Knowledge (XXG)

Tech News: 2023-06

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 Vector 2022 skin, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).
• Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
• Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
• Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will stop receiving new proposals on Monday, 6 February 2023, at 18:00 UTC. Proposers should complete any edits by then, to give time for translations and review. Voting will begin on Friday, 10 February.

Future changes

• Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add skins=… for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.

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Question from EstLeaf (12:38, 9 February 2023)

Tech News: 2023-07

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 wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).
• The Reply tool and other parts of DiscussionTools will be deployed for all editors using the mobile site. You can read more about this decision.

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.

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The Signpost: 20 February 2023

Tech News: 2023-08

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

• Last week, during planned maintenance of Cloud Services, unforeseen complications forced the team to turn off all tools for 2–3 hours to prevent data corruption. Work is ongoing to prevent similar problems in the future.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).
• The voting phase for the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 ends on 24 February at 18:00 UTC. The results of the survey will be announced on 28 February.

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.

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Women in Red March 2023

Tech News: 2023-09

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

• Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC.

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Wikimedians for Sustainable Development - February 2023 Newsletter

• Featured images
• 
  Three horses (SDG 15)
• 
  Hunter baby chameleon (SDG 15)
• 
  Rice paper butterfly (SDG 15)
• 
  Lasiocampa quercus 4th instar caterpillar Keila (top view) (SDG 15)
• 
  Lasiocampa quercus 4th instar caterpillar Keila (side view).jpg (SDG 15)
• 
  Mockingbird on the North Lake Trail (SDG 15)
• 
  Striated Pardalote (SDG 15)
• 
  Wiesenvögelchen (SDG 15)
• 
  Herring gull (SDG 15)
• 
  Northern shoveler (SDG 15)

This message was sent with Global message delivery by Ainali (talk) 18:57, 1 March 2023 (UTC) • Contribute • Manage subscription

Tech News: 2023-10

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 Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
• On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Knowledge (XXG)) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).
• A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon.

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The Signpost: 9 March 2023

Tech News: 2023-11

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 14 March. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Chavacano de Zamboanga Knowledge (XXG), Min Dong Chinese Knowledge (XXG), Chechen Knowledge (XXG), Cebuano Knowledge (XXG), Chamorro Knowledge (XXG), Cherokee Knowledge (XXG), Cheyenne Knowledge (XXG), Central Kurdish Knowledge (XXG), Corsican Knowledge (XXG), Kashubian Knowledge (XXG), Church Slavic Knowledge (XXG), Chuvash Knowledge (XXG), Welsh Knowledge (XXG), Italian Knowledge (XXG)). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

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The Signpost: 20 March 2023

Tech News: 2023-12

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

• Last week, some users experienced issues loading image thumbnails. This was due to incorrectly cached images.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will appear on Special:Contributions — some user scripts which previously added this link may cause conflicts. This feature request was voted #17 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• The Special:AbuseFilter edit window will be resizable and larger by default. This feature request was voted #80 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• There will be a new option for Administrators when they are unblocking a user, to add the unblocked user’s user page to their watchlist. This will work both via Special:Unblock and via the API.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Knowledge (XXG) mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 24 March at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

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Women in Red April 2023

Tech News: 2023-13

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 AbuseFilter condition limit was increased from 1000 to 2000.
• Some Global AbuseFilter actions will no longer apply to local projects.
• Desktop users are now able to subscribe to talk pages by clicking on the Subscribe link in the Tools menu. If you subscribe to a talk page, you receive notifications when new topics are started on that talk page. This is separate from putting the page on your watchlist or subscribing to a single discussion.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 March. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 March. It will be on all wikis from 30 March (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to choose visual diffs on all history pages at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias.
• The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Developers are encouraged to switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.

