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The Signpost: 31 January 2021Edit
- News and notes: 1,000,000,000 edits, board elections, virtual Wikimania 2021
- Special report: Wiki reporting on the insurrection
- In focus: From Anarchy to Wikiality, Glaring Bias to Good Cop: Press Coverage of Wikipedia's First Two Decades
- Technology report: The people who built Wikipedia, technically
- Videos and podcasts: Celebrating 20 years
- News from the WMF: Wikipedia celebrates 20 years of free, trusted information for the world
- Recent research: Students still have a better opinion of Wikipedia than teachers
- Humour: Dr. Seuss's Guide to Wikipedia
- Featured content: New Year, same Featured Content report!
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2020
- Obituary: Flyer22 Frozen
Tech News: 2021-07Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned. [1][2]
- Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [3]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:56, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
Global watchlist - Update 8Edit
Updates associated with DannyS712's Global watchlist script and the Global watchlist extension:
As I noted in the last issue, I received a grant from the WMF to develop the global watchlist script into an extension. That extension has now been deployed on Meta. Visit m:Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings to get started.
I do not plan on any further developments being made to the user script. I have released version 9.1.0 to both the dev and stable versions, which includes a notification about the extension being available when you use the user script. You can dismiss the notification, and the script still works, but it will no longer be maintained.
Those interested in providing feedback for the extension should use the phabricator board, phabricator:tag/mediawiki-extensions-globalwatchlist. Any bug reports about the extension should be filed there.
This will likely be the last update sent to this list.
Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 19:42, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
Tech News: 2021-08Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images. [4]
The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [5]
Problems
- Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly. [6]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 February. It will be on all wikis from 25 February (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.
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00:17, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 February 2021Edit
- News and notes: Maher stepping down
- Disinformation report: A "billionaire battle" on Wikipedia: Sex, lies, and video
- In the media: Corporate influence at OSM, Fox watching the hen house
- News from the WMF: Who tells your story on Wikipedia
- Featured content: A Love of Knowledge, for Valentine's Day
- Traffic report: Does it almost feel like you've been here before?
- Gallery: What is Black history and culture?
Tech News: 2021-09Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
- A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.
Problems
- There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [7]
- Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [8]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 March. It will be on all wikis from 4 March (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:08, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #17Edit
Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasksEdit
Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.
Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.
Moving forward: more wikis to get the featuresEdit
Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.
We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.
We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.
Variant testingEdit
As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.
News for mentorsEdit
Mentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.
Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to use a magic word, {{#mentor}}, to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.
Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Tech News: 2021-10Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
- Flagged revisions now give admins the review right. [9]
- When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article. [10]
Problems
- Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing. [11]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (calendar).
- The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions. [12]
Future changes
- There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
- Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown. [13][14]
- New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:51, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
Tech News: 2021-11Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikis that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
- Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more. [15]
Problems
- Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 March. It will be on all wikis from 18 March (calendar).
Future changes
- You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [16][17]
- You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
- You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database
JOINSwill no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [18]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:22, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
Tech News: 2021-12Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
- The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "Discussion tools" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
- Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [19]
Future changes
- Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [20][21]
- Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from
wg*tomw.config.wg*will soon no longer work. [22]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:53, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 March 2021Edit
- News and notes: A future with a for-profit subsidiary?
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Monuments
- In the media: Wikimedia LLC and disinformation in Japan
- News from the WMF: Project Rewrite: Tell the missing stories of women on Wikipedia and beyond
- Recent research: 10%-30% of Wikipedia’s contributors have subject-matter expertise
- From the archives: Google isn't responsible for Wikipedia's mistakes
- Obituary: Yoninah
- From the editor: What else can we say?
- Arbitration report: Open letter to the Board of Trustees
- Traffic report: Wanda, Meghan, Liz, Phil and Zack
Tech News: 2021-13Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Some very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [23]
- IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to
irc.wikimedia.organd not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [24]
Problems
- When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [25]
- Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [26][27]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:31, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Tech News: 2021-14Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [28]
Changes later this week
- The citoid API will use for example
2010-12-XXinstead of2010-12for dates with a month but no days. This is because2010-12could be confused with2010-2012instead ofDecember 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [29] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).
Future changes
- PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database
JOINSwill no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:41, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Global watchlist - Update 9Edit
Updates associated with DannyS712's Global watchlist script and the Global watchlist extension:
Hi everyone. As I noted in the last issue, I received a grant last year from the WMF to develop the global watchlist script into an extension. That extension has now been deployed on Meta. Visit m:Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings to get started.
That grant has ended, and I have requested another grant to continue development of the extension, and figured subscribers of the newsletter about the user script might be interested. You can see and comment on the grant request at m:Grants:Project/DannyS712/Continued work on GlobalWatchlist extension - if you support this, I hope you'll consider endorsing the request.
Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 00:28, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
Notification about a grant requestEdit
Hi.
As someone who commented about my grant request (including the talk page) last year requesting funding to create the GlobalWatchlist extension, I thought you might want to know that I have requested another grant to continue development. You can see the new request at Grants:Project/DannyS712/Continued work on GlobalWatchlist extension - if you support this, I hope you'll consider endorsing the request.
My apologies if you were already aware of the new grant request (I sent a similar message to the subscribers of User:DannyS712/Global watchlist/Updates - sorry for any duplicates).
Tech News: 2021-16Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [30][31]
- If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [32][33][34]
- Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use
mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles')to go back to how they looked before. [35] - The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- The user group
oversightwill be renamedsuppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:49, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 April 2021Edit
- From the editor: A change is gonna come
- Disinformation report: The Trump Organization's paid editors
- In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby
- Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct
- Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way
- Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia
- Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles
- Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty
- News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia
Tech News: 2021-17Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [36][37][38]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:25, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
Tech News: 2021-18Edit
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.
Problems
- The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [39]
- Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [40]
Changes later this week
- Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [41][42]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).
Future changes
- The CSS classes
.error,.warningand.successdo not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [43]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:43, 3 May 2021 (UTC)