User talk:Frederico1234

Welcome!

Hello, Frederico1234, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page. Again, welcome! -Razorflame (talk) 19:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Israel

I am going to revert your change to the content that the anti-semitic attack was made. Let other read it and read my respond, otherwise my respond makes no sense. And we have nothing to hide, and should not be sterial just to keep the Ass-Holes setecfied. It is on the talk page not on the article. I been working with User:Gwen Gale on humus and we keep the insults on the talk page, and eventially peace comes around! Igor Berger (talk) 18:02, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

i'm rather surprised by your revert. i'd prefer to have the section deleted altogether. is there no limit to the craziness you can post on these talk pages?Frederico1234 (talk) 09:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I would like it to be educational to people with hatred of Israel and Jews. Did you see the video? Igor Berger (talk) 09:46, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia:NOT#censored Igor Berger (talk) 09:47, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

i saw the video. it was not educational but a dishonest piece of propaganda (eg. it linked jimmy carter to neo-nazis in a true guilt-by-association style). what you are doing is fighting garbage with garbage. and i relly don't see the purpose of keeping a title that is both offensive to jews AND says nothing about the content of the section. i'd advice you to either delete the section or atleast rename the section title into a less offensive one. following common sense is better than trying to interpret wikipedia policies. Frederico1234 (talk) 12:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you, it does seem POV on my side, so let's delete the whole section. And the video, although it does have some good parts, some are not, and it is propogandish like! Thanks, Igor Berger (talk) 12:14, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

thanks a lot for your cooperation. much appreciated. i wish you a nice weekend and the best of luck in the future. regards, Frederico1234 (talk) 12:55, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is about commensense, not POV. If more people would work together, there would be no wars. I hope you enjoy editing Wikipedia. Igor Berger (talk) 12:59, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Edits on History of Israel

You have made a series of edits (and then reversions) that are contrary to various Wikipedia policies. I read all of your edit summaries. They don't excuse the fact that you are violating policies with your editing. Citations are not only needed for controversial statements (and for the record, the statement in question IS controversial anyway). Editors do not get to decide to delete certain sourced facts because they feel they are "minor" and not important enough to mention. It is sourced and relevant information. I strongly suggest that you review some of the core Wikipedia policies before continuing to edit, otherwise you face the possibility of facing blocks for disruptive editing. I also suggest you stop this edit war before you breach 3RR. Breein1007 (talk) 22:01, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I apologise for wrongfully accusing you of not reading my comments. That was out of line. I'll consider your comments in the weekend when I have more time. Cheers. Frederico1234 (talk) 11:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The best way forward from here, I believe, is to address each edit one by one.

• The following sentence in The War of Independence: The civil war phase was changed by me:

Initially the Arabs had the advantage as the British maintained an embargo on Palestine's seas preventing the Jews from importing arms or manpower, while Arab states could supply local Arabs who also occupied more strategic areas—and outnumbered the Jews by approximately two to one.

where a source is provided for the fact that of the total population of the Mandate there were twice as many arabs as jews. I changed the sentence to this:

Initially the Arabs had the advantage as the British maintained an embargo on Palestine's seas preventing the Jews from importing arms or manpower, while Arab states could supply local Arabs who also occupied more strategic areas.

You reverted this here and here, stating that "deletion summary does not change the fact that this is sourced and fully appropriate". In my view, and as stated in the comment, the total population is not relevant in context of war. The fact that a source of the population figure is provided does not change that. Please explain why you think it is "fully appropriate". --Frederico1234 (talk) 18:58, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

It is clearly relevant to note the population difference. If the population of one side is twice that of the other, it is likely that the army of that side will be much larger than the others as well. We can't include that in the article, because it is WP:OR, but we can certainly include the population and allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Breein1007 (talk) 19:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Following that line of reasoning, it would be much more reasonable to mention total manpower instead of total population, as total population also includes children, women and elderly. In "Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" Charles D. Smith (professor in history at University of Arizona) on page 200 writes "The Jewish community had a slight manpower advantage over Palestinians among males in the twenty to forty-four age group". I suggest we replace the current erroneous text with this one. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

You didn't raise any objections, so I'll go ahead with the change. --Frederico1234 (talk) 18:45, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

• The UN figure for the number of Arab refugees. Here I must admit I may have been mistaken. In neither of the books I have the figure 711,000 is mentioned. While the figure itself can be found here, the source is a primary source which should be avoided. The figure I found in secondary sources was the earlier 726,000 figure. If you don't object, I will change the figure to that and add the reference. --Frederico1234 (talk) 09:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

If you provide an appropriate source, then please do go ahead. Breein1007 (talk) 19:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok I'll do that. Thanks. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• This revert. I maintain that the level of detail here is excessive. The article is already too long at 121 kilobytes. I believe it has to be made smaller. See WP:TOOLONG. --Frederico1234 (talk) 10:13, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Removing three words in the name of WP:TOOLONG is pretty ridiculous, so I'll suggest that you give up on that point. Breein1007 (talk) 19:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok. Point dropped. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• The total number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Diff of revert here. I suggest moving this figure into the next section, "Ben Gurion and mass immigration". If this figure should be in the article, which I dispute, then that's the proper place for it. --Frederico1234 (talk) 10:13, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I maintain that it makes more sense to the reader to see the figure contrasted with the Arab refugees. Even though it is not perfectly chronological, it is much easier for the reader to understand than to separate the two. Breein1007 (talk) 19:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Why should the figures be contrasted with each other in the first place? I see no reason for doing so, except from a pro-Isreali propaganda point-of-view, which is I'm quite sure is forbidden by Wikipedia policies. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh I see, so when it comes to contrasting numbers that paint Israel in a better light, it's pro-"Isreal" propaganda, but when it comes to contrasting numbers that make Israel look bad, such as including charts showing casualty figures in conflicts where more Palestinians are killed than Israelis, it's perfectly fine? Give it up dude, this isn't even worth discussing. Breein1007 (talk) 00:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

