User talk:Shanata: Difference between revisions

Welcome!

Hello, Shanata, 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:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome!  Selket ^Talk 11:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

March 2009

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, talk pages are meant to be a record of a discussion; deleting or editing legitimate comments, as you did at Talk:Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, is considered bad practice, even if you meant well. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Xasodfuih (talk) 12:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I partially wasn't sure what to do because I thought that it was weird that the comment was at the top of the page, but your solution makes much more sense. Shanata (talk) 10:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Greetings from the MCB WikiProject!

Hello, Shanata, welcome to the Molecular and Cellular Biology WikiProject! I noticed you recently added yourself to our Participants' list, and I wanted to welcome you to our project. Here are some ideas on how you can help:: Read our Manual of Style, guide to citing sources and try this citation tool Join in editing our collaboration of the month Have a look at some related projects and resources Improve articles on our worklist If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, don't hesitate to post on the project talk page, or please drop me a note on my talk page. Again, welcome! Tim Vickers (talk) 01:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks

Many thanks for leaving a message that you had rated the importance of the article on Kosuke Koyama. What you told me was useful for me to know - it is much appreciated. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much

Oh hello. Thanks so much for that message you just left me! My computer was recently hacked with a terrible computer virus, causing all of the pages I went to to be terribly hacked. I do not appreciate for you to threaten banning me from editing, especially when I am a very good person that contributes a lot of useful things. Also, you are not Wikipedia staff and do not have the right or authority to do that. I appreciate it all so much, you're just making my day with this!

Bye now :) Have a good day. 68.43.224.49 (talk) 15:05, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I suggest that you fix the computer virus before you continue to edit, or use a different computer. Good luck. Shanata (talk) 15:11, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

A troll's critism

Why did you revert my page on Holocaust denial? THAT ARTICUL HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH BURNING BEFORE I CHANGED IT!. It clearly had bias in it, since it demonized denial, as there is nothing wrong with denial... If it weren't for denial we wouldn't progress in technolegy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.77.203.166 (talk) 10:04, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Your edits ([1] and [2]) did not appear to be constructive and they removed a lot of material that others have worked on. I noticed that you've started a topic at Talk:Holocaust denial. You should build consensus there before making any major edits to the article. Shanata (talk) 10:17, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Notability of residential colleges

You previously commented on a dispute at List of Rice University residential colleges but the issue at the heart of that dispute appears to be more widespread. A RFC has been submitted on the best way to deal with the existence of many Wikipedia articles on residence halls and dormitories at colleges and universities that may not be notable. Your input and feedback would be appreciated at the RFC. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:39, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Theory of Others

Hello, I was wondering if you would have the time available to go ahead with the deletion process for Theory of Others? I'd like to see it gone.--Ducio1234 (talk) 00:34, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

 Done Please visit the AfD to comment. Shanata (talk) 11:43, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Copwatch

Hi there. While my understanding of the persistent IP edits to Copwatch is that they are vandalism, when I went to template the IP I noticed that you had templated him for NPOV and personal attacks rather than vandalism. The IP keeps reverting back to essentially the same edit, and as you may have noticed, enjoys calling me "Fagwatcher", police apologist, etc. I don't really see this is a legit content dispute, but I wanted to get your thoughts. IMHO, and perhaps due to laziness, a simple block or semi-protection of the page would suffice. Cheers. Factchecker atyourservice (talk) 22:17, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The IP edits do largely appear to be vandalism, though some may be NPOV as the person may actually believe some of what they write. I used the personal attacks template for the second warning because I thought that the edits on the discussion page of Copwatch, where the phrase "Fagwatcher" is used constitutes an unreasonable implicit personal attack on you. Since the IP is not trying to be constructive, it is time to move on--I agree that a block or semi-protection might be the best way to go. Shanata (talk) 09:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Real self

Hi Shanata,

Thank you for recognizing that the merge suggestion was going nowhere; I had forgotten about it. I agree with you about real self deserving its own article. I had originally thought that merging would be best until more information was added, but I now see that "real self" is not limited to philosophy, as Self (philosophy) explicitly is.

Happy editing,

Neelix (talk) 13:35, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists

Hello Shanata. I notice that your edits to Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor show some knowledge of the subject. You might offer a comment at WP:Peer review/Drug Discovery and Development: Nicotinic_Acetylcholine_Receptor_Agonists/archive1. My own thought is that the new article could be too detailed, and needs to be more smoothly integrated with what's here already (for example, Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor). EdJohnston (talk) 22:31, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

