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Tech News: 2022-27
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (
calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 5 July at 07:00 UTC (
targeted wikis) and on 7 July at 7:00 UTC (
targeted wikis).
This change only affects pages in the main namespace in Wikisource. The Javascript config variable proofreadpage_source_href will be removed from mw.config and be replaced with the variable prpSourceIndexPage.
[1]
Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the
Growth team!
New project: Positive reinforcement
Mockup of the Impact module, redesigned to add Positive reinforcement.
The Growth team started a new project:
Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
We
summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
"Add a link" available at more wikis ―
Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can
configure locally how this feature works.
"Add an image" available at more wikis ―
Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: Greek Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. These communities will be able to
configure locally how this feature works.
[2]
Suggested edits
Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at
pilot wikis.
Changes for Add a link ―
We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
User experience improvements ― We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via
Special:EditGrowthConfig.
Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority.
[3]
Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge.
We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further,
please let us know, in any language.
Um, why are you asking me instead of doing it yourself or asking on the talk page? I'm not really familiar with the list. All I know is that Wikidata has a considerably lower bar for notability. The bot is going to revert them anyway in a week or so. — Alexis Jazz (
talk or ping me)
22:40, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
Alexis Jazz, alright. I can't do it myself because I had an emoji in my signature years ago. Anyhow, I forgot to mention that for a week or so I've been seeing double, that is I see "Start a new topic" twice and now there are two text balloons next to your name. Excuse me for not reporting this bug earlier. -- Donald Trung (
talk)
22:51, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
Oh right, edit restrictions. Well I'd prefer the IP getting angry with a bot rather than me for reverting them and I see limited harm in a project page temporarily listing slightly people. Especially if the IP would be right about the lack of notability which I don't intend to research. Seeing double? How very odd! Is this always, on every page? Which skin? Mobile site? Do both icons work? — Alexis Jazz (
talk or ping me)
00:32, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
By the way, I fully understand why you'd want to stay out of this, didn't realise that a bot will undo the vandalism later. I actually see vandalism quite regularly that I'm not allowed remove and at the Meta-Wiki I've actually seen some "subtle vandalism" on a page for years that has gone unreverted simply because nobody does it. I imagine that you probably see vandalism at the Wikimedia Commons all the time that you're not reverting and copyright violations that you're not nominating for deletion. At this point I should probably
just stop giving a fuck, especially if me undoing vandalism is considered to be "more disruptive" than the vandalism itself.
Which is also why I completely understand how you feel about the Wikimedia Commons, after a certain point the drama isn't worth the effort if you can be investing your time into more worthwhile things like tools that can improve users' editing experience. It's a shame that you don't work together with Wikimedia Deutschland to improve the tools. --
Donald Trung (
talk)
14:05, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
WMDE never asked me. Not sure if I should ask WMDE or what we could do for each other. I actually asked for people to volunteer for co-maintainer at
User talk:Alexis Jazz/Bawl#BCL and some potentially bad news, a call that hasn't been answered yet. Sometimes I run into copyvios through my work here, they generally end up on
m:User talk:Alexis Jazz#Copyvios to decorate my talk page so I get them
out of my system", a solution that isn't likely to work for your case. I don't have the double stuff. I notice on one of the screenshots that the speech balloons are far too small, I saw this on one of my (old) phones with an outdated browser but the same phone displayed several other elements too small. IIRC the issue was limited to the Vector skin. Monobook or Timeless (or both) worked fine. I suspect that's an issue with the phone, browser, skin CSS or MediaWiki itself but it affects Bawl quite a bit. Having no developer tools on that phone, there's not much I can seemingly do about it. And since that browser was outdated I didn't bother to report it as a bug on Phabricator. I see on the screenshots that the duplicate icons don't appear consistently. Do you also have replies on the same page that are missing icons? They may actually be misplaced instead of duplicate. An error report (kitty) could maybe help here. This doesn't explain the duplicate new section icon or duplicate "Start a new section" at the bottom. What browser/device are you using? Could you try a different browser to see if it makes a difference? — Alexis Jazz (