But then again, what is the reason for contrasting the numbers with each other? My point was that if the reason is to show Israel in a better light, then that is an invalid reason. I hope you agree with that. --Frederico1234 (talk) 04:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

You're reading into my reasons and assuming that I'm editing with the intention of painting Israel in a good light. This is a dangerous attitude to take, because it makes it difficult to make objective edits yourself if you assume you are "countering" a POV-warrior. On the contrary, I am trying to make the article more objective and simply present facts in a properly organized fashion so that readers can draw their own conclusions. In terms of this issue, it simply makes sense to include the Jewish refugee numbers next to the Arab refugee numbers. Organizationally, that is an obvious way to sort the information. Put related figures together so that readers can get an understanding of the big picture. Breein1007 (talk) 21:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

My apology for failing to assume good faith. Regarding the issue at hands, I don't think we'll come to an agreement here. I say we drop the issue. Thanks for taking the time. Cheers. --Frederico1234 (talk) 21:22, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

BLP

In case you didn't know, WP:BLP applies on every page of this project, including edit summaries. Calling a living person (who happens to be a professor at a major university) a "propagandist" is a serious violation of this policy, and could get you blocked. Momma's Little Helper (talk) 19:48, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

He is a propagandist. --Frederico1234 (talk) 19:55, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

That may be your opinion, but you may not write that in the encyclopedia. Momma's Little Helper (talk) 19:59, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll stop saying that then. Thanks for the notice. But still, Gottheil is not a historian and his "work" has received no recognition among historians. His claims has been discredited. He's not a reliable source.

He's an economist, and an award winning author of economic textbooks. You can't remove material published by him just because you don't like him. Momma's Little Helper (talk) 20:19, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I didn't remove it because I don't like him. I removed it because he's not a reliable source. This isn't about economics. It's about history. His accomplishments in economics are simply irrelevant here. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:24, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

It is a scholarly article, using fundamental economic principles to make an argument. He is quite competent to make that argument, which is highly relevant. Anyway, what you and I think is relevant does not matter - it was published in a reliable source, he is qualified to make that argument, it really ends right there. Momma's Little Helper (talk) 20:30, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

It is not a scholarly article. It's an article designed to look as a scholarly article. Again, he just does not have the qualifications as a historian (or demographer). --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:42, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Here's what the mission statement says for Middle East Forum, where Gottheils "sholarly" article was published: "the Middle East Forum, a think tank [...] promotes American interests in the Middle East [...] working for Palestinian acceptance of Israel". Does that sound like a strictly academic organisation without bias or agenda? I think not. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:51, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

you're confusing a potentially biased source with an unreliable source. It's not the same thing, and unreliability does not follow from having an agenda. You are removing the comments of an award winning academic, published in a reliable source, which we don't do here. Take it to the reliable sources noticeboard, or the article's talk page, to gain consensus, instead of deleting and edit warring. Momma's Little Helper (talk) 23:09, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok I'll do that. I just have to read up on this noticeboard stuff first. --Frederico1234 (talk) 18:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Six Day War/ "Preemptive"

Good call Frederico - I changed the title as suggested. Thanks.Phersu (talk) 08:58, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Israel and Lebanon

Please take your dispute to Talk:Israel. Further reverts may result in your being blocked. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 21:06, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Sure. Thanks for the notice. --Frederico1234 (talk) 21:48, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

1948 Palestinian Exodus

Dear Frederico, i apologize if my response was taken as bullying - it was not my intention. This is not our first discussion, and i assume we could make fruitful discussions now and in the future. I've changed the bold text after your request for italic (the quotations). Regards.Greyshark09 (talk) 08:16, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

It's fine. Thanks! --Frederico1234 (talk) 15:03, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

recent changes

• recent changes to my sandbox, see this. • Ling.Nut 05:26, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

• Just noticed your comments on the talk page of my sandbox. I feel like JRHammond and I are negotiating the sale of a house! See my sandbox for latest version. I must be the seller and he the buyer, 'cause I keep asking for more & he for less.... Tks. • Ling.Nut 09:56, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Your extreme invalid POV regarding RS as "non reliable"

Oh boy! If you are trying to discredit JVL then How much crediblity -- do you think-- your POV holds? Now let's see what RS say, Shall we?

What does the PBS say?

The Jewish Americans . Resources | PBS A division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, the Jewish Virtual Library is a comprehensive online Jewish encyclopedia, covering everything...

More from PBS relying on information from JVL. [2]

You might also want to say that the CNN, BBC, CBS news, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Foxnews, are all not RS since they rely on JVL... In other words none is in your POV.

From wiki:

The Jewish Virtual Library has been cited by CNN, New York Times, BBC, CBS News, Fox News, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Business Week, and Bloomberg,[3] among others. It is listed as reference by academic libraries at Pennsylvania State University, Michigan State University, University of Washington, King's College, London, and the University of Delaware.

JVL received awards from Britannica Internet Guide Selection, USA Today Hot Site, and the Best of the Jewish Web from the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Academic Excellence Award from Study Web and others.

JVL is mainstream not at all 'right wing.' Incidently, Is there any right wing Israeli news source that in your "pov" is RS? Can you cite one for me.

