en regarding my capacity to be involved in GLAM issues here in Australia (which I have removed), and made a correlation with Andy's activities. Please note that GLAM is a label, and under no circumstances does it mean that an individual involved in GLAM in the UK would necessarily be involved with or even be aware of some GLAM activities in Australia. I removed the item, in order to make a more comprehensive explanation of the issues. Andrewssi2 was agrieved of that, I apologise. However I caution ascribing people with connections with things that are posted on one wiki, as being necessarily connected with something else, without checking first. JarrahTree (talk) 04:37, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I now have confirmation that I'll also be visiting Jakarta, Indonesia, after Australia, in late February, for the same reasons. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:48, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

I've started Wikivoyage:GLAM as a place to record and discuss Wikivoyage's collaboration with GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums). Please help to develop it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:58, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

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

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

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

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

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

Recent changes

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

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

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

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

Future changes

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

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

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

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at most "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. This will affect the following languages, amongst others: Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Thai, Aramaic.

Let's work together

• Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
• Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? 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.
• Learn how to improve the "automagical" citoid referencing system in the visual editor, by creating Zotero translators for popular sources in your language! Join the Tech Talk about "Automated citations in Wikipedia: Citoid and the technology behind it" with Sebastian Karcher on 29 February 2016.

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

Elitre (WMF), 19:21, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi people,
the calls for posters, discussions and trainings for Wikimania 2016 are officially opened, you can find all the relevant links on the conference wiki:

https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions

The calls will be closed on March 20.

Posters will be reviewed just to make sure that there aren't things which are too much out of scope. Since we have a whole village we will surely find places to attach them, even if we they will be a lot!

Discussions will be managed by a guiding committee who will work on the wiki to meld all the proposals and suggestions.

Trainings will be reviewed by the programme committee. Please note that we request that each training has at least 3-5 interested attendees in order to be put in the programme.

By the beginning of April we will have a first list of all the accepted proposals.

If you have questions we suggest you to ask them on the discussion pages on wiki, so that everyone will be able to see them (and their answers, of course).

We are looking forward to read your ideas! --Yiyi (talk) 13:28, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the posters idea is a good idea (which is based off an idea from the 2014 Wikimania), especially for the Wikivoyage community, what does everyone else think? I personally think that this could really benefit us, to help raise awareness about the project and maybe get some new members, and all we have to do is leave a request and someone else will make the poster for us.  Seagull123  Φ  16:27, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Powers ^(talk) 00:40, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A poster would also be useful to have for other publicity. If there was a suitable poster or leaflet, I might print a few copies to take with me when travelling - to hand to other travellers or put on hostel noticeboards. AlasdairW (talk) 22:15, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Looking further down the list at the Posters page on the 2014 Wikimania site, I just saw Wikivoyage's poster from then, here (although it's not on Commons) requested by LtPowers. Do we still need to request another poster for this year's Wikimania or not, and if so, should it be the same as in 2014 or different?  Seagull123  Φ  17:24, 5 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, how about that. I thought that initiative looked familiar. We're up to 17 languages now, so that part of the poster should be updated. And I think I'd like my e-mail off of there; at the time I must have thought it was an e-mail contact for the poster project, not to be printed on the poster itself. Powers ^(talk) 21:34, 5 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@LtPowers: Should we put a request in then? I'm happy to put in the request if needed, I'll base it on the request Powers put in before (removing his email of course), unless anyone else wants to do it?  Seagull123  Φ  18:48, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've just made a request for a poster at the Wikimania 2016 site.  Seagull123  Φ  13:06, 13 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is early notice for everyone, and a request to share the news:

The Ops team is planning a major change to the servers, (very) tenatively scheduled for Tuesday, 22 March 2016. One probable result is that when this happens, all wikis will be in read-only mode for a short time, likely less than 15 minutes for all editors. You will be able to read pages, but not edit them. "All wikis" means all of the WMF wikis, including Meta, Commons, the Wikipedias, and all the sister projects, including all of the Wikivoyages. It may affect some related sites, such as mw:Wikimedia Labs (including the Tool Labs). There will also be no non-emergency updates to MediaWiki software around that time.

Many details are still being sorted out. I am asking you to please share the word with your friends and fellow contributors now. This will be mentioned in m:Tech/News (subscribe now! ;-) and through all the other usual channels for Ops, but 99% of contributors don't follow those pages. If you are active in other projects or speak other languages, then please share the news with your fellow contributors at other projects, so that whenever it happens, most people will know that everything should be back online in 10 or 15 minutes.

Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 2 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi folks,

I've been working on the Upload to Commons Android app for the past few months as an Outreachy project (which was recently completed successfully :)). A few changes were made to the app to make categorization of pictures easier, via suggestion of nearby categories and more flexible category search. However, there are lots of improvements (documented on our GitHub page) that we couldn't fit into the scope of the Outreachy project. I would love to be able to continue working on the app to improve it further - hence an IEG proposal.

My IEG proposal for the app involves:

• Fixing long-standing bugs and looking into old crash reports to try and prevent them from recurring, to provide a smoother user experience
• Making several enhancements to the app to make it more user-friendly and newbie-friendly, new location-based features (e.g. a list of nearby articles lacking pictures), and further enhancing categorization.
• Increasing awareness of non-Wikimedians about this app to grow the contributor base

Several of the proposed features are based on previous suggestions by users, and I would very much appreciate more feedback and suggestions! If you are interested, please do take a look at the current proposal, feel free to ask questions and make new suggestions on the Discussion page, and review/endorse it as you see fit. If you would like to be part of the project, volunteers and additional advisors are always welcome.

Thank you so much! Misaochan (talk) 05:28, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, shortly we plan to enable the new maps support for several WikiVoyage languages. See documentation, or you can try it here (especially the Visual Editor). This is the alpha version, so it has bugs and missing functionality, and some behavior might change as we get feedback, but it will give you an opportunity to play with the early release and steer our development efforts towards what you really need. If you have any requests, please create them here (use your wiki login by clicking the MediaWiki button at the bottom of the login form).
CC from previous maps discussions: AlasdairW, Andrewssi2, Atsirlin, Ibaman, JamesA, JuliasTravels, Matroc, MaxSem, Mey2008, Pnorman, Shaundd, Sumit.iitp, Syced, TheTrolleyPole, Torty3, WhatamIdoing, Wrh2.
--Yurik (talk) 17:20, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Yurik: Will anything change when this new extension is enabled, or will it merely be an available option that we can test out while still using the existing maps implementation? Is there anything in particular that won't be supported anymore, or any new features that will be available (for example, an easier way to create a map mask for city borders)? -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:03, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Wrh2: nothing will change at this point, just a new feature to play with. The demo should give you a good feel for it. You will be able to:

• add markers and polygons visually
• edit geojson and see how it changes the map on each keystroke
• add auto-numbered markers (either numbers or letters), and have multiple counters
• have multiple "groups" of markers/polygons and showing them on the same map or on separate maps (e.g. all food and all drink maps and one combined map)
• markers and polygons can be of any color
• markers and polygons can be clicked and will show popups with wiki text and images
• very fast full screen popup map

• NOT available: multiple map layers

--Yurik (talk) 18:10, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'ts live now. Please play with it and tell us if there's something wrong/missing! Using it in articles right now would be slightly premature though:) MaxSem (talk) 23:16, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Many listings have a image= attribute linking to a file's name on Commons, for instance image=21 21 DESIGN SIGHT - Tokyo, Japan - DSC06710.JPG. This image is shown in the pop-up by the current map system, but not by the demo you linked to. Also, the description should probably be on the same line as the listing's name? (I guess we can fix that by ourselves, together with the other text-type parameters). Cheers! Syced (talk) 10:19, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Syced, in the demo on the right hand side, if you click the marker, it shows an image. The templates you currently use for the links can be changed to use the <maplink> tag, which will add extra data to the marker, so the image=... template parameter would turn into {"description":"[[File:Image.jpeg|250px|Image description]]", ...}. Is that what you are asking? --Yurik (talk) 16:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Please see this discussion by the WikiVoyage community. Add your suggestions there. Thanks! --Yurik (talk) 16:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tomasz is doing a live demo of the new map feature in the Metrics and Activities meeting – look about 45 minutes into the video. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agree really cool stuff. Very useful for WV. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:53, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Interactive maps. Excellent! How do we make all the dynamic maps on Wikivoyage interactive like that? Are they already? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:22, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's definitely got potential. To Ikan's question, no, our dynamic maps don't work like that. It's a different tag (<mapframe>) with different functionality. I'm not sure how we'd switch it over, but I don't think we're there yet.

