User talk:John Broughton
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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.
Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.
Recent changes
- RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [1]
- MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [2]
- codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [3]
- On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.
Problems
- In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [4]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (calendar).
Meetings
- Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [5][6]
- You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
- Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [7][8]
- Templates with <templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new
wrapper
parameter now. You can use it for selectors like.mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>
. [9]
Problems
- When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [10]
Changes later this week
- You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
- Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [11]
- The AbuseFilter variable
minor_edit
has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter. - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15
17:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [12]
Recent changes
- The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category
Pages with unreviewed translations
to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category inSpecial:TrackingCategories
on Wikipedias. - https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.
Problems
- When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [13]
- MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [14][15]
- Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [16]
Changes later this week
- You will be able to use template styles in the
Module
namespace. [17] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:35, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Wikimedia servers use HHVM to run the PHP code. They are going to use PHP7 and stop using HHVM. You can test PHP7 with a new beta feature. That way you can help find and report problems.
Problems
- When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [18]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [19]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can use the
ambox
CSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you useambox
there are classes you can use.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 February. It will be on all wikis from 14 February (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #5
[edit]Welcome to the fifth newsletter for the new Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
New projects for discussion
[edit]We began the "Personalized first day" project with the welcome survey so that we could gather information about what newcomers are trying to accomplish. The next step is to use that information to create experiences that help the newcomers accomplish their goal – actually personalizing their first day. We asked for community thoughts in the previous newsletter, and after discussing with community members and amongst our team, we are now planning two projects as next steps: "engagement emails" and "newcomer homepage".
- Engagement emails: this project was first discussed positively by community members here back in September 2018, and the team how has bandwidth to pursue it. The idea is that newcomers who leave the wiki don't get encouraged to return to the wiki and edit. We can engage them through emails that send them the specific information they need to be successful – such as contact from a mentor, the impact of their edits, or task recommendations. Please read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Do you think this is a good idea? Where could we go wrong?
- Newcomer homepage: we developed the idea for this project after analyzing the data from the welcome survey and EditorJourney datasets. We saw that many newcomers seem to be looking for a place to get started – a place that collects their past work, options for future work, and ways to learn more. We can build this place, and it can connect to the engagement emails. The content of both could be guided by what newcomers say they need during their welcome survey, and contain things like contact from a mentor, impact of their edits, or task recommendations. Please read over the project page, and comment on its discussion page with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Do you think this is a good idea? Where could we go wrong?
Initial reports on newcomer activity
[edit]We have published initial reports on each of the team's first two projects. These reports give the basic numbers from each project, and there are many more questions we will continue to answer in future reports. We're excited about these initial findings. They have already helped us define and design parts of our future projects.
- Welcome survey: the initial report on welcome survey responses is available here. Some of the main findings:
- Most users respond to the survey, giving it high response rates of 67% and 62% in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, respectively.
- The survey does not cause newcomers to be less likely to edit.
- The most common reason for creating an account in Korean Wikipedia is to read articles—not for editing—with 29% of Korean users giving that responses.
- Large numbers of respondents said they are interested in being contacted to get help with editing: 36% in Czech and 53% in Korean.
- Understanding first day: the initial report on what newcomers do on their first day is available here. Some of the main findings:
- Large numbers of users view help or policy pages on their first day: 42% in Czech and 28% in Korean.
- Large numbers of users view their own User or User Talk page on their first day: 34% in Czech and 39% in Korean.
- A majority of new users open an editor on their first day – but about a quarter of them do not go on to save an edit during that time.
Help panel deployment
[edit]The help panel was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on January 10. Over the past four weeks:
- About 400 newcomers in each wiki have seen the help panel button.
- About 20% of them open up the help panel.
- About 50% of those who open it up click on one of the links.
- About 5% of Czech users ask questions, and about 1% of Korean users ask questions.
We think that the 20% open rate and 50% click rate are strong numbers, showing that a lot of people are looking for help, and many want to help themselves by looking at help pages. The somewhat lower numbers of asking questions (especially in Korean Wikipedia) has caused us to consider new features to allow people to help themselves. We're going to be adding a search bar to the help panel next, which will allow users to type a search that only looks for pages in the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
How to create a good feedback page?
[edit]What is the way to built a good help page? What blocks you when writing an help page? Your replies will help to create better help contents to newcomers, that would be used on Help panel.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 14:15, 13 February 2019 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Today's Wikipedian 10 years ago
[edit]Ten years! |
---|
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:56, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- When you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [20]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [21]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:13, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Talk to us about talking
[edit]The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.
We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.
We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.
We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.
You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:
- First, sign up your group here.
- Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
- Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
- When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
- What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
- What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
- What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
- What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
- Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.
You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.
Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.
You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.
Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.
Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
- Related to this, I mentioned your book at mw:Talk pages consultation 2019/Discussion tools in the past. Please Be Bold and correct any errors and omissions that you see, or drop by the talk page and tell stories about what Wikipedia was like back in the day. ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new version of the iOS Wikipedia app. It has for example syntax highlighting and new toolbars to make it easier to write wikitext. It also has night mode, a find-on-page function and other things. You can give feedback and suggestions. [22]
Changes later this week
- When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [23]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:16, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
Books & Bytes, Issue 32
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 32, January – February 2019
- #1Lib1Ref
- New and expanded partners
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
French version of Books & Bytes is now available on meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:29, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 February 2019
[edit]- From the editors: Help wanted (still)
- News and notes: Front-page issues for the community
- Discussion report: Talking about talk pages
- Featured content: Conquest, War, Famine, Death, and more!
- Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Binge-watching
- Technology report: Tool labs casters-up
- Gallery: Signed with pride
- From the archives: New group aims to promote Wiki-Love
- Humour: Pesky Pronouns
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
- The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [24][25]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the
mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatements
Lua function or the#statements
parser function. If they do, they will now be shown using a Kartographer<maplink>
if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator. - There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.
Problems
- Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
- Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [26]
- Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [27][28]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
NPR Newsletter No.17
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- News
- The WMF has announced that Google Translate is now available for translating articles through the content translation tool. This may result in an increase in machine translated articles in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to use the {{rough translation}} tag and gently remind (or inform) editors that translations from other language Wikipedia pages still require attribution per WP:TFOLWP.
- Discussions of interest
- Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
- {{db-blankdraft}} was merged into G13 (Discussion)
- A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
- There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.
- Reminders
- NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.
- NPP Tools Report
- Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
- copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
- The NPP flowchart now has clickable hyperlinks.
Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828
Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #6
[edit]Welcome to the sixth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Plans for the next three months
[edit]The Growth team has been working on features to increase new editor retention for the last seven months. We have made a lot of progress and learned a lot, and we've just finished planning for our next three months. During the next three months, we're going to focus on iterations of the help panel and the newcomer homepage. We have decided not to start the engagement emails project, because we think that we will be able to do better work by improving the projects we have already started. Specifically, these are our team goals:
- Deploy and iterate on newcomer homepage
- Continued iteration on help panel
- Make the help panel available to more wikis
- Add a fourth Wikipedia to our set of target wikis
- Publish in-depth quantitative reporting on the data from this year
- Assemble a report on what our team has learned so far about newcomers
Newcomer homepage
[edit]We have recently decided on the specifications for an initial version that we can deploy and iterate on:
- Shown in the User space
- Desktop only (mobile comes next)
- Four modules
- Help module: help links and ability to ask help desk questions
- Mentorship module: all newcomers assigned a mentor to whom they can ask questions
- Impact module: shows the number of pageviews for pages the newcomer edited
- Account completion module: gives some very simple recommendations of how to get started (add an email, start your user page)
- Layout not yet personalized for each user
We're currently running live user tests on this configuration. Future work will include adapting the homepage for mobile, working on a task recommendation module, and considering how to encourage newcomers to visit their homepage.
Help panel
[edit]During the last month, the help panel was deployed on Vietnamese Wikipedia, adding it to Czech and Korean Wikipedias.As of 2019-03-14:
- 2,425 newcomers have seen the help panel
- 422 of them have opened it
- 175 have clicked links
- 27 have run searches
- 40 have asked questions
We have been analyzing the data around usage, and we'll be publishing numbers in the coming weeks. At a high level, we see at least some users are being helped by the panel, with many clicking on links, running searches, and asking questions. We do not yet see any problems that have arisen from the help panel. Therefore, we think that the help panel is generally a positive feature – though data is still coming that will allow us to see its numerical impact. If other wikis are interested in using the help panel, please contact us on our team's talk page, in the language of your choice.
Over the past month, we have iterated on the help panel to take into account the usage patterns we are seeing. You can see in the accompanying image how the help panel currently looks.
- We added a search capability, in which users can search the Help and Wikipedia namespaces.
- The help panel was previously available whenever a newcomer was in "edit" mode. We are now also showing the help panel when a newcomer is in "read" mode on a page in the Help, Wikipedia, or User namespaces.
We want to see whether users find the "search" useful. If so, we may spend time on improving search results. We're also looking forward to learning whether exposing the help panel in "read" mode in more namespaces will increase usage.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [29][30]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [31]
- Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version. [32]
Problems
- There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed. [33]
- The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon. [34]
- Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them. [35]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Judicial service
[edit]In my experience, it is the norm to refer to "judicial service"; we have literally thousands of articles with headings for judicial service, or specifically for state judicial service and federal judicial service. bd2412 T 01:58, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
- @BD2412: I'll defer to your expertise, though I'm glad to see that you didn't think there was a need to repeat "service" in the subsection headings. (My larger gripe is with sentences that read, for example, "She served in the position of Deputy Whatever from [date] ... ", when it could simply read "She was the Deputy Whatever from [date] ... "). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:42, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
- That, I am fine with. Thanks. bd2412 T 02:46, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 March 2019
[edit]- From the editors: Getting serious about humor
- News and notes: Blackouts fail to stop EU Copyright Directive
- In the media: Women's history month
- Discussion report: Portal debates continue, Prespa agreement aftermath, WMF seeks a rebranding
- Featured content: Out of this world
- Arbitration report: The Tides of March at ARBCOM
- Traffic report: Exultations and tribulations
- Technology report: New section suggestions and sitewide styles
- News from the WMF: The WMF's take on the new EU Copyright Directive
- Recent research: Barnstar-like awards increase new editor retention
- From the archives: Esperanza organization disbanded after deletion discussion
- Humour: The Epistolary of Arthur 37
- In focus: The Wikipedia SourceWatch
- Special report: Wiki Loves (50 Years of) Pride
- Community view: Wikipedia's response to the New Zealand mosque shootings
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
- Notifications tell you about things that happen on the wiki. You can turn on notifications about new links to pages you created. For performance reasons you can no longer get e-mails about this. [36]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- More wikis are now testing visual editor section editing for mobile users. You can read more.
- Admins on French and Polish Wikipedia can block someone from editing a page or a namespace. If your wiki wants to get these blocks before they are available to all wikis, you can tell the developers. [37][38]
Problems
- You will be able read but not edit most wikis for 30 minutes on 11 April at 05:00 (UTC). This is because of a hardware problem. You can see a list of the affected wikis. [39]
- A map update caused some problems on 29 March and 30 March. It was rolled back. [40]
- Pages on some Wikivoyages had problems with the top headline. This has been fixed. [41]
Changes later this week
- When you add an edit summary the VisualEditor will search your recent edit summaries in case you want to re-use one. This works in both the visual and wikitext modes on desktop. It also works on the mobile site. [42]
- The Wikimedia wikis will get a URL shortener. This will work from 11 April. You can read more. [43]
- The
{{REVISIONID}}
magic word will no longer work. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it will return""
(empty string). When you read a page it will return"-"
(dash). For now this will only affect content namespaces. [44] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will be able to preview references. This means that when you hover over the link you will get a popup that shows you a preview of the reference. It will work much like page previews. This is so you don't have to go to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will now be available as a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia. [45][46]
- The Wikidata JSON output will change. Empty containers will be serialised as empty objects. This is a breaking change that will affect tools that use JSON outputs and APIs. It will happen on 30 April. You can read more and see how to test your code.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- All wikis now have the TemplateWizard for the wikitext editor.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikidata will get a new constraint status called
suggestion
. This will change how theWikibaseQualityConstraints
constraint checking API works. [47][48] - You can test the
depicts
property for structured data on Commons.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:00, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The advanced search function URL now shows which namespaces you search in. The namespace field is collapsed by default on the search page. You can also add new fields to the search interface through a hook. [49][50][51]
- The wikis now look slightly different in the mobile web version. [52]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikipedia articles will have the
sameAs
meta property. It adds structured data. This makes it easier for search engines to find Wikipedia articles. It also makes it easier to reuse content. There will an A/B test. [53][54]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #7
[edit]Welcome to the seventh newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Newcomer homepage release this week
[edit]Like the other Growth team features, this will be deployed in a controlled experiment, in which half of newcomers will have access to their homepage and half will not. Users with the feature will be able to access it by clicking their username at the top of their browser, and it will only be available on desktop -- not mobile. Experienced users who want to see their homepage will be able to turn it on in their preferences.
Wikis receiving the newcomer homepage can expect these things:
- Additional questions will come to the help desk from the "help module" on the homepage.
- Mentors who have signed up for the "mentorship module" will start to receive questions on their user talk pages.
- More users may create and edit user pages through the "start module".
Recent and future homepage development
[edit]The most important piece developed for the homepage over the last month is the "start module", which gives newcomers clear actions to take when they are new: add/confirm their email, go through a tutorial, start their user page. We learned about the need for this module from user tests last month. The next priorities for the newcomer homepage are:
- Mobile design: to work well in mobile browsers, the homepage needs a separate design and engineering. See the accompanying mockups for potential mobile designs.
- Features for discovery: only about 15% - 30% of newcomers will discover their homepage by clicking their username at the top of their browser. We are going to be designing additional ways for newcomers to find out about it.
- Additional modules: the initial version contains some of the simpler modules. Potential upcoming modules include task recommendations and a feed of activity on the wiki.
Other updates
[edit]- Help panel leading indicators: our team published data on the help panel's initial performance. The evaluation exposes some areas for improvement, but we think the help panel's behavior so far is healthy and that it is not having a negative impact on the wikis. We will be publishing additional data, making plans, and asking for community thoughts around the future of the help panel over the course of the next two weeks. If you are interested in trying out the help panel on your wiki, please let us know on our team's talk page.
- Long term plans: the team had a week of planning meetings, in which we talked about some longer-term ideas for Growth work. Some of the top ideas are: to extend the newcomer homepage to help user's build their identity through a user profile, and to revisit the "engagement emails" project that the team put on hold. Over the next month, we will be asking for community conversation around how the team can spend our time in the next fiscal year, that starts in July.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:18, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android now invites users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. [55][56]
Problems
- Tech News was late last week because of a MassMessage bug. Other newsletters had the same problem. [57]
Changes later this week
- You will see when you last refreshed the recent changes page. This is so you can see how recent the changes are. [58]
- When you write a comment in Structured Discussions but have not posted it yet your web browser will save it in
local storage
instead ofsession storage
. This means you do not lose them even if you close your web browser. Structured Discussions used to be called Flow. [59] - You will be able to turn off milestone notifications. Milestone notifications congratulate you when you have made certain numbers of edits. [60]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikidata
wb_terms
table will be dropped. This will affect some Wikidata tools. They need to be updated. The table has become too big which is causing problems. This will happen on 29 May. You can read more. You can ask for help if you need it. - Wikimedia wikis will soon use a token when you log out. This changes how the API works. Some tools might need to be updated. [61]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:27, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
Jay Shetty
[edit]Just submitted new Jay Shetty draft for review. Thanks for getting the word out and I hope you’ll take a look. Thank you.
Added a new source to Jay Shetty’s draft - I hope you’ll take a look. Thanks!--Marysairplane (talk) 02:59, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
I reverted a recent edit to this page due to no source. Did I do this correctly? --Marysairplane (talk) 00:05, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
- Marysairplane - yes. That wasn't a particularly bad edit, but it wasn't helpful, so removing it was a good idea.
