User talk:SMcCandlish

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Wrong balance at Community Wishlist Survey

Moved discussion to: Talk:Community Wishlist Survey#Feedback on CWS process

Under one item of our wishlist you write “Community Wishlist Survey is rather broken, in accepting only what has the most votes this year, which is never, ever going to be stuff template editors need.” That is a valid point that deserves wider attention. How would you suggest this to be fixed? One fix I can see would be to put effort and effect in proportion. A wishlist without any regard for cost will tend to favor the most expensive items, regardless of how many useful items can be had at the same price. ◅ SebastianHelm (talk) 13:45, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

@SebastianHelm: Yes, there's definitely that effect.

• That one's challenging to address, since assumptions about difficulty of implementing something are often – maybe even usually? – wrong (just ask any software engineer, especially one tasked with changing existing features or adding new ones to an existing product mostly written by other people). I'm reminded of the voter guide I get in the mail; there's a dedicated legislative analysis office that comes up with estimated costs and complications of implementing various ballot measures. WMF having someone[s] on staff doing this for CWS proposals and Phab requests in general might help, but it might be easy to be wrong and get fired/sacked. >;-)
• The no. 1 thing to me is true prioritization. Mission-critical things, e.g., accessibility solutions, HTML (and other) standards-compliance fixes, security improvements, and other key proposals which meet with support should take precedence over all attempts to add new features or "polish the chrome" on things that already are properly functional. Secondarily, improvements to existing features people definitely use (wishlist, search, editing tools) should generally have higher priority (among accepted proposals) than requests for all-new features.
  • This, to me, is where the process (not just CWS, but WMF's MW development in general) has failed the worst. It's also deeply entwined in why I resigned as a WMF Tech Ambassador to en.WP; the short version of my statement on my user page about this is: WMF is acting like a software company with a customer base and a marketing plan (what it wants customers to go for), instead of behaving as a globally important NGO with a constituency and a mission to serve the actual needs of that constituency. Some of the standards compliance things have been open tickets for 15+ years, across multiple bug-tracker systems, and some attempts to "fix" them have simply introduced more compliance problems, cutting off our nose to spite our face. There's a competence problem of some kind happening somewhere, even if most of the devs are amazing. But whoever thought it was good idea to have : equate to <dd> and render visually as an indent, and do this in absence of a proper <dl> list structure was foolish. Of course it would get abused for purely visual indentation not d-list construction, especially if no alternative was provided to do indentation properly. But it was an even worse idea (one I just now learned about, in the mobile skin) to replace that abuse of <dd> with abuse of <blockquote>, which is strictly reserved for actual quotations. The <div> generic element exists for a reason, and is super-mega-obviously the one to use here (though on talk pages the HTML 5 element <article> might be a better choice, especially with smart id stuff for thread building; this can probably just be ripped wholesale from any good blog, forum, or other CMS that is open-source.
  • No one who is unwilling to totally absorb the HTML and CSS specs has any business working on HTML and CSS code (including code that generates that code) at a professional level. I don't mean fire/sack anyone, just move them to something they're actually competent at, and put experts on the tasks the non-experts have been screwing up. Seriously, the kind of screwups involved are things that would not have been tolerated at a regular meritocracy-driven open source project; they would have been fixed years ago, and a bad mistake, like moving from abuse of one element to abuse of another instead of use of the proper one, would likely never have happened.
  • A conceptually similar issue (which I raised with a WMF person at w:en:WP:VPTECH, I think, within the last month) is WMF's internal hostility to VPNs, and inability to distinguish them from other kinds of services, nor to recognize the value they provide for security in an increasingly mobile but increasingly vulnerable computing and communications environment. The current practice of just blacklisting almost every block of IP addresses that happen to resolve to machines that provide VPN out-node services (generally blacklisted because of other services they provide) is downright stupid. It betrays a sort of "stuck in 2004" ignorance about how the technology works. Not just the necessity of VPNs these days, but the simple fact that any given IP address is apt to resolve to multiple [virtual] servers, even by multiple entities, and any given "server" is apt to have multiple sometimes unrelated IP addresses, all due to cloud computing, and software/servers-as-a-service models. It's rather like trying to block travel from Massachusetts because you heard about a bank robber who was born in Massachusetts, and also block entry to banks while you're at it, because anyone going into one might be a robber. This is not how to address sockpuppetry and other abuse problems, anymore than just massacring the entire populations of Nigeria and India is how to address the problem of online scams often coming from or passing through Nigeria and India.
• CWS proposals that pertain primarily to WMF projects should get pretty much all priority; stuff that's extraneous to that (e.g. features for bending MW into a blogging platform) should be left to third-party development, other than any necessary hooks for that development. And even then only if both WMF and the overall community think spending any time at all on that hook is worthwhile. Just because someone can conceive of a way to torque MW into being something it was not supposed to be doesn't make it a good idea.
• But there also need to be more CWS categories, or subcategories, that independently rank proposals within them. The current ones are mostly too sweeping, and net together many unrelated things (plus they become so long they are difficult to get through).
  • E.g., almost all requests for template/module tools are stuffed under "Editing", which is not at all what most people are thinking about for that category (they're thinking of public-facing content, the form we used for creating it, and the tools that operate on the content in that form, like add markup with a button press, etc.).
  • It even needs to split between source-mode editing and VisualEditor. Some of the proposals this year are VE-only, but are not labeled as such, and end up being confusing.
• Then there's the issue of the same proposals being made for 5 or 10 years in a row and always being supported but never implemented. Support assessment needs to be cumulative (within reason; some of the proposals mutate a little over time, but the entire WMF community is good at assessing shifting consensus over time, so this is not much of a challenge).
• Not-quite-relatedly, there are often also essentially duplicate proposals (I saw at least three this year: one pair already identified as such by someone; one pair flagged as such by me, though I only did that one way; and one pair unmarked because I was exhausted by the end and couldn't be bothered). Just as en.Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (and several other processes, have clerks), someone should be tasked with clerking this stuff and merging proposals that are too similar (just present the options as variants, and if the proposal in general passes, the exact version to implement can be another discussion for another time, if that's not already clear from the CWS comments). I think there actually is some clerking going on already, since I have seen translation and other work get done. Maybe whoever's doing it needs an assistant.
• One other thing: this survey is so daunting it is very difficult to actually get through it all. It might be more practical to stagger it, e.g. put out the Editing section one month and the Search section another month, and so on, so one does not have to spend literally an entire waking day to wade through it all.
• We're getting too little input from too few editors. In part this is because of the issue in the bullet above this, but in part it's due to lack of local-project awareness and engagement. One radical change in approach could be for projects to host their own wishlists, or have RfCs for items to add, and then forward this on the bigger, cross-project process. There are numerous ways this could be reshaped, and each would present its own strengths and weaknesses.
• Some of it could also be more top-down. The devs will have ideas about what really needs to get done, what is nearing completion and pretty easy to do, what is virtually impossible, and some other matters, like what WMF's executive team and/or board are hoping for (which the community often doesn't know anything about in detail until too late) and solicit feedback more directly.
• Frankly, WMF needs to be willing to spend more money on getting stuff done. It has a lot of money, and isn't really spending enough of it on mission-critical things. I come from a "tech nonprofit" background (EFF and CRF), so I know very well what that problem looks like. A common version is over-spending on executive salaries and perqs (also for the board), like luxury furniture and first-class travel, at the expense of sufficient program staff (the average tech, communications, and other program staffer at such organizations is in dire need of at least one assistant, often a department, and the organization will not realize this until that over-worked and under-paid person burns out and leaves, and the org finds that person has to be replaced with 2 or 4 or 8 to get the same work done).

