This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on
Phabricator and on
MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things
bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
Our
last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.
Overall
Between September and December 2019, there were 33
BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput:
Beeblebroxnoted that
the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of
UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago.
TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While
OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately,
SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill:
TAnthonypointed out that
reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator
Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021,
Curb Safe Charmer had
taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
There are now default
short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis, [[WB:]] will go to the local language default for the [[Project:]] namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via
the usual process.
[1]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 December. It will be on all wikis from 16 December (
calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Tech News
Because of the
holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.
Recent changes
Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension (<DynamicPageList>) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis.
[2]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
The Wikimedia
Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to
claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February.
[3]
Hi there, I'm a Lonely Planet employee. We replaced the logo as of December 6 2021, which is now live on its website, and I'm trying to understand how to update it in the company wikipedia page. --
Pedroteixeira07 (
talk) 14:58, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
Hello @
Pedroteixeira07! You've gotten yourself into one of the most complicated areas of Wikipedia, but I'll try to help you out. On Wikipedia the licensing status of all images need to be documented and the images usually have to be freely licensed, with exceptions. In the case of the new Lonely Planet logo I believe it is below the
Threshold of originality (
Wikipedia interpretation) in the US where Wikipedia servers are located, but not in Australia which I believe would be the country of origin in this case. That means it can be uploaded on Wikipedia but not Wikimedia commons, our sister site for completely free images. After some head scratching I believe the following is the correct bundle of tags for this logo.
:Which looks as follows if you are curious.
{{PD-ineligible-USonly|Australia}}
{{Trademarked}}
{{SVG-Logo}}
Please note: The public domain status of this work is only in regards to its copyright status. There may be other
intellectual property restrictions protecting this image, such as
trademarks or
design patents if it is a logo.
PDPublic domainfalsefalse
Do not copy this file to Wikimedia Commons. This image is believed to be non-free or possibly non-free in its home country, Australia. In order for Commons to host a file, it must be free in its home country and in the United States. Some countries, particularly other countries based on common law, have a lower
threshold of originality than the United States.
This work contains material which may be subject to trademark laws in one or more jurisdictions. Before using this content, please ensure that it is used to identify the entity or organization that owns the trademark and that you have the right to use it under the laws which apply in the circumstances of your intended use. You are solely responsible for ensuring that you do not infringe someone else's trademark. These restrictions are independent of the copyright status. See also the Wikipedia
trademark disclaimer and
Wikipedia:Logos.
With this licensing information you can go to
this link which takes you to the files for upload process where new users can request files be uploaded. Give the information requested and an URL for the image and it will probably go quite smoothly from there.
I have to apologize on behalf of the Wikipedia community for our hopelessly difficult system, but I wish you the best of luck. --
Trialpears (
talk) 19:06, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
Following consensus at the
2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right
has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.
The
functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to
the Arbitration Committee.
You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.
When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.
Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on
better tools to help.
We have
two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can
let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.
Shortly following your block of yet another
Arifer sock
here, they returned as
181.228.122.52] to make two disruptive edits at
Talk:Ariel Fernandez,
here and
here. My question is: because this is unquestionably Arifer, can the IP address be formally associated with them and/or their blocked socks (for example,
RutiWinkler) by you or another admin, or does that association require filing another SPI? Thanks for your help.
JoJo Anthrax (
talk) 14:55, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
I blocked them for a month as a duck. I'm unsure what the best procedure is to note the extra sock if at all, but will take care of it. Thanks for reporting! --
Trialpears (
talk) 15:10, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
I now note that indef-blocked
Arifer has returned today as
User:Ariel Fernandez Account, explicitly identifying themselves as Ariel Fernandez and posting on
Talk:Ariel Fernandez in a manner identical to their previous socks. I am now apparently a vicious [...] predatory editor who engages in gross misrepresentations and slander. On a certain level this is humorous, but Fernandez and their seemingly bottomless sock drawer have truly become disruptive. Pinging @
TonyBallioni: as they yesterday blocked one of the sleeper socks. Thanks once again for all of your help.
JoJo Anthrax (
talk) 14:01, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Already blocked and protected the talk page for a few days. Another sleeper check may be good. --
Trialpears (
talk) 14:03, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Dreamy Jazz did a CU on them, so I guess there's nothing more to do for now. --
Trialpears (
talk) 16:49, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Yet again, an obvious sock of
Arifer has made a
contribution to what is threatening to become a testy discussion about content in the
Ariel Fernandez article. Please note their username. This is really getting out of hand. Thanks again for your help.
