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ArbCom 2017 election voter message
Hello, Rcsprinter123. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The
Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the
Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose
site bans,
topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The
arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
You can now use
live updates for recent changes if you use
the new filters. This feature updates the filtered recent changes every three seconds when you activate it.
[2]
There is an experimental
onion service for Wikimedia projects.
[3]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 December. It will be on all wikis from 7 December (
calendar).
Very old versions of the
Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems.
[4]
Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in
Linter categories will switch to use the
Remex parsing library. This is
to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.
[5][6]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
5 December at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
6 December at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
The Community Liaisons team at the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for
active tech ambassadors. This is to make sure the Wikimedia communities get all the information they need about new features and can be involved in the technical development.
[7]
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 new
tag marks edits where a redirect was created or removed. This still works when the editor writes something else in the edit summary. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist.
[9]
If you use
Chrome on
Android, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article.
[10]
Filter by number of edits or filter by time range have been grouped on a same menu on the recent changes page if you use the new filters. The "View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent.
[11]
Some of the web fonts that were provided by the
Universal Language Selector extension are being removed. This is to reduce the load time on pages. The
web fonts were added many years ago to help users read text in scripts which did not have fonts or had broken fonts. This is not the case any more. You can
check the status page for a list of all web fonts and whether they are currently being used and especially for special requirements.
[12]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
12 December at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
13 December at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
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 8 January 2018.
Problems
When you import a page from another wiki the usernames of the users who edited the article on the wiki you imported it from are shown in the article history. This should link to the users on the original wiki. A script to fix this caused problems for Wikidata and German Wikipedia. It also created a large number of
SUL accounts on wikis where editors had never edited.
[13]
Some bot owners got email about their bots logging in from a new computer. If this is from one or a couple of wikis, you can turn these messages off
in your preferences on those wikis until the problem has been solved. If not, you can report more about the problem
in Phabricator.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
19 December at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Files on Commons will have
structured metadata in the future. The developers are now looking for examples of different kinds of metadata to make sure they are aware of them when they build prototypes for structured data on Commons. You can
read more and help by giving examples of interesting media files.
The
Structured Commons team are making sure Commons work with structured data. If you regularly contribute to Commons and Wikidata you can
answer a survey that helps the team prioritise the tools that are important for the Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey ends on 22 December. You can
read more on Commons. You can also
help the team decide on better names for "captions" and "descriptions". This ends on 3 January 2018.
Hi. You just created a talk page to a non-existent redirect?
Onel5969TT me 16:06, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
Ah yeah - the page is creation protected but I forgot that my script would create the talkpage regardless. Either the protection needs lifting to allow the the redirect (which seems reasonable to me), or the talk could be CSDd. Rcsprinter123(yarn) 16:54, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
No worries... but if the redirect isn't created you should definitely CSD the talk page.
Onel5969TT me 18:20, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
Speedied now. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Rcsprinter123(message) 18:35, 31 December 2017 (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
On Wikidata, the "save" button when you edit is now called "publish". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "Save page" to "Publish changes". This is to help new editors understand what it does.
[14][15]
Some edits will get an automatic
tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways.
[16]
Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new
Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki.
[17]
Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation
has been updated.
[18][19]
Problems
Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem.
[20]
With the new filters in the recent changes, "Exclude selected" in "Namespaces" did not work for "Saved filters" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again.
[21]
The latest version of
Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see #R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9 instead of #Résumé even if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March).
[22]
Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed.
[23]
Changes later this week
Wikidata will be moved to its own database
servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30
UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis.
[24]
The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems.
[25][26]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (
calendar).
WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one: ext.wikiEditor. All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed.
[27]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
9 January at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
10 January at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis where the
Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed.
[28]
There is a new
Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development.
[29]
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-
ASCII characters when a page was edited.
[30][31]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
16 January at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in
Linter categories will switch to use the
Remex parsing library. This is
to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.
[32][33]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Filters on
Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features.
[34][35]
Problems
With the new
OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed.
