Wikipedia:Community Portal/Archive 4

Introducting Beta Features

(Apologies for writing in English. Please translate if necessary)

We would like to let you know about Beta Features, a new program from the Wikimedia Foundation that lets you try out new features before they are released for everyone.

Think of it as a digital laboratory where community members can preview upcoming software and give feedback to help improve them. This special preference page lets designers and engineers experiment with new features on a broad scale, but in a way that's not disruptive.

Beta Features is now ready for testing on MediaWiki.org. It will also be released on Wikimedia Commons and MetaWiki this Thursday, 7 November. Based on test results, the plan is to release it on all wikis worldwide on 21 November, 2013.

Here are the first features you can test this week:

• Media Viewer — view images in large size or full screen
• VisualEditor Formulæ (for wikis with VisualEditor) — edit algebra or equations on your pages
• Typography Refresh — make text more readable (coming Thursday)

Would you like to try out Beta Features now? After you log in on MediaWiki.org, a small 'Beta' link will appear next to your 'Preferences'. Click on it to see features you can test, check the ones you want, then click 'Save'. Learn more on the Beta Features page.

After you've tested Beta Features, please let the developers know what you think on this discussion page -- or report any bugs here on Bugzilla. You're also welcome to join this IRC office hours chat on Friday, 8 November at 18:30 UTC.

Beta Features was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation's Design, Multimedia and VisualEditor teams. Along with other developers, they will be adding new features to this experimental program every few weeks. They are very grateful to all the community members who helped create this project — and look forward to many more productive collaborations in the future.

Enjoy, and don't forget to let developers know what you think! Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery (wrong page? Correct it here), 20:26, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Call for comments on draft trademark policy

Hi all,

The Wikimedia legal team invites you to participate in the development of the new Wikimedia trademark policy.

The current trademark policy was introduced in 2009 to protect the Wikimedia marks. We are now updating this policy to better balance permissive use of the marks with the legal requirements for preserving them for the community. The new draft trademark policy is ready for your review here, and we encourage you to discuss it here.

We would appreciate if someone would translate this message into your language so more members of your community can contribute to the conversation.

Thanks,
Yana & Geoff

VisualEditor coming to this wiki

Hello. Please excuse the English. I would be grateful if you can translate this message!

VisualEditor is coming to this project on December 2, 2013. VisualEditor is software in development to allow people to edit pages in MediaWiki without needing to learn wikitext syntax (like typing [[ to start a link). It is already available and in use on some Wikipedia projects. Please see mw:Help:VisualEditor/FAQ for more information.

When this software arrives, you will have the option to use it or to use the current wikitext editor. When you press “edit”, you will get the new VisualEditor software. To use the wikitext editor, you can press “edit source”. For more information about how to use VisualEditor, see mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide.

We hope that this software will be useful to people in your community, and we can really use your help to make it better! Please let us know if you find any problems. If you're willing and able, please report the issue in bugzilla in the "VisualEditor" product. If you would prefer not, please explain the issue you found on the central feedback page on mediawiki.org. Once VisualEditor is made available, if there are any urgent problems, like an unexpected bug suddenly causing widespread severe problems, please e-mail James Forrester, the Product Manager, at jforrester@wikimedia.org for immediate attention.

We would also appreciate help with translation with the pages about VisualEditor here and on MediaWiki.org, and its user interface. To translate the user interface, start by creating an account at TranslateWiki. Once your account request is approved, all you need to do is select your language from this list. This will give you a list of individual lines and paragraphs. The English original will be on one side, with the option to “edit” on the other. Pressing “edit” will open an edit window where you can work.

The User Guide is another important document. To translate this, simply go to the MediaWiki.org page, and select “translate this page”. Your language should be available from the drop-down menu on the right. If you want to help with translations and would like to talk about how, please leave a message for me on my talk page.

Thank you, and happy editing! --PEarley (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment on Commons: Should Wikimedia support MP4 video?

I apologize for this message being only in English. Please translate it if needed to help your community.

The Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team seeks community guidance on a proposal to support the MP4 video format. This digital video standard is used widely around the world to record, edit and watch videos on mobile phones, desktop computers and home video devices. It is also known as H.264/MPEG-4 or AVC.

Supporting the MP4 format would make it much easier for our users to view and contribute video on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects -- and video files could be offered in dual formats on our sites, so we could continue to support current open formats (WebM and Ogg Theora).

However, MP4 is a patent-encumbered format, and using a proprietary format would be a departure from our current practice of only supporting open formats on our sites -- even though the licenses appear to have acceptable legal terms, with only a small fee required.

We would appreciate your guidance on whether or not to support MP4. Our Request for Comments presents views both in favor and against MP4 support, based on opinions we’ve heard in our discussions with community and team members.

Please join this RfC -- and share your advice.

All users are welcome to participate, whether you are active on Commons, Wikipedia, other Wikimedia project -- or any site that uses content from our free media repository.

You are also welcome to join tomorrow's Office hours chat on IRC, this Thursday, January 16, at 19:00 UTC, if you would like to discuss this project with our team and other community members.

We look forward to a constructive discussion with you, so we can make a more informed decision together on this important topic. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Universal Language Selector will be enabled by default again on this wiki by 21 February 2014

On January 21 2014 the MediaWiki extension Universal Language Selector (ULS) was disabled on this wiki. A new preference was added for logged-in users to turn on ULS. This was done to prevent slow loading of pages due to ULS webfonts, a behaviour that had been observed by the Wikimedia Technical Operations team on some wikis.

