Knowledge (XXG)

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.

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Review

Nomination of Sisterhood of Karn for deletion

The article will be discussed at Knowledge (XXG):Articles for deletion/Sisterhood of Karn 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.

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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Page review

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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DR about Avicci

The Anomebot

The Signpost: 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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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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Concern regarding Draft:Hungarian Academy of Arts

"Nine eleven" listed at Redirects for discussion

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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Nomination of Thomas Darwood for deletion

The article will be discussed at Knowledge (XXG):Articles for deletion/Thomas Darwood 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.

Tech News: 2023-33

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

Recent changes

• The Content translation system is no longer using Youdao's machine translation service. The service was in place for several years, but due to no usage, and availability of alternatives, it was deprecated to reduce maintenance overheads. Other services which cover the same languages are still available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 August. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 August. It will be on all wikis from 17 August (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Latin Knowledge (XXG), Ladino Knowledge (XXG), Luxembourgish Knowledge (XXG), Lak Knowledge (XXG), Lezghian Knowledge (XXG), Lingua Franca Nova Knowledge (XXG), Ganda Knowledge (XXG), Limburgish Knowledge (XXG), Ligurian Knowledge (XXG), Lombard Knowledge (XXG), Lingala Knowledge (XXG), Latgalian Knowledge (XXG), Latvian Knowledge (XXG), Maithili Knowledge (XXG), Basa Banyumasan Knowledge (XXG), Moksha Knowledge (XXG), Malagasy Knowledge (XXG), Armenian Knowledge (XXG), Kyrgyz 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

• A few gadgets/user scripts which add icons to the Minerva skin need to have their CSS updated. There are more details available including a search for all existing instances and how to update them.

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The Signpost: 15 August 2023

Questions for a research project

Tech News: 2023-34

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 GDrive to Commons Uploader tool is now available. It enables securely selecting and uploading files from your Google Drive directly to Wikimedia Commons.
• From now on, we will announce new Wikimedia wikis in Tech News, so you can update any tools or pages.
  • Since the last edition, two new wikis have been created:
    • a Wiktionary in Pa'O (wikt:blk:)
    • a Wikisource in Sundanese (s:su:)
  • To catch up, the next most recent six wikis are:
    • Wikifunctions (f:)
    • a Wiktionary in Mandailing (wikt:btm:)
    • a Knowledge (XXG) in Ghanaian Pidgin (w:gpe:)
    • a Wikinews in Gungbe (n:guw:)
    • a Wiktionary in Kabardian (wikt:kbd:)
    • a Knowledge (XXG) in Fante (w:fat:)

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 August. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 August. It will be on all wikis from 24 August (calendar).

Future changes

• There is an existing stable interface policy for MediaWiki backend code. There is a proposed stable interface policy for frontend code. This is relevant for anyone who works on gadgets or Wikimedia frontend code. You can read it, discuss it, and let the proposer know if there are any problems.

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Orphaned non-free image File:Le lien cover art.jpg

Tech News: 2023-35

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 changes for the better diff handling of paragraph splits, improved detection of splits is being rolled out. Over the last two weeks, we deployed this support to group0 and group1 wikis. This week it will be deployed to group2 wikis.
• All Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date.
• Wikisource users can now use the prpbengalicurrency label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <pagelist> tag.
• Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "Enable the visual editor" is now shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "Beta features" tab at some wikis. The preference "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor" is now also shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis, instead of the "Beta features" tab.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (calendar).
• New signups for a Wikimedia developer account will start being pushed towards idm.wikimedia.org, rather than going via Wikitech. Further information about the new system is available.
• All right-to-left language wikis, plus Korean, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Wikipedias, will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. This feature will come to more wikis in future weeks.

Future changes

• The removal of the DoubleWiki extension is being discussed. This extension currently allows Wikisource users to view articles from multiple language versions side by side when the <=> symbol next to a specific language edition is selected. Comments on this are welcomed at the phabricator task.
• A proposal has been made to merge the second hidden-categories list (which appears below the wikitext editing form) with the main list of categories (which is further down the page). More information is available on Phabricator; feedback is welcome!

