Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
New features
You can now use the "Autonym" font of the
Universal Language Selector (ULS) to display the name of languages (for example in navigation templates) in their correct script. To do this, add the CSS class "autonym" to the elements that include language names. Note that this font only works for the name of languages, not for any other text.
[1]
Problems
There was a
problem with Parsoid (the program used by VisualEditor to convert wikitext to annotated HTML) on November 4, between 19:40 and 20:40 (UTC). Encoding issues caused non-ASCII characters (including those with
diacritics, like "é") to be broken when converted to wikitext and saved to the page.
[2]
Future
The
Beta Features tool is now available on Commons and Meta-Wiki. With it, you can test new features before they're added for everyone. The plan is to add this tool to all wikis on November 21.
[3]
MediaWiki 1.23wmf3 was added to test wikis on November 7. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 12 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 14 (
calendar).
[4]
The
MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis.
[5]
The button of the Search page will soon be changed to be blue and bigger (
see the difference).
[6]
You will soon be able to add a page name as parameter for {{REVISIONID}}, {{REVISIONUSER}} and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and similar functions, by writing for example {{REVISIONID:Apple}}.
[7]
In the future, when you hide a CentralNotice banner on a wiki, it will also be hidden on other Wikimedia sites.
[8]
Was there a particular reason why my
unlogged in edits were reverted? I didn't think I add anything inconsistent with the page guidelines for fiction, and in one case your revert destroyed a table that I went in to correctly format, which has left it broken in your current version. If nothing else, you've got an obligation to fix the latter since that was a constructive edit, but before I assume that my edits were out of line or unneeded I'd like your reply on this matter.
TomStar81 (
Talk) 05:28, 15 November 2013 (UTC)reply
The edits wander into triviality. The "currently" serving language is in-universe and the assertion lazily sourced. Copyedit was sloppy, i.e. lacking proper caps. Between that and the IP, I assumed the table was similarly well-intentioned but inappropriate for the already crufty. However, it does look clean and I'll restore it. --
EEMIV (
talk) 07:06, 15 November 2013 (UTC)reply
Can you offer substantiation for the Enterprise-J as Universe class? I don't see any third-party sourcing, online at least, beyond speculation/"an idea" by Doug Drexler. --
EEMIV (
talk) 07:10, 15 November 2013 (UTC)reply
I didn't add the Universe class section, I just fixed the table when I noticed it was broken since I like a tidy page. Since that was already in the article when I got here I assumed it had been added by someone who was knowledgeable about the ship, but if its questionable then go ahead and axe it.
TomStar81 (
Talk) 07:19, 15 November 2013 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Problems
There was a problem caused by too many requests to the database on November 14.
[9]
Future
MediaWiki 1.23wmf4 was added to test wikis on November 14. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 19 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 21 (
calendar).
The new
Search tool (
CirrusSearch) will be added to *.wikimedia.org, Wikimania and Wikisource wikis on November 19, and Wiktionary wikis on November 21 (except where it's already available). Once it is added, you can test it by adding &srbackend=CirrusSearch to the address of the search results page. It will become the main search engine on Wikivoyage wikis on November 21.
[10]
The
MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 19 instead of November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis.
[11]
You can't prod something that's previously gone through AFD. I moved it to AFD for you. Ten Pound Hammer • (
What did I screw up now?) 03:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)reply
Blaster
Hello, regarding
Blaster (Star Wars), I've given the article a bit of an overhaul. I was wondering if you would give it a second look? There are some additional sources out there, but I was not able to preview them. There could be more detail about the design of the weapons (especially to replace the "prop blog" passage still in the article) as well as the science behind it (whether or not it is feasible in the real world). What do you think?
Erik (
talk |
contribs) 15:41, 22 November 2013 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
New features
The
Beta Features announced before are now available on all Wikimedia wikis. You can test new features easily by
changing your Beta preferences. VisualEditor is one of those features on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. There is also a new media viewer and changes in the article text style.
[12]
Tools developers can now
create tools that use the
OAuth protocol to connect to accounts on Wikimedia sites. As a user, you can use those tools to make edits and other changes with your account without giving the tool your password.
