Wikitech-ambassadors May 2013

wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org

15 participants
21 discussions

Hiring Community Liaisons (Contract)
by Howie Fung 18 May '13

18 May '13

* Hey all, For the last 18 months, the Engineering & Product Development department has been experimenting with the role of “Community Liaison, Product Development” - a staff member embedded in the Product team and tasked with factoring community concerns into our software development process, keeping editors informed about what we’re doing, and maintaining a dialogue between those who write code and those who write articles. While there is always room for improvement, I think this role has shown a lot of promise. We have a number of large projects coming down the pipeline (e.g., visual editor, discussion systems) and we need more help reaching out to our contributor communities, especially our non-English speaking projects, as our outreach there has traditionally been challenged. We’d like to recruit a small number of English-speaking or multilingual editors to do the Community Liaison job with different development teams and focuses. In particular we’re looking for people with a strong history of contributions to our projects who can provide sound and reasoned judgment and are trusted to do so by their community. Speaking other languages in addition to English is a major plus, as one of the objectives here is to ensure we can properly interact with and support non-English projects. I’ve included the full job description below. Our immediate need is for help with the Visual Editor. We’d like to hire a few community liaisons to help inform different Wikipedia language communities of the upcoming launch, create spaces for feedback and discussion, synthesize feedback for the Visual Editor team, and other activities required to support the Visual Editor launch later this year. If this is a role that would interest you, please e-mail Philippe Beaudette at pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org<https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=pbeaudette@wikimedia.org>. And if you know someone else who might fit the role, let them know about it :-). We’re provisionally interested in hiring 2-3 liaisons, at an hourly rate commensurate with experience. This can be a part-time role, but we’ll need at least 15 hours/week for the length of the engagement (minimum 3 months). Please do apply if you think it’s a role that suits you, and if you find places we haven’t notified, spread the word! Thanks. Howie * _________________________ Howie Fung Director of Product Development Wikimedia Foundation * Community Liaison Job Description Background Information and Statement of Purpose The Wikimedia Foundation’s Engineering & Product Development Department is looking at ways to more effectively incorporate broad community perspectives in decisions and hold dialogues with our editors about the scope, pace and features of upcoming changes to Wikimedia projects. As part of this, it is hiring additional Community Liaisons from our volunteer community. Scope of Work Support and improve our ongoing software development projects, in particular: - Building up a network of volunteers from both English language and non-English language wikis, increasing the number of projects we can interact with; - Engaging the community in the software development process, by acting as a conduit for community questions, bugs and and feature requests, talking to editors about our work and how they can participate in it effectively, and recruiting them for workgroups and studies; - Being available from time to time to provide expertise and knowledge about our projects, including but not limited to training externally-sourced staff in the way our projects work, answering their questions, and providing expert advice on an ad-hoc basis; - Ensuring that our community is represented in the decision-making process and that our planned software adequately reflects user needs; - Monitoring Wikimedia projects, with the assistance of a network of volunteers, for emerging issues that have an impact on Engineering programmes; and - Other duties as needed. Requirements Effective Community Liaisons will be: - Experienced users of Wikimedia projects, capable of representing our community within the Foundation and vice-versa. - Strong communicators (both verbally and with the written word), able to explain our products to different groups of users with different levels of technical understanding. - Able to focus on the larger picture, understanding which concerns and views are widespread and which are marginal or individual. - Approachable, as both users and product developers must be able to trust these people for the relationship to function. - Self-motivated - they will be given important projects and expected to execute with little to no supervision. - Strongly empathetic - they excel at understanding the perspectives of others and bridging the gap between different approaches to the world. - Willing and able to remain resilient in the face of frustration from our users, in order to get the job done. Pluses Other positive attributes or areas of knowledge include: - Diverse language skills. While the Wikimedia Foundation communicates internally in English, we aim to be able to talk to our different communities natively. - Experience with the software development process. You will be thrown into teams that are actively working on new features; having a background that reduces the slope of your learning curve is a plus. - Familiarity with multiple Wikimedia projects is a major plus; we are about more than just Wikipedia. *

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Fwd: Deployment Highlights - Week of May 20th, 2013
by Greg Grossmeier 17 May '13