- If this had been a registered editor, rather than an IP address (anonymous user) doing the edit, I would have checked to see if you had posted a comment to the user talk page, letting the user know why you did the revert. But it's generally not worthwhile to do this for an IP editor, since the chances of the user subsequently seeing your comment (let alone considering it seriously) is very low. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:49, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for the pointers. Just checking - another anonymous user left an edit with a tag that reads “notable?” at the top of the page and I’m not sure how to proceed. Looking for advice. --Marysairplane (talk) 01:59, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
- Marysairplane - I've reverted the edits that are related to the template/tag. It was an anonymous IP editor that put up the template, and there was no explanation on the article talk page about why he/she thought that the topic wasn't notable. Given the source of the edit (IP editor with no history of other edits), the lack of detail in both the edit summary and on the talk page, and the number of sources actually cited in the article, the posting of the template isn't credible. So I deleted it, with an invitation, in the edit summary, to discuss further the matter on the article talk page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:41, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
John - this page has been vandalized multiple times by anonymous users over the last 24 hours. Do you think this qualifies to be protected? —Marysairplane (talk) 09:54, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
- Marysairplane -- I don't think that the amount or type of vandalism has quite risen to the level where semi-protection (preventing anonymous editors from editing) is justified, though this is subjective. The policy is at WP:PREEMPTIVE, if you haven't looked yet.
- The most persistent of the editors has been blocked (for 31 hours), and I added a post to their user talk page to try to explain Wikipedia policies; they're trying to add content, not vandalize per se, though unsourced negative content is still unacceptable.
- But if you want to ask for semi-protection, I certainly wouldn't object. Or you could wait a day or two and see if problem persists. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:58, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. The problem persisted for several days, so I went ahead and requested semi protection. —Marysairplane (talk) 23:17, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
This page is receiving vandalism again and I’m looking for some help. I reverted some edits yesterday due to a lack of independent and reliable sources and the user has replaced them. One of them is a self-published source. I’d like to get a second pair of eyes on this if you can take a look. Maybe we should consider requesting protection again. —Marysairplane (talk) 00:32, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
- Marysairplane -- I've made some changes to the article, and posted at Talk:Jay Shetty. This conversation should be continued on that page, if you don't think the information now in the Wikipedia article is acceptable. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:18, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. The developers are working on solving the problem. [62]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:48, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019
[edit]Welcome to a special newsletter from the Growth team! This special newsletter is not about Wikimedia Foundation Growth team projects. Instead, it is a call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019. We think that many people who receive this newsletter may have something valuable to contribute to this space at Wikimania. We haven't translated the newsletter, because Wikimania's language is English.
Please see below for the message from the organizers of the Community Growth space at Wikimania.
---
Wikimania 2019 is organized into 19 “spaces”, which are all accepting proposals for sessions. This message comes from the team organizing the Community Growth space.
Since you are interested b Growth team projects, and potentially involved in welcoming newcomers initiatives on your wiki, we would like to invite you to submit a proposal to the Community Growth space because of the actions you’ve done around newcomers on wikis. The deadline for submission is June 1. See below for Community Growth submission topics and session formats. Topics and sessions have to be in English.
In the Community Growth space, we will come together for discussions, presentations, and workshops that address these questions:
- What is and is not working around attracting and retaining newcomers?
- How should Wikimedia activities evolve to help communities grow and flourish?
- How should our technology and culture evolve to help new populations to come online, participate and become community members?
Recommended topics: please see this link for the list for the list of recommended topics. If you do not plan to submit a proposal, you can also suggest additional topics here. If your topic does not fit into our space, remember that there are 18 other spaces that could welcome you sharing your knowledge and perspective.
Types of session. We prefer sessions that are participatory, interactive, promote conversations, and give a voice to parts of our movement that are heard less often. Please see this link for the list of recommended session formats.
Poster submissions. Posters are also a good way to introduce a topic, or show some results of an action. Please consider submitting one!
More information about the Community Growth space, topics, and submission formats is available on the proposal page.
Please submit your proposal. The reviews will happen at the beginning of June.
If you have questions about Wikimania in general, please ask them on the Wikimania wiki.
On behalf of the Community Growth leadership team, Trizek (WMF), 11:44, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - May 2019
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the May 2019 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- What's Hot! (battle of the hairs?)
- Articles (Deny Recognition, Wikipedia's Welcome Page!)
- The Wikipedian This month we interview an Ip editor!
- News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Events!)
- Editor's Notes (New Sections to Main Page!)
- Activity Page (Fun Activities, and answers to last time's questions...)
- Ads (Ads)
Hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 23:51, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
NPR Newsletter No.18
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- WMF at work on NPP Improvements
Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:
- Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
- Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.
- Reliable Sources for NPP
Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.
- Backlog drive coming soon
Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.
- News
- Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.
- Discussions of interest
- A request for bot approval for a bot to patrol two kinds of redirects
- There has been a lot discussion about Notability of Academics
- What, if anything, would a SNG for Softball look like
Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The report for phase 1 of the talk pages consultation 2019 has been published. Communities are invited to start phase 2 of the consultation on their wikis.
Problems
- File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed. [63][64]
- Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments. [65][66]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The content translation tool on Wikipedia can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team. [67]
- The Wikidata
wbeditentity
API endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June. [68]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:03, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Books & Bytes, Issue 33
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 33, March – April 2019
- #1Lib1Ref
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:41, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- Big changes to the replica database will happen on 3 June. Some tools on Cloud Services will stop working if the maintainers do not update them to use the new schema. This probably affects tools that query for revisions or log entries made by a user. [69][70]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:33, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - Update
[edit]Dear reader,
Thank you for subscribing to TheWikiWizard. This is a special message letting you know that the June/July/August issues of TheWikiWizard may be delayed, due to the absence of User:Thegooduser. Thegooduser and the other editors of TWW will try their best to deliver these issues to you. Thank you for reading TWW, and we hope to see you again in September 2019. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and enjoy your summer! :-) We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Happy Editing!
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 00:04, 31 May 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk)
The Signpost: 31 May 2019
[edit]- From the editors: Picture that
- News and notes: Wikimania and trustee elections
- In the media: Politics, lawsuits and baseball
- Discussion report: Admin abuse leads to mass-desysop proposal on Azerbaijani Wikipedia
- Arbitration report: ArbCom forges ahead
- Technology report: Lots of Bots
- News from the WMF: Wikimedia Foundation petitions the European Court of Human Rights to lift the block of Wikipedia in Turkey
- Essay: Paid editing
- From the archives: FORUM:Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 6
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (May 2019).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 6th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
Enjoy your summer, --DannyS712 (talk) 23:44, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now write all special letters in all African Wikipedia languages. This works in the desktop version. [71]
- There is now a field called
depicts
on Commons. This is a way to show what is in a picture with the help of Wikidata. It is still in development. [72] - Some tools on Toolforge may break on or after 3 June because of database changes. Maintainers should update their tools to use the new schema. [73][74]
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [75]
Changes later this week
- Some wikis have one tab for the visual editor and one tab for a wikitext editor. Others wikis just have one tab. If your wiki has two tabs, clicking a link to create a new page has always opened a wikitext editor. It will now open the editor you used the last time you edited. [76]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- When you create a PDF from a page on the wiki this is now done by Proton. Before this we used Electron. It should look the same but work better. Both use Chromium. This is a different system from when you collect several articles into a book and make a PDF from them. [77][78]
- The Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standard OOUI icons. There will be additional minor fixes for positioning in the next deployment. [79]
- Bots and other scripts that do not set an identifiable User-Agent may find their requests strictly rate-limited until they identify themselves properly. [80]
Problems
- Please check if the Flagged Revisions configuration on your wiki is as you expect (or as it was a few weeks ago). If not, please report it. [81]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #8
[edit]Welcome to the eighth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
May was a busy month, and we apologize for a slightly late newsletter.
General news
[edit]- The Growth team will begin to work with the Arabic Wikipedia community as a new target wiki. This is in addition to Korean, Czech, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
- Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimedia Hackathon. To see what we worked on and learned, read this update (in English).
- Wikimania 2019 is coming up in August. The conference will include a "Community Growth" space, for sessions about how our communities expand through software and programs.
Early results from newcomer homepage release
[edit]- The newcomer homepage was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on May 6 for desktop users. It is deployed in an A/B test, so that half of newcomers have access to the homepage and half do not. They access it by clicking on their username in their personal tools along the top of the window.
- After about a month of usage, we see a few interesting trends. We think that the usage is going well so far, as we continue to work on the feature
- About half of users who visit the homepage click on a link or button.
- About half of users visit the homepage more than once, with about a fifth of users visiting on multiple days.
- Users are interacting with all the different modules on the page -- there is no clear favorite.
- Users have been asking questions to their mentors -- but not on the help desk.
Next steps for homepage
[edit]- Because we are seeing good reactions to the homepage from the first users, we are prioritizing work that helps more users find their homepage:
- Mobile homepage: the team is currently building the mobile version of the homepage. We tested this design with five users, giving us confidence that the design is strong.
- Features to aid discovery: only a minority of newcomers who have a homepage will find their homepage on their own. The team is designing features that help newcomers learn where to find their homepage. The most important feature will point to the homepage link using a GuidedTour.
- User tests showed that the most important thing to add to the homepage are clear task recommendations to help newcomers get started with editing right away. This is the module that we will be working on next.
Future of team in the next year
[edit]- The Growth team has been working since September 2018, and we're now planning for the work we'll be doing for the next fiscal year, which begins in July.
- Though we have not yet developed a feature that clearly increases growth in our target wikis, we believe that the features we have been developing have high potential to increase growth if we continue to work on them.
- Therefore, the team will continue to work on the features we have started, and we will develop related features that improve the overall newcomer experience. These features may include:
- Improvements to how newcomers can build their user pages and develop their on-wiki identity. See initial notes here.
- Improvements to how newcomers receive notifications on-wiki and through email, so that they quickly find out if other users are contacting them.
- Processes that help newcomers get awards or recognition for good work.
- Ways for newcomers to see the activity on the wiki and find others who share their interests.
- We will start discussions with communities to help us define these ideas before we work on them.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [82]
Changes later this week
- MIDI files can soon be played without the Score extension. You can then add them with
[[File:Filename.midi]]
. Lateroverride_midi
andoverride_audio
will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score. [83] - A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems. [84]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old
wgEnableAPI
andwgEnableWriteAPI
values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values. [85]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:37, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- The new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday. [86]
- Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced. [87]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can watch or join the next Wikimedia Language showcase. It will be about the usage of Machine Translation in Wikimedia projects. The showcase will be on 26 June at 13:00 (UTC). A recording will be kept for later viewing
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 26 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
New Page Review newsletter July-August 2019
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- WMF at work on NPP Improvements
More new features are being added to the feed, including the important red alert for previously deleted pages. This will only work if it is selected in your filters. Best is to 'select all'. Do take a moment to check out all the new features if you have not already done so. If anything is not working as it should, please let us know at NPR. There is now also a live queue of AfC submissions in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to review AfCs, but bear in mind that NPP is an official process and policy and is more important.
- QUALITY of REVIEWING
Articles are still not always being checked thoroughly enough. If you are not sure what to do, leave the article for a more experienced reviewer. Please be on the alert for any incongruities in patrolling and help your colleagues where possible; report patrollers and autopatrolled article creators who are ostensibly undeclared paid editors. The displayed ORES alerts offer a greater 'at-a-glance' overview, but the new challenges in detecting unwanted new content and sub-standard reviewing do not necessarily make patrolling any easier, nevertheless the work may have a renewed interest factor of a different kind. A vibrant community of reviewers is always ready to help at NPR.
- Backlog
The backlog is still far too high at between 7,000 and 8,000. Of around 700 user rights holders, 80% of the reviewing is being done by just TWO users. In the light of more and more subtle advertising and undeclared paid editing, New Page Reviewing is becoming more critical than ever.
- Move to draft
NPR is triage, it is not a clean up clinic. This move feature is not limited to bios so you may have to slightly re-edit the text in the template before you save the move. Anything that is not fit for mainspace but which might have some promise can be draftified - particularly very poor English and machine and other low quality translations.
- Notifying users
Remember to use the message feature if you are just tagging an article for maintenance rather than deletion. Otherwise articles are likely to remain perma-tagged. Many creators are SPA and have no intention of returning to Wikipedia. Use the feature too for leaving a friendly note note for the author of a first article you found well made or interesting. Many have told us they find such comments particularly welcoming and encouraging.
- PERM
Admins are now taking advantage of the new time-limited user rights feature. If you have recently been accorded NPR, do check your user rights to see if this affects you. Depending on your user account preferences, you may receive automated notifications of your rights changes. Requests for permissions are not mini-RfAs. Helpful comments are welcome if absolutely necessary, but the bot does a lot of the work and the final decision is reserved for admins who do thorough research anyway.
- Other news
School and academic holidays will begin soon in various places around the Western world. Be on the lookout for the usual increase in hoax, attack, and other junk pages.
Our next newsletter might be announcing details of a possible election for co-ordinators of NPR. If you think you have what it takes to micro manage NPR, take a look at New Page Review Coordinators - it's a job that requires a lot of time and dedication.
Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 7
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (June 2019).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 7th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
- After an MfD, DannyS712's MMS was deleted. It was originally created by Abelmoschus Esculentus. If you import either of these scripts, you may want to uninstall them, as they no longer exist.
Having published 6 issues of this newsletter, I decided it was time to move it out from my user space. It is now located at Wikipedia:Scripts++. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 11:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Request from MasterClass
[edit]Hi John Broughton. I work for MasterClass, an online portal for learning new skills (cooking, script-writing, etc.). The current “Reception” section on the page about us is not balanced at all – just 100% negative – whereas most reviews about us are more balanced. I took a shot at a more balanced version here and shared it on the Talk page, but haven’t gotten anyone to take a look.
I know it’s awkward for the company to write their own reviews section, but not sure what else can be done. The current is so overtly unfair. I was wondering if you could review and post your thoughts on the article Talk page. BethMasterClass (talk) 18:24, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [88]
Problems
- Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [89]
- Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [90]
Changes later this week
- You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [91]
- There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:22, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [92]
- Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [93]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
- The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [94]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [95]
- There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [96]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Books & Bytes Issue 34, May – June 2019
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 34, May – June 2019
- Partnerships
- #1Lib1Ref
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- Global branches update
- Bytes in brief
French version of Books & Bytes is now available on meta!
Read the full newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:21, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [97]
Changes later this week
- The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called
Edit filter
and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more. - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [98]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:29, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Classy, fair edit / addition
[edit]To the Patrick Pizzella page -- perfect, factual, even-handed re Abramoff. There were crooked doings and crooked guys around Casino Jack, but Pizzella had done 14 years of public service prior to ever working at Preston Gates, and since then three Presidents of both parties have appointed Pizzella, apparently without incident or regret. --GaryWMaloney (talk) 16:49, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
- Gary - I'm not convinced that Pizzella is bipartisan, at all, but thank you for the compliment on the editing.
- I'm not convinced because I'm sure that Obama nominated Pizzella as the minority (Republican, at the time) member of the FLRA. (Here's the requirement for split membership of the FLRA.) That means, of course, that Pizzella was tolerable to Obama, but typically such nominations involve political negotiations, or at least considerations and signaling, not really positive feelings.
- None of that is in the Wikipedia article because I haven't found any sources for it, and given that membership in the FLRA isn't (apparently) considered particularly newsworthy, I don't think I will - particularly because I'm not willing to spend a lot of time looking. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:48, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Editing News #1—July 2019
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Did you know?
Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.
Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.
Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:
Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?
If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.
Follow these instructions and share your experience:
Recent releases
[edit]The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team has recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:
- Section editing
- The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
- The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
- Loading overlay
- The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.
Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.
New and active projects
[edit]This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.
- Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how: 📲Try Edit Cards.
- Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
- Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
- Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use. The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.
Looking ahead
[edit]- Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to them about how editing can be improved.
- Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.
Learning more
[edit]The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
PPelberg (WMF) (talk) and Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check the conditions and the request process.
- The Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania. [99]
Problems
- The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [100]
Changes later this week
- Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [101]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some items in the visual editor will change later this week. This will make it easier to edit links, citations, and templates on both desktop and mobile. [102][103]
- With advanced search turned on you will be able to choose the sorting order of the search results when you do a search. [104][105]
- Users who edit from IP addresses whitelisted on a request for temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation will bypass CAPTCHAs. This will happen in August. If you think this should not happen for some reason, please let us know.
- The variable
user_wpzero
will be removed from AbuseFilter. A list of filters needing a fix is provided.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #9
[edit]Welcome to the ninth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Opening Growth features to more wikis
[edit]The Growth team has existed for about one year. During that time, we have developed several features that we think can help increase retention. Though we are still gathering data to detect scientifically whether the features increase retention, we think that some of the features are ready to be deployed on more wikis that want to experiment with them. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible.
