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.
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 is a new user right for users who can edit
CSS and
JavaScript for the entire wiki. Before this all admins could edit CSS and JavaScript. This was a security risk. This group is called
interface administrators. Administrators can delete user CSS and JavaScript pages.
[1][2]
There will be an
A/B test on the Wikipedia mobile website. It starts this week. It tests how we show templates that show information about an article. The test will last two weeks.
[3][4]
You can now use different CSS rules for different skins when you edit templates. This is because of
TemplateStyles.
[5]
When you get a new message on your talk page you get a yellow message in the toolbar. The preference to show or not show this has been removed.
[7]
Problems
UploadWizard had problems with
campaigns. Users could not upload files. This has now been fixed.
[8]
You can get a
notification when a link is made to a page you created. This has not worked since June. It was fixed last week.
[9]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 September. It will be on all wikis from 6 September (
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
5 September at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation
Readers department will work on advanced mobile editing. You can
read more about this and other things they plan to work on over the next year. You can also
see the presentation.
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 you added or edited a template with the visual editor the input boxes were very big. This has been fixed. The input boxes will now be smaller until you click on them. Then they will change size to fit the text.
[11]
Problems
Some diffs showed lines in the wrong order. This was fixed last week.
[12]
Marking a cross-wiki notification as read didn't work every time. The other wiki was not updated. This has now been fixed.
[13]
<maplink> did not work for a few days. This was because of a bug. This has now been fixed.
[14]
{{subst:REVISIONUSER}} is used by some templates. For a period edits saved with {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} would save the previous user's name and not your username. This is now fixed. Edits made before the bug was fixed will still be wrong and need to be corrected.
[15]
When you move a page the title still shows the old page name. The developers are working on fixing this.
[16]
Changes later this week
Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at
14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
You can read more about this.
Because of
the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.
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
11 Septmber 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
12 September 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
The
Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. Images uploaded using Nearby are now automatically added to the associated Wikidata item. You can browse other images on Commons. You can see your achievements and your upload statistics. It has also fixed some bugs.
[17]
MediaWiki web requests now have a time limit of 60 seconds for GET requests and 200 seconds for POST requests.
[18]
Problems
You could not see the menu on the notifications page on the mobile version. This has now been fixed.
[19]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 September. It will be on all wikis from 20 September (
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
19 September 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.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 September. It will be on all wikis from 27 September (
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
26 September 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
Ordinary pages can no longer be loaded as
javascript. You could do this using ?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript in the
URL. Only fully protected pages in the MediaWiki: namespace or user javascript subpages can be loaded as javascript now. This is for better security.
[22][23]
Problems
New and updated translations from
translatewiki.net will not reach the wikis for a while. You can still translate messages on translatewiki.net. The Wikimedia wikis will be updated with the new translations later. This is because of work on the translation system.
[24][25]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 October. It will be on all wikis from 4 October (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
3 October at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
You can join the meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Search Platform team. The meeting will be on
3 October at 15:00 UTC. See
how to join if you want to know how the search function works or have questions.
Future changes
Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at
14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
You can read more about this.
There is an open
request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.
Technical news
Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the
Test Wikipedia and the
Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to
measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
Because of
a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.
Following a
request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are
being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
There was a problem when you copied and pasted from a table with the visual editor. It could add href where it shouldn't be. This has now been fixed.
[27]
Changes later this week
Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at
14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
You can read more about this.
Because of
the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
10 October 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.
Problems
Some pages, edits and users disappeared for a short while after the
server switch. Missing content and users was fixed within a day. Some preferences and other things might take a few more days to fix.
[28]
Wikis are updated with new and updated translations from
translatewiki.net again. This will happen once a week. The developers are working on fixing the problem so we can have translation updates more often again.
[29]
Changes later this week
When you create an abuse filter that prevents edits you can now write a specific error message for it. Before this all abuse filters that prevented edits had the same error message.
[30]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 October. It will be on all wikis from 18 October (
calendar).
Meetings
There will be no more meetings with the Editing team. This is because not enough Wikimedians were interested. To tell developers which bugs you think are the most important you can use
Phabricator as normal.
[31]
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
17 October 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
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 October. It will be on all wikis from 25 October (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
24 October at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The
Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the
Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can post proposals for the
Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the
Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
The wikis now have a
content security policy report. This means that you might get a warning in your javascript console when you load external resources in your user scripts. For security reasons it is recommended that you don't do this. It might not be possible to load external resources in your scripts in the future.
[32]
Problems
Your watchlist can show which changes you have already seen. This did not work for a few days. It has been fixed.
[33]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 October. It will be on all wikis from 1 November (
calendar).
The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer available. It will be removed from
Special:Preferences. It has not been the standard editor for a long time. It was replaced by the
2010 wikitext editor.
