Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/April 2019

Draft: namespace

What is the Draft: namespace for on this wiki? Where is it documented, and what are the criteria for moving a page from draft to mainspace?

I ask because of this discussion on Wikidata, where the policy of linking to Wikiversity draft pages is being reviewed. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:24, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: The relevant discussion is here: Wikiversity:Requests_for_Deletion/Archives/16#Draft_namespace with some more here: Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/May_2018#Bot_moved_lots_of_content_pages_to_draft_namespace?_OK?_Good?_Not_helpful?. As far as a policy, I don't think we've done much to document that. Whatever you can glean from those two conversations is probably all there is. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:20, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To put a finer point on it, Wikiversity:Namespaces doesn't even mention it (other than in a table). Another discussion is here: Wikiversity:Request_custodian_action/Archive/21#A_candidate_for_our_first_use_of_draft_space. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:22, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should try to document some best practices, at the very least. FWIW, my input to the creation of a draft namespace discussion was based on the understanding that the draft space would be used similar to WP to review resources before publication. As I noted at wikidata I don't think that en-wv should be treated differently from sister projects which do not get links to draft space resources. I encourage all interested parties to contribute to the wikidata discussion. --mikeu ^talk 20:30, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comment above. Just wanted to mention that Draft: ns on WP is entirely voluntary, not mandatory as here. I requested peer review by academics offsite of some of my lectures and received Nada. Peer review on a site this small is unworkable, plus peer review for lectures or courses is requested and needed to receive accreditation which we're not allowed to have. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:04, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another discussion occurred here Wikiversity_talk:Requests_for_Deletion#Draft_ns_discussion. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 03:49, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Three comments from Guy vandegrift: (1) I share mikeu's view that all resources should start in draft space and be moved to mainspace only after a proper review. (2) I also agree that we need to discuss how to accomplish this because a current policy is effectively nonexistent. (3) Here is my proposal: Instead of getting into another chaotic debate/discussion, let us instead break up into small groups of like-minded people to create a collection of coherent proposals. I believe the best path for Wikiversity is to diverge from the other wikis in some way. We don't need to be like Wikipedia or Wikibooks because those entities already exist. I propose something that resembles our Wikijournals because they have obtained some degree of success. For those of us who supported draft space in the first place, we need to find a mechanism by which decisions can be reached in a reasonable amount of time. Finding such a mechanism is no easy task. In the spirit of dividing ourselves into small "think tanks" of like minded philosophers, I suggest these discussions take place in userspace, with the user serving as a moderator. For my group I nominate three people: My first choice is mikeu. My second choice is User:Dave Braunschweig. My third choice is a tie between myself and anybody affiliated with the WikiJournal User Group who might be interested.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 16:05, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I support this suggestion as a preliminary effort and look forward to reading your thoughts and also Dave's. I'm not familiar with who is active at WikiJournal, so I can't recommend another nominee. But, I'd like to see a broad range of contributions and welcome recommendations. ~~I'll draft something over the weekend in my userspace.~~ To prevent another "chaotic debate/discussion" I intend on adopting the convention that is defined at Wikiversity:Community_Review_Policy#Recent_amendments_to_this_policy in my userspace discussion, namely: "Have statements by individual contributors about the topic, under their own headings, not to exceed 700 words." {emphasis added, not in the original) I feel that this step is necessary to prevent the discussion from becoming unwieldy. --mikeu ^talk 16:39, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone is invited to express an opinion at this preliminary discussion. --~~mikeu

Whatever we do needs to be consistent with the Wikiversity:Mission, including the note about empowering and engaging people. It also needs to be sustainable. Review of every resource may be desirable, but may not be practical. There's also currently a technical problem with Draft: space in that the VisualEditor is not enabled there. That prevents new users from being able to easily contribute to draft resources. For me, that needs to be addressed before we can go further. I'll start a separate discussion for voting so we can create a Phabricator request and get it updated. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:17, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to repeat here a comment that I made at wikidata: "However, the local community can't conduct an informed discussion if we are unclear about wikidata notability policy. We are asking for clarification on the issue of wikidata linking to our draft namespace pages." A great deal of my thinking on these topics is dependent on the outcome of the decision there. I can't really articulate a suggested course of local practice until I know more about how the cross-wiki link policy will be implemented. --mikeu ^talk 17:27, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My current effort is at Special:Permalink/1995046#Quality_control_on_Wikiversity_in_280_words. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 01:36, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor Active Namespaces

According to mw:Extension:VisualEditor#Changing_active_namespaces, the VisualEditor is only active in the "Main", "User", "File" and "Category" namespaces. Our full list of namespaces is:

main / Talk
User / User talk
Wikiversity / Wikiversity talk
File / File talk
MediaWiki / MediaWiki talk
Template / Template talk
Help / Help talk
Category / Category talk
School / School talk
Portal / Portal talk
Topic / Topic talk
Collection / Collection talk
Draft / Draft talk
Module / Module talk
Gadget / Gadget talk
Gadget definition / Gadget definition talk

I recommend that we enable VisualEditor for the following namespaces:

main
User
Wikiversity
File
Help
Category
School
Portal
Draft

This change requires a configuration change (not available in MediaWiki:) and therefore community support and a Phabricator request. Please indicate your support or lack thereof below.

