Esino Lario—a mountainous village of some 750 people in northern Italy—was selected to host Wikimania 2016. However, volunteers and others have since brought up a host of concerns that raise serious questions about the town's suitability for hosting such a large conference.
Wikimania is one of two annual international events held annually by the Wikimedia movement. Each Wikimania site is selected by a jury, a temporary group that assembles each year to review bids and recommend a host to the WMF Board. The jury is composed of six volunteer editors and WMF conference coordinator Ellie Young, who is a voting member. Of the volunteers, four are from Europe, one is from South America, and one is from Australia. Of six original bids for Wikimania 2016, four were disqualified by the jury, leaving just Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, and Esino Lario.
In January, the jury announced it had selected Esino Lario as conference host. The decision is subject to approval by the WMF Board, although this fact is difficult to discern from the jury's timeline, which has it that "by the end of 2014 ... jury decision made; announcement of host city to bidders and public", and of the statement at the time by Ellie Young that: "On the recommendation of the Wikimania 2016 selection Jury Committee, we have accepted the proposal from the Esino Lario Italy team." No jury decision has ever been overturned by the Board, which Young told the Signpost is due to examine the recommendation in May, after her site visit that month. Nevertheless, she did express some potential concerns with the bid, which will be directly funded by the WMF with some US$350,000—a basic grant comparable to the 2010 and 2012 Wikimanias. Young has refused to issue further comments either to the Signpost or concerned editors, instead requesting patience for the WMF to complete its site visits.
In the past, the conference has not been without controversy, highlighted by the repeated failure of the Hong Kong organisers of the 2013 event to produce a financial statement, raising still-unresolved questions of financial probity. This failure occurred despite an upbeat announcement by the volunteer jury 18 months before that they had selected Hong Kong's bid over four other proposals. Although the 2016 jury's decision initially received accolades in the community and from several WMF staffers, there were glimmers of doubt almost immediately on the Wikimedia mailing list ("sounds just a little bit crazy"; "Northern Italian village of 775 people for a conference of 1,000. ... So where are people gonna sleep?".)
The ensuing discussion, particularly on the Wikimania Facebook group page, raised serious questions about the site. Andrew Lih (Fuzheado) wrote: "If you have not read the proposal, I encourage you to digest the "Accomodation" section, which makes this unlike any Wikimania you've ever seen before", and for his trouble was told to "nut up and be a little adventurous". Stuart Prior (Battleofalma), a jury member, wrote that he had seen a "demand to get 'back to Frankfurt' and have a more low key event after the recent Wikimania dynamic of 'bigger = better'."
A strong theme in the commentary related to Esino Lario's deficiencies in accessibility and facilities. Alison Wheeler, who identified herself on Facebook as an individual with a disability that sometimes precludes her from walking, expressed outrage that inaccessibility had not been a dealbreaker: "How would you feel if a location said 'nobody over 30', 'vegans only', 'no gay people', or 'no jews'? Full access should be an automatic given not 'something nice to have'," she wrote. "Anything which prevents full access to the event by all who want to attend is not acceptable in this day and age. There can be no justification for allowing an event which enforces this discrimination." In regards to the accessibility concerns, jury member Richard Symonds (Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry) wrote, just before a lengthy examination into the Philippines' mental health care system, "Although Esino Lario poses some problems for those with physical disabilities, the Philippines poses huge problems for those with mental disabilities, and serious problems for those with physical ones".
Members of the jury indicated in an email to the Signpost that Esino Lario had scored 116 to the Philippines' 109, out of a possible 140. The jury mentioned specific strengths of the Esino Lario bid as "personal safety of attendees, attractive meeting spaces, and the overall strength of the bid team." These strengths outweighed any concerns over the fact that most attendees will need to be accommodated in hotels up to 40 minutes away from the town by bus, or that the small, separated hotels would disrupt any plans outside of the conference itself.
Josh Lim (Sky Harbor), a member of the Manila bid team, challenged much of the jury's analysis. While conceding that Manila is not a perfect city for the disabled, he wrote that "to claim that a major convention center in a major city is not accessible is preposterous."
"Esino Lario is not ideal, but it is better than Manila."