[36]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
irc.wikimedia.org will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically.
[37]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an
editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to.
[39]
The
Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language.
[40]
Info pages for file pages now show the file's
SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded.
[41]
Problems
Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this.
[42]
Changes later this week
When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a
visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users.
[43]
When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like gallery widths="150px". You could use em or % instead of px but it would make no difference. You can now only use 150px or nothing (150). If you write something else, instead of treating it like px, it will not work.
[44]
The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of Yes or No it will say Thank and Cancel. It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public.
[45]
Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a
tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it
can disable it.
[46]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
6 February at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please
submit a task on Phabricator.
[49][50][51]
You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use
visual diffs on history pages.
[52]
The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like {{reflist}}, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates.
[53]
The abuse filter extension has a new feature contains_all that you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.
[54]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
13 February at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed.
[56][57]
You can now
see statistics for pageviews per wiki per country. You can see this on maps or in a table.
[58]
Problems
Linter is reporting estimated counts instead of actual counts for some wikis. This is because of performance problems. You might notice a false higher number in linter counts for some categories. This will be fixed as soon as the performance problem has been fixed.
[59]
Last week the way that Visual Editor displays references lists was changed. As a result, the references generated by specific templates like {{sfn}} are not visible in the references list whilst editing.
[60][61]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
20 February at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
21 February at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The way edit summaries and log comments are stored in the database is being changed. In the future this will
make longer comments possible.
[62]
Edit conflicts could be solved in a different way in the future. You can
test a new prototype.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Checkusers and stewards can now view private data such as the IP address in the abuse log. This data is removed regularly.
[63]
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki version was rolled back because of a bug.
[64][65]
Since the deployment train last week until late evening on 20 February
UTC, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed.
[66]
Special:Statistics did not take newly created pages into account since 13 February 2018. Because of this the statistics are recreated.
[67][68][69]
Changes later this week
Users with version 10 of the Internet Explorer browser will no longer get JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis. If you use this browser on your computer, you can try upgrading to a newer version.
[70]
The Wikinews wikis will switch to use the
Remex parsing library. This is
to replace Tidy. It will happen on 27 February. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.
[71][72]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 1 March (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
27 February at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
28 February at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. With 53 contestants qualifying, the groups for round 2 are slightly smaller than usual, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining users.
Our top scorers in round 1 were:
Aoba47 led the field with a featured article, 8 good articles and 42 GARs, giving a total of 666 points.
FrB.TG , a WikiCup newcomer, came next with 600 points, gained from a featured article and masses of bonus points.
Ssven2, another WikiCup newcomer, was in third place with 403 points, garnered from a featured article, a featured list, a good article and twelve GARs.
Ceranthor, Numerounovedant, Carbrera, Farang Rak Tham and Cartoon network freak all had over 200 points, but like all the other contestants, now have to start again from scratch. A good achievement was the 193 GARs performed by WikiCup contestants, comparing very favourably with the 54 GAs they achieved.
Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.
If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on
Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.
Godot13 (
talk),
Sturmvogel 66 (
talk),
Cwmhiraeth (
talk) and
Vanamonde (
talk) 15:27, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
Bots Newsletter, March 2018
Bots Newsletter, March 2018
Greetings!
Here is the 5th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from
this list.
While there were no large-scale bot-related discussion in the past few months, you can check
WP:BOTN and
WT:BOTPOL (and their corresponding archives) for smaller issues that came up.
The edit summary limit has been increased to 1000 characters (see
T6715). If a bot you operate relied on the old truncation limit (255 characters), please review/update your code, as overly long summaries can be disruptive/annoying. If you want to use extra characters to have more information in your edit summary, please do so intelligently.
You will soon be able to
ping users from the edit summary (see
T188469). If you wish to use this feature in your bot, please do so intelligently.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
On
Special:AbuseLog you can now choose to list only actions that actually made an edit. Other actions are when the filter warned the editor or blocked the edit from being made. There are also more search options.