Then, go through the checklist to start the process of getting these features:
- Help panel: allow newcomers to find help and ask questions while they edit.
- Welcome survey: learn what topics and types of edits newcomers are interested in.
- EditorJourney: learn what workflows newcomers go through on their first day.
General news
[edit]- A new quarter of the year has started, and the team has set our goals for the next three months. The most important goals are:
- Newcomer homepage: increase activity through a task recommendations module. Now that we have seen several weeks of positive activity on the newcomer homepage, we think that the most important thing to add is a way for newcomers to find tasks to work on. The challenge will be recommending the right kind of tasks at the right point of their journey.
- Newcomer homepage: increase feature discovery rate by 100%. Right now, only 20% - 30% of newcomers ever visit their homepage. We want to double that number by making sure all newcomers know how to find it.
- Help panel: increase usefulness through improvements to affordance, search, and UX flow. We have looked closely at data and anecdotes from the usage of the help panel, and we plan to pursue specific improvements to increase its effectiveness (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers find responses to their questions).
- Wikimania is coming up next month, which includes a "Community Growth" space. We hope to see people from all communities there to talk about how to bring newcomers into our movement.
- We have started to deploy features to our team's fourth target wiki: Arabic Wikipedia. That wiki is the biggest one we target, it has a high percentage of mobile users, and also is our first right-to-left language. This will help us make sure that our features are valuable for as many types of users as possible.
Mobile homepage and early analysis
[edit]- The mobile version of the newcomer homepage was deployed to Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Now, newcomers can access their homepage from both desktop and mobile devices.
- We have published our first set of data about the performance of the newcomer homepage. In summary, we are happy with the homepage's performance so far. We see about half of visitors clicking on something, and the majority of them returning to the homepage multiple times.
- Because we see positive usage of the homepage, we will deploy several small features in the next two weeks that help more newcomers discover their homepage (see accompanying image of a feature that helps newcomers discover their homepage from their empty Contributions page).
- As listed in our goals above, we'll be starting to focus on adding task recommendations to the newcomer homepage. We'll be publishing early thoughts on this feature so that community members can give their thoughts and advice.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [106]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 8
[edit]
News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (July 2019). Hello everyone and welcome to the 8th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter: Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
|
Hope everyone is having a good winter (or summer, for those in the northern hemisphere). Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 02:40, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).
Problems
- A change in RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed. [107][108]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [109]
- Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [110]
Changes later this week
- Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [111]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.
Problems
- Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
- Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [112]
Changes later this week
- Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [113]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbies
will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [114]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 August 2019
[edit]- News and notes: Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings
- In focus: Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff
- Discussion report: Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users
- Traffic report: Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes
- News from the WMF: Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year
- Recent research: Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Re: "Wiki values"
[edit]Thanks. The way I used the phrase "wiki values" is a bit jargon-like. Still, I thought the mention of "values" made the phrase harder to misinterpret, because values are usually not associated with wiki as a technological platform. Nevertheless, it's indeed "Wikipedia's values" I'm appealing to, so I'll change the wording per your suggestion to make it clear. GregorB (talk) 19:04, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
- @GregorB: Thanks! I had considered making the changes myself, because I was sure that was what you meant. But since the page was personal opinion, not a Signpost news article, I didn't feel like I had the right to directly edit it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [115]
- The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
- The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [116]
- The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [117]
- The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [118]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
- When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [119]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on September 10 at 05:00 (UTC). [120]
- You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 17 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [121]
- You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 24 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [122]
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes on September 26 at 05:00 (UTC). [123]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
New Page Review newsletter September-October 2019
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- Backlog
Instead of reaching a magic 300 as it once did last year, the backlog approaching 6,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.
- Coordinator
A proposal is taking place here to confirm a nominated user as Coordinator of NPR.
- This month's refresher course
Why I Hate Speedy Deleters, a 2008 essay by long since retired Ballonman, is still as valid today. Those of us who patrol large numbers of new pages can be forgiven for making the occasional mistake while others can learn from their 'beginner' errors. Worth reading.
- Deletion tags
Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon (you will need to have 'Nominated for deletion' enabled for this in your filters) may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders using Twinkle. They require your further verification.
- Paid editing
Please be sure to look for the tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. WMF policy requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.
- Subject-specific notability guidelines' (SNG). Alternatives to deletion
- Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves once more with notability guidelines for organisations and companies.
- Blank-and-Redirect is a solution anchored in policy. Please consider this alternative before PRODing or CSD. Note however, that users will often revert or usurp redirects to re-create deleted articles. Do regularly patrol the redirects in the feed.
- Not English
- A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, and if they do have potential, tag as required, then move to draft. Modify the text of the template as appropriate before sending it.
- Tools
Regular reviewers will appreciate the most recent enhancements to the New Pages Feed and features in the Curation tool, and there are still more to come. Due to the wealth of information now displayed by ORES, reviewers are strongly encouraged to use the system now rather than Twinkle; it will also correctly populate the logs.
Stub sorting, by SD0001: A new script is available for adding/removing stub tags. See User:SD0001/StubSorter.js, It features a simple HotCat-style dynamic search field. Many of the reviewers who are using it are finding it an improvement upon other available tools.
Assessment: The script at User:Evad37/rater makes the addition of Wikiproject templates extremely easy. New page creators rarely do this. Reviewers are not obliged to make these edits but they only take a few seconds. They can use the Curation message system to let the creator know what they have done.
DannyS712 bot III is now patrolling certain categories of uncontroversial redirects. Curious? Check out its patrol log.
Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:15, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - September 2019
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the September 2019 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- A big thank you! (TWW is now 1 years old!)
- What's Hot! (Can you solve the riddles?)
- Articles (Assume Good Faith, The Teahouse)
- The Wikipedian
- News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Events!)
- Editor's Notes (New Sections to Main Page!)
- Activity Page (Fun Activities, and answers to last time's questions...)
- Ads (Ads)
We Hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading! Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 21:44, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 35, July – August 2019
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 35, July – August 2019
- Wikimania
- We're building something great, but..
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- A Wikibrarian's story
- Bytes in brief
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:58, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed. [124]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 2 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team is working on a watchlist expiry feature. This means you can put things on your watchlist for a period of time instead of forever. They are looking for feedback on the questions they have.
- Special:Contributions will get the standard OOUI look. This makes it easier to use on mobile and makes it look like other
Special:
pages. There is a script you can use to make the form smaller if you want to. [125]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #10
[edit]Welcome to the tenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
General news
[edit]- Growth team features are now fully deployed in Arabic Wikipedia and Basque Wikipedia (along with Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias). If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then, go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
- We have deployed features that help newcomers find their newcomer homepage. These features were successful, and more than doubled the number of newcomers who find their homepage. In Czech Wikipedia, 72% of newcomers visit their homepage and in Korean Wikipedia, 49% of newcomers visit their homepage.
- You can now join the Growth discussion space on the Wikimedia Space. This space has been created during Wikimania, to coordinate initiatives around welcoming newcomers. Please come and say hello!
Growth at Wikimania
[edit]- Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimania in Stockholm. We helped organize a conference track around Community Growth, presented about our team's work, and had many conversations with community members from around the world.
- Here are the most important links:
- These are some of our topline notes:
- Alignment on newcomer retention: It seems like Wikimania attendees generally believe that newcomer retention is an important problem.
- Connecting offline to online: Enthusiasm for ideas that connect our features better to offline events, such as making homepage mentors correspond to offline mentors.
- Mentor dashboard: Experienced users requested a dashboard with which they could monitor newcomers who may need help.
Newcomer tasks -- feedback needed!
[edit]- The Growth team's main project right now is newcomer tasks, which will suggest easy edits for newcomers. It will be built as a new module for the newcomer homepage.
- We hope that this project will help newcomers build their skills before attempting more difficult edits, such as creating new articles or adding images.
- These are the three main challenges we've been working on:
- Where to find the tasks? After considering many different sources for tasks, we've decided to start by using maintenance templates, which are applied by editors on most wikis, and including tasks like copy editing, adding links, and adding references.
- How to match to interests? Research shows that users are more likely to work on articles that are related to their interests. We are currently prototyping methods to ask newcomers their interests and then find articles that match.
- How to guide the newcomer? Once a newcomer has selected a recommended article, they will need guidance on how to complete the edit. We have decided to use the help panel to provide that guidance while the newcomer edits.
- We are currently engineering on this feature, and we recently published notes from user tests that give mostly positive feedback.
- You can explore the design for newcomer tasks in these interactive mockups. We hope to hear from you about your thoughts on the project talk page. Do you think this could be helpful for newcomers? What are we missing?
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 9
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past two months (August and September, 2019).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 9th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter: Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
Sorry for falling behind a bit. Please let me know if I missed any new scripts. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 01:55, 7 October 2019 (UTC) |
|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The abuse filter function now has a faster parser. This is to shorten the waiting time when you save an edit. [126]
Problems
- There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon. [127]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can leave feedback.
- The URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page
would behttps://www.wikidata.org/
instead. You can tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki. - There is a new technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community. Subscribe to get the information in the future.
- Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:35, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now use more advanced editing tools on the mobile web. You can turn them on and off in your preferences in the mobile version. [128]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 16 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else. [129]
- In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can read more and discuss.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:55, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages – October 2019
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.
Help
[edit]What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!
Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team would value your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.
Talk Pages
[edit]The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.
The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.
Mobile visual editor
[edit]The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.
- On 3 September, the Editing team released version 3 of Edit Cards. Anyone could use the new version in the mobile visual editor.
- There is an updated design on the Edit Card for adding and modifying links. There is also a new, combined workflow for editing a link's display text and target.
- Feedback: You can try the new Edit Cards by opening the mobile visual editor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Edit cards talk page.
- In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
- One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
- New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
- Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
- Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.
Wikimania
[edit]The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.
Looking ahead
[edit]- Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
- Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
- Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: The Editing team hopes to share results in November. This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.
– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as
internal
. API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives. [130]
Problems
- There is a translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed. [131]
- The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed. [132]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (calendar).
- Reference Previews will be a beta feature on all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 October. See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:34, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - October 2019
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the September 2019 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- What's Hot! (Turkey Overload, Federal Election...)
- Articles (Cite reliable sources!)
- The Wikipedian
- News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Events!)
- Editor's Notes (New Main Page Planning)
- Activity Page (Fun Activities, and answers to last time's questions...)
- Ads (Cool Ads)
We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 01:43, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 02:05, 23 October 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
- Mobile users now have a specific design for their Watchlist. [133][134]
- You can share feedback and ideas on the Desktop Improvements project. The goal is to make the interface easier to use for readers and editors without removing any functionality. The Foundation's Readers Web team will work on this over the next two years.
- OOUI now allows using
px
(pixels) instead ofem
(em) for some specific cases. [135][136]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 October. It will be on all wikis from 31 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There will be no software changes from 19 December to 2 January. The first MediaWiki version next year will come the week of 6 January. [137]
- Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015, this information was moved from global variables named
wg*
tomw.config
. The old global variables will be removed later this year. You can know more about it and tell the developers if you want to try this out on your wiki first.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:15, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
New Page Review newsletter November 2019
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon.
- Getting the queue to 0
There are now 804 holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action.
Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.
Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox.
Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards.
- Coordinator
Admin Barkeep49 has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers.
- This month's refresher course
Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources.
- Tools
- It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
- It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
- Reviewer Feedback
Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13.
- Second set of eyes
- Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
- Do be sure to have our talk page on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
- Arbitration Committee
The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights.
- Community Wish list
There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion.
To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
Hi. I just wanted to thank you for rating an article I had written, Shahrbanu, about 20 minutes ago. Unfortunately, at the time you had given your rating, the article had been experiencing some disruptive edits in the "Historicity" section. I was wondering whether any problematic content you noticed in that section had effected your rating? Thank you.
Alivardi (talk) 01:15, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
- Alivardi - No, the rating (assessment) was based on the number and type of sources cited, and the amount of text in the article, not on a a close reading of the content.
- One could argue, I suppose, that the article deserves a higher rating (specifically, "B" class), but that requires (in my mind) a much closer examination of content. Since the article was had no assessment at all, I thought that I'd start the process with"C" class. But if someone else (you?) wants to give the article a "B" class rating, I doubt very much that I'd be concerned enough to do the work necessary to knowledgeably agree or disagree. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:53, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
- Don't worry, I wouldn't expect you to provide another assessment without good cause. But thank you for explaining the process to me, I really appreciate it.
Alivardi (talk) 11:12, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
- Don't worry, I wouldn't expect you to provide another assessment without good cause. But thank you for explaining the process to me, I really appreciate it.
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
- At Special:Contributions you could see up to 5000 edits at the same time if you edited the URL. This has been lowered to 500. This is to stop requests which break the sites. [138]
Changes later this week
MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry
can set the default length to block a user for your wiki. You will be able to useMediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip
to set a different default block length for IP editors. [139]- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 November. It will be on all wikis from 7 November (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:47, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 10
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (October 2019).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 10th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
Have a great November, --DannyS712 (talk) 22:18, 7 November 2019 (UTC) |
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- MediaWiki2LaTeX can put different pages from a Wikimedia wiki into a PDF. It can now make a PDF with around 5000 pages. Previously this was 800 pages.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikimedia will take part in Google Code-in. This is for young students who want to help with open source software. You can read more. Experienced technical Wikimedians can mentor students.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #11
[edit]Welcome to the eleventh newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
General news
[edit]- Expanding to more wikis: the team is preparing to deploy Growth features to Ukrainian and Hungarian Wikipedias. Wikis that already have the features are Czech, Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Basque Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
- Mentor training: we tried out our first training for mentors with the Czech community, so that experienced users can build skills that help them retain newcomers.
- The guide for mentors has been updated. Translations are welcomed!
Help panel results
[edit]The help panel was first deployed to newcomers in January 2019, and we have now finished analyzing data to determine its impact. A brief summary is below, and more in-depth information can be found here (in English).
- In summary, although we have seen a good amount of usage of the help panel, the help panel has not shown an increase in activation (whether a user makes their first edit) or retention (whether a user returns to edit again).
- This is a disappointing result, and our team has discussed potential reasons for the result and ideas for the future. Although we have many ideas for how to improve the help panel, we have decided to keep our attention on the newcomer homepage and newcomer tasks projects for the coming months.
- We'll be using the help panel as part of the newcomer tasks project: using it to guide newcomers while they complete suggested edits.
- We welcome questions and thoughts about this on the project's talk page.
Newcomer tasks deployment
[edit]- The first version of the newcomer tasks workflow (V1.0) will be deployed in the next weeks on our 4 priority wikis. This version will suggest articles to edit based on maintenance templates. In this first version, we expect many newcomers to initiate the workflow, but not many to select articles to edit or complete edits. We expect future versions of the feature to increase those behaviors.
- We're excited about this project because the majority of newcomers visit their newcomer homepage, and this will be the first element of the homepage that clearly asks the newcomer to start editing.
- These are the next two versions of the feature, which are already being planned:
- V1.1 (topic matching): will allow newcomers to choose topics of interest (such as Art, Music, Sports, or Technology) to personalize their suggestions. After evaluating several approaches, we have decided to use a new ORES model built by the WMF Scoring team. The model will automatically identify the topic area of each article. We expect this to increase how often newcomers select articles to edit.
- V1.2 (guidance): once newcomers arrive on an article to edit, we will use the help panel to provide guidance about how to complete the editing task. We expect this to increase how many newcomers actually complete productive edits.