If you're interested, I've been playing with the maps a bit -- User:Shaundd/Maps Demo and User:Shaundd/Dynamic_Region_Map. In addition to the stuff in the video, it can do some things that our current dynamic maps can't, like creating clickable dynamic maps and creating shaded polygons (useful if you want to highlight a particular neighbourhood in a city map). On the downside, I think there are still some Wikivoyage-specific quirks that should be worked out. For example, I haven't figured out how to get our existing listings to show in one of these maps, although I assume that's a fairly easy technical fix for someone who's good with those things. Those points they add in the video don't link with our listings tags so we could end up with two sets of coordinates for the same listing. Maps currently only has one layer, so we'd lose the GPX tracks, cycle maps, hill shading, OSM view (mapnik), MapQuest layer, etc, that our current dynamic maps have. The Visual Editor interface makes it really easy to set up a map and add points of interest and polygons, but to make them useful (e.g., change their colour, size, marker style, create a mapmask, add a name) you need to edit the GeoJSON that underlies the map. My understanding is Yurik and the Maps team would like to go in these directions, it's a work-in-progress.

It'd be great if more people played with/tested the Maps/mapframe feature so there's more diversity in the feedback. There's a discussion at Meta and so far it's mostly Yurik and the developers, me and some folks from Dutch WV. More opinions would be helpful! -Shaundd (talk) 15:38, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I made test implementation of the new maps for Wikivoyage: city article and country article with a fully dynamic(!) map of regions. The map of regions is embedded into the article just like static maps. Other dynamic maps can be opened (unfolded) by clicking on the map icon next to "Открыть карту" on the right side of the page. A few things remain to be polished, but in general the new maps are fully operational, and importing map masks from OSM turned out to be surprisingly easy. Not to mention the cool feature of drawing masks (polygons) using Visual Editor. Many thanks to Yurik and his team! --Alexander (talk) 14:12, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It will be awesome if we can easily utilize city borders and other data from OSM with the new map framework, and I'm excited by the potential applications. Many thanks to those who have been providing feedback and figuring out how to integrate these new maps with the existing templates and listing data. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:57, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. Alexander, could you edit the map mask with the Visual Editor after importing the data from OSM? I imported some data (not from OSM) and it displays OK when reading the page but I can't edit it in the Visual Editor. -Shaundd (talk) 05:11, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, I could not. But I also stored all masks on separate page(s) so that they do not clutter the article. --Alexander (talk) 06:44, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Being able to use two maps per article sounds great! (for instance town center + suburbs) Syced (talk) 05:18, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Trans-Canada Highway links to multiple dynamic maps, splitting the 8000+ km route into multiple regional segments. Will the new implementation display these inline? K7L (talk) 15:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@K7L: Done. --Yurik (talk) 15:34, 16 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, how have you made the pre fill templates ? With an extension ? A script ? Thank you Archi38 (talk) 19:35, 17 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What templates are you looking for? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:37, 17 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Generally the approach to templates on WV has been to reduce their number if possible and practicable in order to make editing easier. However, I don't know what pre-fill templates are and they may indeed justify addition to the limited list of templates in use on WV Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:39, 17 March 2016 (UTC)s[reply]

@Ikan Kekek: @Hobbitschuster: On this wiki you call it "standart section". I'm talking about "City • City District • Region • National Park • Phrasebook • Huge airport • Dive site • Disambiguation • Redirect" when you create a new page. Archi38 (talk) 06:26, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. Yes, we do. Go to Wikivoyage:Article templates and press "quick version" on any of the templates. The other way to do it is by searching for the title you want to create and then choosing the template when you are asked whether you want to create an article on that title. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:47, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Archi38: See MediaWiki:Newarticletext. That is the message displayed when creating new articles, and is how the option to pre-populate the new article window with an existing template is generated. For each template type we have created a template (for example {{Smallcity skeleton}} which you will see used in the calls from that MediaWiki: message (for example //en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?action=edit&title=Wikivoyage:Travellers%27_pub/2016&preload=Template:Smallcity_skeleton). -- Ryan • (talk) • 13:44, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Wrh2: I already did it but how do you remove the little blue icon at right of the template's link ? Archi38 (talk) 16:23, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The following CSS will do it:

.mw-newarticletext a.external {     background: none !important; } 

-- Ryan • (talk) • 16:30, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you to all ! You helped me a lot ! Archi38 (talk) 17:58, 18 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why, in your opinion, have the Hebrew Wikivoyage articles got more views in the recent days than all of the other Wikivoyage editions? This clearly can't be correct. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 17:54, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Another question: How have edits and active users developed in recent years? Is there a usable statistic on this? Pageview statistics don't seem to be all that accurate... Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:39, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We haven't had many active users beside myself. probably around 5 more semi-active users. I myself though have focused a lot on building up the core foundation of the website (I think I have done the work of circa 10 people so far), so this might have some impact on the readership (see my theory below). ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 19:56, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My suspicion on this matter, is that that once in a while (maybe once a year?), Google would test the relevancy + popularity of the content in specific websites by sending A LOT more people to the pages of specific websites which it suspects might be of higher interest to the general public. For example, I won't be surprised if the Hebvoy articles were higher in Google.co.il for about 24 or 48 hours, and that after this test the page views return to normal again while Google adjusts the amount of people they send to the content on a daily basis based on how they automatically measured the relevancy each page has to the users (maybe, among other things, based on the amount of time each user spent reading the page before returning to Google). ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 19:56, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Btw, my question above was also targeted towards this language version. I am not quite sure if we are declining, growing or holding steady... However, I do know that de-WT [sic!] is dead. Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:19, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, what in the world happened at de:? Not even a year ago they were routinely getting twice the number of pageviews as en:, but they cratered last summer and they haven't even cleared the million mark in any month after September 2015. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:27, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am not talking about German Wikivoyage, I was talking about that other site's German edition, which is so dead in the water it is almost funny. As for what happened with de-WV, I cannot quite tell. Call it a cliché, but I have sometimes perceived their style of dealing with things a bit more bureaucratic and cumbersome than here, on the other hand their coverage is quite good for some areas and almost nonexistent elsewhere. But pageview statistics are quite likely not the gospel truth.... Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:31, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think my theory above is the real reason for such a sharp increase in pageviews? or do you have an alternative explanation? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 00:36, 8 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

w:Slashdot effect can cause a short-term spike fairly easily if a usually-quiet wiki gets mentioned at a higher-traffic site or in a media report. K7L (talk) 01:02, 8 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all -- I produce a podcast for Wikimedia Deutschland in English about interesting projects, community initiatives, open source, you name it.. and currently we're working on an episode on Wikivoyage. Would any of you experienced members of the community be available to speak, say via skype, and share your interest and explain what excites you about this resource? 5 to 10 minutes? If so please get in touch, we're trying to put these audio bits together in the coming days. Send me a message, here or perhaps best via email mark at citizenreporter dot org. Bicyclemark (talk) 22:06, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We were in touch earlier about this. I reiterate my interest and have already sent you an email to that effect. Eagerly awaiting further information. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:20, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is over. If you found any problems, please let me know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 19 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And it's all been switched back to the Virginia servers, somewhat faster and definitely with fewer surprises. Again, if you see any problems, please {{ping}} me. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:26, 21 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For those of you who enjoy listening to podcasts, AndreCarrotflower and I both took part in an episode about Wikivoyage and travel writing for the Source Code Berlin podcast (associated with Wikimedia Deutschland). I invite you guys to listen, maybe leave some feedback, and enjoy! PerryPlanet (talk) 21:08, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! - Matroc (talk) 13:45, 26 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good podcast. Maybe it will even draw an eyeball or two to our project... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:21, 26 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Listening to it right now. It's good advertising for WV, so let's hope as many people as possible stumble upon it. Thumbs up to Andre and Perry. :) ϒpsilon (talk) 19:12, 26 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When listening, please bear in mind that I don't lisp like that in real life. It was a bad Skype connection. :) -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:00, 26 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, it's so much fun listening to you ;) Thanks! Danapit (talk) 20:04, 26 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I, on the other hand, frequently do sound that hyper and stuttering, especially when I start getting enthusiastic about something. ;) PerryPlanet (talk) 01:25, 27 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to Andre and Perry for contributing, and the producers for a very polished podcast. Nicely done, hopefully it garners some attention for the project. -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:35, 27 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello

Cross wiki notifications will be released by default on all wikis on May 12 at 23:00 UTC

During the beta phase, the cross-wiki notifications feature was enabled by over 18,000 accounts across more than 360 wikis. We receive great feedback from a lot of very happy users. After that 3-months long beta period during which we made adjustments and that feature is now ready for a release by default.

Users who don't want to receive cross-wiki notifications will be able to turn them off on their preferences on each wiki. If you haven't activated Cross-wiki Notifications during the Beta phase, you may receive old unread notifications from other wikis.

More information is available on the documentation. The talk page is still open for any questions or feedback, in any language.

All the best, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Are there statistics for how often different articles are read? And which articles are the most read during a period? /Yvwv (talk) 13:36, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I vaguely remember having looked at such statistics somewhere two years ago or so, so I googled "wikivoyage statistics". seems to have statistics for WMF projects including Wikivoyage, however they seem to have some problem there right now. Nothing loads, including the Wikivoyage stats page. ϒpsilon (talk) 14:56, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We used to discuss (official?) statistics in unregular intervals, but they have always produced questionable results if you ask me... Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:11, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pageviews at https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews, eg, https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/#project=en.wikivoyage.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&range=latest-20&pages=New_Zealand. Nurg (talk) 10:44, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Hey All We have been successfully running a bot to pick up copy and paste issues on En Wikipedia per . Would WV be interested in a bot running here? It is about 60% accurate and we see copyright issues in about 5 to 10% of substantial edits. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:40, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it could do much harm... And it good help getting rid of that google penalty... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:10, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That bot has already been set up on Wikivoyage, although it hasn't made any edits in a while: Special:Contributions/EranBot. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:36, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah perfect. Will see about activating it again if people find it useful. Travel Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:40, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please run it. I've been detecting a lot of these manually, but I can't always be here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:01, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

