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Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new
advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated.
[1]
- Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin.
[2]
Changes later this week
- Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week.
[3]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
- The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21.
Full announcement,
Phabricator task.
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18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Tech News
- There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.
Problems
Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can
read more to see how to fix the filters.
- Only six accounts can be created from one
IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again.
[4]
Changes later this week
- Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one
IP address. An IP address can be
whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show
CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday.
[5]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
- There is an
RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit
abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can
read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbies
will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead.
[6]
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15:20, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can use the new
termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages.
[7]
The
new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
- The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues.
[8]
- The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute.
[9]
- The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:.
[10]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (
calendar).
- When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the
Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to
change your password for a
stronger password.
[11]
Meetings
Future changes
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09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Hi, I like your
WP:WikiProject Amateur radio userbox, and I'd be interested in adding that to my list of userboxes as well. I'm not sure how you set yours up, but would appreciate some assistance in how I can do that for mine as well.
Thanks
Zul32 (
talk)
16:50, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
- Hey! You can use {{
User:UBX/WikiProject Amateur radio}} —
danhash (
talk)
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 35, July – August 2019
- Wikimania
- We're building something great, but..
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- A Wikibrarian's story
- Bytes in brief
Read the full newsletter
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
06:58, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed.
[16]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
2 October at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
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16:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Problems
- There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon.
[19]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
- The
Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can
leave feedback.
- The
URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page
would be
https://www.wikidata.org/
instead. You can
tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki.
- There is a new
technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community.
Subscribe to get the information in the future.
Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria
can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.
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15:35, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (
calendar).
Meetings
Future changes
-
Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer
supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You
can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else.
[21]
- In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can
read more and discuss.
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23:33, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The
API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as internal
. API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives.
[22]
Problems
- There is a
translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed.
[23]
- The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed.
[24]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (
calendar).
-
Reference Previews will be a beta feature on
all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
23 October. See
how to join.
Tech news prepared by
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14:29, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can post proposals for the
Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the
Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can
read more about the format for this year.
- Mobile users now have a specific design for their Watchlist.
[25]
[26]
- You can share feedback and ideas on the
Desktop Improvements project. The goal is to make the interface easier to use for readers and editors without removing any functionality. The Foundation's Readers Web team will work on this over the next two years.
OOUI now allows using px
(pixels) instead of em
(
em) for some specific cases.
[27]
[28]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 October. It will be on all wikis from 31 October (
calendar).
Meetings
Future changes
- There will be no software changes from 19 December to 2 January. The first MediaWiki version next year will come the week of 6 January.
[29]
Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015, this information was moved from global variables named wg*
to mw.config
. The old global variables will be removed later this year. You can
know more about it and tell the developers if you want to try this out on your wiki first.
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16:13, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
- At
Special:Contributions you could see up to 5000 edits at the same time if you edited the
URL. This has been lowered to 500. This is to stop requests which break the sites.
[30]
Changes later this week
MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry
can set the default length to block a user for your wiki. You will be able to use MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip
to set a different default block length for IP editors.
[31]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 November. It will be on all wikis from 7 November (
calendar).
Meetings
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16:47, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
22:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
20:16, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 36, September – October 2019
Sent by
MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
05:20, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the
desktop improvements project. You can turn on
advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a
gadget or user script.
[33]
-
Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can
report them.
[34]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (
calendar). This is because of holidays.
Meetings
Future changes
- You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view.
[35]
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16:51, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest
tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
-
Mix'n'match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (
calendar).
Meetings
Future changes
There will be a new schema for
XML dumps. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work.
[36]
The {{REVISIONID}}
magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns ""
(empty string). When you read a page it returns "-"
(dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces.
[37]
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16:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)