Talk:Tech/News/Archives/2022

Numbering scheme

The number scheme 2022-09 as used in dissemination like that is misleading and confusing.

• By ISO 8601 this is to be interpreted as “September 2022”.
• If I do not know that it is distributed on weekly rather than monthly basis I would assign the wrong time in year for the first 12 issues.
• Tech/News/2022/09 is much better to identify volume 2022, issue 09.
• Please identfy like 2022/09 in future.

Greetings --PerfektesChaos (talk) 15:34, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@PerfektesChaos Hi. Good point, and thanks for the clear details.

Unfortunately, some people might be equally confused by 2022/09.

We're thinking about how to resolve this in a way that doesn't result in a need for more translation efforts (i.e. without using more translatable words, e.g. "week/issue/edition").

IIUC, there is also the small added complexity that / would be converted into %2F within URLs that are copy&pasted elsewhere, which would make the end of URLs look like #Tech%2FNews%2F2022%2F06 (vs the current #Tech_News:_2022-06).

So, there are benefits and drawbacks to all the options... :-/ But we'll keep thinking about it, and other ideas are appreciated. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Looking over my keyboard I detect in ASCII

• Tech News: 2022, 09
• Tech News: 2022; 09
• Tech News: 2022 (09)
• Tech News: 2022 '09
• Tech News: 2022:09

# is not appreciated in fragment identifiers. Both. and § have other shortcomes.

Latin letters are not compatible with a cultural multiverse project. Even in France they are using semaine and would not catch a w for week and Germans are not familiar with issue.

Best, --PerfektesChaos (talk) 11:59, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

On URL fragments: I think I might be wrong on that one... I was guessing that based on my regular frustration with ? turning into %3F, and the list of w:Percent-encoding#Reserved_characters. But, I've now found some examples, and after testing it seems we don't need to worry about / (e.g. w:(α/Fe) versus (Fe/H) diagram becomes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(%CE%B1/Fe)_versus_(Fe/H)_diagram when I paste it.)

On wording: Oh, what I meant was... There's a new feature that enables translatable headers in massmessages, and so we were already trying to think of how to improve the header (phab:T302920). We want to avoid changing it from Tech News: $year-$week to Tech News: $year, week $week (or similar) where the word "week" is translatable before it is sent. We want to avoid adding any more translatable words, if possible.

We will probably end up using Tech/News/2022/09, partially because that's the actual page-title! But we're not rushing any change. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Line feeding changed

Since some days there are much too much linefeeds generated, may be since Tech News: 2022-15? What has been properly designed for 7 lines is now spread over a whole page, textual relations are broken and documentations are difficult to read. Untouched pages keep the layout but as soon as they are edited the unwanted linefeeds occur. -- sarang♥사랑 07:02, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

I just found the reason, must be something with the Template:TemplateBox. -- sarang♥사랑 07:20, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Translatable subject is now available - but no HTML

As noted in last week's edition (Tech/News/2022/14) the subject-line is now translatable! Special thanks to Tacsipacsi for helping to get that setup correctly.

One limitation to be aware of, is that it doesn't allow any HTML tags. If I understand correctly, this is because the Subject line is also used for the edit-summary, and therefor it only allows the very-basic wikitext that is accepted by the edit-summary-parser. I noticed this problem after checking the delivered version of the French translation by Pols12 (sorry I didn't notice beforehand).

• I.e. To create "N^o", we cannot use n<sup>o</sup> but must instead only use unicode and wikitext, i.e. the character "№" or similar.

HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:30, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

OK, HTML tags have been stripped, but their content is kept. I will take care of this, thank you for the notice. 🙂 -- Pols12 (talk) 22:05, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Translatable Title

@Quiddity (WMF): IMO there is no need to make the title of TechNews translatable - and there is already translatable section name in the recent update. Stang 20:04, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

@Stang Good point. I've removed it for this week's edition. I'll try to remember (and have documented) to un-select the checkbox (which is "on" by default) in future weeks. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

@Stang and Quiddity (WMF): I think there is need to make it translatable. It’s unfortunate that we need to translate title twice, but users looking at the page should see an as-localized-as-possible interface, which includes the <h1> at the top (there’s a link to the page in the footer, so we can reasonably assume that not only translators look at the page directly instead of just looking at the delivered message). —Tacsipacsi (talk) 08:33, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Also a good point! Hmmm. I guess the best option, for now, is to re-enable it. It's the least important part to translate, but then the option is available if a translator wants to do so.

