Prototime

SEMI-RETIRED

This user is no longer very active on Wikipedia.

Semi-retired: After taking an extended semi-wikibreak, it appears unlikely that I will return to my prior level of editing any time soon (perhaps I will one day). For now, I hope to channel my research energy into more academic and professional pursuits. But I'm certainly not leaving Wikipedia entirely, and you can always reach me by leaving a message here or by pinging me.

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Voting Rights Act of 1965

In the Voting Rights Act article, you made the following change: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965&action=historysubmit&diff=561604715&oldid=561593510 Unfortunately, this adds uncited material that contradicts statements under the "Bail in" section. I'm particularly concerned that you added your sentence before a citation that did not support it. If you want to restore it, please put it after that citation and add a citation or a "citation-needed" tag. Such a citation should explain explicitly why the Section 3 jurisdictions are no longer covered. Note: I agree with your changes to the previous sentence -- keep up the good work. Mdfst13 (talk) 15:19, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out. The lack of a direct source for that particular sentence was a mistake in this instance, because elsewhere the same point has been sourced by SCOTUSblog. I have restored the sentence and added the source. (As an aside, note that the language of Section 5 references only Section 4; "bail in" under Section 3 imposes its own preclearance requirement, so the statement that "no jurisdiction is currently required to have any of their voting changes precleared under Section 5" is indeed correct, if a bit counter-intuitive.) –Prototime (talk · contribs) 04:57, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Section 3(c) vs. Section 5

I put it on the VRA Talk page but also wanted to say here how ashamed I am of not having recognized that you were correct and that I was wrong. Wikipedia et al. are fortunate to have you editing.Czrisher (talk) 14:14, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey, no worries. It makes total sense to think that bail in would trigger Section 5, when I first learned about it that's what I assumed too. Nothing to be ashamed of! Thanks. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 15:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Democracy

I noticed from your user page that you're interested in democracy and related articles. It'll be at least a few months before I could get to it, but Democracy is an article I'd like to get to GA some day. I'm working on a lot of the most-viewed articles for WP Human rights, and that's often in the top 20. Would you have any interest in collaborating on that? -- Khazar2 (talk) 20:36, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for reaching out, I'd be interested in collaborating on that. I've actually put a fair amount of work into that article in the past, and I've been wanting to return to for a while because it still has a ways to go to get to GA status, particularly in its lack of sources. Like you, it'll be a few months before I could get to it though—my main focus currently is to bring the Voting Rights Act of 1965 up to GA status, and that'll probably take me well into August because I'm utterly swamped until the end of this month with other things. But do drop me a message when you want to start working on the article. In the meantime, our paths will definitely be crossing more on the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States article—which I wish I had even more time to contribute to, but at the rate things are going over there it will obtain GA status in no time. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 06:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Great, I will. And I appreciate the help at the 15A article--before this year, I mostly wrote biographies or book articles, so these law articles have been presenting me unusual challenges for research, terminology, and defining scope/assigning weight.

As for the VRA of 1965, feel free to ping me if there's ever a way I can help, especially with GA criteria questions. Good luck on it! -- Khazar2 (talk) 11:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Definitely will do. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 19:09, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

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WikiProject Report

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Freedom of Speech for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Hope you have a great day. -buffbills7701

Obamacare Lead

Hey! Look, I know I'm being pedantic about this, and I don't want to appear to be edit warring, so I wanted to talk to you about it. So we've got the two versions:

• The ACA aims to increase the quality, affordability, and rate of health insurance coverage for Americans, and reduce the costs of health care for individuals and the government.
• The ACA aims to increase the quality and affordability of health insurance and to raise the number of insured Americans. It also aims to reduce health care costs for individuals and governments.

The reason I prefer the former is that rate is more accurate in a technical sense (by which I mean how it's referred to in policy) - if you check the Health insurance coverage in the United States page 'rate' is used frequently in relation to coverage, just as we refer to the 'unemployment rate' rather than the 'number of unemployed' - and to remove any ambiguity I had included the 'rate of coverage' in the hyperlink. I'd prefer to use the former because of that.

Also, as a side-note, I'm working on the 'Change in insurance standards' section and I hope to have something adequate finished shortly (which isn't to say it wouldn't require improvement), but once we've sorted this, the lead, and a bit I want to elaborate on the impact of Scott Brown's election (as it is a bit disconnected atm), I was thinking of nominating it for a good article - I was wondering about your thoughts on that? Thanks! =) Sb101 (talk) 04:49, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Please forgive my presumptuousness, but having finished the remaining edits I wanted to get done, I've changed the lead back to my version, on the assumption you are satisfied by my justification for it. If not, forgive me, and let's discuss the matter to sort it out. Otherwise, unless you have anything you still want to improve, I was hoping to nominate it for GA status now, as I'm satisfied with where it's at? (I am trying to sort out a couple of images and a video for the page, but they’re more bonuses than necessities). I intend to hold off nominating the article until I hear your thoughts.

Also, as an aside, I enjoyed your 'Tools of debate' section, and it reminded me of a post you might like: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/david-brooks-and-the-role-of-opinion-journalism.html Sb101 (talk) 14:33, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

You most certainly are not being pedantic (or if you are, it certainly isn't a problem; accuracy and clarity are important!). I agree that strictly speaking, you are correct: the term "rate of health insurance coverage" can refer to the number of persons insured. However, I do think that saying "rate of health insurance coverage" implies to lay readers "insurance rates", commonly meaning "premiums", and that this would be a source of confusion. While the wikilink can help to clarify, I don't think that readers should have to click it to understand what is meant. That said, I'm not especially attached to the language I added, and perhaps I am overestimating the potential confusion. So, how about this: let's keep your language for now. By all means, go ahead and nominate the article for GA status. I just ask that during the GA review, we see if the reviewing editor(s) bring it up on their own, and if they don't, then we ask them their opinion(s) as to whether they think it's confusing. If others think it's confusing, we'll change it (maybe, but not necessarily, to the way I had it); otherwise, we'll keep it. Sound fair? –Prototime (talk · contribs) 21:26, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I do understand where you're coming from, but suspect that you are overestimating the likelihood of confusion (not only due to the hyperlink and technical use, but also 'rate' in the singular suggests, I think, that it's not to do with premium rates, plural). However, I'm more than happy to get the opinion of a reviewer. If you do want a third opinion in the meantime, we could consult the talk page? Sb101 (talk) 03:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. I just didn't want to delay your efforts for a GA review, and (despite my premature placement of the banner on my user page) I will be on a total wikibreak for the next week (starting in a few hours), so I won't be able to participate in the conversation until after then. I see two options though. You can bring it up on the talk page now if you'd like and mention my concern with the current language, and then I'll join the conversation when I get back (unless consensus is overwhelmingly one way or another by then). Or, we can keep things as is until next week and I'll post on the talk page then. It's up to you, I'm fine either way. If you choose the latter, and a GA review happens in the mean time (which it probably won't, but it certainly can), I'd just ask that you bring up the concern then. Thanks! –Prototime (talk · contribs) 04:08, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll post something in the talk page shortly - that way we can be soliciting input while your away. And I'll be sure to bring it up, if we get reviewed in the meantime. Enjoy your wikibreak! Sb101 (talk|contribs) 06:25, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey, sorry it took me so long to reply. Just notifying you that I've updated the PPACA talk page with my justification for the current language. Look forward to hearing what you think. =) Sb101 (talk|contribs) 17:33, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! –Prototime (talk · contribs) 00:29, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