– Richard Symonds, Wikimania 2016 jury member
(email to the Signpost)
Additional concerns were raised on Facebook by Christopher Cooper (CT Cooper) concerning the planned use of $55,000 in WMF funds to subsidize internet and electricity development in a first-world town, without which it would be ill-equipped for an event such as Wikimania. Young told the Signpost that "it has been made clear that no WMF funds will be used to upgrade any infrastructure in Esino Lario—only sponsor's money may be used for this purpose."
However, the Signpost viewed a subsequent email from Young to Cooper that states: "Regarding the significant amounts of money to upgrade the communications, the ES team is applying for grants to subsidize and/or cover this. We should know more in the next couple of months. WMF is going to need assurances that we won't be spending more than what is requested, while still providing all the benefits and services that we normally offer at Wikimania." It is possible that organizers may apply for additional Wikimedia donors' funds through the WMF's PEG funding scheme, on top of the $350,000 operating grant, although a later email from Young denied that this would be the case.
We asked davidwilliam97, an English Wikipedian with networking expertise, to comment on the networking issues raised by the bid. He was first concerned about the lack of specifications in the bid, and the absence of details about undertakings by the named contractor Telecom Italia, which he noted has $34 billion in debt and whose Brazilian operation was involved in a 2012 consumer lawsuit (in Portuguese). Dave questioned "their track-record in deploying internet solutions to events", and referring to the schematic of the network topology, he said: "a mesh topology means they’ll probably have wireless access points scattered around. It's very odd that the hackathon is shown as on the end of a point-to-point link, not the wired links to venues 2, 3, 6, and 7." He had a number of other queries: "How much would the university in Milan charge to house the hackathon if the installed network is unsatisfactory for its needs, and would it be possible to arrange this in time? Was the $55K a formal written quote or just what some engineer told them in conversation? The bid says: 'the Telecom site-visit and check will allow to select the most appropriate and efficient solution'—has it been done yet? Would there be connectivity in the distant hotels?"
Although the bid claims that one advantage of Wikimania would be "The structures improved for the conference are used after the conference”, we asked Dave what could be taken back by the WMF: "the server, the UPS, wireless radio equipment, router, 24-port unmanaged switch, and the cable (but the last is probably not worth taking back) ... that’s it." The jury told the Signpost that "the benefits of delivering a successful conference as well as the impact and legacy for the local community were considered important enough to justify the expenditure. The technical requirements were independently verified by community members with expert knowledge, the bid team also has within it expert knowledge, and the jury has within it former Wikimania organisers who are all too aware of how important these issues are and how potential problems will unfold." On the prospects for recovering some of the hardware, they said: "Our understanding is that the majority of items are recoverable, however, the details of any cost-recovery in terms of equipment, especially at this early stage in planning, are too granular for the jury to consider in more detail."
Christopher Cooper wrote to Ellie Young on 9 February questioning the choice of Esino Lario on a number of grounds, and privately circulated copies of the email, which pushed up the temperature of the Facebook discussion. One jury member, for example, accused him of making "passive aggressive comments about our opinions". Cooper then published the email onwiki, and included a further email he sent to Young on 12 February.
Cooper told the Signpost on the phone that: "I was hoping the issues I raised would be resolved, but the events of the past few days have made me rethink that. ... Some members of the jury seemed to see themselves as the final arbiters, treating the Board like "a rubber stamp". He suggested that the jury was faced with two unsatisfactory bids, and that rather than an Esino Lario vs Manilla competition, it might have been handled differently. The Signpost also spoke with Richard Symonds and Stuart Prior by phone (both are employees of Wikimedia UK). Concerning the notion that they had to decide between two bad bids, they were unwilling to comment without seeking input from the other jury members.
