User talk:Benison/Archive 41
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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
- On Wikidata, the "save" button when you edit is now called "publish". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "Save page" to "Publish changes". This is to help new editors understand what it does. [1][2]
- Some edits will get an automatic tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways. [3]
- Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki. [4]
- Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation has been updated. [5][6]
Problems
- Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem. [7]
- With the new filters in the recent changes, "Exclude selected" in "Namespaces" did not work for "Saved filters" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again. [8]
- The latest version of Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see
#R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9instead of#Résuméeven if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March). [9] 
Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed. [10]
Changes later this week
- Wikidata will be moved to its own database servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis. [11]
- The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems. [12][13]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).- WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one:
ext.wikiEditor. All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed. [14]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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16:19, 8 January 2018 (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
- Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed. [15]
- There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development. [16]
Problems
- Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited. [17][18]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [19][20]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 16 January 2018
- News and notes: Communication is key
- In the media: The Paris Review, British Crown and British Media
- Featured content: History, gaming and multifarious topics
- Interview: Interview with Ser Amantio di Nicolao, the top contributor to English Wikipedia by edit count
- Technology report: Dedicated Wikidata database servers
- Arbitration report: Mister Wiki is first arbitration committee decision of 2018
- Traffic report: The best and worst of 2017
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
- Filters on Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features. [21][22]
Problems
- With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed. [23]
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 24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
irc.wikimedia.orgwill be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically. [24]
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23:56, 22 January 2018 (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
- 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 31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation is working on how to get less unmaintained code on Wikimedia wikis. This could be by finding maintainers or removing unmaintained features. They are now looking for feedback on what do do with AbuseFilter, the IRC RecentChanges feed, the RelatedSites extension and TimedMediaHandler. You can leave feedback on the linked talk pages. [25]
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17:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Adopt-a-user - please check your details
Hello, I have been doing a cleanup of the ‘Adopter’ information page for the Adopt-a-user Project, located here. During my cleanup, I've removed several long-inactive and retired users, leaving just the most recently active ones, whether they're currently available (14 users) or not currently available (24 users).
In order to provide potential adoptees with an easy location to find people, the Adopter's page needs to be up-to-date with the latest availability information. Thus:
- If you are no longer interested in being an adopter, even in the future, please remove yourself from the list, and delete any
{{adopting}}templates from your user pages. - If you are still interested, but not currently available, please check the list to see if your details needs to be updated - especially with regards availability. (A dummy edit would show me you’ve checked and are OK with what’s currently there.)
- Feel free to add a line at the bottom of your entry to show how many adoptees you’ve previously helped. I’m sure that would be of interest to newcomers, especially when you do return.
- I have also cleaned out nearly 100 inactive editors still flagged as seeking adoption. That leaves just 18 people currently interested in being adopted.
- If you are no longer interested in being an adopter, even in the future, please remove yourself from the list, and delete any
You are receiving this message because you are listed as an adopter here, but have made relatively few edits over the last year or so.
Finally, as an editor with previous experience of adoption (unlike myself!), you might wish to respond to the (admittedly long) comments I've made here about how I think the project could be improved and got working again. I've also 'been bold' and tweaked the project pages a wee bit. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 01:02, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
Books and Bytes - Issue 26
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 26, December – January 2018
- #1Lib1Ref
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Spotlight: What can we glean from OCLC’s experience with library staff learning Wikipedia?
- Bytes in brief
Arabic and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:36, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 5 February 2018
- Featured content: Wars, sieges, disasters and everything black possible
- Traffic report: TV, death, sports, and doodles
- Special report: Cochrane–Wikipedia Initiative
- Arbitration report: New cases requested for inter-editor hostility and other collaboration issues
- In the media: Solving crime; editing out violence allegations
- Humour: You really are in Wonderland
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
- Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to. [26]
- The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language. [27]
- Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded. [28]
Problems
- Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this. [29]
Changes later this week
- When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users. [30]
- When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like
gallery widths="150px". You could useemor%instead ofpxbut it would make no difference. You can now only use150pxor nothing (150). If you write something else, instead of treating it likepx, it will not work. [31] - The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of
YesorNoit will sayThankandCancel. It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public. [32] - Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it. [33]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Education Program extension will be removed on 30 June. It is replaced by the Programs and Events Dashboard. [34][35]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:51, 5 February 2018 (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
- TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please submit a task on Phabricator. [36][37][38]
- Registration pages now collect keyboard/mouse usage information for research on identifying spambots.
