Creating this page so my RSS reader will stop displaying stupid updates. --Elitre (talk) 22:20, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2008-11-30T22:20:00.000Z","author":"Elitre","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Elitre-2008-11-30T22:20:00.000Z","replies":[]}}-->
The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
a rich-text visual editing option, and
other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.
Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing @. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.
– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2020-06-15T18:11:00.000Z","author":"Whatamidoing (WMF)","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Whatamidoing_(WMF)-2020-06-15T18:11:00.000Z-Editing_news_2020_#2_\u2013_Quick_updates","replies":[]}}-->
On 16 March 2020, the 50 millionth edit was made using the visual editor on desktop.
Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:
The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2020-07-03T02:05:00.000Z","author":"Whatamidoing (WMF)","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Whatamidoing_(WMF)-2020-07-03T02:05:00.000Z-Editing_news_2020_#3","replies":[]}}-->
More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[1]
The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).
The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.
New requirements for user signatures
The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.
Next: New discussion tool
Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2020-08-31T18:48:00.000Z","author":"Whatamidoing (WMF)","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Whatamidoing_(WMF)-2020-08-31T18:48:00.000Z-Next:_New_discussion_tool","replies":[]}}-->
__DTSUBSCRIBEBUTTONDESKTOP__{"headingLevel":2,"name":"h-TheImaCow-2021-01-19T07:06:00.000Z","type":"heading","level":0,"id":"h-Speedy_deletion_nomination_of_File:WikiAfrica_and_Share_Your_Knowledge_results,-2021-01-19T07:06:00.000Z","replies":["c-TheImaCow-2021-01-19T07:06:00.000Z-Speedy_deletion_nomination_of_File:WikiAfrica_and_Share_Your_Knowledge_results,"],"text":"Speedy deletion nomination of File:WikiAfrica and Share Your Knowledge results, March 2013.pdf","linkableTitle":"Speedy deletion nomination of File:WikiAfrica and Share Your Knowledge results, March 2013.pdf"}-->
__DTSUBSCRIBEBUTTONMOBILE__{"headingLevel":2,"name":"h-TheImaCow-2021-01-19T07:06:00.000Z","type":"heading","level":0,"id":"h-Speedy_deletion_nomination_of_File:WikiAfrica_and_Share_Your_Knowledge_results,-2021-01-19T07:06:00.000Z","replies":["c-TheImaCow-2021-01-19T07:06:00.000Z-Speedy_deletion_nomination_of_File:WikiAfrica_and_Share_Your_Knowledge_results,"],"text":"Speedy deletion nomination of File:WikiAfrica and Share Your Knowledge results, March 2013.pdf","linkableTitle":"Speedy deletion nomination of File:WikiAfrica and Share Your Knowledge results, March 2013.pdf"}-->
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. --TheImaCow (talk) 07:06, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2021-01-19T07:06:00.000Z","author":"TheImaCow","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-TheImaCow-2021-01-19T07:06:00.000Z-Speedy_deletion_nomination_of_File:WikiAfrica_and_Share_Your_Knowledge_results,","replies":[]}}-->
Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.
The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.
The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.
Research notes:
As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[2]
The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[3] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
A large A/B test will start soon.[4] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.
During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.
–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2021-01-23T01:02:00.000Z","author":"Whatamidoing (WMF)","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Whatamidoing_(WMF)-2021-01-23T01:02:00.000Z-Next:_Notifications","replies":[]}}-->
Thanks for letting me know! Elitre (talk) 13:35, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"2021-04-15T13:35:00.000Z","author":"Elitre","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Elitre-2021-04-15T13:35:00.000Z-Next:_Notifications","replies":[]}}-->
When newcomers had the Reply tool and tried to post on a talk page, they were more successful at posting a comment. (Source)
Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.
The key results were:
Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.
These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.
Looking ahead
The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.
–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"20220826003500","author":"Whatamidoing (WMF)","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Whatamidoing_(WMF)-20220826003500-Editing_news_2022_#2","replies":[]}}-->
The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.
–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]__DTELLIPSISBUTTON__{"threadItem":{"timestamp":"20230222181900","author":"Whatamidoing (WMF)","type":"comment","level":1,"id":"c-Whatamidoing_(WMF)-20230222181900-Editing_news_2023_#1","replies":[]}}-->