Good luck on wikipedia and welcome. but please refrain from dictating your own POV on wikipedia.RS101 (talk) 05:38, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I was not referring to jewishvirtuallibrary in general, but the "Myths and Facts" part of it. "Myths and Facts" is highly unreliable. --Frederico1234 (talk) 07:27, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

LGBT politicians

Hi. Just to say thanks for these edits. That whole article is the biggest BLP mess I think I've ever seen on Wikipedia. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:54, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

BLP mess indeed. --Frederico1234 (talk) 10:23, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Deir Yassin

Just let the IP fuss. Choose your battles, in this case, it won;t make a difference. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 16:13, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Request for comment/mediation

Frederico1234, you've always been a fair and impartial commenter and mediator, in my view. I'm having a dispute, once again, involving WGFinley, where he is again issuing veiled threats to ban me from yet another article, on the alleged grounds that I'm refusing to consider others' arguments. I've proposed an edit that NoMoreMisterNiceGuy and WGFinley are objecting to on the basis that I've violated WP:SYNTH. I maintain that the statements I've proposed adding to the article are completely factually accurate, and that their accuracy can be verified from the sources given. I maintain that the latter is absolutely incontrovertible. I've avoided even paraphrasing and instead quoted directly from the source at length after having revised my proposed edit numerous times in an effort to satisfy the stated objections. Yet every time I revise in an attempt to change the wording they identify as problematic, they simply repeat their objections that I'm "synthing". I keep asking them questions to clarify their objections and explain in what way the sources don't verifiably state what I say they state, and in what way they think I have "synthed" by drawing any conclusions, making my own analysis, etc., and they have refused for the most part to answer my questions. They just keep repeating "synth", "synth", "synth" over and over without any actual argument as to why this is so. I would greatly appreciate it if you would take the time to review my proposed edit, their objections, and my replies, and comment with your view so as to help resolve the dispute. If you agree I've violated WP:SYNTH, perhaps you could explain to me how this is so, so that I can resolve the issue. I feel confident, however, that you will find this not to be the case. Please take a few moments to review the matter here:[4]. Thank you. JRHammond (talk) 01:26, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words. Unfortunately, I must decline your request as I haven't got the time to look into the matter. Please accept my apology. --Frederico1234 (talk) 08:29, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Scope of Racism in the Palestinian territories

Hi. I've attempted to systematize the discussion on the scope of Racism in the Palestinian territories with regard to racism by Israeli settlers and soldiers at Talk:Racism in the Palestinian territories#Proposed resolutions. This debate does not concern whether such racism exists, merely whether it is an appropriate part of the article. Issues of WP:POLICY are currently being discussed. You've previously addressed the issue. Please contribute your opinion.--Carwil (talk) 23:13, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

IP editing

Hello Frederico. Have you ever edited a computer programming article using an IP, perhaps inadvertently? Best,--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 04:47, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I sometimes post when logged out, so it's possible. I only (infrequently nowadays) edit programming articles related to the C language. --Frederico1234 (talk) 06:28, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry case

Your name has been mentioned in connection with a sockpuppetry case. Please refer to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Supreme Deliciousness for evidence. Please make sure you make yourself familiar with the guide to responding to cases before editing the evidence page. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 15:37, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. Do I need to do anything? --Frederico1234 (talk) 15:54, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Merging of page into Timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Dear Frederico, considering our fruitful cooperation on the Timeline page, i would like you to express your opinion in the discussion whether to merge Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into Timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thank you!Greyshark09 (talk) 15:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll look into it. --Frederico1234 (talk) 21:48, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Dear Frederico

There are content rules in Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:Verifiability) and if you violate the rules, they will block you. Editors are not allowed to write statements with no reference to reliable sources, especially when there are reliable sources that contradict these statements. I have already given references for sources supporting my statements but you did not do so.
I know there is a wide consensus in among Egyptians that the 1973 war was a victory for the Egyptian army and a defeat for the Israeli army. However, this is due to a propaganda campaign made by the Egyptian regime for one purpose:
Ensuring the good reputation of the Egyptian army which is sworn to protect Egypt's secular constitution, and thus, reducing the public support for the Ichwan. Megaidler (talk) 11:16, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello Megaidler! Thank you for visiting my talk page.

What particular edit of mine do you found questionable? --Frederico1234 (talk) 12:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

Frederico, I read you wrong. You're an okay chap and I want to apologize if I ever did anything on wikipedia that caused you offense.--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 07:42, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

:) Thanks for the kind words. Cheers! --Frederico1234 (talk) 10:34, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

RM alert

There's a move request discussion going on at Talk:Foreign relations of the Palestinian National Authority#Requested move, with which you were previously involved. I'd be grateful if you could contribute to the new discussion. Nightw 08:22, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Palestinian people - Palestinian leadership Ties with Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers during World War II

the section is an important part of Palestinian history.

the purpose of wikipedia is to spread relevant knowledge  , not fiction and political propaganda.

palestinian leadership ties and collaboration with nazi germany in world w2 are essential part of palestinian history. without it's impossible to really understand what happened in 1948 war, and after.

