Welcome to Meta!Edit
Hello, Sam Sailor. Welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum if you need help with something (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!
PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:44, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Special:Blankpage/globalsul
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 writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.
Recent changes
- RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [1]
 MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [2]- codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [3]
- On several wikis, an account named "Abuse filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.
Problems
- In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [4]
Changes later this week
 The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (calendar).
Meetings
- Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.
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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 use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [5][6]
- You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
- Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [7][8]
- Templates with <templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new
wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [9]
Problems
- When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [10]
Changes later this week
- You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
- Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [11]
- The AbuseFilter variable
minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15 17:55, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
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
- Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [12]
Recent changes
- The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category
Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
- https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.
Problems
- When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [13]
- MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [14][15]
- Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [16]
Changes later this week
- You will be able to use template styles in the
Module namespace. [17]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).
Meetings
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20:36, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
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
Problems
- When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [18]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
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18:16, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
18:46, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
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 you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [20]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (calendar).
Meetings
Future changes
- There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [21]
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23:14, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Talk to us about talkingEdit
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.
We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.
We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.
We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.
You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:
- First, sign up your group here.
- Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
- Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
- When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
- What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
- What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
- What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
- What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
- Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.
You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.
Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.
You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.
Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.
Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
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
Changes later this week
- When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [23]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).
Meetings
Future changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.
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21:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
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
Problems
- Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
- Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [26]
- Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [27][28]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
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
- When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [29][30]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [31]
- Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.
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19:44, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
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 new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version. [32]
Problems
- There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed. [33]
- The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon. [34]
- Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them. [35]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
16:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
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
Problems
- You will be able read but not edit most wikis for 30 minutes on 11 April at 05:00 (UTC). This is because of a hardware problem. You can see a list of the affected wikis. [39]
- A map update caused some problems on 29 March and 30 March. It was rolled back. [40]
- Pages on some Wikivoyages had problems with the top headline. This has been fixed. [41]
Changes later this week
- When you add an edit summary the VisualEditor will search your recent edit summaries in case you want to re-use one. This works in both the visual and wikitext modes on desktop. It also works on the mobile site. [42]
- The Wikimedia wikis will get a URL shortener. This will work from 11 April. You can read more. [43]
- The
{{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it will return "" (empty string). When you read a page it will return "-" (dash). For now this will only affect content namespaces. [44]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will be able to preview references. This means that when you hover over the link you will get a popup that shows you a preview of the reference. It will work much like page previews. This is so you don't have to go to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will now be available as a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia. [45][46]
- The Wikidata JSON output will change. Empty containers will be serialised as empty objects. This is a breaking change that will affect tools that use JSON outputs and APIs. It will happen on 30 April. You can read more and see how to test your code.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
23:00, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
19:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
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 invites users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. [55][56]
Problems
- Tech News was late last week because of a MassMessage bug. Other newsletters had the same problem. [57]
Changes later this week
- You will see when you last refreshed the recent changes page. This is so you can see how recent the changes are. [58]
- When you write a comment in Structured Discussions but have not posted it yet your web browser will save it in
local storage instead of session storage. This means you do not lose them even if you close your web browser. Structured Discussions used to be called Flow. [59]
- You will be able to turn off milestone notifications. Milestone notifications congratulate you when you have made certain numbers of edits. [60]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikidata
wb_terms table will be dropped. This will affect some Wikidata tools. They need to be updated. The table has become too big which is causing problems. This will happen on 29 May. You can read more. You can ask for help if you need it.
- Wikimedia wikis will soon use a token when you log out. This changes how the API works. Some tools might need to be updated. [61]
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22:28, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
16:28, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
00:49, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
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
Problems
- File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed. [63][64]
- Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments. [65][66]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The content translation tool on Wikipedia can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team. [67]
- The Wikidata
wbeditentity API endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June. [68]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:04, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
15:34, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
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 write all special letters in all African Wikipedia languages. This works in the desktop version. [71]
- There is now a field called
depicts on Commons. This is a way to show what is in a picture with the help of Wikidata. It is still in development. [72]
- Some tools on Toolforge may break on or after 3 June because of database changes. Maintainers should update their tools to use the new schema. [73][74]
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [75]
Changes later this week
- Some wikis have one tab for the visual editor and one tab for a wikitext editor. Others wikis just have one tab. If your wiki has two tabs, clicking a link to create a new page has always opened a wikitext editor. It will now open the editor you used the last time you edited. [76]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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15:25, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
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 you create a PDF from a page on the wiki this is now done by Proton. Before this we used Electron. It should look the same but work better. Both use Chromium. This is a different system from when you collect several articles into a book and make a PDF from them. [77][78]
- The Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standard OOUI icons. There will be additional minor fixes for positioning in the next deployment. [79]
- Bots and other scripts that do not set an identifiable User-Agent may find their requests strictly rate-limited until they identify themselves properly. [80]
Problems
- Please check if the Flagged Revisions configuration on your wiki is as you expect (or as it was a few weeks ago). If not, please report it. [81]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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17:07, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
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
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [82]
Changes later this week
- MIDI files can soon be played without the Score extension. You can then add them with
[[File:Filename.midi]]. Later override_midi and override_audio will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score. [83]
- A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems. [84]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old
wgEnableAPI and wgEnableWriteAPI values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values. [85]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:38, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
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 new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday. [86]
- Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced. [87]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar).
Meetings
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17:30, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
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 development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [88]
Problems
- Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [89]
- Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [90]
Changes later this week
- You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [91]
- There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
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
- For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [92]
- Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [93]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
- The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [94]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [95]
- There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [96]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:13, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
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 mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [97]
Changes later this week
- The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called
Abuse filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more.
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [98]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:30, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
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
Problems
- The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [100]
Changes later this week
- Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [101]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
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13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
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 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).
Problems
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.
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13:25, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [109]
- Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [110]
Changes later this week
- Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [111]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:20, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
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
- There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.
Problems
- Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
- Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [112]
Changes later this week
- Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [113]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [114]
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15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
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 the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [115]
- The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
- The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [116]
- The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [117]
- The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [118]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
- When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [119]
Meetings
Future changes
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09:08, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
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's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed. [124]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 2 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:51, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
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
Problems
- There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon. [127]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can leave feedback.
- The URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page would be https://www.wikidata.org/ instead. You can tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki.
- There is a new technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community. Subscribe to get the information in the future.
- Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.
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15:36, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
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
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (calendar).
Meetings
Future changes
- Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else. [129]
- In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can read more and discuss.
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23:55, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
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 API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as
internal. API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives. [130]
Problems
- There is a translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed. [131]
- The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed. [132]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (calendar).
- Reference Previews will be a beta feature on all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 October. See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:39, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
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MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. 
The