The jury subsequently wrote to us that it "was unanimous in its support for the Esino Lario bid and there were a few deciding factors:"
| “ | The Esino Lario bid had been in development for longer, which meant that the team had had more time to think about problems and propose solutions, relationships had been well established with potential sponsors and partners, and crucially it demonstrated strong commitment to the project that after 2.5 years, and one rejection, they were still dedicated to making it happen. The bid team had established a wide range of support and cooperation across movement organisations and also demonstrated a very strong combined experience and knowledge between them. Additionally, the bid was very focused on legacy and the momentum that Wikimania could generate to deliver lasting impact in the region and for the regional languages. ... We must add that the jury’s decision isn’t the final word, and further due diligence in terms of financial and practical considerations will be conducted by the Foundation, but we feel that we made a fair assessment of the bids and chose the strongest one and a final decision from the Foundation will be made later this Spring. | ” |
The Wikimedia Foundation's first two program evaluations of 2015 have been published on Meta. These examine the annual Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) and other photo competitions that have been held around the globe, with an eye towards finding what worked and what did not. Although WLM is an international contest, it is organized separately in each country, with separate budgets and contests in each before the winners advance to the global finals. It was first held in the Netherlands in 2010, and the success there encouraged organizers in other countries to join.
The evaluations reveal that in the last three years (2012–14), WLM has possibly fallen victim to its own success and seen diminishing returns: the average total number of uploads has decreased from a high of 6,266 images in 2012 to 2,714 in 2014 even as the average money spent per upload has increased from US37c to 90c. While the total number of images increased from 2012 to 2013, it was less than half that in 2014. The number of images in use on Wikimedia programs has dropped both in total number and percentage, and the cost per used image has gone up from $3.03 in 2012 to $6.31—although this is an improvement on 2013's $6.61. Cost per participant was, on average, about $25. About 1% of the total image uploads were later rated as "quality" or "valued" images.
The users participating skewed heavily towards people who had never edited Wikimedia sites: over the three studied years, about 1,400 current and 14,000 new users participated. The conversion rate into continuing editors, as measured by having at least one edit three months after the competition, is 2.4%. Extending this to twelve months after the competition (for programs that ended before February 2014) shows that the programs netted 16 "active" new editors, or 0.3%—those who made more than five or more edits in the studied period.
The overall data analysis by the WMF suggests that "When planning a photo event, it may be useful to try to balance group size with both new and experienced users to increase use and ensure high quality uploads." For funding, the evaluators recommended that the WMF be "cautious about the investment level" amidst the contest's diminishing returns. E
| “ | We closed doors temporarily for a few months to re-think our structure and visual identity ... We kept all the bestsellers and added new and socially responsible items that will promote our mission and remind our supporters of the great work by all the volunteers who build Wikipedia and its sister projects. ... We have also started to collaborate with new vendors, designers and artists with compatible visions to create meaningful merchandise for our users. Soon you will see more creative representations of Wikipedia and its sister projects from these collaborations. These new designs aim to motivate you and people around you, to help spread knowledge through the Wikimedia projects. | ” |
British media outlets reported this week that David Coburn, a Member of the European Parliament for the Scotland region for the UK Independence Party, had been blocked from editing Wikipedia on April 6. The indefinite block was imposed on the account David Coburn MEP by JohnCD after edit warring on Coburn's Wikipedia article.
From April 1–6, the account repeatedly removed references to Coburn's comments about opposing candidate Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh of the Scottish Nationalist Party. Coburn had repeatedly mangled her name and referred to her in a way that she characterized as "sexist - and possibly racist". The account also disputed other information, including Coburn's place of residence and high school.
The account made 59 edits to the article, but no edits to the article talk page or the account's user talk page, which includes numerous warning templates and attempts by other editors to discuss the article. The account did post frequent complaints in their edit summaries, including:
Despite the account's frequent use of the first person, Coburn gave what appear to be conflicting statements to The Guardian about who was using the account. They reported (April 29) that "Coburn said he had started editing the page after spotting mistakes on it, but that he had stopped after getting bored." Coburn also told them "It was done by one of my people. I don’t know how to press the buttons to make it work. I was telling them what to do. If there was garbage on there I told them to take it off."