I put this section in the "history" section of the article. and I don't think there is more appropriate venue. you wrote about reaching a consensus on talk page. but i don't know with whom and how, since i'm new here. so , i'm going to revert the article again. please reach a consensus before reverting beck. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JonathanGo (talk • contribs) 06:53, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Palaestina and Palaestina Prima/Secunda

I would like to draw your attention to the "Palestine" article, which largely is encopassing the Palestine geographical region. Currently if we try to search Palaestina province of the Byzantine Empire we reach Palestine geography article, and same with Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda. Considering the independent nature of article "British Manadate for Palestine", which is a similar political entity to "Byzantine province of Palaestina" i think the latter deserves an article of its own. What do you think?Greyshark09 (talk) 15:16, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like an excellent idea! Go for it! --Frederico1234 (talk) 18:50, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

In case you have not noticed, i have already done this, see Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda. I also intend to create Palaestina Salutaris.Greyshark09 (talk) 20:22, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

RM alert

The move request at Talk:Foreign relations of the Palestinian National Authority was closed, so we're now taking suggestions for an alternative. As you were involved in the previous discussion, I'd be grateful if you could contribute to the new one. Please lodge your support for a proposal, or make one of your own. Night w2 (talk) 04:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Racism in the Palestinian territories

Hi. I just wanted to leave you a note about your recent reversion. Using automated tools such as Popups or Twinkle is seen by some editors as a suggestion that their edits are vandalism. When reverting non-vandalism, especially contentious edits, you might want to avoid the use of automated tools. Just a suggestion. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 18:34, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I'll avoid that in the future. --Frederico1234 (talk) 18:43, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

93.91.196.117 et al

See User_talk:Tnxman307#Sockpuppet. It's a Ledenierhomme sockpuppet. Sean.hoyland - talk 16:07, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Good job hunting down those pesky socks! --Frederico1234 (talk) 18:29, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Your opinion in regard to 2005 Ahwazi unrest

Since we had some good cooperation in the Israeli-Palestinian articles, i would also ask your valueable opinion on the 2005 Ahwazi unrest article (created by myself), which is highly disputed by some editors. Though probably not directly related to your interests, i would appreciate your opinion here - [5].Greyshark09 (talk) 18:08, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

My apology, but I'm afraid I'l have to respectfully decline your kind request, as I've got no degree of expertise on the subject whatsoever (Ahwaz, is that in Bulgaria? ;)). --Frederico1234 (talk) 19:29, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Ahwaz is in Iran, with the article speaking of Arab minority protests in Iran. Since the situation in Khuzestan province has some similarities to Arab minority in Israel, i thought you might have an opinion on this issue. Thanks anyway. Greyshark09 (talk) 14:49, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

The Bulgaria thing was just a silly joke.

I did some googling and found this report from the US state department: link. It doesn't seem to be used in the article. Search for "Ahwaz"; you should find some info on the event there. I hope that could be of some value for you. Cheers. --Frederico1234 (talk) 19:25, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

An interesting link, i will use some of the info, thanx!Greyshark09 (talk) 17:01, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletions

Did you not realize that I am reverting all the speedy deletion tags or do you not care?--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 20:15, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

No. Why are you doing that? It's a sock of a banned uset. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Because in my opinion, and in the opinion of any non-wikilawyer, this encyclopedia is better off with the content than without the content. Deleting all these articles is pure disruption.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 20:19, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales disagrees: "Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information". The creators of the speedy deletion criteria disagrees, or they wouldn't have created the CS5 rule.

Way unanalogous. We are dealing with true information not false information. The SD criteria was created similar to any other SD criteria --when any non-creator disagrees the SD fails.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 20:41, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

In addition, the majority of the articles were substantially edited by other editors making them illegible under the given SD criteria. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 20:23, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

You removed the SD notice regardless of whether anyone besides the sock had edited them or not. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:31, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

You first added the SD noticed regardless of whether anyone besides the sock had edited them or not. Thus your SD tagging did not have creditability. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 20:43, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I admit that. I got lazy and did not check the edit histories. My wrong.

If I had limited myself to only those articles where the banned user was the sole author, would you still have reverted? --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:56, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I understand now why the banned users won't accept the WP:OFFER: they have no incentive to do so as all their work will be kept anyway. If cought, just create another account and continue editing as nothing happened. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:27, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, the OFFER will not remove the topic ban. Secondly, it still sucks getting caught and blocked every few weeks.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 20:38, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

It won't suck for the banned user as his new account won't be blocked. It's just continuing editing as if nothing happened. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:49, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Demographics of Palestine

I do not know what grounds you have to say that Gotthiel is an unreliable source. The other main source Justin McCarthy has been shown on several incidents to be extremely biased:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_McCarthy_%28American_historian%29

He's a former member of the Turkish Peace Corps and is funded by the Institute of Turkish Studies, a main proponent in the denial of the Armenian Genocide.

--APKeaton (talk) 13:06, 15 July 2011 (EST)

Gottheil is not an expert in the field. He's an economist. He's also a propagandist. This makes him highly unreliable.

McCarthy on the other hand is a professional demographer. This makes him an expert. --Frederico1234 (talk) 09:06, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Gotthiel's article focuses largely on the historical economics and how they may have influenced demographics. He is most certainly qualified to make judgement on that issue. Furthermore, McCarthy has been shown on numerous occassions to misquote his sources. He has several complaints of bias against him by other scholars. If McCarthy work is deemed reliable, then so should Gotthiel's response. Gotthiel is no more a propagandist than McCarthy.

--APKeaton (talk) 14:56, 16 July 2011 (EST)

Further research into Gotthiel shows he is employed by the University of Illinois and his research is focussed on the economics of the middle east. He is most certainly qualified to weigh in on whether economic development by Jews resulted in an increase in movements in the labour force.

http://www.economics.illinois.edu/people/fgotthei/

The University of Illinois is considered one of the leading research universties in the USA and a "public Ivy". Your dismissal of Gotthiel as a "propagandist" is libelous.

McCarthy is employed by the Univeristy of Kentucky, a far less well regarded school.

