User talk:Fauban

Hello! Fauban, you are invited to join fellow Wikipedia editors in the Teahouse. The Teahouse is a place to ask questions and learn more about Wikipedia. Please join us! Sarah (talk) 20:45, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding this edit, I was wondering if you could tell me what you thought was unencyclopedic and what was almost ridiculous.

The fact that such information does not appear in the phonology articles of other languages doesn't mean this one is wrong; it could also mean all others are incomplete. This is a question of information being relevant in a specific context, and I think the section we are talking about is entirely relevant in that article.

I'm also trying to solve the problem of the lack of references, so I added a few. If there are particular statements that you feel are in more urgent need for sourcing, please let me know, although it could take some time before I find sources. — AdiJapan 17:04, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Adijapan,

Well, in my view, this kind of information (the "Other consonants" section) is sort of trivial. For example, we could also add whistless, or farts made with one's mouth. Besides, almost all these noises (because that's what they are) are not language-specific, they are done everywhere.

Why don't you try to add this kind of information on the English phonology article and see what happens?

Apart from this, it's highly unlikely that anybody can find references to this.

If you think that's not trivial, why don't you create a separate article? There's already one called Cross-linguistic onomatopoeias.

Regards, --Fauban (talk) 17:58, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, no, all languages are different in the way they use their phoneme inventory (or go beyond it) in interjections. The article Cross-linguistic onomatopoeias that you suggested is the perfect proof of that.

If "farts made with one's mouth" are actual words used in speech, then I don't see a reason not to mention them in a phonology article. Actually all speech sounds are noises.

I don't see why a separate article would be any better than a section. This sort of information is specifically related to the phonology of the language. — AdiJapan 13:57, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry but I think I just can't agree with you. Anyway, don't you think you should first ask the Language Phonologies task force of the Linguistics Project?? I'm sure they'll know what to do.--Fauban 14:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Fauban, thanks for your addition to the Miles Davies article. My changes are not personal, just made to follow the guidelines. It's fine to re-work and re-add text the has been removed. This tends to be how we wind up re-crafting the article. " "So What" or "Kind of Blue", they were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. It's over [...]. What I used to play with Bill Evans, all those different modes, and substitute chords, we had the energy then and we liked it. But I have no feel for it anymore—it's more like warmed-over turkey."<ref>|Interview with Ben Sindran, 1986.</ref>You would need to add more detail to this cite. "According to Davis, the rumor had been spread by his ex-wife Cicely Tyson."<ref>Article published by Miles Davis in 1989.</ref> You need more cite detail for this too. Generally we don't add rumour, even sourced. Please add in the ref material asap. Thanks very much. Span (talk) 18:18, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Span,

Thanks for the explanations, just a couple of things.

• About the rumors, well, I know this word is kind of cursed here. Maybe it should be reworked. The thing is that according to the newspaper article and the biography (2 reliable sources), at least Miles believed there were rumours. The thing is that an article appeared on 1st Feb. 1989 somewhere, and on 2nd Feb. an "official" article by Miles's Agent was published denying this. I'm removing C. Tyson's refrence.

• About the interview, well, it's not on Youtube, but it must be true. Miles said that and I think it's important for the article. I'll add a reference naming the magazine where I read the quote.

Sorry for the misunderstandings. Regards --Fauban 18:29, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your additions. Sorry if the process seemed a bit harsh. Your contributions to the article are valuable. I get that the rumour aspect affected Davies and it's all more complex than back street tittle tattle that went nowhere. I think the way it's now framed presents the more academic aspect. Other editors might disagree and take it out - and so it goes. The quote by Davies about looking back on his older work I took out of inset and put as a straight inline quote as it's a bit abstract and needs the context of the paragraph to make most sense. The readers' eye is drawn to quote boxes and insets, as with pictures, and they have to stand alone without explanation. I've tweaked your adds a little. Titles of books, magazines, albums etc are italicised eg A Kind of Blue or Jazz Times. Articles, poems, essays, songs etc are put in inverted commas eg "Over the Rainbow" or "Ode to Autumn". We use full dates eg February 9, 1976 (US style) or 9 February 1976 (everywhere else). I hope all that makes sense. Best wishes and happy editing. Span (talk) 19:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much!!!--Fauban 09:05, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for your additions to Bill Evans. We don't use cquote insets any more as they make the page harder to read. Could you tweak them so they are regularised sentences and it's clear who is commenting? Also, just to note, WP tends to favour secondary sources, rather than primary, first hand accounts such as autobiographies. It's ok to include them sometimes but if you want to take an article to GA level editors might quibble as first hand accounts are not taken to be as reliably objective. When I first starting editing here, inspired by autobiographies, I added a great many direct quotes and then spent months going back and rephrasing them. WP:QUOTEFARM has more details. Most WP editing is based on paraphrasing what we have read. I hope this makes sense. Best wishes and happy editing. Span (talk) 14:21, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What has always served me well for that is the cheatsheet.

Lectonar (talk) 13:12, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

 

Thanks!!--Fauban 14:25, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for your work on Bill Evans. I see you have cut out a great deal of the article. No explanation is given for the cutting, especially concerning Miles Davies, Evans' son and the death section. Please explain and do always use edit summaries. Thanks Span (talk) 12:11, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh sorry. I forgot. I'm removing some direct quotations I had added myself (you told me to do so) and placing some prose explanations instead. Also I'm removing unnecessary adjectives and explanations that should be found in other places (I'm adding a link to Evan Evans, if somebody wants to know more about him, then check his article). Finally, I've done some rewording, without changing the content itself.--Fauban 12:20, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, just checking. The Thanks for all the time you're giving to the article. Best wishes Span (talk) 12:54, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ooo I just noticed you've been adding to the Bill Evans article. I'm a massive fan of his playing. Would be good to get up to GA status? I started the Evan Evans article BTW. I'm afraid though your fair use photos will get deleted eventually as they are not free images. And those commons images dated 1936 and 1960 you claim were published in the US before 1923 in the license when he wasn't even born!♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:06, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. It's a pity about the photos. The thing is that I had specified the pre-1989 copyright option... I could change that. All the photos were taken prior to that date, and most of them are unlikely to have living copyright holders. I mean, if we can't put any photo because everything is post-1923, then what?? Then we could only put the 1978 photo and my 1969 photo. Regards--Fauban 08:25, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is terribly uptight about images. Even on very old images where it is highly unlikely that anybody is going to care they won't permit them. I agree and think photographs can significantly improve the quality but that's the way it is.. I'd say though that we'd need to get hold of a copy of the biography which I believe has recently been written by partner at the time of his death.♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:55, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, just a couple of things:

• First, can I upload screen captures of Evans's TV apperances like this [1] ?
• Second, I found some of Laurie Verchomin's stuff: Talk:Bill Evans #Adding_some_sources._Laurie_Verchomin_info

--Fauban 10:26, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've started a peer review process--Fauban 12:40, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Fauban, your current ref 25 isn't working. Re the review, just a few brief, initial thoughts: I reckon the article is doing well. It needs a whack more referencing as there are large uncited parts and it needs a reception section. With these it wouldn't be far off a GA review. The Youtube cite might get in the way as copyright with the interview is unclear. The prose is good. Well done on all the work. Span (talk) 12:52, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ps, we try not to use ellipsis at all. They don't work in quote boxes. I Recommend either reducing the quote length or using all of it. Span (talk) 13:02, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmmm... I find this very difficult. I mean, if I put the whole quote, its size could triplicate... Sometimes it's from two different chapters of a book, or I got the quote already with the ellipsis. And reducing the length could make them loose sense... What's wrong with them?? I mean, they are covered in the Manual of Style Wikipedia:ELLIPSIS#Ellipses. --Fauban 13:21, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Hey, great work! I am a big fan of Evans, so I would like to help bringing this to GA status. I could translate the German featured article, as it has some interesting stuff about his style and composition. Regards.--GoP_T^C_N 18:14, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • @GoP: Wunderbar!!--Fauban 08:25, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[Re ellipsis]. Maybe GOP has an angle on it. I am mostly thinking of going for GA. Ellipses are tricky. They get in the way of readability and the quotes are somewhat manipulated. There is a sense of editorialising about them. It's not a big deal, just not something to do lots of, style-wise. Span (talk) 19:46, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Span: Hi, I have removed all the ellipsis (except those in the 1st quote) and substituted them with double line breaks; thus, I'm simply putting two different quotes in a single box. But I feel I can't do the same with the first. The original quote is at least 30% longer, but he's just repeating himself. Why don't we put the complete quote on the references or add a link to Wikiquote? And then maybe simply remove the ellipsis.--Fauban 08:23, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've been bold and made some changes to the quotes that I think make the page stronger. See what you think. Span (talk) 12:32, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fantastic!--Fauban 13:03, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• • @GoP: I've started to pick some info from the German Wikipedia, but my German is very bad and translators are still very defficient... But well, I've added the reference shortcut to the main source of the article. It's the Petrik book. To add a ref, just add <ref name="petrik"/>. Regards--Fauban 13:50, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, just a note that if you are going for a GA for Bill Evans, fansites are not regarded RS. It'd be worth finding another source. Best wishes Span (talk) 11:55, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. I had this on mind, but well, this interview is material we're not going to found anywhere else... Well, in fact the new material was the exact city in California or so... I'm sure Pettinger has the same... But I don't have the full book. Thank you--Fauban 13:09, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Nice work so far. However, can you please add the exact page numbers in note form and just list the book at the bottom. See the style of William Burges. I'll ask Gerda if she can help translate the German article gradually so we might have some more material to work with. But keep up the good work. I can build on what you're doing. Its an article i'd love to get to FA eventually but GA for now.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:30, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was thinking so. However, some parts are extracts or summaries from third parties, but I'll try to put all the numbers from the Google Books preview. Also, tell Gerda that GreatOrangePumpkin is also willing to help with the translation. I've also made a glance at the German article myself, and I could tell them what I think are the first points to consider. Regards.--Fauban 19:00, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd advise using the sfn type notes. Click edit on Peter Sellers for what I mean. See refs 8-9 of the article now. If possible please disperse all of the bunches sources to those, preferably just citing one page for each fact. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:31, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok!--Fauban 08:50, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Jaaklo seems unhappy with your sourcing. Any thoughts? Span (talk) 20:42, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've made some digging. First of all, Jaaklo and Robrijn seem to work in group, maybe they're the same person. The first nickname stands for Jaap van der Klomp (who published a book with gravestone photos), the second is Rob Rijneke (the owner of the website "Time Remebrered").

I had never considered this site since it seems to have lots of NPOV, etc. My main sources have been, in that order: The JazzTimes article (45% from Pettinger), the AllMusic summary of Pettinger, the AllMusic bio (70% from Pettinger), Petrik (from German Wiki), and the Google Books preview of Pettinger. Some images were also taken from a blog found in Google Images (and in 2D objects, the photographer/scanner doesn't own the material, if not, projects such as the IMSLP wouldn't exist). Since most of the info out there about Evans is from Pettinger, and "Time Remembered" may see itself as the "autoritative" site for this issue, the owner is trying everything to advertise himself (his website has +/- covert advertisements about books, scores...) by claiming ownership of information they do not own. Besides, they don't want to talk. Thanks--Fauban 08:50, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Licensing is an area I know very little about - it's pretty tightly regulated here. It's probably worth erring on the side of caution, if in doubt. I'm sure Dr Blofeld knows a great deal more about such things. WP tend to come down pretty hard on copyright infringement but there are ways of claiming fair use and things. It's always worth assuming good faith of other editors, also. Tussles are nearly always pointless and a waste of everyone's energy and good will. The Dutch editors look new to Wikipedia also, so are probably figuring out how it all works. All the best for your weekend. Span (talk) 12:48, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I know I should assume good faith, but it's difficult. First, because they want to put their web name everywhere, and second, because they act as if they possessed the photos and info in that site, and they do not. I know they picked the images from the internet like me, because I found the original scannings, and the pictures that "Time Remembered" has are trimmed and photoshopped. The Evans state did not give them the sheets personally. Clearly, this site has no respect to copyrights (they're posting whole scores). They simply don't want us to have a better source knowledge about Bill Evans than them.--Fauban 15:48, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. These questions often come up. There is a due process for sorting it out. I know it can be hard to keep good faith but personal slanging matches rarely seem to help. Best to keep it super professional. There's a huge community of editors here to help and a gargantuan mass of guidelines. It's amazing how fast quarrels can spiral out of control. Go gently. Best wishes Span (talk) 16:56, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am the author of the website "Time Remembered". I'm for many years a good friend of the Evans family and the Evans Estate, and have almost daily contact with Nenette Zazzara. I got a large amount of original material and information from her for my website, provided that it is not copied and distributed. In cooperation with the Evans family, I recently released a new double album of the Bill Evans trio "Momentum". Also with Laurie Verchomin I have a close contact, and got copyrighted material from her for my site. The same applies to information from my friends Win Hinkle (Letters From Evans), Brian Hennessey (Bill Evans Memorial Library), Jan Stevens (The Bill Evans Webpages), Prof. Ron Nethercutt (Bill Evans archive, Southeastern Louisiana University), Bill Zavatsky, poet and friend of Bill Evans, Jack Reilly, author of the two books The Harmony of Bill Evans volume 1 and 2. In your Wiki contributions is inside information that only could be coming from my site, which I have obtained from above mentioned people. The same goes for the copyrighted photo of the gravestone of Bill Evans, that a friend of mine made ​​for his book "Jazz Lives" together with Scott Yanow. As you suggested I need no way advertising for my website. But maybe I can perhaps help you in the future. Best Robrijn (talk) 16:05, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm glad you're willing to participate in the project, your help is very welcome!