The Scotsman quoted (April 29) Coburn's chief of staff Arthur Misty Thackeray, who blamed the matter on Coburn's lack of technological expertise. He said "it goes to the heart of the fact that David’s not an IT expert, so things like Wikipedia aren't his strong point." In The Guardian, Coburn himself attributed the conflict to supporters of Scottish independence: "I’m sure its all wee cybernats who've got nothing better to do with their time and they should actually be out getting a job." G
Gizmodo and other technology media outlets report (April 28) on a project from the Laboratory for Web Algorithmics at the University of Milan called The Open Wikipedia Ranking. The project's website ranks Wikipedia articles by importance using a variety of metrics. The top ten Wikipedia articles ranked by harmonic centrality are:
The website also presents top ten lists of articles in a variety of broad categories. Some odd results appear in the lists, such as Ronald Reagan topping the list of actors and Lady Gaga at the top of the list of fashion designers. Other strange results arise from limitations in handling the data and the reliability of the data itself. The website's FAQ notes:
| “ | The most important album of all times seems to be Röksopp's [sic] "Suzerainty", but if you follow the link you'll see it's instead a complex political concept: Wikipedia has only the concept, and Wikidata has only the album, so there is no way to disambiguate. | ” |
The reference to that album was removed from Wikidata on April 30 and Röyksopp's discography does not appear to contain an album by that title. G
SoleCollector investigates (April 26) what appears to be advocacy editing on behalf of sneaker companies Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour since 2005. They examined edits from IP addresses and concluded "Nike had more Wikipedia edits relating to its own business than any other sneaker brand." These included edits regarding controversies involving Nike's use of sweatshop labor and the quality of materials. SoleCollector also identified three accounts it contends belong to Nike historian Scott Reames. Edits from those accounts include the addition of material noting the increase in Nike's annual revenue "despite [anti-sweatshop] campaigns", and disputing a claim regarding Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, changes regarding Nike's corporate sponsorship in the wake of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. G
Ten featured articles were promoted this week.
Nine featured lists were promoted this week.
Twenty-eight featured pictures were promoted this week.
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Apart from these featured contents, thirty-one good articles were promoted this week.
Click to show
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Though the continued predominance of movies, TV, and sports noted in last week's report largely continues, three additional topics joined the Top 10 this week. Bruce Jenner's long-awaited personal announcement that he considers himself a trans woman was made in a highly publicized American television interview on April 24, and easily made his article #2 on this week's report. The Loch Ness Monster was the subject of a Google Doodle celebrating the 81st anniversary of the iconic hoaxed photograph of the legendary beast, putting Nessie on this Report for the first time. And much more sobering, but also in the Report for the first time, is the Armenian Genocide (#10), which commenced 100 years ago this week. Farther down the list on the Top 25, it is worth noting that Adolf Hitler (#23), who famously asked who remembered the Armenian Genocide, also appears in the Top 25 for the first time. While World War II related topics often make the charts, for some reason Hitler himself has not since the Top 25's debut in January 2013.
For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.
For the week of April 19 to 25, 2015, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Avengers: Age of Ultron | 
|
1,725,099 |  |
Up from #16 and 541,147 views last week, the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe premiered in Hollywood on April 13. In any other year, the sequel to the billion-grossing Avengers would be the film to beat at the box office, but with the success of Furious 7, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ahead, no one is taking bets on who will come out on top. The film opens in wide release on May 1. |
| 2 | Bruce Jenner |
|
1,606,878 |  |
The former track and field Olympian and current honorary Kardashian got into the news this week. Jenner previously appeared on the Top 25 for two weeks in February, but his article would not include what the tabloids were reporting until Jenner said it himself, which he did in an April 24 interview on American television with Diane Saywer – that he is a trans woman. His gender transition will be the subject of an eight-part documentary series starting July 2015. |
| 3 | 420 (cannabis culture) | 
|
1,240,611 |  |
This curious "holiday", which falls on April 20 (for obvious reasons), refers to the mysterious number 420 and its long link to marijuana usage. While it may not quite be to cannabis what Oktoberfest is to beer, it no doubt aspires to be. And this year it placed at #3 for the week, up from #5 last year. And, for the very obvious joke, we note the article is far too laid back to seek to improve any further from Start Class. |