--APKeaton (talk) 15:06, 16 July 2011 (EST)

You have been reported at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Frederico1234

Please consider yourself notified. Broccolo (talk) 19:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

This complaint has been closed with a warning to you. It will be logged in the case at WP:ARBPIA. You are warned against any further violation of the WP:1RR restriction and warned not to assume bad faith about groups of editors in the I-P articles. Thank you, EdJohnston (talk) 15:06, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Notified of the discretionary sanctions under WP:ARBPIA

The Arbitration Committee has permitted administrators to impose discretionary sanctions (information on which is at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions) on any editor who is active on pages broadly related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Discretionary sanctions can be used against an editor who repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behavior, or any normal editorial process. If you engage in further inappropriate behavior in this area, you may be placed under sanctions, which can include blocks, a revert limitation, or an article ban. The Committee's full decision can be read in the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles#Final decision section of the decision page. Please familiarise yourself with the information page at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions, with the appropriate sections of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures, and with the case decision page.

— EdJohnston (talk) 15:13, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Merging

• Frederico, i'm relisting the proposal, after it got "lost".

Please express your opinion over the relisted suggestion to merge the article Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into Timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both articles are substantially the same and shouldn't exist in separate. You can participate in the discussion here Talk:Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict#Merging with Timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Greyshark09 (talk) 19:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

The discussion was closed with an outcome of merge, you are welcome to assist the merger procedure. Thank you.Greyshark09 (talk) 14:27, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Belated thanks for barnstar

Hi Federico. I should have said many thanks a while ago. My only excuse is that I am a bit embarrassed and not sure if I deserve it. But I'm not going to refuse it either. Glad someone felt the work was some use. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:45, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

your revert on uss liberty page

What you reverted was not a forum link but a good reference.Please pay attention in the future.--Shrike (talk) 16:40, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I interpreted your edit summary the wrong way. My apology. --Frederico1234 (talk) 04:00, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Naming Conventions for Locations in Jerusalem

Hi, I've put up a proposal re: Naming Conventions for Locations in Jerusalem here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration/Current_Article_Issues#Naming_Conventions_for_Locations_in_Jerusalem) and would very much appreciate any comments you have on this issue. BothHandsBlack (talk) 19:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Azzam Pasha quote AfD

I have suggested on the AfD regarding the Azzam Pasha quote that the article be merged with Azzam Pasha and have already moved most of the material to that article. Please note your opinion on a suggested merge at the AfD.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 16:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Frederico, this was admirable on your part. On the other hand, I was dismayed to see that you changed colors back in July.—Biosketch (talk) 23:18, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I did not add that user box in order to mislead anyone. But since that seems to be what you think, I removed it. --Frederico1234 (talk) 06:42, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

What? No, that's not what I meant. I was commenting that I was a little disappointed to see you conform.—Biosketch (talk) 10:08, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah. Stupid me:) --Frederico1234 (talk) 12:06, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

And sorry for my betrayal of the Red Pact! --Frederico1234 (talk) 12:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

And thank you for your kind words! Appreciated. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:54, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Merge of Mandate Palestine

Frederico, you have participated in the discussion, though no clear opinion on your behalf was expressed, would you like to take a stand on the issue here?Greyshark09 (talk) 21:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm still a little bit torn between the two options. I do plan to make a stand though. --Frederico1234 (talk) 21:24, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Gilabrand sockpuppetry

Hello Frederico, Foo Bar Buzz Netz is claimed to be a sock of NoCal100 and another guy. Both are male. But Foo Bar Buzz Netz is a female per her own comments... Both have the same problems on the article related on the I-P conflict and both focus much on the grammar of other editors. Gilabrand was trapped to use socks during her block. Given the little number of female users, the 'duck test' is rather conclusive. 91.180.110.219 (talk) 17:30, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not convinced. Gilabrand is an old account not currently subject to topic-bans. Why sock? --Frederico1234 (talk) 18:29, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

A beer for you!

For you efforts also I noticed that you a good editor even though we disagree on many issues. Shrike (talk) 18:52, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Appreciated *slurp*.

Re Chesdovi's appeal

I'll reopen it and see what happens; it would be supremely helpful if you could copy his new statement over, as it's very hard to cut and paste on my iPhone. I'll take care of it now. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 13:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Statement copied. --Frederico1234 (talk) 13:56, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Barkan

Hi Frederico. Hope you are doing well. Regarding Barkan, Much of the Judean mountain range is located within Israel proper and even if it wasn't, we need to stick with what the source actually says and not what we think it should say. Please take these comments in a constructive manner as I do believe that you are a valuable contributor and I have nothing but the utmost respect for your sense of fairness and keen insight. Best regards,--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 07:09, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words as well as your constructive criticism!

Looking at the source, it seems that mention of "Judean mountains" is no longer present. Perhaps the company has moved away from the Barkan Industrial Park in the West Bank? I'll open a discussion at the talk page. --Frederico1234 (talk) 07:21, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct. The source says Jerusalem mountains not Judean mountains. I have made the correction. Thank you for pointing that out. Best regards,--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 14:49, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