[75][76]
Wikis can
enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but it is complex. The tool will now warn in the JavaScript console if the configuration isn't correct. Soon Citoid will disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can
ask for help if you need it.
[77]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 March. It will be on all wikis from 8 March (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
6 March at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
7 March at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
In the future you will be able to use global preferences. This means you could change a preference for all wikis instead of having to change it every time for each wiki. You can now
test global preferences and
give feedback.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Page Previews has been updated to use
HTML for previews. This has fixed many issues. An
A/B test was done on English and German Wikipedia to measure how it is used. Other changes were also made.
[79]
Some edits have to be checked against too many conditions before they can trigger an
abuse filter. If that is the reason no filter is triggered the edit will be
tagged for review.
[80]
Auto-saving has been added to the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. Right now it is meant to help if your browser crashes or if you accidentally close a tab.
[81]
Problems
The
abuse filter did not tag all edits that should have been tagged after last week's MediaWiki version had come to the wikis. It was fixed on 9 March (UTC).
[82]
Changes later this week
You can
notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. This was originally planned to happen last week.
[83]
It is now possible to specify the block parameters for each filter in
Special:AbuseFilter. The parameters include block duration and if the user should be blocked from editing their own talk page. The block duration is separate for anonymous and registered users.
[84][85]
A hundred Wikimedia wikis will switch to use the
Remex parsing library. This is
to replace Tidy. It will happen on 13 and 14 March. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.
[86][87][88]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 March. It will be on all wikis from 15 March (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
13 March at 19:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
14 March at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Problems
On March 12 early morning UTC, the number of 503 error messages increased due to an issue on esams datacenter. It has been fixed.
[89]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 March. It will be on all wikis from 22 March (
calendar).
Meetings
There is no Editing team meeting this week.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
21 March at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
From April 4, the autopatrol status of edits will only be accessible in the Recent Changes database table, so only for 30 days.
[90][91]
In-Context Help and Onboarding is a new project, aiming to improve retention of new wiki editors. The goal is to give them short tutorials and other training experiences based on their activity.
Collaboration team is expecting feedback and comments on
the project talk page, especially from people working with newcomers.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Changes later this week
Some of the interface icons and text sizes will change slightly, as part of the updates for improved accessibility and consistency. These icons are used in many features, including Notifications, Recent Changes, Beta Features, Visual Editor, 2017 Wikitext Editor, Code Editor, and others. While editor toolbars, dialogs, and menus will appear slightly bigger; elements on special pages will be slightly smaller. Functionality will not change.
[92][93]
The deprecated #toc and #toctitle CSS ids have been removed. If your wiki was still using these for fake Tables of Content (ToC) then these might lose their styling. They can be replaced with .toc and .toctitle classes where appropriate.
[94]
TemplateStyles will be deployed to the Wikivoyages on 28 March 2018.
[95]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 March. It will be on all wikis from 29 March (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
27 March at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be one hour earlier than usual on
28 March at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
From 9 April, the sort order of categories will be distorted for a short time. We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a maintenance script to update existing database entries. This will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on wiki size. Read
more details.
[96]
Changes are coming to search for Serbian projects. Cyrillic and Latin variants of a word and different grammatical forms of a word will be able to find each other. Read more on MediaWiki in
Serbian or
English.
File:Seal of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.gif listed for discussion
A file that you uploaded or altered,
File:Seal of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.gif, has been listed at
Wikipedia:Files for discussion. 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.
Magog the Ogre (
t •
c) 02:56, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Template Wizard script available for testing. It will show up as a puzzle-piece icon in the 2010 WikiEditor. You can click on the icon to insert a template.
The Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey is to be sent to participants around the world this week. If you are volunteer developer, and have contributed code to any pieces of MediaWiki, gadgets, or tools,
please take 20 to 40 minutes to complete the survey.
Problems
MediaWiki deployment train has been rolled back to version 1.31.0-wmf.26 on week 13, due to a multiplication of lost connections during MySQL queries. Some of the recent changes may have not been applied. They will be deployed next week.