talk or ping me)
15:31, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Alexis Jazz, I'm currently using the
Ecosia browser and using a
GooglePixel 4a. The Ecosia browser is essentially just a fork of
Chromium and the device I'm using is a relatively new one. I will try to see if I have these issues on other devices and in other Wikimedia websites as I've only checked Wikipedia and the WC. -- Donald Trung (
talk)
17:04, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
IIRC the section edit links in Vector classic were also too small on my old phone. There happen to be no section edit links visible in your screenshots. Are the section edit links (or any other elements) disproportionally small for you? If they are, can you take a screenshot of that, preferably in a private window without Bawl? With that I could file a Phabricator task for that issue. — Alexis Jazz (
talk or ping me)
17:12, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
I was rather confused initially, while some elements could be misplaced or duplicated due to some oversight the "new section" in the toolbar is really only added once. There just can't be two. And you can't run the script twice, it has a check for that. But as it turns out, you do load the script twice: once from
User:Donald Trung/common.js and once from
m:User:Donald Trung/global.js. And the check for double loading in Bawl was flawed: if loaded twice in quick succession the check could be passed again, which is what happened for you. This should no longer happen. The icon size issue is unrelated, but I suspect that's not a Bawl bug. — Alexis Jazz (
talk or ping me)
02:14, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
That I fixed. The check if Bawl is already loaded is more reliable now. You might want to remove the line from
User:Donald Trung/common.js anyway (that would have also solved your problem) as it's redundant to the one in your global.js. The speech balloons on
File:Start a new section brawl bug on "Desktop" mode (12 July 2022) 02.png are smaller than they should be. They should be about line height. But I suspect that's also true for some other elements like possibly the section edit links. If you could confirm that with a screenshot I could file a Phabricator task. Or if every other element on the page is the normal size, maybe it would be an issue with Bawl. — Alexis Jazz (
talk or ping me)
06:21, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
How they appear for me now.
Well, on mobile this has always been the size, using "Desktop mode" on mobile is something that the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) always discourages, so I assume that "it's a feature and not a bug". As I'm convinced that some developers just try to sabotage Wikimedia websites for mobile devices on the presumption that all mobile users are vandals / "LTA" (whatever that means). I'd actually try to advise you to just use nothing but a mobile device for a week and see all the common issues we run into, sometimes I use my wife's laptop and the experiences are like night and day. My friends in real life also complain when I send them mobile Wikipedia links on Skype or Discord.
"Officially" the mobile site is supposed to be more "Consumer-oriented" while the desktop site is more "Prosumer-oriented", but the mobile site hides so much it's basically only designed to read and nothing more. Sure there are beta features that improve it, but overal the mobile site is specifically designed to hide talk pages, hide categories, hide the ability to edit full pages, basically hide anything that could make someone productive. I'm convinced that the WMF and the Stews just want to keep mobile editors away from these websites. Most updates also make the mobile editing experience worse, not better. And you're not allowed to complain about it. Wait no, that only applies to me. --
Donald Trung (
talk)
06:44, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
Well if (non-Bawl) section edit links or any other elements are also undersized for you it's a bug, probably an oversight in the CSS for Vector that only triggers on Chromium-family browsers on devices with a high pixel density. But unless I can confirm you experience the same issue I did on that outdated phone browser I can't file a Phab task. — Alexis Jazz (
talk or ping me)
06:54, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
Everard Richard Calthrop (3 March 1857 – 30 March 1927) was a British railway engineer and inventor. Calthrop was a notable promoter and builder of narrow-gauge railways, especially of 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) narrow gauge, and was especially prominent in India. His most notable achievement was the Barsi Light Railway, but he is best known in his home country for the Leek and Manifold Valley Light Railway. Calthrop has been described as a "railway genius.
(Please update the interwiki links on
Wikidata of your language version of the article after each week's translation is finished so that all languages are linked to each other.)