[13]
com/2008/12/09/exclusive-interview-roberto-orci-on-all-the-latest-with-star-trek-and-more/]</ref>). Its registry number, NCC-0514, comes from Abrams' birthdate of [[May 14]].
"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy". This ship is destroyed by the simulator and you cannot save it. />
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
The
CommonsMetadata feature was added to all wikis. It creates metadata information about multimedia files (like their license) that can be read automatically by computer programs. It not only works for Commons, but for all wikis, and you can use it for files on your wiki by
editing templates used to describe metadata.
[15]
You can now paste formatted content copied from external sources (not just as plain text) into VisualEditor; this includes copy/pasting from other VisualEditor windows.
[17]
You can now open VisualEditor by adding ?veaction=edit to the page URL, regardless of your user preferences.
[18]
Many bugs have been fixed, and VisualEditor should also look faster, for example when you save a page.
[19]
Problems
Due to issues, the new search tool ("
CirrusSearch") was recently removed from wikis where it was enabled, then added again.
[20]
Future
MediaWiki 1.23wmf6 was added to test wikis on December 5. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 10 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 12 (
calendar).
The old Etherpad tool (replaced by a
new version) will be removed on December 30, 2013. You can still save old pads before that date using the old address:
https://etherpad-old.wikimedia.org.
[21]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
The toolbar is now simpler; all text styles (bold, italics, underline, subscript, etc.) are in the same menu, and the "More" menu is called "Insert".
[24]
You can now use a basic tool to add special characters to your text. You can add more characters (useful in your language) by editing the MediaWiki interface
on translatewiki.net.
The tool to add and edit mathematical text is now called "formula".
[25]
Problems
There was a problem with the "Create a book" tool (
Collection); books could only be exported to PDF format. The change has been undone.
[26]
The log-in system for external tools ("OAuth") was broken on wikis that tested the new search tool. It was fixed last week.
[27][28]
MediaWiki 1.23wmf7 was added to test wikis on December 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 17 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 19 (
calendar).
You will soon be able to select the language of SVG images that have translations using a drop-down menu on the image page. (
see example)
[30]
GLAMToolset, a tool to help
GLAM groups (like museums) upload many pictures to Commons, will be added to Commons on December 17.
[31]
A
Draft namespace will be added to the English Wikipedia to make it easier to create new pages. You will be able to use VisualEditor for drafts if you have enabled it.
[32][33]
Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the
request for comment on Talk:Family name. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see
suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from
Wikipedia:Feedback request service. —
Legobot (
talk) 00:02, 21 December 2013 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on December 19. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on December 31 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 2, 2014 (
calendar).
You can now test the new search tool ("
CirrusSearch") on all Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikimedia chapter wikis hosted on Foundation servers. Enable "New search" in your
Beta features preferences.
[35]
There was a bug where
notifications were not sent when the signature of the user leaving the message linked to a translated namespace. The problem was fixed in the software and will soon be fixed on Wikimedia sites.
[36][37]
You can now use the log-in system for external tools (
OAuth) on all Wikimedia wikis that use the
unified login.
[38]
If your wiki adds stars or other icons to interwiki links for featured articles in other languages, you may need to
change the JavaScript code.
[39]
You can thank other users for their edits even if your browser does not have JavaScript.
[40][41]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
You can now see the text of DjVu and PDF files in search results on wikis testing the new search tool (
CirrusSearch).
[55][56]
With the new version of the
Wikibase DataModel extension, you can install it outside Wikimedia wikis.
[57]
CirrusSearch will be added as the second search method for Spanish (es), French (fr), Portuguese (pt) and Russian (ru) wikis on December 30. Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies and Wikinews users will also be able to enable it in their
Beta Features options.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 2. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on January 7 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 9 (
calendar).
On January 2, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage projects were broken for 2 hours due to language cache update issues.
On the same day, it was not possible to edit most wikis for about 30 minutes, due to a database replication problem.
Future software changes
The new search tool (
CirrusSearch) will be added as the default search method for Italian Wikipedia, French Wikisource, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage sites, and as a second search method for the German Wikipedia and all Wikibooks sites on January 6.