I could probably come up with more ideas and observations (see, e.g., w:en:User:SMcCandlish/Discretionary sanctions 2013–2018 review for an example of the kind of policy analysis I can do when I devote enough time to it, and even that's two years out of date and would cover several more more things than it does if I revised it significantly).
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< , 02:21, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Wow, I had no idea there was so much behind it – and you're hiding it in the comment to one wish! How best to tackle all of this? Does it even make sense to try and find a solution for one problem that only addresses a small shard of the whole?

Good point about the clerical tasks. I would see those as part of project management; why aren't WMF's PMs doing that?

You're right that the sheer amount of wishes is daunting. It may be a good idea to stagger it, but ultimately the workload stays the same. Not sure how to actually reduce the workload. Maybe similar to what we wrote in the wish for preferences: Mark everything for which a wish exists with a “🎁” symbol – in the UI and the manual – which links to the wish under discussion. So users will see wishes at the right moment and the right place, and only for those functionalities that they use or are interested enough to RTFM. I think this may also address the issue of getting input from too few editors. ◅ SebastianHelm (talk) 22:58, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

This thread would probably have more impact at Talk:Community Wishlist Survey, so I've copied it over there.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  04:14, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Democratic authoritarianism

Hello.
Your formulation of the concept at en:Wikipedia talk:There is no justice made you one of the most respected en.Wikipedians by me. BTW I am astonished that such criticism of the regime has been possible in mainstream essays as late as in 2016. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:17, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

@Incnis Mrsi: Thanks, and I'm glad you liked it. :-) I worked most of that material into w:en:Wikipedia:Advice for hotheads, which covers several other things, including explosive behavior, false civility, and attempts to "argue Wikipedia into capitulation". I'll take the liberty of engaging in some coffee-fueled morning rambling:

As for essays, there's long been a lot of tolerance for conflicting viewpoints between various of them. We even have pairs of directly contradictory ones (or seemingly so, until you see that they address different kind of issues/incidents/questions). But ones that just do not at all align with the community's norms tend to get userspaced (or deleted at MfD if they're so off-kilter they have a NOTHERE vibe).

On the more philosophical "democratic authoritarianism" thing (not exactly the term I would use, but I see what you mean), and how it relates to an entity like WMF and a project like Wikipedia, I'm reminded of Twitter and Facebook kicking Trump and friends off their platforms (way later than they should have). They are privately owned companies with terms of use/service and a public to answer to. Various people in Trump's camp are claiming they are being "censored". They're making legally incorrect First Amendment arguments (the 1A only applies against censorship by the state, and doesn't let someone force their expression to be carried by private-sector third parties). WMF is in a similar boat. It isn't in a position to allow PoV pushers and other disruptive parties free reign, to allow defamatory material in articles on living people, and so on. WP is more like a newspaper or magazine publisher. PeTA and Greenpeace do not have a legal or "moral" right to force The Wall Street Journal to print their advocacy material, and the Family Research Council and the Eagle Forum can't require Huffington Post to given them equal "air time".