| 4 | Furious 7 | 
|
966,738 |  |
Down from #2 last week and 1.36 million views, but still going strong. "Fast and furious" pretty much sums up the seventh installment of this long-running series. Its worldwide gross as of April 26 is now $1.322 billion. It has also become the third film in history to earn over $1 billion in "overseas" sales, after Avatar and Titanic. |
| 5 | Daredevil (TV series) |
|
774,553 |  |
The first of four projects started as part of a deal between Marvel Studios and Netflix, this TV series was released in its entirety on the service on April 10. It's impossible to gauge the public response to this ("ratings" don't really have meaning when applied to Netflix shows) but the critical response has been ecstatic (Rotten Tomatoes currently rates it at 97%) and if its Wikipedia position is anything to go by, the public appear to have taken to it too. Down from #1 and 1.49 million views last week. |
| 6 | Loch Ness Monster |
|
764,390 |  |
A Google Doodle on April 21 celebrated the 81st anniversary of the 1934 hoaxed "Surgeon's Photograph" of the legendary Scottish lake monster. Google has also helpfully put Loch Ness on Street View so you can search for her yourself. A review of the past three weeks of the WP:5000 data shows that Nessie is normally submerged below our Top 5000 weekly articles. This is her debut in the Top 25. |
| 7 | Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao |
|
745,655 |  |
This long-anticipated (the article was created in July 2013!) boxing match between Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (pictured) and Manny Pacquiao, the latest fight to be dubbed the Fight of the Century, will be held on May 2 in Las Vegas. |
| 8 | Paul Walker |
|
692,364 |  |
Furious 7 will be the last, and definitely biggest, film of Paul Walker's career, and was completed despite his tragic death midway through production. How much of the film's current record grosses was in memoriam to a fallen star is impossible to say. |
| 9 | Manny Pacquiao |
|
637,686 |  |
See #7. And Mr. Mayweather is #11. |
| 10 | Armenian Genocide |
|
631,960 |  |
The 100th anniversary of the start of the systematic killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman government probably generated more concentrated press coverage of this tragic event than ever seen before. Much of the current political debate focuses on the refusal of Turkey, and others, to recognize the term "genocide" as an accurate description for the event. |
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
This paper[1] provides evidence that quality of an article is not a simple function of its popularity, or, in the words of the authors, that there is "extensive misalignment between production and consumption" in peer communities such as Wikipedia. As the author notes, reader demand for some topics (e.g. LGBT topics or pages about countries) is poorly satisfied, whereas there is over-abundance of quality on topics of comparatively little interest, such as military history.
| Rank | Popular and underdeveloped topics | High-quality, not popular topics |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Countries | Cricket |
| 2 | Pop music | Tropical cyclones |
| 3 | Internet | Middle Ages |
| 4 | Comedy | Politics |
| 5 | Technology | Fungi |
| 6 | Religion | Birds |
| 7 | Science fiction | Military history |
| 8 | Rock music | Ships |
| 9 | Psychology | England |
| 10 | LGBT studies | Australia |
The authors arrived at this conclusion by comparing data on page views to articles on English, French, Russian, and Portuguese Wikipedias to their respective Wikipedia:Assessment (and like) quality ratings. The authors note that at most 10% of Wikipedia articles are well correlated with regards to their quality and popularity; in turn over 50% of high quality articles concern topics of relatively little demand (as measured by their page views). The authors estimate that about half of the page views on Wikipedia – billions each month – are directed towards articles that should be of better quality, if it was just their popularity that would translate directly into quality. The authors identify 4,135 articles that are of high interest but poor quality, and suggest that the Wikipedia community may want to focus on improving such topics. Among specific examples of extremes are articles with poor quality (start class) and high number of views such as wedding (1k views each day) or cisgender (2.5k views each day). For examples of topics of high quality and little impact, well, one just needs to glance at a random topic in the Wikipedia:Featured articles – the authors use the example of 10 Featured Articles about the members of the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (itself a Good Article; 30 views per day). Interestingly, based on their study of WikiProjects, popularity and quality, the authors find that contrary to some popular claims, pop culture topics are also among those that are underdeveloped. The authors also note that even within WikiProjects, the labor is not efficiently organized: for example, within the topic of military history, there are numerous featured articles about individual naval ships, but the topics of broader and more popular interests, such as about NATO, are less well attended to. In conclusion, the authors encourage the Wikipedia community to focus on such topics, and to recruit participants for improvement drives using tools such as User:SuggestBot.