[97][98][99]
The Notifications badge icons were overlapping other links. This has been fixed.
[100]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 April. It will be on all wikis from 5 April (
calendar).
User subpages ending in .json will now be protected from other people editing them, like .js and .css pages already are. If you have a tool that stores static configuration, you can now use a subpage like User:Example/mygadget.json to do this without concerns.
[101]
Tidy will be replaced by RemexHtml on the next set of wikis. On April 4, we plan to turn off Tidy on all Wikiquotes (except frwikiquote) and Wikimedia chapters and user groups wikis. 23 wikis will have Tidy replaced this time.
[102][103][104]
AbuseFilter will transition to use
OOUI starting April 4, and the rule editor will also be changed to a CodeEditor (ACE) similar to what is found on user JavaScript pages. The move to OOUI will continue over the next few weeks.
[105][106]
In Special:Preferences, the preference "Reload the watchlist automatically whenever a filter is changed (JavaScript required)" is now only visible for users who have opt-out the New Filters for the Watchlist.
[107]
You can see names of individual abuse filters in
Special:AbuseLog. Now if the name of an abuse filter contains some wikisyntax like links, it will not change to a link when displayed.
[108]
You can now search through filter patterns at
Special:AbuseFilter. You may specify either a plain string or a
regular expression and the matching filters will show a snippet of their pattern with the match highlighted.
[109]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
3 April at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
4 April at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
If you're using, creating or improving Lua modules, you can
give your feedback to help harmonizing the modules across wikis and add more useful functions.
On April 11th, we plan to turn off Tidy on all wikis with less than 50 entries in all high priority linter categories. About 60 wikis will have Tidy replaced. Currently about 600 wikis have had Tidy replaced and we have another 300 wikis to go. We plan to finish this transition from Tidy to RemexHtml by end of June 2018. Please follow
T175706 to monitor progress of
Tidy replacement.
[110][111]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Some pages have templates that describe problems with that article. There is now more information for mobile readers and what is wrong with the article and how they could help fix it.
[112]
The sort order of categories will have errors for a short time starting Monday 9 April (UTC). We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a script to update the database. This will take between a few hours and a few days depending on wiki size. You can
read more details.
[114]
Tag filter titles will now work better on wikis where the tag filter title is in a language that is written in another direction than the language of that wiki. This could for example be an English title (written from left to right) on a Hebrew or an Arabic wiki (written from right to left).
[115]
Problems
The bookmark icon for saved filters on the recent changes page disappeared because of new icon changes. This has now been fixed.
[116]
For a week in March rollbacks got both the rollback and the undo tag on the recent changes page and other pages where you see tags. This has now been fixed.
[117]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 April. It will be on all wikis from 12 April (
calendar).
Patrolled edits now have three states instead of two. Recent changes filters are updated to show unpatrolled, autopatrolled and manually patrolled edits.
[118]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
10 April at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
11 April at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Changes later this week
Profiling statistics for an
abuse filter tell how often edits match the filter. The statistics for the abuse filters were reset after 10000 actions. Wikis can now decide to reset it more or less often. They can
file a phabricator task to do so.
[119]
Abuse filters will now treat integers and
floats more precisely. For example, 5/2 was rounded down to 2 but will now be 2.5 and 2*4 will be the integer 8 and not the floating-point number 8.0. Division values are the only ones changed. For the rest only strict comparisons (=== and !==) will be affected leaving the values unchanged.
[120][121]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 April. It will be on all wikis from 19 April (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
17 April at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
18 April at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The
new PDF renderer could not create PDFs from
books. Books are in this case collections of pages on a Wikimedia wiki.
PediaPress will take over development of the books-to-PDF function.
[122]
Pywikibot will no longer support Python 2.7.2 and 2.7.3.
[123]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
The iOS and Android apps now have
synced reading lists. This means you can save articles to a private list that can be seen on your other devices if you use the apps.