About the information you claim to come from your website, I personally don't know. The article was kind of "hibernatig" when I started work on it, so most people don't know how the original text was made. Also, there are other websites (like AllAbotJazz and AllMusic) that feature much information, and I took some from them. Nobody seems to have taken stuff from your site at least recently.

Anyway, you must be aware that Wikipedia has a set of rules that must be followed, especially for referencing (see WP:REF). For example, except a few cases, we should only use a selection printed of information, like books, newspapers and magazines, i.e. what's called reliable sources (see WP:RS, WP:NOR). Things people might have heard are not elegible of being included as sources unless published by a RS. Also, in this article, references must be inputted according to the footnote format, not in parenthesis (see WP:CITEFOOT). Another point is that the language used must be encyclopedic and objective, so words like "beautiful" or "legendary" are unacceptable unless quoting a RS (see WP:PEA, WP:NPOV). Finally, using two accounts simultaneously is not generally recommended, as per WP:SOCK. Hope this helps. Bye!--Fauban 18:53, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I mean this is a good way but you're worryingly dense in regards to copyright. You can't just snap a screenshot of a copyrighted work and claim ownership in the same way you can't claim photos taken in the 60s to be pre 1923. I quite agree that the images are better, and I never liked the "free" image we have of him in the infobox, looked little like him, but copyright is copyright all the same.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:44, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I understand. I just wanted to put some images to help add good content in the article... But all these rules make it very very difficult. Mmmm... I'll try to come up with something better.--Fauban 12:04, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As noted above, there are very tight rules about images and ownership. That's why you see image deletion notices on so many people's talk pages and why many articles, including biographies, have no images at all. Wikipedia have to be very careful of their legal situation and we have to support the Foundation in that. Well written, well referenced text is the meat of an article; images, if we can get them, are the icing. Best wishes Span (talk) 12:40, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Where can I find on Internet and on wich page of the book of Laurie Verchomin is mentioned that Elaine surname is Horowitz? Robrijn (talk) 12:23, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, the surname was aready there. If I'm not mistaken, the reference on Verchomin's book is related to the calculation of the year (very approx: 1973-12). BTW Pettinger calls her "Ellaine", but seems to be a misspelling. Bye!--Fauban 12:53, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The surname is not on internet nor in the Verchomin book, its on my website and I got the surname from a friend of her! Bye! Robrijn (talk) 19:31, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ok--Fauban 09:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You undid my edit because it "removed sourced content", but if you read the source, it says the opposite of what the article claims. The line as it has returned to says, 'Miles Davis, who was always dismissing his earlier output,[67] made no exception with his work with Bill Evans in Kind of Blue, calling it "warmed-over turkey".[68]' The source article actually says: 'Evans influenced Davis’ outlook and guided his taste, introducing him to a host of modern classical composers. He then played catalyst to—and co-composer of much of the material on—the modal-jazz masterpiece Kind of Blue. “I planned that album around the piano playing of Bill Evans,” Davis admitted in 1989 ... “’So What’ or Kind of Blue, they were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. It’s over,” Davis told Ben Sidran in 1986. He further declared, “What I used to play with Bill Evans, all those different modes, and substitute chords, we had the energy then and we liked it. But I have no feel for it anymore—it’s more like warmed-over turkey.”' Stratman07 (talk) 11:32, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to translate the phrase wikt:ploure a bots i barrals but I have no idea what a barral is, and I can't find anything about it either. Can you help please? CodeCat (talk) 00:45, 18 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

I'm just wondering why you duplicated that article, since Gralla is not a disambiguation page. Travelbird (talk) 16:31, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, you just didn't let me finish. Now it's done. Regards.--Fauban 16:33, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note that if you change a page, you should do that on the main page, not on the talk page. Otherwise it won't work. Travelbird (talk) 16:35, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I know, it was a mistake.--Fauban 16:35, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that - strictly speaking - you should use WP:Page move for these kinds of edits, as otherwise there are potential problems with copyright due to the attribution component of the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License. If you move a page it's also obvious that you aren't simply duplicating a page. Travelbird (talk) 16:38, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks for your advice!--Fauban 16:42, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Loved your work. I would really like to do similar things, but I am a complete n00b at making and uploading images, and it is quite difficult to learn this kind of thing for me (maybe because of the similarity of my behavior with ADD or Asperger's).

May I ask if you can do one for Portuguese? It will be a bit more complex.

• Specifically, European Portuguese

• /ä/ → [ə̞]
• /ɐ̃/ → [ə̃]
• /e/, /ɛ/ → [ʊ̜, i]
• /o/, /ɔ/ → [u].

• Southern/western Brazilian Portuguese

• /ä/ → [ɐ ~ ɜ ~ ə]
• /ɜ̃/ → [ə̃]
• /e/, /ɛ/ → [e ~ e̞] → [ɪ]
• /o/, /ɔ/ → [o ~ o̞] → [ʊ].

• Eastern/northern Brazilian Portuguese

• /ä/ → [ɐ ~ ɜ ~ ə]
• /ɜ̃/ → [ə̃]
• /e/, /ɛ/ → [e̞ ~ ɛ] → [i]
• /ẽ/ → [ĩ]
• /o/, /ɔ/ → [o̞ ~ ɔ] → [u]
• /õ/ → [ũ].