[34][35]
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 October at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Partial blocks is now available for testing on the
Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the
local talk page or on
Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
A
user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
The
2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for
admins and stewards that may be of interest.
Arbitration
Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the
2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
The Arbitration Committee's email address
has changed to arbcom-enwikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
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
TemplateWizard to edit templates. This works only with the
2010 wikitext editor and not in the visual editor or the
2017 wikitext editor. If you click on you can enter the information in a pop-up. You can turn on TemplateWizard in your beta feature preferences.
[36]
Changes later this week
You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. The interface for the two-column edit conflict will change. You can
read more.
When you edit with the visual editor you can use the "Automatic" citation tab. This helps you generate citations. You will now be able to write plain text citations or the title of a journal article or a book in this tab. This will search the
Crossref and
WorldCat databases and add the top result.
[37]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 November. It will be on all wikis from 8 November (
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
7 November 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
Some old mobile browsers can use the watchlist again. This has not worked for a while. These browsers are called
grade C browsers. This helps for example Windows Phone 8.1 with Internet Explorer and Lumia 535 with Windows 10.
[38]
Problems
You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. Users who use this view saw the edit conflict resolution page when they wanted to see a preview. This has been fixed.
[39][40][41]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 November. It will be on all wikis from 15 November (
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
14 November at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
You can use the
content translation tool to translate articles. The developers are working on
a new version. One of the changes will be a maintenance category. Articles where users add a lot of text from machine translation without changing it will be in that category. This is so the community can review it. The users will also have been warned before they publish the article that it has a lot of unchanged text from machine translations.
[42]
Hello Miss,
Why is my edit called 'vandalism'?
It's true.
--
71.9.129.27 (
talk) 03:53, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
After taking a second look at
the edit in question, I see that I was mistaken in my revert. What originally caught my attention was the removal of a reference in the page. I have reverted the page back to your last edit, and I sincerely apologize for the mixup.
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 04:24, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
ArbCom 2018 election voter message
Hello, OhKayeSierra. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 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.
There is an
A/B test for sameAs data. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the
metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks.
[43]
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
21 November at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated.
[44]
The
Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The
database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page.
[45]
Hi,
as it stands, the page is misleading because it omits (in the introduction, after which arguably most readers stop reading) an important fact. The change I had made simply consisted in reporting in the introductory paragraph what is already stated further down. The fact that she resigned as home secretary in connection to the Windrush scandal is a fact and must be reported in the introduction. Conveniently omitting it, while leaving only celebratory statements such as "the fastest-rising politician to a Great Office of State since the Second World War" turns this page into a hidden propaganda piece and not a decent encyclopedic voice. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
82.27.121.11 (
talk) 21:02, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
I started reverting vandalism by Ben jamine E 27 27 27 and noticed you already had finished with it. thank you, could you possibly send him a warning message
63.140.88.136 (
talk) 08:18, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
@
63.140.88.136: Didn’t get a chance to reply to this earlier, but Done.
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 16:56, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
confused
I don't know what you mean by joke edit???? The academy has a crest and I described it. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
109.204.116.125 (
talk) 09:33, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
[46] Well, I took a look after your first request and before you removed it, and semiprotected for a few days. The history looked pretty silly. Anyway. 🙂
Bishonen |
talk 20:50, 22 November 2018 (UTC).
I am looking to update our school's information as it is our 50th anniversary and have recently learned how popular Wikipedia searches actually are. I would like to make it look professional.
We have several forms of Social Media that I would like to share along with many of the Noteable Alumni we have and any other form of communication that we can do to reach out to our alumni.
Please help. I am VVVery new to editing in Wikipedia. Any help and guidance is much appreciated.
@
Yolandanavas: After taking a second look at the article and similar articles to other high schools, I found that there was precedent for including social media links in the article, so I
added them to the External links section. I also took care of some minor copy-editing to the article. Best,
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 15:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
OhKayeSierra, I am an unregistered user. I was wondering if you could state that Cardi B is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and television personality. Also, could you teach me how to start a page? I'm new to Wikipedia. Please and thank you.
Solomon32 (
talk) 12:49, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
@
Solomon32: There are two possible ways that you can go about this. You are currently only two days and 5 edits away from getting
autoconfirmed status on your account, which would let you make all of these edits on your own. If you’re not up for waiting, you can follow the instructions that come up when you attempt to edit Cardi B and make an edit request on the talk page. To do so, go to
Talk:Cardi B and make an edit request.
Wikipedia:Edit requests is a useful page that can help you format the request correctly. As far as creating an article goes, I recommend reading through
Wikipedia:Your First Article to get yourself up to speed on what the proper formatting and expectations for how to reference your article should be. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me again!
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 13:37, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
It should also be noted that, by virtue of having an account, you actually are a registered user now. 😁
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 13:38, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
OhKayeSierra, How many edits am I from getting autoconfirmed status on my account?
