This page is an
archive of past newsletter issues. 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.
Enterprisey's copy-section-link adds popups to section headers which has an appropriate wikilink and external link to the section.
DannyS712's FindBlacklistEntry can be used to figure out which line(s) in either the local or global spamblacklist prevent a particular url from being added.
The
Watchlist Expiry feature worked on by the Community Tech team has been enabled on Wikipedia. For scripts that include watching or unwatching pages, developers may want to update their code to take advantage of the new functionality. See the documentation
on mediawiki.org.
As noted in the prior issue,
Enterprisey's links-in-logs script has now been implemented as part of MediaWiki core. By my count, this is his third script that was replaced by implementing the code in MediaWiki core or an extension, along with
link-section-edits and
abusefilter-hide-search. Additionally, his
reply-link script is being converted in part to
mw:Extension:DiscussionTools. Are there any other scripts that might be worth integrating directly in MediaWiki? Thoughts would be welcome at
Wikipedia talk:Scripts++.
As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy holidays! --
DannyS712 (
talk) 00:19, 18 December 2020 (UTC)reply
User:Ahecht/Scripts/pageswap - version 1.4 fixes reading destination from form field if destination is not in article namespace, and fixes self redirects.
Wikipedia:XFDcloser - version 4 brings a new user interface for dialogs, some preferences for customising XFDcloser, major behind-the-scenes coding changes, and resolves various issues raised on the talkpage. Also, since version 3.16.6 non-admin soft delete closure have been allowed at TfD.
Open tasks
As a reminder, the legacy javascript globals (like accessing wgPageName without first assigning it a value or using mw.config.get('wgPageName') instead) are deprecated. If your user scripts make use of the globals, please update them to use mw.config instead. Some
global interface editors or local
interface administrators may edit your user script to make these changes if you don't. See
phab:T72470 for more.
Miscellaneous
For people interested in creating user scripts or gadgets using
TypeScript, a types-mediawiki package (
GitHub,
NPM) is now available that provides type definitions for the MediaWiki JS interface and the API.
A
GitHub organization has been created for hosting
codebases of gadgets. Users who maintain gadgets using GitHub may choose to move their repos to this organization, to ensure continued maintenance by others even if the original maintainer becomes inactive.
As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, including nominating a featured script, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy new year! --
DannyS712 (
talk) 01:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Problems
There were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned.
[1][2]
Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new
short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your
reading lists or recording
email bounces. This is because of database maintenance.
[3]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (
calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The visual editor will now use
MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images.
[4]
Editing a
timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly.
[6]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 February. It will be on all wikis from 25 February (
calendar).
Future changes
There is a
user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the
Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Wikis using the
Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere
through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
A new version of the
VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.
Problems
There was a problem with the
job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits.
[7]
Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari.
[8]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 March. It will be on all wikis from 4 March (
calendar).
A
request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a
2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
A
request for comment is in progress to remove
F7 (invalid fair-use claim)
subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
A
request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
When blocking an IPv6 address with
Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to
just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at
WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
By
motion, the
discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the
GamerGate case are
now authorized under a new
Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can
test it and
leave feedback.
When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article.
[10]
Problems
Many graphs have
JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing.
[11]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (
calendar).
The
New Discussion tool will soon be a new
discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions.
[12]
Future changes
There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can
read more.
Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with
Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown.
[13][14]
New JavaScript-based functions will not work in
Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can
read more.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Wikis that are part of the
desktop improvements project can now use a new
search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also
test it early.
Editors who put up banners or change site-wide
JavaScript code should use the
client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can
read more.
[15]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 March. It will be on all wikis from 18 March (
calendar).
Future changes
You can add a
newline or
carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems.
[16][17]
You will be able to read but not edit
12 wikis for a short period of time on
23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
You can use
Quarry for
SQL queries to the
Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can
post on Phabricator or on
Wikitech.
PAWS and other ways to do
SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later.
[18]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
There is a
Wikipedia app for
KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a
simulator so you can see what it looks like.
You will be able to read but not edit
twelve wikis for a short period of time on
23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (
calendar).
Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain.
[20][21]
Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from wg* to mw.config. wg* will soon no longer work.
[22]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Some very old
web browsersdon’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers.
[23]
IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to irc.wikimedia.org and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern
EventStreams.
[24]
Problems
When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a
job queue problem.
[25]
Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this.
[26][27]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (
calendar).
Following a
request for comment,
F7 (invalid fair-use claim)
subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
Following a
request for comment,
page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.
Technical news
When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a
job queue problem. (
T278350)
Code to support some very old
web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (
T277803)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first.
[28]
Changes later this week
The
citoidAPI will use for example 2010-12-XX instead of 2010-12 for dates with a month but no days. This is because 2010-12 could be confused with 2010-2012 instead of December 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the
Extended Date/Time Format.
[29]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (
calendar).
Future changes
PAWS can now connect to the new
Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 28 April. There is
a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post
on Phabricator or on
Wikitech.
Welcome, subscribers, to the inaugural Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.
Category 1
Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.
This issue's Category 1 articles are:
Community Outreach Academy Elementary: A recent AfD survivor, this is one of those entertaining exceptions to the 'primary schools aren't notable' rule. How many primary schools do you know of that host Cossack militias and are endorsed by foreign embassies? Sadly, the article itself is far from representative of the school's wealth of eccentric coverage.