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Translating articles about Ukrainian settlements

The Signpost: 31 August 2023

Tech News: 2023-36

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

• EditInSequence, a feature that allows users to edit pages faster on Wikisource has been moved to a Beta Feature based on community feedback. To enable it, you can navigate to the beta features tab in Preferences.
• As part of the changes for the Generate Audio for IPA and Audio links that play on click wishlist proposals, the inline audio player mode of Phonos has been deployed to all projects.
• There is a new option for Administrators when they are changing the usergroups for a user, to add the user’s user page to their watchlist. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API.
• One new wiki has been created:
  • a Knowledge (XXG) in Talysh (w:tly:)

Problems

• The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Eastern Mari Knowledge (XXG), Maori Knowledge (XXG), Minangkabau Knowledge (XXG), Macedonian Knowledge (XXG), Malayalam Knowledge (XXG), Mongolian Knowledge (XXG), Marathi Knowledge (XXG), Western Mari Knowledge (XXG), Malay Knowledge (XXG), Maltese Knowledge (XXG), Mirandese Knowledge (XXG), Erzya Knowledge (XXG), Mazanderani Knowledge (XXG), Nāhuatl Knowledge (XXG), Neapolitan Knowledge (XXG), Low German Knowledge (XXG), Low Saxon Knowledge (XXG), Nepali Knowledge (XXG), Newari Knowledge (XXG), Norwegian Nynorsk Knowledge (XXG), Novial Knowledge (XXG), N'Ko Knowledge (XXG), Nouormand Knowledge (XXG), Northern Sotho Knowledge (XXG), Navajo Knowledge (XXG), Nyanja Knowledge (XXG), Occitan Knowledge (XXG), Livvi-Karelian Knowledge (XXG), Oromo Knowledge (XXG), Oriya Knowledge (XXG), Ossetic Knowledge (XXG), Punjabi Knowledge (XXG), Pangasinan Knowledge (XXG), Pampanga Knowledge (XXG), Papiamento Knowledge (XXG), Picard Knowledge (XXG), Pennsylvania German Knowledge (XXG), Palatine German Knowledge (XXG), Norfuk / Pitkern Knowledge (XXG), Piedmontese Knowledge (XXG), Western Punjabi Knowledge (XXG), Pontic Knowledge (XXG), Pashto 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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Need help

Thanks

Tech News: 2023-37

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

Recent changes

• ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Knowledge (XXG) and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "Contribution quality predictions" and "User intent predictions"), please report them.
• When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
• The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team invites anyone involved in the technical field of Wikimedia projects to signup to and join one of their listening sessions on 13 September. Another date will be scheduled later. The goal is to improve the technical decision-making processes.
• As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format.

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
• The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Knowledge (XXG). Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.

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The Signpost: 16 September 2023

Always precious

Tech News: 2023-38

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

• MediaWiki now has a stable interface policy for frontend code that more clearly defines how we deprecate MediaWiki code and wiki-based code (e.g. gadgets and user scripts). Thank you to everyone who contributed to the content and discussions.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.
• All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener.

Future changes

• The team investigating the Graph Extension posted a proposal for reenabling it and they need your input.

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Tech News: 2023-39

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 Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September (calendar).
• The ResourceLoader mediawiki.ui modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
• Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes

• New variables will be added to AbuseFilter: global_account_groups and global_account_editcount. They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time.

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 27 October at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

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Present tense

Tech News: 2023-40

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 preference for "Always enable safe mode". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets.
• Gadget definitions now have a new "contentModels" option. The option takes a list of page content models, like wikitext or css. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Future changes

• The Vector 2022 skin will no longer use the custom styles and scripts of Vector legacy (2010). The change will be made later this year or in early 2024. See how to adjust the CSS and JS pages on your wiki.

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The Signpost: 3 October 2023

Tech News: 2023-41

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

• One new wiki has been created: a Knowledge (XXG) in Fon (w:fon:)

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Swahili Knowledge (XXG), Walloon Knowledge (XXG), Waray Knowledge (XXG), Wolof Knowledge (XXG), Kalmyk Knowledge (XXG), Xhosa Knowledge (XXG), Mingrelian Knowledge (XXG), Yiddish Knowledge (XXG), Yoruba Knowledge (XXG), Zhuang Knowledge (XXG), Zeelandic Knowledge (XXG), Min Nan Knowledge (XXG), Zulu Knowledge (XXG)). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
• At some wikis, newcomers are suggested images from Commons to add to articles without any images. Starting on Tuesday, newcomers at these wikis will be able to add images to unillustrated article sections. The specific wikis are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table. You can learn more about this feature.
• In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID #page-actions will be replaced with #p-views. This change is to make it consistent with other skins and to improve support for gadgets and extensions in the mobile skin. A few gadgets may need to be updated; there are details and search-links in the task.