Changes later this week
- You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use visual diffs on history pages. [39]
- The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like
{{reflist}}, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates. [40] - The abuse filter extension has a new feature
contains_allthat you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string. [41] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 February at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The settings page and beta options for the mobile website are being improved. [42]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:59, 12 February 2018 (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 explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed. [43][44]
- You can now see statistics for pageviews per wiki per country. You can see this on maps or in a table. [45]
Problems
- Linter is reporting estimated counts instead of actual counts for some wikis. This is because of performance problems. You might notice a false higher number in linter counts for some categories. This will be fixed as soon as the performance problem has been fixed. [46]
- Last week the way that Visual Editor displays references lists was changed. As a result, the references generated by specific templates like
{{sfn}}are not visible in the references list whilst editing. [47][48]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The way edit summaries and log comments are stored in the database is being changed. In the future this will make longer comments possible. [49]
- Edit conflicts could be solved in a different way in the future. You can test a new prototype.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:54, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 20 February 2018
- News and notes: The future is Swedish with a lack of administrators
- Recent research: Politically diverse editors write better articles; Reddit and Stack Overflow benefit from Wikipedia but don't give back
- Arbitration report: Arbitration committee prepares to examine two new cases
- Traffic report: Addicted to sports and pain
- Featured content: Entertainment, sports and history
- Technology report: Paragraph-based edit conflict screen; broken thanks
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
- Checkusers and stewards can now view private data such as the IP address in the abuse log. This data is removed regularly. [50]
Problems
- Last week's MediaWiki version was rolled back because of a bug. [51][52]
- Since the deployment train last week until late evening on 20 February UTC, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed. [53]
- Special:Statistics did not take newly created pages into account since 13 February 2018. Because of this the statistics are recreated. [54][55][56]
Changes later this week
- Users with version 10 of the Internet Explorer browser will no longer get JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis. If you use this browser on your computer, you can try upgrading to a newer version. [57]
- The Wikinews wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 27 February. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [58][59]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 1 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 28 February 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.
19:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
WikiCup 2018 March newsletter
And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. With 53 contestants qualifying, the groups for round 2 are slightly smaller than usual, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining users.
Our top scorers in round 1 were:
Aoba47 led the field with a featured article, 8 good articles and 42 GARs, giving a total of 666 points.
FrB.TG , a WikiCup newcomer, came next with 600 points, gained from a featured article and masses of bonus points.
Ssven2, another WikiCup newcomer, was in third place with 403 points, garnered from a featured article, a featured list, a good article and twelve GARs.- Ceranthor, Numerounovedant,
Carbrera, 
Farang Rak Tham and 
Cartoon network freak all had over 200 points, but like all the other contestants, now have to start again from scratch. A good achievement was the 193 GARs performed by WikiCup contestants, comparing very favourably with the 54 GAs they achieved.
Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.
If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) and Vanamonde (talk) 15:27, 2 March 2018 (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 make longer edit summaries. [60]
Changes later this week
- You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. [61]
- On Special:AbuseLog you can now choose to list only actions that actually made an edit. Other actions are when the filter warned the editor or blocked the edit from being made. There are also more search options. [62][63]
- Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but it is complex. The tool will now warn in the JavaScript console if the configuration isn't correct. Soon Citoid will disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [64]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 March. It will be on all wikis from 8 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- In the future you will be able to use global preferences. This means you could change a preference for all wikis instead of having to change it every time for each wiki. You can now test global preferences and give feedback.