Paul J. Heald and his coauthors at the University of Glasgow continued their extremely valuable studies of the public domain, publishing "The Valuation of Unprotected Works".[2] The study finds that "massive social harm was done by the most recent copyright term extension that has prevented millions of works from falling into the public domain since 1998" which "provides strong justification for the enactment of orphan works legislation."
In recent years, authorities have started acknowledging possible errors in copyright legislation of the past, which would have been prevented by an evidence-based approach. Heald mentions the Hargreaves Report (2011), endorsed by the UK's IP office, but other examples can be found in World Intellectual Property Organization reports. This awakening corresponds to the work by researchers and think tanks to prove the importance of public domain and certain damages of copyright.[supp 1]
The importance of evidence-based legislation can't be overstated, especially in the current process of EU copyright revision.
As Heald notes, past copyright policy has relied on a number of incorrect assumptions, in short:
Recent studies, some of which are mentioned in this paper (Pollock, Waldfogel, Heald), have instead found strong indicators that:
In short, it seems that "the public is better off when a work becomes freely available", insofar as copyright has been "robust enough to stimulate the creation of the work in the first place" and that a work "must remain available to the public after it falls into the public domain".
However, it is impossible to measure the value of knowledge acquired by society and, even considering the mere monetary value, it is impossible to measure transactions which did not happen. The English Wikipedia is used by the authors as dataset because its history is open to inspection and its content is unencumbered by copyright payments, so every "transaction" is public.
In particular, the study measures what would be the cost of gratis images not being available for use on English Wikipedia articles, as a proxy of (i) the consumer surplus generated by those images, (ii) their private value, and (iii) their contribution to social welfare. If a positive value is found, it is proved that a more restrictive copyright would be harmful, and we can reasonably infer that reducing copyright restrictions would make society richer.
The calculation is done in three passages.
Clearly, the number of inferences is great, but the authors believe the findings to be robust. The pageview increase, depending on the method, was 6%, 17% or 19%, and at any rate positive. Authors with most images were those died before 1880, an outcome which has no possible technological reason nor any welfare justification: it's clearly a distortion produced by copyright.
For those fond of price tags, the English Wikipedia images were esteemed to be worth about $30,000/year for those 362 writers, or about $30m in hypothetical advertising revenue for English Wikipedia, or $200m–230m in hypothetical costs of image purchase.
At any rate, this reviewer thinks that the positive impact of the lack of copyright royalties is proven and confirms the authors' thesis. It is quite challenging to extend the finding to the whole English Wikipedia, all Wikimedia projects, the entire free knowledge landscape and finally the overall cultural works market; and even more fragile to put a price tag on it. However, this kind of one-number communication device is widely used to explain the impact of legislation and numbers traditionally used by legislators are way more fragile than this. Moreover, the study makes it possible to prove a positive impact on important literature authors and their life, i.e. their reputation, which is supposed to be the aim of copyright laws, while financial transactions are only means.
There are several possible observations to be made about details of the study.
A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.
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Recent changes
All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [2] [3]
You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [4]
There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [5]
You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [6]
Recent changes
There was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [7]
VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [8]
You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [9]
If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [10]
Problems
There was a problem with Labs on Monday. [11]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [12] [13] [14]
If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [15]
You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [16]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You will soon be able to add and remove tags on edits. [17] [18]
Recent changes
You can read the latest news about VisualEditor.
You can now use the new translation tool on 22 Wikipedias. You now see the tool the first time you create a new page. [19]
The list of bad user names on your wiki no longer works. The global list replaces it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [20] [21]
Problems
Some wikis had issues on Wednesday. [22] [23]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [24] [25]
All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [26]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Recent changes
You can join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [27]
You can read the last monthly report. In the future you can read team reports every three months. You can see current work on the roadmap. [28] [29]
The number of articles in Special:Statistics is now updated once a month. [30]
You can use a new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. Using the app, you can now share a fact with your friends. [31]
Problems
The import tool was broken for a few days. Imports didn't add log entries. You can delete and import pages again if necessary. [32]
Labs was broken several times this week. [33] [34] [35] [36]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).
You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [37]
Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [38] [39]
You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [40]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [41]
Reader comments
