Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2016/May

Help requested
I am not sure where to ask this question. Pl. direct me to the proper place. I have an English-Telugu Dictionary. Right now it is sitting in the Telugu (:te) wikipedia. I would like to transfer this to (:te) wikibooks and still be able to update/edit it as I find need for corrections, updates, as such. One possibility is to go the "create a book" link at the left margin and follow the instructions there. Thanks --Vemurione (discuss • contribs) 22:59, 6 May 2016 (UTC)


 * An English-Telugu dictionary sounds like material that would belong on the Wiktionary sister project, rather than Wikibooks (and rather that Wikipedia). Words in Telugu with English definitions would go in the English Wiktionary, while words in English with Telugu definitions would go in the Telugu Wiktionary.  Unless I'm misunderstanding something about the situation?  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 00:02, 7 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks. You understood 90% of my predicament. I have a large English-Telugu dictionary file and a large Telugu-English dictionary file - both are now residing in the Telugu Wikipedia (:te). The E_T part is called "Vemuri dictionary." It is my understanding that one enters each and every word individually in pre-defined fields of the Wiktionary. This approach will be long and laborious. But the Telugu Wikipedia community feels that Wikipedia is NOT the correct place for such a work and it should be hosted elsewhere. I thought it makes sense to transfer these files en mass to Wikibooks. You see, I am still making updates to these files and by putting them in Wiktionary I may lose control of the "books" during this evolutionary phase. I hope I made myself clear. Thanks--Vemurione (discuss • contribs) 03:48, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Firstly, you do not have "control" to lose - that's the whole point of these projects. Secondly, as Pi zero noted, dictionaries are specifically out of scope for Wikibooks. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 07:25, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

A new "Welcome" dialog
Hello everyone. This is a heads-up about a change which has just been announced in Tech News: Add the "welcome" dialog (with button to switch) to the wikitext editor.

In a nutshell, later this week this will provide a one-time "Welcome" message in the wikitext editor which explains that anyone can edit, and every improvement helps. The user can then start editing in the wikitext editor right away, or switch to the visual editor. (This is the equivalent of an already existing welcome message for visual editor users, which suggests the option to switch to the wikitext editor. If you have already seen this dialog in the visual editor, you will not see the new one in the wikitext editor.)


 * I want to make sure that, although users will see this dialog only once, they can read it in their language as much as possible. Please read the instructions if you can help with that.


 * I also want to underline that the dialog does not change in any way current site-wide and personal configurations of the visual editor. Nothing changes permanently for users who chose to hide the visual editor in their Preferences or for those who don't use it anyway, or for wikis where it's still a Beta Feature, or for wikis where certain groups of users don't get the visual editor tab, etc.
 * There is a slight chance that you see a few more questions than usual about the visual editor. Please refer people to the documentation or to the feedback page, and feel free to ping me if you have questions too!
 * Finally, I want to acknowledge that, while not everyone will see that dialog, many of you will; if you're reading this you are likely not the intended recipients of that one-time dialog, so you may be confused or annoyed by it—and if this is the case, I'm truly sorry about that. This message also avoids that you have to explain the same thing over and over again—just point to this section. Please feel free to cross-post this message at other venues on this wiki if you think it will help avoid that users feel caught by surprise by this change.

If you want to learn more, please see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133800; if you have feedback or think you need to report a bug with the dialog, you can post in that task (or at mediawiki.org if you prefer).

Thanks for your attention and happy editing, Elitre (WMF)  16:47, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Why anons and new users cannot view edit filters?
Recently, I have noticed that the Special:AbuseFilter page is inaccessible to anons and new users. Why? 211.100.57.45 (discuss) 10:01, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
 * An abuse filter is largely about, well, pest control. Most vandals think it's clever to do damage to things other people use (as opposed to, say, being abysmally stupid to lower the quality of the world they themselves live in), but are just doing it on the spur of the moment.  So there's no point in making it easier to learn quickly about how to cause trouble, for people who are just investing a few minutes causing trouble.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:37, 27 May 2016 (UTC)