There are some grey areas, the common carriers. The gist is that various private or somewhat privatized entities have quasi-monopoly privileges, in exchange for infrastructure rollout, and liability shields for content they did not create, in exchange for not being permitted to monitor and censor. Some are arguing that social networking sites should be like this, should operate like package delivery services and telephone companies, as passive conduits for anything people want to send through them. I think this would be disastrous, since even with such sites trying to enforce ToU/ToS against against racist rabblerousing, black-market trading, insurrection and terrorism planning, etc., etc., the effect on our society of social media's propensity for creating borderless "reality bubbles" that inculcate us-vs.-them thinking, radicalization, and the spread and belief in patent falsehoods has just about ripped society apart over the last decade, and it's not looking to get better immediately if at all. If anything, non-state actors in the online information and communication space need to be more rather than less restrictive about what they'll permit on their systems, And that goes for far-left stuff too; the trans right activists making death threats against TERFs, or supposed antifa people agitating to burn down courthouses and cops' homes, should have their accounts nuked right along with anti-abortionists doxxing clinic workers in hopes they'll be tracked down and murdered, or white-nationalist "militia" nuts planning racist hate crimes.

The fundamental difference between a common carrier and a social networking site (in the broad sense, including webboards, collaborative content projects, etc.) is the public, memetic component. You can't recruit 10,000 people to join your telephone call or share in the goods inside a package you ordered from Amazon. There is no broad threat to society from having privacy and freedom of expression in one's phone calls and postal mail (even if certain crimes can be organized that way). There's obviously a big one inherent in using technology to create "permeably-walled-garden" propaganda and indoctrination farms, abusing private-sector services that were intended to make people's lives better and happier.

I have a lot of concerns about people system-gaming WP's "assume good faith" position through crafty "civil PoV-pushing" techniques to essentially bend WP articles to propagandistic purposes. It's already happening in a lot of topics, and it's hard to do much about it. All the pushers have to do is bait neutrality-minded editors into doing something explicitly uncivil, then get them banned from the topic area so the PoV pushers can just own it. This POVRAILROAD technique is precisely what was happening in the recent Flyer22 ArbCom case. The "AGF is not a suicide pact" maxim is going to have to be taken more seriously. WP is not longer a project eagerly accepting thousands of new editors per month from SlashDot and other nerdy forums to attempt the wacky idea of building a free encyclopedia. Eventualism essentially expired in the late 2000s at the latest. WP is a free encyclopedia, one of the most-read information sources in the world by the general public, and is under constant pressure to say non-neutral things on thousands of topics. We can still assume good faith, at first and for a while, but that has to stop with regard to a particular party when we see clear evidence to the contrary in their behavior. I should stop here or this will just get longer and longer. >;-)
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  14:00, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-04

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 January. It will be on all wikis from 27 January (calendar).
• The following languages can now be used with syntax highlighting: BDD, Elpi, LilyPond, Maxima, Rita, Savi, Sed, Sophia, Spice, .SRCINFO.
• You can now access your watchlist from outside of the user menu in the new Vector skin. The watchlist link appears next to the notification icons if you are at the top of the page. [1]

Events

• You can see the results of the Coolest Tool Award 2021 and learn more about 14 tools which were selected this year.
• You can translate, promote, or comment on the proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. Voting will begin on 28 January.

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21:38, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-05

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

• If a gadget should support the new ?withgadget URL parameter that was announced 3 weeks ago, then it must now also specify supportsUrlLoad in the gadget definition (documentation). [2]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 February. It will be on all wikis from 3 February (calendar).

Future changes

• A change that was announced last year was delayed. It is now ready to move ahead:
  • The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. 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 three weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections. As usual, these labels can be translated on translatewiki (direct links are available) or by administrators on your wiki.

Events

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 28 January and 11 February. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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17:42, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-06

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

• English Wikipedia recently set up a gadget for dark mode. You can enable it there, or request help from an interface administrator to set it up on your wiki (instructions and screenshot).
• Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month. [3]

Problems

• A code-change last week to fix a bug with Live Preview may have caused problems with some local gadgets and user-scripts. Any code with skin-specific behaviour for vector should be updated to also check for vector-2022. A code-snippet, global search, and example are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 February. It will be on all wikis from 10 February (calendar).

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21:16, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-07

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

• Purging a category page with fewer than 5,000 members will now recount it completely. This will allow editors to fix incorrect counts when it is wrong. [4]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 February. It will be on all wikis from 17 February (calendar).
• In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function has been updated so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [5]

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19:18, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-08

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

• Special:Nuke will now provide the standard deletion reasons (editable at MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown) to use when mass-deleting pages. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [6]
• At Wikipedias, all new accounts now get the Growth features by default when creating an account. Communities are encouraged to update their help resources. Previously, only 80% of new accounts would get the Growth features. A few Wikipedias remain unaffected by this change. [7]
• You can now prevent specific images that are used in a page from appearing in other locations, such as within PagePreviews or Search results. This is done with the markup class=notpageimage. For example, [[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]]. [8]
• There has been a change to the HTML of Special:Contributions, Special:MergeHistory, and History pages, to support the grouping of changes by date in the mobile skin. While unlikely, this may affect gadgets and user scripts. A list of all the HTML changes is on Phabricator.

Events

• Community Wishlist Survey results have been published. The ranking of prioritized proposals is also available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 February. It will be on all wikis from 24 February (calendar).

Future changes

• The software to play videos and audio files on pages will change soon on all wikis. The old player will be removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [9][10]
• Toolforge's underlying operating system is being updated. If you maintain any tools there, there are two options for migrating your tools into the new system. There are details, deadlines, and instructions on Wikitech. [11]
• Administrators will soon have the option to delete/undelete the associated "talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option will also be available. This was a request from the 2021 Wishlist Survey.