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Wikimedians for Sustainable Development - March 2023 Newsletter

• Featured images
• 
  Ourapteryx yerburii ssp. specimens and male genitalia (SDG 15)
• 
  Pterophorus pentadactyla (SDG 15)
• 
  Wood duck drake (SDG 15)
• 
  Cardinal (SDG 15)
• 
  Bunten Kronwicke (Securigera varia) (SDG 15)
• 
  Sympetrum sanguineum (SDG 15)
• 
  Crocus tommasinianus (SDG 15)
• 
  Papaya - longitudinal section close-up view (SDG 15)
• 
  Aphantopus hyperantus (SDG 15)
• 
  Australian Zebra Finch (SDG 15)
• 
  Melospiza melodia (SDG 15)
• 
  Roadside hawk (Rupornis magnirostris griseocauda) eating speckled racer (Drymobius margaritiferus) (SDG 15)
• 
  Black iguana (Ctenosaura similis) (SDG 15)
• 
  Cerastis rubricosa caterpillar (side view) (SDG 15)
• 
  Cerastis rubricosa caterpillar (dorsal view) (SDG 15)
• 
  Frühlings-Knotenblume (Leucojum vernum) (SDG 15)
• 
  Ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata) male (SDG 15)
• 
  Geoffroy's spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi yucatanensis) (SDG 15)
• 
  Ophiopogon planiscapus (SDG 15)
• 
  Protaetic cuprea ignicollis (SDG 15)
• 
  Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus plexippus) (SDG 15)
• 
  Cepaea nemoralis (SDG 15)
• 
  Crepis biennis (SDG 15)
• 
  Keel-billed toucan (Ramphastos sulfuratus sulfuratus) on foxtail palm (Wodyetia bifurcata) (SDG 15)
• 
  Trifolium spadiceum (SDG 15)

This message was sent with Global message delivery by Ainali (talk) 07:42, 1 April 2023 (UTC) • Contribute • Manage subscription

The Signpost: 03 April 2023

Tech News: 2023-14

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 system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
• Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version.
• The deprecated jquery.hoverIntent module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQuery hover() or on() instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide.
• Some of the links in Special:SpecialPages will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account.
• You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new __ARCHIVEDTALK__ magic word. There will also be a new .mw-archivedtalk CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page.

Future changes

• The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.

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Help editing a topic

Tech News: 2023-15

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 visual editor, it is now possible to edit captions of images in galleries without opening the gallery dialog. This feature request was voted #61 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• You can now receive notifications when another user edits your user page. See the "Edits to my user page" option in your Preferences. This feature request was voted #3 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems

• There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Knowledge (XXG), Danish Knowledge (XXG), Dinka Knowledge (XXG), Lower Sorbian Knowledge (XXG), Ewe Knowledge (XXG), Greek Knowledge (XXG), Emiliano-Romagnolo Knowledge (XXG), Esperanto Knowledge (XXG), Estonian Knowledge (XXG), Basque Knowledge (XXG), Extremaduran Knowledge (XXG), Tumbuka Knowledge (XXG), Fulah Knowledge (XXG), Finnish Knowledge (XXG), Võro Knowledge (XXG), Fijian Knowledge (XXG), Faroese Knowledge (XXG), Arpitan Knowledge (XXG), Northern Frisian Knowledge (XXG), Friulian Knowledge (XXG), Irish Knowledge (XXG), Guianan Creole Knowledge (XXG), Scottish Gaelic Knowledge (XXG), Galician Knowledge (XXG), Gilaki Knowledge (XXG), Guarani Knowledge (XXG), Goan Konkani Knowledge (XXG), Gothic Knowledge (XXG), Gujarati Knowledge (XXG), Manx Knowledge (XXG)). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

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Question from EsmailRahmani (16:01, 14 April 2023)

Tech News: 2023-16

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 see nearby articles on a Kartographer map with the button for the new feature "Show nearby articles". Six wikis have been testing this feature since October.
• The Special:GlobalWatchlist page now has links for "mark page as read" for each entry. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems

• At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week.
• For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 April. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 April. It will be on all wikis from 20 April (calendar).

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Question from Anxietykazoo (20:12, 17 April 2023)

Tech News: 2023-17

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The date-selection menu on pages such as Special:Contributions will now show year-ranges that are in the current and past decade, instead of the current and future decade. This feature request was voted #145 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems

• Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities.
• For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed.

