Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2013/May

[en] Change to section edit links
The default position of the "edit" link in page section headers is going to change soon. The "edit" link will be positioned adjacent to the page header text rather than floating opposite it.

Section edit links will be to the immediate right of section titles, instead of on the far right. If you're an editor of one of the wikis which already implemented this change, nothing will substantially change for you; however, scripts and gadgets depending on the previous implementation of section edit links will have to be adjusted to continue working; however, nothing else should break even if they are not updated in time.

Detailed information and a timeline is available on meta.

Ideas to do this all the way to 2009 at least. It is often difficult to track which of several potential section edit links on the far right is associated with the correct section, and many readers and anonymous or new editors may even be failing to notice section edit links at all, since they read section titles, which are far away from the links.

(Distributed via global message delivery 18:20, 30 April 2013 (UTC). Wrong page? Correct it here.)


 * The edit link appears to the left of the section title when the title is formatted to look better. This appears to correct itself after the page is edited.  I assume this was unintended.  How do we fix this? Danielravennest (discuss • contribs) 16:45, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Reusing content of wikipedia under wikibooks
Hi, I'm from Portuguese wikibooks, and I'm new in the Wikibooks land.

I'm looking for a method to import content from the wikipedia in a "conventional" or "automated" way using the mediawiki software itself (I mean, not depending on third party software). There is a way to do it (a keyword, a function, etc. that I can use within mediawiki markup language)?

To be more specific, I'm writing a book, it covers the grammars of the Brazilian Portuguese. There are various articles already ready to be used in the Wikipedia (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc.), but I don't known how to import these things with some little (automated way?) modifications (like excluding TOC when its not necessary).

The most "usefulness" of open content is that it can be reused, I'm sure its meant to be, but, how its done here?

Thanks, very much. :)


 * An administrator/sysop can use pt:Special:Import to import unmodified content from another wikimedia project by using the mediawiki software itself. The language edition of Wikipedia you want to import from would need to be in Portuguese Wikibooks' list of allowed import sources. Automated modifications to imported pages might be possible by using JavaScript in combination with the MediaWiki API, but you would need to roll your own solution to avoid third party software. At English Wikibooks, administrators import pages people want to use from Wikipedia, and the rest is left up to the requester. --dark lama  01:46, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Tech newsletter: Subscribe to receive the next editions
Latest  Tech news  from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.
 * Recent software changes: (Not all changes will affect you.)


 * The latest version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf4) was added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and to the English Wikipedia (with a Wikidata software update) on May 20. It will be updated on all other Wikipedia sites on May 22.
 * A software update will perhaps result in temporary issues with images. Please report any problems you notice.
 * MediaWiki recognizes links in twelve new schemes. Users can now link to SSH, XMPP and Bitcoin directly from wikicode.
 * VisualEditor was added to all content namespaces on mediawiki.org on May 20.
 * A new extension ("TemplateData") was added to all Wikipedia sites on May 20. It will allow a future version of VisualEditor to edit templates.
 * New sites: Greek Wikivoyage and Venetian Wiktionary joined the Wikimedia family last week; the total number of project wikis is now 794.
 * The logo of 18 Wikipedias was changed to version 2.0 in a third group of updates.
 * The UploadWizard on Commons now shows links to the old upload form in 55 languages (bug 33513).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Unsubscribe • 20:28, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Future software changes:
 * The next version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf5) will be added to Wikimedia sites starting on May 27.
 * An updated version of Notifications, with new features and fewer bugs, will be added to the English Wikipedia on May 23.
 * The final version of the "single user login" (which allows people to use the same username on different Wikimedia wikis) is moved to August 2013. The software will automatically rename some usernames.
 * A new discussion system for MediaWiki, called "Flow", is under development. Wikimedia designers need your help to inform other users, test the prototype and discuss the interface..
 * The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring people to act as links between software developers and users for VisualEditor.

 Important note: This is the first edition of the Tech News weekly summaries, which help you monitor recent software changes likely to impact you and your fellow Wikimedians.

If you want to continue to receive the next issues every week, please subscribe to the newsletter. You can subscribe your personal talk page and a community page like this one. The newsletter can be translated into your language.

You can also become a tech ambassador, help us write the next newsletter and tell us what to improve. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. guillom 20:28, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Help test the new account creation and login
Hi all,

After many weeks of testing, We (the editor engagement experiments team) are is getting close to enabling redesigns of the account creation and login pages. (There's more background about how we got here and why ‎our blog post.)

Right now are trying to identify any final bugs before we enable new defaults. This is where we really need your help: for now, we don't want to disrupt these critical functions if there are outstanding bugs or mistranslated interface messages. So for about a week, the new designs are opt-in only for testing purposes, and it would be wonderful if you could give them a try. Here's how:


 * Go to account creation and add  to the URL, or just use this link
 * Go to login and add  to the URL, or just use this link

If you have questions about how to test this or why something might be the way it is, I'd definitely check out our step-by-step testing guide and the general documentation. Many thanks, Steven (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 19:45, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I noticed the "(help me choose)" link on the en Wikibooks' new account form didn't work, because this wiki didn't have a    :Username_policy page.  But you have a section in Using Wikibooks/Setting Up A User Account, so I made it a redirect to that.  Wikibooks admins need to do something similar for the other two links, see Account creation user experience/Testing. Also, does Wikibooks in other languages have similar pages? If so, maybe bilingual admins can make similar changes to their pages. Thanks, let me know how we can improve this. -- S Page (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 21:30, 15 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Just a heads up that we're enabling this new version today! Steven (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 22:48, 29 May 2013 (UTC)