The tildes separating sounds in the same brackets indicate that a different-colored oblate figure encompassing a bigger part of the vowel chart would be more helpful, as it is an absence of phonemic distinction in the unstressed environment but different from actual vowel reduction, that Brazilian Portuguese applies to its unstressed mid vowels in an unpredictable way.

As you can imagine, it is source of great confusion for those reading about the language's phonology, or learning Portuguese and its different dialects in general, so a work in the image of that of yours would be a real improvement. Thanks, and Merry Christmas. 177.40.144.160 (talk) 19:31, 25 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, interesting. However, I no longer have Photoshop, so I won't be able to do that util I get it again. Anyway, I can't do a diagram with what you've given me. I can't represent the groups of vowels separated with tildes, I only can put one of them. Catalan has also may realizations of the phonemes I represented (e.g. /ə/ is [ə] in most Central Catalan, but it is [ɐ] in Barcelona, and [a] in l'Alguer). What the diagrams I made show, are vawel mergers, not their exact realization.

Also, I don't understand what the double shifts (X → Y → Z) mean. Are there "double" conditions? I mean, in Catalan, the only condition of vowel reduction is stress. Are there more conditions in Portuguese?

Finally, I think you should only mention the main dialects (EP vz. BrP), as I did in Catalan. Regards--Fauban 12:13, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So someone'd rather redraw it with MS Paint or similars.

The phonetic transcription of Brazilian Portuguese here in Wikipedia is based on that of European Portuguese. We don't have a very clear standard in phonetic transcription, and Brazilians aren't used at all to phonetic alphabets or whatever re-spelling system you can imagine. Portuguese teachers in our schools don't even regard the sounds /w/ and /j/ as consonants, as to us they're just allophones of their respective vowels (this is a frequent argument because w and y were re-added to our alphabet just in 2009-2012, and before it many people believed at least one of them were vowels). We have seven oral vowel and five nasal vowel phonemes in stressed environment, but it goes really complicated with the unstressed one.

Yes, we have stress as a condition for vowel reduction, but it is not always applied for pre-stress mid vowels in Brazilian Portuguese and similar Portuguese dialects in most instances (just as in Astur-Leonese and pre-modern Galician, I believe), and in some instances in others as well. I don't know exactly why. We don't have a [e-ɛ] and [o-ɔ] contrast in unstressed environment, and prestigious dialects such as those of Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Brasília and Manaus as well a considerable number of speakers in Recife and Porto Alegre have them as mid, that is really the dominant. Transcription of it as /e/, as here in Wikipedia, is pretty absurd as in most mid registers [ɛ] is favored when a speaker for linguistic reasons chooses a possibility other than the mid vowel, especially when the following stressed syllable has an open-mid, near-open or open vowel, not taking into consideration that most registers of the Northeast and non-European-influenced rest of the Lusophone world as some in the North use mostly [ɛ] instead of a mid, so [e] is definitely a rare choice (mostly of SP, PR, hinterland SC and RS, MS and the caipira area in general).

The vowel reduction of nasal vowels is also significant. For example, comprimento (length, longitude) and cumprimento (greeting, performance, fulfillment, respect) sound different in São Paulo, but the same in Rio.

Brazilian Portuguese has two main varieties used in media – though all dialects may be regarded as equally valid, the difference of what is standard Portuguese usage for us is mostly of vernacular "deep" Brazilian versus colloquial "lusitanizing" Brazilian versus formal "lusitanizing" Brazilian, not pronunciation (albeit autoritative sources in the past cited the variant of Rio de Janeiro as the most "correct", and it is still regarded as the most "average" dialect despite its largely European-like characteristics such as palatalization of coda /s/, lenition of /d/ to [ð] and more strict vowel reduction) –, that of São Paulo, a southern dialect, and that of Rio de Janeiro, a "northern" dialect (for our purposes). They sound odd to each other despite being at relatively close locations due to different histories of colonization and development; the variant of São Paulo was expanded to much of Brazil thanks to the bandeirantes, and it is very linguistically innovative because of a significant Medieval Galician, Tupi-Guarani and Judaeo-Portuguese input, with its earliest dialect, what we modern Brazilians today call caipira, being a relexification of a creole language, while the variants of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Northeastern Brazil, for example, are remarkably similar to archaic central/southern European Portuguese and less archaic Galician. Foreigners sometimes think it is all the same, just as many think the English dialects of Ireland and Scotland, or Australia and New Zealand, are interchangeable, or that "Italian" is spoken the same throughout Italy, but a Brazilian may easily draw a line in the map separating these two main groups if he/she knows a sufficient number of people/accents from different states. BTW, if you want, I can search some Portuguese Wikipedia text(s) that agree with the point of the dialect of São Paulo and its descendants being the most innovative ones.

This suggestion is often neglected and even opposed here, but for people learning true Brazilian pronunciation, this IS a significant difference, even if this knowledge can be easily acquired with traveling or having an intermediate/advanced Portuguese command and watching some Brazilian TV shows with stories set on different geographic locations, Wikipedia is supposed to deal with it. We have coverage of much smaller English phenomena (happy-tensing, for example), and I believe it is somewhat of a question of systemic bias. 177.133.103.76 (talk) 17:58, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Thanks for creating Phonological history of Catalan, Fauban!

Wikipedia editor Kieranian2001 just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:

Reviewed as part of page curation, article seems interesting.Kieranian2001 (talk) 11:28, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

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VisualEditor has been updated twice in the last two weeks. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week.

As announced, the toolbar was redesigned to be simpler, shorter, and to have the ability to have drop-down groups with descriptions. What you see now is the initial configuration and is expected to change in response to feedback from the English Wikipedia and other Wikipedias. The controls to add <u> (underline), <sub> (subscript), and <sup> (superscript), <s> (strikethrough) and <code> (computer code/monospace font) annotations to text are available to all users in the drop-down menu. At the moment, all but the most basic tools have been moved into a single drop-down menu, including the tools for inserting media, references, reference lists, and templates. The current location of all of the items in the toolbar is temporary, and your opinions about the best order are needed! Please offer suggestions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Toolbar.

In an eagerly anticipated upgrade to the reference dialog, newly added references or reference groups no longer need the page to be saved before they can be re-used (bugs 51689 and 52000). The 'Use existing reference' button is now disabled on pages which don't yet have any references (bug 51848). The template parameter filter in the transclusion dialog now searches both parameter name and label (bug 51670).