Changes later this week

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Future changes

• The Editing team plans an A/B test for a usability analysis of the Talk page project. The planned measurements are available. Your wiki may be invited to participate. Please suggest improvements to the measurement plan at the discussion page.
• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input until May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023 on Meta-wiki.

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The Signpost: 26 April 2023

Women in Red May 2023

Tech News: 2023-18

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 content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the French and Italian Wikipedias. More languages will be added in the near future. This is part of the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads.
• The Special:Preferences page has been redesigned on mobile web. The new design makes it easier to browse the different categories and settings at low screen widths. You can also now access the page via a link in the Settings menu in the mobile web sidebar.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 May. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 May. It will be on all wikis from 4 May (calendar).

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Wikimedians for Sustainable Development - April 2023 Newsletter

• Featured images
• 
  Ara macao cyanopterus (SDG 15)
• 
  Leptura quadrifasciata (SDG 15)
• 
  Bursa lamarckii (SDG 15)
• 
  Ara macao cyanopterus (SDG 15)
• 
  Chlamydera guttata (SDG 15)
• 
  Sitta carolinensis (SDG 15)
• 
  Pumpkin field (SDG 2)
• 
  Diglossa baritula & Canna indica (SDG 15)
• 
  Acer platanoides (SDG 15)
• 
  Amazilia rutila (SDG 15)
• 
  Passiflora edulis (SDG 15)
• 
  Melanerpes aurifrons (SDG 15)
• 
  Argiope versicolor (SDG 15)
• 
  Allium ursinum (SDG 15)
• 
  Platanus x hispanica (SDG 15)
• 
  Thymelicus lineola (SDG 15)
• 
  Acer palmatum (SDG 15)
• 
  Falco tinnunculus (SDG 15)
• 
  Zalophus californianus (SDG 15)
• 
  Acer pseudoplatanus (SDG 15)
• 
  Tamarindus indica (SDG 15)
• 
  Sciurus carolinensis (SDG 15)
• 
  Tyrannus savana monachus (SDG 15)
• 
  Rapa incurva (SDG 15)
• 
  Trigona sp. (SDG 15)

This message was sent with Global message delivery by Ainali (talk) 19:31, 2 May 2023 (UTC) • Contribute • Manage subscription

Question from Sayrahnda (14:29, 19 April 2023)

Question from Most Faithful on Robert Drinan (03:33, 4 May 2023)

The Signpost: 8 May 2023

Question from NotSOnovice (05:07, 5 May 2023)

Tech News: 2023-19

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

• Last week, Community Tech released the first update for providing better diffs, the #1 request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. This update adds legends and tooltips to inline diffs so that users unfamiliar with the blue and yellow highlights can better understand the type of edits made.
• When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports wikitext as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such as html5, moin, and html+handlebars, can now be replaced.
• Preloading text to new pages/sections now supports preloading from localized MediaWiki interface messages. Here is an example at the Czech Knowledge (XXG) that uses preload=MediaWiki:July.

Problems

• Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like de:Modul:Graph. The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).
• Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review.

Future changes

• During the next year, MediaWiki will stop using IP addresses to identify logged-out users, and will start automatically assigning unique temporary usernames. Read more at IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Updates. You can join the discussion about the format of the temporary usernames.
• There will be an A/B test on 10 Wikipedias where the Vector 2022 skin is the default skin. Half of logged-in desktop users will see an interface where the different parts of the page are more clearly separated. You can read more.
• jquery.tipsy will be removed from the MediaWiki core. This will affect some user scripts. Many lines with .tipsy( can be commented out. OO.ui.PopupWidget can be used to keep things working like they are now. You can read more and read about how to find broken scripts.