JoJo Anthrax (
talk) 00:35, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
Now pinging @
TonyBallioni: because of their previous help in this matter, and because the
Arifer sock continues to post
here. That discussion is becoming a bit harsh, and the sock's contributions are not helping.
JoJo Anthrax (
talk) 15:11, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
@
JoJo Anthrax Very likely Arifer again, but I feel a checkuser would be beneficial to confirm so I opened another SPI. --
Trialpears (
talk) 18:18, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm spending a lot of time lately thanking you for your help, and now I am doing so again.
JoJo Anthrax (
talk) 22:34, 6 January 2022 (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
A oauth_consumer variable has been added to the
AbuseFilter to enable identifying changes made by specific tools.
[4]
Gadgets are
now able to directly include JSON pages. This means some gadgets can now be configured by administrators without needing the interface administrator permission, such as with the Geonotice gadget.
[5]
Gadgets
can now specify page actions on which they are available. For example, |actions=edit,history will load a gadget only while editing and on history pages.
[6]
Gadgets can now be loaded on demand with the withgadget URL parameter. This can be used to replace
an earlier snippet that typically looks like withJS or withCSS.
[7]
Four special pages (and their API counterparts) now have a maximum database query execution time of 30 seconds. These special pages are: RecentChanges, Watchlist, Contributions, and Log. This change will help with site performance and stability. You can read
more details about this change including some possible solutions if this affects your workflows.
[11]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 January. It will be on all wikis from 13 January (
calendar).
Events
Community Wishlist Survey 2022 begins. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC.
Learn more.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
When using
WikiEditor (also known as the 2010 wikitext editor), people will now see a warning if they link to disambiguation pages. If you click "Review link" in the warning, it will ask you to correct the link to a more specific term. You can
read more information about this completed 2021 Community Wishlist item.
When asked to create a new page or talk page section, input fields can be
"preloaded" with some text. This feature is now limited to wikitext pages. This is so users can't be tricked into making malicious edits. There is a discussion about
if this feature should be re-enabled for some content types.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 January. It will be on all wikis from 20 January (
calendar).
Events
Community Wishlist Survey 2022 continues. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC.
Learn more.
Hello, how do I get to the tabulated section listing ships operated by The NZSC as I have found ship names etc. missing from the list?
Best Regards
Doug Prewer
Ex SS Pipiriki. --
Dougdell1189 (
talk) 11:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 January. It will be on all wikis from 27 January (
calendar).
The following languages can now be used with
syntax highlighting: BDD, Elpi, LilyPond, Maxima, Rita, Savi, Sed, Sophia, Spice, .SRCINFO.
You can now access your watchlist from outside of the user menu in the
new Vector skin. The watchlist link appears next to the notification icons if you are at the top of the page.
[13]
Events
You can see the results of the
Coolest Tool Award 2021 and learn more about 14 tools which were selected this year.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
If a gadget should support the new ?withgadget URL parameter that was
announced 3 weeks ago, then it must now also specify supportsUrlLoad in the gadget definition (
documentation).
[14]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 February. It will be on all wikis from 3 February (
calendar).
Future changes
A change that was
announced last year was delayed. It is now ready to move ahead:
The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for
technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in three weeks. You can comment
in Phabricator if you have objections. As usual, these labels can be translated on translatewiki (
direct links are available) or by administrators on your wiki.
You allege you are open to recall. Please detail your criteria.
Hipocrite (
talk) 09:36, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Hey @
Hipocrite, sorry about not responding to your message for a while, didn't have time when I first saw it and forgot afterwards. My criteria is the
sample process as I specified at my
RfA. I probably should make it a bit more explicit in my user space though. --
Trialpears (
talk) 18:09, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Bots Newsletter, January 2022
Bots Newsletter, January 2022
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on
Phabricator and on
MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things
bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.
Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.
Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71
BRFAs. Of these, Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with N2 8 denied, ? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
January 2020
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.
A new
Pywikibot release dropped support for
Python 3.4, and it was expected that support for
Python 2.7 would be removed in coming updates.
Toolforge itself planned to drop Python 2 support in 2022.
On February 1, some
concerns were raised about
ListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operator
Magnus Manske (who originally coded the
Phase II software|precursor of
MediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarily blocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
In March, a long
discussion was started at
Wikipedia talk:Bot policy by
Skdb about the troubling trend of bots "expiring" without explanation after their owners became inactive. This can happen for a variety of reasons --
API changes break code, hosting providers' software updates break code, hosting accounts lapse, software changes make bots' edits unnecessary, and policy changes make bots' edits unwanted. The most promising solution seemed to be
Toolforge hosting (although it has some problems of its own, like the occasional necessity of refactoring code).