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19:12, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-09

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

• When searching for edits by change tags, e.g. in page history or user contributions, there is now a dropdown list of possible tags. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [12]
• Mentors using the Growth Mentor dashboard will now see newcomers assigned to them who have made at least one edit, up to 200 edits. Previously, all newcomers assigned to the mentor were visible on the dashboard, even ones without any edit or ones who made hundred of edits. Mentors can still change these values using the filters on their dashboard. Also, the last choice of filters will now be saved. [13][14]
• The user group oversight was renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. You may need to update any local references to the old name, e.g. gadgets, links to Special:Listusers, or uses of NUMBERINGROUP.

Problems

• The recent change to the HTML of tracking changes pages caused some problems for screenreaders. This is being fixed. [15]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 March. It will be on all wikis from 3 March (calendar).

Future changes

• Working with templates will become easier. Several improvements are planned for March 9 on most wikis and on March 16 on English Wikipedia. The improvements include: Bracket matching, syntax highlighting colors, finding and inserting templates, and related visual editor features.
• If you are a template developer or an interface administrator, and you are intentionally overriding or using the default CSS styles of user feedback boxes (the classes: successbox, messagebox, errorbox, warningbox), please note that these classes and associated CSS will soon be removed from MediaWiki core. This is to prevent problems when the same class-names are also used on a wiki. Please let us know by commenting at phab:T300314 if you think you might be affected.

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22:59, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-10

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 was a problem with some interface labels last week. It will be fixed this week. This change was part of ongoing work to simplify the support for skins which do not have active maintainers. [16]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).

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21:16, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-11

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

• In the Wikipedia Android app it is now possible to change the toolbar at the bottom so the tools you use more often are easier to click on. The app now also has a focused reading mode. [17][18]

Problems

• There was a problem with the collection of some page-view data from June 2021 to January 2022 on all wikis. This means the statistics are incomplete. To help calculate which projects and regions were most affected, relevant datasets are being retained for 30 extra days. You can read more on Meta-wiki.
• There was a problem with the databases on March 10. All wikis were unreachable for logged-in users for 12 minutes. Logged-out users could read pages but could not edit or access uncached content then. [19]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
• When using uselang=qqx to find localisation messages, it will now show all possible message keys for navigation tabs such as "View history". [20]
• Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights through their group memberships. Before, only those with the deleterevision right could access this special page. [21]
• On the Special:Undelete pages for diffs and revisions, there will be a link back to the main Undelete page with the list of revisions. [22]

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the IP Masking implementation strategy and next steps. The announcement can be read here.
• The Wikipedia Android app developers are working on new functions for user talk pages and article talk pages. [23]

Events

• The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place as a hybrid event on 20-22 May 2022. The Hackathon will be held online and there are grants available to support local in-person meetups around the world. Grants can be requested until 20 March.

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22:07, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-12

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

New code release schedule for this week

• There will be four MediaWiki releases this week, instead of just one. This is an experiment which should lead to fewer problems and to faster feature updates. The releases will be on all wikis, at different times, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. You can read more about this project.

Recent changes

• You can now set how many search results to show by default in your Preferences. This was the 12th most popular wish in the Community Wishlist Survey 2022. [24]
• The Jupyter notebooks tool PAWS has been updated to a new interface. [25]

Future changes

• Interactive maps via Kartographer will soon work on wikis using the FlaggedRevisions extension. Please tell us which improvements you want to see in Kartographer. You can take this survey in simple English. [26]

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16:01, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-13

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 simple new Wikimedia Commons upload tool available for macOS users, Sunflower.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of regular database maintenance. It will be performed on 29 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 31 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [27][28]

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19:55, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-14

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

• For a few days last week, edits that were suggested to newcomers were not tagged in the Special:RecentChanges feed. This bug has been fixed. [29]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 April. It will be on all wikis from 7 April (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 7 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

• Starting next week, Tech News' title will be translatable. When the newsletter is distributed, its title may not be Tech News: 2022-14 anymore. It may affect some filters that have been set up by some communities. [30]
• Over the next few months, the "Add a link" Growth feature will become available to more Wikipedias. Each week, a few wikis will get the feature. You can test this tool at a few wikis where "Link recommendation" is already available.

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21:01, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-15

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 new public status page at www.wikimediastatus.net. This site shows five automated high-level metrics where you can see the overall health and performance of our wikis' technical environment. It also contains manually-written updates for widespread incidents, which are written as quickly as the engineers are able to do so while also fixing the actual problem. The site is separated from our production infrastructure and hosted by an external service, so that it can be accessed even if the wikis are briefly unavailable. You can read more about this project.
• On Wiktionary wikis, the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [31][32]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).

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19:44, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-16

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 April. It will be on all wikis from 21 April (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 19 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 21 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Administrators will now have the option to delete/undelete the associated "Talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option is also available. This concludes the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
• On selected wikis, 50% of logged-in users will see the new table of contents. When scrolling up and down the page, the table of contents will stay in the same place on the screen. This is part of the Desktop Improvements project. [33]
• Message boxes produced by MediaWiki code will no longer have these CSS classes: successbox, errorbox, warningbox. The styles for those classes and messagebox will be removed from MediaWiki core. This only affects wikis that use these classes in wikitext, or change their appearance within site-wide CSS. Please review any local usage and definitions for these classes you may have. This was previously announced in the 28 February issue of Tech News.