- You can now read about planned works on maps during 2018. This will be done by June. You can give feedback on the planned maps work.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:11, 5 March 2018 (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
- 3D models can now be uploaded to Commons. [65]
- Page Previews has been updated to use HTML for previews. This has fixed many issues. An A/B test was done on English and German Wikipedia to measure how it is used. Other changes were also made. [66]
- Some edits have to be checked against too many conditions before they can trigger an abuse filter. If that is the reason no filter is triggered the edit will be tagged for review. [67]
- Auto-saving has been added to the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. Right now it is meant to help if your browser crashes or if you accidentally close a tab. [68]
Problems
- The abuse filter did not tag all edits that should have been tagged after last week's MediaWiki version had come to the wikis. It was fixed on 9 March (UTC). [69]
Changes later this week
- You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. This was originally planned to happen last week. [70]
- It is now possible to specify the block parameters for each filter in Special:AbuseFilter. The parameters include block duration and if the user should be blocked from editing their own talk page. The block duration is separate for anonymous and registered users. [71][72]
- A hundred Wikimedia wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 13 and 14 March. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [73][74][75]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 March. It will be on all wikis from 15 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 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.
19:44, 12 March 2018 (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
- On March 12 early morning UTC, the number of 503 error messages increased due to an issue on esams datacenter. It has been fixed. [76]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 March. It will be on all wikis from 22 March (calendar).
Meetings
- There is no Editing team meeting this week.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- From April 4, the autopatrol status of edits will only be accessible in the Recent Changes database table, so only for 30 days. [77][78]
- In-Context Help and Onboarding is a new project, aiming to improve retention of new wiki editors. The goal is to give them short tutorials and other training experiences based on their activity. Collaboration team is expecting feedback and comments on the project talk page, especially from people working with newcomers.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:03, 19 March 2018 (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
- Some of the interface icons and text sizes will change slightly, as part of the updates for improved accessibility and consistency. These icons are used in many features, including Notifications, Recent Changes, Beta Features, Visual Editor, 2017 Wikitext Editor, Code Editor, and others. While editor toolbars, dialogs, and menus will appear slightly bigger; elements on special pages will be slightly smaller. Functionality will not change. [79] [80]
- The deprecated #toc and #toctitle CSS ids have been removed. If your wiki was still using these for fake Tables of Content (ToC) then these might lose their styling. They can be replaced with .toc and .toctitle classes where appropriate. [81]
- TemplateStyles will be deployed to the Wikivoyages on 28 March 2018. [82]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 March. It will be on all wikis from 29 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 March at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be one hour earlier than usual on 28 March at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- From 9 April, the sort order of categories will be distorted for a short time. We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a maintenance script to update existing database entries. This will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on wiki size. Read more details. [83]
- Changes are coming to search for Serbian projects. Cyrillic and Latin variants of a word and different grammatical forms of a word will be able to find each other. Read more on MediaWiki in Serbian or English.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Signpost issue 4 – 29 March 2018
- News and notes: Wiki Conference roundup and new appointments.
- Arbitration report: Ironing out issues in infoboxes; not sure yet about New Jersey; and an administrator who probably wasn't uncivil to a sockpuppet.
- Traffic report: Real sports, real women and an imaginary country: what's on top for Wikipedia readers
- Featured content: Animals, Ships, and Songs
- Technology report: Timeless skin review by Force Radical.
- Special report: ACTRIAL wrap-up.
- Humour: WikiWorld Reruns
We could use you at the signpost
Let me know if you can do it. Eddie891's creature 23:32, 29 March 2018 (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
- Template Wizard script available for testing. It will show up as a puzzle-piece icon in the 2010 WikiEditor. You can click on the icon to insert a template.
- The Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey is to be sent to participants around the world this week. If you are volunteer developer, and have contributed code to any pieces of MediaWiki, gadgets, or tools, please take 20 to 40 minutes to complete the survey.
Problems
- MediaWiki deployment train has been rolled back to version 1.31.0-wmf.26 on week 13, due to a multiplication of lost connections during MySQL queries. Some of the recent changes may have not been applied. They will be deployed next week. [84][85][86]
- The Notifications badge icons were overlapping other links. This has been fixed. [87]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 April. It will be on all wikis from 5 April (calendar).