A
discussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started by
Barkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and adding
non-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It was blocked on April 10; the next day it was unblocked, reblocked from article space, reblocked "for specified non-editing actions", unblocked, and indeffed. The next week, several
safeguards were implemented in its code by Magnus; the bot was allowed to roam free once more on April 18.
Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via
unified login, like a talk page at
Commons or at
Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like
Phabricator or
GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise
anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.
May 2020
We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots
MajavahBot 3, an impressively meta bot task, was approved this month for maintaining a list of bots running on the English Wikipedia. The page, located at
User:MajavahBot/Bot status report, is updated every 24 hours; it contains a list of all accounts with the bot flag, as well as their operator, edit count, last activity date, last edit date, last logged action date, user groups and block status.
In July 2017,
Headbomb made a
proposal that a section of the
Wikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019,
Lua code was written superseding
Legobot's tasks on that page, and operator
Legoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, a
partial-block of Legobot for the dashboard was proposed. Some months later, on June 16, Headbomb said: "A full block serves nothing. A partial block solves all current issues [...] Just fucking do it. It's been 3 years now." The next day, however, Legoktm disabled the task, and the dashboard was successfully refactored.
On June 7,
RexxS blocked
Citation bot for
disruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, a
discussion on the bots noticeboard was opened, saying "it is a widely-used and useful bot, but it has one of the longest block logs for any recently-operating bot on Wikipedia". While its last BRFA approval was in 2011, its code and functionality had changed dramatically since then, and
AntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. Maintainer
AManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a proper
test suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like a
June 2019 incident in which a
LTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
David Tornheim opened a discussion about
whether bots based on closed-source code should be permitted, and proposed that they not. He cited a recent case in which a maintainer had said "I can only suppose that the code that is available on GitHub is not the actual code that was running on [the bot]". Some disagreed:
Naypta said that "I like free software as much as the next person, and I strongly believe that bot operators should make their bot code public, but I don't think it should be that they must do so".
The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for
technical reasons. You can comment
in Phabricator if you have objections.
The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant
Village Pump discussion.
Hello, I'm a volunteer for the Decision Education Foundation and I'm wondering if it's a conflict of interest to post an article about them. It's an educational 501c non-profit. I can draft a post to show the tone and can provide citations. --
Tonypray (
talk) 20:13, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Hello
Tony! Thank you for asking about your potential conflict of interest. In this case you would be considered to have a conflict on interest since you have a close external relationship with the organization. The usual method for creating your first article is through the
articles for creation process where you make a draft that a more experienced editor will review before it is published to make sure it meets Wikipedia's
inclusion criteria, essentially that there are several reliable and independent sources giving significant coverage of the organization). I see you've already made a draft which is great! When you're ready for it to be reviewed you can add the following to the top of the page: {{subst:submit}}
For the sources you've used at
User:Tonypray/sandbox there will likely be complaints about there not being any independent sources from what I can tell with both the Stanford University School of Engineering and the Strategic Decisions Group seems to be related to the organization? If you don't include any independent sources it will almost certainly not be published.
In your case you should also disclose on the drafts talk page that you have a conflict of interest which I see you've done.
If you have any other questions feel free to ask, I'm happy to help! --
Trialpears (
talk) 00:00, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
Why My Article "Harsh Vinodbhai Anuwadia" Is Not Published ? --
Softwareable (
talk) 09:38, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Hello @
Softwareable! You have currently made a draft that is not a part of the encyclopedia. It could be reviewed using the
articles for creation process, but I highly doubts that the subject is
notable for Wikipedia's purposes and thus will likely not be accepted. It also seems like you may be trying to write an article about yourself which is highly discouraged. You can read more about that at
Wikipedia:Autobiography. --
Trialpears (
talk) 00:04, 6 February 2022 (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.
Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month.
[15]
Problems
A code-change last week to fix a bug with
Live Preview may have caused problems with some local gadgets and user-scripts. Any code with skin-specific behaviour for vector should be updated to also check for vector-2022.
A code-snippet, global search, and example are available.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 February. It will be on all wikis from 10 February (
calendar).
