This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
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.
[1][2]
The Wikipedia
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.
[3]
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.
[4]
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-Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia). This is part of the
progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can
configure how this feature works locally.
[5]
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.
[6]
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.
[7]
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-Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia, Ladino Wikipedia, Luxembourgish Wikipedia, Lak Wikipedia, Lezghian Wikipedia, Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia, Ganda Wikipedia, Limburgish Wikipedia, Ligurian Wikipedia, Lombard Wikipedia, Lingala Wikipedia, Latgalian Wikipedia, Latvian Wikipedia, Maithili Wikipedia, Basa Banyumasan Wikipedia, Moksha Wikipedia, Malagasy Wikipedia, Armenian Wikipedia, Kyrgyz Wikipedia). This is part of the
progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can
configure how this feature works locally.
[8]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 August. It will be on all wikis from 24 August (
calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
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.
[19]
All
Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date.
[20]
Wikisource users can now use the prpbengalicurrency label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <pagelist> tag.
[21]
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.
[22][23]
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-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (
calendar).
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.
[24]
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!
Following
an RfC,
TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
A discussion at
WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for
dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.
The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in
XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of
XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.
Miscellaneous
Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of
Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.
Wikiproject Military history coordinator election nominations open
Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available
here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the
current coord team.
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
02:05, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
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.
[25]
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.
[27]
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.
[29]
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-Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia, Maori Wikipedia, Minangkabau Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Mongolian Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Western Mari Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Maltese Wikipedia, Mirandese Wikipedia, Erzya Wikipedia, Mazanderani Wikipedia, Nāhuatl Wikipedia, Neapolitan Wikipedia, Low German Wikipedia, Low Saxon Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Newari Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Novial Wikipedia, N'Ko Wikipedia, Nouormand Wikipedia, Northern Sotho Wikipedia, Navajo Wikipedia, Nyanja Wikipedia, Occitan Wikipedia, Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia, Oromo Wikipedia, Oriya Wikipedia, Ossetic Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Pangasinan Wikipedia, Pampanga Wikipedia, Papiamento Wikipedia, Picard Wikipedia, Pennsylvania German Wikipedia, Palatine German Wikipedia, Norfuk / Pitkern Wikipedia, Piedmontese Wikipedia, Western Punjabi Wikipedia, Pontic Wikipedia, Pashto Wikipedia). This is part of the
progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can
configure how this feature works locally.
[30][31]
Hello and welcome to the September 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
David Thomsen: Prolific Wikipedian and Guild member David Thomsen (Dthomsen8) died in November 2022. He was a regular copy editor who took part in many of our Drives and Blitzes. An obituary was published in the mid-July issue of The Signpost. Tributes can be left on David's
talk page.
Election news: In our
mid-year Election of Coordinators, Dhtwiki was chosen as lead coordinator, Miniapolis and
Zippybonzo continue as assistant coordinators, and Baffle gab1978 stepped down from the role. If you're interested in helping out at the GOCE, please consider nominating yourself for our next election in December; it's your WikiProject and it doesn't organize itself!
June Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our
June Copy Editing Blitz, 12 copy-edited at least one article. 70,035 words comprising 26 articles were copy-edited. Barnstars awarded are
here.
July Drive: 34 of the 51 editors who took part in our
July Backlog Elimination Drive copy-edited at least one article. They edited 276 articles and 683,633 words between them. Barnstars awarded are
here.
August Blitz: In our
August Copy Editing Blitz, 13 of the 16 editors who signed up worked on at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 79,608 words comprising 57 articles. Barnstars awarded are available
here.
September Drive:Sign up here for our month-long September Backlog Elimination Drive, which is now underway. Barnstars awarded will be posted
here.
Progress report: As of 14:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC), GOCE copy editors have processed 245
requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stands at 2,066.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Dhtwiki,
Miniapolis and
Zippybonzo.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from
our mailing list.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia 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.
[32]
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.
[33]
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-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (
calendar).
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.
[34]
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.
[35]
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 Wikipedia. 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.
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.
[36][37]
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-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (
calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users.
[40]
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-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September (
calendar).
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.
[41][42]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia 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.
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.
[43]
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-Wikipedia 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.
[44]
An RfC is open regarding amending the
paid-contribution disclosure policy to add the following text: Any administrator soliciting clients for paid Wikipedia-related consulting or advising services not covered by other paid-contribution rules must disclose all clients on their userpage.
Technical news
Administrators can now choose to add the user's user page to their watchlist when changing the usergroups for a user. This works both via
Special:UserRights and via the API. (
T272294)
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 Wikipedia in
Fon (
w:fon:)
[45]
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-Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia, Walloon Wikipedia, Waray Wikipedia, Wolof Wikipedia, Kalmyk Wikipedia, Xhosa Wikipedia, Mingrelian Wikipedia, Yiddish Wikipedia, Yoruba Wikipedia, Zhuang Wikipedia, Zeelandic Wikipedia, Min Nan Wikipedia, Zulu Wikipedia). This is part of the
progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can
configure how this feature works locally.
[46]
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.[47]
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.
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.
[48]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia 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.
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.
[49]
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-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (
calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
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
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia 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.
[50][51]
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.
[52]
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.
[53]
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.
[54]
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-Wikipedia 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.