Future changes

• Kartographer will become compatible with FlaggedRevisions page stabilization. Kartographer maps will also work on pages with pending changes. [34] The Kartographer documentation has been thoroughly updated. [35] [36] [37]

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23:12, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-17

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

• On many wikis (group 1), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [38][39]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 April. It will be on all wikis from 28 April (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 26 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Some very old browsers and operating systems are no longer supported. Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in very old browsers like Internet Explorer 9 or 10, Android 4, or Firefox 38 or older. [40]

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22:56, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-18

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

• On all remaining wikis (group 2), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [41][42]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 May. It will be on all wikis from 5 May (calendar).

Future changes

• The developers are working on talk pages in the Wikipedia app for iOS. You can give feedback. You can take the survey in English, German, Hebrew or Chinese.
• Most wikis will receive an improved template dialog in VisualEditor and New Wikitext mode. [43] [44]
• If you use syntax highlighting while editing wikitext, you can soon activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme. [45]
• Several CSS IDs related to MediaWiki interface messages will be removed. Technical editors should please review the list of IDs and links to their existing uses. These include #mw-anon-edit-warning, #mw-undelete-revision and 3 others.

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19:34, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-19

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

• You can now see categories in the Wikipedia app for Android. [46]

Problems

• Last week, there was a problem with Wikidata's search autocomplete. This has now been fixed. [47]
• Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 20 minutes, for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a problem with a database change. [48]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [49]
• Incompatibility issues with Kartographer and the FlaggedRevs extension will be fixed: Deployment is planned for May 10 on all wikis. Kartographer will then be enabled on the five wikis which have not yet enabled the extension on May 24.
• The Vector (2022) skin will be set as the default on several more wikis, including Arabic and Catalan Wikipedias. Logged-in users will be able to switch back to the old Vector (2010). See the latest update about Vector (2022).

Future meetings

• The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place on 17 May. The following meetings are currently planned for: 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July.

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15:22, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-20

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• Some wikis can soon use the add a link feature. This will start on Wednesday. The wikis are Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [50]
• The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place online on May 20–22. It will be in English. There are also local hackathon meetups in Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Nigeria and the United States. Technically interested Wikimedians can work on software projects and learn new skills. You can also host a session or post a project you want to work on.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 May. It will be on all wikis from 19 May (calendar).

Future changes

• You can soon edit translatable pages in the visual editor. Translatable pages exist on for examples Meta and Commons. [51]

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18:58, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-21

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

• Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. [52]
• The www.wiktionary.org portal page now uses an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months. [53]

Problems

• The Growth team maintains a mentorship program for newcomers. Previously, newcomers weren't able to opt out from the program. Starting May 19, 2022, newcomers are able to fully opt out from Growth mentorship, in case they do not wish to have any mentor at all. [54]
• Some editors cannot access the content translation tool if they load it by clicking from the contributions menu. This problem is being worked on. It should still work properly if accessed directly via Special:ContentTranslation. [55]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 May. It will be on all wikis from 26 May (calendar).

Future changes

• Gadget and user scripts developers are invited to give feedback on a proposed technical policy aiming to improve support from MediaWiki developers. [56]

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00:21, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-22

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

• In the AbuseFilter extension, an ip_in_ranges() function has been introduced to check if an IP is in any of the ranges. Wikis are advised to combine multiple ip_in_range() expressions joined by | into a single expression for better performance. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [57]
• The IP Info feature which helps abuse fighters access information about IPs, has been deployed to all wikis as a beta feature. This comes after weeks of beta testing on test.wikipedia.org.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 31 May at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at most wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [58][59]
• The list=usercontribs API will support fetching contributions from an IP range soon. API users can set the uciprange parameter to get contributions from any IP range within the limit. [60]
• A new parser function will be introduced: {{=}}. It will replace existing templates named "=". It will insert an equal sign. This can be used to escape the equal sign in the parameter values of templates. [61]

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20:28, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-23

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).
• A new str_replace_regexp() function can be used in abuse filters to replace parts of text using a regular expression. [62]

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02:46, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-24

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

• All wikis can now use Kartographer maps. Kartographer maps now also work on pages with pending changes. [63][64]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 14 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [65]
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [66]
• The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at Commons, Wikidata, and some other wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [67][68]

Future meetings

• The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place today (13 June). The following meetings will take place on: 28 June, 12 July, 26 July.

Future changes

• By the end of July, the Vector 2022 skin should be ready to become the default across all wikis. Discussions on how to adjust it to the communities' needs will begin in the next weeks. It will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Learn more.

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16:59, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-25

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 Wikipedia App for Android now has an option for editing the whole page at once, located in the overflow menu (three-dots menu ). [69]
• Some recent database changes may affect queries using the Quarry tool. Queries for site_stats at English Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata will need to be updated. Read more.
• A new user_global_editcount variable can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. [70]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).
• Users of non-responsive skins (e.g. MonoBook or Vector) on mobile devices may notice a slight change in the default zoom level. This is intended to optimize zooming and ensure all interface elements are present on the page (for example the table of contents on Vector 2022). In the unlikely event this causes any problems with how you use the site, we'd love to understand better, please ping Jon (WMF) to any on-wiki conversations. [71]

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
• Parsoid's HTML output will soon stop annotating file links with different typeof attribute values, and instead use mw:File for all types. Tool authors should adjust any code that expects: mw:Image, mw:Audio, or mw:Video. [72]

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20:18, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-26

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

• Wikimedia Enterprise API service now has self-service accounts with free on-demand requests and monthly snapshots (API documentation). Community access via database dumps & Wikimedia Cloud Services continues.
• All Wikimedia wikis can now use Wikidata Lexemes in Lua after creating local modules and templates. Discussions are welcome on the project talk page.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 28 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [73]
• Some global and cross-wiki services will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 June at 06:00 UTC. This will impact ContentTranslation, Echo, StructuredDiscussions, Growth experiments and a few more services. [74]
• Users will be able to sort columns within sortable tables in the mobile skin. [75]

Future meetings

• The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (28 June). The following meetings will take place on 12 July and 26 July.