- The project page includes links to the designs of the workflow, and we welcome questions and thoughts on the talk page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit some wikis for up to 30 minutes on 26 November at 06:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. It will probably last much shorter than 30 minutes. This will also affect the
centralauth
database. This could for example affect changing passwords, logging in to new wikis, changing emails or global renames. [140]
Changes later this week
- You can soon vote on proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
ArbCom 2019 election voter message
[edit]Books & Bytes – Issue 36
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 36, September – October 2019
- #1Lib1Ref January 2020
- #1Lib1Ref 2019 stories and learnings
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:21, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the desktop improvements project. You can turn on advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a gadget or user script. [141]
- Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can report them. [142]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (calendar). This is because of holidays.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view. [143]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:52, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 11
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (November 2019).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 11th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
|
Enjoy your thanksgiving --DannyS712 (talk) 08:22, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Special Notice for TheWikiWizard
[edit]Dear Reader, You may have noticed that you did not receive a mailing for the November 2019 Issue, this is due to thegooduser being very busy with schoolwork and other important life issues. We do apologize that you have not received the November issue, and we will continue to work very hard to deliver to you the December Special Issue for 2019. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you like hearing about Wikipedia News and events, don't forget that The Signpost (our rival paper) does cover such events, in case we do not publish an issue on time. Thank you for subscribing and we will work very hard to deliever the December Issue. Best, --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 02:39, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 04:10, 29 November 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk)
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
- Mix'n'match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There will be a new schema for XML dumps. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work. [144]
- The
{{REVISIONID}}
magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns""
(empty string). When you read a page it returns"-"
(dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces. [145]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikimedia projects use Translatewiki to translate the wiki interface. You can now use WatchTranslations to watch projects there. You would get an email if there are missing translations to your language. [146]
- There is a new dataset you can use. It shows the number of editors per country per month for a number of countries. You can read the documentation and download the dataset.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 December. It will be on all wikis from 12 December (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You can test a new reference tool. It makes it possible to reference different parts of a source without repeating all information. You can test it on the beta cluster. You can see an example article. [147]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:38, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Best practices for help pages
[edit]Do you happen to know of any good research on how to write end-user documentation? This is in the context of mw:Growth/Communities/How to create help contents. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): No, I don't. I do have a 2007 author's guide for the Missing Manual series; books in that series are essentially 100% end-user documentation. I'd be happy to share that (or, more accurately, selected pages; some of the material is relevant only to how books in that series are laid out, and to specific technology used for that series). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:23, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks, that's a good idea. Do you want to leave a note on the mw page directly? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. It did not show new changes last week. This was because of an API problem. It is now working again. [148]
- Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information again. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. This is because of a database problem. The developers are working on solving the problem. [149]
Changes later this week
- You can get email notifications. You can get them immediately, a summary every day or a summary once every week. If you choose a summary you can soon choose not to get notifications you have already marked as read on the wiki. [150]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 December. It will be on all wikis from 19 December (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The partial blocks feature is now stable. It will come to most wikis on 6 January. Your wiki can ask to wait. Contact NKohli (WMF) if you don't want it now. [151]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
Conflict of interests review
[edit]Hi John. I got your name from WikiProject Cooperation. I work for Sitel. Currently the page about us (a multi-billion dollar company) is about 1.5 paragraphs long and has no Wikipedia-compliant citations. I proposed a much more complete draft replacement that got very positive feedback. However, my understanding is that another editor should ideally be the one to implement the draft? I was wondering if you could take a look and see if you approve or have any other feedback. DanSlavov (talk) 19:08, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
- @DanSlavov: Yes, WP:COI should make it clear that it's considered very bad form for an employee of a company to edit an article about that company. Thank you for following Wikipedia rules by asking other editors to help with changes.
- I've gone ahead and put your version into "mainspace", as a live article. However, I do have doubts about one thing (without looking at your sources, admittedly) - I find it hard to believe a company with 18 employees, in 1985, could have $100 million in revenues. And I also find it hard to believe that whoever owned that company would sell it for $165,000. If the revenues were, say, $1 million, that would make sense. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:46, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for December 19
[edit]Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Sitel, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page James Lynch (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 08:54, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Happy holidays
[edit]
Interstellarity (talk) is wishing you Happy Holidays! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user Happy Holidays, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!
Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Happy holidays}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
New Page Review newsletter December 2019
[edit]- Reviewer of the Year
This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.
Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.
Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.
Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.
Rank | Username | Num reviews | Log |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Rosguill (talk) | 47,395 | Patrol Page Curation |
2 | Onel5969 (talk) | 41,883 | Patrol Page Curation |
3 | JTtheOG (talk) | 11,493 | Patrol Page Curation |
4 | Arthistorian1977 (talk) | 5,562 | Patrol Page Curation |
5 | DannyS712 (talk) | 4,866 | Patrol Page Curation |
6 | CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk) | 3,995 | Patrol Page Curation |
7 | DragonflySixtyseven (talk) | 3,812 | Patrol Page Curation |
8 | Boleyn (talk) | 3,655 | Patrol Page Curation |
9 | Ymblanter (talk) | 3,553 | Patrol Page Curation |
10 | Cwmhiraeth (talk) | 3,522 | Patrol Page Curation |
(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)
- Redirect autopatrol
A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.
- Source Guide Discussion
Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.
- This month's refresher course
While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 16:10, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 6 January 2020.
Recent changes
- All mobile site users now have new features. Features include: tabs for page/discussion; an expanded user-menu; direct access to history pages. These features were initially part of the "advanced mode".
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
Future changes
- You can use
setlang
in the URL to change the user interface language. This will no longer happen automatically. When you open the link you will be asked to confirm the language change. This will not happen if Javascript is not working in your browser. [152]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:06, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Can you help me find info about Provelt?
[edit]Hi John. You helped me a couple of years ago with a problem. I hope you can point me in the right direction with a new problem. Something called Provelt edited a page I am working on (Marshall B. Clinard) on. Here is the diff. There are things in Provelt's edit which I want to retain, but I don't want the references collapsed (I don't want hard carriage returns removed from the references). I am happy to figure out what I need to do to retain the things Provelt did which I want to retain. Now my questions! Is there a way to block Provelt from working on this article, and a few other articles, where I and the other editors want the references left as they are? More generally, can you point me to a talk page for Provelt where I can ask this myself (or point me to Provelt documention which might tell me how to block Provelt, or block specific actions by Provelt)? CWBoast (talk) 15:19, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
- @CWBoast: Thanks for the diff; that made things much easier for me to analyze.
- ProveIt is a gadget (a tool); you'll find documentation here: Wikipedia:ProveIt. To answer one of your questions, no, you can't prevent other editors from using it, and you can't (if you're not the one using it) modify its actions. But if you really think it's doing things wrong, you could raise that issue on the related Talk page.
- What you probably want to do (first) is have a discussion with the editor (User:~riley), who, I note, is fairly experienced. You might approach him/her with a question, on his/her talk page ("I don't understand why you're doing X," or "You're not doing Y the same way that I am; am I wrong?") rather than with a conclusion ("You're doing X and you shouldn't be") or a demand ("Please stop editing this page"). Also, see WP:OWN). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:35, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
- CWBoast, sorry for any inconvenience. I understand the frustration that will present itself when an article you have written gets changed by a random person. While I can undo the my edit and the tool's removal of the hard carriages for the references, they will likely be removed again by another tool whether that be AWB or a bot. Inline references can significantly bloat the wikitext in the edit window and can become difficult and confusing. Add hard carriages to that and it is even harder to edit the document. I hope this makes sense for why those changes were made. ~riley (talk) 17:58, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
- ~riley, thanks for your reply, especially your words "Inline references can significantly bloat the wikitext ...". I had noticed that some articles put only <ref name="a-name"/> in the main body and put all the actual reference information in the section titled == References == but I had never thought about how great that approach is. My goal with all the hard carriage returns was to make it easier to find the end of a reference in the wikitext, and <ref name="a-name"/> does that much better than the hard carriage returns! I'm going to redo the Marshall B. Clinard article with that referencing strategy. And, for other articles on which I have worked extensively I may do likewise, after proposing to do so on the article Talk page. Thanks again for your reply, and for all 7 of your edits to Marshall B. Clinard. CWBoast (talk) 11:43, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [153]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 January. It will be on all wikis from 9 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:21, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - January 2020
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the January 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- What's Hot! (We Found Santa Claus!...)
- Articles (DFFT, Young Editors!)
- The Wikipedian
- News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Events!)
- Editor's Notes (New Main Page DYKS)
- Activity Page (Fun Activities, and super cool stuff...)
- Ads (Super Cool Ads)
We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 04:00, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 04:10, 13 January 2020 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser use very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It can lead to downgrade attacks. Since 9 December you just see a warning. Soon the browser will not connect to the wikis at all. Most are users on Android systems older than 4.4. You can read the browser recommendations. [154]
- Special:LinkSearch has been moved from the "Redirecting special pages" section on Special:SpecialPages to the "Lists of pages" section. [155]
Changes later this week
- Wikis can protect pages so that only some users can edit them. The standard protection levels are Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access and Require administrator access. If your wiki use more protection levels the technical name might be renamed for standardisation. This doesn't affect what users see. [156]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 January. It will be on all wikis from 16 January (calendar).
Future changes
- Deepcat and Catgraph will stop working. This will happen at the end of January. This is because you can now use the normal search function instead. [157]
- You can use
<ref follow="…">
to merge footnotes that follow each other. It is meant to be used for digitised books on Wikisource. If the order of the footnotes is wrong no error was shown but the bad <ref> was shown outside the <references /> list. This will change and you will see an error message instead. [158]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:39, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 January. It will be on all wikis from 23 January (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a new suggestion for what to show when someone edits without registering an account. This is to give unregistered editors better privacy and make some anti-vandalism work go faster. You can give feedback.
- Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will no longer support Python 2. Use the
python2
tag if you need to continue running Python 2 scripts. The Pywikibot team strongly recommends to migrate to Python 3. You can get help to do so. [159] - The weekly MediaWiki branch cut will soon become automated. The timing for this cut may change. You can discuss in Phabricator if this affects you. [160]
- You can read about coming technical events and mentoring interns.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:41, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Some mobile diffs have problems. A couple of buttons are not shown. Structured data diffs on Commons are confusing. The developers are working on fixing it. [161][162]
- Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions can't move discussion pages. This is a bug. The developers are working on fixing it. [163]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- There is JavaScript code on Special:Undelete for administrators that makes it possible to automatically select multiple checkboxes by holding the "Shift" key and clicking. This code is also loaded by accident on other special pages and on articles. This makes pages slower to load. This will be fixed. If you know of other special pages where this is useful please tell the developers at phab:T232688.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:52, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 37
[edit]On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:10, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 February. It will be on all wikis from 6 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:04, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Growth team updates #12
[edit]Welcome to the twelfth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
General news
[edit]- A training for mentors has been published. The training was first tried with the Czech community, and went well.
- Growth team features have been deployed to Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Armenian Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together whether your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
Productive edits from newcomer tasks
[edit]We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.
- About 1.5% of newcomers who visit their homepage complete the workflow and save a suggested edit. So far, this has amounted to over 450 edits, on all wikis, coming from both desktop and mobile users.
- When we look at the edits that newcomers make, we see that they are largely positive! We are pleased to see that this feature does not appear to encourage vandals.
- 75% of the edits are productive and unreverted.
- 95% of the edits appear to be in good faith.
- Most of the edits include copyedits and adding links, with some newcomers also adding content and references. Copyedits are suggested most strongly.
- Click here to learn more specifics about the results so far.
Topic matching deployed
[edit]The results from our user tests showed us that newcomers are likely to do more suggested edits if they can choose articles related to a topic that they're interested in, such as "science", "music", or "sports".
- On January 21, we deployed topic matching on our pilot wikis. Newcomers are now using it. We expect it to cause more newcomers to try suggested edits, and to keep making more of them.
- In the coming weeks, we will be making improvements to the accuracy of the algorithm used to topic matching, which is part of the ORES project.
Next steps for newcomer tasks
[edit]Because we are seeing positive results from newcomer tasks, the Growth team plans to concentrate our efforts on improving the workflow and encouraging more newcomers to use it.
- Guidance: next, we will be using the help panel to provide guidance to newcomers as they do suggested edits, and to prompt them to do another edit after completing their first one. In user tests for this feature, demo videos were one of the favorite features, and we will think about how these might be added.
- Starting the workflow: only about 20% of newcomer who visit their homepage begin the newcomer tasks workflow. We are going to be trying out different layouts of the homepage to encourage more newcomers to try newcomer tasks.
- Additional task types: we are researching methods to recommend more specific tasks to newcomers, such as specific links to add, or images that could be added to articles from Commons.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 12
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past two months (December 2019 and January 2020).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 12th issue issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests |
Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 06:12, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem. [164]
Problems
- There was a problem with the new MediaWiki version last week. It deleted some messages by accident. The new version was late because it was stopped to fix things. [165]
Changes later this week
- The MediaWiki action API is used by various tools like bots and gadgets. Some error codes will change. Some parameter values that do not follow the standard will no longer work. [166]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 February. It will be on all wikis from 13 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:11, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- Source Guide Discussion
The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.
- Redirects
New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.
- Discussions and Resources
- There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
- A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
- A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
- A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.
- Refresher
Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.
Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here
16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Pages on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance. [167][168]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 February. It will be on all wikis from 20 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 February. It will be on all wikis from 27 February (calendar).
Future changes
- There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:00, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Blank Wikipedia: The Missing Manual pages. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:27, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 13
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (February 2019).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 13th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
|
I hope everyone is having a great year so far! --DannyS712 (talk) 15:53, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [169]
Changes later this week
- If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You will now be able to choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This will be a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. [170]
- When you asked for a new password you could see if the username didn't exist on Special:PasswordReset. Now the page will show the username you entered and tell you an email has been sent if the username exists. This is for better security. [171]
- On Special:WhatLinksHere you can see what other pages link to a page. You can see if the link is from a redirect. You can now see which section the redirect links to. [172]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 March. It will be on all wikis from 5 March (calendar).
Future changes
- The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback. [173]
- There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
-
wgMFSpecialCaseMainPage
was used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [174]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new search word called
articletopic
. You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon. [175][176][177]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 March. It will be on all wikis from 12 March (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
- The Wikipedia Android app will do push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will come later this year. [178]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Proposed rewrite
[edit]Dear John. I am the Communications Manager at Covanta. The current page on our company only covers the controversies and only from one side of the debate. I shared a proposed rewrite that is more balanced with encyclopedic, historical information and covers controversies from multiple perspectives. Guy Macon was going to review the proposed draft, but I didn’t want to bother him given he is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Guy_Macon#message_from_guy's_wife recovering from a heart attack]. I was wondering if you would be willing to review the proposed draft and provide any feedback. NKR2009 (talk) 15:19, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
@NKR2009: I'm not going to be able to get to this immediately, but I've put it on my "to do" list for next week. If you've not seen any evidence of my looking at the draft, please feel free to ping me again in a week or so. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:27, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
- No rush, but giving you a ping as requested. NKR2009 (talk) 20:46, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
- @NKR2009: I was glad to hear that you found someone else to review your rewrite. (Thanks for following Wikipedia guidelines regarding conflicts of interest.) I did have time to do a quick copyedit, a few minutes ago, of the article. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:23, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard/Workshop/Issues/Feburary/March 2020
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the Feb/March 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- What's Hot! (Love poem?)
- Articles (The Missing Manual)
- The Wikipedian
- News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Events!)
- Editor's Notes (Exciting News!)
- Activity Page (Fun Activities, and super cool stuff...)
- Ads (Super Cool Ads that are totally not spelt woeng)
We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading! Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 03:36, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
- Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 20:27, 14 March 2020 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk)
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 API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use
action=changecontentmodel
to specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [179]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 March. It will be on all wikis from 19 March (calendar).
Future changes
- If you edit a page at the same time as someone else you can get an edit conflict. There is a new two-column interface to make it easier to solve this. It will soon be active by default on the German, Arabic, and Farsi Wikipedias. It will be on by default on more wikis within the next months. You will be able to opt out of the new interface. [180][181]
- You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:16, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
- There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed. [182][183]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 March. It will be on all wikis from 26 March (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 March 2020
[edit]- From the editors: The bad and the good
- News and notes: 2018 Wikipedian of the year blocked
- WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19: A WikiProject Report
- Special report: Wikipedia on COVID-19: what we publish and why it matters
- In the media: Blocked in Iran but still covering the big story
- Discussion report: Rethinking draft space
- Arbitration report: Unfinished business
- In focus: "I have been asked by Jeffrey Epstein …"
- Community view: Wikimedia community responds to COVID-19
- From the archives: Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own
- Traffic report: The only thing that matters in the world
- Gallery: Visible Women on Wikipedia
- News from the WMF: Amid COVID-19, Wikimedia Foundation offers full pay for reduced hours, mobilizes all staff to work remote, and waives sick time
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
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 beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts. [184]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 April. It will be on all wikis from 2 April (calendar).
Future changes
- The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed. [185]
- There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on the project page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback. [186]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 14
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (March 2020).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 14th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
|
Stay safe, --DannyS712 (talk) 05:48, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. It will soon be fixed. [187]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 April. It will be on all wikis from 9 April (calendar).