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Comment

Nomination of Competent man for deletion

The article will be discussed at Knowledge (XXG):Articles for deletion/Competent man (3rd nomination) 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.

Tech News: 2023-42

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 Unified login system's edge login should now be fixed for some browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera). This means that if you visit a new sister project wiki, you should be logged in automatically without the need to click "Log in" or reload the page. Feedback on whether it's working for you is welcome.
• Edit notices are now available within the MobileFrontend/Minerva skin. This feature was inspired by the gadget on English Knowledge (XXG). See more details in T316178.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).

Future changes

• In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to addPortletLink and #p-namespaces that was deprecated one year ago will be removed. If you notice tools that should appear next to the "Discussion" tab are then missing, please tell the gadget's maintainers to see instructions in the Phabricator task.

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The Signpost: 23 October 2023

Tech News: 2023-43

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 Language and internationalization newsletter, written quarterly. It contains updates on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects, and related support work.
• Source map support has been enabled on all wikis. When you open the debugger in your browser's developer tools, you should be able to see the unminified JavaScript source code.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).

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DYK for Enshittification

Nomination of 𝼛 for deletion

The article will be discussed at Knowledge (XXG):Articles for deletion/𝼛 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.

Tech News: 2023-44

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 Structured Content team, as part of its project of improving UploadWizard on Commons, made some UX improvements to the upload step of choosing own vs not own work (T347590), as well as to the licensing step for own work (T347756).
• The Design Systems team has released version 1.0.0 of Codex, the new design system for Wikimedia. See the full announcement about the release of Codex 1.0.0.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).
• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 2 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for many languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more.
• Starting November 1, the impact module (Special:Impact) will be upgraded by the Growth team. The new impact module shows newcomers more data regarding their impact on the wiki. It was tested by a few wikis during the last few months.

Future changes

• There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. You can help by reviewing this proposal and sharing what you think about it.
• The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.

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The Signpost: 6 November 2023

Tech News: 2023-45

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, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content.

Problems

• Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).
• The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly.

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Tech News: 2023-46

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

• Four new wikis have been created:
  • a Knowledge (XXG) in Moroccan Amazigh (w:zgh:)
  • a Knowledge (XXG) in Dagaare (w:dga:)
  • a Knowledge (XXG) in Toba Batak (w:bbc:)
  • a Wikiquote in Banjar (q:bjn:)

Problems

• Last week, users who previously visited Meta-Wiki or Wikimedia Commons and then became logged out on those wikis could not log in again. The problem is now resolved.
• Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 November. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 November. It will be on all wikis from 16 November (calendar).

Future changes

• Reference Previews are coming to many wikis as a default feature. They are popups for references, similar to the PagePreviews feature. You can opt out of seeing them. If you are using the gadgets Reference Tooltips or Navigation Popups, you won’t see Reference Previews. Deployment is planned for November 22, 2023.
• Canary (also known as heartbeat) events will be produced into Wikimedia event streams from December 11. Streams users are advised to filter out these events, by discarding all events where meta.domain == "canary". Updates to Pywikibot or wikimedia-streams will discard these events by default.

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The Signpost: 20 November 2023