The AfD may provide a jumping-off point for an interested writer to cover a 'run-of-the-mill' topic that's anything but.
Holy Diver (song): One of the signatures of metal legend
Ronnie James Dio, this start-class article barely touches on almost forty years of history, analysis, and veneration. With literally hundreds of interviews, pages upon pages of Google Books hits, and more than a few cover versions, there's enough sourcing to cover an article many times this one's size and status.
Character class: One of the most fundamental aspects of role-playing games, this is a sad case of "Start class/Top importance". A big topic with a big history, this article is just begging for some dedicated writers to sit down and shape it into something beautiful. According to the article's talk page, this is also mirrored on at least one Fandom wiki, so getting it into shape will have broader consequences outside Wikipedia alone.
Category 2
Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.
This issue's Category 2 articles are:
Border Collie: This article for one of the world's most popular dog breeds is a
Million Award candidate. Now at B-class, it's had a few separate issues raised on the talk page throughout its history regarding various sorts of inter-owner drama. There's a good skeleton here, and some meat on its bones would make a comprehensive reference work.
Cool World: A former GA delisted just last month, Nathan Rabin's
spectacular piece for The A.V. Club back in 2007 (quite the source in its own right) comments that Wikipedia has a great entry on this, and it can again. The story of this film's failure, notorious in animation circles, is chronicled in depth in as many sources as a curious writer looking to bring this article back to glory could want. Quarter Million-tier yearly pageviews sweeten the deal.
American poetry: This big topic was an early FA -- could you make it one again? Now stymied by unsourced and dated additions, this article deserves the same artistic virtue as the works it describes.
Category 3
Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.
This issue's Category 3 articles are:
Python (programming language): This 2007 GA (swept in 2009) has been recommended for reassessment, although no GAR has been opened. With over two and a half million views a year, the readers of this widely read article deserve the best they can get.
Grunge: The sound of the 1990s is an FA currently undergoing review.
The FAR discusses overquoting, prose, cite formatting, and length as issues -- all matters a knowledgeable editor can help with. This important article has had a star since 2005, and deserves help to keep it.
Icelandic Naming Committee: A short GA on an oddball topic with outstanding maintenance tags, in need of updating and perhaps expansion. Editors interested in going into a unique subject are encouraged to get this one back up to standard.
Letter from the Editor
Hello, wonderful people, and welcome to the very first Discontent Content! I'm glad you're here, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do. In future issues, I hope to use this section to brag about the achievements of subscribers -- so why not go do something worth bragging about?
Article improvement initiatives have a long and storied history on this project, and I'm honoured to add myself to the list of people trying to find one that works. My perhaps quixotic goal here is to unify a few different issues -- the maintenance of old quality-assessed articles (GAs in particular) and the sheer length of the long left tail -- in one fell swoop. I'd be happy if this ended in something like another GA sweep; I'd be happier if it ended in another GA sweep where those GAs got kept. I'd be even happier than that if this resulted in the improvement of our worst articles, not just our best. I believe in the project, and I believe in what we can be.
Most of all, I believe in you. Let's get out there and make this thing better. Vaticidalprophet 06:35, 11 April 2021 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use
Znuny instead of
OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon.
[30][31]
If you use
syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces.
[32][33][34]
Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks
similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before.
[35]
The
latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for
technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment
in Phabricator if you have objections.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with
TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster.
[36][37][38]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (
calendar).
Welcome, subscribers, to the second Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.
Category 1
Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.
This issue's Category 1 articles are:
Michael Krasnow: A recent AfD survivor, this article is currently a single-paragraph stub, but has substantial expansion potential in online, print, and archival sources alike.
This piece is a particularly useful starting point for such a unique article.
Injury: A start-class Vital Article with the common problem of medical articles of list-formatted content that'd work better as prose.
Fetish Con: This eccentric topic that I absolutely do not apologise for placing right under "Injury" survived AfD in March. Though currently in poor stub-and-table shape, the AfD made it clear substantial expansion potential exists.
Category 2
Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.
This issue's Category 2 articles are:
Home: Another start-class Vital Article, this one is at level 2, making it one of the 100 core topics. It's also...I think it's a Million Award candidate? Honestly, man, I don't know, I checked three years and they all had frankly weird charts. This one has good bones, but the internal sections are all in need of expansion. Someone able to work on them could certainly take this to GA.
Tea: The world's most popular drink (inb4 water) was an FA back in the Brilliant Prose era, but no longer. Attempts since to bring it back to standard have failed. Will you succeed?
Mazes and Monsters: Tom Hanks' first leading role, an early DYK, and an unusual quirky topic, this article bears real potential for expansion.
Category 3
Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.
This issue's Category 3 articles are:
Death Cab for Cutie: This GA is up for GAR primarily due to uncited text. A motivated editor could save this article's plus sign by hunting down verification.
Doctor Who missing episodes: An FA at FAR and in danger of moving to FARC without engagement. This significant chunk of television history has tons written on it, and yet a number of the sources in the article are subpar. Can you save it?