I don't think there's any way to (easily) setup a recurring QQQ message to note that it's not required, so that setup will have to do, for now. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 03:45, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Community Tech maintenance changes

Hey Tech News writers — not sure if you've seen this thread at Talk:Community Tech, but I'm wondering if it's the sort of thing worth mentioning in the next issue of tech news? It'd be really great to get some community input on the changes, and we'd really appreciate suggestions on which tools to keep actively maintaining ~TheresNoTime-WMF (talk • she/her) 17:50, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime-WMF Hiyo. I can empathize with that problem you're all discussing there!

I have a few hesitations about including this in Tech News this week; especially because of the English-only content, and also the unstructured nature of the current thread. I.e. It's awkward to invite thousands of non-English speaking people to look at an informal English discussion, and also awkward for everyone to need to deduce that they also need to look at Community Tech/Maintenance and provide some kind (?) of feedback about [some/all] of the entries there.

We could potentially include something in a future issue, but I'd hesitantly suggest that it first needs to be a bit more refined/specific/actionable, and ideally also translated, and perhaps include the metrics that KSiebert mentions there.

Hope that helps! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

@Quiddity (WMF): Appreciate the insight, thank you! We'll try to get a bit further along in the conversations and revisit this 🙂 ~TheresNoTime-WMF (talk • she/her) 21:53, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Database changes for links

I understand that the database changes announced in March have now taken place for the templatelinks table, with other tables to follow. This is a major breaking change for many Quarry: queries and might merit a line in the next Tech News. It would also be very useful to be prompted when the other tables change (you may be able to find out by following Phab T299947, T299953 and T299951). Thanks, Certes (talk) 12:31, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks again, @Certes. I asked a dev for some suggested (and translatably-clear) wording, and have now added/tweaked their suggestion from phab:T299417#8241642 into Tech/News/2022/38 which will be sent on Monday. They'll let me know if/when the other items need an entry. Cheers, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Translation interface lacking context

Is there a way to see the source strings in context? For example, “Thank you!” is untranslatable in my language because it can be translated two ways and the two are not interchangeable; it becomes translable only when I can see what is being thanked for, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to see the context. Thanks!—Al12si (talk) 00:00, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Al12si. Are you asking about something related to the Tech News newsletter? If not, then the answer will depend on whether you are translating content on this wiki, or within the translatewiki site, or elsewhere.

(Links or examples almost always help to clarify questions like this!)

If you are translating on this wiki, then the top links will take you to the in-context page. E.g. At this page the word "Translations" is a link to Tech/News/2022/38/yue.

If you are translating at translatewiki, then it can sometimes be complicated to understand the context. There is often context shown in the box at the right, e.g. in this string. Sometimes it can be deduced based on the string's code-name.

I hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:10, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I believe was looking at the tech news template, but I can’t find the translation UI any more. Sorry. I guess I’ll wait until Thursday and see if I see it again. Thanks.—Al12si (talk) 02:00, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

@Quiddity (WMF): Wait... I just found it. It’s the “Translate frequently used templates” link. The last string on the page is “Thank you!” which is untranslatable unless we know the context. This probably affects other languages too.—Al12si (talk)

@Al12si: Ah! That is just from the end of the yellow "Translation admins: ..." box, that you can see near the top of next week's edition: Tech/News/2022/39. (I.e. Template:News draft). Cheers, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:09, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Oh! Ok, thank you!—Al12si (talk) 02:19, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

“Recurrent item”: What is the label for?

I tried loading tech news on a text browser and was surprised I didn’t see the words “Recurrent item”. I understand it’s hover text, but is there a reason it’s not alternate text (or some other form of fallback text)? Al12si (talk) 13:36, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

@Al12si If I understand this correctly: w:Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images#Decorative images - a blank alt attribute is perhaps preferred for this use-case?

Context/background: The current setup exists after the blank tag was added in this edit by @Pols12, which occurred after the previous change to the structure in this edit by @Tacsipacsi. (After initial addition in 2015 following this discussion. And possibly more changes in-between, that are harder to find.)

As I'm not a regular user of screen reader software, I'm not sure whether (any/all) regular users would prefer to have "recurrent item" read out each time, or to instead determine whether they want to skip the reading of that item based on hearing the first few words - there are currently two possible recurrent items (per Tech/News/init). I.e. it's not crucial information.