- User subpages ending in
.jsonwill now be protected from other people editing them, like.jsand.csspages already are. If you have a tool that stores static configuration, you can now use a subpage likeUser:Example/mygadget.jsonto do this without concerns. [88] - Tidy will be replaced by RemexHtml on the next set of wikis. On April 4, we plan to turn off Tidy on all Wikiquotes (except frwikiquote) and Wikimedia chapters and user groups wikis. 23 wikis will have Tidy replaced this time. [89][90][91]
- AbuseFilter will transition to use OOUI starting April 4, and the rule editor will also be changed to a CodeEditor (ACE) similar to what is found on user JavaScript pages. The move to OOUI will continue over the next few weeks. [92] [93]
- In Special:Preferences, the preference "Reload the watchlist automatically whenever a filter is changed (JavaScript required)" is now only visible for users who have opt-out the New Filters for the Watchlist. [94]
- You can see names of individual abuse filters in Special:AbuseLog. Now if the name of an abuse filter contains some wikisyntax like links, it will not change to a link when displayed. [95]
- You can now search through filter patterns at Special:AbuseFilter. You may specify either a plain string or a regular expression and the matching filters will show a snippet of their pattern with the match highlighted. [96]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- If you're using, creating or improving Lua modules, you can give your feedback to help harmonizing the modules across wikis and add more useful functions.
- On April 11th, we plan to turn off Tidy on all wikis with less than 50 entries in all high priority linter categories. About 60 wikis will have Tidy replaced. Currently about 600 wikis have had Tidy replaced and we have another 300 wikis to go. We plan to finish this transition from Tidy to RemexHtml by end of June 2018. Please follow T175706 to monitor progress of Tidy replacement. [97][98]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:28, 2 April 2018 (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
- Some pages have templates that describe problems with that article. There is now more information for mobile readers and what is wrong with the article and how they could help fix it. [99]
- You can now thank users for many more actions than edits to a page. This was one of the top ten requests in the Wishlist Survey last year. [100]
- The sort order of categories will have errors for a short time starting Monday 9 April (UTC). We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a script to update the database. This will take between a few hours and a few days depending on wiki size. You can read more details. [101]
- Tag filter titles will now work better on wikis where the tag filter title is in a language that is written in another direction than the language of that wiki. This could for example be an English title (written from left to right) on a Hebrew or an Arabic wiki (written from right to left). [102]
Problems
- The bookmark icon for saved filters on the recent changes page disappeared because of new icon changes. This has now been fixed. [103]
- For a week in March rollbacks got both the
rollbackand theundotag on the recent changes page and other pages where you see tags. This has now been fixed. [104]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 April. It will be on all wikis from 12 April (calendar).
- Patrolled edits now have three states instead of two. Recent changes filters are updated to show unpatrolled, autopatrolled and manually patrolled edits. [105]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The iOS and Android apps will get synced reading lists later in April.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:08, 9 April 2018 (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
- Profiling statistics for an abuse filter tell how often edits match the filter. The statistics for the abuse filters were reset after 10000 actions. Wikis can now decide to reset it more or less often. They can file a phabricator task to do so. [106]
- Abuse filters will now treat integers and floats more precisely. For example, 5/2 was rounded down to 2 but will now be 2.5 and 2*4 will be the integer 8 and not the floating-point number 8.0. Division values are the only ones changed. For the rest only strict comparisons (
===and!==) will be affected leaving the values unchanged. [107][108] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 April. It will be on all wikis from 19 April (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The new PDF renderer could not create PDFs from books. Books are in this case collections of pages on a Wikimedia wiki. PediaPress will take over development of the books-to-PDF function. [109]
- Pywikibot will no longer support Python 2.7.2 and 2.7.3. [110]
- Volunteer developers can fill out the Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey. The last day is April 22 (UTC). This is a third-party service survey. See the privacy statement.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:20, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 27
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 27, February – March 2018
- #1Lib1Ref
- New collections
- Alexander Street (expansion)
- Cambridge University Press (expansion)
- User Group
- Global branches update
- Wiki Indaba Wikipedia + Library Discussions
- Spotlight: Using librarianship to create a more equitable internet: LGBTQ+ advocacy as a wiki-librarian
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Chinese and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:50, 18 April 2018 (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
- All Wikipedias now have Page Previews.
- The iOS and Android apps now have synced reading lists. This means you can save articles to a private list that can be seen on your other devices if you use the apps.