The visual editor and the 2017 wikitext ask you to write an edit summary after you press Publish. This button now also shows an
ellipsis. This is to show that pressing Publish is not the last step.
[125]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 April. It will be on all wikis from 26 April (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
24 April at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
25 April at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
<mapframe> will come to most Wikipedias in May. This means that you can put interactive maps in the articles. Nine Wikipedias that use a strict version of
flagged revisions will not get this feature in May.
[126]
The rollback function could change. This was a
German community request. All editors with rollback rights can
leave feedback on the proposed solution. The last day to leave feedback is 4 May (UTC).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The parameter for unpatrolled edits in recent changes filters changed name. You might need to update saved filters and links.
[127]
Problems
We are migrating wikis from Tidy to Remex. Because of a bug the 250 wikis which do not yet use Remex were switched on 23 April. This is two months early. This meant that pages with broken wikitext showed wrongly to readers. The bug was undone the next day. You can
help fix broken wikitext to avoid this problem when your wiki switches. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. You can follow the process
on Phabricator.
[128]
When an administrator blocks someone they will have a calendar they can use to choose when the block ends. This is to make it easier to pick a specific date.
[130]
You can soon turn on the
Performance Inspector in the Editing section in your preferences. It shows information about the
performance of pages. This could be the size of modules in the page, how many CSS selectors are defined on the page and how many are used, or the size of the images on the page. This tool is intended to help editors fix pages that load slowly.
[131]
There is a new
abuse filter function called equals_to_any. You can use it to check if its first argument is equal (===) to any of the following ones. For example you can use it to check if the page's namespace is amongst a given set of values in a more compact way than you could earlier. You can
read more on mediawiki.org.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 May. It will be on all wikis from 3 May (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
1 May at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
2 May at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The
Wikimedia Cloud Services team is working on a new project called
Toolhub. The goal is to make it easier for Wikimedians to discover software tools they can use. You can leave feedback on
the talk page or email jharewikimedia.org to leave private feedback.
All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in all namespaces will switch to use the
Remex parsing library. This is
to replace Tidy. It will happen on 2 May. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Wikibooks wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch on 9 May. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018.
[132][133][134]
The second round of the 2018 WikiCup has now finished. Most contestants who advanced to the next round scored upwards of 100 points, but two with just 10 points managed to scrape through into round 3. Our top scorers in the last round were:
Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with three featured articles
Iazyges, with nine good articles and lots of bonus points
Yashthepunisher, a first time contestant, with two featured lists
SounderBruce, a finalist last year, with seventeen good topic articles
Usernameunique, a first time contestant, with fourteen DYKs
Muboshgu, a seasoned competitor, with three ITNs and
Courcelles, another first time contestant, with twenty-seven GARs
So far contestants have achieved twelve featured articles between them and a splendid 124 good articles. Commendably, 326 GARs have been completed during the course of the 2018 WikiCup, so the backlog of articles awaiting GA review has been reduced as a result of contestants' activities. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met; most of the GARs are fine, but a few have been a bit skimpy.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on
Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.
Godot13 (
talk),
Sturmvogel 66 (
talk),
Vanamonde (
talk) and
Cwmhiraeth (
talk) 06:10, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The
Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. It is now easier to find nearby places that need pictures. It helps you with direct uploads and title and category suggestions. The app only works on Android phones.
[135]
Problems
The
abuse filters had a problem with blocks where you had changed how long they last. It used the default length everywhere. This was in late April. Abuse filter users should make sure the right block length is used and change them if needed. This is only for filters where how long blocks last had been changed.
[136]
Changes later this week
The
advanced search function beta feature will be on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist.
[137]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 May. It will be on all wikis from 10 May (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
8 May at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
9 May at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch to use the
Remex parsing library. This is
to replace Tidy. It will happen on 16 May. Other wikis will switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018.
[138][139]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
The new
Advanced Search interface is now available as a
Beta Feature on all wikis. This makes it easier to learn about and to use many of the powerful options in our search. Feedback is appreciated.