Windows RT: Though this GA has been recommended for GAR since last September, it hasn't been brought to the process. No reasons are given on the talk, but the lead looks in need of a trim to bring its information to the body, and there's more than a bit of
WP:OVERCITE.
Letter from the Editor
Updates on articles from last issue:
Grunge has been delisted following an unsuccessful FAR. Anyone who wants to get this important article back to FAC is strongly encouraged.
Reader suggestion: BOZ, a founding member of the new
WikiProject Cemeteries, has an additional suggestion for anyone looking for further inspiration:
Bohemian National Cemetery (Chicago): A Czech cemetery in Chicago and the first I've heard of with an area dedicated specifically to fans of a given baseball team, this cemetery has ties to outsider art, historical shipwrecks, and one of the city's founding ethnic communities.
Thank you all, once again, for your subscription and your work on Wikipedia!
Vaticidalprophet 18:33, 26 April 2021 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can
now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the
twinkle-starter GitHub repository.
Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen
around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes.
[40]
Changes later this week
Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using
Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none.
[41][42]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (
calendar).
Future changes
The
CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in
MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead.
[43]
The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for
technical reasons. You can comment at
T112147 if you have objections.
Arbitration
The
community consultation on the Arbitration Committee
discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (
calendar).
Future changes
You can see what participants plan to work on at the online
Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.
Welcome, subscribers, to the third Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.
Category 1
Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.
This issue's Category 1 articles are:
Gambling in Nevada: An unusual move -- a redirect? But if you look at the history, you'll see why. This sweeping and expansive topic about the home of Reno and Las Vegas was recently converted to a redirect due to its almost complete lack of useful content. Nonetheless, this subject is bursting with potential and can have a full article written about it.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Original Theme Highlights: This recent AfD survivor was the first soundtrack written for the popular series. More unorthodox, for a children's animation album, it features songs by
Pantera and
Ween and was given a vinyl re-release in 2016 for the...ironic market? Certainly some market. There's a fair amount of coverage here to write a solid article on.
Death by misadventure: A surprisingly major topic to be a one-paragraph stub, this is a legal and colloquial term both. The article is currently sourced in whole to a single page in a single book!
Category 2
Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.
This issue's Category 2 articles are:
Rope (film): Hitchcock's classic attempt to shoot an entire film in a single shot, Rope is both a significant note in cinematic history and, in recent years, conceptualized as an important piece of
Hays Code-era gay cinema. It's a good watch, and the article should be just as solid. Currently it's a C-class with some unsourced content and an overreliance on block quotes.
Rachel Pollack: One of the major occult writers of the 20th and 21st centuries (a book of hers is prominently involved in my quixotic "bring the
Major Arcana to FT" plan), not to mention a significant fiction and comics writer collaborating with names such as
Neil Gaiman and
Grant Morrison, Pollack's article has quite a bit of room for improvement to quality-assessed levels. Though her article's lead is short and the work as a whole underreferenced, plenty of opportunities exist to improve it.
Narrative paradigm: Despite this article's High or Top importance across multiple wikiprojects, it's in a sorry state. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was subjected to a WikiEd course some time back. Significant potential lies within the idea that all human communication is narrative; the article must be accordingly strong.
Category 3
Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.
This issue's Category 3 articles are:
Jaime King: This GA on a famous model of the 1990s has been recommended for GAR. Unreferenced sections and low-quality references are a problem for this BLP.
Dartmouth College: This FA is at FARC and on the brink of delisting, but the issues mentioned -- accessibility,
WP:LEADCITE compliance, and overreliance on primary sources -- are far from insurmountable, and an editor could certainly polish off this star.
Tamil language: Another FARC, this is the native language of 75 million people (including my own stepmother) and the language of one of the world's great classical traditions. It's afflicted by a lack of sourcing and particularly issues with inline citations.
Letter from the Editor
This issue's subscriber suggestion, again from BOZ, is:
Dice: This former GA was delisted in 2009. It's a big topic to a lot of different subjects, and deserves a top-quality article.
This is ridiculously late, and I apologise -- I've been writing articles :) I've also, excitingly, landed a couple 'real publishing' writing gigs, which I'll be plenty excited to talk about when they're published. Due to the current increased amount of writing I have to do on a regular basis both on- and off-wiki, I'm planning to drop this down to monthly so I can spread out my responsibilities a bit. Vaticidalprophet 09:08, 15 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
An
earlier issue of Tech News said that the
citoidAPI would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first.
[49]
Changes later this week
MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles.
[50]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (
calendar).
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 movement has been using
IRC on a network called
Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The
Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have
decided to move to the new
Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a
migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia
discussions about this.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (
calendar).
Welcome, subscribers, to the fourth Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.
Category 1
Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.
This issue's Category 1 articles are:
Lineage (anthropology): A shocking subject to be a sourceless stub, this Vital 4 obviously has so much more to write about than its three sentences. In this state, even a basic improvement would do a ton.
Police memorabilia collecting: Survived AfD not long ago, with plenty of sources given in the discussion to use in the article. "Further reading" may in particular be of use.
Koror City:
Palau may be a small island nation, but having its largest city by far be a stub is unacceptable. (We've managed to
write much more about it over at Wikivoyage, where it's guide-class and about to make a Main Page appearance.) Vital 5 with a healthy couple hundred pageviews a day, the widespread use of English in its native land makes it a more accessible topic than editors afraid of working in countries they're unfamiliar with might worry.