Future changes
- MediaWiki will use a newer version of Unicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seen on Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the user
Maintenance script
. This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to. [188]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:02, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Editor’s Index
[edit]I see you created the about page for the index, among other things. I was recently review a single section of the index and cleaning out the dead links related to WikiProjects. I had encountered the dead and dying while reviving a project myself. Anyway, Thanks for the work you did. I am going to take a run at cleanup over parts of the index where I believe I understand the subjects linked. —¿philoserf? (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- @Philoserf: - The index certainly could use a lot of cleaning up, so thank you for whatever you do. I will note that if a WikiProject is defunct (most are), but still has a page, I think it's worth linking to it, because (a) there could be useful information from the past, and (b) it could encourage an editor to try to revive the project. That's why, for example, the index has entries for a lot of failed proposals - because there is still something that can be learned.
- What I think most needs to be done, when cleaning up the index, is to (1) remove redlinks (these are not obvious if the link is to a page outside of en.wikipedia.org), (2) fix links that have become redirects (the link should be changed to go directly to a page; if that page is already listed, deleting what would otherwise be a duplicate entry), and (3) change index entries where the name of the page has changed. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:18, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- John Broughton, So far i cleaned up links to dead bots, mainly. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:20, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- @Philoserf: - Interesting. That's a grey area for me. If there are a bunch of bots that do/did roughly the same thing, then yes, removing links to dead ones is a good idea. By contrast, if there was only one, really useful bot for something, which no longer runs, my preference would be to put something like "(dead)" or "(not functioning)" or similar at the end of the entry. The thought is that someone might go to the index to see if there is already a bot that does something, and discover there was, or someone might say to themselves "that sounds like a useful bot; maybe I can help create something similar". -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:32, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- There were none dead that hadn’t been dead since 2007/8. I will be updating the WikiProject bot space where ever I find it. It was hard to navigate with all the unmarked dead stuff when I started. I agree about marking the dead but useful and not yet replaced. I left links to bots I didn’t comprehend alone too. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:41, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- @Philoserf: - Thanks again for taking the time to work on the index. If you look at its history, you'll find that perhaps 90% of the entries are from 2007/2008, so it's not surprising that dead bots go back that far. In any case, it's very valuable to mark entries for dead bots to show that they are dead; for those looking for an active solution, this saves them at least a click. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:55, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- There were none dead that hadn’t been dead since 2007/8. I will be updating the WikiProject bot space where ever I find it. It was hard to navigate with all the unmarked dead stuff when I started. I agree about marking the dead but useful and not yet replaced. I left links to bots I didn’t comprehend alone too. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:41, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- @Philoserf: - Interesting. That's a grey area for me. If there are a bunch of bots that do/did roughly the same thing, then yes, removing links to dead ones is a good idea. By contrast, if there was only one, really useful bot for something, which no longer runs, my preference would be to put something like "(dead)" or "(not functioning)" or similar at the end of the entry. The thought is that someone might go to the index to see if there is already a bot that does something, and discover there was, or someone might say to themselves "that sounds like a useful bot; maybe I can help create something similar". -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:32, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- John Broughton, So far i cleaned up links to dead bots, mainly. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:20, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now use the
articletopic
search word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic. [189] - You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery. [190]
- You can see edits from the Wikimedia Cloud Services in a new dashboard.
- When you use filters on a history page you sometimes don't see any edits. There is a text explaining this now. Before it was just empty. [191]
- There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog. [192]
Problems
- There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest. [193][194][195]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 15. It will be on all wikis from April 16 (calendar).
Future changes
- Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed. [196]
- The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
- For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated
<source>
tag, as well as the use of the deprecatedenclose
parameter, will add tracking categories.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list
The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.
The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.
- On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
- The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
- an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
- a rich-text visual editing option, and
- other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.
To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.
– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Follow up - proposed rewrite
[edit]Just checking in on whether you still had time to review the proposed rewrite of the Covanta Energy page. NKR2009 (talk) 17:05, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
- Just letting you know Guy Macon reviewed and implemented the draft. NKR2009 (talk) 17:11, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - April 2020
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the April 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- Coronavirus Pandemic Message A special message for everyone during this time
- What's Hot! (Wikipedia Time?)
- Articles (none this month)
- The Wikipedian (we have a user!)
- News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Events!)
- Editor's Notes (News!)
- Activity Page (Fun Activities, and super cool stuff...)
- Ads (Super Cool Ads)
We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading & stay safe! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 02:05, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.
Recent changes
- The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills. [197]
- Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed.
div#content
is now.mw-body
.div.portal
is now.portal
.div#footer
is now#footer
. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. [198]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in Internet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011. [199]
- The font in the diffs will change. [200]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:45, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
Issue 38, January – April 2020
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 38, January – April 2020
- New partnership
- Global roundup
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --15:57, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Carole Baskin
[edit]Hello. I noticed this edit. One thing to keep in mind is that Ms Baskin married Howard Baskin in November 2004, so before November 2004, her name was not Baskin. You changed the article to say "Baskin moved in with Michael Murdock" around 1978, but she would not become "Baskin" until about 25 years after that happened, so I don't think it is appropriate to refer to her as "Baskin" when describing events before 2004. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:32, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 15
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (April 2020).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 15th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
|
- Wikipedia:User scripts/Most imported scripts now also shows the number of active users for each script. It will now be updated by a bot periodically.
- Twinkle's Morebits library added a new
Morebits.date
class to replace the moment library. It can handle custom formatting and natural language for dates, as well as section header regexes. If you were usinggetUTCMonthName
orgetUTCMonthNameAbbrev
withDate
objects, those have been deprecated and should be updated. - User:SD0001/find-archived-section was made a gadget. You can enable it from your gadget preferences, in the Browsing section.
Hope everyone stays safe. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:27, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 5 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [201]
- Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 7 May. This will also affect CentralAuth. This can for example affect global renames, password changes, changing or confirming your email address and logging in to new wikis. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [202]
Changes later this week
- You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can soon turn these notifications off for individual pages. [203]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 May. It will be on all wikis from 7 May (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [204]
Problems
- Commons will be on read-only for a few minutes on 12 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [205]
- Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [206][207]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 May. It will be on all wikis from 14 May (calendar).
Future changes
- JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via
mw.config.exists()
ormw.user.tokens.exists()
. You can useexists()
orget()
to check one at a time instead. [208]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #13
[edit]Welcome to the thirteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Join the conversation: structured tasks
[edit]We are looking for community input on a new project to make it easy for newcomers to make real article edits.
In our previous newsletter, we talked about the productive edits coming from the newcomer tasks feature. Those good results have continued: about 900 newcomers made over 5,000 suggested edits so far. We've learned that newcomers are interested in receiving suggested edits.
Now, we are thinking about how to supply them a feed of easy edits that will help more of them be successful quickly. We have a new idea called "structured tasks". This would aim to break down edits into steps that are easy for newcomers and easy on mobile devices.
In the past, certain kinds of editing tasks have been structured. For instance, adding categories through HotCat. Now, we are thinking about how to structure the editing of articles. The goal is to allow newcomers can make large content additions, especially from their mobile devices.
Please visit the project page and respond to the discussion questions listed on the talk page. You are welcome to show this project to others in your community. You can help by translating the materials to your language so that more voices can join in. We will be having this conversation until June 18.
Expanding to more wikis
[edit]We have expanded to six new wikis, and are looking for more interested communities.
In the last two months, we deployed Growth features to six new wikis: Ukrainian, Serbian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Basque Wikipedias, and French Wiktionary. Newcomers from these wikis have already contributed over 600 edits through Growth features.
We want to expand to more wikis in the coming months, and we are looking for interested communities. French Wikipedia already agreed and will be the next one to join the experiment. We will contact several other wikis in the coming weeks to offer them to participate.
Do you think the Growth Team features would be a good addition to your wiki? Please see this translatable summary of Growth features. You can share with your communities and start a discussion. Then, please contact us to begin the process!
Other updates
[edit]Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.
- In March, we deployed an upgrade to the topic matching in newcomer tasks. The current version offers 39 different topics using new ORES models.
- In April, we completed an A/B test of two homepage configurations. We learned that more newcomers will attempt suggested edits if the module is made more prominent. We are implementing those learnings in our next test. See the full results here.
- We are currently working on guidance for newcomer tasks. It will use the help panel to guide newcomers through completing easy edits.
- Our next step is to create new configurations of the homepage. The goal is to encourage more newcomers to begin doing suggested edits.
As usual, we are still welcoming your feedback and questions about our features. Please contact us on the project talk page!
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:29, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. [209][210]
Problems
- There is a bug that creates problems for iPhone users with iOS 13 and Safari. If you use an iPhone to read or edit Wikipedia and see bugs on the mobile site you can report them. [211]
- Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [212][213]
Changes later this week
- The Wikipedia app for Android can let users add depicts on Commons. The beta version used computer-aided tagging. This was removed to get more specific depicts. [214]
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- Graphs will be rendered in the reader's browser. This will use Javascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files. [215]
- Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects
div#p-personal
,div#p-navigation
,div#p-interaction
,div#p-tb
,div#p-lang
,div#p-namespaces
,div#p-variants
anddiv#footer
. They will have to removediv
. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [216] - Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects
#p-variants
,#p-namespaces
,#p-personal
,#p-views
and#p-cactions
. They can no longer use> ul
. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:18, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - May 2020
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the May 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- Coronavirus Updates for Wikipedia Updates on Wikipedia during COVID-19
- What's Hot! (wifi)
- Articles (none this month)
- The Wikipedian (Want to be interviewed?)
- News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Updates!)
- Editor's Notes (News/Updates!)
- Activity Page (Fun Activities!...)
- Ads (Super Cool Ads)
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading & stay safe! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 23:58, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [217]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 May 2020
[edit]- From the editor: Meltdown May?
- News and notes: 2019 Picture of the Year, 200 French paid editing accounts blocked, 10 years of Guild Copyediting
- Discussion report: WMF's Universal Code of Conduct
- Featured content: Weathering the storm
- Arbitration report: Board member likely to receive editing restriction
- Traffic report: Come on and slam, and welcome to the jam
- Gallery: Wildlife photos by the book
- News from the WMF: WMF Board announces Community Culture Statement
- Recent research: Automatic detection of covert paid editing; Wiki Workshop 2020
- Community view: Transit routes and mapping during stay-at-home order downtime
- WikiProject report: Revitalizing good articles
- On the bright side: 500,000 articles in the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia
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 beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [218]
Problems
- There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [219][220][221]
- The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [222]
Changes later this week
- You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [223]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Some articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [224]
- Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them.
<b/>
is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work.area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr
can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect<references />
or<ref />
. [225] - There is a banner called
WikidataPageBanner
. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions onMediaWiki:Sitenotice
so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [226][227]
Changes later this week
- You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [228]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).
Future changes
- A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 118 wikis need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [229]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 39, May – June 2020
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 39, May – June 2020
- Library Card Platform
- New partnerships
- ProQuest
- Springer Nature
- BioOne
- CEEOL
- IWA Publishing
- ICE Publishing
- Bytes in brief
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:13, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list
This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.
- Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing
@
. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months. - New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
- New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
- Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.
– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.
Problems
- There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [230]
- Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [231]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 June. It will be on all wikis from 18 June (calendar).
Future changes
- Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [232]
- The selectors
.menu
and.vectorMenu
will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts..menu
should be replaced byul
..vectorMenu
should be replaced by.vector-menu
. [233]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard/Issues/Summer 2020
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the May 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- Coronavirus Updates for Wikipedia (Updates on Wikipedia during COVID-19)
- What's Hot! (staycations?)
- Articles (none this month)
- The Wikipedian (Want to be interviewed?)
- News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Updates!)
- Editor's Notes (News/Updates!)
- Activity Page (Activities!...)
- Ads (Super Cool Ads)
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading & stay safe! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 02:11, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- Your help can make a difference
NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.
- Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate
In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.
- Discussions and Resources
- A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
- Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
- A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
- Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.
Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [234]
- Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors.
.vectorTabs
should be replaced with.vector-menu-tabs
to fix this. [235]
Changes later this week
- The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [236]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).
Future changes
- A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [237]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [238]
- Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [239]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).
Future changes
- The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID
searchGoButton
for the go button. This issearchButton
for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change tosearchButton
in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to usesearchButton
. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 16
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past two months (May and June 2020).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 16th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
|
If anyone else would like to contribute to future issues, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:13, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #3
[edit]Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:
- The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
- More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
- Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
- The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
- Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
- On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
- In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed. [240]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 July. It will be on all wikis from 9 July (calendar).
Future changes
- Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more. [241]
- The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
- Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks. [242]
Problems
- Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week. [243][244]
Changes later this week
- Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background. Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using
<translate nowrap></translate>
on the source page. [245] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).
Future changes
- Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. [246][247][248][249]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. The mobile main page special casing stopped working 14 July. 60 wikis now have main pages that don't work well on mobile. You can see which ones, how to fix it and how to get help in Phabricator. This is the same problem that was reported in Tech News 2020/24 and 2020/26.
Problems
- There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution. [250]
- Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [251]
- Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably a browser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the details on Phabricator. [252]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 July. It will be on all wikis from 23 July (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a
Printable version
link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway. [253]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:12, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Starter kit is now available for wiki communities. This page lists technical resources, tools, and recommendations. These are essential to operate a wiki project. This is mostly useful for smaller wikis where the community has limited experience with this. [254]
- The first features of the Desktop Improvements project are available for logged-in users on all wikis. In order to use them, uncheck Use Legacy Vector in your local or global preferences in section Skin preferences. More improvements are planned. Feedback is welcome.
- On multiple wikis, a UTCLiveClock gadget is available. For wikis that import the gadget directly from mediawiki.org, end users can now choose a different timezone to show instead of UTC.
Problems
- The deployment train for MediaWiki has been blocked this week. [255][256]
- Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed. [257]
- Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed. [258]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 29. It will be on all wikis from JUly 30 (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:52, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- All queries to the Wikidata Query Service failed between 17:50 and 17:59 UTC on Thursday 23 July. Some queries failed during a longer period. [259]
- Interlanguage links were ordered incorrectly for the past few weeks. This problem was also mentioned in Tech News two weeks ago. The problem is now fixed. [260]
- There is a problem with the global preferences for the "Use Legacy Vector" option. Developers are working on fixing it. [261]
- A bug in the Wikibase extension had disabled the "move" and "create" types of protection in the main (Gallery) namespace on Wikimedia Commons. New protections could not be added, and existing protections were not enforced, allowing some page moves and page creations that should not have been possible. This has now been fixed. [262]
Changes later this week
- The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. This week, the current beta feature will become the video player for everyone on most non-Wikipedia wikis. The old player will be removed. [263]
- Users'
global.js
andglobal.css
pages will now also be loaded on the mobile site. You can read documentation for how to avoid applying styles to the mobile skin. [264] - In the MonoBook skin, the
searchGoButton
identifier is nowsearchButton
. This may affect CSS and JS gadgets. Migration instructions can be found in T255953. This was previously mentioned in issue 27. - Bot operators can use Pywikibot to regularly archive discussions. The behavior when the bot uses
counter
to prevent large archives was changed. [265] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 5. It will be on all wikis from August 6 (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact. [266]
Problems
- The mobile skin displays a message at the bottom of the page about who edited last. This message showed raw wikitext. This has now been fixed. Some messages in Structured Discussions and content translation may still appear as raw wikitext. Developers are working on it. [267]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 12. It will be on all wikis from August 13 (calendar).
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [268][269]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- If you revert an edit using the undo link your edit is marked with an
undo
tag. This will now only happen if you don't change anything in the edit window before publishing the undo. This is to keep users from marking edits as undos when they actually do something else. [270] - The new OOUI version will not work with Internet Explorer 8. This means the wikis will look strange and not work well in Internet Explorer 8. This was reported in Tech/News/2020/17. This is because keeping the wikis working with very old browsers creates other problems. [271]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 August. It will be on all wikis from 20 August (calendar).
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis next week. This is a reminder. You can help by translating the announcement message. [272][273]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:40, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 August. It will be on all wikis from 27 August (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #4
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter
Reply tool
[edit]The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.
- More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
- Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
- Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[274]
The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).
The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.
New requirements for user signatures
[edit]- The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
- Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.