[140]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 May. It will be on all wikis from 17 May (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
16 May at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
In the mobile view, warnings for when something is wrong with a page are not as clear as they should be. The developers are working on this. You can
give feedback and suggestions.
The developers are working on making the Wikipedia Android app available in more languages. You can give feedback, suggestions and help test it.
Read more on mediawiki.org[141]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 May. It will be on all wikis from 24 May (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
23 May at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
It could become easier to reference different pages of a book in an article. You can
give feedback. The last day for feedback is 27 May.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now use
global preferences on most wikis. This means you can set preferences for all wikis at the same time. Before this you had to change them on each individual wiki. Global preferences will come to the Wikipedias later this week.
[142][143]
It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.
[144]
There is now a checkbox on
Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups.
[145]
Some rare invisible Unicode characters have recently been banned from page titles. This includes soft hyphens (U+00AD) and left-to-right (U+2066) and right-to-left (U+2067) isolate markers. Existing pages with these characters will soon be moved by a script.
[146]
There's a new Wikimedia Foundation team to support the Wikimedia technical communities. It's called the Technical Engagement team. Most of the team members did similar work in other teams before this.
[147]
Problems
Some translatable pages are showing old translations instead of latest ones. The cause of this issue has been fixed. We will update all pages automatically to show the latest translations.
[148]
Changes later this week
There will be a new special page named
PasswordPolicies. This page gives information about the
password rules for each user group on that wiki.
[149]
A new way to see moved paragraphs in diffs is coming to most wikis. This is to make it easier to find the moved paragraphs and the changes in them.
[150]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 May. It will be on all wikis from 31 May (
calendar).
Wikis can
enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. This is complex. The tool will now disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. It has warned about this in the JavaScript console since February. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can
ask for help if you need it.
[151]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
29 May at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
30 May at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Content Translation drafts which have not been updated in over a year will be removed. This allows other users to translate those articles.
[152]
A survey is collecting information on what users think about how Wikimedia wiki pages are loaded. This information could be used in future development.
[153]
Some wikis will switch to use the
Remex parsing library. This is
to replace Tidy. It will happen on 30 May and 13 June. Wikis with fewer than 100 linter issues in the main namespace in all high-priority linter categories will switch. This includes Wikidata. Tidy will probably be removed on all wikis in the first week of July.
[154][155]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The
MonoBook skin has been optimised for mobile devices. It now looks different.
[156]
Redirect links in
Special:WhatLinksHere now link to the original page and not the target page. This was done earlier and changed the used messages on some pages. This was a problem for wikis that customized the message. A new change fixed this by using the old messages with one more parameter for customization. Wikis that already changed their customized messages will have to move the customization back again.
[159]
Problems
You will not be able to edit some wikis between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 13 June. You can see if
your wiki is one of them.
MassMessage did not work 24–28 May. This is also why last week's Tech News was late.
[160]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 June. It will be on all wikis from 7 June (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
5 June at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
6 June at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
In
the Wikipedia app for Android or iOS users can create
reading lists. The reading lists can be seen on different devices if you are logged in to your account. There is now a browser extension so you can add pages to your reading list from a web browser. At the moment it works with Firefox and Chrome.
[163]
There is a new version of
Pywikibot. Pywikibot is a tool to automate tasks on MediaWiki wikis.
[164]
Problems
The
MonoBook skin was changed to make it work better for mobile users. This caused some problems. The change was rolled back to fix them. The new version is now back on the wikis. MonoBook users can opt out from the new responsive design.
[165]
Changes later this week
The
new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave
beta. For most wikis this will happen on 18 June. For the rest it will happen on 25 June.
[166][167]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 June. It will be on all wikis from 14 June (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the
Readers Web team IRC office hour. There you can discuss tools to contribute on the mobile web for the existing MediaWiki skins. The meeting will be on
18 June at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
12 June at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
13 June at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Syntax highlighting has been a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It is now a normal feature. It is based on
CodeMirror.
