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Tech News: 2024-21
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
Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title.
[1]
New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description.
[2][3]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (
calendar).
[4][5]
The HTML used to render all headings
is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and
report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a
Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
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
Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see
T365107 and
T365119.
In March 2024 a new
addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and
give feedback.
Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes: .collapsible, .multicol, .reflist, .coordinates, .topicon.
Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (
calendar).
[6][7]
When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules.
[8]
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
It is now possible for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript.
Documentation is available.
[9]
The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category" to "MediaWiki:Wikihiero-usage-tracking-category".
[10]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 June. It will be on all wikis from 6 June (
calendar).
[12][13]
Future changes
Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read.
Learn more.
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please
consult the documentation and please get in touch on
SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
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 software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering.
[14]
The HTML used to render all headings
is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and
report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a
Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
The HTML markup used for citations by
Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the mw-reference-text class, Parsoid now also adds the reference-text class for better compatibility with the legacy parser.
More details are available.
[15]
Problems
There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed.
[16]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (
calendar).
[17][18]
The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations:
Parsoid will now generate a <span class="mw-cite-backlink"> wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup.
More details are available.
[19]
On multilingual wikis that use the <translate> system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community
requests it.
[20]
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
People who attempt to add an external link in the visual editor will now receive immediate feedback if they attempt to link to a domain that a project has decided to block. Please see
Edit check for more details.
[21]
The dark mode
beta feature is now available on category and help pages, as well as more special pages. There may be contrast issues. Please report bugs on the
project talk page.
[24]
Problems
Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center.
[25]
Last week, styling updates were made to the Vector 2022 skin. This caused unforeseen issues with templates, hatnotes, and images. Changes to templates and hatnotes were reverted. Most issues with images were fixed. If you still see any,
report them here.
[26]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (
calendar).
[27][28]
Starting June 18, the
Reference Edit Check will be deployed to
a new set of Wikipedias. This feature is intended to help newcomers and to assist edit-patrollers by inviting people who are adding new content to a Wikipedia article to add a citation when they do not do so themselves. During
a test at 11 wikis, the number of citations added
more than doubled when Reference Check was shown to people. Reference Check is
community configurable.
[29]
Mailing lists will be unavailable for roughly two hours on Tuesday 10:00–12:00 UTC. This is to enable migration to a new server and upgrade its software.
[30]