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20:02, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-27

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 5 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 7 July at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
• This change only affects pages in the main namespace in Wikisource. The Javascript config variable proofreadpage_source_href will be removed from mw.config and be replaced with the variable prpSourceIndexPage. [76]

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19:32, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-28

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

• In the Vector 2022 skin, the page title is now displayed above the tabs such as Discussion, Read, Edit, View history, or More. Learn more. [77]
• It is now possible to easily view most of the configuration settings that apply to just one wiki, and to compare settings between two wikis if those settings are different. For example: Japanese Wiktionary settings, or settings that are different between the Spanish and Esperanto Wikipedias. Local communities may want to discuss and propose changes to their local settings. Details about each of the named settings can be found by searching MediaWiki.org. [78]
• The Anti-Harassment Tools team recently deployed the IP Info Feature as a Beta Feature at all wikis. This feature allows abuse fighters to access information about IP addresses. Please check our update on how to find and use the tool. Please share your feedback using a link you will be given within the tool itself.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 12 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.

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19:25, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-29

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

• The feature on mobile web for Nearby Pages was missing last week. It will be fixed this week. [79]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 July. It will be on all wikis from 21 July (calendar).

Future changes

• The Technical Decision Forum is seeking community representatives. You can apply on wiki or by emailing TDFSupport@wikimedia.org before 12 August.

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23:00, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-30

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 www.wikibooks.org and www.wikiquote.org portal pages now use an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months. [80]

Problems

• Last week, some wikis were in read-only mode for a few minutes because of an emergency switch of their main database (targeted wikis). [81]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 July. It will be on all wikis from 28 July (calendar).
• The external link icon will change slightly in the skins Vector legacy and Vector 2022. The new icon uses simpler shapes to be more recognizable on low-fidelity screens. [82]
• Administrators will now see buttons on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. [83]

Future meetings

• The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (26 July).

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19:27, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-31

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

• Improved LaTeX capabilities for math rendering are now available in the wikis thanks to supporting Phantom tags. This completes part of the #59 wish of the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 August. It will be on all wikis from 4 August (calendar).
• The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 0. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout August. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.

Future meetings

• This week, three meetings about Vector (2022) with live interpretation will take place. On Tuesday, interpretation in Russian will be provided. On Thursday, meetings for Arabic and Spanish speakers will take place. See how to join.

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21:22, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-32

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

• GUS2Wiki copies the information from Special:GadgetUsage to an on-wiki page so you can review its history. If your project isn't already listed on the Wikidata entry for Project:GUS2Wiki you can either run GUS2Wiki yourself or make a request to receive updates. [84]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 9 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 11 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future meetings

• The Wikimania Hackathon will take place online from August 12–14. Don't miss the pre-hacking showcase to learn about projects and find collaborators. Anyone can propose a project or host a session. Newcomers are welcome!

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19:50, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-33

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 Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia community decided to block IP editing from October 2021 to April 2022. The Wikimedia Foundation's Product Analytics team tracked the impact of this change. An impact report is now available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 August. It will be on all wikis from 18 August (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 16 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 18 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 1. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout August. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes. [85][86][87]

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21:08, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-34

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

• Two problems with Kartographer maps have been fixed. Maps are no longer shown as empty when a geoline was created via VisualEditor. Geolines consisting of points with QIDs (e.g., subway lines) are no longer shown with pushpins. [88][89]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The colours of links and visited links will change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. [90]

Future changes

• The new [subscribe] button helps newcomers get answers. The Editing team is enabling this tool everywhere. You can turn it off in your preferences. [91]

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00:13, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-35

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 Realtime Preview is available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 2. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals. Please note that when this Beta feature is enabled, it may cause conflicts with some wiki-specific Gadgets.

Problems

• In recent months, there have been inaccurate numbers shown for various Special:Statistics at Commons, Wikidata, and English Wikipedia. This has now been fixed. [92]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation wants to improve how Wikimedia communities report harmful incidents by building the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) to make it easy and safe for users to make reports. You can leave comments on the talk page, by answering the questions provided. If you have ever faced a harmful situation that you wanted to report/reported, join a PIRS interview to share your experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

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23:05, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-36

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 6 September at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 8 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of #p-namespaces should be updated to use the mw.util.addPortletLink function instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting #p-associated-pages, the new id for this row. Examples are available. [93][94]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

23:22, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-37

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 search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [95]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).
• Syntax highlighting is now tracked as an expensive parser function. Only 500 expensive function calls can be used on a single page. Pages that exceed the limit are added to a tracking category. [96]

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01:50, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-38

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

• Two database fields in the templatelinks table are now being dropped: tl_namespace and tl_title. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field called tl_target_id. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [97][98]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
• In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [99][100]

Future changes

• In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 22:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-39