Category 2
Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.
This issue's Category 2 articles are:
List of premature obituaries: A former FL, an eccentric and popular topic, and a refreshing change from the sports statistics and "list of awards received by X" that populate FLC. This list was demoted in 2009 for sourcing concerns, which even at the time were mentioned as potentially fixable.
War: Let's just jump straight into the Overtopics, shall we? This Vital 2 really shows what "Top-importance to the whole encyclopedia" means. Currently B-class -- more B- in my estimate, maybe -- it stands out that non-editor readers on the talk page have qualms with the scope, in particular omissions they expected to find.
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Once GA, now C. Still relatable. This seminal work of literature can certainly be returned to where it was.
Category 3
Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.
This issue's Category 3 articles are:
Byzantine Empire: From the
metapedian perspective, this is perhaps our most important FA -- the oldest, promoted in 2001 (older than some of this newsletter's subscribers!), to retain FA status unbroken to the present day. Speaking
exopedianly, it's still decidedly vital, with nearly three million page views in the last year. FAR was suggested late last year; it hasn't been brought to the chopping block yet, but an article this important both inside and outside of the project deserves to remain in top shape.
Underoath: This GA is recommended for GAR, with complaints about long-unaddressed maintenance tags and sections in dire need of updates. The article gets hundreds of views a day and is translated across plenty of projects.
Acute myeloid leukemia: Medical articles aren't scary! Really! They're not! If I can work on them, so can you! That aside, this FA was given a FAR notice in January. There are sourcing concerns, conveniently assisted by sources left on the talk page. Non-editor readers on the talk have raised concerns about inaccurate prognostic statements.
Letter from the Editor
This issue's reader suggestion is brought to you by Sennecaster:
Margery Wolf: Perhaps the fastest GA delist known to the project, this article was delisted two days after promotion upon discovery of foundational copyvio. Though it was reduced to just four short paragraphs, the sourcing obviously exists to create a high-quality article.
Yes, I know I said I was going to switch to monthly. Let's just go "Vat doesn't really Get Time" and run with it.
The Core Contest is on its last day of entries, and I've picked articles here with an eye to that. It's the first time it's running since 2017, and I for one am looking forward to overhauling
Prehistoric religion. If you feel inspired by anything here, get in there quick! Vaticidalprophet 17:06, 30 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Problems
There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday.
[51]
FoldArchives collapses archived talk page threads in order to reduce screen space
GoToTitle converts the page title into an input field for navigating to other pages
UserHighlighter adds highlighting to links to the userpages, talk pages, and contributions of administrators and other user groups as well as tooltips to indicate which groups a user is in
filterDiff: Adds a "Show changes" button to the filter editor.
filterNotes: Parses filter notes as wikitext (so links are clickable), and signs and dates new comments for you.
filterTest: Adds a "Test changes" button. Opens
Special:AbuseFilter/test with what's currently in the edit form, not with what's saved in the database, so you don't have to copy-paste your changes.
Twinkle has a number of improvements, including that most watchlist defaults now make use of the new
temporary watchlist feature. Other changes include rollbacks treating consecutive IPv6 editors in the same /64 range as the same user, adding a preview for shared IP tagging, a preference for watching users after CSD notification, and for sysops, the ability to
block the /64 and link to a
WP:RfPP request, and new copyright blocks default to indefinite.
Wikipedia:Shortdesc helper now v3.4.17, changes include minor fixes and preventing edits that don't change the description.
Joeytje50's JWB now version 4.1.0, includes the ability to generate page lists from the search tool, major updates to the handling of regular expressions, the storing of user settings, the addition of upload protection, and an option to skip pages that belong to a specific category, among other changes. See
User:Joeytje50/JWB/Changelog for a full list of recent changes.
Wikipedia:User scripts/List has been revamped to make it easier to find scripts suited for your needs. If you know of a cool script that is missing on the list, or a script on the list that is no longer working, please edit the list or let us know on
the talk page.
My apologies for this long-overdue issue, and if I missed any scripts. Hopefully going forward we can go back to monthly releases - any help would be appreciated. Thanks, --
DannyS712 (
talk) 13:04, 2 June 2021 (UTC)reply
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 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (
calendar).
Future changes
The Wikimedia movement uses
Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future.
[52][53][54]
Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct
diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages.
[55]
The
CSRF token parameters in the
action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters.
[56][57]
Wikimedia previously used the
IRC network
Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the
Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new
Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a
migration guide and Wikimedia
discussions about this.
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
Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the
advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile.
[58]
German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC.
[60]
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
[61][62]
Welcome, subscribers, to the fifth Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.
Category 1
Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.
This issue's Category 1 articles are:
Isolar – 1976 Tour: A substantial musical event for one of the most influential albums of its era, but with a rather spindly, table-focused article (I also note no one seems to have given post-inflation numbers for any of the figures).
Occultism (Islam): "Major topic that's a literal stub because it's about something outside the comfort zone of the average editor" of the day. Esotericism in one of the world's major
exoteric religions is, of course, something which can be written about extensively.
G & G v Wikimedia Foundation Inc: Going meta for a moment...This is an interesting case, and it's a shame we discuss it only as a paragraph. It would be fascinating to read further on this topic.