- The icons in the 2010 wikitext editor have changed. [111]
- The visual editor and the 2017 wikitext ask you to write an edit summary after you press
Publish. This button now also shows an ellipsis. This is to show that pressingPublishis not the last step. [112]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 April. It will be on all wikis from 26 April (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- <mapframe> will come to most Wikipedias in May. This means that you can put interactive maps in the articles. Nine Wikipedias that use a strict version of flagged revisions will not get this feature in May. [113]
- The rollback function could change. This was a German community request. All editors with rollback rights can leave feedback on the proposed solution. The last day to leave feedback is 4 May (UTC).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:16, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 April 2018
- From the editors: The Signpost's presses roll again
- Signpost: Future directions for The Signpost
- In the media: The rise of Wikipedia as a disinformation mop
- In focus: Admin reports board under criticism
- Special report: ACTRIAL results adopted by landslide
- Community view: It's time we look past Women in Red to counter systemic bias
- Discussion report: The future of portals
- Arbitration report: No new cases, and one motion on administrative misconduct
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Military History
- Traffic report: A quiet place to wrestle with the articles of March
- Technology report: Coming soon: Books-to-PDF, interactive maps, rollback confirmation
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
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 parameter for unpatrolled edits in recent changes filters changed name. You might need to update saved filters and links. [114]
Problems
- We are migrating wikis from Tidy to Remex. Because of a bug the 250 wikis which do not yet use Remex were switched on 23 April. This is two months early. This meant that pages with broken wikitext showed wrongly to readers. The bug was undone the next day. You can help fix broken wikitext to avoid this problem when your wiki switches. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. You can follow the process on Phabricator. [115]
Changes later this week
- You will be able use CodeMirror in the 2017 wikitext editor on all wikis. CodeMirror helps with syntax highlighting. It has previously been a beta feature and only available on wikis with scripts that are written from left to right. [116]
- When an administrator blocks someone they will have a calendar they can use to choose when the block ends. This is to make it easier to pick a specific date. [117]
- You can soon turn on the Performance Inspector in the Editing section in your preferences. It shows information about the performance of pages. This could be the size of modules in the page, how many CSS selectors are defined on the page and how many are used, or the size of the images on the page. This tool is intended to help editors fix pages that load slowly. [118]
- There is a new abuse filter function called
equals_to_any. You can use it to check if its first argument is equal (===) to any of the following ones. For example you can use it to check if the page's namespace is amongst a given set of values in a more compact way than you could earlier. You can read more on mediawiki.org. - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 May. It will be on all wikis from 3 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 May at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 2 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Cloud Services team is working on a new project called Toolhub. The goal is to make it easier for Wikimedians to discover software tools they can use. You can leave feedback on the talk page or email jhare
wikimedia.org to leave private feedback. - All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in all namespaces will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 2 May. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Wikibooks wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch on 9 May. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. [119][120][121]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:18, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
WikiCup 2018 May newsletter
The second round of the 2018 WikiCup has now finished. Most contestants who advanced to the next round scored upwards of 100 points, but two with just 10 points managed to scrape through into round 3. Our top scorers in the last round were:
Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with three featured articles
Iazyges, with nine good articles and lots of bonus points- Yashthepunisher, a first time contestant, with two featured lists
SounderBruce, a finalist last year, with seventeen good topic articles- Usernameunique, a first time contestant, with fourteen DYKs
Muboshgu, a seasoned competitor, with three ITNs and
Courcelles, another first time contestant, with twenty-seven GARs
So far contestants have achieved twelve featured articles between them and a splendid 124 good articles. Commendably, 326 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2018 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met; most of the GARs are fine, but a few have been a bit skimpy.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:10, 1 May 2018 (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 Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. It is now easier to find nearby places that need pictures. It helps you with direct uploads and title and category suggestions. The app only works on Android phones. [122]
Problems
- The abuse filters had a problem with blocks where you had changed how long they last. It used the default length everywhere. This was in late April. Abuse filter users should make sure the right block length is used and change them if needed. This is only for filters where how long blocks last had been changed. [123]
Changes later this week
- The advanced search function beta feature will be on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. [124]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 May. It will be on all wikis from 10 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 May at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 16 May. Other wikis will switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. [125][126]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:28, 7 May 2018 (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
- Dynamic maps are now available on most Wikipedias. Labels on maps can also be in different languages.