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

• Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the rel attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 September. It will be on all wikis from 29 September (calendar).
• Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [101]
• Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [102] [103]
• In the Module namespace, pages ending with .json will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [104]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:30, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-40

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

• Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [105] [106]
• The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
• Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [107] [108]
• The scribunto-console API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5]
• The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:23, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-41

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
• On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [109][110]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:09, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-42

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 recently implemented feature of article thumbnails in Special:Search will be limited to Wikipedia projects only. Further details are in T320510. [111]
• A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
• Lua module authors can use mw.loadJsonData() to load data from JSON pages. [112]
• Lua module authors can enable require( "strict" ) to add errors for some possible code problems. This replaces "Module:No globals" on most wikis. [113]

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated at most wikis. The "reply" button will look different after this change. [114]

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:46, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-43

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 have been some minor visual fixes in Special:Search, regarding audio player alignment and image placeholder height. Further details are in T319230.
• On Wikipedias, a new preference has been added to hide article thumbnails in Special:Search. Full details are in T320337.

Problems

• Last week, three wikis (French Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia) had read-only access for 25 minutes. This was caused by a hardware problem. [115]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 October. It will be on all wikis from 27 October (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 October at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 27 October at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Assamese Wikipedia, Bashkir Wikipedia, Balinese Wikipedia, Bavarian Wikipedia, Samogitian Wikipedia, Bikol Central Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Bhojpuri Wikipedia, Bislama Wikipedia, Banjar Wikipedia, Bambara Wikipedia, Bishnupriya Wikipedia, Breton Wikipedia, Bosnian Wikipedia, Buginese Wikipedia, Buryat Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [116]
• Starting on Wednesday October 26, 2022, the list of mentors will be upgraded at wikis where Growth mentorship is available. The mentorship system will continue to work as it does now. The signup process will be replaced, and a new management option will be provided. Also, this change simplifies the creation of mentorship systems at Wikipedias. [117][118][119]
• Pages with titles that start with a lower-case letter according to Unicode 11 will be renamed or deleted. There is a list of affected pages at m:Unicode 11 case map migration. More information can be found at T292552.
• The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikipedias. Learn more.

Future changes

• The Reply tool and New Topic tool will soon get a special characters menu. [120]

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:23, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-44

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

• When using keyboard navigation on a Kartographer map, the focus will become more visible. [121]
• In Special:RecentChanges, you can now hide the log entries for new user creations with the filter for "New users". [122]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 November. It will be on all wikis from 3 November (calendar).
• The maps dialog in VisualEditor now has some help texts. [123]
• It is now possible to select the language of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor via a dropdown menu. [124]
• It is now possible to add a caption to a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [125]
• It is now possible to hide the frame of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [126]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:15, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-45

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

• An updated version of the Event Registration tool is now available for testing at testwiki and test2wiki. The tool provides features for event organizers and participants. Your feedback is welcome at our project talkpage. More information about the project is available. [127]

Problems

• Twice last week, for about 45 minutes, some files and thumbnails failed to load and uploads failed, mostly for logged-in users. The cause is being investigated and an incident report will be available soon.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:32, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-46

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

• At Wikidata, an interwiki link can now point to a redirect page if certain conditions are met. This new feature is called sitelinks to redirects. It is needed when one wiki uses one page to cover multiple concepts but another wiki uses more pages to cover the same concepts. Your feedback on the talkpage of the new proposed guideline is welcome. [128]
• The www.wikinews.org, www.wikiversity.org, and www.wikivoyage.org portal pages now use an automated update system. [129]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 November. It will be on all wikis from 17 November (calendar).
• There will be a new link to directly "Edit template data" on Template pages. [130]

Future changes

• Wikis where mobile DiscussionTools are enabled (these ones) will soon use full CSS styling to display any templates that are placed at the top of talk pages. To adapt these “talk page boxes” for narrow mobile devices you can use media queries, such as in this example. [131]
• Starting in January 2023, Community Tech will be running the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) every two years. This means that in 2024, there will be no new proposals or voting.

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:55, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-47

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 display of non-free media in the search bar and for article thumbnails in Special:Search has been deactivated. Further details are in T320661.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 22 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 24 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:22, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-48

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

• A new preference, “Enable limited width mode”, has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also available as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. It allows for increasing the width of the page for logged-out and logged-in users. [132]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 29 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 December at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Mathematical formulas shown in SVG image format will no longer have PNG fall-backs for browsers that don't support them. This is part of work to modernise the generation system. Showing only PNG versions was the default option until in February 2018. [133][134][135]
• On some wikis that use flagged revisions, a new checkbox will be added to Special:Contributions that enables you to see only the pending changes by a user. [136]

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change early next week at group1 wikis (but not Wikimedia Commons or Meta-Wiki). This change improves the accessibility of content, and makes it easier to write related CSS. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems. [137]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 20:03, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-49

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 Wikisources use a tool called ProofreadPage. ProofreadPage uses OpenSeadragon which is an open source tool. The OpenSeadragon JavaScript API has been significantly re-written to support dynamically loading images. The functionality provided by the older version of the API should still work but it is no longer supported. User scripts and gadgets should migrate over to the newer version of the API. The functionality provided by the newer version of the API is documented on MediaWiki. [138][139]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:41, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-50

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

• An A/B test has begun at 15 Wikipedias for DiscussionTools on mobile. Half of the editors on the mobile web site will have access to the Reply tool and other features. [140]
• The character = cannot be used in new usernames, to make usernames work better with templates. Existing usernames are not affected. [141]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).
• The HTML markup used by DiscussionTools to show discussion metadata below section headings will be inserted after these headings, not inside of them. This change improves the accessibility of discussion pages for screen reader software. [142]

Events

• The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award will happen online on Friday 16 December 2022 at 17:00 UTC! The event will be live-streamed on YouTube in the MediaWiki channel and added to Commons afterwards.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:34, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-51

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 9 January 2023.