Category 2
Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.
This issue's Category 2 articles are:
Misophonia: A concept, symptom, or disorder -- no one's quite yet drawn the borderlands -- where people are unusually upset at noises such as chewing sounds. The idea may sound odd, but it does distress people with it and those around them. The subject is very popular, with Half Million Award-tier page views, but the readers are served by a rather weak article.
Sparks (band): This eccentric, creative band was a GA long ago, but delisted in 2010. Though undersourced, the article certainly has potential to return to its old status.
Han Xin: One of the great military leaders of ancient China is graced by a massively undersourced article. Several sections have none at all.
Category 3
Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.
This issue's Category 3 articles are:
Wind: This FA is on a huge, important topic, but its star needs some polishing. FAR notice has been given for significant uncited passages. To quote the talk page, the article has good bones, and it can certainly be restored to modern FA status if anyone is able to work on it.
Jeopardy!: The article for perhaps one of the most famous game shows of all time is at GAR for citation issues. Most of the issues brought up can be fixed quite easily, such as locating page numbers.
French fries: Tasty, but needs more sauce. The GAR discusses unsourced sections and unreliable sourcing; I also notice some pretty blatant prose issues and a spindly lead.
Maasai people: The Vital 4 article for this major East African ethnic group was recently significantly reduced due to copyvio. It needs urgent work to restore cored-out content, but the references are still available in the article to simplify the process.
One topic I've been broadly thinking about lately is the concept of GA sweeps. There hasn't been one in well over a decade; discussion of a new one is traditionally stymied by the sheer number of GAs that would need sweeping, considering there are over ten times as many as there were at the last sweep. Nonetheless, there's no dispute that many GAs don't really count as 99.5th percentile articles, or even decent-quality articles (whether one's own personal reading of WIAGA is closer to the former or the latter, and how different those things are, is an exercise for the reader).
I've been brainstorming ideas, and I've been wondering if we can tackle the problem with limited-scope sweeps. One idea would be sweeping popular or vital articles -- those that get enough views to make up a significant proportion of the "GA experience" to readers. Another would be focusing on shorter GAs, which might trend towards a less in-depth treatment of the topic than could really justify the rating. There may very well be a path here to maintaining GA standards, and either of those would have the benefit that they might be more likely to encourage people to work on rather than simply delist articles -- popular topics with lots of interested parties willing to help, or smaller topics that don't seem like too big a challenge to pick up.
Vaticidalprophet 04:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC)reply
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 otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters.
[63]
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between
5:00 and 5:30 UTC.
[64]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (
calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Wikisources have a new
OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your
common.css page.
[66]
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at
14:00 UTC.
[67][68]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (
calendar).
Future changes
Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can
read more and give feedback.
A toolbar will be added to the
Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users.
[69][70]
Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at
WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
An
RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to
TFAs.
Technical news
IP addresses of unregistered users are to
be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how
IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed
at the talk page.
Arbitration
The community authorised
COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the
COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a
motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.
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
The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.
Recent changes
AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses
JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes.
[71]
Problems
InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to
Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org.
[72]
Changes later this week
The tool to
find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year.
[73][74]
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
Some Wikimedia wikis use
Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful.
[75]
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 tool to
find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year.
[76][77]
Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page.
[78]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (
calendar).
Future changes
How media is structured in the
parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can
read more. You can test it on
Testwiki or
Testwiki 2.
The parameters for how you obtain
tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can
read more.
Welcome, subscribers, to the sixth Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.
Category 1
Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.
This issue's Category 1 articles are:
Floating match on card: This famous magic trick is a microstub with an empty section and no meaningful discussion of its methods or effects. Some useful information is available on the talk page.
Erotic horror: A significant literary (or, well...look, you know) genre with significant academic and critical coverage, which you wouldn't know from reading its three-sentence article.
Black ribbon: Currently in poor shape, with unnecessary lists attracting spurious examples, this article nonetheless has potential to cover a coherent topic on a sensitive subject.
Category 2
Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.
This issue's Category 2 articles are:
Violin: This twice-candidate at GAN has good bones, but suffers from expanses of uncited content (and indeed expanses of "people slapping CN tags on literally every sentence"). Much of this information should be citable, and potential exists for this article to stand tall amongst other core music articles.
Art museum: Though this looks a little underrated as a soi-disant "Start", it's nonetheless an important cultural article with significant improvement potential. This was a former candidate for the
Team-B-Vital campaign ran by members of the Wikimedia Discord to bring Vital Articles to B-class status, and while not selected, it has strong potential for anyone interested in working on it.
Grocery store: Daily life has always been one of Wikipedia's coverage gaps. Though this topic is something virtually anyone deals with on a regular basis, the article struggles with cleanup tags, sandwiching, and the weird fear of prose that drives people to put everything they can in a list. With hundreds of views a day, readers deserve an article with a stronger core.
Category 3
Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.
This issue's Category 3 articles are:
Slackers CDs and Games: This GA hasn't had significant content edits since 2008. As much of its content references then-recent controversies, it needs a good look for updating.
Potential superpowers: GA with a multiple issues template, with concerns of outdated information, lack of citations, and potential OR.