IPCOLL

Hi Frederico. Hope you are doing well. I saw your vote to oppose the proposal. Naturally, I have nothing but the utmost respect for your opinions as I believe that they are sincere and stem from a desire to improve content rather than advocate for a political position. However, would you be inclined to accept a position whereby the boilerplate text, rather than being removed in its entirety, is modified to something along the lines of Soosim's suggestion? I just wanted to know whether there's some flexibility in your position.--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 14:33, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello, and again thanks for the kind words! Regarding Soosims proposal, I think it's fine to include it in addition to the current wording, but not substitute it as that would mean that the illegality issue is removed. So I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, though I look forward to cooperate with you on other issues. Happy editing! --Frederico1234 (talk) 19:58, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough Frederico. Let me throw one out there and move several steps closer to your position. How would you feel about the following language as a substitute to the current boilerplate language? Palestinians and their supporters within the international community view settlements as illegal though Israel draws a distinction between those communities it has officially sanctioned and outposts that settlers built without permission. How does that strike you? Before you answer please bear in mind that a substantial part of the community wishes to see all boilerplate language removed. But in the interest of moving forward and in the interest of bridging the gap, I was wondering if this formulation is something that you could live with.--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 20:52, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Short answer: no. Long answer: "Palestinians and their supporters within the international community" make it sound as it is just some parts of the international community which hold the settlements to be illegal (under international law). In reality, it's pretty much Israel vs. the rest of the world, so that phrasing would be misleading. --Frederico1234 (talk) 18:02, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The United States has not adopted that position. Is the United States not part of the international community? Moreover, you have to understand that the majority seem to favor removal of the mandatory text in its entirety on policy considerations. However, a compromise might be reached whereby some text that both sides can swallow, remains. Does that not seem logical to you?--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 18:45, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

You may have a point about the US. But the point still stands: A very clear majority of the international community rejects the legitimacy of the settlements. I don't think reaching a compromise is realistic as the the sides are too far apart. --Frederico1234 (talk) 19:29, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello again. What about this text? Much of the international community view settlements as illegal though Israel draws a distinction between those communities it has officially sanctioned and outposts that settlers built without permission. Is that something you'd find acceptable as a compromise?--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 19:47, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

JJG, if you can source this, that may be fair to add, international community, at the notable exception of the United States, view the settlements as illegal but I am nore sure that the US stated the contrary...

By the way such a discussion should not take place on a single user page but on a page dedicated to the topic and that is followed by more users. 87.66.161.203 (talk) 19:34, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm ok with "Much of the international community". But "under international law" should not be omitted. That Israel view some settlements as illegal under Israeli law (i.e. the "outposts") is less relevant for non-outpost settlements, so that part of the proposed sentence does not belong here. --Frederico1234 (talk) 19:31, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Lebanon in '48 war

Hi,

it seems you are aware of the issue that they didn't participate to the war. I provided the source (Morris) and quoted it in the talk:page of 1948 Arab-Israeli war article but I have some difficulties in modifying the caption of the article (where it is listed among the invading armies). Could you please come and give your mind and eventually other sources ? I have also some concerns about the flags for the volunteers. This should be discussed in the talk pages. 81.247.97.117 (talk) 18:35, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Please accept this

	Olive branch
	I would very much like to work productively with you in the future Ankh.Morpork 23:13, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Accepted :) --Frederico1234 (talk) 23:16, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps you could help me improve Deception: Betraying the Peace Process? Ankh.Morpork 21:13, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll have a look later today. Cheers! --Frederico1234 (talk) 07:04, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation

Thank you for your recent submission to Articles for Creation. Your article submission has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please view your submission to see the comments left by the reviewer. You are welcome to edit the submission to address the issues raised, and resubmit once you feel they have been resolved.

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Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! Athleek123 20:53, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

July 2012

Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, such as on User talk:Sandstein, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button or located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when they said it. Thank you.  Sandstein  18:50, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Heyo

Hi Frederico. There's a weird rule on the Six-day war article that requires all reverts to be explained on corresponding talk page. I voiced concurrence with your revert at talk and you don't ever have to worry about me reporting you (even though we're at opposite political ends) but I don't want to see you get into trouble so you might want to drop a word or two at Talk. You can even cut and paste your edit summary.--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 16:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi there! Actually, I didn't know that, so thanks a lot for telling me! Cheers! --Frederico1234 (talk) 16:54, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

No problem my friend.--Jiujitsuguy (talk) 16:58, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	Sincerely, I award you a barnstar for your civility in the Argaman debates. AgadaUrbanit (talk) 14:03, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

My first barnstar :) Thank you very much!

Talkback

Hello, Frederico1234. You have new messages at AnkhMorpork's talk page.
Message added 19:05, 18 July 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Ankh.Morpork 19:05, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation

Thank you for your recent submission to Articles for Creation. Your article submission has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please view your submission to see the comments left by the reviewer. You are welcome to edit the submission to address the issues raised, and resubmit once you feel they have been resolved.

• If you would like to continue working on the submission, you can find it at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Automatic Reference Counting.
• To edit the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
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Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! Topher385 (talk) 12:55, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Historical articles

Hi Frederico, since you have contributed in the past on improving articles on historical events and timelines in the Levant, i would like your assistance on History of Gaza. For some reason, one of the editors of this article is increasingly feeling ownership over it, and even my simple attempts to ask for citations ({{cn}}) and verifications ({{verify source}}) are boldly reverted. I believe that civil discussion and neutral review of sources (which i find very problematic and missing in some cases) can transform the article into a much better piece. Frankly, i have no idea how this article appears as "good article".Greyshark09 (talk) 20:18, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

My knowledge of 7th century Gaza is quite limited, unfortunately. I'm more into the modern era. Perhaps someone at WP:IPCOLL could provide input? --Frederico1234 (talk) 14:30, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Frederico1234. You have new messages at Debresser's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Could you please explain your edit on the talk page ?