[67]
Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian Wikipedia users will also be able to enable CirrusSearch in their
Beta Features options.
[68]
Plural form rules for some languages
will be changed. Many translations of the user interface for Belarusian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian and other languages will need to be changed.
[69][70][71]
You will see a warning when you try to delete a page linked to from other pages.
[72][73]
You will be able to use keyboard shortcuts in the
Translate tool, by pressing Alt+1 and similar key groups.
[76][77]
E-mails sent by MediaWiki will include the name of the site in their From: line. You will be able to change this name on your wiki by editing the MediaWiki:Emailsender page.
[78][79]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
You can read a
recent blog post about how Tech News is put together, translated and sent to you across wikis each week.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 9. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 14, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 16 (
calendar).
Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons may be slow due to a search engine issue.
[82]
VisualEditor news
VisualEditor will be added for all users on several Wikipedias on January 13.
[83]
You can now add and remove __NOTOC__, __FORCETOC__ and __NOEDITSECTION__ in the page metadata menu.
[84][85][86]
Problems
For a few hours on January 6, it was not possible to edit pages using the
Translate tool on Wikimedia Commons and the Wikimania 2013 wiki, due to a settings error.
[87][88]
For about 20 minutes on January 9, there were problems with
CSS and
JavaScript due to high server load.
Future software changes
Wikidata will be added to all Wikisource wikis on January 14.
[89]
The new search tool (
CirrusSearch) will be added as the second search method for the English Wikipedia on January 13. On Wikibooks and the German Wikipedia, you will also be able to test it by adding it in your
Beta Features options.
Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the
request for comment on Talk:Comedian. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see
suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from
Wikipedia:Feedback request service. —
Legobot (
talk) 00:05, 20 January 2014 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (
calendar).
As of January 16, you can make and use
guided tours on the Asturian, Farsi and Russian Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to
translate it and ask in
Bugzilla.
[95][96]
You can give comments on an idea to have a
fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages.
[97]
You can
watch a video to learn how to report problems in Bugzilla.
[98]
VisualEditor news
In the toolbar, the menu to edit the styles (like bold, italic, etc.) now has a down arrow (). The order of the Insert menu has also changed a little.
You can now edit <gallery /> tags with a very basic tool.
[99]
You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu.
[100]
When you change categories, you will now see them when you save the page.
[101]
When you edit templates, you will now see the parameters in the right order. The ones that you must add have a star (*).
[102][103]
The page will now be saved faster, thanks to a new way of coding the text that sends 40% less text to the servers.
[104]
There was a problem with search on the English and German Wikipedias between January 6 and January 14. You could not see new pages and changes in search results.
[106]
There were "pool timeouts" errors on several wikis on January 13; it was caused by a code change that was made to fix another problem.
[107]
On January 17, Bugzilla and Wikimedia Labs were broken for about 20 minutes due to network problems. IRC channels with recent changes (
irc.wikimedia.org) were broken for about two hours.
[108]
Future software changes
If you have removed JavaScript in your web browser, you will soon be able to see the orange bar saying that you have new messages. If you have changed how the bar looks with a gadget, you may need to change the gadget again.
[109][110]
You will soon be able to add a given Flickr user to a blacklist so that their files can't be uploaded using
UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons and other wikis.
[111]
You will see a warning when you try to delete a page included in at least one other page.
[112]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
Pages from Wikimedia sites now load faster in your browser thanks to "module storage", a way for your browser to save data like JavaScript and CSS on your computer to avoid downloading them again.
See video.
[115]
The code used to show videos has changed. You should be able to play the video on the page, with the play button on top of the video. If you see the play button on the right of the video, or if clicking on the video leads you to the original file, please
file a bug or tell
User:Bawolff.
[116]
The Special:ActiveUsers page will be removed because it's too slow.
[117]
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (
calendar).
Problems
On January 21,
Universal Language Selector was turned off on all Wikimedia sites because
it makes pages load slowly. If you want to use web fonts, or write in scripts that aren't on your keyboard, you need to add it as an option
in your preferences. It will be turned back on when the issues are resolved.