We are now ready to enable ULS again. The temporary preference to enable ULS will be removed. A new checkbox has been added to the Language Panel to enable/disable font delivery. This will be unchecked by default for this wiki, but can be selected at any time by the users to enable webfonts. This is an interim solution while we improve the feature of webfonts delivery.

You can read the announcement and the development plan for more information. Apologies for writing this message only in English. Thank you. Runa

Amendment to the Terms of Use

Hello all,

Please join a discussion about a proposed amendment to the Wikimedia Terms of Use regarding undisclosed paid editing and we encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please translate this statement if you can, and we welcome you to translate the proposed amendment and introduction. Please see the discussion on Meta Wiki for more information. Thank you! Slaporte (WMF) 22:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Call for project ideas: funding is available for community experiments

I apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.

Do you have an idea for a project that could improve your community? Individual Engagement Grants from the Wikimedia Foundation help support individuals and small teams to organize experiments for 6 months. You can get funding to try out your idea for online community organizing, outreach, tool-building, or research to help make Wikipedia better. In March, we’re looking for new project proposals.

Examples of past Individual Engagement Grant projects:

• Organizing social media for Chinese Wikipedia ($350 for materials)
• Improving gadgets for Visual Editor ($4500 for developers)
• Coordinating access to reliable sources for Wikipedians ($7500 for project management, consultants and materials)
• Building community and strategy for Wikisource (€10000 for organizing and travel)

Proposals are due by 31 March 2014. There are a number of ways to get involved!

Hope to have your participation,

--Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants, Wikimedia Foundation 19:44, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

"Other Small African Language Wikipedias" on the main page

1. Malti (Maltese) is European.
2. Afar, Kanuri, Kuanyama, Oshiwambo, and Otsiherero were all shut down in 2009 and 2010.
3. Egyptian Arabic (Masri) and Kabyle are active projects:

مصرى ·
Taqbaylit ·

Varlaam (talk) 16:18, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposed optional changes to Terms of Use amendment

Hello all, in response to some community comments in the discussion on the amendment to the Terms of Use on undisclosed paid editing, we have prepared two optional changes. Please read about these optional changes on Meta wiki and share your comments. If you can (and this is a non english project), please translate this announcement. Thanks! Slaporte (WMF) 21:56, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Catalan Culture Challenge

I apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.

The Catalan-speaking world... Want to find out more? From March 16 to April 15 we will organise the Catalan Culture Challenge, a Wikipedia editing contest in which victory will go to those who start and improve the greatest number of articles about 50 key figures of Catalan culture. You can take part by creating or expanding articles on these people in your native language (or any other one you speak). It would be lovely to have you on board. :-)

We look forward to seeing you!

Amical Wikimedia--Kippelboy (talk) 05:54, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Changes to the default site typography coming soon

This week, the typography on Wikimedia sites will be updated for all readers and editors who use the default "Vector" skin. This change will involve new serif fonts for some headings, small tweaks to body content fonts, text size, text color, and spacing between elements. The schedule is:

• April 1st: non-Wikipedia projects will see this change live
• April 3rd: Wikipedias will see this change live

This change is very similar to the "Typography Update" Beta Feature that has been available on Wikimedia projects since November 2013. After several rounds of testing and with feedback from the community, this Beta Feature will be disabled and successful aspects enabled in the default site appearance. Users who are logged in may still choose to use another skin, or alter their personal CSS, if they prefer a different appearance. Local common CSS styles will also apply as normal, for issues with local styles and scripts that impact all users.

For more information:

• Summary of changes and FAQ
• Discussion page for feedback or questions
• Post on blog.wikimedia.org

-- Steven Walling (Product Manager) on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation's User Experience Design team

Media Viewer

Greetings, my apologies for writing in English.

I wanted to let you know that Media Viewer will be released to this wiki in the coming weeks. Media Viewer allows readers of Wikimedia projects to have an enhanced view of files without having to visit the file page, but with more detail than a thumbnail. You can try Media Viewer out now by turning it on in your Beta Features. If you do not enjoy Media Viewer or if it interferes with your work after it is turned on you will be able to disable Media Viewer as well in your preferences. I invite you to share what you think about Media Viewer and how it can be made better in the future.

Thank you for your time. - Keegan (WMF) 21:29, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

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Media Viewer is now live on this wiki

Media Viewer lets you see images in larger size

Greetings— and sorry for writing in English, please translate if it will help your community,

The Wikimedia Foundation's Multimedia team is happy to announce that Media Viewer was just released on this site today.

Media Viewer displays images in larger size when you click on their thumbnails, to provide a better viewing experience. Users can now view images faster and more clearly, without having to jump to separate pages — and its user interface is more intuitive, offering easy access to full-resolution images and information, with links to the file repository for editing. The tool has been tested extensively across all Wikimedia wikis over the past six months as a Beta Feature and has been released to the largest Wikipedias, all language Wikisources, and the English Wikivoyage already.

If you do not like this feature, you can easily turn it off by clicking on "Disable Media Viewer" at the bottom of the screen, pulling up the information panel (or in your your preferences) whether you have an account or not. Learn more in this Media Viewer Help page.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about Media Viewer. You are invited to share your feedback in this discussion on MediaWiki.org in any language, to help improve this feature. You are also welcome to take this quick survey in English, en français, o español.

We hope you enjoy Media Viewer. Many thanks to all the community members who helped make it possible. - Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

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