In response to several requests, there are some new keyboard shortcuts. You can now set the block/paragraph formatting from the keyboard: Ctrl+0 sets a block as a regular paragraph; Ctrl+1 up to Ctrl+6 sets it as a Heading 1 ("Page title") to Heading 6 ("Sub-heading 4"); Ctrl+7 sets it as pre-formatted (bug 33512). Ctrl+2, which creates level 2 section headings, may be the most useful.

Some improvements were made to capitalization for links, so typing in "iPhone" will offer a link to "iPhone" as well as "IPhone" (bug 50452).

Copying and pasting within the same document should work better as of today's update, as should copying from VisualEditor into a third-party application (bug 53364, bug 52271, bug 52460). Work on copying and pasting between VisualEditor instances (for example, between two articles) and retaining formatting when copying from an external source into VisualEditor is progressing.

Major improvements to editing with input method editors (IMEs; mostly used for Indic and East Asian languages) are being deployed today. This is a complex change, so it may produce unexpected errors. On a related point, the names of languages listed in the "languages" (langlinks) panel in the Page settings dialog now display as RTL when appropriate (bug 53503).

Looking ahead: The help/'beta' menu will soon expose the build number next to the "Leave feedback" link, so users can give more specific reports about issues they encounter (bug 53050). This change will make it easier for developers to identify any cacheing issues, once it starts reporting the build number (currently, it says "Version false"). Also, inserting a link, reference or media file will put the cursor after the new content again (bug 53560). Next week’s update will likely improve how dropdowns and other selection menus behave when they do not fit on the screen, with things scrolling so the selected item is always in view.

If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being finalized. About two dozen Wikipedias are on the list for Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only, and on Monday, September 30 for unregistered editors. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Catalan language (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

added links pointing to Catalan, Pallars, Ribagorça, European and Barcelona province

History of Catalan (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

added links pointing to Pallars and Ribagorça

Phonological history of Catalan (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

added links pointing to Yod and Ligurian language

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Hello!

Veig que has fet uns quants articles sobre lingüística a la Viquipèdia en anglès. El proper 4 d'octubre organitzem una viquimarató per millorar la cobertura sobre el català tan a la Viquipèdia en català com a altres llengües. T'animes a participar-hi traduint els articles proposats a l'anglès o a altres llengües que dominis?

Salutacions, --Davidpar (talk) 10:41, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Gràcies per convidar-me, pero no crec que pugui venir pas.--Fauban 09:44, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On Wiktionary at wikt:Appendix:Catalan verbs and wikt:Appendix:Catalan irregular verbs, I wrote a description about the different verb classes. If you are planning to update the Wikipedia articles on Catalan verbs, they might be useful to you? CodeCat (talk) 17:33, 28 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes! It's really going to be useful. Thanks CodeCat!

P.S: Did you take all this information from a book (so that I can put some ref tags)?--Fauban 08:45, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No it's written by me. I don't know if references are needed though because they are really just self evident truths if you know Catalan. The language itself is the reference. CodeCat (talk) 12:43, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Catalan language (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

added a link pointing to Alger

History of Catalan (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

added a link pointing to Ribagorça

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As you may know, VisualEditor ("Edit ^beta") is currently available on the English Wikipedia only for registered editors who choose to enable it. Since you have made 50 or more edits with VisualEditor this year, I want to make sure that you know that you can enable VisualEditor (if you haven't already done so) by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable". This will give you the option of using VisualEditor on articles and userpages when you want to, and give you the opportunity to spot changes in the interface and suggest improvements. We value your feedback, whether positive or negative, about using VisualEditor, at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Catalonia, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Castille (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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VisualEditor is still being updated every Thursday. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week. If you haven't done so already, you can turn on VisualEditor by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable".

The reference dialog for all Wikipedias, especially the way it handles citation templates, is being redesigned. Please offer suggestions and opinions at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. (Use your Wikipedia username/password to login there.) You can also drag and drop references (select the reference, then hover over the selected item until your cursor turns into the drag-and-drop tool). This also works for some templates, images, and other page elements (but not yet for text or floated items). References are now editable when they appear inside a media item's caption (bug 50459).

There were a number of miscellaneous fixes made: Firstly, there was a bug that meant that it was impossible to move the cursor using the keyboard away from a selected node (like a reference or template) once it had been selected (bug 54443). Several improvements have been made to scrollable windows, panels, and menus when they don't fit on the screen or when the selected item moves off-screen. Editing in the "slug" at the start of a page no longer shows up a chess pawn character ("♙") in some circumstances (bug 54791). Another bug meant that links with a final punctuation character in them broke extending them in some circumstances (bug 54332). The "page settings" dialog once again allows you to remove categories (bug 54727). There have been some problems with deployment scripts, including one that resulted in VisualEditor being broken for an hour or two at all Wikipedias (bug 54935). Finally, snowmen characters ("☃") no longer appear near newly added references, templates and other nodes (bug 54712).

Looking ahead: Development work right now is on rich copy-and-paste abilities, quicker addition of citation templates in references, setting media items' options (such as being able to put images on the left), switching into wikitext mode, and simplifying the toolbar. A significant amount of work is being done on other languages during this month. If you speak a language other than English, you can help with translating the documentation.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Catalonia (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

added a link pointing to Guardia Urbana

Karol Szymanowski (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

added a link pointing to Górale

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Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some feature changes, major infrastructure improvements to make the system more stable, dependable and extensible, some minor toolbar improvements, and fixing bugs.

A new form parsing library for language characters in Parsoid caused the corruption of pages containing diacritics for about an hour two weeks ago. Relatively few pages at the English Wikipedia were affected, but this created immediate problems at some other Wikipedias, sometimes affecting several dozen pages. The development teams for Parsoid and VisualEditor apologize for the serious disruption and thank the people who reported this emergency at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and on the public IRC channel, #mediawiki-visualeditor.