By the way, I do think the article is a serious GA contender, especially given the number of reliable sources you have added over the past week. It could still use a bit of copy-editing, but its substance and sources are right on. Great work! –Prototime (talk · contribs) 21:26, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! =) Sb101 (talk) 03:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

And thanks for the article you linked. I'd love it if opinion journalists actually followed that advice! –Prototime (talk · contribs) 02:28, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

"Uninsured rate"

Prototime, you're invited to provide feedback to a potential compromise on this issue. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:44, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! –Prototime (talk · contribs) 00:29, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey! Wasn't sure if I needed to say anything or not, but just in case, I expect you're also happy with me not bringing up the aforementioned issue with the reviewer now that we've settled it? (NB: full disclosure: I did just swap 'reduce' and 'lower' around but otherwise). =) Sb101 (talk|contribs) 05:11, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Yep, the issue is resolved as far as I'm concerned! Thanks! –Prototime (talk · contribs) 05:14, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Lead#Challenges

Hey, me again. Just wanted to raise a couple of concerns about that sentence. I don't think it's completely accurate to say that " Implementation of the ACA continues to face challenges..." as it implies only the implementation is the problem, when in fact the challenges (e.g. in the courts, and Congressional repeal efforts) are broader than that. I was thinking of changing it to "Since the ruling, the ACA has continued to face challenges..."? I was also wanting to re-add '... from state governments' because I *think* that makes sense grammatically (e.g. challenges in Congress, challenges in federal courts, challenges from state governments - since 'in' doesn't work for the last)? I thought I'd quickly check your thoughts about them? =) Sb101 (talk|contribs) 03:18, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I think "implementation of" is correct even when describing wholesale repeal efforts, and I figured it was slightly more descriptive, but if you are passionate about dropping it, go ahead. Concerning "in/from" -- grammatically, the first "in" before the first comma should modify every word after each comma in the series unless there's an explicit modifier before those words, so grammatically if you want to vary in/from it should read "in Congress, in federal courts, and from state governments." But I figured "in state governments" worked anyway and was more inclusive than "from", given that some states governments that are internally divided on the issue (e.g., Florida's legislature opposes the Medicaid expansion, while its executive branch supports it, so I'm not sure it'd be correct to say that the entire state government opposes it as the word "from" would suggest, but rather the legislature "in" the state government has challenged it). –Prototime (talk · contribs) 05:00, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Just before I reply to the points, I feel I should check that you don't my questions? Wouldn't want to become a bore.

Whilst implementation itself does face challenges (like the employer mandate; sections 5.2-5.4), opponents wouldn't be satisfied with implementing it 'right'; their objections run deeper (5.1, 5.5). I think that the sentence implies narrower grounds for opposition than is the case. Especially in context, it could read that the ruling ended opposition to the law itself. To make it more descriptive, I've tried: "Since the ruling, the law and its implementation have continued to face challenges in Congress, in federal courts, and from some state governments."

(Thank you for the grammatical correction). The reason I prefer from > in, is that the ACA faces a challenge from a state when that state [doesn't implement an exchange/Medicaid, is noncooperative, has an Attorney General with a lawsuit, etc.] regardless of which official(s) in it are responsible for that challenge or how unified (or not) they are. I mean, we usually refer to the course taken by a state as a whole even if parts of state government and electorate aren't in agreement with that approach, so it feels consistent. And since the effect is not confined to a state, but affects the federal government, that too seems to advise against 'in state govts.' Besides, since we do only say 'some' state governments, even if 'from' did imply agreement among a state government, it'd still be correct since some state governments are - and we disambiguate which in the article with references. Don't you love Constructive ambiguity? =P Sb101 (talk|contribs) 07:54, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

"From" should work too, not too big of a concern just so long as all the modifiers are there since they're being varied (as they are now). Thanks. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 03:50, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Belated appreciation

Despite the potential for editorial disagreements to become nasty, I wanted to thank you

		The Civility Barnstar
		For your consistently polite and constructive conduct Sb101 (talk|contribs) 20:03, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

@Sb101: I just realized I never properly thanked you for awarding me this Barnstar and for your own civility. I do wish to return the appreciation, though now I am a bit belated myself! It's always a pleasure to work with a fellow editor who is dedicated and constructive when collaborating with others to improve Wikipedia. Thank you! –Prototime (talk · contribs) 14:07, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

PPACA

I still mean to reply to you about electoral systems; atm however I wanted to mention this: Innab's recent contributions. Now I've gone through and checked them and fixed ones I disagree (in a non-revert way), whilst I don't have a problem with many of them. But just a heads-up. Sb101 (talk|contribs) 17:19, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, though nothing looks too out of place. I'm just glad the edit warring seems to have ended. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 17:56, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Bradley Manning/October 2013 move request

Greetings. Because you participated in the August 2013 move request regarding this subject, you may be interested in participating in the current discussion. This notice is provided pursuant to Wikipedia:Canvassing#Appropriate notification. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:41, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Opting in to VisualEditor

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Disambiguation link notification for October 14

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Million Award

		The Million Award
		For your contributions to bring Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (estimated annual readership: 2,160,000) to Good Article status, I hereby present you the Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers. -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:51, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

The Million Award is a new initiative to recognize the editors of Wikipedia's most-read content; you can read more about the award and its possible tiers (Quarter Million Award, Half Million Award, and Million Award) at Wikipedia:Million Award. You're also welcome to display this userbox:

This editor won the Million Award for bringing Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to Good Article status.

If I've made any error in this listing, please don't hesitate to correct it; if for any reason you don't feel you deserve it, please don't hesitate to remove it; if you know of any other editor who merits one of these awards, please don't hesitate to give it; if you yourself deserve another award from any of the three tiers, please don't hesitate to take it! Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:51, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Khazar2! I am honored to be one of the editors who helped bring this article up to GA status! –Prototime (talk · contribs) 02:01, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

It's good practice for if we do make a run at democracy someday! Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 02:03, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

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Thanks

Thank you for the welcome. ProudGamecock (talk) 04:02, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

You're quite welcome! Let me know if you'd like help with anything. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 04:08, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

no worries and thanks

no worries. it feels great to have some faith restored in the wikipedia way despite some petty squabbling sometimes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.65.213.231 (talk) 16:27, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

I know what you mean! –Prototime (talk · contribs) 01:55, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Absence and thanks

Hey! Apologies for my continued absence. I do intend to be back within the month. Truth be told, I was a bit burnt out. But I also have been swamped by work (I've been working off a deadline from when I last edited that will have my workload for this year ease after November 16th). I just felt I should mention, not only because I still intend to edit and maintain further (I'm sure there's several touch ups, and in particular I've been pondering the public opinion section and wonder whether/how much I should insist on the Kaiser video); but I didn't want you to think I'd done a 'dine and dash' and left you cleaning the dishes (well, you know what I mean... I think/hope =P ). So I thought I'd drop-by to thank you and DrFleischman for continuing to maintain it since we got it up to a good article (/high five!). =) Sb101 (talk|contribs) 13:42, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

No worries, Sb101; I'd get burnt out too after a two-month GAR! Thanks for the note, and I'm glad to hear you'll be returning soon. We can hold things down on PPACA in the mean time. What are your plans for when you return? –Prototime (talk · contribs) 03:18, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