Italy report: Opening and closing projects in June
Kosovo report: Edit-a-thon with Kino Lumbardhi; DokuTech; CEE Spring 2022 in Albania and Kosovo
New Zealand report: West Coast Wikipedian at Large and Auckland Museum updates
Poland report: Wikipedian in residence in the National Museum in Cracow; The next online meeting within the cycle of monthly editing GLAM meetings; Steps to communicate GLAM partnerships better and involve the Wikimedian community
Sweden report: 100 000 memories from the Nordic Museum; Report from the Swedish National Archives
USA report: Fifty Women Sculptors; Juneteenth Edit-a-thon; Juneteenth Photobooths 2022; Wiknic June 2022; New York Botanical Garden June 2022; LGBT Pride Month
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, July 27th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the
Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
Next Linked Data for Libraries
LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group call July 12, 2022: Houcemeddine Turki will speak on "Enriching and Validating Wikidata from Large Bibliographic Databases." This call will be part of the 2022 LD4 Conference on Linked Data, “Linking Global Knowledge.” While you can attend the call directly via the links below without registering for the conference, we encourage everyone to check out the full conference program and all the excellent sessions on
Sched at
Agenda
Due to summer vacations and our current workloads the response times from the Wikidata communications team (Léa and Mohammed) to requests and queries may be delayed. We will resume full capacity by October.
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 page title is now displayed above the tabs such as Discussion, Read, Edit, View history, or More.
Learn more.
[6]
The Anti-Harassment Tools team
recently deployed the IP Info Feature as a
Beta Feature at all wikis. This feature allows abuse fighters to access information about IP addresses. Please check our update on
how to find and use the tool. Please share your feedback using a link you will be given within the tool itself.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 12 July at 07:00 UTC (
targeted wikis).
Welcome to the 7th issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! The newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the implementation of Wikimedia's
Movement Strategy recommendations, other relevant topics regarding Movement governance, as well as different projects and activities supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The MSG Newsletter is delivered quarterly, while the more frequent
Movement Strategy Weekly will be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe
here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.
Movement sustainability: Wikimedia Foundation's annual sustainability report has been published. (
continue reading)
Improving user experience: recent improvements on the desktop interface for Wikimedia projects. (
continue reading)
Safety and inclusion: updates on the revision process of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines. (
continue reading)
Equity in decisionmaking: reports from Hubs pilots conversations, recent progress from the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, and a new white paper for futures of participation in the Wikimedia movement. (
continue reading)
Stakeholders coordination: launch of a helpdesk for Affiliates and volunteer communities working on content partnership. (
continue reading)
Leadership development: updates on leadership projects by Wikimedia movement organizers in Brazil and Cape Verde. (
continue reading)
Internal knowledge management: launch of a new portal for technical documentation and community resources. (
continue reading)
Innovate in free knowledge: high-quality audiovisual resources for scientific experiments and a new toolkit to record oral transcripts. (
continue reading)
Evaluate, iterate, and adapt: results from the Equity Landscape project pilot (
continue reading)
Other news and updates: a new forum to discuss Movement Strategy implementation, upcoming Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, a new podcast to discuss Movement Strategy, and change of personnel for the Foundation's Movement Strategy and Governance team. (
continue reading)
The Church of St. Clare, Horodkivka is a Roman Catholic religious building and an architectural monument of local importance in the village of Horodkivka (alternative spelling Gorodkivka), Andrushivka Raion, Zhytomyr region, Ukraine. Horodkivka was called Khalaimgorodok before 1946
(Please update the interwiki links on
Wikidata of your language version of the article after each week's translation is finished so that all languages are linked to each other.)
The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, July 27th 2022 at 17:00 UTC (18:00 Berlin time) in the
Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.
Next Linked Data for Libraries
Wikidata Working Hour July 18, 2022: Working with diverse children's book metadata. The second Wikidata Working Hour in the series will cover reconciliation in OpenRefine, so we can identify which authors from our spreadsheet of children's book metadata already exist and/or need to be created in Wikidata. You are, as always, welcome to bring your own data to work on.
Event page
Placing a scientific article on Wikidata (in Portuguese) -
YouTube
Teaching Wikidata Editing Practices (in Chinese) -
YouTube
Threads
OpenSexism has created the
Wednesday Index: each wednesday, it show gender diversity in Wikipedia articles. Gender diversity is computed using a SPARQL query.
Fixed an issue where the grammatical form of a Lexeme was rendered as `[object Object]` (
phab:T239208) This also solves similar issues in other places.
REST API: Continued working on the API route to replace or remove a statement of an Item
We are making Wikibase resolve redirects when showing Item labels and descriptions in a lot more places; notably, this includes the wbsearchentities API. (
phab:T312223)
Mismatch Finder: We are discussing options for how to improve its handling of dates, specifically calendar model and precision.
EntitySchemas: We are trying to figure out how to best technically go about implementing some of the most-needed features for version 2.