BTW, this happened on schedule, almost 8 hours ago. If you ran into any problems or weird things, please let me know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

It's often handy when writing to use shorthand, so instead of writing [[Wikivoyage:Name of page]] I sometimes use the abbreviation [[WV:Name of page]], which works the same way. I've just found out, however, that [[WV talk:Name of policy page]] does not link to [[Wikivoyage talk:Name of policy page]]. Could someone familiar with the coding needed please fix this? Saving keystrokes is great for the hands! Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:51, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't remember if such an animal actually exists; however, I think that a shortcut of Wikivoyage design could probably be accomplished through a REDIRECT? - just a thought -- (There is Shortcut template that creates a box - also a Wikivoyage page on shortcuts - maybe something could be garnished from that discussion etc.) --Matroc (talk) 02:41, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that this could be realized using normal redirects. As far as I know it's a matter of the MediaWiki configuration. I'd try to open a phabricator ticket. Could anybody do that? –T.seppelt (talk) 05:52, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it's a configuration issue and that redirects aren't appropriate. But we should discuss whether it should be "WV Talk", or "WT" like on Wikipedia. Powers ^(talk) 20:25, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am opposed to WT meaning anything other than that other site - even in wiki syntax. We will at some points in time have to mention them (before that one company shuts them down) and WV talk makes much more sense imho. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:03, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Hobbitschuster on this. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:33, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a shortcut, but if you're working on multiple projects or multiple languages, it's handy to know that you can always reach the local equivalent of the "Wikivoyage:" namespace via "Project:". This English label, and its matching "Project talk:", works everywhere. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:14, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Hello,

I'd like to talk to you about setting up the visual editor for contributors to this wiki.

The visual editor allows people to edit Wikivoyage articles as if they were using a typical word processor. If you're not familiar with it, then please try it out. Going to https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/User:Whatamidoing_(WMF)/Sandbox?veaction=edit will let you see its current state. (Feel free to edit and save; it's just a sandbox.) Or click on the picture there to enlarge it, if you just want a quick look. If you want to see more, then there are some screencasts on Commons.

If you want to keep using it here, then you will need to enable it for your account. This is quick and easy: Go to "Beta Features" in your preferences. Choose "VisualEditor" and click save. When it is enabled, press the "Edit" button to edit an article. When the visual editor is open, you can switch to the wikitext editor any time you want. Just click the [[ ]] icon in the toolbar, next to the "Save" button. Inside the wikitext editor, click the pencil icon () in the upper right corner to switch to the visual editor. (If you prefer having two tabs, or if you want to change the editing system that opens first, then go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and choose your favorite option for the "Editing mode".)

On the tech side, this could be done at any time, but we've got a couple of requests in the system to customize this software for Wikivoyage. The first (phab:T133725) is to move the big "Cite" button into a the "Insert" menu, since you probably don't want Wikipedia-style citations. The other (phab:T96710) is to add the popular listings templates into the toolbar. You can access them easily now (Insert > Template and search for See, Do, Eat, etc.), but this would make them even quicker. My suggestion is to wait until the first is done, but not to wait for the second.

There is a short guide at mediawiki.org that has some tips about getting the best value out of the visual editor for your project, but the relevant bits are this:

• It's much easier to add templates if you've added TemplateData information. This has already been done for the listings templates.
• For more information about how to use the visual editor, see mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide.
• Let me know if you find any problems in either editing system. You can report issues in Phabricator or, for the visual editor, on the central feedback page on mediawiki.org. Also, you can always leave a note on my talk page.

Please let me know what you think about the idea of setting up the visual editor here. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:46, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit confused. I was very sure that this wiki already has the visual editor and I have used it before. However if I check now (and thinking of it, it has been like this for at least 2 weeks) I can't access it any more. Has there been a recent change on this? Drat70 (talk) 09:26, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to use it now, then you have to enable it (and set your prefs so you can find it, if you want), or switch to it after opening the wikitext editor. See #You can switch between wikitext and visual editing for more information (and {{ping}} me if anything's unclear). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Since no one has raised any particular concerns about doing this, I have asked the team to schedule this for next Tuesday, 28 June 2016. Please ping me if you would like me to change this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This will probably happen in about 22 hours. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:26, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

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. However, 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. 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. Thank you. On behalf of the Wikimedia Language team:--Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) 07:45, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I do not like this feature, nor do I understand the need. On Wikivoyage the language list was short anyway (and on Wikipedia, the long lists are fascinating – I sometimes click odd languages just for fun).