Next: New discussion tool
[edit]Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 17
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past two months (July and August 2020).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 17th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
Stay safe --DannyS712 (talk) 19:42, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- This is a reminder. All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. Please check on the details on the announcement message. [275][276]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter 14
[edit]Welcome to the fourteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Success with guidance
[edit]We deployed the "Guidance" feature on June 15.
This feature uses the help panel to explain what to do after selecting a suggested edit. For instance, if a newcomer selects a copyedit task, they are guided on what sorts of errors to look for. They can see examples of how to rewrite the text. You can try this feature on test.wikipedia.org. First enable the homepage and the help panel in your preferences there.
Since we launched "Guidance", the data we collected show good results (see image). Now, we see more users completing suggested edits than before Guidance was deployed.
Structured tasks
[edit]Structured tasks is a project that aims to break down editing workflows into a series of steps. We hope newcomers can accomplish these tasks easily.
In the previous newsletter, we asked for feedback from community members on the idea. We had a good discussion in six languages with 35 community members (summary here). We have now posted new design mockups. We hope community members can check the mockups out and react to them (in any language). They are posted along with some of the main questions we are thinking about as we continue to refine our plans.
Other technical updates
[edit]- We are currently working on Variants C and D (adjacent image) of the homepage. The goal is to increase the number of newcomers who start the newcomer tasks workflow. This is the team's main project at the moment.
- We've made it easier to hide the help panel when not needed. [277]
- The welcome survey has a new question for people who created their account: language skills. The goal is to find out how many newcomers know multiple languages, so that we can learn whether it is a good idea to integrate Content Translation as a newcomer task. To make room for this question, we removed one that is not being used. [278]
Community outreach
[edit]- We continue to engage with more communities. We recently deployed the Growth features to Persian, Hebrew, and Russian Wikipedias. Learn more about getting the features.
- If your community is having a remote event, and you are interested in hearing from the Growth team, please contact us! We have already participated to two community events online:
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:33, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- Normally pages can be moved to a title that has no existing page yet or to a page that has only one revision, which is a redirect to the page to be moved. A new user right allows editors to move pages over one-revision pages that redirect to anywhere. [279]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 September. It will be on all wikis from 10 September (calendar).
- All MediaWiki API modules will now use
watchlist
instead ofwatch
. This was inconsistent before. [280]
Future changes
- The Wikipedia Android app team might work on patrolling tools in the future. You can let them know what tools would be useful for you or for less experienced patrollers. See the page on mediawiki.org.
- OTRS will be updated to a new version. This will probably take around two days. OTRS agents will not have access to the system during these days. Emails that come in during the update will be delivered when the update is done. The plan is to start around 08:00 UTC on 14 September. This could change. [281]
- The Wikipedia Android app will send push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will need Google Play Services to work. It will also be possible to get the app without Google Play Services but push notifications will not work. Google Play Services is also used to make the app work for Android 4.4 users. [282][283]
- Wikimedia code review could move to GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. You can take part in the consultation.
- Dropdown menus in the Vector skin use a
.menu
class. This will not work in the future. Scripts can usenav ul
instead..vectorTabs
and.vectorMenu
will also not work. Some scripts need to be updated. You can read more in Phabricator.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 40
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 40, July – August 2020
- New partnerships
- Al Manhal
- Ancestry
- RILM
- #1Lib1Ref May 2020 report
- AfLIA hires a Wikipedian-in-Residence
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:14, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- The Wikipedia apps briefly showed pages without CSS last week. This meant they looked wrong. It was quickly fixed but cached pages without CSS were shown for a few hours. [284][285]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 September. It will be on all wikis from 17 September (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard/Issues/September 2020
Hello, John Broughton! Here is the September 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- What's Hot! ("working from home")
- Articles (New One this month)
- Interviews (New Interview!)
- News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Updates!)
- Editor's Notes (News/Updates!)
- Activity Page (Activities!...)
- Ads (Super Cool Ads)
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading & stay safe! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 00:48, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new tag for reverted edits. For example you can see it in the recent changes feed or in the article history. It is added to edits when they have been undone, rollbacked or manually reverted to an older version of the page. [286][287]
Changes later this week
- The number of times you can do something in a period of time on wiki is limited. This could be the number of edits per minute or the number of users you email in a day. Some users are not affected by all limits because of their user rights. They could soon see the limit even if it does not affect them. [288]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 September. It will be on all wikis from 24 September (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:25, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Admins can now see links to diffs of deleted revisions on Special:AbuseLog. This uses the interface of Special:Undelete. [289]
- Editors are automatically added to some user groups. For example editors are added to autoconfirmed users when they have edited enough times and long enough. Abuse filters can hinder users from automatically getting user rights for a period of time. They can also remove rights user have. Wikis can now ask to change how long this period of time is for their wiki in Phabricator. It is currently five days. [290]
Problems
- Last year some abuse filters stopped working because of a new change. If they tried to use variables that were unavailable for that action they would fail. This has now been fixed. [291]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 September. It will be on all wikis from 1 October (calendar).
Future changes
- You can't see the language links to other language versions from the talk page or history page. They are also not shown when you edit an article. This could change. It is not decided if for example the history page should link to another history page or to the article. You can take part in the discussion in Phabricator.
- The link colours could change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. You can read more in Phabricator.
- In your preferences you can choose to get different notifications on the web or by email. You will see
Apps
as one of the alternatives later this week. This is because the Android and iOS Wikipedia apps will use push notifications for those who want them. You can see the preferences on the test wiki. The goal is to have push notifications on Android in October and on iOS in early 2021. [292] - You can soon put pages on your watchlist for a limited time. This could be useful if you want to watch something for a shorter time but don't want it on your watchlist forever. It now works on mediawiki.org and will come to more wikis later. You can read more and see when it will come to other wikis.
- You can see what Wikimedians think are the best new technical tools this year. You can also nominate them.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:23, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new tool where you can see which home wiki users have in discussions on Meta. This can help show which communities are not part of the discussion on wikis where we make decisions that affect many other wikis.
- You can now thank users for file uploads or for changing the language of a page. [293]
Problems
- There were many errors with the new MediaWiki version last week. The new version was rolled back. Updates that should have happened last week are late. [294]
- Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [295]
- Many pages have JavaScript errors. You can read more and now see a list of user scripts with errors.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 October. It will be on all wikis from 8 October (calendar).
- Letters immediately after a link are shown as part of the link. For example the entire word in
[[Child]]ren
is linked. On Arabic wikis this works at both the start and end of a word. Previously on Arabic wikis numbers and other non-letter Unicode characters were shown as part of the link at the start of a word but not at the end. Now only Latin and Arabic letters will extend links on Arabic wikis. [296]
Future changes
- You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [297]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:24, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Because of the problems with the MediaWiki version two weeks ago last week's updates are also late. [298][299][300]
Changes later this week
- Live previews didn't show the templates used in the preview if you just edited a section. This has now been fixed. You can also test CSS and JavaScript pages even if you have the live preview enabled. Previously this didn't work well. [301][302]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 October. It will be on all wikis from 15 October (calendar).
Future changes
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:23, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 October. It will be on all wikis from 22 October (calendar).
Future changes
- You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [304]
- In the AbuseFilter extension, the
rmspecials()
function will be updated soon so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses ofrmspecials()
withrmwhitespace()
wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [305] - Some gadgets and user-scripts use the HTML div with the ID
#jump-to-nav
. This div will be removed soon. Maintainers should replace these uses with either#siteSub
or#mw-content-text
. A list of affected scripts is at the top of phab:T265373.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
Request for help updating my page
[edit]Hi John. My name is Prerna Gupta. I would like to add an infobox and more information to the page about me. I shared a draft at Draft:Prerna Gupta. After trying BLPN, a Wikiproject, and the page’s original author, I haven’t been able to find anyone available to look at the draft. You came recommended as someone who might be willing to put some impartial eye-balls on the proposed draft. If you are available to take a look, I would greatly appreciate your time! Best regards. Prernagupta1 (talk) 22:10, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
- @Prernagupta1: - the draft is problematical because several of the sources are things that you wrote yourself. That absolutely fails the requirements for reliable secondary sources. Specifically, source 8 (and 16, which is the same) is unusable, so any text that is supported by this source needs to be either removed, or an acceptable source found to support it. Similarly, sources 17 through 23 are essentially self-published information, or otherwise fail WP:RS, and so the related text should be removed from the (draft) article.
- I realize that many of these sources are, in fact, in the published Wikipedia article. That doesn't make them acceptable, it just means that no Wikipedia editor has been interested enough to spend the time to edit the article to remove them. (One editor did, however, note the problem on the article's Talk page.)
- If you're willing to remove the unacceptable sources, and related text, from the draft article (or find acceptable sources that do support the text - I suspect there are none), then yes, I'd be willing to look at using the draft article to update/expand the Prerna Gupta article. Otherwise, I'm afraid you're going to have to look for someone else to help.
- I realize that Wikipedia's insistence on secondary sources for information probably seems odd. It's partly, of course, there is doubt that self-published information, even in as prestigious a place as the New York Times, is true. But it's more that Wikipedia's philosophy is that self-published information hasn't proved itself to be important - to be, if you will, worth including in an encyclopedia. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:00, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks John. I really appreciate your response and offer to help! I removed the offending self-authored citations and associated content from the draft. Let me know if there's anything else I need to do to comply with Wikipedia's standards, and thanks again for your time helping out a newbie. Best regards. Prernagupta1 (talk) 15:55, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
- @Prernagupta1: Okay, done. If I've made a mistake, or you see the opportunity to improve, or you want to update the article, the best way to do that is to post to Talk:Prerna Gupta, saying exactly what you want changed (add, delete, whatever), and, if not obvious, why you want the change. And if you mention me - {{replyto|John Broughton}} - in what you post, then you don't need to post anything on my user talk page - I'll be alerted by the Talk page posting, and - more importantly - so will other editors interested in that page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:26, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks so much John! I really appreciate it. I'm going to work on getting a properly licensed headshot image for the page. I had another request for you in the meantime, if you're up for it. I know it's a lot to ask after you just reviewed the Prerna Gupta page, but I also shared a draft at Talk:Hooked (app) (an app my company created) about a month ago if you have any interest in looking at that one too. I'm happy to bother someone else if you're all tapped out. Prernagupta1 (talk) 20:52, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
- @Prernagupta1: I've added a template to your Talk:Hooked (app) posting, which - in theory - should attract other editors to take a look at your draft. However, there is a backlog on doing this (too few interested editors, given the demand). If no one has commented on or helped with your draft in two weeks or so from now, please feel free to drop me a note and I'll see what I can do. Or, if someone does comment or act, and - after discussion(s) with that editor - you're not happy with the result, please feel free to let me know. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:37, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Hi John. I added a headshot of myself here if you don't mind adding it to Prerna Gupta. I just emailed the Declaration of Consent to OTRS.
Regarding the Hooked app page, an editor from Request Edit showed up, but it seemed like they were expecting an individual correction, rather than a re-write/expansion. He said the draft looks good, but would prefer a shorter Features section, so I shortened it here. Prernagupta1 (talk) 17:50, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
- @Prernagupta1: I've added the image to the article. However, I rarely work with images or infoboxes, so it wouldn't surprise me if another editor decides to get involved here - clipping the photo and/or reducing the display size. And if no one else does, I may take some time to learn more about what's the norm, and make adjustments myself. But at least I've started the process. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:26, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for doing that so quickly, John! Sounds good regarding photo resizing etc. As for the Hooked app page, how would you suggest I proceed, given the response I received from the editor who saw my edit request? Prernagupta1 (talk) 20:51, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
- @Prernagupta1: The norm (or, at least, the preferred approach, from an editor's viewpoint), anyway, is that you say [as separate, bulleted items], "change A to B, delete C, change D to E, delete F", and so on. It's more work (or, at least, more thinking) to look at two different versions and decide what to keep, what to discard, and what to merge/combine, on a sentence-by-sentence basis.
- It's pretty clear that the editor who responded is looking for that sentence-by-sentence approach. Your choices are (a) to wait to see if someone else jumps in who is willing to use what you have already provided [unlikely, but possible], or (b) for you to do the extra work to break out, sentence by sentence, what you want changed. (You don't have to say anything when there is a sentence to be left as is.)
- If you go with (a), there is a good chance that I'll get involved in a week or two, and that will get closure, but (b) would be faster and more guaranteed to happen. You could also split the difference - pick part of the existing article that you most want changed, and spell out in detail, on the article's talk page, what you want changed. (Editors really like additions that come with a good citation; another approach would be to suggest changes that result in missing sources being added to the article.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:29, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks John. I don’t think it’s sensible to go through the proposed draft sentence by sentence and there’s no urgency. Thus, I’ll patiently wait for your review, when you get around to it. Prernagupta1 (talk) 00:26, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
- Also, I just realized there’s an error on the Prerna Gupta page! I was born in 1981 (December 12, 1981), not 1980. Would it be possible to specify the correct date, or else remove it entirely? Prernagupta1 (talk) 16:12, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [306]
- Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [307]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can. [308]
- There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits. [309]
- The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized. [310]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-October 2020
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the October 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- What's Hot! (candy time?)
- Articles (New One this month)
- Interviews (We have a new Interview!)
- News about Wikipedia! (WAM 2020)
- Editor's Notes (News/Updates!)
- Activity Page (Activities?)
- Ads (Super Cool Ads)
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading & stay safe! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 23:27, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
Growth team updates #15
[edit]Welcome to the fifteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Variants C and D deployed
[edit]Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We hope they will increase the number of users using suggested edits. They both make suggested edits the clear place where newcomers should get started on the page. They have some differences in their workflows, because we want to test which design is better. We deployed these variants on October 19; half of newcomers get each variant. After about 5 weeks, we will analyze the data from the tests. The goal is to determine which variant is helping more newcomers to make more suggested edits. We will identify the better variant and then use it with all newcomers.
Structured tasks: add a link
[edit]As we discussed in previous newsletters, the team is working on our first "structured task": the "add a link" task. After community discussion on design ideas, we ran user tests on the mobile designs. We decided on the design concept we want to use moving forward: Concept A. We're now engineering the backend for this feature. Next, we will be running user tests for desktop designs.
Learn more about the findings.
Community news
[edit]- We recently deployed the Growth features to Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish Wikipedias. 18 wikis now have Growth features. Learn more about getting the features.
- Have you recently checked if all interface messages are translated for your language?
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
10:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser uses very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It could lead to downgrade attacks. Since October 29, 2020, users who use old TLS versions will not be able to connect to Wikimedia projects. A list of browser recommendations is available. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [311]
- There is a new automatic tracking category available: Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments. It collects pages which use the
{{formatnum}}
parser function with invalid (non-numeric) input, e.g.{{formatnum:TECHNEWS}}
. Note that{{formatnum:123,456}}
is also invalid input: as described in the documentation, the argument should be unformatted so that it can be reliably and correctly localised. The tracking category will help identify problematic usage and double-formatting. The new tracking category's name can be translated at translatewiki. [312]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 4. It will be on all wikis from November 5 (calendar).
- Administrators and stewards will be able to use a special page (Special:CreateLocalAccount) to force local account creation for a global account. This is useful when account creation is blocked for that user (by a block or a filter). [313]
- The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias on November 4. This change excludes the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, plus a few smaller Wikipedias with special circumstances. You can read the help page and the troubleshooting guide for more information. [314]
Future changes
- A discussion has been restarted about using a Unicode minus sign (− U+2212) in the output of
{{formatnum}}
when it is given a negative argument. [315] - In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:07, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- You can see reference previews. This shows a preview of the footnote when you hover over it. This has been a beta feature. It will move out of beta and be enabled by default. There will be an option not to use it. The developers are looking for small or medium-sized wikis to be the first ones. You can let them know if your wiki is interested. [316]
- From November 16 the categories will not be sorted in order for a short time. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the internationalisation library. They will use a script to fix the existing categories. This can take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [317][318]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most 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. [319][320]
Changes later this week
- If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed. [321]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 November. It will be on all wikis from 19 November (calendar).
Future changes
- The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 41
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 41, September – October 2020
- New partnership: Taxmann
- WikiCite
- 1Lib1Ref 2021
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-November 2020
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the November 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard.
- What's Hot! (Lots of turkey)
- Articles (New Ones this month!)
- Interviews (This month, we focused the interview on a certain topic)
- News about Wikipedia! (Updates about Wikipedia)
- Editor's Notes (News/Updates!)
- Activity Page (Activities!)