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PPACA

Thanks for showing me where the "debate" was over the use of the word "myths". I didn't see it in the GA index. I, however, disagree, and intend to contest its usage. Yours, Quis separabit? 20:51, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

No worries, I understand people will have different views about the use of that term, and I welcome further discussion. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 20:54, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Notice of Edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TBSchemer (talk • contribs) 21:23, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Your Reverts on the Affordable Care Act

The change to the section (which you describe as "rolling back major changes" is only in its title, which is clearly a violation of Wikipedia's basic policy of the use of NPOV language. Another editor argued that the, the terminology could be described as a "myth" due to WP:Fringe. However, the language is clearly used in mainstream sources. In on citation, it is used by a professor of constitutional law, whose last three books were published in Cambridge University Press, Harvard University Press, and Yale University Press. Therefore we can't invoke WP:Fringe, and we are required therefore to used NPOV language for this section. Other than that, your removal of sourced and balanced content is simple vandalism. Avaya1 (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Avaya1, please discuss this on the talk page for the article (not just my user talk), where other editors can see and respond to your comments. There is an active discussion already occurring there you are welcome to participate in. Please stop reverting before actually achieving consensus for your edits per WP:BRD. My reverts don't just concern the title, they also concern rewordings and an entire new paragraph added to the section supporting the view that "death panels" are a reality. Just because you found one professor willing to support a view doesn't make it mainstream. You calling my reverts "vandalism", when they are in fact in line with WP:BRD, is nothing more than bad faith. Keep this up and I will report you for edit warring and ask that the article be fully protected. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 16:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

PPACA

I know you're going to hate me for this, but I'm going to take a break from significant work at PPACA. I'm frying other fish at the moment and feeling more productive. Plus I need a break from dealing with the kooks, who seem to come in waves. If I see debates that need input then I'm happy to add my two cents. I'd say you should ping me but I wouldn't want you to run afoul of the canvassing rules. I've really enjoyed working with you and learning from you in recent months. Cheers. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 01:04, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

@DrFleischman: I've enjoyed working with and learning from you as welel, and your presence at PPACA will be missed. But I can't say I blame you for taking a break, and the thought has crossed my own mind more than once (and things have been so busy for me that I took an unexpected break from Wikipedia entirely over the past few days, which is why I was slow to respond). It seems like much of what we've been doing at PPACA has been defending the article against socks, POV-pushers, and people who dislike the consensus-building process--and I, too, am getting pretty worn down constantly battling people, especially because it takes my attention away from other projects. We'll see how much more patience for it all I have. I do hope you'll continue to contribute to the discussions concerning "Common misconceptions"/"Myths"; I don't know if we'll ever come to a consensus on that section, but it'd be sure nice to move past that ongoing point of contention... at least until someone finds something else to fight about. Best of luck in your other projects during your break, perhaps our paths will cross on some other articles sometime. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 21:37, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh no, it's tiresome protecting this abomination? So sad to read! The good thing is there are armies of fine folks waiting to jump into that breach and reach maximum spin consensus. One just has to temporarily suspend disbelief and WOW this wiki page on the ACA is an encyclopedic look at the new health care law. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.252.201 (talk) 04:59, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

RE: Third opinion

Thanks for your response. I followed up on your suggestion and revised that bit about the songs and the effects. I restored my section, but did it piecemeal, so the other editor doesn't feel he has to revert the entire thing. Just in case he does tho, should I go back to the third opinion page and ask for another? Dan56 (talk) 08:33, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

@Dan56: Doing so piecemeal was a wise decision. I would say that if reverts continue, try to keep communication open with the other editor to see if you can reasonably address any remaining issues he may have. If agreement isn't possible, you shouldn't return to the third opinion page since you've already exhausted that process. Instead, you may explore other parts of the dispute resolution process, such as asking for other editors to get involved through posting on the dispute resolution noticeboard or starting a request for comment. Good luck. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 18:01, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Voting Rights Act of 1965

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Voting Rights Act of 1965 you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of RJaguar3 -- RJaguar3 (talk) 16:00, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Prototime. You have new messages at Talk:Voting Rights Act of 1965/GA1#Update.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

RJaguar3 | u | t 19:28, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Prototime. You have new messages at RJaguar3's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

RJaguar3 | u | t 14:02, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

The article Voting Rights Act of 1965 you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Voting Rights Act of 1965 for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of RJaguar3 -- RJaguar3 (talk) 03:40, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Ah, you are working on the page for a good label, congrats. I did a couple of edits yesterday, adding in more data about James Bevel and his role in the Selma Movement (which was pretty much his movement) and the Selma to Montgomery march, which he initiated. While reading that history section I noticed that someone had posted that after Dr. King was arrested in Selma that hundreds of children were arrested in the next couple of days. I think the article may have that confused with the Birmingham Children's Crusade (another Bevel action). As I recall, the major arrests in Selma, outside of the regular standing in line waiting for the voter registration office to open arrests - which was the main action before the Selma to Montgomery march, along with C.T. Vivian's night march in which Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed (which caused Bevel to call the Selma-Montgomery March to ask Gov. Wallace if he had ordered the streetlights to be turned off, but really to give the people, many of whom had armed themselves, a way to nonviolently direct their anger and sorrow) - were maybe during the Teacher's March on the registration office organized by Frederick Reese, although I don't recall ever reading about arrests occurring during that. I just don't remember reading or hearing about any children being arrested in Selma, but may be wrong. So that one point may - or may not - need some polishing. Thanks, and good to meet you, and good luck with your project - nice work. Randy Kryn 18:06 18 February, 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your contributions to the article and your words of encouragement, Randy Kryn. The information about Selma's arrests of schoolchildren comes from the book Eyes on the Prize by Juan Williams. The relevant passage is from page 261:

Spurred by news of King's arrest, 500 of Selma's schoolchildren marched to the courthouse, violating the court order, and were arrested. The city's jails were getting crowded. The next day, leading newspapers including the New York Times displayed page-one photos of King praying just before his arrest. Wednesday brought the arrest of more than a hundred additional marchers, followed by the arrests of 300 more schoolchildren. Each evening, the television news covered the mass arrests and showed children being led off to jail.

As an aside, I'm hesitant to describe James Bevel as the "director" of the Selma Movement. He clearly played a pivotal role, especially in the Selma to Montgomery marches, and that information should certainly be included. But I'm not sure it's best to so definitively characterize any particular person as the movement's "director" given the tensions between SCLC and SNCC and the fact that SNCC's Selma organizing predated the SCLC's. I'd appreciate any further thoughts you may have on this point. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 04:13, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Again, nice work. Maybe we should move this section over to the talk page. I don't recall hearing about children marching to the jail to protest King's arrest getting arrested by the hundreds, but could have just overlooked that in my research (added, here is photo of young students in Selma about to get arrested, 10th one down from the top: http://crmvet.org/images/pkouns.htm ). I do know that Bevel was the Director of the Selma Movement, at least on SCLC's end (and recognized by his friend, Bernard Lafayette, who had run the Selma Movement for SNCC until he moved to Chicago). The one tweek that I made, and you reverted, may be a point to discuss. The line in question: "In January 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders organized or participated in several voting-rights marches in Selma that led to violent clashes with police." I had added James Bevel's name in front of King's on this one, because Bevel organized the marches (as SCLC's Director of Direct Action and the founder of its Alabama Project - really Bevel's and Nash's and Orange's Alabama Project), King did not. King didn't organize any marches in Selma, it wasn't his role in the movement, it was Bevel's role. Are you sure you're not solely putting King's name in that sentence because of his public prominence? I would say adding Bevel's name, and as the first name, is the historically accurate way to go.