For short lists of languages, those are presented exactly as they were before. For pages available in more languages, the tool provides aids such as flexible search or surfacing your usual choices. The purpose of the tool is to make it easy to find their usual languages for users that often switch between the languages they speak. Finding your language in some articles not only takes time from our users but may prevent them to discover that content is available in their language (e.g., speakers of small languages for which content is not usually available and when it is their language is in the middle of a long list since the topics are covered by many other languages). In our tests we've found the proposer selector makes it easier to find the content in your language. You can still click on odd languages, they will be just easier to access the next time. --Pginer-WMF (talk) 09:58, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Choosing a few languages makes people less likely to click the others – even less likely if the algorithm for choosing languages is good. This makes people miss the would-be-next language, which often could be relevant (I know about five languages well enough to produce simple text, but counting related languages I can probably get some information out of more than a dozen).

This is one of the aspects we focused on when testing the feature with users. For the people we tested with it was clear that there were more languages available than those shown initially, and finding them was easier than scanning a list of potentially hundred of options. Having the option you are looking for in the middle of a long list with mixed scripts is not going to help much with discovery.--Pginer-WMF (talk) 10:12, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For me personally this makes using iw more difficult. I have to activate a popup just to see what the other languages are, and to choose one I have to "search" by continent (with most languages doubled; scrolling needed). I though it was easy to opt out, but I cannot find where (and the possibility is not mentioned in the posting above).

A specific issue over here is that choice of language very much depends on the article: I will surely check versions in the local language of any destination where I am going, even when I do not understand a word (as in Chinese), and try to find articles in comprehensible regional languages. I think such considerations are not made when choosing what languages to show.

--LPfi (talk) 11:54, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is a ticket to consider the languages that appear in the content as another criteria for language selection. This could help in the scenario you mention, since an article about China is likely to contain some Chinese word even in the English article giving a hint that Chinese is relevant in this context. --Pginer-WMF (talk) 10:19, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like this non-feature. I can't find anywhere to set my preferred set of languages - I could see some value if I could restrict the list to those languages that I know a little of. I just tried it on Warsaw and Polish was not one of the languages shown. If you want to improve the list of languages, adding the article size (or a sort by size feature) would be much more useful.

You can customise the default list of languages. Since previous choices is the highest priority criteria, you just need to navigate to your preferred languages and those will be remembered for future use. That is, just using the feature configures it to better fit your preferences. --Pginer-WMF (talk) 10:02, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have just opted out of this - by deselecting the "Use a compact language list, with languages relevant to you." at the bottom of the Appearance tab in Preferences. AlasdairW (talk) 22:15, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is a step in the wrong direction, maybe makes sense in Wikipedia where there are many small articles with same topic on many languages but for Wikivoyage if the location is on a number of language sites it will in most case be long enough in length to handle the list. Switch off in preference only improves things for those who know about it, can this be switched off for all readers? --Traveler100 (talk) 05:04, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not a fan of this too. I don't see why the list of languages has to be shortened. It ain't broke. Gizza ^(roam) 12:13, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's certainly more challenging on pages with dozens or even 100+ links, and people especially at non-English sites do complain about having trouble finding the 'obvious' interlanguage links in a sea of mostly irrelevant ones. I've sent an e-mail message to Runa, to make sure that she sees your comments. However, Wikimania's underway, so I'm making no promises about how soon she will be able to read it (much less to reply). If you've not worked with Runa before, then I think you'll be happy; the Language team in general is responsive and easy to talk to. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:57, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Whatamidoing (WMF). Hello, thanks for the feedback. We did indeed discuss in the team about the already short language list in Wikivoyage and as it has already been mentioned in this thread, compact links are (at the moment) expected to be more effective for projects like Wikipedia than Wikivoyage. Nevertheless, the expectation is that Wikivoyage being a still growing project may soon add more languages and users will be able to use the compact links for easier navigation across languages. I am taking this feedback to the team for discussion. Thanks again for the feedback and please do feel free to contact me directly or on our project talk page.--Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) 02:31, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Where is the problem? Proposal for alternative solution: --Traveler100 (talk) 04:18, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

1. If list shorter then length of article do not compact.
2. Highlight language(s) selected in reader's browser preferences plus language based on IP address of visitor to site.

@Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF): That's a very naive expectation given the fact that 7 out of 17 language versions of Wikivoyage have zero contributors with 100+ edits/month. --Alexander (talk) 05:20, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from being unnecessary on Wikivoyage, I am finding having to scroll down through the oversized pop-up window very annoying. How can we by default switch this feature off? --Traveler100 (talk) 17:29, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am trying to do this for Russian Wikivoyage, but it looks like the developers strongly oppose such requests. I would be grateful if more people write on Phabricator what they think about this useless functionality. --Alexander (talk) 17:39, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This Phabricator site not exactly open and user friendly to non experts is it. Looks like a good way of alienating contributors to wiki sites. --Traveler100 (talk) 17:54, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed I don't really like Compact Language Links myself and I think they discourage interwiki work. (I have to admit that I am slightly ignorant of how they are sorted though--for instance, someone who knows Catalan may well know French and Spanish, so it would make sense to have those always appear but is very unlikely to know Swahili, so it's more okay if that disappears from the list.) In the case of voy, v:, and n: it's not really necessary to compact these because there will be so few interwiki links anyway. I understand with almost 300 editions of w: and over 100 of b: and wikt: (almost 100 for q:) but even then, I don't really like the idea that much. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:07, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, if it's inconvenient, the feature can be disabled by anyone by using the checkbox under User Preferences -> Appearance -> Languages (see the screenshot). You will find more information about how the languages are being selected in the FAQ page and also how, over time it gets improved to show more relevant suggestions. The project page has more useful information about the tool. Thanks, --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 11:47, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That is fine for the regular users who are in the know, but not for the causal visitor/reader. Issue is why change the default behaviour to something worse that it was before. --Traveler100 (talk) 14:51, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

At Wikipedia they've apparently compiled a list of "missing Wikipedians" with editors who haven't edited in a while. While I don't think it's necessary for us to create such a list of "missing voyagers", there are undoubtedly many voyagers who have been active editors in the past but have now stopped (or almost stopped) editing, for instance Sertmann, Cacahuate and Sapphire (and probably many others). How about a little talk page message campaign asking such users if they're OK and hoping they'd have time and feel interested to come back to editing WV at some point? --ϒpsilon (talk) 17:21, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As long as this sort of thing doesn't turn into an effort to spam or cajole past contributors then I'm all for it. Maybe rather than a "missing contributors" list we could do something similar to a barnstar, but with more of a "we miss you" tone? I'd love to see even a temporary return of some of our past prolific contributors, but everyone has their reasons for leaving so we should be very careful that we aren't doing anything that would even remotely be construed as an attempt to guilt someone into making additional contributions. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:55, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

With attention duly paid to the caveats Ryan outlined above, I couldn't help but that Peter's name was the first that came to my mind. It would certainly be a long shot to convince him to come back, if there's even any way to get in touch with him, but it's perhaps worth noting that we've long since solved the problem that drove him away in the first place. He's sorely missed. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:19, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think its worth to contact the users and inform about our recent developments. I should still have Peter's phone number. I was not involved in any way here because too busy with the German version (still don't know what happened here at all). I could try to get in touch with him. I should still have Sapphire's contact information as well. Always wanted to have a drink with him. I did the same years ago with some German users. I got some answers, but not too many....-- DerFussi 06:10, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, we shouldn't be too intrusive. Something like a barnstar sounds like a good idea. Many users probably get an e-mail when something is written on their talk page, also, if you're active on any other WMF project you nowadays get a message whenever something is written on your talk page in some other WMF project.

I'd be cautious with using "e-mail this user" or calling them, especially users that explicitly have stated they've retired from WV. I was more thinking of people who may have had so much else to do that they've forgotten about WV. ϒpsilon (talk) 08:59, 24 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

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Did you know?

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

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

If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references. Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

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

Recent changes

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

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

Future changes

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

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

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

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

Let's work together

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

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

m:User:Elitre (WMF), 17:20, 3 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Greetings! The Project Grants program is accepting proposals from July 1st to August 2nd to fund new tools, research, offline outreach (including editathon series, workshops, etc), online organizing (including contests), and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds, Project Grants can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.