- The new Advanced Search interface is now available as a Beta Feature on all wikis. This makes it easier to learn about and to use many of the powerful options in our search. Feedback is appreciated. [127]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 May. It will be on all wikis from 17 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 16 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- In the mobile view, warnings for when something is wrong with a page are not as clear as they should be. The developers are working on this. You can give feedback and suggestions.
- The developers are working on making the Wikipedia Android app available in more languages. You can give feedback, suggestions and help test it. Read more on mediawiki.org [128]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:22, 14 May 2018 (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 22 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 May. It will be on all wikis from 24 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 23 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- It could become easier to reference different pages of a book in an article. You can give feedback. The last day for feedback is 27 May.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:34, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 May 2018
- From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals
- Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
- Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics
- News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia
- Traffic report: We love our superheroes
- Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies
- Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues
- Humour: Play with your food
- Gallery: Wine not?
- From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost
The Signpost: 24 May 2018
- From the editor: Another issue meets the deadline
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Portals
- Discussion report: User rights, infoboxes, and more discussion on portals
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
- Arbitration report: Managing difficult topics
- News and notes: Lots of Wikimedia
- Traffic report: We love our superheroes
- Technology report: A trove of contributor and developer goodies
- Recent research: Why people don't contribute to Wikipedia; using Wikipedia to teach statistics, technical writing, and controversial issues
- Humour: Play with your food
- Gallery: Wine not?
- From the archives: The Signpost scoops The Signpost
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 global preferences on most wikis. This means you can set preferences for all wikis at the same time. Before this you had to change them on each individual wiki. Global preferences will come to the Wikipedias later this week. [129][130]
- It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked. [131]
- Wikidata now supports lexicographical data. This helps describe words.
- There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups. [132]
- Some rare invisible Unicode characters have recently been banned from page titles. This includes soft hyphens (U+00AD) and left-to-right (U+2066) and right-to-left (U+2067) isolate markers. Existing pages with these characters will soon be moved by a script. [133]
- There's a new Wikimedia Foundation team to support the Wikimedia technical communities. It's called the Technical Engagement team. Most of the team members did similar work in other teams before this. [134]
Problems
- Some translatable pages are showing old translations instead of latest ones. The cause of this issue has been fixed. We will update all pages automatically to show the latest translations. [135]
Changes later this week
- There will be a new special page named PasswordPolicies. This page gives information about the password rules for each user group on that wiki. [136]
- A new way to see moved paragraphs in diffs is coming to most wikis. This is to make it easier to find the moved paragraphs and the changes in them. [137]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 May. It will be on all wikis from 31 May (calendar).
- Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. This is complex. The tool will now disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. It has warned about this in the JavaScript console since February. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [138]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 May at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Content Translation drafts which have not been updated in over a year will be removed. This allows other users to translate those articles. [139]
- A survey is collecting information on what users think about how Wikimedia wiki pages are loaded. This information could be used in future development. [140]
- Some wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 30 May and 13 June. Wikis with fewer than 100 linter issues in the main namespace in all high-priority linter categories will switch. This includes Wikidata. Tidy will probably be removed on all wikis in the first week of July. [141][142]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
12:40, 29 May 2018 (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 MonoBook skin has been optimised for mobile devices. It now looks different. [143]
- Planet Wikimedia collects blogs about Wikimedia. It will now use the Rawdog feed aggregator to do this instead of Planet. [144][145]
- Redirect links in Special:WhatLinksHere now link to the original page and not the target page. This was done earlier and changed the used messages on some pages. This was a problem for wikis that customized the message. A new change fixed this by using the old messages with one more parameter for customization. Wikis that already changed their customized messages will have to move the customization back again. [146]
Problems
- You will not be able to edit some wikis between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 13 June. You can see if your wiki is one of them.