PearBOT's task "Updating template caches (for portals)" failed to run per the configuration specified at
Wikipedia:Bot activity monitor/Configurations. Detected only 0 edits in the last 3 days, whereas at least 1 was expected. If/when the issue is fixed, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. When that is done, this notice will be reposted if the bot task is still broken or is re-broken. If your bot is behaving as expected, then you may want to modify the
activity configuration instead. Or to unsubscribe from bot failure notifications, remove the |notify= parameter from the {{/task}} template. Thanks! – SDZeroBot (
talk) 12:20, 14 February 2022 (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
Purging a category page with fewer than 5,000 members will now recount it completely. This will allow editors to fix incorrect counts when it is wrong.
[16]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 February. It will be on all wikis from 17 February (
calendar).
In the
AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function has been updated so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on
Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage.
[17]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
At Wikipedias, all new accounts now get the
Growth features by default when creating an account. Communities are encouraged to
update their help resources. Previously, only 80% of new accounts would get the Growth features. A few Wikipedias remain unaffected by this change.
[19]
You can now prevent specific images that are used in a page from appearing in other locations, such as within PagePreviews or Search results. This is done with the markup class=notpageimage. For example, [[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]].
[20]
There has been a change to the HTML of Special:Contributions, Special:MergeHistory, and History pages, to support the grouping of changes by date in
the mobile skin. While unlikely, this may affect gadgets and user scripts. A
list of all the HTML changes is on Phabricator.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 February. It will be on all wikis from 24 February (
calendar).
Future changes
The software to play videos and audio files on pages will change soon on all wikis. The old player will be removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change.
The new player has been a beta feature for over four years.
[21][22]
Toolforge's underlying operating system is being updated. If you maintain any tools there, there are two options for migrating your tools into the new system. There are
details, deadlines, and instructions on Wikitech.
[23]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Mentors using the
Growth Mentor dashboard will now see newcomers assigned to them who have made at least one edit, up to 200 edits. Previously, all newcomers assigned to the mentor were visible on the dashboard, even ones without any edit or ones who made hundred of edits. Mentors can still change these values using the filters on their dashboard. Also, the last choice of filters will now be saved.
[25][26]
The user group oversight was renamed suppress. This is for
technical reasons. You may need to update any local references to the old name, e.g. gadgets, links to Special:Listusers, or uses of
NUMBERINGROUP.
Problems
The recent change to the HTML of
tracking changes pages caused some problems for screenreaders. This is being fixed.
[27]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 March. It will be on all wikis from 3 March (
calendar).
Future changes
Working with templates will become easier.
Several improvements are planned for March 9 on most wikis and on March 16 on English Wikipedia. The improvements include: Bracket matching, syntax highlighting colors, finding and inserting templates, and related visual editor features.
If you are a template developer or an interface administrator, and you are intentionally overriding or using the default CSS styles of user feedback boxes (the classes: successbox, messagebox, errorbox, warningbox), please note that these classes and associated CSS will soon be removed from MediaWiki core. This is to prevent problems when the same class-names are also used on a wiki. Please let us know by commenting at
phab:T300314 if you think you might be affected.
A RfC is open to discuss prohibiting draftification of articles over 90 days old.
Technical news
The deployment of the reply tool as an opt-out feature, as announced in last month's newsletter, has been delayed to 7 March. Feedback and comments are being welcomed at
Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project. (
T296645)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Problems
There was a problem with some interface labels last week. It will be fixed this week. This change was part of ongoing work to simplify the support for skins which do not have active maintainers.
[28]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (
calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
In the Wikipedia Android app
it is now possible to change the toolbar at the bottom so the tools you use more often are easier to click on. The app now also has a focused reading mode.
[29][30]
Problems
There was a problem with the collection of some page-view data from June 2021 to January 2022 on all wikis. This means the statistics are incomplete. To help calculate which projects and regions were most affected, relevant datasets are being retained for 30 extra days. You can
read more on Meta-wiki.
There was a problem with the databases on March 10. All wikis were unreachable for logged-in users for 12 minutes. Logged-out users could read pages but could not edit or access uncached content then.
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Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (
calendar).
Access to
Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights through their group memberships. Before, only those with the deleterevision right could access this special page.
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On the
Special:Undelete pages for diffs and revisions, there will be a link back to the main Undelete page with the list of revisions.
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Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the IP Masking implementation strategy and next steps. The
announcement can be read here.
The
Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place as a hybrid event on 20-22 May 2022. The Hackathon will be held online and there are grants available to support local in-person meetups around the world. Grants can be requested until 20 March.