Discussion

Enabling VisualEditor on the Wikiversity, Help, School, Portal, and Draft namespaces would make it easier for new editors to contribute to these resources. For me, enabling VisualEditor on the Draft namespace is a requirement for moving forward on other Draft proposals. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:39, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I actually no longer use the VisualEditor, too cumbersome. Which works best for mobile phones? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 16:49, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- See mw:VisualEditor on mobile. "best" is a user decision. We have to enable the feature in order for users to have the choice. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:03, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks for the ref. According to this mobile users get wikitext by default yet save more edits using VisualEditor. But overall, users take longer to save on either platform when using the visual editor. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:27, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - If I'm understanding the MediaWiki extension description correctly, "By default, MediaWiki-VisualEditor does not enable itself for users. To make it available, add the following lines to your wiki's LocalSettings.php after you have downloaded the extension:" we or Dave can already make VE available. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:34, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    - This isn't a discussion about enabling the VisualEditor, and none of us have access to .php settings. The discussion is which namespaces will permit use of the VisualEditor if a user wants it, and whether we file a Phabricator request for changes. By default, the supported namespaces are "Main", "User", "File" and "Category". This discussion is regarding whether to extend that capability to Wikiversity, Help, School, Portal, and Draft. To not extend it means discouraging users who prefer the VisualEditor from contributing to those namespaces. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:15, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    - In response to comments under voting, community consensus is required for configuration changes. See meta:Requesting wiki configuration changes. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:55, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support - As proposer -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:39, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Seems like a reasonable proposal. --mikeu ^talk 04:24, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Yes, please do it. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 12:21, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support I found what and why your asking though I don't see the need to request a consensus. I still tentatively oppose until VE works better for now. I'm not sure activating these is helpful since wikitext already works everywhere. From the March report, perhaps we should revisit this again in a month. The problem of the longer save edit time is why I stopped using VE. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:31, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See my last comment above! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:36, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Outcome

Filed as Phabricator:T220881. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:20, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Read-only mode for up to 30 minutes on 11 April

You will not be able to edit most Wikimedia wikis for up to 30 minutes on 11 April 05:00 UTC. This is because of a hardware problem. You can still read the wikis. You can see which wikis are affected. The time you can not edit might be shorter than 30 minutes. /Johan (WMF)

10:56, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Medium-Term Plan feedback request

Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation has published a Medium-Term Plan proposal covering the next 3–5 years. We want your feedback! Please leave all comments and questions, in any language, on the talk page, by April 20. Thank you! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Drafts...

... should have first a place on portals, then reaching madurity in the categorical-tree.

--Cloud forest (discuss • contribs) 09:04, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The world of templates

Frohe Ostern! Felices pascuas! --Cloud forest (discuss • contribs) 07:33, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Space between title and content

As I noted some time ago, for some reason the space or margin between the title and the content is gone. After some investigation, I found out that the cause seems to be the CSS in MediaWiki:Common.css/Wikipedia.css because when I comment it out from MediaWiki:Common.css and preview the changes, the space seems to be back. However, for some unknown reason, if I go into MediaWiki:Common.css/Wikipedia.css, delete all the content and preview the changes, the space is not back!!! So I'm not quite sure what part of the CSS causes the issue, but I'm pretty certain that it's there. Perhaps someone with more skills than me can figure it out? Thanks! Felipe (discuss • contribs) 12:51, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed, by copying the latest version of MediaWiki:Common.css/Wikipedia.css from Wikipedia. Felipe (discuss • contribs) 14:56, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia (English) As Textbooks of Wikiversity - cannot be used in local

Report a case: Currently, Wikipedia as the main teaching Textbooks for Wikiversity and some local practices, in a local - an opening city of China - Dalian, cannot be used again - since 23rd April, 2019. Voices from certain channel said: It's disordered by the DNS pollution of certain organization. Is it true? What is DNS pollution? Why did it happen? How to solve it? Specific teachers and contributors working hard in their own subjects were concerning about those questions, especially the last - waiting for the solution. Hopefully, it can get over soon... Jason M. C., Han (discuss • contribs) 12:48, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]