There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:

• Accidental deletion of infoboxes and other items: You now need to press the Delete or ← Backspace key twice to delete a template, reference or image. The first time, the item becomes selected, and the second time, it is removed. The need to press the delete key twice should make it more obvious what you are doing and help avoid accidental removals of infoboxes and similar (bug 55336).
• Switch from VisualEditor to the wikitext editor: A new feature lets you make a direct, one-way editing interface change, which will preserve your changes without needing to save the page and re-open it in the wikitext editor (bug 50687). It is available in a new menu in the action buttons by the Cancel button (where the "Page Settings" button used to be). Note that this new feature is not currently working in Firefox.
• Categories and Languages are also now directly available in that menu. The category suggestions drop-down was appearing in the wrong place rather than below its input box, which is now fixed. An incompatibility between VisualEditor and the deployed Parsoid service that prevented editing categories and language links was fixed.
• File:, Help: and Category: namespaces: VisualEditor was enabled for these namespaces the on all wikis (bug 55968), the Portal: and Viquiprojecte: namespaces on the Catalan Wikipedia (bug 56000), and the Portal: and Book: namespaces on the English Wikipedia (bug 56001).
• Media item resizing: We improved how files are viewed in a few ways. First, inline media items can now be resized in the same way that has been possible with block ones (like thumbnails) before. When resizing a media item, you can see a live preview of how it will look as you drag it (bug 54298). While you are dragging an image to resize it, we now show a label with the current dimensions (bug 54297). Once you have resized it, we fetch a new, higher resolution image for the media item if necessary (bug 55697). Manual setting of media item sizes in their dialog is nearly complete and should be available next week. If you hold down the ⇧ Shift key whilst resizing an image, it will now snap to a 10 pixel grid instead of the normal free-hand sizing. The media item resize label now is centered while resizing regardless of which tool you use to resize it.
• Undo and redo: A number of improvements were made to the transactions system which make undoing and redoing more reliable during real-time collaboration (bug 53224).
• Save dialogue: The save page was re-written to use the same code as all other dialogs (bug 48566), and in the process fixed a number of issues. The save dialog is re-accessible if it loses focus (bug 50722), or if you review a null edit (bug 53313); its checkboxes for minor edit, watch the page, and flagged revisions options now layout much more cleanly (bug 52175), and the tab order of the buttons is now closer to what users will expect (bug 51918). There was a bug in the save dialog that caused it to crash if there was an error in loading the page from Parsoid, which is now fixed.
• Links to other articles or pages sometimes sent people to invalid pages. VisualEditor now keeps track of the context in which you loaded the page, which lets us fix up links in document to point to the correct place regardless of what entry point you launched the editor from—so the content of pages loaded through /wiki/Foobar?veaction=edit and /w/index.php?title=Foobar&veaction=edit both now have text links that work if triggered (bug 48915).
• Toolbar links: A bug that caused the toolbar's menus to get shorter or even blank when scrolled down the page in Firefox is now fixed (bug 55343).
• Numbered external links: VisualEditor now supports Parsoid's changed representation of numbered external links (bug 53505).
• Removed empty templates: We also fixed an issue that meant that completely empty templates became impossible to interact with inside VisualEditor, as they didn't show up (bug 55810).
• Mathematics formulae: If you would like to try the experimental LaTeX mathematics tool in VisualEditor, you will need to opt-in to Beta Features. This is currently available on Meta-wiki, Wikimedia Commons, and Mediawiki.org. It will be available on all other Wikimedia sites on 21 November.
• Browser testing support: If you are interested in technical details, the browser tests were expanded to cover some basic cursor operations, which uncovered an issue in our testing framework that doesn't work with cursoring in Firefox; the Chrome tests continue to fail due to a bug with the welcome message for that part of the testing framework.
• Load time: VisualEditor now uses content language when fetching Wikipedia:TemplateData information, so reducing bandwidth use, and users on multi-language or multi-script wikis now get TemplateData hinting for templates as they would expect (bug 50888).
• Reuse of VisualEditor: Work on spinning out the user experience (UX) framework from VisualEditor into oojs-ui, which lets other teams at Wikimedia (like Flow) and gadget authors re-use VisualEditor UX components, is now complete and is being moved to a shared code repository.
• Support for private wikis: If you maintain a private wiki at home or at work, VisualEditor now supports editing of private wikis, by forwarding the Cookie: HTTP header to Parsoid ($wgVisualEditorParsoidForwardCookies set to true) (bug 44483). (Most private wikis will also need to install Parsoid and node.js, as VisualEditor requires them.)

Looking ahead:

• VisualEditor will be released to some of the smaller Wikipedias on 02 December 2013. If you are active at one or more smaller Wikipedias where VisualEditor is not yet generally available, please see the list at VisualEditor/Rollouts.
• Public office hours on IRC to discuss VisualEditor with Product Manager James Forrester will be held on Monday, 2 December, at 1900 UTC and on Tuesday, 3 December, at 0100 UTC. Bring your questions. Logs will be posted on Meta after each office hour completes.
• In terms of feature improvements, one of the major infrastructure projects affects how inserting characters works, both using your computer's built-in Unicode input systems and through a planned character inserter tool for VisualEditor. The forthcoming rich copying and pasting feature was extended and greater testing is currently being done. Work continues to support the improved reference dialog to quickly add citations based on local templates.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:12, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some toolbar improvements, fixing bugs, and improving support for Indic languages as well as other languages with complex characters. The current focus is on improving the reference dialog and expanding the new character inserter tool.

There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:

• Rich copying and pasting is now available. If you copy text from another website, then character formatting and some other HTML attributes are preserved. This means, for example, that if you copy a pre-formatted suggested citation from a source like this, then VisualEditor will preserve the formatting of the title in the citation. Keep in mind that copying the formatting may include formatting that you don't want (like section headings). If you want to paste plain, unformatted text onto a page, then use Control+⇧ Shift+V or ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+V (Mac).
• Auto-numbered external links like [2] can now be edited just like any other link. However, they cannot be created in VisualEditor easily.
• Several changes to the toolbar and dialogs have been made, and more are on the way. The toolbar has been simplified with a new drop-down text styles menu and an "insert" menu. Your feedback on the toolbar is wanted here. The transclusion/template dialog has been simplified. If you have enabled mathematical formula editing, then the menu item is now called the formula editor instead of LaTeX.
• There is a new character inserter, which you can find in the new "insert" menu, with a capital Omega ("Ω"). It's a very basic set of characters. Your feedback on the character inserter is wanted here.
• Saving the page should seem faster by several seconds now.
• It is now possible to access VisualEditor by manually editing the URL, even if you are not logged in or have not opted in to VisualEditor normally.  To do so, append ?veaction=edit to the end of the page name.  For example, change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?veaction=edit to open a random page in VisualEditor.  This is intended to support bug testing across multiple browsers, without requiring editors to login repeatedly.