"I'd say 98% of the plans and activities in Selma were Bevel's. The Selma Movement was Bevel's baby." - James Orange

"We would have never gone to Selma, and there would not have been a Voting Rights Bill today if James Bevel had not conceived of the idea" "Jim was the originator of the idea of the march from Selma to Montgomery. Jim Bevel is the author of that." "Dr. King could not have done the things he did unless he had a James Bevel." - Ralph David Abernathy

I know this is only a part of the overall article, but, as you know, an essential part of the history of the historic Voting Rights Bill (an aside - Bevel, for many of the last years of his life, organized a yearly honoring of Lyndon Johnson for his contribution to Voting Rights). Randy Kryn 16:48 20 February 2014 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: I'm sorry, I realized that I neglected to explain why I removed "James Bevel" from the opening sentence in that paragraph. I'm not entirely opposed to his name appearing there, I just wanted to make sure it's appropriately sourced; that sentence is currently cited to an Eyes on the Prize passage that does mention King but doesn't mention Bevel (although a different passage in the book does mention Bevel in connection with the Selma to Montgomery marches, and I added that cite to the sources you added further down). Perhaps you know of a source we can use that says that Bevel came to Selma in January? (Admittingly, I haven't thoroughly read the other sources you've cited, and don't have access to your book, so perhaps it's in one of them.) That said, I suspect that it may still be necessary to highlight King's work a little more than Bevel's, even though Bevel had a more direct organizing role, simply because King's work, fairly or unfairly, has received more weight among published sources. But we should certainly be accurate; perhaps we could highlight Bevel by saying, immediately after the opening sentence that mentions King, something along the lines of "James Bevel oversaw SCLC's organizing efforts in Selma"? –Prototime (talk · contribs) 17:43, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

The article Voting Rights Act of 1965 you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Voting Rights Act of 1965 for comments about the article. Well done! Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of RJaguar3 -- RJaguar3 (talk) 00:11, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Deletion discussion about Gerrymandering in the United States

Hello, Prototime,

I wanted to let you know that there's a discussion about whether Gerrymandering in the United States should be deleted. Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gerrymandering in the United States .

If you're new to the process, articles for deletion is a group discussion (not a vote!) that usually lasts seven days. If you need it, there is a guide on how to contribute. Last but not least, you are highly encouraged to continue improving the article; just be sure not to remove the tag about the deletion nomination from the top.

Thanks, Imaginatorium (talk) 13:39, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 17 March

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Gerrymandering in the United States page, your edit caused a broken reference name (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:34, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for March 24

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Half Million Award

		The Half Million Award
		For your contributions to bring Voting Rights Act of 1965 (estimated annual readership: 568168) to Good Article status, I hereby present you the Half Million Award. Congratulations, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! -- Bobnorwal (talk) 22:52, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Hey, great job! And sorry it took so long... Bobnorwal (talk) 22:52, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Bobnorwal! I appreciate it! :) –Prototime (talk · contribs) 02:34, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Voting Rights Act of 1965

Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:32, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Binding arbitration and consumer rights laws

Saw your work on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (from today's DYK).

Wondering if you would have any interest in helping improve Wikipedia's content in the area of consumer rights and, in particular, on the subject of consumer arbitration in the US? These are topics of potentially immense importance to the public but largely neglected by Wikipedia editors, particularly editors with expertise in the law. The article on consumer arbitration, for instance, has been edited almost exclusively by a single editor. Even the article on AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion has received very little attention from editors. Could you help take that article to GA status, for example? Dezastru (talk) 16:18, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Dezastru, thanks for your appreciation of my work on Voting Rights Act of 1965. I'm not very familiar with consumer arbitration issues, though I do empathize with the situation; lately, I've been devoting much of my time to improving articles about voting rights in the US, which is another area of potentially immense importance to the public that has been mostly ignored by Wikipedia editors. That area will probably continue to be my primary focus for the near future, but I will take a look at some of the consumer arbitration articles and lend a hand where I can. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 03:29, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Feedback on a new beta feature called Hovercards

Hi Prototime, We are collecting feedback for a new beta feature called 'Hovercards' - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards. Beta features can be turned on using the tab in the top right. It would be great if you could turn the feature on and give us your feedback on the discussion page. Thanks Vibhabamba (talk) 10:09, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Re: FACs

Thanks. Realistically, I doubt it's going to pass this time, considering the two oppose votes and the difficulty of reaching their posters, but I appreciate your comments very much anyway, and I hope you'll come back (with an updated opinion, if necessary) if it fails and I re-nominate it.

I'll check out the Voting Rights Act FAC tomorrow. I knew you'd gotten it to GA, but for some reason I didn't even notice it was at FAC. And I like to think I can contribute my fair share to non-gaming-related FACs, e.g. to those of Miley Cyrus, Thomas F. Bayard, and American football, so I expect I'll be qualified. Tezero (talk) 05:10, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Re: Hey, it's really...

I don't even know if I want to stay; just when I thought I'd gotten the hang of what constituted notability, which was all I'd had to hold on to, I triggered massive outcry. It could happen again with some other abstruse sentiment, formal or otherwise. With that said, I'm also not dead-set on departing; I don't want to decide anything too rashly, which is why I'm taking a leave of absence from Wikipedia as soon as all of this murk is done with to mull over what my work here is really worth and how, if at all, I ought to continue. I'm not looking optimistic on much of anything being preserved in merges, as most of it will probably be thrown out as cruft. Thanks for stopping over, though. And what's this about other users leaving? Tezero (talk) 14:31, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

FA congratulations

Just a quick note to congratulate you on the promotion of Voting Rights Act of 1965 to FA status recently. If you would like to see this (or any other FA) appear as "Today's featured article" soon (either on a particular date or on any available date), please nominate it at the requests page. If you'd like to see an FA appear on a particular date in the next year or so, please add it to the "pending" list. In the absence of a request, the article may end up being picked at any time (although with about 1,307 articles waiting their turn at present, there's no telling how long – or short! – the wait might be). If you'd got any TFA-related questions or problems, please let me know. Bencherlite^Talk 18:08, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Copyright work

Just wanted to stop and say that it's really nice to see somebody who hasn't previously been involved (that i know of) in copyright work on Wikipedia taking an interest, and your efforts to improve the description of those policies and processes are very much welcome and appreciated! If you should at any point feel like pitching in on the cleanup work itself, there's plenty to be done. :D Probably the easiest forum to get started in is Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations, which would be horrifically backlogged at this moment if the copyright bot didn't keep breaking, but the biggest area of backlog is at WP:CCI, which is frequently more complex. Anyway, should you ever want to pitch in, I hope you will! And if you ever want to talk about it with somebody who pokes in all areas of text copyright, I'm happy to discuss practices, processes and philosophies.