- MassMessage did not work 24–28 May. This is also why last week's Tech News was late. [147]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 June. It will be on all wikis from 7 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This is planned to happen in June or early July. [148][149]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:54, 4 June 2018 (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
- In the Wikipedia app for Android or iOS users can create reading lists. The reading lists can be seen on different devices if you are logged in to your account. There is now a browser extension so you can add pages to your reading list from a web browser. At the moment it works with Firefox and Chrome. [150]
- There is a new version of Pywikibot. Pywikibot is a tool to automate tasks on MediaWiki wikis. [151]
Problems
- The MonoBook skin was changed to make it work better for mobile users. This caused some problems. The change was rolled back to fix them. The new version is now back on the wikis. MonoBook users can opt out from the new responsive design. [152]
Changes later this week
- The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. For most wikis this will happen on 18 June. For the rest it will happen on 25 June. [153][154]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 June. It will be on all wikis from 14 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the Readers Web team IRC office hour. There you can discuss tools to contribute on the mobile web for the existing MediaWiki skins. The meeting will be on 18 June at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will be able to move local wiki files to Commons and keep their original data intact. This is planned to come to the first wikis in June.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:55, 11 June 2018 (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
- Syntax highlighting has been a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It is now a normal feature. It is based on CodeMirror. [155]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some old web browsers will not be able to read the Wikimedia wikis. This is because they use an insecure way to connect to them. This means that we get less security for everyone else too. This affects about 0.08% of all traffic to the Wikimedia wikis. This affects for example those who read Wikipedia on a PlayStation 3. [156][157]
- The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. Because there is no new MediaWiki version this week it will happen on 25 June for most wikis. For the rest it will happen in early July. [158][159]
- All wikis that have not already done so will switch to use the Remex parsing library on 5 July. This is to replace Tidy. You can help fix remaining errors. [160]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 28
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 28, April – May 2018
- #1Bib1Ref
- New partners
- User Group update
- Global branches update
- Wikipedia Library global coordinators' meeting
- Spotlight: What are the ten most cited sources on Wikipedia? Let's ask the data
- Bytes in brief
Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Italian and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:33, 20 June 2018 (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
- PAWS, our JupyterHub system, got an upgrade and a logo. Several bugs should be fixed.
Problems
- When a link text was in italics or had other formatting you could sometimes not edit it in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [161][162]
Changes later this week
- Content translation users who translate between any two of Arabic, English, French, Japanese and Russian will be asked to be part of a research project. This is to create better tools for translating articles. [163]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 June. It will be on all wikis from 28 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 June at 15:00 (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.
23:10, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 June 2018
- Special report: NPR and AfC – The Marshall Plan: an engagement and a marriage?
- Op-ed: What do admins do?
- News and notes: Money, milestones, and Wikimania
- In the media: Much wikilove from the Mayor of London, less from Paekākāriki or a certain candidate for U.S. Congress
- Discussion report: Deletion, page moves, and an update to the main page
- Featured content: New promotions
- Arbitration report: WWII, UK politics, and a user deCrat'ed
- Traffic report: Endgame
- Technology report: Improvements piled on more improvements
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Africa
- Recent research: How censorship can backfire and conversations can go awry
- Humour: Television plot lines
- Wikipedia essays: This month's pick by The Signpost editors
- From the archives: Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing
WikiCup 2018 July newsletter
The third round of the 2018 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round had at least 227 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:
- Courcelles, a first time contestant, with 1756 points, a tally built largely on 27 GAs related to the Olympics
- Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with two featured articles and three GAs on natural history and astronomy topics
- SounderBruce, a finalist last year, with a variety of submissions related to transport in the state of Washington
Contestants managed 7 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 120 good articles, 1 good topic, 124 DYK entries, 15 ITN entries, and 132 good article reviews. Over the course of the competition, contestants have completed 458 GA reviews, in comparison to 244 good articles submitted for review and promoted. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process; several submissions, particularly in abstruse or technical areas, have needed additional work to make them completely verifiable.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk), Vanamonde (talk) 04:55, 2 July 2018 (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 database for tags will be changed. This will happen on 2 July on French Wikipedia and 9 July on all other wikis. Please report if recent changes get slower or you can't save edits. This could especially affect editors who use the database on ToolForge. [164]
Problems
- Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a database problem. [165]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 July at 15:00 (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.