Looking ahead: The transclusion dialog will see further changes in the coming weeks, with a simple mode for single templates and an advanced mode for more complex transclusions. The new character formatting menu on the toolbar will get an arrow to show that it is a drop-down menu. The reference dialog will be improved, and the Reference item will become a button in the main toolbar, rather than an item in the Insert menu.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked mostly minor features and fixing bugs. A few significant bugs include working around a bug in CSSJanus that was wrongly flipping images used in some templates in right-to-left (RTL) environments (bug 50910) a major bug that meant inserting any template or other transclusion failed (bug 59002), a major but quickly resolved problem due to an unannounced change in MediaWiki core, which caused VisualEditor to crash on trying to save (bug 59867). This last bugs did not appear on any Wikipedia. Additionally, significant work has been done in the background to make VisualEditor work as an independent editing system.

As of today, VisualEditor is now available as an opt-out feature to all users at 149 active Wikipedias.

• The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has a very basic set of characters. The character inserter is especially important for languages that use Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with unusual characters or frequent diacritics. Your feedback on the character inserter is requested. In addition to feedback from any interested editor, the developers would particularly like to hear from anyone who speaks any of the 50+ languages listed under Phase 5 at mw:VisualEditor/Rollouts, including Breton, Mongolian, Icelandic, Welsh, Afrikaans, Macedonian, and Azerbaijani.
• meta:Office hours on IRC have been heavily attended recently. The next one will be held this coming Wednesday, 22 January at 23:00 UTC.
• You can now edit some of the page settings in the "options" dialog – __NOTOC__ and __FORCETOC__ as selection (forced on, forced off, or default setting; bugs 56866 and 56867) and __NOEDITSECTION__ as a checkbox (bug 57166).
• The automated browser tests were adjusted to speed them up and bind more correctly to list items in lists, and updated to a newer version of their ruby dependencies. You can monitor the automated browser tests' results (triggered every twelve hours) live on the server.
• Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide was updated recently to show some new and upcoming features.

Looking ahead: The character formatting menu on the toolbar will get a drop-down indicator next Thursday. The reference and media items will be the first two listed in the Insert menu. The help menu will get a page listing the keyboard shortcuts. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including support for alignment (left, right, and center) and better control over image size (including default and upright sizes). The developers are also working on support for editing redirects and image galleries.

Subscriptions to this newsletter are managed at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Please add or remove your name to change your subscription settings. If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:06, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am glad there are users like you willing to keep maintaining potentially controversial language articles so that they continue to reflect linguistic consensus rather than certain people's political views. Keep up the good work!

Benwing (talk) 13:13, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome :-)--Fauban 13:34, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Thank you for using VisualEditor! Having editors use it is the best way for the Wikimedia Foundation to develop it into the best tool it can be.

While we always welcome general feedback (please report any issues in Bugzilla in the "VisualEditor" product or drop your feedback on the central feedback page on MediaWiki.org), the developers are especially interested right now in feedback on the special character inserter. This new tool is used for inserting special characters (including symbols like ₥, IPA pronunciation symbols, mathematics symbols, and characters with diacritics). It is intended to help people whose computers do not have good character inserters. For example, many Mac users prefer to use the extensive "Special Characters..." tool present at the bottom of the Edit menu in all applications or to learn the keyboard shortcuts for characters like ñ and ü.

The current version of the special characters tool in VisualEditor is very simple and very basic. It will be getting a lot of work in the coming weeks and months. It does not contain very many character sets at this time. (The specific character sets can be customized at each Wikipedia, so that each project could have a local version with the characters it wants.) But the developers want your ideas at this early stage about ways that the overall concept could be improved. I would appreciate your input on this question, so please try out the character inserter and tell me what changes to the design would (or would not!) best work for you.

Issues you might consider:

• How often do you normally use Wikipedia's character inserters?
• Which character sets are useful to you? Should it include all 18 of the character sets provided in the wikitext editor's newer toolbar at the English Wikipedia, the 10 present in the older editor toolbar, or some other combination of character sets?
• How many special characters would you like to see at one time?
  • Should there be a "priority" or "favorites" section for the 10 or 12 characters that most editors need most often? Is it okay if you need an extra click to go beyond the limited priority set?
  • How should the sections be split up? Should they be nested? Ordered?
  • How should the sections be navigated? Should there be a drop-down? A nested menu?
• The wikitext editor has never included many symbols and characters, like ℗ and ♀. Do you find that you need these missing characters? If the character inserter in VisualEditor includes hundreds or thousands of special characters, will it be overwhelming? How will you find the character you want? What should be done for users without enough space to display more than a few dozen characters?
• Should the character inserter be statically available until dismissed? Should it hover near the mouse? Should it go away on every selection or 10 seconds after a selection with no subsequent ones?
• Some people believe that the toolbar already has too many options—how would you simplify it?

The developers are open to any thoughts on how the special character inserter can best be developed, even if this requires significant changes. Please leave your views on the central feedback page, or, if you'd prefer, you can contact me directly on my talk page. It would be really helpful if you can tell me how frequently you need to use special characters in your typical editing and what languages or other special characters are important to you.

Thank you again for your work with VisualEditor and for any feedback you can provide. I really do appreciate it.

P.S. You might be interested in the current ideas about improving citations, too. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 18 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some small changes to the user interface, such as moving the reference item to the top of the Insert menu, as well as some minor features and fixing bugs, especially for rich copying and pasting of references.

The biggest change was the addition of more features to the image dialog, including the ability to set alignment (left, right, center), framing options (thumbnail, frame, frameless, and none), adding alt text, and defining the size manually. There is still some work to be done here, including a quick way to set the default size.

• The main priority is redesigning the reference dialog, with the goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs and URLs and streamlining the process. Current concept drawings are available at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.
• A few bugs in the existing reference dialog were fixed. The toolbar was simplified to remove galleries and lists from the reference dialog. When you re-use references, it now correctly displays the references again, rather than just the number and name. If you paste content into a dialog that can't fit there (e.g. ==section headings== in references), it now strips out the inappropriate HTML.
• You can now edit image galleries inside VisualEditor. At this time, the gallery tool is a very limited option that gives you access to the wikitext. It will see significant improvements at a later date.
• The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu is being redesigned. Your feedback on the special character inserter is still wanted, especially if you depend on Wikipedia's character inserters for your normal editing rather than using the ones built into your computer.
• You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu (three bars next to the Cancel button) (T54844).
• If you edit categories, your changes will now display correctly after saving the page (T50560).
• Saving the page should be faster now (T61660).
• Any community can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData by leaving a note at T53734.