Either way, again, thanks for working on the policy pages and guidelines. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:23, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Moonriddengirl! I've been a bit concerned about the effect of policy creep on new editors and I thought it may be good to highlight certain key aspects of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, such as the copyright- and plagiarism-related policies that many newcomers aren't all that familiar with. I have found these topics pretty interesting to delve into, so I may check out Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations or WP:CCI soon--thanks for pointing them out to me! And thank you again for your kind words! :) –Prototime (talk · contribs) 21:32, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Animal rights

Hey, do you still want to collaborate on animal rights-related articles? If so, got any in mind? Tezero (talk) 01:40, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

@Tezero: Quite possibly, but for the time being, I have reduced my editing for various reasons and am reevaluating my on- and off-Wiki-priorities. I'll drop you a message sometime soon should I decide to venture into areas of Wikipedia I haven't edited much previously, which I am considering doing--and if so, animal rights articles would probably be high on my list. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 03:46, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Don't be afraid to take a few days or longer off from Wikipedia entirely and mull over your priorities here in your spare time IRL, especially if real-life concerns are weighty. I did recently, and I found myself drawn to work on an article far from my comfort area of video games: Czech language. One of the best decisions I've ever made here. Tezero (talk) 03:57, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

TFA

Congrats on Today's Featured Article! Tezero (talk) 01:17, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Tezero! Unfortunately it turns out to be right in middle of an unexpected mess IRL, but I'm ecstatic that the article is on the main page on the anniversary of its signing! :) Hope all is going well for you. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 05:12, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Precious

rights, protection and care
Thank you, professional lawyer trying to do the right thing including gender neutrality, for quality articles on legislation such as Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, for improving Democracy, University of Central Florida and Freethought, interested in the highest quality of sources, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:44, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Gerda Arendt! I greatly appreciate the recognition and feel honored to receive the Precious award! :) –Prototime (talk · contribs) 14:31, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

A year ago, you were the 938th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:00, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Five years ago, you were recipient no. 938 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:46, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Article tagging for WP:Elections & Referendums

Hi Prototime. I saw that you posted a request for assistance in tagging election/referendum articles with the WikiProject tag in June. I have now made a request for a bot to do this (having compiled a list of around 7,500 categories with relevant articles), but am being stopped from doing so because there is no apparent consensus for this to happen. Could you possibly comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums#Bot to tag articles for the WikiProject so I can demonstrate that there is one (if there is). Cheers, Number 57 12:50, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Animal Rights 2: Eccentric Boogaloo

Seems like you're editing again, so I thought I'd remind you of my willingness to collaborate with you on a topic you're interested in. Apart from the appropriate measures to transform my existing GAs to FAs, I think I'm going to spend my Wiki-time during October primarily on subjects outside my normal comfort zone of video games and Sonic. This project has odd origins: I got on board with the idea when hearing about the GA Cup during this month, and when I learned that's not what it is, I didn't see any reason to cancel my plans - in fact, the more articles I take to GA during this period, the more opportunities reviewers will have. Anyway, write me back if you're interested; animal rights seem like a topic you would be most but perhaps there's something else. Tezero (talk) 22:22, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Tezero, and sorry for taking so long to reply. I am editing again, but only intermittently for the next few weeks due to various RL issues. Come mid-November, I hope to return to more consistent editing and work on taking on an article or two up to GA status. It would fantastic if the two of us could collaborate on something then, animal rights or otherwise. I'll ping you in a few weeks to see if you're still up for a joint project then. Thanks! And happy editing in the meanwhile--I see you have quite a full plate. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 15:50, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Deletions warning

Hello prototime, just after logging in, i noticed a deletions warning on my talk page. I swear, i haven't logged in for over a year. Someone must have hijacked my account.Joey13952 (talk) 15:12, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

The Half Million Award

	The Half Million Award
	For your impressive Quality improvement work to bring Voting Rights Act of 1965 to WP:FA quality, I hereby present you with The Half Million Award. Congratulations, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! — Cirt (talk) 23:14, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:CITE discussion

Just a quick note to say that I'm not blowing off your comment. I'm just headed out the door right now. I'll look it over and probably expand on it a bit more tonight. Thanks for creating the summary section, by the way. We were definitely spinning out wheels for several days. This is much more productive in my view even if I'm arguing a minority position. -Thibbs (talk) 19:42, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

No problems, Thibbs, I appreciate it. I'm just glad we've gotten the discussion back on track! Hopefully we can reach some resolution, one way or another. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 19:55, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Thibbs, thanks again for your persistence and civility in our conversation over at WP:CITE even though our views have differed. Just an unsolicited suggestion, feel free to take it or leave it (I hope you don't take offense to it)--but I think you may want to disengage from your conversations with JJ. They're going nowhere fast, no one else agrees with his perspectives, and whether he realizes it or not, he appears to be gaslighting and projecting his own incivility and sensitivities onto others. Regardless though, thanks again. Cheers. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 02:19, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

You are right. I actually just told JJ that I wouldn't be returning to his talk page to carry on the discussion just now. I will continue to dispute his extreme view on the policy we're discussing, but I'm determined to ignore his jabs. I am mystified by his behavior. Or rather I understand anger and insults relating to a disagreement, but the initial guns-ablazin' reaction to my view (the view that is in fact far closer to his than the majority position) has blind-sided me. Anyway thank you for being polite as well. -Thibbs (talk) 14:54, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Article feedbak/assessment request

Hi,

Undersigned had created article Legal awareness in may 2012. Since then I updated and improved the article many times in past one and half year.

I will be happy if you help me in reassessing tags in article namely {{Multiple issues|confusing|date=February 2013|reason=Laudable effort has been put into this article, but it seems rambling and incoherent.}}{{essay-like|date=February 2013}}

and also

may be article is due for udating class status futher from {{WikiProject Law|class=Start|importance=Mid}}.

I suppose a peer feedback will help me improve the article content still further. You are one of experinced and active WikiProject Law members, and I request your kind support in this respect.

Mahitgar (talk) 10:00, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014

Did you know?

Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from existing tables at the click of a button.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).

Recent improvements

Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.

You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ⌃ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.

You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".

Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "*  " will make the line a bullet list; "1.  " or "# " will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change. There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ⌃ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.

If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead

VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at MediaWiki.org in late December and at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)

The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.

Help

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• Translations of the user guide for most languages are oudated. Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translators are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
• Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
• File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
• The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.

If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta.

Thank you! WhatamIdoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

ACA

Do you think we'd have a shot at achieving sufficient consensus to move PPACA to ACA if the proposal is framed correctly? Clearly we're not moving to Obamacare. I personally like ACA and only switched to Obamacare because I mistakenly thought the Google News results would win the day. Either ACA or Obamacare is better than the overly formalistic PPACA. I really don't like WP being the outlier in a Google web search. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@DrFleischman: Sorry for my delayed response. Yes, I do suspect that there could be support for moving PPACA to ACA if framed correctly, particularly if "Obamacare" is off the table as another alternative--since that suggestion is receiving as much backlash as it is--and the choice is presently as only between PPACA and ACA. The combined showing of ACA beating PPACA as far as search results in all of Google News, Google Scholar, Google Books, and plain old Google Search should be persuasive, particularly if it's strongly emphasized WP:COMMONNAME explicitly endorses the search-engine approach to determining common names, despite some editors objections to that idea. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 06:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Though it seems there are at least a few vocal editors who will ignore WP:COMMONNAME and stick with PPACA no matter what. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:32, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm taking PPACA off my watchlist. Would you mind pinging me if you see a new move request? Cheers. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:01, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps, if I notice it myself. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 00:37, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News 2015—#1

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. 

Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.

Recent improvements

The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:

• starts a new task, like opening the ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽ dialog:  blue ,
• takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation:  green ,
• might remove or lose your work, like removing a link:  red , or
• is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window:  gray.

The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design (T67815) based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor (T73746). This change fixed a couple of existing bugs (T73077 and T73078) and improved usability.

Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once (T78234).

Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedias requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace (T86688, T87027). If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.

Looking ahead

The Editing team will soon add auto-fill features for citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.

We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• Please help complete translations of the user guide for users who speak your language.
• Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. Contact James F. for more information.
• Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.

Subscribe or unsubscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Translations are available through Meta. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:23, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Barnstar for you

		The Instructor's Barnstar
		This Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who have performed stellar work in the area of instruction & help for other editors. For being helpful and thoughtful in discussions relating to citation policy. NickCT (talk) 18:01, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, NickCT! It's been quite an engaging discussion that you started, and I'm glad I can contribute. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 19:17, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your cogent explication at WT:CS. Please don't retire. Hugh (talk) 16:53, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #2—2015

Did you know?

With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:

Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:

After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.

Recent improvements

VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.

The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.

Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.

Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.

The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.

You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance ​on the page.

The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.

Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.

Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).

Looking ahead

The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.

The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
• The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
• File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.

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

-Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 17:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

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TWL Questia check-in

Hello!

You are receiving this message because The Wikipedia Library has record of you receiving a one-year subscription to Questia. This is a brief update to remind you about that access:

• Make sure that you can still log in to your Questia account; if you are having trouble feel free to get in touch.
• When your account expires you can reapply for access at WP:Questia.
• Remember, if you find this source useful for your Wikipedia work, make sure to include citations with links on Wikipedia: links to partner resources are one of the few ways we can demonstrate usage and demand for accounts to our partners. The greater the linkage, the greater the likelihood a useful partnership will be renewed.
• Write unusual articles using this partner's sources? Did access to this source create new opportunities for you in the Wikipedia community? If you have a unique story to share about your contributions, email us and we can set up an opportunity for you to write a blog post about your work with one of our partner's resources.

Finally, we would greatly appreciate if you filled out this short survey. The survey helps us not only better serve you with facilitating this particular partnership, but also helps us discover what other partnerships and services The Wikipedia Library can offer.

Thanks! Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk), on behalf of National Names 2000 10:35, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:

The link tool has been re-designed:

There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).  

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
• If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
• If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

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VisualEditor News #4—2015

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Did you know?

You can add quotations marks before and after a title or phrase with a single click.

Select the relevant text. Find the correct quotations marks in the special character inserter tool (marked as Ω in the toolbar).

Click the button. VisualEditor will add the quotation marks on either side of the text you selected.

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

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team have been working on mobile phone support. They have fixed many bugs and improved language support. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving language support and functionality on mobile devices.

Wikimania

The team attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City. There they participated in the Hackathon and met with individuals and groups of users. They also made several presentations about VisualEditor and the future of editing.

Following Wikimania, we announced winners for the VisualEditor 2015 Translathon. Our thanks and congratulations to users Halan-tul, Renessaince, जनक राज भट्ट (Janak Bhatta), Vahe Gharakhanyan, Warrakkk, and Eduardogobi.

For interface messages (translated at translatewiki.net), we saw the initiative affecting 42 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 56.5% before the translathon, and 78.2% after (+21.7%). In particular, Sakha improved from 12.2% to 94.2%; Brazilian Portuguese went from 50.6% to 100%; Taraškievica went from 44.9% to 85.3%; Doteli went from 1.3% to 41.2%. Also, while 1.7% of the messages were outdated across all languages before the translathon, the percentage dropped to 0.8% afterwards (-0.9%).

For documentation messages (on mediawiki.org), we saw the initiative affecting 24 languages. The average progress in translations across all languages was 26.6% before translathon, and 46.9% after (+20.3%).  There were particularly notable achievements for three languages. Armenian improved from 1% to 99%; Swedish, from 21% to 99%, and Brazilian Portuguese, from 34% to 83%. Outdated translations across all languages were reduced from 8.4% before translathon to 4.8% afterwards (-3.6%).

We published some graphs showing the effect of the event on the Translathon page. Thank you to the translators for participating and the translatewiki.net staff for facilitating this initiative.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations can be enabled on each Wikipedia. The tool uses the citoid service to convert a URL or DOI into a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. You can see an animated GIF of the quick, simple process at mediawiki.org. So far, about a dozen Wikipedias have enabled the auto-citation tool. To enable it for your wiki, follow the instructions at mediawiki.org.

Your wiki can customize the first section of the special character inserter in VisualEditor. Please follow the instructions at mediawiki.org to put the characters you want at the top. 

In other changes, if you need to fill in a CAPTCHA and get it wrong, then you can click to get a new one to complete. VisualEditor can now display and edit Vega-based graphs. If you use the Monobook skin, VisualEditor's appearance is now more consistent with other software.  

Future changes

The team will be changing the appearance of selected links inside VisualEditor. The purpose is to make it easy to see whether your cursor is inside or outside the link. When you select a link, the link label (the words shown on the page) will be enclosed in a faint box. If you place your cursor inside the box, then your changes to the link label will be part of the link. If you place your cursor outside the box, then it will not. This will make it easy to know when new characters will be added to the link and when they will not.

On the English Wikipedia, 10% of newly created accounts are now offered both the visual and the wikitext editors. A recent controlled trial showed no significant difference in survival or productivity for new users in the short term. New users with access to VisualEditor were very slightly less likely to produce results that needed reverting. You can learn more about this by watching a video of the July 2015 Wikimedia Research Showcase. The proportion of new accounts with access to both editing environments will be gradually increased over time. Eventually all new users have the choice between the two editing environments.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help.
• If your wiki would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace, you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
• Please file requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the styling menu in Phabricator.
• The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
• The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Tuesdays at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q1 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.

If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre directly, so that she can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:01, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor update

This note is only delivered to English Wikipedia subscribers of the visual editor's newsletter.

The location of the visual editor's preference has been changed from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences on this wiki. The setting now says Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta. This aligns en.wiki with almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta phase” though.

This action has not changed anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab is still after the “Edit source” one. You can learn more at the visual editor’s talk page.

We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case your account no longer has the settings that you want, please accept our apologies and correct it in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences. Thank you for your attention, Elitre (WMF) -16:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #5—2015

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Did you know?

You can use the visual editor on smartphones and tablets.

Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".

The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.

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, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.

Recent improvements

Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.

Links:  It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558)  These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.

Uploads:  Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.

Mobile:  Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630)  Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.

Rich editing tools:  You can now add and edit sheet music in the visual editor. (T112925)  There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227 and T113354)  When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.

On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.

Future changes

You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. This feedback page uses Flow for discussions.
• Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
• Local admins can set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki. If you need help, then please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
• The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.

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

— Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:16, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #6—2015

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Did you know?

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

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

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

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

Future changes

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

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

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

Testing opportunities

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

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

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

VisualEditor News #1—2016

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Did you know?

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

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

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

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

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

Recent changes

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

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

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

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

Future changes

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

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

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

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

Let's work together

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

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

– Whatamidoing (WMF) 17:47, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

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

How to switch between editing environments

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

Click the pencil icon to switch to the visual editor.

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

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

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

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

Editing News #2—2016

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

Did you know?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent changes

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

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

Future changes

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

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

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

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

Let's work together

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

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

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

Editing News #3—2016

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Did you know?

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

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

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

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

Recent changes

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

Future changes

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

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

Let's work together

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

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge

You are invited to participate in the 50,000 Challenge, aiming for 50,000 article improvements and creations for articles relating to the United States. This effort began on November 1, 2016 and to reach our goal, we will need editors like you to participate, expand, and create. See more here!