New Page Patrol survey

New page patrol – Survey Invitation Hello Shanata! The WMF is currently developing new tools to make new page patrolling much easier. Whether you  have patrolled many pages or only a few, we now need to  know about your experience. The survey takes only 6 minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist us in analyzing the results of the survey; the WMF will not use the information to identify you. If this invitation  also appears on other accounts you  may  have, please complete the  survey  once only.  If this has been sent to you in error and you have never patrolled new pages, please ignore it. Please click HERE to take part. Many thanks in advance for providing this essential feedback. You are receiving this invitation because you  have patrolled new pages. For more information, please see NPP Survey. Global message delivery 13:14, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for your contributions to biophysics pages, esp uploading your first image, for Acetylcholinesterase! It looks fine, but I expanded the abbreviation in its caption on Commons, and removed the "Uncategorized" template, since it's now got categories. Dcrjsr (talk) 00:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikify has been deprecated

Hi Shanata! Just dropping you a note to let you know that {{Wikify}} has been deprecated in favor of more specific maintenance templates. GoingBatty (talk) 05:35, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I identified a more specific maintenance template for Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad. Shanata (talk) 09:31, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library now offering accounts from Cochrane Collaboration (sign up!)

Cochrane Collaboration is an independent medical nonprofit organization consisting of over 28,000 volunteers in more than 100 countries. The collaboration was formed to organize medical scholarship in a systematic way in the interests of evidence-based research: the group conducts systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health-care interventions, which it then publishes in the Cochrane Library.

Cochrane has generously agreed to give free, full-access accounts to 100 medical editors. Individual access would otherwise cost between $300 and $800 per account. Thank you Cochrane!

If you are stil active as a medical editor, come and sign up :)

Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:58, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Biophysics wiki-edit contest

Your entry for the Biophysics wiki-edit contest is much appreciated! The judging is now starting, and the 6 winners will be informed and announced by early September. You have already earned a cool Wiki-Project Biophysics button, which I'd be glad to mail to you if you give me your address, either on my talk page or by email to jsr@kinemage.biochem.duke.edu. - Dcrjsr (talk) 17:37, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations! You are awarded this barnstar as an honorable mention in the 2013 Biophysical Society wiki-edit contest, for your work on the biophysically important en:wikipedia article Single molecule experiment.

I, and the rest of our judges, hope to see you at the meeting, where there will be a wiki-session on the importance of open-license media for science and a dinner for wiki editors -- plus of course great scientific sessions and the opportunity to present a poster or talk. Dcrjsr (talk) 03:58, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

VE newsletter

Hey Shanata; hope you had a decent weekend :). We've got a pile of patches, some of which went out on Monday, some yesterday:

• If you insert wikitext such as links or section headers, you get a notice in the top right corner (over the save button). It doesn't go away until click, though once dismissed you don't get another one that edit. (49820)
• If your edit token expires, VE fetches a new one for you so you can save. (50424)
• If the page is empty of content but does have something non-content (like a category or an HTML comment), VE no longer crashes on load - (50289)
• sub tags are no longer removed ((49873)
• If you type at the end of links, they now extend
• Templates now only take a single click to insert
• Clear annotations clears links (50461)
• The link inspector stays open when you click to another item (50895)
• Typing after multi-byte characters no longer creats pawn icons (51140)
• Resizing thumbnails that have a default size set now works (50645)
• References made by tag:ref now display properly (bugzilla:50978)
• The VE is integrated with the spam blacklist (50826)
• Feedbacl link goes to the right language (bugzilla:47730)

There are a lot more improvements coming, but that's it for Monday and Tuesday. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:32, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

VE newsletter

Hey Shanata. The newest updates:

• Links now don't extend over space/punctuation/workbreaks when you type (bugzilla:51463)
• Users with the "minoredit" preference set get working functionality (bugzilla:51515)
• You can tab to buttons in dialogs, including the save dialog (bugzilla:50047)
• We now show the <newarticletext> (or <newarticletextanon>) message as an edit notice (bugzilla:51459)
• You can scroll dialog panels like in transclusions' templates' parameter listings (bugzilla:51739)
• Templates that only create meta-data and no display content at all (like Template:Use dmy dates) now can't be deleted accidentally or deliberately, but still don't show up (bugzilla:51322)
• FlaggedRevisions integration (bugzilla:49699)
• Edit summary will get the section title pre-added if you launched from a section edit link (bugzilla:50872)

Along with some miscellaneous language support fixes. That's all for today; as always, let us know if you spot more bugs. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for 06 August 2013

It's been almost two weeks since the last newsletter, and a lot of improvements have been made during that time. The main things that people have noticed are significant improvements to speed for typing into long pages (Template:Bug), scrolling (Template:Bug) and deleting (Template:Bug) on large pages. There have also been improvements to references, with the latest being support for list-defined references, which are <ref>s defined inside a <references> block (Template:Bug). Users of Opera 12 and higher have had their web browser removed from the browser black-list, mostly as a result of work by a volunteer developer (Template:Bug). Opera has not been fully white-listed yet, so these users will get an additional warning and request to report problems.