- Ads (Super Cool Ads)
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading & stay safe! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 02:34, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
- This Message was delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:44, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page. [322]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January. [323]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message
[edit]Disambiguation link notification for November 25
[edit]An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Alabama's 2nd congressional district, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Barry Moore.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:09, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 November 2020
[edit]- News and notes: Jimmy Wales "shouldn't be kicked out before he's ready"
- Op-Ed: Re-righting Wikipedia
- Opinion: How billionaires re-write Wikipedia
- Featured content: Frontonia sp. is thankful for delicious cyanobacteria
- Traffic report: 007 with Borat, the Queen, and an election
- News from Wiki Education: An assignment that changed a life: Kasey Baker
- GLAM plus: West Coast New Zealand's Wikipedian at Large
- Wikicup report: Lee Vilenski wins the 2020 WikiCup
- Recent research: Wikipedia's Shoah coverage succeeds where libraries fail
- Essay: Writing about women
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 1 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 December. It will be on all wikis from 3 December (calendar).
Future changes
- The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test. [324][325]
- The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database
JOINS
will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. [326]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 18
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past three months (September, October, and November 2020).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 18th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
|
- Twinkle has made a number of improvements, including using a change tag to identify actions made with it and automatically filing edit requests for protected XfD nominations.
- SD0001's shortdescs-in-category is now compatible with scripts modifying category listings, such as Equazcion's CatListMainTalkLinks
- GhostInTheMachine's TalkHelper2 is a newer version of their prior script, TalkHelper
- GeneralNotability's spihelper updated to 2.2.10, fixing a number of small bugs, automatically tagging globally locked socks as such in the sockpuppet template, and restoring open cases following an SPI history merge.
- Enterprisey's script-installer gadget has been updated with more internationalization of messages, as well as addition of a user preference,
window.scriptInstallerInstallTarget
to allow controlling where new scripts are to be installed.
- Enterprisey is looking for beta testers for their new section-watchlist user script. See the announcement.
- The second edition of the m:Coolest Tool Award will be taking place in December.
- Enterprisey's links-in-logs script has now been implemented as part of MediaWiki core, see gerrit:640761 and phab:T207562.
My apologies for the delayed issue. As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:20, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
Growth team updates #16
[edit]Welcome to the sixteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Growth features show impact
[edit]Newcomer task experiments results
The team recently published our analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We are happy to announce that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers.
In November 2019, the Growth team added the "newcomer tasks" feature to the newcomer homepage. After six months, we collected data from Arabic, Vietnamese, Czech, and Korean Wikipedias. We analyzed the overall impact of the Growth features, including newcomer tasks.
This analysis finds that the Growth features lead to increases in:
- the probability that newcomers make their first article edit (+11.6%)
- the probability that they are retained as editors
- the number of edits they make during their first couple of weeks on the wiki (+22%)
We also find that the quality of their edits, as measured by revert rate, is comparable to that of a control group.
-
The number of suggested edits completed by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020, with a line for the total.
-
The number of distinct users completing suggested edits by each wiki each week, going from December 2019 to November 2020.
Because of these results, we think all Wikipedias should consider implementing these features. Learn more about how to get them.
You can find more details about this experiment on the report page. Please post any feedback or questions on the talk page
General metrics
As of November 2020, across all wikis where the features have been deployed:
- more than 5,000 newcomers have made more than 40,000 edits using Newcomer tasks.
- more than 14,000 questions have been sent to volunteer mentors by more than 11,000 users.
- more than 2,000 questions have been asked on help desks by more than 1,500 users.
Learn more about Growth results here, and please post any feedback or questions on the talk page.
Variants C and D
[edit]Variants C and D are two new arrangements of the newcomer homepage. We deployed them in October. After six weeks of these variants being deployed, we can see that they have led to increased interactions with newcomer tasks. Next, we will determine which variant is best and use that for all newcomers.
News for mentors
[edit]A separate list for workshops hosts
During workshops organized by education programs through the communities, workshops hosts like to mentor people they train on wiki. Several wikis requested to have a way to claim their mentees without having other newcomers being randomly being assigned to them. To address this need, a separate list can be created on wiki, for mentors that wish to claim mentees, but prefer not to have random mentees being assigned to them. Learn more about this feature.
Claiming multiple mentees at once
Mentors can use Special:ClaimMentee to claim a newcomer as their mentee. The feature now allows mentors to claim multiple newcomers at once.
Community news
[edit]The help panel allows people to post a message to the local help desk while editing. Previously, the tool always posted messages to the bottom of help desks. Wikis are now able to configure it to display new messages at the top of the help desk page. T261714
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:22, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function. [327][328]
Changes later this week
- Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki. [329][330]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all wikis from 10 December (calendar).
Future changes
- You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
New Page Patrol December Newsletter
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- Year in review
It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.
Rank | Username | Num reviews | Log |
---|---|---|---|
1 | DannyS712 bot III (talk) | 67,552 | Patrol Page Curation |
2 | Rosguill (talk) | 63,821 | Patrol Page Curation |
3 | John B123 (talk) | 21,697 | Patrol Page Curation |
4 | Onel5969 (talk) | 19,879 | Patrol Page Curation |
5 | JTtheOG (talk) | 12,901 | Patrol Page Curation |
6 | Mcampany (talk) | 9,103 | Patrol Page Curation |
7 | DragonflySixtyseven (talk) | 6,401 | Patrol Page Curation |
8 | Mccapra (talk) | 4,918 | Patrol Page Curation |
9 | Hughesdarren (talk) | 4,520 | Patrol Page Curation |
10 | Utopes (talk) | 3,958 | Patrol Page Curation |
- Reviewer of the Year
John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.
- NPP Technical Achievement Award
As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.
Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here
18:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too. [331]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all wikis from 17 December (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 19
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (December 2020).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 19th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
- Voting in the m:Community Wishlist Survey 2021 is ongoing until December 21, 2020. There are 15 proposals in the "bots and gadgets" category that may be of interest.
- A script to help list discussions at WP:ANRFC (request)
- A script to allow undoing edits despite conflicting intermediary edits (request)
- ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests
- The Watchlist Expiry feature worked on by the Community Tech team has been enabled on Wikipedia. For scripts that include watching or unwatching pages, developers may want to update their code to take advantage of the new functionality. See the documentation on mediawiki.org.
- As noted in the prior issue, Enterprisey's links-in-logs script has now been implemented as part of MediaWiki core. By my count, this is his third script that was replaced by implementing the code in MediaWiki core or an extension, along with link-section-edits and abusefilter-hide-search. Additionally, his reply-link script is being converted in part to mw:Extension:DiscussionTools. Are there any other scripts that might be worth integrating directly in MediaWiki? Thoughts would be welcome at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++.
As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy holidays! --DannyS712 (talk) 00:19, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.
Recent changes
- The
{{citation needed}}
template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [332]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
Future changes
- You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
- Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a
<langconvert>
tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [333] - Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [334]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:53, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-December 2020
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the December 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard. Pilot Project, trying a smaller and different style newsletter
- Here are the events of December 2020
Wikipedia News
[edit]- On the French Wikipedia, the new vector skin design has already been rolled out! Check it out here!
- Wikipedia will soon celebrate it's 20th Birthday very soon! Go back to 2001 by visiting nostalgia.wikipedia.org !
- EN Wikipedia has more than 6,200,000 Articles!
Humor
[edit]- Santa is watching you.... Don't vandalise Wikipedia, or he will reward you a block and no presents this year if you do so. (Seriously don't vandalise Wikipedia, even if santa isn't watching)
- More turkey on Christmas
Notes
[edit]- We are trying out this pilot style newspaper, making it easier for you, and our editors to use. Please let me know what you think about this new 'style' of newspaper!
- The Wikipedia Ads section will be omitted, to make the flow of this newsletter easier. Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. Enjoy this Issue and stay safe! Happy Holidays --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:13, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
- This message was sent by --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:16, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
Nomination of 2006 Ohio's 2nd congressional district election for deletion
[edit]A discussion is taking place as to whether the article 2006 Ohio's 2nd congressional district election, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 Ohio's 2nd congressional district election until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 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.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:05, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
David Perdue article
[edit]Take out "without evidence" on your David Purdue page. This is wikipedia not your personal leftist blog. If you need me to explain the difference between fact and opinion let me know. There is nothing more dangerous to the American People than liars like you pretending to be "news" or "scholars". You're nothing but a leftist hack. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.49.107.112 (talk) 04:05, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
- @50.49.107.112: Well, one fact is that you've misspelled the last name of David Perdue. Another is that the wording "without evidence" wasn't added by me to the David Perdue article. A third fact is that it's not "my" article; in fact, I'm almost certainly not even one of the main editors of that article. So yes, I'm pretty sure I don't need you to help with facts. And finally, I can think of lots of things that are more dangerous to the American people than what's in a (footnoted) Wikipedia article. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:53, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [335]
- You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [336]
- Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
- The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [337]
- Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [338]
- When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
- There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [339]
- Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the
watchlist
towatch
will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [340] - Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [341]
- CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [342]
- There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 January. It will be on all wikis from 14 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
Nomination of Andrew Giuliani for deletion
[edit]A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Andrew Giuliani, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrew Giuliani until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 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.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:03, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).
Future changes
- The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [343]
- MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Editing news 2021 #1
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter
Reply tool
[edit]The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.
- The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
- It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.
Research notes:
- As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
- There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[344]
- The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[345] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
- A large A/B test will start soon.[346] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.
New discussion tool
[edit]The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[347] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.
Next: Notifications
[edit]During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.
–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-January 2021
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the January 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard. Pilot Project, trying a smaller and different style newsletter
- Here are the events of January!!
Wikipedia News
[edit]- Wikipedia is now 20 years old!! Notice a different logo?
- There is now more than 1 billion edits on Wikipedia!
- The Simple English Wikipedia now has more than 180,000 Articles! So close to 200,000!
Humor
[edit]- Did you realize that the word "Humour" has been spelt wrong? I didn't until now! ;)
- I hope you didn't edit Wikipedia straight on and Missed Christmas...
Notes
[edit]- We are trying out this pilot style newspaper, making it easier for you, and our editors to use. Please let me know what you think about this new 'style' of newspaper!
- The Wikipedia Ads section will be omitted, to make the flow of this newsletter easier. Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. Enjoy this Issue and stay safe! Happy New Year! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:18, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
- This message was sent by --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:07, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 42
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 42, November – December 2020
- New EBSCO collections now available
- 1Lib1Ref 2021 underway
- Library Card input requested
- Libraries love Wikimedia, too!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:00, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). You will not be able to read or edit Wikitech for a short time on 28 January at 09:00 (UTC). [348][349]
Changes later this week
- Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January. [350]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:29, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
Nomination of Prerna Gupta for deletion
[edit]A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Prerna Gupta, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prerna Gupta until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 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.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:03, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- IPv6 addresses were written in lowercase letters in diffs. This caused dead links since Special:Contributions only accepted uppercase letters for the IPs. This has been fixed. [351]
Changes later this week
- You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [352]
- Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background. [353][354]
- Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like
1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55
as well as the1.2.3.4/27
syntax for IP ranges. [355] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).
Future changes
- Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more. [356][357]
- Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be
185.15.56.1
. This will happen on February 8. You can read more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
Nomination of 2006 West Virginia's 2nd congressional district election for deletion
[edit]A discussion is taking place as to whether the article 2006 West Virginia's 2nd congressional district election, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 West Virginia's 2nd congressional district election until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 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.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:03, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 20
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (January 2021).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 20th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
- As a reminder, the legacy javascript globals (like accessing
wgPageName
without first assigning it a value or usingmw.config.get('wgPageName')
instead) are deprecated. If your user scripts make use of the globals, please update them to usemw.config
instead. Some global interface editors or local interface administrators may edit your user script to make these changes if you don't. See phab:T72470 for more.
- For people interested in creating user scripts or gadgets using TypeScript, a types-mediawiki package (GitHub, NPM) is now available that provides type definitions for the MediaWiki JS interface and the API.
- A GitHub organization has been created for hosting codebases of gadgets. Users who maintain gadgets using GitHub may choose to move their repos to this organization, to ensure continued maintenance by others even if the original maintainer becomes inactive.
- A script to ease reviewing Good Article nominations
- A script to help manage Z number templates
- ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests
As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, including nominating a featured script, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy new year! --DannyS712 (talk) 01:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android now has watchlists and talk pages in the app. [358]
Changes later this week
- You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like. The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis. [359]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).
Future changes
- When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones. [360][361]
- Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [362]
- Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead. [363]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned. [364][365]
- Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [366]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:54, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-February 2021
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the February 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard. Pilot Project, trying a smaller and different style newsletter
Wikipedia News
[edit]- A New Code of Conduct is being made by Wikipedia/The WMF more info here
- Meta Wiki has Steward Elections open! see this page for more information
Humour
[edit]THESE STATEMENTS ARE NOT TRUE/NOT GOOD ADVICE. ALWAYS FOLLOW THE POLICIES THAT WIKIPEDIA HAS. EVERYTHING LISTED HERE IN THIS SECTION IS SOLELY FOR THE PURPOSE OF HUMOUR
- If you have a COI, and you don't want to declare it, don't! (For all we know, a dog could be writing [or rather typing] this statement ;) )
Notes
[edit]- We have a new editor on our team! Berrely will be joining the TWW team as a proofreader starting from the next issue onwards! (No more typos now...)
- The Wikipedia Ads section will be omitted, to make the flow of this newsletter easier. Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. Enjoy this Issue and stay safe! Happy Chinese New Year! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- This Issue was delivered by --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:07, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images. [367]
- The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [368]
Problems
- Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly. [369]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 February. It will be on all wikis from 25 February (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
- A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.
Problems
- There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [370]
- Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [371]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 March. It will be on all wikis from 4 March (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #17
[edit]Welcome to the seventeenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasks
[edit]Add a link: the team is continuing to engineer on our first "structured task", which will break down the workflow of adding wikilinks to articles, and assist newcomers with an algorithm to identify words and phrases that could be made into links.
Add an image: even as we build our first structured task, we have been thinking about the next one. "Add an image" is a structured task in which newcomers would be recommended images from Wikimedia Commons to add to unillustrated articles. This is an ambitious idea with many details to consider. We have already learned a lot from community members, and we encourage everyone to look at the project page and join the discussion.
Moving forward: more wikis to get the features
[edit]Last November, our team published the analysis of the impact of newcomer tasks. We announced that we found that the Growth features, and particularly newcomer tasks, lead to increased editing from newcomers. Because of these results, we believe all Wikipedias should implement these features.
We have started to contact more wikis to deploy the features, including Wikipedias of all sizes. Bengali Wikipedia recently began using Growth features, and Danish, Thai, Indonesian, and Romanian Wikipedias will be coming soon. Please contact us if you have questions regarding deployment.
We are looking for translators who can help by translating the interface. Translating is done on Translatewiki.net (it requires a different account that your Wikimedia one). Communities that already have the Growth features being deployed are invited to check on the translations. Access translations here.
Variant testing
[edit]As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we ran a test of two variants of the newcomer homepage, meant to find a version that increases users completing suggested edits. We have completed the experiment, and learned that one of the variants leads to more edits on desktop while the other leads to more edits on mobile. Therefore, we will deploy the strongest variants for each platform to all newcomers.
News for mentors
[edit]Mentor dashboard: we have interviewed mentors from several communities as we plan a mentor dashboard feature, which would help mentors track the progress of their mentees. We encourage all mentors to share their thoughts on tools that would help them.
Magic word for mentors: it is now possible to use a magic word, {{#mentor}}
, to display the name of a given newcomer's mentor. This can be used on welcome messages, userboxes, etc.
Help panel questions going to mentors: in most wikis, newcomers using the help panel ask questions to the help desk. On Czech Wikipedia, we have experimented with sending these questions to mentors instead. This simplifies the newcomer experience, and only led to a increase in mentorship questions of about 30%. We tried this in Arabic, Bengali, French and Vietnamese Wikipedias, and we are making it the default experience.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Nomination of 2006 Michigan's 8th congressional district election for deletion
[edit]A discussion is taking place as to whether the article 2006 Michigan's 8th congressional district election, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 Michigan's 8th congressional district election until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 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.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:04, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
- Flagged revisions now give admins the review right. [372]
- When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article. [373]
Problems
- Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing. [374]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (calendar).