• Submit a grant request or draft your proposal in IdeaLab
• Get help with your proposal in an upcoming Hangout session
• Learn from examples of completed Individual Engagement Grants or Project and Event Grants

Also accepting candidates to join the Project Grants Committee through July 15.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) 15:21, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Would be nice to get a response to the question at m:Wikimedia merchandise/Design ideas#Wikivoyage Sticker. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:17, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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When a Chinese users (zh:User:Hiokdat) login to wikivoyage , but there show " Fatal exception of type "Exception" ", And even the whole global account has a problem , who someone can help the fixes? Thank--Yuriy kosygin (talk) 07:11, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing we can do about login issues from here. I suggest asking on Meta-Wiki or filing a bug report on Phabricator. Powers ^(talk) 17:22, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Has been repaired successfully, sorry to bother everyone... --Yuriy kosygin (talk) 17:47, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yuriy kosygin, I'm so sorry to hear that User:Hiokdat got "bit" by this bug. There was a terrible problem in the software, and it has just been fixed. About four thousand login attempts failed recently – far more than usual.

It is supposed to be working now, but, just in case, I hear that some editors were successful if they started to log in at their "home" wiki (usually the Wikipedia for your preferred language, but Special:CentralAuth will know for certain – it's marked with a "house" or a green "+" icon). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 12 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing, of more general interest: The fix involved temporarily reverting a lot of software changes. So, some recently fixed bugs have reappeared. Don't worry; they'll be re-fixed soon (expected time: today). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 12 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I know! thank you for your reminder.--Yuriy kosygin (talk) 11:03, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Please see incubator:Incubator:Community_Portal#maplink_and_imagemap Can anyone here help our fellow traveller? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:06, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Could I bother an admin to please edit the Pageinfo footer to add the same tools as in Wikipedia? So this: "WV footer" would look like this: "WP footer". Just a copy/paste. I'm mostly interested in the pageview functionality myself but the other tools might be useful to other people. This is how it would look in an actual page: Scroll down to the bottom. Thanks, Acer (talk) 18:45, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, some changes are needed, pretty simple, just changing wikipedia to wikivoyage in the urls. I'm pasting the updated version below, I also removed the wikichecker as I couldn't get it to work. Acer (talk)

External tools

• Revision history search
• Revision history statistics
• Edits by user
• Page view statistics

Done. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:52, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, it's working fine Acer (talk) 20:19, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Swept in from the pub

Two thing's I've noticed since I started dropping by, probably because I'm new here...

• The font size in the pagebanners is a bit small I think and the text can get lost in the background. I actually didn't see the navigation links for almost two weeks after I started visiting here more and assumed you guys didn't use them. Navigating large articles was a pain. I've been editing wikis for quite a while and don't have any vision impairment so if I missed them I'd say it's a fair bet some casual readers are missing the links as well.

• Is the "Related sites" tab on the sidebar still relevant? I imagine it's a leftover from when this was a standalone project? It mostly just repeats what's in the sister projects tab now. The only other site I see there from time to time is DMOZ. More often than not it's just Commons and Wikipedia.

On a side note, I've been doing some interwiki work on the 'pedias related to WV, I'll do a write up later of what I've managed so far, mostly replacing WT links with WV ones and a few other things. Cheers, Acer (talk) 06:29, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Related sites is now mainly duplication. Until recently, there didn't used to be a "In other projects" section. Now that there is, I'm just wondering if we should remove all the [[wikipedia:]] and [[commons:]] links from the bottom of articles? We could also remove the [[dmoz:]] links and add some code into {{pagebanner}} to get the dmoz links from wikidata and still show them in the releated site section. -- WOSlinker (talk) 14:13, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Would be a good idea. Do we need to do any cross check first before removing the [[wikipedia:]] and [[commons:]] links? Also using the "In other projects" facility, any way to auto generate Category:Articles without Wikipedia links? --Traveler100 (talk) 14:37, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We could add a little bit of code in {{pagebanner}} to see if wikidata has a wikipedia link and then add the page to Category:Articles without Wikipedia links if it doesn't or maybe adding it to a new category Category:Articles without Wikipedia links (via Wikidata) (or other name) so that a comparison can be done. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:13, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sound like a method that would work. I assume we could add to that a check that the wikidata WIkipadia name matches the [[wikipedia:]] entry so we can clean-up data before deleting the entries. Also create a categories of pages without wikidata page. --Traveler100 (talk) 16:14, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you just want a list of pages without a link from Wikidata, Special:UnconnectedPages will provide that information. The list is sorted by newest-pages first. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:24, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you select Main Space in Special:UnconnectedPages that brings list down to 103 articles - Matroc (talk) 01:54, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can see a few problems with removing the [[wikipedia:]]. Take a look at Icefields Parkway which has a wikidata page and corresponding pages on other language Wikivoyage sites as well as pages on non English Wikipdia such as German and French. The English Wikipedia, which did exist, now is part of w:Alberta Highway 93 with a redirect to the section. Based purely on Wikidata the link to English Wikipedia would be lost. And not sure what to do about Tokyo or Windsor and Eton. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:19, 15 August 2016 (UTC)