17 May '13

Hello Ambassadors! See below for the deployment highlights for next week. One thing I did want to additionally make note of for everyone on this list is that the CodeEditor extension will be updated to also allow editing of JavaScript and CSS files. See this bug more the details: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39653 However, that change (CodeEditor) isn't going live next week. Instead, it'll go out with the start of the MediaWiki 1.22wmf5 rollout, beginning on May 27th. I just wanted to give you all a little more lead time on it. Thanks! Greg ----- Forwarded message from Greg Grossmeier <greg(a)wikimedia.org> ----- > Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 11:51:22 -0700 > From: Greg Grossmeier <greg(a)wikimedia.org> > To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Development and Operations engineers > <engineering(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: Deployment Highlights - Week of May 20th, 2013 > > Hello and welcome to the latest installment of the Deployment Highlights > email. > > The full calendar for next week lives at: > https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments#Week_of_May_20th > > For the week of May 6th we have the following interesting deployments: > > == All Week == > > * Due to a security update to the Linux kernel, we will be upgrading and > rebooting ALL machines throughout the week. This may affect your > experience with some services, but it should be minimal. > > > == Monday == > > * VisualEditor will be deploy a new extension, TemplateData, to all > Wikipedias (<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44444>) in > addition to a VisualEditor configuration change on mediawiki.org > (<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48430>). > > * English Wikipedia will be updated to MediaWiki version 1.22wmf4, in > addition to a WikiData client update on English Wikipedia. See > <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/Roadmap> > > * An update to HTCP purging will be rolled out by the WMF Operations > team which might create momentary issues with some thumbnails. Please > report any issues you experience. > > > == Wednesday == > > * The rest of the Wikipedias will be updated to MediaWiki 1.22wmf4, thus > completing the roll out of that version. The next version, 1.22wmf5, > will start on Monday May 27th. See > <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/Roadmap> > > > == Thursday == > > * The Editor Engagement team (E2) will rollout bugfixes to Notifications > (Echo). See <http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/echo-release>. > > > Best, > > Greg > > -- > | Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | > | identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D | ----- End forwarded message ----- -- | Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | | identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D |

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Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Announcing the Flow Portal(s)
by Mr. Donald J. Fortier II 17 May '13

17 May '13

Jorm, which channel are you on? ________________________________ From: "wikitech-ambassadors-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org" <wikitech-ambassadors-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> To: wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, May 17, 2013 8:00 AM Subject: Wikitech-ambassadors Digest, Vol 19, Issue 7 Send Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list submissions to wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to wikitech-ambassadors-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at wikitech-ambassadors-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Wikitech-ambassadors digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Announcing the Flow Portal(s) (Sumana Harihareswara) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 10:08:38 -0400 From: Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org> To: Coordination of technology deployments across languages/projects <wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Cc: Brandon Harris <bharris(a)wikimedia.org> Subject: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Announcing the Flow Portal(s) Message-ID: <5194E866.8070405(a)wikimedia.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 From: Brandon Harris <bharris(a)wikimedia.org> Hello! As many of you know, the Wikimedia Foundation is now actively engaged in designing a next-generation discussion and workflow system called Flow, initially slated to replace user talk pages. Flow is an ambitious project (on par with the VisualEditor) and will touch nearly every aspect of the Wikimedia experience. We need ''your'' help and input. We have started a portal for information and discussion. You can find it on the English Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flow And on MediaWiki here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal (We'll be creating one on meta as well). At the Flow portal, you can read about what we're doing and why, as well as play around with an interactive prototype. We're desperately interested in your feedback and thoughts. There are things that we know, and things that we know that we don't know. But there are also things that we *don't* know that we don't know. And we want to reduce that lack of knowledge. We will also be conducting additional office hours for a variety of timezones - as many as we need to - and will also be open to having conversations via Google hangouts and/or Skype as need be. I am always around on irc (freenode, username "jorm") and am willing to answer any questions you may have. -b. --- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list Wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors End of Wikitech-ambassadors Digest, Vol 19, Issue 7 ***************************************************

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Announcing the Flow Portal(s)
by Sumana Harihareswara 16 May '13

16 May '13

From: Brandon Harris <bharris(a)wikimedia.org> Hello! As many of you know, the Wikimedia Foundation is now actively engaged in designing a next-generation discussion and workflow system called Flow, initially slated to replace user talk pages. Flow is an ambitious project (on par with the VisualEditor) and will touch nearly every aspect of the Wikimedia experience. We need ''your'' help and input. We have started a portal for information and discussion. You can find it on the English Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flow And on MediaWiki here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal (We'll be creating one on meta as well). At the Flow portal, you can read about what we're doing and why, as well as play around with an interactive prototype. We're desperately interested in your feedback and thoughts. There are things that we know, and things that we know that we don't know. But there are also things that we *don't* know that we don't know. And we want to reduce that lack of knowledge. We will also be conducting additional office hours for a variety of timezones - as many as we need to - and will also be open to having conversations via Google hangouts and/or Skype as need be. I am always around on irc (freenode, username "jorm") and am willing to answer any questions you may have. -b. --- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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VisualEditor fortnightly update - 2013-05-13 (MW 1.22wmf4)
by James Forrester 14 May '13