Could you please exaplain your revert on [talk page] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.226.49.34 (talk) 13:11, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

User: AbrahemHaif

Thanks for your sockpuppet report. You confirmed my suspicions... All the best. --E4024 (talk) 12:16, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Cheers! --Frederico1234 (talk) 12:20, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Palestinian Authority issue

Dear user, since you participated on a geopolitical context discussion on Palestine [6], you might be interested in expressing your opinion on a reformulated discussion Talk:Palestinian National Authority#Palestinian Authority - an organization (government) or a geopolitical entity?. Thank you.Greyshark09 (talk) 21:28, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

new cat

After you recent reverts of my edits to categorization of industrial parks in Israel, I've created a new category following the precident of airports, roads, etc. in Israeli-occupied territories. I think this might satisfy. Kind regards, --@Efrat (talk) 06:39, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, looks good. Well done! --Frederico1234 (talk) 14:09, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

! --@Efrat (talk) 17:50, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

C

You do realize you reverted my edit after I already reverted it.
—Sowlos (talk) 12:23, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

No, I didn't realize that. Sorry about that. --Frederico1234 (talk) 14:20, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

No worries. Honestly, thought it was funny more than anything.
—Sowlos (talk) 14:31, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Jerusalem 2". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by 5 January 2013.

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Request for mediation rejected

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Moderation of Jerusalem RfC

Hello. You are receiving this message because you have recently participated at Talk:Jerusalem or because you were listed at one of the two recent requests for mediation of the Jerusalem article (1, 2). The Arbitration Committee recently mandated a binding request for comments about the wording of the lead of the Jerusalem article, and this message is to let you know that there is currently a moderated discussion underway to decide how that request for comments should be structured. If you are interested in participating in the discussion, you are invited to read the thread at Talk:Jerusalem#Moderation, add yourself to the list of participants, and leave a statement. Please note that this discussion will not affect the contents of the article directly; the contents of the article will be decided in the request for comments itself, which will begin after we have finalised its structure. If you do not wish to participate in the present discussion, you may safely ignore this message; there is no need to respond. If you have any questions or comments about this, please leave them at my talk page. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:10, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject C/C++

Greetings, I've noticed your interest in articles relating to C/C++ and would like to invite you to join the WikiProject C/C++, a group of Wikipedians devoted to improving articles related to C and C++. If you're interested, please consider adding yourself to the list of participants and joining the discussion on the talkpage. --—Sowlos

Fwd: Your edits at 1948 Arab-Israeli War

Yes, look upon your comment. I did it because they were useful and referenced. Why did you remove them? Kordas (sínome!) 19:39, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

So someone did contact you? Could you please identify this person? (The reasons for removal could be seen at the talk page.) --Frederico1234 (talk) 07:57, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for September 5

This Thursday's VisualEditor update was mostly about stability and performance improvements, and some preparatory work for major planned improvements, along with bug fixes for non-English language support and right-to-left text. Everything that the English Wikipedia received today has been running on Mediawiki for a week already.

Officially, the problem with the link inspector not linking to a specific section on a page (bug 53219) was fixed in this release, although that critical patch actually appeared here earlier.

A number of bugs related to copy-and-paste functionality were fixed (48604, bug 50043, bug 53362, bug 51538, among others). Full rich copy-and-paste from external sources into VisualEditor is expected "soon".

In other fixes, you can no longer add empty ref tags (<ref/>) (bug 53345). Selecting both an image and some text, and then trying to add a link, previously deleted the selected image and the text. This was fixed in bug 50127. There was another problem related to using arrow keys to move the cursor next to an inline image that was fixed (bug 53507).

Looking ahead: The next planned upgrade is scheduled for next Thursday, and you should expect to find a redesigned toolbar with drop-down menus that include room for references, templates, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, and code formatting. There will also be keyboard shortcuts for setting the format (paragraph vs section headings).

If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being determined at this time. Generally speaking, languages that depend on the input method editor are not going to receive VisualEditor this month. The current target date is Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only. 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) 21:49, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Source

Regarding your revert of my edit here. I did ask for the source, preferably a quote. Because I distinctly remember that those people killed were civilians. Debresser (talk) 20:46, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Why don't you try to find one yourself? --Frederico1234 (talk) 15:37, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Because I don't have that book. Don't worry, I try to do my homework on Wikipedia, when I can. But, absent a source, I must revert to the previous version. Debresser (talk) 22:49, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Try another book then. And you don't need to revert anything. --Frederico1234 (talk) 04:08, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for September 19, 2013

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) 21:54, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013

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) 18:56, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. The thread is "West Bank". Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! EarwigBot ^{operator / talk} 16:05, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for November 2013

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) 22:23, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Important Notice: Your 2013 Arbitration Committee Election vote

Greetings. Because you have already cast a vote for the 2013 Arbitration Committee Elections, I regret to inform you that due to a misconfiguration of the SecurePoll we've been forced to strike all votes and reset voting. This notice is to inform you that you will need to vote again if you want to be counted in the poll. The new poll is located at this link. You do not have to perform any additional actions other than voting again. If you have any questions, please direct them at the election commissioners. --For the Election Commissioners, v/r, TParis

Disambiguation link notification for December 16

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page It (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.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:00, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter • 19 December 2013

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 [7] 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) 20:46, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Discussion in Mandatory Palestine

You have previously participated (one year ago). The discussion is now heated up - you are welcome to rejoin it at Talk:Jewish insurgency in Palestine.GreyShark (dibra) 16:36, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

I'll look into it. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:06, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for Janaury 2014

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) 20:11, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor Newsletter—February 2014

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) (Template:Bug).
• If you edit categories, your changes will now display correctly after saving the page (Template:Bug).
• Saving the page should be faster now (Template:Bug).
• Any community can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData by leaving a note at Template:Bug.

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)

VisualEditor newsletter—March 2014

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 (Template:Bug).
• 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)

VisualEditor newsletter—April 2014

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.

