WMDE Technical Wishes

Wikimedia Deutschland's Technical Wishes Project is an approach to identify and prioritize technical requirements from diverse users in a collaborative way. The Technical Wishes team aims to build new and improved features in MediaWiki.

If you want to learn more about our approach, how it all started and the way we work, read our white paper "Building tools for diverse users. Lessons learned from the Technical Wishes project" or this wiki page.

If you are interested in technical details, please visit the project on Phabricator.


Reusing references (2022–2024)
How can reusing references within an article become easier? More information on the page of this focus area.
Project On some wikis On all wikis
Extending references

Reusing a reference with different details (e.g. page number) in wikitext and VisualEditor

  In development
  In development
Bug fixes
  Done
  Done

More projects will be added to this list.


Geoinformation (2020–2022)
How can the representation of geographical information be improved? Our work has focused on making Kartographer work on wikis using Flagged Revisions, and on several improvements in Kartographer and its documentation. More information on the page of this focus area.
Project On some wikis On all wikis
Update maki icons
  Done
  Done
Show nearby articles
  Done
  Done
Adding geopoints via QID
  Done
  Done
Fixing bugs
  Done
  Done
Improve documentation for Kartographer
  Done
  Done
Make Kartographer compatible with page stabilization and pending changes
  Done
  Done
VisualEditor Kartographer improvements
  Done
  Done
Improved accessibility
  Done
  Done


How can working with templates generally become easier? The following projects were tackled during our work in this area. More information on the page of this focus area.


Project on some wikis on all wikis
Bracket Matching
  Done
  Done
Improved Color Scheme of Syntax Highlighting
  Done
  Done
Line Numbering
  Done
  Done
for the template namespace
Suggested values for template parameters
  Done
  Done
Finding and inserting templates
  Done
  Done
Removing a template from a page using the VisualEditor
  Done
  Done
VisualEditor template dialog improvements
  Done
  Done
TemplateData editor improvements
  Cancelled
  Cancelled


Older projects
The Technical Wishes team has been working in focus areas since the survey 2019. In the 2013, 2015 and 2017 surveys, the dewiki communtity voted on on specific problems. The following resulting projects are or were being implemented by the Technical Wishes team.
Project on some wikis on all wikis
Gendered categories
Show correctly gendered category names on biographical articles.
  Cancelled
  Cancelled
ReferencePreviews
Finding a solution that prevents users from losing the reading position when checking out a reference.
  Done
  Done
on all wikis using the PopUps extension
Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface
The Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface aims to improve the current interface to resolve edit conflicts.
  Done
  Beta-Feature
FileImporter/FileExporter
With the FileImporter, locally stored files can be moved to Wikimedia Commons including the correct version history.
  Done
  Done
RevisionSlider
The RevisionSlider adds a slider to the diff view, so that you easily can navigate between the revisions. As of May 17, 2017, RevisionSlider is a default feature on all wikis.
  Done
  Done
Show text changes in moved text paragraphs
This project is about making changes within paragraphs visible in the wikitext on the diff page.
  Done
  Done
Advanced Search
The Advanced Search extension is making hidden existing search options accessible for everyone.
  Done
  Done
Footnote Highlighting
If a footnote is referenced multiple times, highlight the link in the footnote section that brings you back to your original reading position.
  Done
  Done
Rollback
A confirmation prompt that prevents users from accidentally clicking the rollback instead of the thank you link.
  Done
  Done
Tables in PDFs
Wish #9 of the German-speaking Technical Wishes Survey was adding tables to the PDF export
  Done
  Done
Catwatch
Catwatch is a MediaWiki feature that allows users to view category membership changes in the recent changes and watchlists.
  Done
  Done
Notifications about mentions
Notification about successful and failed mentions are two new notification types built within the Echo/Notifications-system
  Done
  Done
RevisionSlider
The RevisionSlider helps editors to view edit summaries and the version history on diff pages.
  Done
  Done