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Tech News: 2023-20

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

• Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 May. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 May. It will be on all wikis from 18 May (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Gorontalo Knowledge (XXG), Hausa Knowledge (XXG), Hakka Chinese Knowledge (XXG), Hawaiian Knowledge (XXG), Fiji Hindi Knowledge (XXG), Croatian Knowledge (XXG), Upper Sorbian Knowledge (XXG), Haitian Creole Knowledge (XXG), Interlingua Knowledge (XXG), Interlingue Knowledge (XXG), Igbo Knowledge (XXG), Iloko Knowledge (XXG), Ingush Knowledge (XXG), Ido Knowledge (XXG), Icelandic Knowledge (XXG), Inuktitut Knowledge (XXG), Jamaican Patois Knowledge (XXG), Javanese Knowledge (XXG)). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Future changes

• There is a recently formed team at the Wikimedia Foundation which will be focusing on experimenting with new tools. Currently they are building a prototype ChatGPT plugin that allows information generated by ChatGPT to be properly attributed to the Wikimedia projects.
• Gadget and userscript developers should replace jquery.cookie with mediawiki.cookie. The jquery.cookie library will be removed in ~1 month, and staff developers will run a script to replace any remaining uses at that time.

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Question from Zii Lizard on User:Zii Lizard (23:46, 20 May 2023)

The Signpost: 22 May 2023

Tech News: 2023-21

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The "recent edits" time period for page watchers is now 30 days. It used to be 180 days. This was a Community Wishlist Survey proposal.

Changes later this week

• An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).

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Women in Red - June 2023

Tech News: 2023-22

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

• Citations can once again be added automatically from ISBNs, thanks to Zotero's ISBN searches. The current data sources are the Library of Congress (United States), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library), and K10plus ISBN (German repository). Additional data source searches can be proposed to Zotero. The ISBN labels in the VisualEditor Automatic tab will reappear later this week.
• The page Special:EditWatchlist now has "Check all" options to select all the pages within a namespace. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems

• For a few days earlier this month, the "Add interlanguage link" item in the Tools menu did not work properly. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 May. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 May. It will be on all wikis from 1 June (calendar).
• VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on small and medium wikis this week. Large wikis will follow in the coming weeks. This is part of the effort to move Parsoid into MediaWiki core. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here.

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The Signpost: 5 June 2023

Tech News: 2023-23

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
• Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "Group results by page". This has now been fixed.

Problems

• For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
• Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist.

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Question from Drxkutloo on Knowledge (XXG):Articles for creation/Submitting (04:13, 7 June 2023)

Tech News: 2023-24

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 content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias. This was the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article.
• The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software.
• The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages.

Problems

• For three days last month, some Knowledge (XXG) pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended __TOC__ (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed.
• Currently, the "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing.
• Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace #wpReason with #wpReason > input. See an example fix.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).
• VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Knowledge (XXG) on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here.

Future changes

• From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.

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Question from Rishab Smith (11:09, 15 June 2023)

poorly explained reversal

The Signpost: 19 June 2023

Tech News: 2023-25

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

• Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing \ or pressing ctrl + shift + p. It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor.

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Question from Dsapples5 on Education in Iraq (23:52, 21 June 2023)

Nomination of Olamide Toyin Adebayo for deletion

The article will be discussed at Knowledge (XXG):Articles for deletion/Olamide Toyin Adebayo until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Arewa house

Question from DrArjunanStrange (17:09, 24 June 2023)

Tech News: 2023-26

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 Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing / to all prop=extlinks responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the externallinks database table.

Problems

• Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
• The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the .mbox-text CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki.
• Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the |targets= parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the |skins= parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution.
• All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary.
• The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components.

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change in the coming weeks at group2 wikis. This change improves the accessibility of content. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Women in Red July 2023

The Signpost: 3 July 2023

Tech News: 2023-27

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

• As part of the rolling out of the audio links that play on click wishlist proposal, small wikis will now be able to use the inline audio player that is implemented by the Phonos extension.
• From this week all gadgets automatically load on mobile and desktop sites. If you see any problems with gadgets on your wikis, please adjust the gadget options in your gadget definitions file.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 July. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 July. It will be on all wikis from 6 July (calendar).