00:46, 3 July 2018 (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
- WebM video files have smaller file size but still be of the same quality. Creating WebM files will take longer time. [166]
- The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This was supposed to already have happened but was delayed. For most wikis this will happen on 9 July. For the rest it will happen on 16 July. [167]
- All wikis now use the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy. This could cause errors. You can help fix the errors. [168]
Problems
- When you rolled back an edit it could get both the
RollbackandUndotags. This has been fixed. [169] - Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed. [170]
Changes later this week
- When you edit a link in the visual editor there will be two separate buttons to change which page the link goes to (target) or its text (label). [171][172]
- On the mobile version you can find a link to an editor's contributions from their user page. Now this will work even if they haven't created a user page. [173]
- When you edit a discussion on the mobile version you sometimes get your signature automatically added. This will now not happen if you have already added a signature manually. This is to avoid double signatures. [174]
- Structured discussions toolbars will have more style options. [175]
- When you look at Wikimedia code in Gerrit there will be a new interface. It is on by default for new users. This is also true for developers. This is to make it easier to understand what is happening. [176]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 July. It will be on all wikis from 12 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Today all administrators can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. There will be a new user group for editing CSS and JavaScript. Administrators will no longer automatically be able to do this. This is because it is a security risk when all administrator accounts can edit JavaScript even if they never plan to or do not know how it works. You can read more. [177]
- Page previews will be on by default for new accounts. [178]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:09, 9 July 2018 (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 use global preferences on Wikimedia wikis. You can set them on the global preferences page. [179]
- You can now see a new log of pages being created at Special:Log/create. It includes pages which are later deleted. It is now available on all Wikimedia wikis except Commons and Wikidata. [180]
- You can see how many pageviews a wiki had from specific countries. The Wikistats2 maps have now been updated. [181]
Changes later this week
- Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change. [182]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on July 17 at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on July 18 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can read more and leave feedback.
- You can use
<inputbox>to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead ofprefix:Page nameyou will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:00, 16 July 2018 (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 log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [183]
- Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [184]
- Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [185]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 July. It will be on all wikis from 26 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 25 July at 15:00 (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.
09:44, 24 July 2018 (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 design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems. [186]
Problems
- Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [187][188]
- Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [189][190]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 August (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 August at 15:00 (UTC) as well as at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- After a community discussion, a new group for users will be created. "Interface administrators" will be the only users allowed to edit interface pages like MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Common.js. This is done to avoid technical issues and improve security. That change will be effective by the end of August 2018.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 July 2018
- From the editor: If only if
- Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality
- Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals
- Featured content: Wikipedia's best content in images and prose
- Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes
- Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else
- Technology report: New bots, new prefs
- Recent research: Different Wikipedias use different images; editing contests more successful than edit-a-thons
- Humour: It's all the same
- Essay: Wikipedia does not need you
- From the archives: The pending changes fiasco: how an attempt to answer one question turned into a quagmire
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:NewPages now has the OOUI look. [191]
Problems
- The MediaWiki version that was released two weeks ago was late to some Wikimedia wikis. This was because of bugs. It was on all wikis 30 July. [192][193]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 August. It will be on all wikis from 9 August.
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 August at 15:00 (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.
19:39, 6 August 2018 (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
- CSS in templates can now be stored in a separate page on all wikis. This is called TemplateStyles. This is to make it easier to edit how templates look. [194]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can read more. You can leave feedback on the talk page. [195]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:53, 13 August 2018 (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 21 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 August. It will be on all wikis from 23 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 22 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The 2018 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
- Legacy JavaScript global variables have been deprecated for seven years. They will soon be removed from all wikis. Gadgets and scripts that use them will stop working. You can test your community's gadgets on "group0" wikis. For example Test Wikipedia or mediawiki.org. The legacy JavaScript global variables are already disabled there. You can read the migration guide to fix old scripts. [196]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
| This is an archive of past discussions with User:Benison. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
| Archive 35 | ← | Archive 39 | Archive 40 | Archive 41 | Archive 42 | Archive 43 | → | Archive 45 |