Significant changes were made to the user interface to de-emphasize VisualEditor. This has cut the use of VisualEditor by approximately one-third. You can read about these at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Updates/August 1, 2013, but they include:

• Re-ordering links to the editors to put "Edit source" first and VisualEditor second
• Renaming the link for VisualEditor to "Edit^beta"
• Disabling the animation for section editing.
• Changing all labels for the classic wikitext editor to say "Edit source", regardless of namespace.

There have also been many smaller fixes, including these:

• Horizontal alignment of images working correctly on more pages (Template:Bug)
• Categories with ':'s in their names (like Category:Wikipedia:Privacy) now work correctly (Template:Bug)
• Magic JavaScript gadgets and tools like sortable tables will now work once the page is saved (Template:Bug)
• Keyboard shortcut for "clear annotations" - now Control+\ or ⌘ Command+\ (Template:Bug)
• Fixed corruption bugs that led to duplicate categories (Template:Bug) and improper collapsing when multiple new references were added in a row (Template:Bug).
• Improvements to display elements: The save dialog in Monobook is restored to normal size (Template:Bug), pop-up notices on save now look the same in VisualEditor as in wikitext editor (Template:Bug), and the popup about using wikitext has a link to the definition of wikitext that now opens in a new window (Template:Bug)

Most of the Wikimedia Foundation staff is traveling this week and next, so no updates are expected until at least August 15th. If you're going to be in Hong Kong for Wikimania 2013, say hello to James Forrester, Philippe Beaudette, and the other members of the VisualEditor team.

As always, if you have questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 23:27, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for 21 August 2013

Both VisualEditor and MediaWiki were upgraded recently. For VisualEditor, this is the long-awaited post-Wikimania update with many bug fixes and enhancements. Work also continues on speed at opening and during use, as well as on the bugs reported here and at other Wikipedias. The full report is at Mediawiki.

References are displaying properly, even when nested (Template:Bug) or in image captions (Template:Bug. Reference lists are now always fully populated with references (bug 50094). Firefox users can insert an existing reference in the first paragraph (Template:Bug). Opera users no longer see corruption of categories when a reference was added (bug 50385).

Stray spaces are being stripped from the start of paragraphs to end one of the common <nowiki> problems (Template:Bug). We also fixed a round-tripping bug that caused desirable whitespace in templates (used to make templates more legible, e.g., by putting each parameter in an infobox on a separate line) to get corrupted (bug 51150).

Wikilink handling was improved. Users are not allowed to create internal links to invalid titles (titles that are actually impossible due to limits on acceptable character combinations in titles, not redlinks) (Template:Bug). You can extend wikilinks, but it won't do so over a wordbreak (like a space) (bugs 49931 and 51463).

A handful of fixes to the user interface were made. The toolbar doesn't float over personal tools after opening a dialog or the inspector (Template:Bug). Toolbars were also re-written to be collapsible/expandable, with room for more icons. Buttons in dialogs can now be activated using the Tab ↹ and ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ key commands (bug 50047). This saves time for editors, because you don't need to take your hands off the keyboard to click a button. We fixed a handful of bugs that affected only certain articles or certain browsers, including toolbar buttons in Firefox (bug 51986) and dialog panels that didn't always scroll correctly (bug 51739). Bugs with undo/redo getting confused have been fixed (Template:Bug).

Images, in addition to getting references displaying correctly, also saw improvements with a set-empty |link= parameter no longer corrupted (51963). We corrected thumbnail images' display so that they look don't wrong in some contexts (bug 51995). Inserted images no longer explicitly set their alignment, but instead inherit the default position in compliance with the Manual of Style (bug 51851).

More edit notices, warnings, and metadata like information about Pending Changes on an article now appear as appropriate (bug 49699). When new articles are created, users are now shown the <newarticletext> message (bug 51459). VisualEditor now handles templates that set "meta" items (like a category) and nothing else better (bug 51322). If the database is locked when a user tries to save with VisualEditor, they now get a message telling them as such and an opportunity to try again, rather than a silent failure (bug 51636).

When you save the page, having the default preference set to "mark all my edits as minor by default" no longer overrides the setting in the save dialog (bug 51515). If you open VisualEditor from a section edit link, the section's title will be pre-filled in in the edit summary box when you go to save it (bug 50872). The size of the save dialog box in the Monobook skin has been fixed (bug 50058). Also, wikipage content handlers like sortable tables are re-run automatically after saving (Template:Bug).

A very early version of the mathematics equation editor is now available for testing on mw:Mediawiki. If you would like to help improve the user interface for math editor, please test out the extension at mw:Mediawiki:Sandbox and leave your comments directly at the discussion page for the Math Node User Interface at Mediawiki. You should be able to use your regular username and password should to login to Mediawiki.

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) 17:45, 21 August 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)

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) 21:53, 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)

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) 22:22, 20 November 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 [3] 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) 20:45, 19 December 2013 (UTC)