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Question from DeceasedKekoathings1 (07:13, 3 July 2023)

Tech News: 2023-28

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 Section-level Image Suggestions feature has been deployed on seven Wikipedias (Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Catalan, Hungarian, Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål). The feature recommends images for articles on contributors' watchlists that are a good match for individual sections of those articles.
• Global abuse filters have been enabled on all Wikimedia projects, except English and Japanese Wikipedias (who opted out). This change was made following a global request for comments.
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool for administrators to help fight spam. It provides a clearer interface for blocking plain domains (and their subdomains), is more easily searchable, and is faster for the software to process for each edit on the wiki. It does not support regex (for complex cases), nor URL path-matching, nor the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist, but otherwise it replaces most of the functionalities of the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. There is a Python script to help migrate all simple domains into this tool, and more feature details, within the tool's documentation. It is available at all wikis except for Meta-wiki, Commons, and Wikidata.
• The WikiEditor extension was updated. It includes some of the most frequently used features of wikitext editing. In the past, many of its messages could only be translated by administrators, but now all regular translators on translatewiki can translate them. Please check the state of WikiEditor localization into your language, and if the "Completion" for your language shows anything less than 100%, please complete the translation. See a more detailed explanation.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (calendar).
• The default protocol of Special:LinkSearch and API counterparts has changed from http to both http and https.
• Special:LinkSearch and its API counterparts will now search for all of the URL provided in the query. It used to be only the first 60 characters. This feature was requested fifteen years ago.

Future changes

• There is an experiment with a ChatGPT plugin. This is to show users where the information is coming from when they read information from Knowledge (XXG). It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Knowledge (XXG) plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20.
• There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed Third-party resources policy. The proposal will impact the use of third-party resources in gadgets and userscripts. Based on the ideas received so far, policy includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, some best practices and exemption requirements such as code transparency and inspectability. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on on the policy talk page.

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The Signpost: 17 July 2023

Question from Akela1971 (14:18, 17 July 2023)

Tech News: 2023-29

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

• We are now serving 1% of all global user traffic from Kubernetes (you can read more technical details). We are planning to increment this percentage regularly. You can follow the progress of this work.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 July. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 July. It will be on all wikis from 20 July (calendar).
• MediaWiki system messages will now look for available local fallbacks, instead of always using the default fallback defined by software. This means wikis no longer need to override each language on the fallback chain separately. For example, English Knowledge (XXG) doesn't have to create en-ca and en-gb subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides.
• The action=growthsetmentorstatus API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use the action=growthmanagementorlist API now.

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Women in Red 8th Anniversary

Question from Mrm1235 (19:44, 19 July 2023)

Tech News: 2023-30

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 July 18, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a survey about the technical decision making process for people who do technical work that relies on software that is maintained by the Foundation or affiliates. If this applies to you, please take part in the survey. The survey will be open for three weeks, until August 7. You can find more information in the announcement e-mail on wikitech-l.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 July. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 July. It will be on all wikis from 27 July (calendar).

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Women in Red August 2023

Tech News: 2023-31

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 Synchronizer tool is now available to keep Lua modules synced across Wikimedia wikis, along with updated documentation to develop global Lua modules and templates.
• The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. For example, you can hide edits that were made using an automated tool.
• The Knowledge (XXG) ChatGPT plugin experiment can now be used by ChatGPT users who can use plugins. You can participate in a video call if you want to talk about this experiment or similar work.

Problems

• It was not possible to generate a PDF for pages with non-Latin characters in the title, for the last two weeks. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 August. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 August. It will be on all wikis from 3 August (calendar).
• Starting on Tuesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Georgian Knowledge (XXG), Kara-Kalpak Knowledge (XXG), Kabyle Knowledge (XXG), Kabardian Knowledge (XXG), Kabiyè Knowledge (XXG), Kikuyu Knowledge (XXG), Kazakh Knowledge (XXG), Khmer Knowledge (XXG), Kannada Knowledge (XXG), Kashmiri Knowledge (XXG), Colognian Knowledge (XXG), Kurdish Knowledge (XXG), Cornish Knowledge (XXG)). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

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The Signpost: 1 August 2023

Tech News: 2023-32

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

• Mobile Web editors can now edit a whole page at once. To use this feature, turn on "⧼Mobile-frontend-mobile-option-amc⧽" in your settings and use the "Edit full page" button in the "More" menu.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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