[55][56]
Following
a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
Following
several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
Following
a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
Following
a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.
Miscellaneous
The
Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in
the Gadgets settings.
Sign up here to participate!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
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.
[61]
Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved.
[62]
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-Wikipedia 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.
[63]
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.
[64][65]
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "
Add a link" (Quechua Wikipedia, Romansh Wikipedia, Romani Wikipedia, Rundi Wikipedia, Aromanian Wikipedia, Tarandíne Wikipedia, Rusyn Wikipedia, Kinyarwanda Wikipedia, Sanskrit Wikipedia, Sakha Wikipedia, Santali Wikipedia, Sardinian Wikipedia, Sicilian Wikipedia, Scots Wikipedia, Sindhi Wikipedia, Northern Sami Wikipedia, Sango Wikipedia, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, Sinhala Wikipedia, Slovak Wikipedia, Slovenian Wikipedia, Samoan Wikipedia, Somali Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Serbian Wikipedia, Sranan Tongo Wikipedia, Swati Wikipedia, Southern Sotho Wikipedia, Saterland Frisian Wikipedia, Sundanese Wikipedia, Silesian Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Tulu Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Tetum Wikipedia, Tajik Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkmen Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia, Tswana Wikipedia, Tongan Wikipedia, Tok Pisin Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Tsonga Wikipedia, Tatar Wikipedia, Twi Wikipedia, Tahitian Wikipedia, Tuvinian Wikipedia, Udmurt Wikipedia, Uyghur Wikipedia, Uzbek Wikipedia, Venda Wikipedia, Venetian Wikipedia, Veps Wikipedia, West Flemish Wikipedia, Volapük Wikipedia). This is part of the
progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can
configure how this feature works locally.
[66][67][68]
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.
[69]
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-Wikipedia 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.
[70][71]
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.
[72]
The deployment of "
Add a link" announced
last week was postponed. It will resume this week.
Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The
Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the
Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose
site bans,
topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The
arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
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.
[73]
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.
[74]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
[75][76]
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.
Following a
talk page discussion, the
Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have
notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.
Arbitration
Following
a motion, the
Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
The Arbitration Committee has
announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
Hello, and welcome to the December 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since September. Don't forget that you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
Election news: The Guild needs coordinators! If you'd like to help out, you may nominate yourself or any suitable editor—with their permission—for the Election of Coordinators for the first half of 2024. Nominations will close at 23:59 on 15 December (UTC). Voting begins immediately after the close of nominations and closes at 23:59 on 31 December. All editors in good standing (not under current sanctions) are eligible, and self-nominations are welcome. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term that ends at 23:59 on 30 June.
Drive: Of the 69 editors who signed up for the
September Backlog Elimination Drive, 40 copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 661,214 words in 290 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed
here.
Blitz: Of the 22 editors who signed up for the
October Copy Editing Blitz, 13 copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 109,327 words in 52 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed
here.
Drive: During the
November Backlog Elimination Drive, 38 of the 58 editors who signed up copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 458,620 words in 234 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed
here.
Progress report: As of 20:33, 10 December 2023 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 344 requests since 1 January, and the backlog stands at 2,191 articles.
Other news: Our Annual Report for 2023 is planned for release in the new year.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki,
Miniapolis and
Zippybonzo.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from
our mailing list.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
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.
[78][79]
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.
[80][81]
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-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (
calendar).
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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.
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-Wikipedia 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.
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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.
[86]
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.
[87]
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.
Voting for the WikiProject Military History newcomer of the year and military historian of the year awards for 2023 is now open!
Voting is now open for the WikiProject Military History newcomer of the year and military historian of the year awards for 2023! The the top editors will be awarded the coveted Gold Wiki . Cast your votes
vote here and
here respectively. Voting closes at 23:59 on 30 December 2023. On behalf of the coordinators, wishing you the very best for the festive season and the new year.
Hawkeye7 (
talk·contribs) via
MediaWiki message delivery (
talk)
23:56, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
Following a
motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were
enacted in June 2009.
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
mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can
install on your local machine.
The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing.
[88]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (
calendar).
[89][90]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
Pages that use the JSON
contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size.
[91]
Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all
supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the requiresES6 option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future.
[92]
An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024
has been published. Please read and give your feedback.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (
calendar).
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Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately.
[97]
The jquery.cookie module was deprecated and replaced with the mediawiki.cookie module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed.
[98]
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
A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed.
[99]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 January. It will be on all wikis from 25 January (
calendar).
[100][101]
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
Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change
on Diff or
on Mediawiki.org.
[102]
There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on
the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 January. It will be on all wikis from 1 February (
calendar).
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Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the targets option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the skins option instead.
[106]
An
RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.
Technical news
Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (
T326065)
Arbitration
Following a
motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
Community feedback is
requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at
WP:AE.
A vote to ratify the charter for the
Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via
Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found
here.
Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the
Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes.
Read more
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to
the phabricator task.
On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity.
Learn more about "action blocks".
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Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (
calendar).
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Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed.
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Future changes
24 Wikipedias with
Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make
Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For
46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February,
unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings.
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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
WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels.
[114][115][116] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service.
[117][118]
Problems
There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black;
this issue is fixed.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (
calendar).
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As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,
[121] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped.
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