Tech News: 2023-47

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

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Quechua Knowledge (XXG), Romansh Knowledge (XXG), Romani Knowledge (XXG), Rundi Knowledge (XXG), Aromanian Knowledge (XXG), Tarandíne Knowledge (XXG), Rusyn Knowledge (XXG), Kinyarwanda Knowledge (XXG), Sanskrit Knowledge (XXG), Sakha Knowledge (XXG), Santali Knowledge (XXG), Sardinian Knowledge (XXG), Sicilian Knowledge (XXG), Scots Knowledge (XXG), Sindhi Knowledge (XXG), Northern Sami Knowledge (XXG), Sango Knowledge (XXG), Serbo-Croatian Knowledge (XXG), Sinhala Knowledge (XXG), Slovak Knowledge (XXG), Slovenian Knowledge (XXG), Samoan Knowledge (XXG), Somali Knowledge (XXG), Albanian Knowledge (XXG), Serbian Knowledge (XXG), Sranan Tongo Knowledge (XXG), Swati Knowledge (XXG), Southern Sotho Knowledge (XXG), Saterland Frisian Knowledge (XXG), Sundanese Knowledge (XXG), Silesian Knowledge (XXG), Tamil Knowledge (XXG), Tulu Knowledge (XXG), Telugu Knowledge (XXG), Tetum Knowledge (XXG), Tajik Knowledge (XXG), Thai Knowledge (XXG), Turkmen Knowledge (XXG), Tagalog Knowledge (XXG), Tswana Knowledge (XXG), Tongan Knowledge (XXG), Tok Pisin Knowledge (XXG), Turkish Knowledge (XXG), Tsonga Knowledge (XXG), Tatar Knowledge (XXG), Twi Knowledge (XXG), Tahitian Knowledge (XXG), Tuvinian Knowledge (XXG), Udmurt Knowledge (XXG), Uyghur Knowledge (XXG), Uzbek Knowledge (XXG), Venda Knowledge (XXG), Venetian Knowledge (XXG), Veps Knowledge (XXG), West Flemish Knowledge (XXG), Volapük Knowledge (XXG)). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
• The Vector 2022 skin will have some minor visual changes to drop-down menus, column widths, and more. These changes were added to four Wikipedias last week. If no issues are found, these changes will proceed to all wikis this week. These changes will make it possible to add new menus for readability and dark mode. Learn more.

Future changes

• There is an update on re-enabling the Graph Extension. To speed up the process, Vega 2 will not be supported and only some protocols will be available at launch. You can help by sharing what you think about the plan.

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"Fu-chien County" listed at Redirects for discussion

CPRN Redirect Page proposed for deletion

Tech News: 2023-48

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 28 November. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
• MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow async/await syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately.
• The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.

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ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

The Signpost: 4 December 2023

Tech News: 2023-49

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 spacing between paragraphs on Vector 2022 has been changed from 7px to 14px to match the size of the text. This will make it easier to distinguish paragraphs from sentences.
• The "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is working again. You no longer need to switch to source editing to edit {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• On 6 December, people who have the enabled the preference for "Show discussion activity" will notice the talk page usability improvements appear on pages that include the __NEWSECTIONLINK__ magic word. If you notice any issues, please share them with the team on Phabricator.

Future changes

• The Toolforge Grid Engine shutdown process will start on December 14. Maintainers of tools that still use this old system should plan to migrate to Kubernetes, or tell the team your plans on Phabricator in the task about your tool, before that date.
• Communities using Structured Discussions are being contacted regarding the upcoming deprecation of Structured Discussions. You can read more about this project, and share your comments, on the project's page.

Events

• Registration & Scholarship applications are now open for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 that will take place from 3–5 May in Tallinn, Estonia. Scholarship applications are open until 5 January 2024.

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Alexander Lozza moved to draftspace

Tech News: 2023-50

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 Wikimedia Commons, there are some minor user-interface improvements for the "choosing own vs not own work" step in the UploadWizard. This is part of the Structured Content team's project of improving UploadWizard on Commons.

Problems

• There was a problem showing the Newcomer homepage feature with the "impact module" and their page-view graphs, for a few days in early December. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (calendar).

Future changes

• The 2023 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 5 January 2024, and has an associated privacy statement.

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Tech News: 2023-51

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

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2024 because of the holidays.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 December. It will be on non-Knowledge (XXG) wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 December. It will be on all wikis from 21 December (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
• Starting December 18, it won't be possible to activate Structured Discussions on a user's own talk page using the Beta feature. The Beta feature option remains available for users who want to deactivate Structured Discussions. This is part of Structured Discussions' deprecation work.
• There will be full support for redirects in the Module namespace. The "Move Page" feature will leave an appropriate redirect behind, and such redirects will be appropriately recognized by the software (e.g. hidden from Special:UnconnectedPages). There will also be support for manual redirects.

Future changes

• The MediaWiki JavaScript documentation is moving to a new format. During the move, you can read the old docs using version 1.41. Feedback about the new site is welcome on the project talk page.
• The Wishathon is a new initiative that encourages collaboration across the Wikimedia community to develop solutions for wishes collected through the Community Wishlist Survey. The first community Wishathon will take place from 15–17 March. If you are interested in a project proposal as a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you can register for the event and read more.

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CfD nomination at Knowledge (XXG):Categories for discussion/Log/2023 December 19 § X in fiction VI

CfD nomination at Knowledge (XXG):Categories for discussion/Log/2023 December 21 § X in fiction IX

The Signpost: 24 December 2023