Alzheimer's disease: This major medical FA is at FAR due to outdated information, an unfortunately common scourge of medical articles over time. Such an important article needs people willing to get it in good shape.
Letter from the Editor
After my prior thoughts on GA sweeps and their viability, work is beginning to break down what parts of the backlog can be tackled. Planning is beginning at
User:Vaticidalprophet/GA reform and its talk; feel free to give your opinion, participate in current GARs, and assess articles. The
current plan is to look at GAs with outstanding cleanup tags as our first priority.
Sorry for the delay this time around -- I've been having A Month healthwise. I expect to maintain this at an approximately monthly schedule and will try not to let it slip further. I'm enthused by the work going on at GAR lately and hope to work something excellent out of it. Vaticidalprophet 01:54, 26 July 2021 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
A
new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (
calendar).
Future changes
If you use the
Monobook skin you can choose to switch off
responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new
preferenceEnable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can
read more.
An
RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for
G13 speedy deletions.
Technical news
Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating
dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (
T287380)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at
T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at
T287701.
Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly.
[79][80]
Changes later this week
When adding links to a page using
VisualEditor or the
2017 wikitext editor,
disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages.
[81]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (
calendar).
Future changes
The
team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can
read more. They are looking for users who want to
test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
The
Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to
subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (
example).
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 can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at
05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database.
[82]
Changes later this week
The
Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (
calendar).
The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at
T287962.
Future changes
The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an
extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later.
[83]
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 add language links in the sidebar in the
new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet.
[85]
Problems
There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed.
[86][87][88]
Changes later this week
A
revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to
disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be
hidden.
[89]
Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the
Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback
from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your
mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page.
[90]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (
calendar).
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
Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an
advisory published.
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit
some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around
06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (
calendar).
Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).
For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check
on Phabricator.
A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.
Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!
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 musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check
Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.
Problems
Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator.
[91]
Changes later this week
The parameters for how you obtain
tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can
read more about this.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (
calendar).
Future changes
You will be able to read but not edit
Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around
05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
[92]
A
discussion is open to decide when, if ever, should discord logs be eligible for removal when posted onwiki (including whether to oversight them)
A
RfC on the next steps after the trial of
pending changes on
TFAs has resulted in a 30 day trial of automatic semi protection for TFAs.
Technical news
The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the
mediawiki page.
Arbitration
A request for comment is in progress to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of
the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules. Comments and new proposals are welcome.
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 wikis that have
Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features.
[93]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break.
[94][95]
Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing. The
impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment.
Learn more.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team
has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (
calendar).
Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner.
[98]
You can add language links in the sidebar in
the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet.
[99]
The
syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the
Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output.
[100][101]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed.
[102]
A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping
Jon (WMF) on wiki or in
phabricator if any problems are reported.
Problems
There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers.
[103]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (
calendar).
The
meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0.
[104]
Future changes
The
Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in
Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in
Editing Preferences.
[105]
The
previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow
T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.
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
iOS 15 has a new function called
Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use
Safari browser. This is like using a
VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for
iCloud. It will come to Safari users on
OSX later. There is a
technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.
Problems
Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the
portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon.
[106]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (
calendar).
The
GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed
Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October.
[107]
A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old
root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can
read more.
You can
receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find
more information in T282029.
Following
an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain
high-risk templates.
Following
a discussion at the Village Pump, there is consensus to treat discord logs the same as IRC logs. This means that discord logs will be oversighted if posted onwiki.
A
motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in
the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
Following the closure of the
Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions
are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
The Arbitration Committee
encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.
Miscellaneous
Editors
have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to
add themselves to the mentor list.
The
community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can
let the developers know.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (
calendar).
Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response.
[109]
A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can
let the developers know.
Future changes
You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the
iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions.
[110]
The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript.
[111]
The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "
mediawiki.cookie" module.
[112]
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 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (
calendar).
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
Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can
read more.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (
calendar).
3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a
proxy or a
VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a
discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
Wikimedia Enterprise is a new
API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can
read more. You can also ask the team questions
on Zoom on
22 October 15:00 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
Coolest Tool Award 2021 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 27 October.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 October. It will be on all wikis from 28 October (
calendar).
Future changes
Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience.
The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax.
[113]
The version of the
Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change.
[114]
Phase 2 of the 2021
RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues
found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
There is a limit on the amount of emails a user can send each day. This limit is now global instead of per-wiki. This change is to prevent abuse.
[115]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 November. It will be on all wikis from 4 November (
calendar).
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
Mobile IP editors are now able to receive warning notices indicating they have a talk page message on the mobile website (similar to the orange banners available on desktop). These notices will be displayed on every page outside of the main namespace and every time the user attempts to edit. The notice on desktop now has a slightly different colour.
[116][117]
In the future, unregistered editors will be given an identity that is not their
IP address. This is for legal reasons. A new user right will let editors who need to know the IPs of unregistered accounts to fight vandalism, spam, and harassment, see the IP. You can read the
suggestions for how that identity could work and
discuss on the talk page.
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
Most
large file uploads errors that had messages like "stashfailed" or "DBQueryError" have now been fixed. An
incident report is available.
Problems
Sometimes, edits made on iOS using the visual editor save groups of numbers as telephone number links, because of a feature in the operating system. This problem is under investigation.