14 May '13

Hello all, As before, the regular update<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/status#2013-05-13_.28MW_1.22wmf…> about progress on the VisualEditor: VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.22wmf4 branch deployment <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/wmf4> on Monday 13 May. In the two weeks since 1.22wmf3, the team have worked on the new features for VisualEditor's beta launch as the default way users will edit our wikis: Categories, Templates, References and Images. The VisualEditor now lets users edit the contents of <div> blocks (47907<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47907>) as if they were normal mark-up - though not the blocks themselves, such as setting arbitrary CSS, which will come later. Work on enabling the editing of categories is almost finished with the addition of a way of setting {{DEFAULTSORT}} in the interface (46465<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46465>), and support for moving, altering and inserting new images and references is also improving rapidly. Progress on template editing is at an earlier stage, with core back-end support mostly finished at this point. We made quite a few changes to the MediaWiki integration layer. Most obviously, we now use SVGs rather than PNGs for the graphical elements of the interface, so it scales nicely for users who zoom in (48148<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48148>). The "Edit source" tab now appropriate becomes active when it is being used ( 47452 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47452>), appears on all pages, not just view (47776<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47776>), and the "Edit" (VE) tab now points to the newly-updated page once you've made an edit (47420 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47420>). The Vector drop-down menu's change behaviour no longer hides it behind the VisualEditor toolbar (48078<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48078> ) We improved some issues with the Opera browser (47772<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47772>) and now warn logged-out users appropriately about the consequences of their editing (47842 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47842>). Pre-save diffs now give a more reasonable message when there are no changes to be made (43754 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43754>), and now work when the diff is aborted and restarted (44446<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44446>). Pages that are not wikitext content (such as user CSS or JS items) will now not trigger VisualEditor (47456<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47456>). We added a new access key for accessing VisualEditor - Ctrl+Alt+v/Ctrl+⌥ Option+v - restoring the regular edit access key to the wikitext editor ( 48107 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48107>). We also made a number of fixes for RTL environments. First, the link inspector now works for RTL environments, but allows LTR content for Web links (47717 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47717>). For multi-script variant wikis, content displayed with one variant whilst the user's interface is in a second now works correctly (33175<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33175>). Un-editable blocks ("aliens") now appear in RTL environments correctly ( 47746 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47746>). Finally, the "Edit" (VE) tab now appears down-tab rather than up-tab of the "Edit Source" tab (48017 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48017>). On the integration with Parsoid, we cleaned up a number of items of code including removing change markers (45061<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45061>), and fixed some problems with trailing whitespace on paragraphs and table cells being dropped (47712<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47712>). Content with different names for the same annotation now serialises to the same wikitext (48110 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48110>), and serialisation of data with DOM elements is now fixed (47948<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47948> ). Finally, we fixed a number of other bugs, including ugly issues with pawn characters being created in list and paragraph editing (48287<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48287> , 48286 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48286>, 47817<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47817>, and 48346 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48346>), with indenting and outdenting of multiple list items (48390<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48390>), and with splitting list items (48386<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48386>). Categories that appear in sub-sub-pages don't get corrupted when the page is being edited (48408<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48408>), and in Firefox, we fixed editing a page causing the entire editor to go blank (47834 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47834>) and non-character keys being interpreted as real ones (48022<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48022>). Trying to set a link covering the first character of the document no longer causes VisualEditor to crash (47623<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47623>), and links now don't wrongly appear to extend when you type after them (48171<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48171> and 48114 <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48114>). A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.22/wmf4 changelog<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/wmf4/Changelog#VisualEditor>, and all Bugzilla bugs closed in this period on Bugzilla's list<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&bug_status…> . As always, I would be very grateful if you could highlight any parts of the update that you think important for your local wikis. If you have any questions, please do ask. Yours, -- James D. Forrester Product Manager, VisualEditor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester

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Re: [Wikitech-ambassadors] [Wikimedia-l] Single User Login finalisation: some accounts will be renamed
by Federico Leva (Nemo) 12 May '13

12 May '13

James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:56: > On 12 May 2013 10:40, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:20: >> >> Sorry for the disruption to everyone's plans. If you have any questions, >>> please do ask. >>> >> >> Will you still make the lists and send out the notifications so that >> people can start planning? > > > Yes. Lovely. This is very good news, many people will be happy. :) Nemo

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Single User Login finalisation: some accounts will be renamed
by James Forrester 12 May '13