[118]
For about 20 minutes on the same day, there were problems with
CSS and
JavaScript due to high server load.
Future software changes
You can
give comments about the new version of "
Winter", a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages.
[119]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 30. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 6 (
calendar).
You can now link to diffs using [[Special:Diff/12345]] and similar links.
[124]
There is no longer an option to hide tables of contents on all pages.
[125]
Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons is now faster, after a bug was fixed on January 29.
[126]
All Wikimedia wikis now have high-resolution
favicons.
[127]
VisualEditor news
You can now see a list of keyboard shortcuts by pressing Ctrl+/ inside VisualEditor.
[128]
Future software changes
Edits and files hidden with the
Oversight tool will be moved to the
RevisionDelete system. The Oversight tool will then be removed from Wikimedia wikis.
[129][130][131]
For languages where not all sister projects exist, you will be able to link to other language projects using double interwikis (:ko:v, :v:ko, etc.).
[132]
It will soon be possible to use the
GettingStarted tool on other wikis than the English Wikipedia. You can translate it on
Translatewiki.net.
[133]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 13 (
calendar).
The Vector search box was changed to fix old display and accessibility issues; for example, you can now use full-text search even if you have disabled JavaScript. Please report any problems you see. The option to disable the "simplified search bar" on Vector will also be removed.
[139][140][141][142][143]
You are now
notified when someone adds a link to your user page on wikis where it didn't work before (wikis with dates in the year-month-day order, including Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and some variants of Chinese).
[144]
VisualEditor news
You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool.
[145][146]
The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed.
[147][148][149]
Problems
On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue.
[150]
On February 6, some wikis were broken for about half an hour in total due to a problem with the
Math extension.
Future software changes
Some methods from Scribunto's
mw.message library will be removed after February 18. If you use them in your templates or modules, please check to make sure that things will not break.
[151][152]
You will soon be able to use
GettingStarted on 23 new Wikipedias. It helps new users by
listing possible tasks and giving help. The new version was also added to the English Wikipedia on February 7th.
[153]
You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (
CirrusSearch).
[154][155]
The
WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster.
[156]
bugzilla.wikimedia.org will be updated this week. You won't be able to access it from 22:00 UTC on February 12 until 01:00 UTC on February 13 at the latest.
[165]
The <poem> tag will be renamed to <lines>. The old tag will still work.
[166]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 20 (
calendar).
The new search tool (
CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces.
[169]
You can now directly link to files viewed with
MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files.
[170]
You can read the
summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014.
[171]
Problems
On February 9,
Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an
XFS file system problem.
[172]
On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue.
[173]
On the same day, for about 20 minutes there were issues with page loading due to database problems.
There were issues with page loading between 21:00 UTC on February 13 and 11:00 UTC on February 14 for users in Europe. It was due to a cache server problem.
On February 14, all sites were broken for about 15 minutes for users in Southeast Asia, Oceania and the western part of North America. It was due to problems with cache servers.
VisualEditor news
The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page.
[174]
You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor.
[175]
Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing.
[176]
You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor.
[177][178][179]
A file that you uploaded or altered,
File:Anakin Skywalker.png, has been listed at
Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the
discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you.
Stefan2 (
talk) 14:01, 18 February 2014 (UTC)reply
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 27 (
calendar).
The new search tool (
CirrusSearch) was added to the Italian Wikiquote and all Wikiversity projects. Users can now enable it in their
Beta options.
[180][181]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.23wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 6 (
calendar).
When users enable web fonts by default,
Universal Language Selector will now log if they don't have fonts to display pages correctly. This information will be used by developers to improve font support in the future. Read more about
missing fonts.
[195]
Article Feedback Tool will be removed from the English and French Wikipedias on March 3. It will also no longer be possible to add this tool to any Wikimedia wiki.
[212][213]
Wikis using the
new search tool will come back to the old tool for a few hours starting at 00:00 UTC on March 6.
[214]
Problems
For about an hour on February 23, there were problems with page loading due to a MediaWiki bug.
[215]