Thanks,
Solomon32 (
talk) 22:47, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi, I am wondering why the changes that I have made have disappeared again. Thank you. MiaDirewolf — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Miadirewolf (
talk •
contribs) 10:30, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
@
Miadirewolf: I looked through
your contributions, but I’m having trouble trying to determine what edits you’re referring to. I don’t recall reverting you at any point myself.
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 17:21, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi, don't know why you revert my editing in Paris section Music. I think it is better for Wikipedia to link to live sources and not to archive.org. I see you want to protect Wikipedia from spam link building, but I don't think, so it is the case. Please, think about it :) — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Platform.www (
talk •
contribs) 21:20, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
@
Platform.www:this edit and
[47] are inappropriate additions because it changes the reference that was available with an unwarranted link addition. By definition, that’s
spam and you could be subjected to a block if you continue to replace references with those links. Because of that, I stand by both of my reverts.
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 21:26, 26 November 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
On wikis with
translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages.
[48]
Changes later this week
The
advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia.
[49]
Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the
magic word__EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__.
[50]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (
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
28 November at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week.
Look for the warningUse of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a
migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead.
[51]
Dear OhKayeSierra. I have thought that is more valuable for Wikipedia to link to live site more than to archive.org, in addition, if the new content is somehow enriched. As you said, the links are nofollow and cannot help me with anything and I know it. Don't worry I'm not a typical Indian guy who spam links anywhere. I did not put to the referenced page any affiliate link or banner etc., I only thought, that it could be helpful for Wiki visitors, cause someone can be confused from the weird archived pages, not everyone is internet professional like we are. What was my motivation? Do not get a link, but get interesting content from archive.org to a site that is thematically similar.
Additionally, I think you are badly influenced by the fact that you still have to deal with spam? and you are not 100% objective in this respect. I do not care - I just say it.
And one more thing. if we will be 100% objective, we have to delete 50% of the external links. I can start to do it if you want, check all external links in the main category pages in many industries where the money is spinning, travel, marketing, dieting, etc. and report them if they are suspicious links. I give my neck that 50% are only SEO links.
Have a nice day and all good. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Platform.www (
talk •
contribs) 07:16, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks For the Thanks
Hello there! Thank you for the feedback on my previous edit! I appreciate it, any other air accidents you need help with send me a message, thanks
OrbitalEnd48401 (
talk) 17:15, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
You wouldn’t mind assisting me In adding more to the summary on TWA flight 514?
OrbitalEnd48401 (
talk) 17:19, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
@
OrbitalEnd48401: Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with
Aviation accidents and incidents, so I doubt I'd be much help to improving the article substantially right now. However, I'd be more than happy to look over it when I have some free time later in the week.
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 17:42, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
A
request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the
Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
A
request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This
change has been implemented globally. See also
this ongoing village pump discussion (
permalink).
To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on
a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.
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
Admins will not be able to unblock themselves if they are blocked by someone other than themselves. This is because it can cause damage if someone else takes over an admin account and other admins can't block them. If this is a problem for your community you can
report it on Phabricator. You can also ask questions
on Meta. There is a discussion
on Phabricator about how to solve this if two admins fight with each other on a small wiki.
[52]
You can go to a section from the edit summary by clicking on the section name. Before this you had to click on the arrow.
[54]
When you jumped to a footnote that was referenced several times in an article it could be difficult to see where you were in the text. Now there are jump marks and highlights to help you find your way back.
[55][56]
On the medical simulation wiki page all of our competitors are listing their companies and products with links. I am simply doing the same. May I ask how to do this properly? That way, we are all listed there. We are the biggest company of this type and need to be represented. A note was sent to our founder so I must address this in a timely manner.
Thank you for your help. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Simbionix (
talk •
contribs) 18:02, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
User indef blocked, Requesting immediate archiving...OhKayeSierra (
talk) 18:48, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Speedy tagging
Please don't tag articles as A3 (or A1) until at least 10 minutes have elapsed since creation. At
Ø̀ you tagged it one minute after creation. I deleted it anyway because a lot of time has elapsed since your tag, but that doesn't change the standard.--
Bbb23 (
talk) 19:59, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Also, just mentioning for the record that I almost never dabble in
new page patrolling (with today being a major exception). The page (and it’s editor) just caught my attention while I was going through the filter logs.
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 20:06, 5 December 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.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 December. It will be on all wikis from 13 December (
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
12 December at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts.
[58][59]
When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off.
[60]
I'd like your help wth someone stating my sourcing is inaccurate etc. He keeps going on at me when I provided him proof that the websiote i use for my research is A) Sources. B) Secure so notable accidents are uneditable.
I don't like his mannor in which he's trying to attack me.