12 May '13

All, The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users (like cross-wiki notifications). These changes will mean users have the same account name everywhere, will let us give you new features that will help you edit & discuss better, and will allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the pre-conditions for this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis.[0] Unfortunately, some accounts are currently not unique across all our wikis, but instead clash with other users who have the same account name. To make sure that all of these users can use Wikimedia's wikis in future, we will be renaming a number of accounts to have "~” and the name of their wiki added to the end of their accounts' name. This change will take place on or around 27 May. For example, a user called “Example” on the Swedish Wiktionary who will be renamed would become “Example~svwiktionary”. All accounts will still work as before, and will continue to be credited for all their edits made so far. However, users with renamed accounts (whom we will be contacting individually) will have to use the new account name when they log in. It will now only be possible for accounts to be renamed globally; the RenameUser tool will no longer work on a local basis - since all accounts must be globally unique - therefore it will be withdrawn from bureaucrats' tool sets. It will still be possible for users to ask on Meta for their account to be renamed further, if they do not like their new user name, once this takes place. A copy of this note is posted to meta [1] for translation. Please forward this to your local communities, and help get it translated. Individuals who are affected will be notified via talk page and e-mail notices nearer the time. [0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login [1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_User_Login_finalisation_announcement Yours, -- James D. Forrester Product Manager, VisualEditor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester

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Come talk with us about Flow (replacing user talk pages), 1800 UTC 9 May
by Sumana Harihareswara 07 May '13

07 May '13

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours In #wikimedia-office on 9 May, 1800-1900 UTC <http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=18&min=00&sec=0&d…>, Brandon Harris (senior designer at WMF) will lead a discussion of Flow, an upcoming change in the wiki discussion interface. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal Flow involves replacing user talk pages. He will be showing an interactive prototype so you can try it out, and he wants to hear your feedback. Please come! If that time doesn't work, please let us know what times will work. Please spread the word to your communities! Thanks. -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation

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What should a better (and global) watchlist look like?
by Guillaume Paumier 06 May '13

06 May '13

Hi, A discussion has started on-wiki about a global watchlist, and other related improvements to the watchlist feature. A few people have started to organize the various bug reports about watchlists, but there is still much to do before we have a clear & prioritized vision of what the watchlist feature should become. Improving a feature as used and central as the watchlist has the potential of drastically improving the users' experience, but is also likely to cause an outcry if proper research isn't done in advance, given that everyone has their own workflow. Improving the watchlist feature isn't trivial, and it would help developers if users could come together and prepare clear specifications & prioritized features in advance. I'd like to find a few people interested in working together to better define the possible improvements, organize bug reports, prioritize them into proper specifications, etc. in order to guide developers who'd be interested in implementing these changes. Are you interested in working on proposing a better watchlist feature? (or spreading the word to your local community to see if other people are interested?) If so, your input would be appreciated there: * Discussion: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Watchlist_wishlist * Draft product page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Watchlist_wishlist More information, quoted from my comment on the talk page: ==================================== I think it would really help if someone could consolidate the existing discussions, bugs, feature requests, etc. on a page. The main focus of the page would be on a watchlist that works across wikis, but the page could probably also benefit from prioritization of other related features and enhancements of the watchlist interface itself. Apart from prioritization, this would probably also benefit from consolidating input from many users, to be sure that the use cases we're talking about are consistent with how people use their watchlists. Basically, the questions we'd need to answer so that developers can work on global watchlists are those: * How do users use their watchlist? * What would be the best way to implement a global watchlist? What would it look like? * What other changes would we need to make to the watchlist system and interface to make this work? * What other changes would we want to make to the watchlist system and interface while we're at it? Some of these questions can be answered by going through existing bugs and discussions on bugzilla and wiki pages, and some will probably require talking to users to get their perspective. (from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Talk:New_editor_engagement/Watchlists… ) ==================================== -- Guillaume Paumier

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Fwd: [Translators-l] Single User Login finalisation announcement - translation request
by Federico Leva (Nemo) 01 May '13

01 May '13

Please relay to local communities and ensure it's translated to your language, there's very little time. Nemo -------- Messaggio originale -------- Oggetto: [Translators-l] Single User Login finalisation announcement - translation request Data: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:17:49 -0700 Mittente: James Forrester <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org> Rispondi-a: Wikimedia Translators <translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> A: translators-l <translators-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hello all, It would be really great to get the Single User Login finalisation announcement[0] translated into as many languages as possible as it potentially affects a large number of users in each language. There is the original announcement[1], the specific user notification for users who will be renamed[2], and the general[3] and directed[4] CentralNotices. Many thanks! [0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_User_Login_finalisation_announcement [1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-S… [2] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-S… [3] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=Centra… [4] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=Centra… Yours, -- James D. Forrester Product Manager, VisualEditor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. jforrester(a)wikimedia.org <mailto:jforrester@wikimedia.org> | @jdforrester

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Wikitech-ambassadors May 2013