I'm also uncertain about how to balance the needs/desires of text browser users, screen reader users, and translators. Thoughts/suggestions/pointers/etc welcome. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:01, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

The issue here is “Recurrent item” is clearly not decorative but semantic. It marks the item as a “recurrent item”; that’s why I was puzzled.

I haven’t yet tried it with a screen reader, only with a text browser. I’ll grab my phone, try it with a screen reader, and report back what I hear. Al12si (talk) 22:08, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Tried it with my old phone. “Recurrent item” isn’t announced. This information is absent when using a screen reader.

I don’t know what actual blind people will think about this (the translation interface, for example, announces quite a lot of extra information that I don’t even see unless I hover — if I know hovering will give me more information), but if you asked me the screen reader stopping on every single link is more annoying than hearing “recurrent item”. If you want I’ll ask a few blind people (probably have to do it through one of the profs who taught me) and see how they think.

PS: Balancing the needs of text browser and screen reader users is an impossible task, I know; we basically have opposite needs. — Al12si (talk) 23:10, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

I mean, if “Recurrent item” isn’t alternate text why even bother putting the icon there? Hover is only exposed on the desktop; it’s not visible to even mobile users.

And hover is “hidden affordance”. I’ve always wondered what that icon meant (never bothered to hover on it; I’m not a big fan of hover) until I tried translating Tech News and noticed a string that’s not on the screen — only then did I tried hovering and saw it’s hover text... We might as well get rid of that icon. Al12si (talk) 23:43, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

The intent of the 2 icons ( for "recurring item", and for "advanced item") is covered in the initial 2015 discussion where we added them (and hover text) based on suggestions from others. I.e. "It's been suggested we should use symbols to make this [detection of recurring or dev-focused entries] a bit easier for (most of) the readers." I hope that helps with the context. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:34, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

This is terrible. 2015 was after I graudated; purely visual icons should not have been acceptable even back then. But thanks for the clarification.

Can there be a pref to turn these off then? They probably serve no purpose outside the circle of insiders. And if it’s intended to be purely visual we should get rid of the hover text to avoid confusing translators.

It’s also not like blind developers didn’t exist either (I literally know of one, who programs in React). This is discrimination.. Al12si (talk) 02:40, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

I was under the impression that the text was read out by screen readers in the current setup. I.e. I was meaning the statement in w:MOS:BLANKALT about "Similar problems exist for an image that strictly repeats the information found in nearby text or in a caption.". If that is not the case, then perhaps we can fix that situation.

I believe the icons benefit many readers (i.e. enabling them to easily ignore things they are not interested in, and pay attention to things they are interested in), so I hope we don't just get rid of them.

Perhaps others have ideas on technical improvements for the wikitext; if not, I will investigate. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 03:09, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

It isn’t read out by Talkback (Android’s screen reader). I can test VoiceOver too (MacOS X / IOS), and maybe Orca, if I can get it to work with my setup. Al12si (talk) 03:28, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for raising up this issue. We technically have got two pieces of information: “alt” and “title”. “title” is optional; non-blind users see it, and they can hover it to get an explanation about what it means.

In my opinion, what we’re currently doing actually complies with HTML 5 and WCAG 2 standards. Screen readers and mobile browsers should provide information provided by “title” attribute.

I see only 2 alternatives to current solution: to use only “alt” (non-blind desktop users will lost image caption support), or to duplicate “alt” and “title” (blind user with expected “title” support will get superfluous information). --Pols12 (talk) 18:08, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Actually, we falls into “img with null altand non-null title attributes” issue. I don’t know how to workaround it. -- Pols12 (talk) 18:20, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

I think we should just let MediaWiki handle it. With the markup I used (title text specified, alt text unspecified rather than specified as empty), we signal to MediaWiki that this text describes the image for sighted users using graphical browsers, for users of text browsers, as well as blind users. If MediaWiki decides to output both alt and title attributes, it’s its responsibility. Maybe in the future, there will be a more obvious solution, and then only the MediaWiki parser will need to be fixed, not the parser and Tech News. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 22:43, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Solicitations for Donations

I appreciate the need for funding, and requests to users, but all possible donations were eliminated when I was bombarded with requests at a very inopportune time, costing me personal financial cost. 2605:8D80:6E0:BC31:9361:457D:32DC:AABC 17:45, 30 December 2022 (UTC)