The drop-down menu is on the right, next to the search box.

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)

VisualEditor newsletter—May 2014

Did you know?

The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates.  If your wiki has enabled the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, press "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" and select the appropriate template from the menu.

Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu.

Read the user guide for more information.

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)

VisualEditor global newsletter—June 2014

Did you know?

The character formatting menu, or "Style text" menu lets you set bold, italic, and other text styles. "Clear formatting" removes all text styles and removes links to other pages.

Do you think that clear formatting should remove links? Are there changes you would like to see for this menu? Share your opinion at MediaWiki.org.

The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.

The VisualEditor team is mostly working to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.

• They have moved the "Keyboard shortcuts" link out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Within dialog boxes, buttons are now more accessible (via the Tab key) from the keyboard.
• You can now see the target of the link when you click on it, without having to open the inspector.
• The team also expanded TemplateData: You can now add a parameter type  "date" for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format, and  "boolean" for values which are true or false. Also, templates that redirect to other templates (like {{citeweb}} → {{cite web}}) now get the TemplateData of their target (bug 50964). You can test TemplateData by editing mw:Template:Sandbox/doc.
• Category: and File: pages now display their contents correctly after saving an edit (bug 65349, bug 64239)
• They have also improved reference editing: You should no longer be able to add empty citations with VisualEditor (bug 64715), as with references. When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to replace it with another reference instead. 
• It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor. Remember that inline images cannot display captions, so existing captions get removed. Many other bugs related to images were also fixed.
• You can now add and edit {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and __DISAMBIG__ in the "Page options" menu, rounding out the full set of page options currently planned.
• The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler.

Looking ahead

The VisualEditor team has posted a draft of their goals for the next fiscal year. You can read them and suggest changes on MediaWiki.org.

The team posts details about planned work on VisualEditor's roadmap. You will soon be able to drag-and-drop text as well as images. If you drag an image to a new place, it won't let you place it in the middle of a paragraph. All dialog boxes and windows will be simplified based on user testing and feedback. The VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for citations. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments and adding rows and columns to tables.

Supporting your wiki

Please read VisualEditor/Citation tool for information on configuring the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". This menu will not appear unless it has been configured on your wiki.

If you speak a language other than English, we need your help with translating the user guide. The guide is out of date or incomplete for many languages, and what's on your wiki may not be the most recent translation. Please contact me if you need help getting started with translation work on MediaWiki.org.

VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Saturday, 19 July 2014 at 21:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas and Pacific Islands) or on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 9:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East, Asia).

To change your subscription to this newsletter, please see the subscription pages on Meta or the English Wikipedia. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:59, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—July and August 2014

The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.

Dialog boxes in VisualEditor have been re-designed to use action words instead of icons. This has increased the number of items that need to be translated. The user guide is also being updated.

The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.

• Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
• You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
• All references and footnotes (<ref> tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu.
• When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
• All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
• The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
• The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.

Looking ahead

The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.

Feedback opportunities

The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30.

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).

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 for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014

Did you know?

TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.

With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.

See the help page for TemplateData for more information about adding TemplateData. The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org.

There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs 69856 and 69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that caused replaced some categories with a link to the system message, MediaWiki:Badtitletext (bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.

Increased support for devices and browsers

Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.

Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (bug 66697, bug 68828, bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Wikipedia from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.

TemplateData editor

A tool for editing TemplateData will be deployed to more Wikipedias soon.  Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation.  When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top.  Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.

Other changes

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).

Looking ahead

The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon, perhaps in late October.

The team is also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables, and early work for this may appear within the month. Please comment on the design at Mediawiki.org.

In the future, real-time collaborative editing may be possible in VisualEditor. Some early preparatory work for this was recently done.

Supporting your wiki

At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community has been posted here. Thank you all for your work.

VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.

Please join the office hours on Saturday, 18 October 2014 at 18:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Africa and Europe) and on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC on IRC.

Give feedback on VisualEditor at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. To help with translations, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre at Meta. Thank you!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014

Did you know?

VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Login and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings in the upper-right corner, to pick which editor to use. Choose "Edit" to use VisualEditor, or "Edit source" to use the wikitext editor.

It will remember whether you used wikitext or VisualEditor, and use the same editor the next time you edit an article.

The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Not all features are available in Mobile Web.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.

Recent improvements

The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias next week, and eventually at the English Wikipedia.

The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.

VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.

The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar's menus are now shown in the menus. VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme from the User Experience / Design group. The appearance of dialogs has already changed in one Mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" design and the new "MediaWiki" theme which will replace it.)

Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search program could not find the page. A link inside a template, to a local page that does not exist, will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to a error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [8] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.

TemplateData

The tool for quickly editing TemplateData will be deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November.  This tool is already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation.  When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top.  Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.

You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common response for that parameter. The autovalue can be easily overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.

In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.

Looking ahead

Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in tables will appear next Wednesday. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be possible later. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus will be hidden behind a "More" item, such as "underlining" in the styling menu. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.

The user guide will be updated soon to add information about editing tables. The translations for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. Talk to us if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.

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.

Also, user experience researcher Abbey Ripstra is looking for editors to show her how they edit Wikipedia. Please sign up for the research program if you would like to hear about opportunities.

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 Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Thank you!

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

VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014

Did you know?

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

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

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

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

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

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

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead

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

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

Help

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

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

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

VisualEditor News 2015—#1

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

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

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

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

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

Looking ahead

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

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

Let's work together

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

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

VisualEditor News #2—2015

Did you know?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking ahead

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

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

Let's work together

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

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

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

VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

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

The link tool has been re-designed:

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

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

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

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

Recent improvements

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's work together

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

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