Education/News/Newsletter Guidelines/archives

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Newsletter publication[edit]

Newsletter creation steps

This section is to document how to create the various versions of the newsletter.

Starting with the February 2017 Newsletter, monthly issues will be published in a single edition. The updated process is currently under review and will be published by 28 February, 2017.

How the current newsletter gets posted to the news page[edit]

The new way:

  • Go to Education/News
  • Below the __NOTOC__ update the month in the following line of code: {{:Education/Newsletter/Feb_2017}}

How to edit the news feed on the main page[edit]

  1. Search for: Template:Education Portal/Newsletter/Headlines
  2. Then edit the Headlines page
  3. Replace the previous issue’s links with the current issue’s links
  4. Save the Headlines page
  5. The Latest news section on the homepage of the Education portal will automatically update. You may, however, have to purge the page/bypass the cache.

How the past issue of the newsletter page is archived[edit]

Open the archives, edit the section for this year, and add a link to the most recent past edition. Make sure that you are not on the main newsletter page, but actually on the page for that specific issue; you're in the right place if there's a month and a year in the URL, like this: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/April_2014.

Publication checklist[edit]

  1. Make the new newsletter (See: Instructions for creating the various versions of the newsletter)
  2. Update the news page (See: How the current newsletter gets posted to the news page)
  3. Update the news feed on portal main page (See: How to edit the news feed on the main page)
  4. Archive the old issue (See: How the past issue of the newsletter page is archived)


Newsletter distribution[edit]

Sending the newsletter to talkpages[edit]

  • There are several methods to get the content of the Headlines, depending on the type of page and what you want to send:
Non-translatable page Translatable page, but send English-only version Translatable page, send multilingual version
  1. Go to Education/News and click the link for the headlines edition.
  2.  Click edit and copy all of the code.
    • Don't forget the second |} in the template.
    • But don't include the category, which is the last line. It looks like this: <noinclude>[[Category:This Month in Education]]</noinclude>.
  3. Format as per the examples at Newsletter mass message template.
  4. Remove any and all translation tags and extra div tags and make sure the title isn't in there twice!

If you have a translatable page, it's full of translate tags, tvars, etc. so you can't just copy/paste the content. You need the clean version of the page, and that's very easy to get.

  1. Go to Education/News and click the link for the headlines edition.
  2. Once on the headlines page (called something like "Education/Newsletter/July 2014"), open the edit window. The URL in your browser will look like:
    https://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Education/Newsletter/July_2014&action=edit
  3. Change the URL in your browser to access the /en subpage by adding this bit:
    https://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Education/Newsletter/July_2014/en&action=edit
  4. There shouldn't be any translate tags in this version. Copy the content as you would do for a non-translatable page, leaving out the <languages /> at the top.
  1. Go to Education/Newsletter/Newsroom/Multilingual message and open the edit window: You'll see something like:
    {{#invoke:Assemble multilingual message|assembleMessage|marker=education-newsletter|page=Education/Newsletter/June 2014|es|fr}}.
    This is the script that assembles all existing translations into one big text.
  2. Replace the page= parameter with the page you want to send, for example:
    page=Education/Newsletter/July 2014
  3. After the page, insert the language codes of languages in which your page has been translated, for instance |es|fr|uk if your page has been translated to Spanish, French and Ukrainian. Do not add "en" for the English version: as the default language, it is automatically included.
  4. Your code should now be something like:
    {{#invoke:Assemble multilingual message|assembleMessage|marker=education-newsletter|page=Education/Newsletter/July 2014|es|fr|uk}}.
  5. Save your edit, and copy/paste the content you see.
  1. To send the newsletter across wikis, you need the "MassMessage sender" user right (see the list of people who have it). You can request it at m:WM:RFH.
  2. Once you have the MassMessage sender user right, to send the message, go to: m:Special:MassMessage
  3. In the page containing list of pages to leave a message on, type: Global message delivery/Targets/This Month in Education
  4. In the subject of the message (also used as the edit summary), type: This Month in Education: [Month Year]
  5. In the body of the MassMessage, paste the code (i.e. what you have obtained above with one of the three methods).
  6. Remember to sign the MassMessage with the delivery system's signature and timestamp, using 4 tildes: ~~~~.
  7. Add the following copy at the bottom:
    <div style="margin-top:10px; font-size:90%; padding-left:5px; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, [[m:Global message delivery/Targets/This Month in Education|update your subscription]]. </div>
  8. Click "Preview" and then, if it looks good, send it! :)
     Note: Even you're sending a multilingual newsletter, you'll only see the English version when you preview, because Meta is in English.

Sending the newsletter to email subscribers[edit]

  1. There is a Gmail account for the education newsletter. Log in to the account using this username: thismonthineducation@gmail.com, and contact the education team at the Wikimedia Foundation to get the password at education@wikimedia.org.
  2. When you are logged in to the account, please check whether there are any subscribe/unsubscribe requests and add/remove them to the group of contacts called "newsletter mailing list".
  3. Compose a new message in which you should copy the message you sent to talk pages. You may want to include a brief message to the readers before the template.
  4. Send the message to the group of contacts named "newsletter mailing list"
  5. You can send the same message to some Wikimedia mailing lists like: education@lists.wikimedia.org, education-collab@lists.wikimedia.org, wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, WikimediaAnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org.