Looking ahead: The link tool will tell you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. The warning about wikitext will hide itself after you remove the wikitext markup in that paragraph. Support for creating and editing redirects is in the pipeline. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including default and upright sizes. The developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments, some behavioral magic words like DISPLAYTITLE, and in-line language setting (dir="rtl").

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:21, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen on your userpage that you speak Catalan: From March 16 to April 15 we will be organising 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). We look forward to seeing you! Amical Wikimedia--Kippelboy (talk) 08:25, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on changes to the template and image dialogs.

The biggest change in the last few weeks was the redesign of the template dialog. The template dialog now opens in a simplified mode that lists parameters and their descriptions. (The complex multi-item transclusion mode can be reached by clicking on "Show options" from inside the simplified template dialog.) Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing.  With today's update, searching for template parameters will become case-insensitive, and required template parameters will display an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. In addition to making it quicker and easier to see everything when you edit typical templates, this work was necessary to prepare for the forthcoming simplified citation dialog. The main priority in the coming weeks is building this new citation dialog, with the ultimate goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs, URLs, DOIs and other quick-fills. This will add a new button on the toolbar, with the citation templates available picked by each wiki's community. Concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.

• The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. Pages that exist, but are not indexed by the search engine, are treated like non-existent pages (T56361).
• Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from the paragraph you are editing.
• The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has been slightly redesigned, to introduce larger buttons. Your suggestions for more significant changes to the special character inserter are still wanted.
• The page options menu (three bars, next to the Cancel button) has expanded. You can create and edit redirect pages, set page options like __STATICREDIRECT__, __[NO]INDEX__ and __[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__, and more.  New keyboard shortcuts are listed there, and include undoing the last action, clearing formatting, and showing the shortcut help window. If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged.
• It is easier to edit images. There are more options and they are explained better. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size.  You can now set image sizes to the default, if another size was previously specified. Full support for upright sizing systems, which more readily adapt image sizes to the reader's screen size, is planned.
• VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. These "slugs" are now smaller than normal blank lines, and are animated to be different from actual blank lines.
• You can use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘ Command+⌥ Option+S shortcuts to open the save window, and you can preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window.
• After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed to the Interlingual Occidental Wikipedia, the Portuguese Wikibooks, and the French Wikiversity.
• Any community can ask for custom icons for their language in the character formatting menu (bold, italic, etc.) by making a request on Bugzilla or by contacting Product Manager James Forrester.

The developers apologize for a regression bug with the deployment on 6 March 2014, which caused the incorrect removal of |upright size definitions on a handful of pages on the English Wikipedia, among others. The root cause was fixed, and the broken pages were fixed soon after.

Looking ahead:  Several template dialogs will become more compact. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. You will be able to see the Table of Contents change live as you edit the page, rather than it being hidden. In-line language setting (dir="rtl") may be offered to a few Wikipedias soon.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on 19 April 2014 at 2000 UTC. Thank you! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on performance improvements, image settings, and preparation for a simplified citation template tool in its own menu.

• In an oft-requested improvement, VisualEditor now displays red links (links to non-existent pages) in the proper color. Links to sister projects and external URLs are still the same blue as local links.
• You can now open templates by double-clicking them or by selecting them and pressing  Return.  This also works for references, images, galleries, mathematical equations, and other "nodes".
• VisualEditor has been disabled for pages that were created as translations of other pages using the Translate extension (common at Meta and MediaWiki.org). If a page has been marked for translation, you will see a warning if you try to edit it using VisualEditor.
• When you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor, the full protection notice and most recent log entry are displayed. Blocked users see the standard message for blocked users.
• The developers fixed a bug that caused links on sub-pages to point to the wrong location.
• The size-changing controls in the advanced settings section of the media or image dialog were simplified further. VisualEditor's media dialog supports more image display styles, like borderless images.
• If there is not enough space on your screen to display all of the tabs (for instance, if your browser window is too narrow), the second edit tab will now fold into the drop-down menu (where the "Move" item is currently housed). On the English Wikipedia, this moves the "Edit beta" tab into the menu; on most projects, it moves the "Edit source" tab. This is only enabled in the default Vector skin, not for Monobook users. See this image for an example showing the "Edit source" and "View history" tabs after they moved into the drop-down menu.
• After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed as an opt-in feature at Meta and on the French Wikinews.

Looking ahead:  A new, locally controlled menu of citation templates will put citations immediately in front of users. You will soon be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) is being developed. In-line language setting (dir="rtl") will be offered as a Beta Feature soon. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Monday, 19 May 2014 at 18:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this on your own page, subscribe at Wikipedia:VisualEditor#Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.

The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.

Eventually, the VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for these citations. When this long-awaited feature is created, you could add an ISBN, URL, DOI or other identifier to the citation tool, and VisualEditor would automatically fill in as much information for that source as possible. The concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog, and your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted.

• There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction.  This allows editors who have opted in to use the "Language" tool in the "Insert" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this:  <span lang="en" dir="ltr">English</span>. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis.
• The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "⧼math-visualeditor-mwmathinspector-title⧽" item in the "Insert" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
• The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field.  Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
• TemplateData has been expanded:  You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones.  "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work.  There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names.  The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
• Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
• Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency.  The message shown when you "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽" out of an edit is clearer. The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie.  As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
• Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
• In the "Images and media" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
• There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData.  You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box.  If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
• There have been multiple small changes to the appearance:  External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki.  This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links.  The styling of the "Style text" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin.  VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images.  Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
• The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
• At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.

Looking ahead:  The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard.  The "Keyboard shortcuts" link will be moved out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Thursday, 19 June 2014 at 10:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:16, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.

VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the mw-redirect or mw-disambig class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these in types of links can be created.

Templates' fields can be marked as 'required' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (bug 60358). 

Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a dir attribute but no lang set (bug 69955).

You can influence VisualEditor's design. Tell the VisualEditor team what you want changed during the office hours via IRC. The next sessions are on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC and on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC. You can also share your ideas at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.

— Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:41, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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).

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.

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.

• 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)[reply]

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.

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.

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.

• 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)[reply]

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.

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).

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.

• 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)[reply]

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.

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.

• 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)[reply]

Read this in another language • Local subscription list • Subscribe to the multilingual edition

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.

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.

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.  

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.

• 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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.

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.

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.

• 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)[reply]

Hi,
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