[168]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
19 June at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
20 June at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Some old web browsers will not be able to read the Wikimedia wikis. This is because they use an insecure way to connect to them. This means that we get less security for everyone else too. This affects about 0.08% of all traffic to the Wikimedia wikis. This affects for example those who read Wikipedia on a
PlayStation 3.
[169][170]
The
new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave
beta. Because there is no new MediaWiki version this week it will happen on 25 June for most wikis. For the rest it will happen in early July.
[171][172]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
When a link text was in italics or had other formatting you could sometimes not edit it in the visual editor. This has now been fixed.
[174][175]
Changes later this week
Content translation users who translate between any two of Arabic, English, French, Japanese and Russian will be asked to be part of a research project. This is to create better tools for translating articles.
[176]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 June. It will be on all wikis from 28 June (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
26 June at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
27 June at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
The third round of the 2018 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round had at least 227 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:
Courcelles, a first time contestant, with 1756 points, a tally built largely on 27 GAs related to the Olympics
Cas Liber, our winner in 2016, with two featured articles and three GAs on natural history and astronomy topics
SounderBruce, a finalist last year, with a variety of submissions related to transport in the state of Washington
Contestants managed 7 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 120 good articles, 1 good topic, 124 DYK entries, 15 ITN entries, and 132 good article reviews. Over the course of the competition, contestants have completed 458 GA reviews, in comparison to 244 good articles submitted for review and promoted. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process; several submissions, particularly in abstruse or technical areas, have needed additional work to make them completely verifiable.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on
Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.
Godot13 (
talk),
Sturmvogel 66 (
talk),
Cwmhiraeth (
talk),
Vanamonde (
talk) 04:55, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The database for
tags will be changed. This will happen on 2 July on French Wikipedia and 9 July on all other wikis. Please
report if recent changes get slower or you can't save edits. This could especially affect editors who use the database on ToolForge.
[177]
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a database problem.
[178]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
3 July at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
4 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
WebM video files have smaller file size but still be of the same quality. Creating WebM files will take longer time.
[179]
The
new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave
beta. This was supposed to already have happened but was delayed. For most wikis this will happen on 9 July. For the rest it will happen on 16 July.
[180]
When you rolled back an edit it could get both the Rollback and Undo tags. This has been fixed.
[182]
Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed.
[183]
Changes later this week
When you edit a link in the visual editor there will be two separate buttons to change which page the link goes to (target) or its text (label).
[184][185]
On the mobile version you can find a link to an editor's contributions from their user page. Now this will work even if they haven't created a user page.
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When you edit a discussion on the mobile version you sometimes get your signature automatically added. This will now not happen if you have already added a signature manually. This is to avoid double signatures.
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When you look at Wikimedia code in
Gerrit there will be a new interface. It is on by default for new users. This is also true for developers. This is to make it easier to understand what is happening.
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The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 July. It will be on all wikis from 12 July (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
10 July at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
11 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Today all administrators can edit
CSS and
JavaScript for the entire wiki. There will be a new user group for editing CSS and JavaScript. Administrators will no longer automatically be able to do this. This is because it is a security risk when all administrator accounts can edit JavaScript even if they never plan to or do not know how it works. You can
read more.
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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.
You can now see a new log of pages being created at
Special:Log/create. It includes pages which are later deleted. It is now available on all Wikimedia wikis except Commons and Wikidata.
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You can see how many pageviews a wiki had from specific countries. The
Wikistats2 maps have now been updated.
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Changes later this week
Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change.
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The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
July 17 at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
July 18 at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can
read more and leave feedback.
You can use <inputbox> to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead of prefix:Page name you will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can
read more and leave feedback.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
CSS in templates can now be stored in a separate page on all wikis. This is called
TemplateStyles. This is to make it easier to edit how templates look.
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Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on
14 August at 18:30 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
15 August at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can
read more. You can leave feedback on the
talk page.
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