[119]
There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of a configuration error.
[120]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 November. It will be on all wikis from 18 November (
calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
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 30 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 December. It will be on all wikis from 2 December (
calendar).
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
MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 December. It will be on all wikis from 9 December (
calendar).
At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at Special:MentorDashboard. It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the
Growth features. You can learn more about
activating the mentor list on your wiki and about
the mentor dashboard project.
The predecessor to the current
MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), action=ajax, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module.
[121]
An old ResourceLoader module, jquery.jStorage, which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to mediawiki.storage instead.
[122]
Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (
T284642)
The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (
T293866)
The already authorized standard
discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the
Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed,
have been made permanent.
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on
Phabricator and on
MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things
bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
Our
last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.
Overall
Between September and December 2019, there were 33
BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput:
Beeblebroxnoted that
the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of
UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago.
TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While
OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately,
SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill:
TAnthonypointed out that
reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator
Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021,
Curb Safe Charmer had
taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
There are now default
short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis, [[WB:]] will go to the local language default for the [[Project:]] namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via
the usual process.
[123]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 December. It will be on all wikis from 16 December (
calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Tech News
Because of the
holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.
Recent changes
Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension (<DynamicPageList>) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis.
[124]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
The Wikimedia
Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to
claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February.
[125]
Hello everyone, and welcome to the 22nd issue of the Wikipedia
Scripts++ Newsletter. This issue will be covering new and updated user scripts from the past seven months (June through December 2021).
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script
here!
Featured script
LuckyRename, by Alexis Jazz, is this month's featured script. LuckyRename makes requesting file moves easier, and automates the many steps in file moving (including automatic replacement of existing usage). Give it a shot!
Updated scripts
SD0001: hide-reverted-edits has been updated to take into account changes in reversion tools like Twinkle and RedWarn.
ClaudineChionh: SkinSwitcher (a fork and update of
Eizen's
script) provides an options menu/toolbox/toolbar allowing users to view a given page in MediaWiki's default skins.
Wikipedia:User scripts/Ranking is a sortable table of Wikipedia's thousand-or-so most commonly used scripts; it includes their author, last modification date, installation count, and sometimes a short description.
Toolhub is a community managed catalog of software tools used in the Wikimedia movement. Technical volunteers can use Toolhub to document the tools that they create or maintain. All Wikimedians can use Toolhub to search for tools to help with their workflows and to create lists of useful tools to share with others.
draft-sorter sorts AfC drafts by adding WikiProject banners to their talk pages. It supersedes
User:Enterprisey/draft-sorter, adding a few features and fixing some bugs.
BooksToSfn adds a portlet link in
Visual Editor's source mode editing, in main namespace articles or in the user's Sandbox. When clicked, it converts one {{
cite book}} inside a <ref>...</ref> tag block into an {{
Sfn}}.
diffedit enables editing directly from viewing a diff "when, for instance, you notice a tiny mistake deep into an article, and don't want to edit the entire article and re-find that one line to fix that tiny mistake".
warnOnLargeFile warns you if you're about to open a very large file (width/height >10,000px or file size >100 MB) from a file page.
QuickDiff (by OneTwoThreeFall at Fandom) lets you quickly view any diff link on a wiki, whether on Recent Changes, contribs pages, history pages, the diff view itself, or elsewhere. For more information, view its
page on Fandom.
talkback creates links after user talk page links like this: |C|TB (with the first linking to the user's contributions, and the latter giving the option of sending a {{talkback}} notice). It also adds a [copy] link next to section headers.
diff-link shows "copy" links on history and contributions pages that copy an internal link to the diff (e.g.,
Special:Diff/1026402230) to your clipboard when clicked.
auto-watchlist-expiry automatically watchlists every page you edit for a user-definable duration (you can still pick a different time using the dropdown, though).
generate pings generates the wikitext needed to ping all members of a category, up to 50 editors (the limit defined by MediaWiki).
share ExpandTemplates url allows for easy sharing of your inputs to
Special:ExpandTemplates. It adds a button that, when clicked, copies a shareable URL to your exact invocation of the page,
like this. Other editors do not need to have this script installed in order to access the URL generated.
show tag names shows the real names of tags next to their display names in places such as page revision histories or the watchlist.
ColourContrib color-codes the user contributions page so that pages you've edited last are sharply distinguished from pages where another editor was the last to edit the page.
All in all, some very neat scripts were written in these last few months. Hoping to see many more in the next issue --
drop us a line on the talk page if you've been writing (or seeing) anything cool and good. Filling in for DannyS712, this has been jp×g. Take care, and merry Christmas! jp×g 07:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)reply
Following consensus at the
2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right
has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.
The
functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to
the Arbitration Committee.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
A oauth_consumer variable has been added to the
AbuseFilter to enable identifying changes made by specific tools.
[126]
Gadgets are
now able to directly include JSON pages. This means some gadgets can now be configured by administrators without needing the interface administrator permission, such as with the Geonotice gadget.
[127]
Gadgets
can now specify page actions on which they are available. For example, |actions=edit,history will load a gadget only while editing and on history pages.
[128]
Gadgets can now be loaded on demand with the withgadget URL parameter. This can be used to replace
an earlier snippet that typically looks like withJS or withCSS.