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:40, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

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

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

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

Editing News #1—2017

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can review your changes visually?

When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "Review your changes".

In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.

Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.

The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history.

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

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

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. [8]

The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [9]

Other changes:

• 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. [10]
• 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. [11]
• The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the icon) for quicker access. [12] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [13]
• You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [14]
• Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [15]
• The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [16]
• 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. [17]
• 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 on a PC or Command+K on a Mac. [18]

Future changes

• The VisualEditor team is working with the Community Tech team 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. [19]
• The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, 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. [20]
• The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [21]

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! User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Change your Views from bullets to subsections?

Hello! I found your name interesting so I looked at your user page. Though I no longer live there, I'm a 5th-generation Miamian, which is very unusual, and I love the Airbender series, so I really love the work you have done.

If your Views on Wikipedia section was separated by subheaders rather than bullet points, people would be able to link to them directly in discussions of related topics. I think that would be very useful. My real life limitations and the fact that this is your user page means that I'm not going to do it myself even if you give me permission here.

Thanks for all your hard work and I hope you remember to have fun out there in the real world! —Geekdiva (talk) 13:54, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Sigh.

Heh. The section of your user page I discussed above inspired me to go make a suggestion on the In the News (ITN) talk page. I quickly went back to fix a few things in my post, and it looked like the idea had already been shot down with "the main page is not for that" bluntness, though I could be wrong. However, the speed of and the abrupt start to the rejection got to me more than a little bit, and since your user page seems pretty reasonable, I decided to vent a little here. Wellll, not so much to vent as to state my thoughts with a sigh.

You see, I couldn't risk reading further, because (among other illnesses I have had longer such as fibromyalgia) I have to deal with adult-onset Still's disease (Stillsdisease.org)—an unremitting case of it, every second of every day—so even simple physical activity and any emotional stress chip away at me, within each day plus cumulatively over time, quickly increasing a range of really bad symptoms: a daily fever spike, body-wide pain, nausea, muscle weakness, etc., till I am too confused to communicate to the point that when face-to-face people think I'm a junkie. Or till I pass out, which is also detrimental to communication 😏. And also makes me look junkie-fied.

It wouldn't be fair of me to insist that people not be themselves when interacting with me, as it's my responsibility to deal with what I got to deal with. It's too much work to be a saint and it's selfishly unpleasant and social death to be a martyr, so I refuse to be either!

However, with this invisibly disasterous illness, I've had to experience such understandable misunderstandings about me (plus my own regret about not being able to do the right thing at the right time) that I can't read Facebook anymore. Well, it's risky. And when you get tired, who wants to take a risk to get worse? The first step to getting better is to stop getting worse, and with a progressive illness that's very tough.

To protect my ability to volunteer here, which is a very important source of endorphins for me as someone who's usually bed-to-bathroom bound (even when my mobility device is working, which it hasn't for a while), I'm not going to go back and risk reading the that response to my idea. This is one of three major instances since starting editing Wikipedia after I became too ill to work in 2000-2001 that I've had to...to run away from a shock like that, when if I was healthier I could provide a reasonable response. I already posted on a template talk page today that I had done too much and that I had to data-dump my intentions via my phone's voice dictation utility for somebody else to follow up on. So, I'm currently in a state that I usually describe on WP as not having very much wherewithal or as my real-life limitations keeping me from editing here. (If I actually say illness or disability, I've seen that get in some people's way of understanding the point of such a post, which is not to demand a pity party but to get what I can out of myself when I can as I can, in the hopes of giving something back to the world that I live in. Plus, endorphins. Can't reduce my pain meds without those endorphins!)

So, I don't think that the quick responder to my idea did anything wrong, but on the other hand even in the title of that new section I mentioned editor retention and editor recruitment, and I just find it ironic that while reviewing my edits I would look down to see a colon followed by "The main page is not for..."

Wikipedians don't need to be tiptoeing around each other. However, even if an idea is one that we have seen brought up a thousand times before and we're exhausted over it, we can remind ourselves that our goal is the constant improvement of the part of Wikipedia that we are working on, which is something no one person can do alone. This can help us engage pleasantly from the start with that idea-having editor to add to the influences that keep an influx of volunteers who participate more and more often because they find it enjoyable AND worthwhile, not just worthwhile. We can be less judgemental in our wording and not make life difficult for people at the other end of the edit summaries, since they might have unknown barriers to editing Wikipedia—physical, emotional, social or whatever.

The main page used to not exist. And then it was brought into existence for a set of purposes. These purposes change over time. Ideas can be considered. I feel wistful that I can't just go say this.

I also feel wistful that I can't go verify that the thing I reacted to was what I perceived it to be, but I've already lost the ability to type today which means that by posting here my fever spike is creeping higher, and the shock is pushing it even higher. However, sighing here will simultaneously help push it back down a little 😌 and help even more in the long run, so thank you for posting about the need for personal interaction on Wikipedia. (And, uh, mebbe gimme a lil click o'the Endorphin link? 🐰 Uh, I mean the Thanks link? I can see those notifications immediately, stress-free, but I am waaaay behind on my user talk page for reasons given throughout this post. I am working on this trait. Two steps forward, unpredictably variable number of steps back, extremely rarely zero.)

You see? Your user page (which I will click Thanks for) really helped me out long-term by helping me convert an unpleasant experience to one that is something I feel comfortable communicating about. And who could have predicted that? But it's far easier to predict that something negative will encourage a negative result, especially when it's applied to something someone has put effort into. Over time, these things add up and arrive at a tipping point—one that on an individual basis I believe that you've already seen.

Thanks again even if you never see this, and as I often say with apologies to Pascal, sorry for not having the time and wherewithal to make this post shorter. ... Well, it took me all the time since my previous edit on the ITN page to dictate this gradually, so... —Geekdiva (talk) 20:26, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red World Contest

Hi. We're into the last five days of the Women in Red World Contest. There's a new bonus prize of $200 worth of books of your choice to win for creating the most new women biographies between 0:00 on the 26th and 23:59 on 30th November. If you've been contributing to the contest, thank you for your support, we've produced over 2000 articles. If you haven't contributed yet, we would appreciate you taking the time to add entries to our articles achievements list by the end of the month. Thank you, and if participating, good luck with the finale!

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Prototime. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi

Hello, I would like to ask your help, the page "Draft:Israel lucas gois monteiro" is already some time stopped, I would like to ask your help to move the page and leave it available here in Wikipedia, the article is very well edited, could you help me? Brbolt2 (talk) 05:29, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2018

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Did you know?

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. An arrow indicates that the paragraph changed location.

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 Editing Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode, which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and improving the visual diff tool. Their work board is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

• 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. [22]
• Wikitext syntax highlighting is available as a Beta Feature for both the 2017 wikitext editor and the 2010 wikitext editor. [23]
• The citoid service automatically translates URLs, DOIs, ISBNs, and PubMed id numbers into wikitext citation templates. This tool has been used at the English Wikipedia for a long time. It is very popular and useful to editors, although it can be tricky for admins to set up. Other wikis can have this service, too. Please read the instructions. You can ask the team to help you enable citoid at your wiki.

Let's work together

• The team is planning a presentation about editing tools for an upcoming Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting.
• 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.
• The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. This has already been enabled at the English Wikipedia. If you want columns for a long list of footnotes on this wiki, you can use either <references /> or the plain (no parameters) {{reflist}} template. If you edit a different wiki, you can request multi-column support for your wiki. [24]
• 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. Thank you!