Recent changes

• On a user's contributions page, you can filter it for edits with a tag like 'reverted'. Now, you can also filter for all edits that are not tagged like that. This was part of a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [143]
• A new function has been used for gadget developers to add content underneath the title on article pages. This is considered a stable API that should work across all skins. Documentation is available. [144]
• One of our test wikis is now being served from a new infrastructure powered by Kubernetes (read more). More Wikis will switch to this new infrastructure in early 2023. Please test and let us know of any issues. [145]

Problems

• Last week, all wikis had no edit access for 9 minutes. This was caused by a database problem. [146]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
• The word "Reply" is very short in some languages, such as Arabic ("ردّ"). This makes the Discussion tools button on talk pages difficult to use. An arrow icon will be added to those languages. This will only be visible to editors who have the Beta Feature turned on. [147] [148]

Future changes

• Edits can be automatically "tagged" by the system software or the Abuse filter management system. Those tags link to a help page about the tags. Soon they will also link to Recent Changes to let you see other edits tagged this way. This was a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [149]
• The Trust & Safety tools team have shared new plans for building the Private Incident Reporting System. The system will make it easier for editors to ask for help if they are harassed or abused.
• Realtime Preview for Wikitext is coming out of beta as an enabled feature for every user of the 2010 Wikitext editor in the week of January 9, 2023. It will be available to use via the toolbar in the 2010 Wikitext editor. The feature was the 4th most popular wish of the Community Wishlist Survey 2021.

Events

• You can now register for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023, taking place on May 19–21 in Athens, Greece. You can also apply for a scholarship until January 14th.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-02

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

• You can use tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags. [150]
• Special:WhatLinksHere shows all pages that link to a specific page. There is now a prototype for how to sort those pages alphabetically. You can see the discussion in the Phabricator ticket.
• You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page. [151]
• A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time. [152]
• Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use matrix: to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [153]
• You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages. [154]

Changes later this week

• Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 10 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 12 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 January. It will be on all wikis from 12 January (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 01:07, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-03

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

• The URLs in "prev" links on page history now contain diff=prev&oldid=[revision ID] in place of diff=[revision ID]&oldid=[revision ID]. This is to fix a problem with links pointing to incorrect diffs when history was filtered by a tag. Some user scripts may break as a result of this change. [155]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).
• Some changes to the appearance of talk pages have only been available on Talk: and User talk: namespaces. These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such as Meta talk:. They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, including Meta: pages (e.g., at the Village Pump). You can change your preferences (beta feature). [156]
• On Wikisources, when an image is zoomed or panned in the Page: namespace, the same zoom and pan settings will be remembered for all Page: namespace pages that are linked to a particular Index: namespace page. [157]
• The Vector 2022 skin will become the default for the English Wikipedia desktop users. The change will take place on January 18 at 15:00 UTC. Learn more.

Future changes

• The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey, which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts next week on 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC. You can start drafting your proposals in the CWS sandbox.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 01:10, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-04

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

• Last week, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue. [158]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).
• If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity. [159][160]
• The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:46, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-05

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

• Last week, for ~15 minutes, some users were unable to log in or edit pages. This was caused by a problem with session storage. [161]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 February. It will be on all wikis from 2 February (calendar).

Future changes

• Wikis that use localized numbering schemes for references need to add new CSS. This will help to show citation numbers the same way in all reading and editing modes. If your wiki would prefer to do it yourselves, please see the details and example CSS to copy from, and also add your wiki to the list. Otherwise, the developers will directly help out starting the week of February 5.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:05, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-06

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

• In the Vector 2022 skin, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default. [162]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).
• Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays. [163]
• Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [164]
• Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will stop receiving new proposals on Monday, 6 February 2023, at 18:00 UTC. Proposers should complete any edits by then, to give time for translations and review. Voting will begin on Friday, 10 February.

Future changes

• Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add skins=… for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.

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MediaWiki message delivery 10:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-07

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

• On wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week. [165]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).
• The Reply tool and other parts of DiscussionTools will be deployed for all editors using the mobile site. You can read more about this decision. [166]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [167][168][169]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 01:49, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-08

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

• Last week, during planned maintenance of Cloud Services, unforeseen complications forced the team to turn off all tools for 2–3 hours to prevent data corruption. Work is ongoing to prevent similar problems in the future. [170]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).
• The voting phase for the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 ends on 24 February at 18:00 UTC. The results of the survey will be announced on 28 February.

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [171][172][173]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 01:57, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-09

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

• Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task. [174][175]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [176]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:47, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-10

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 Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
• On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Wikipedia) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed. [177]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).
• A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon. [178]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:50, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-11

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Chavacano de Zamboanga Wikipedia, Min Dong Chinese Wikipedia, Chechen Wikipedia, Cebuano Wikipedia, Chamorro Wikipedia, Cherokee Wikipedia, Cheyenne Wikipedia, Central Kurdish Wikipedia, Corsican Wikipedia, Kashubian Wikipedia, Church Slavic Wikipedia, Chuvash Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [179][180]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:20, 13 March 2023 (UTC)