[129]
Four special pages (and their API counterparts) now have a maximum database query execution time of 30 seconds. These special pages are: RecentChanges, Watchlist, Contributions, and Log. This change will help with site performance and stability. You can read
more details about this change including some possible solutions if this affects your workflows.
[133]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 January. It will be on all wikis from 13 January (
calendar).
Events
Community Wishlist Survey 2022 begins. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC.
Learn more.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
When using
WikiEditor (also known as the 2010 wikitext editor), people will now see a warning if they link to disambiguation pages. If you click "Review link" in the warning, it will ask you to correct the link to a more specific term. You can
read more information about this completed 2021 Community Wishlist item.
When asked to create a new page or talk page section, input fields can be
"preloaded" with some text. This feature is now limited to wikitext pages. This is so users can't be tricked into making malicious edits. There is a discussion about
if this feature should be re-enabled for some content types.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 January. It will be on all wikis from 20 January (
calendar).
Events
Community Wishlist Survey 2022 continues. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC.
Learn more.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 January. It will be on all wikis from 27 January (
calendar).
The following languages can now be used with
syntax highlighting: BDD, Elpi, LilyPond, Maxima, Rita, Savi, Sed, Sophia, Spice, .SRCINFO.
You can now access your watchlist from outside of the user menu in the
new Vector skin. The watchlist link appears next to the notification icons if you are at the top of the page.
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Events
You can see the results of the
Coolest Tool Award 2021 and learn more about 14 tools which were selected this year.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
If a gadget should support the new ?withgadget URL parameter that was
announced 3 weeks ago, then it must now also specify supportsUrlLoad in the gadget definition (
documentation).
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Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 February. It will be on all wikis from 3 February (
calendar).
Future changes
A change that was
announced last year was delayed. It is now ready to move ahead:
The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for
technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in three weeks. You can comment
in Phabricator if you have objections. As usual, these labels can be translated on translatewiki (
direct links are available) or by administrators on your wiki.
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on
Phabricator and on
MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things
bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.
Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.
Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71
BRFAs. Of these, Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with N2 8 denied, ? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
January 2020
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.
A new
Pywikibot release dropped support for
Python 3.4, and it was expected that support for
Python 2.7 would be removed in coming updates.
Toolforge itself planned to drop Python 2 support in 2022.
On February 1, some
concerns were raised about
ListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operator
Magnus Manske (who originally coded the
Phase II software|precursor of
MediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarily blocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
In March, a long
discussion was started at
Wikipedia talk:Bot policy by
Skdb about the troubling trend of bots "expiring" without explanation after their owners became inactive. This can happen for a variety of reasons --
API changes break code, hosting providers' software updates break code, hosting accounts lapse, software changes make bots' edits unnecessary, and policy changes make bots' edits unwanted. The most promising solution seemed to be
Toolforge hosting (although it has some problems of its own, like the occasional necessity of refactoring code).
A
discussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started by
Barkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and adding
non-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It was blocked on April 10; the next day it was unblocked, reblocked from article space, reblocked "for specified non-editing actions", unblocked, and indeffed. The next week, several
safeguards were implemented in its code by Magnus; the bot was allowed to roam free once more on April 18.
Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via
unified login, like a talk page at
Commons or at
Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like
Phabricator or
GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise
anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.
May 2020
We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots
MajavahBot 3, an impressively meta bot task, was approved this month for maintaining a list of bots running on the English Wikipedia. The page, located at
User:MajavahBot/Bot status report, is updated every 24 hours; it contains a list of all accounts with the bot flag, as well as their operator, edit count, last activity date, last edit date, last logged action date, user groups and block status.
In July 2017,
Headbomb made a
proposal that a section of the
Wikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019,
Lua code was written superseding
Legobot's tasks on that page, and operator
Legoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, a
partial-block of Legobot for the dashboard was proposed. Some months later, on June 16, Headbomb said: "A full block serves nothing. A partial block solves all current issues [...] Just fucking do it. It's been 3 years now." The next day, however, Legoktm disabled the task, and the dashboard was successfully refactored.
On June 7,
RexxS blocked
Citation bot for
disruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, a
discussion on the bots noticeboard was opened, saying "it is a widely-used and useful bot, but it has one of the longest block logs for any recently-operating bot on Wikipedia". While its last BRFA approval was in 2011, its code and functionality had changed dramatically since then, and
AntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. Maintainer
AManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a proper
test suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like a
June 2019 incident in which a
LTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
David Tornheim opened a discussion about
whether bots based on closed-source code should be permitted, and proposed that they not. He cited a recent case in which a maintainer had said "I can only suppose that the code that is available on GitHub is not the actual code that was running on [the bot]". Some disagreed:
Naypta said that "I like free software as much as the next person, and I strongly believe that bot operators should make their bot code public, but I don't think it should be that they must do so".
The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for
technical reasons. You can comment
in Phabricator if you have objections.
The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant
Village Pump discussion.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month.
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Problems
A code-change last week to fix a bug with
Live Preview may have caused problems with some local gadgets and user-scripts. Any code with skin-specific behaviour for vector should be updated to also check for vector-2022.
A code-snippet, global search, and example are available.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 February. It will be on all wikis from 10 February (
calendar).