—User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2018

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.

You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.

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 Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.

Recent changes

• The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
• 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 Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
• The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
• The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
• The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [25]

Let's work together

• 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.
• The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
• 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. Thank you!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

invite to help edit some Fourth Amendment related pages

Hi Prototime, just wanted to invite you to help edit some Fourth Amendment related pages. I left a message on WikiProject US Constitution Talk which fills out the details and lists the pages.

Thanks! Seahawk01 (talk) 03:22, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Prototime. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

An invitation to discussion

I kindly invite you to the discussion on Template talk:Infobox election#The Bolding issue to decide whether to bold the winner in the election infobox. Lmmnhn (talk) 19:12, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Amy Rose

Unfortunately, it looks like the closer decided that the consensus was to merge the article. From here, how about me, you and Satellizer help re-write the Amy article for a future de-merge? Kokoro20 (talk) 01:53, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Lawyers and law students' signatures needed for Supreme Court amicus brief in favor of publishing the law

Hello, given your userbox I thought you might be interested in helping Carl Malamud's case for the public domain, crucial also for Wikisource: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/25/happy-law-day.html . Best regards, Nemo 21:07, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Voting Rights Act of 1965, reprise

Hi Prototime--and thanks for getting that article up to FA status. I have a question for you; I know you're semi-retired but it doesn't hurt to ask. What I would love to see in the article (or linked from the article) is the votes for the Act, by state and affiliation. Here in the South it matters greatly, and on Rep. Terri Sewell's Facebook page I saw a couple of people doing the age-old "ah Democrats voted against blacks" kind of thing, and it's not so easy to refute (in the end, I believe that in the South this wasn't a R vs. D thing--it was a white vs. the Other kind of thing). I found out that R-Senator John Tower voted against the VRA, but the two other R-Senators from the South likely voted for it (but I'm not sure). I do not know how the D-Senators voted. Of Alabama's 5 R-House members, one (William Louis Dickinson) likely voted against it; he seems to have been a die-hard racist (and former Democrat). I found this list, but that's difficult to parse for me, and it involves a vote on an amendment. If you have time and inclination (and I know you have formatting skills), can you make that vote/those votes accessible and intelligible to the average Wikipedia reader? Thank you so much, Drmies (talk) 14:55, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello Drmies. Here are two sources that give the final votes on the original Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its final form (the conference committee report version), broken down by party and state:

• House votes: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/89-1965/h107
• Senate votes: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/89-1965/s178

Does this about match what you are looking for? These sources are linked to as citations in the article but, as you say, a vote breakdown like this isn't included in the article itself. I don't think it would work to directly include this detailed information in the article because it's so long, but perhaps a new article could be made, something to the effect of "Congressional votes on the Voting Rights Act of 1965." I'm not sure if there's precedent for such vote-breakdown articles, but I don't think it would be a problem (or at least I would hope not; WP:GNG sometimes seems more like a hammer than a guideline these days). –Prototime (talk · contribs) 22:13, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Prototime, thank you so much: that is gorgeous. I don't know--maybe I'm asking too much with a separate article, and it is a lot to include. Yes, I see now where it's linked in the article: it's a massive article, of course! But at the very least now I know where to look for it. Thanks again! Drmies (talk) 21:01, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #1—July 2019

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon to start editing.

Edit Cards

This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.

Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.

Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.

Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:

Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?

If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.

Follow these instructions and share your experience:

📲 Try Edit Cards.

Recent releases

The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team has recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:

1. Section editing
   • 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.
2. Loading overlay
   • The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.

Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.

New and active projects

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.

Looking ahead

• 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 them 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.

Learning more

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.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) and Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages – October 2019

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Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.

Help

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 would value your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.

Talk Pages

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.

Mobile visual editor

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.

Edit Cards

What happens when you click on a link. The new Edit Card is bigger and has more options for editing links.

• On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
• There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
• Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.

Toolbar

The editing toolbar is changing in the mobile visual editor. The old system had two different toolbars. Now, all the buttons are together. Tell the team what you think about the new toolbar.

• 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.

Wikimania

The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.

Looking ahead

• 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: The Editing team hopes to share results in November. This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

2019 US Banknote Contest

	US Banknote Contest
	November-December 2019
There are an estimated 30,000 different varieties of United States banknotes, yet only a fraction of these are represented on Wikimedia Commons in the form of 2D scans. Additionally, Colonial America, the Confederate States, the Republic of Texas, multiple states and territories, communities, and private companies have issued banknotes that are in the public domain today but are absent from Commons. In the months of November and December, WikiProject Numismatics will be running a cross-wiki upload-a-thon, the 2019 US Banknote Contest. The goal of the contest is to increase the number of US banknote images available to content creators on all Wikimedia projects. Participants will claim points for uploading and importing 2D scans of US banknotes, and at the end of the contest all will receive awards. Whether you want to claim the Gold Wiki or you just want to have fun, all are invited to participate. If you do not want to receive invitations to future US Banknote Contests, follow the instructions here

Sent by ZLEA at 23:30, 19 October 2019 (UTC) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk)

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Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools

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This early version of the Reply tool automatically signs and indents comments.

The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.

In a future update, the team plans to test a tool for easily linking to another user's name, a rich-text editing option, and other tools.

The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.

• On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
• 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.

To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates

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The new features include a toolbar. What do you think should be in the toolbar?

This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.

• Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). 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. 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.
• New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
• 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.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #3

On 16 March 2020, the 50 millionth edit was made using the visual editor on desktop.

Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:

• The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
• 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.
• 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.
• The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
• 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.
• On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
• In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4

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Reply tool

The number of comments posted with the Reply Tool from March through June 2020. People used the Reply Tool to post over 7,400 comments with the tool.

The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.

• More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
• Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
• Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[26]

The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).

The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.

New requirements for user signatures

• The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
• Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.

Next: New discussion tool

Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

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Editing news 2021 #1

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Reply tool

Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.

The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.

• The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
• It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.

Research notes:

• As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
• There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[27]
• The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[28] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
• A large A/B test will start soon.[29] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.

New discussion tool

Screenshot of version 1.0 of the New Discussion Tool prototype.

The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[30] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.

Next: Notifications

During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #2

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When newcomers had the Reply tool and tried to post on a talk page, they were more successful at posting a comment. (Source)

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 next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.

You can turn on "Discussion Tools" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

00:27, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

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Nomination for deletion of Template:Sciencefields

Template:Sciencefields has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Editing newsletter 2022 – #1

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New editors were more successful with this new tool.

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 most WMF-hosted wikis. You can join the discussion about this tool for the English Wikipedia is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Enabling the New Topic Tool by default. You will be able to turn it off in the tool or at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

The Editing team plans to change the appearance of talk pages. These are separate from the changes made by the mw:Desktop improvements project and will appear in both Vector 2010 and Vector 2022. The goal is to add some information and make discussions look visibly different from encyclopedia articles. You can see some ideas at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project#Prototype Ready for Feedback.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

23:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Editing news 2022 #2

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The [subscribe] button shortens response times.

The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

"Catholic law" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Catholic law and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 20#Catholic law until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. MB 01:41, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

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Editing news 2023 #1

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This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

1. The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
2. They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

Some of the upcoming changes

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

Daily edit completion rate by test group: DiscussionTools (test group) and MobileFrontend overlay (control group)

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

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Always precious

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:19, 6 August 2024 (UTC)