@
OrbitalEnd48401: I took a look at your respective edits as well as the thread at
WT:AVIATION. I can certainly understand your frustration with that situation! Where I think the problem lies is that no one has actually explained how citation works on Wikipedia.
Citing sources directly in the article is key to ensuring that Wikipedia is a verifiable source for our readers. That being said, edits such as
this edit and
this edit can make this problematic because, after all, our readers won’t see the edit summary. With respect to whether ASN is an
acceptable source or not, I’ll defer to the consensus at
WT:AVIATION for that. Again, aviation topics isn’t really my main field of article-writing.
To put it simply, references to your edits are essential, and
this tutorial on how to add in-line references explains how to do it much better than I possibly could. Finally, I would suggest
assuming good faith in regards to
User:Jetstreamer. I think their intentions are good, and that they might not realize that you’re new to editing, or that no one has bothered to explain how references work or how to cite until today. I’d recommend giving them some benefit of the doubt, and likewise, to Jetstream, I recommend you avoid
BITE-y behavior with OrbitalEnd48401. We’re all here for the same goal, after all, which is to
build an encyclopedia. 😁
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 21:12, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
seriously thanks for the help! vey helpful. this will help me with future edits!!!! ;)
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 7 January 2019.
Recent changes
Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before.
[61][62]
Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped.
[63]
The
ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the
Remex parsing library instead of
Tidy.
Problems
<ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed.
[64]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 December. It will be on all wikis from 20 December (
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
19 December at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation
Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can
read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell
Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.
tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes
the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going.
[65]
OhKayeSierra, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable
New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Donner60 (
talk) 07:43, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
@
Donner60: Thank you for the well-wishes, as well as the work that you do for the project, and I also hope that you have a great and productive New Year!
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 00:19, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no
file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at
Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (
discussion). This is {{
db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (
discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{
db-blankdraft}}.
Members of the
Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are
now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.
Technical news
Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new
password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors,
et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available
on MediaWiki.org.
Blocked administrators
may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A
request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
{{
Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the
RevDel checkboxes already filled in.
Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
Around 22% of admins have enabled
two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider
doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate
account security by ensuring your password is
secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Psst, you still have one reserved since last week. Also happy new year. — AfroThundr (
u ·
t ·
c) 14:54, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
@
AfroThundr3007730: Whoops! Sorry about that! Holiday season has been a little chaotic with family coming into town and whatnot. I’ll be sure to take a look at it later today. Thanks for the heads up!
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 14:56, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.
Recent changes
RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata.
[66]
MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment.
[67]
codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code.
[68]
On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See
T212268 for more information and future plans.
Problems
In
AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed
on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is
on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them.
[69]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (
calendar).
Meetings
Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9.
Check the details for time and date.
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 add
captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
Earlier a
quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text.
[72][73]
Templates with
<templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the
sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>.
[74]
Problems
When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have
tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed.
[75]
Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage.
[76]
The
AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on
Special:AbuseFilter.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15
Do you recall what the rational for this undo was?
Thanks,
RLE64 (
talk) 17:42, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
@
RLE64: Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Sorry, but I don’t recall the original reason I reverted this from 9 months ago. On the surface, it looks like an erronous revert on my part, since I don’t see any issues with the anonymous editor’s edit to the page.
OhKayeSierra (
talk) 19:25, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Tech News
Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with
MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can
read it on Meta.
[77]
Recent changes
The
content translation tool can now use
version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the
beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed.
[78]
MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone.
[79][80]
Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed.
[81]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (
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 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.
When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed.
[83]
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
30 January at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent
request for comment has amended the
blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
A
request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.
Technical news
A
discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of
Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (
permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at
WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.
A new
IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be
identified.
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
It was easy to untick a box by accident in
Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed.
[84]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (
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
6 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
You can use the amboxCSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you use ambox there are
classes you can use.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 February. It will be on all wikis from 14 February (
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
13 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
When you
thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident.
[85]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (
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
20 February at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can
leave feedback.
[86]
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a
global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.
We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.
We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.
We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.
You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:
Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.
Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us
how your group communicates.
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 you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the
new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown.
[88]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (
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
27 February at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The
Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. 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.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (
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
6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
The mobile website will use the standard
fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts.
[89][90]
Following discussions at
the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and
Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the
restoration of adminship policy was
reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.
Technical news
A
new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.
Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee announced
two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g.,
WP:COIN or
WP:SPI).
paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive
paid editing.
checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.
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
Pages can use
geocoordinates from Wikidata with the mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatementsLua function or the #statementsparser function. If they do, they will now be shown using
a Kartographer <maplink> if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions
on Phabricator.
Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (
UTC). This will start at
15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can
see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed.
[91]
Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed.
[92][93]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (
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
13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See
how to join.