- The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions. [375]
Future changes
- There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
- Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown. [376][377]
- New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikis that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
- Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more. [378]
Problems
- Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 March. It will be on all wikis from 18 March (calendar).
Future changes
- You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [379][380]
- You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
- You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database
JOINS
will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [381]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-March 2021
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the March 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard.
Wikipedia News
[edit]- I came across an interesting article about Wikipedia.
- TJMSmith had a successful RFA, Congrats!
Humour
[edit]This section was written by User:Canadian Otaku, I hope you enjoy it as much as I (Tsugaru) did!
- If you edit Wikipedia around 1-5 AM, beware, as any admin could block you for being up too late!
- It's really easy to break Wikipedia, just click here.
- Ignore people telling you to stop putting "Hrrnngg,,,beans" on the article Bean (film), they don't know what good edits are.
- Jimbo is god, and can do anything he wants to!
Notes
[edit]- There are 2 new editors now, one of them Berrely, and CanadianOtaku. As mentioned Berrely is our new proofreader (typos beware) and Canadian Otaku is now going to be writing our Humor sections, I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for joining us, and remember, if you want to join, just let me know!
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. Enjoy this Issue and stay safe! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:22, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
Nomination of 2006 California's 4th congressional district election for deletion
[edit]A discussion is taking place as to whether the article 2006 California's 4th congressional district election, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 California's 4th congressional district election until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. 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.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:02, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 42
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 42, January – February 2021
- New partnerships: PNAS, De Gruyter, Nomos
- 1Lib1Ref
- Library Card
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:27, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
- The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "Discussion tools" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
- Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [382]
Future changes
- Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [383][384]
- Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from
wg*
tomw.config
.wg*
will soon no longer work. [385]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:51, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Some very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [386]
- IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to
irc.wikimedia.org
and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [387]
Problems
- When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [388]
- Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [389][390]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [391]
Changes later this week
- The citoid API will use for example
2010-12-XX
instead of2010-12
for dates with a month but no days. This is because2010-12
could be confused with2010-2012
instead ofDecember 2010
. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [392] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).
Future changes
- PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database
JOINS
will no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:38, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-April 2021
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the April 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard.
Wikipedia News
[edit]- MediaWiki has a new logo. Looks great, doesn't it?
- Did you get to see the April Fools DYK for the Main Page? If not, catch them here (Under April 1)
- In the Beta Features, try out "Discussion tools" it is a very useful feature for replying to talkpage messages. You will need an account to do so!
Memorials
[edit]- Pi zero has passed away. Our condolences go out for Pi zero and anyone who knew him. Thank you Pi zero for your service here at Wikimedia. We are very sorry to hear this. We will never forget your valuable contributions to Wikipedia and it's sister projects.
Humour
[edit]Tsugaru's Humour Section
- April Showers can't Bring May Flowers, if the Flowers ran away to June!
- You can't get in trouble, if you don't cause trouble!
- The May Flowers can't be flowers if they are roses!
Please find CanadianOtaku's Humour Section below
- Sadly, there was no edit war of 2021, maybe next year.
- This joke space is up for rent!
- You too can be a hacker by removing everything in an article!
- Error 410: I dropped this joke and I can't find it.
Editor's Notes
[edit]- Just a reminder that TWW is delivered between the 16th to the 20th of each month
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. Enjoy this Issue and stay safe! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 23:53, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
- This Issue was delivered to you by --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:56, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [393][394]
- If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [395][396][397]
- Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use
mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles')
to go back to how they looked before. [398] - The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- The user group
oversight
will be renamedsuppress
. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:47, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 April 2021
[edit]- From the editor: A change is gonna come
- Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise
- In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby
- Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct
- Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way
- Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia
- Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles
- Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty
- News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia
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
- Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [399][400][401]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.
Problems
- The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [402]
- Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [403]
Changes later this week
- Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [404][405]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).
Future changes
- The CSS classes
.error
,.warning
and.success
do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [406]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 43
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 43, March – April 2021
- New Library Card designs
- 1Lib1Ref May
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:11, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).
Future changes
- You can see what participants plan to work on at the online Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:08, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new toolbar in the Reply tool. It works in the wikitext source mode. You can enable it in your preferences. [407] [408] [409]
- Wikimedia mailing lists are being moved to Mailman 3. This is a newer version. For the character encoding to work it will change from
UTF-8
toutf8mb3
. [410][411] - An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoid API would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first. [412]
Changes later this week
-
MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist
will be renamedMediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist
. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [413] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:48, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
Growth Newsletter #18
[edit]Welcome to the eighteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasks
[edit]"Add a link" is now being tested in production and is nearing release on our four pilot wikis (Arabic, Czech, Vietnamese, and Bengali Wikipedias). We'll be doing final tests this week and next week, and then plan to deploy to the four wikis either during May 24 week, or May 31 week. After two weeks, we will analyze the initial data to identify any problems or trends. We expect that this feature will engage new kinds of newcomers in easy and successful edits. If things are going well after four weeks, we'll progressively deploy it to the wikis with Growth features.
News for mentors
[edit]- We are currently working on a Mentor dashboard. This special page aims to help mentors be more proactive and be more successful at their role. The first iteration will include a table that shows an overview of the mentors current mentees, a module with their own settings, and a module that will allow them to store their best replies to their mentees questions.
- We've conducted our quarterly audit on Growth's four pilot wikis to see the activity of mentors. It appears that the vast majority of mentors are active.
Community configuration
[edit]We are working on project to allow communities to manage the configuration of the Growth features on their own. In the past, communities have needed to work directly with the Growth team to set up and alter the features. We plan to put this capability in the hands of administrators, through an easy-to-use form, so that the features can be easily tailored to fit the needs of each community. While we developed it initially for Growth features, we think this approach could have uses in other features as well. We'll be trying this on our pilot wikis in the coming weeks, and then we'll bring it to all Growth wikis soon after. We hope you check out the project page and add any of your thoughts to the talk page.
Scaling
[edit]- Growth features are now available on 35 wikis. Here is the list of the most recent ones: Romanian Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Catalan Wikipedia.
- A new group of Wikipedias has been defined for the deployment of Growth features. Please contact us if you have questions about the deployment process, or if your community likes to get the features in advance.
- After discussion with the English Wikipedia community, the Growth features will be tested on a small percentage of new accounts. At the moment, registered users can test the features by turning them on in their preferences.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Wikimedia movement has been using IRC on a network called Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have decided to move to the new Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia discussions about this.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-May 2021
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the May 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard.
Wikipedia News
[edit]- The Simple English Wikipedia was mentioned in a article online very recently, you can read the article here.
- Meta is looking for Board Election Volunteers you can read up more by following that link.
- The English Wikipedia, has just passed 6,300,000 articles!
Tip of the Month
[edit]This tip is one of the many ways to combat spam on Wikipedia:
- On Wikipedia, articles either meet the General Notability Guideline or not. When you come across a new article, it is extremely important to determine if it is a real article, or just a spam article. Start with a search on Google, for reliable sources, if you get none in return, then look at the article for non-NPOV content, also scan the references section in the article to see what sources it uses, and check the 'other languages' section and Wikidata to see if it is on other Wikipedias. If other Wikipedias have the same content and/or a CSD or AfD tag (WP:AFD) it is likely spam or not notable, so you can then nominate it for deletion to get input, remember that CSD criterion does not always apply to these articles depending on the content/contex. Also remember to check for copyright violations via earwig's
Memorials
[edit]- SlimVirgin has sadly passed away this month, you can read more about SlimVirgin's passing here
- Moroboshi also sadly passed away earlier this month.
Humour
[edit]- This section was made by CanadianOtaku, please note it contains some emojis, so you might just see a box if your browser doesn't support them. -つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁
- Got blocked on the English Wikipedia because of your epic hacking skills? Start hacking other Wikimedia projects, they ca- This user account is currently locked across all Wikimedia projects.
- This joke is a work in progress, so I might drop some hammers.
- This joke is 2 spaces away, so a🔨n- woah that was close!
Editor's Notes
[edit]- If you want to join TWW, please leave us a message!
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. Enjoy this Issue and stay safe! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 00:01, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
- This Issue was sent you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 00:04, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday. [414]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 21
[edit]News and updates associated with user scripts from the past four months (February through May 2021).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 21st issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
Scripts Submit your new/improved script here
|
My apologies for this long-overdue issue, and if I missed any scripts.
Hopefully going forward we can go back to monthly releases - any help would be appreciated. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 13:04, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (calendar).
Future changes
- The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future. [415][416][417]
- Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for
Bedusz
doesn't findBędusz
on German Wikipedia. The characterę
isn't used in German so many would writee
instead. This will work better in the future in some languages. [418] - The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters. [419][420]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [421]
- Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [422]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
- German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [423]
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [424][425]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
Editing news 2021 #2
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter
Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.
The key results were:
- Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
- The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.
These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.
Looking ahead
The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
The next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.
You can turn on "Discussion Tools" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.
00:27, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
Requesting your support
[edit]Hi John. I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to participate over here on a page about customer service software, where I have a COI. I posted a message a couple months ago and followed up with a couple editors but the page doesn’t seem to hold a lot of interest. Tskillin (talk) 20:09, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
- @Tskillin: I'm not sure that I have much time for this, but I am impressed by the amount of work you've put into the draft, based (quite correctly) on reliable sources. So, two comments:
- I'm not convinced that separating corporate history from product history is ideal. Was that based on what you saw in other Wikipedia articles, and, if so, could I get a pointer or two?
- The RP template is quite useful for book-length publications, but should be used for every citation. You've put page numbers (17-18) in the first use of the citation, but should not have, because that means that those pages (17-18) show up in every use of the core citation. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:38, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
- I'm glad you like the proposed draft. A lot of work went into being neutral and researching good sources. Based on your feedback I consolidated product and corporate history under the "History" section and removed the page number citations. The revised draft is located at the same link. Please let me know if you have any additional feedback. Tskillin (talk) 20:08, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Hi John. Just checking in on this. Thanks very much. Tskillin (talk) 22:33, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The
otrs-member
group name is nowvrt-permissions
. This could affect abuse filters. [426]
Problems
- You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [427]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-Special Notice
[edit]Hello. Thanks for subscribing to TheWikiWizard, as you may know, the next issue of TheWikiWizard, was supposed to be ready and delivered to your talkpage (or the page you subscribed to receive the newsletter) on the 20th. However, due to Tsugaru (User:つがる) being busy with exams, and having some problems logging into his Wikipedia account, the next Issue of TWW has been delayed. The next issue should be ready in around one weeks time. Thanks for your patience and understanding, and we hope you will enjoy the next issue! -- つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 02:45, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
- This message was delivered to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 02:48, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikis with the Growth features now can configure Growth features directly on their wiki. This uses the new special page
Special:EditGrowthConfig
. [428] - Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add
.ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; }
to your common.css page. [429]
Problems
- You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [430][431]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).
Future changes
Threshold for stub link formatting
,thumbnail size
andauto-number headings
can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.- A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [432][433]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:31, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-June 2021
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the June 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard.
Wikipedia News
[edit]- The IRC channels used for Wikipedia have changed, you can read more on it here. While TWW was aware of this in the last issue, we decided to wait and publish this in this issue, when the issue is not as new any more, and more information has been developed.
- There was quick interruption in editing on Wikipedia, that was to test server switching should an emergency happen, more details can be found here.
Humour
[edit]- This section was written by CanadianOtaku --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁
- Internet Explorer still thinks freenode is the best IRC service!
- It has been proven that editing the article Cheese while eating Cheese is considered a WP:COI.
- This joke has been donated to us from aliens, hopefully they learned UTF-8: £
Editor's Notes
[edit]- Thanks for your patience as we experienced delays in publishing this issue.
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
We hope you Enjoy this Issue and have a safe and happy summer! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 02:01, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
- This issue was sent to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 02:04, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.
Recent changes
- AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON.
Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage
has moved toWikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON
andWikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config
.Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version
has moved toWikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON
. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [434]
Problems
- InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from
archive.is
toweb.archive.org
. [435]
Changes later this week
- The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [436][437]
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [438]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:31, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [439][440]
- Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word
__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__
on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [441]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).
Future changes
- How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
- The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).
Future changes
- If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If
⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽
is unticked you need to also untick the new preferenceEnable responsive mode
. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:09, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 45
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 45, May – June 2021
- Library design improvements continue
- New partnerships
- 1Lib1Ref update
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:04, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- If your wiki uses markup like
<div class="mw-content-ltr">
or<div class="mw-content-rtl">
without the requireddir
attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example:<div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en">
or<div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">
. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such asspan
orcode
. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701. - Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network, from the old Freenode network. Local documentation should be updated.
Problems
- Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [442][443]
Changes later this week
- When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [444]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).
Future changes
- The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
- The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding
?dtenable=1
to the end of the talk page's URL (example).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [445]
Changes later this week
- The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
- The old CSS
<div class="visualClear"></div>
will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use<div style="clear:both;"></div>
. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.
Future changes
- The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [446]
- Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [447]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:18, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [448]
Problems
- There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [449][450][451]
Changes later this week
- A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [452]
- Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
- In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [453]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Score extension (
<score>
notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
Read-only reminder
[edit]A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday August 25 06:00 UTC. It should only last for a few minutes.
Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).
For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.
A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.
Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!
20:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard-Summer 2021
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the Summer 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard.
Wikipedia News
[edit]- There is an election that is taking place, for the Wikikmedia Foundation, to read more about it click here
- The Wikipedia Library, has made some updates to their terms of use. You can read more here
- Wikimania took place this month!
- There are a few new admins who have joined the Admin Team, congrats to them! Remember, if you see a use who you believe meets the criteria for adminship here, or on other projects (Please check that Wikipedia/Wikimedia Project's Adminship Criteria page, as they vary by project), you can give it a try and nominate them for adminship if they are okay with it!
Humour
[edit]- There is no due date in Wikipedia, so I could take 1000 years to write this issue! ;P
- If you are reading this, you are reading this! (makes no sense, but okay!)
- There is no more Humour to put and this sentence is no longer funny.
- The mess I made in my room is bigger than this city!
- Here's a list of all events that happened between TWW issues
Editors notes
[edit]- I have been really busy with school so I was unable to write this issue for a long time. Thanks for your patience. :)
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. Enjoy this Issue and have a safe and happy summer! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 02:35, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
- This Issue was sent to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 02:39, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 August 2021
[edit]- News and notes: Enough time left to vote! IP ban
- In the media: Vive la différence!
- Wikimedians of the year: Seven Wikimedians of the year
- Gallery: Our community in 20 graphs
- News from Wiki Education: Changing the face of Wikipedia
- Recent research: IP editors, inclusiveness and empathy, cyclones, and world heritage
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Days of the Year Interview
- Traffic report: Olympics, movies, and Afghanistan
- Community view: Making Olympic history on Wikipedia
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Some musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.
Problems
- Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [454]
Changes later this week
- The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).
Future changes
- You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [455]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:59, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
Simon Brett
[edit]Hi, I have expanded the Simon Brett page to list all of his works after seeing your message on the Talk: page you left about 10 years ago, if you have some time could you please take a look at my edit and see if it is alright? Thanks in Advance, Urere ◉ ◉ (talk) 00:54, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- @Urere: Thank you for improving the article. I'm glad to hear that my ten-year-old suggestion did eventually bear fruit.
- In hindsight, I should have suggested two categories, "Other novels", and "Non-fiction", rather than one ("Other"). And I note that according to https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/simon-brett/ , it looks like there is a fifth detective series, Decluttering, with two books so far. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features. [456]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break. [457][458]
- Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing. The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- 45 new Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. [459]
- A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.
Problems
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 14 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [460]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
- Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [461]
- You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [462]
- The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally,
golang
can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a specialoutput
mode has been added to show a program's output. [463][464]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:31, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
Please join this discussion - there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled. Even our review systems themselves at AfC and NPR have been infiltrated. The good news is that detection is improving, but the downside is that it creates the need for a huge clean up - which of course adds to backlogs.
Copyright violations are also a serious issue. Most non-regular contributors do not understand why, and most of our Reviewers are not experts on copyright law - and can't be expected to be, but there is excellent, easy-to-follow advice on COPYVIO detection here.
At the time of the last newsletter (#25, December 2020) the backlog was only just over 2,000 articles. New Page Review is an official system. It's the only firewall against the inclusion of new, improper pages.
There are currently 706 New Page Reviewers plus a further 1,080 admins, but as much as nearly 90% of the patrolling is still being done by around only the 20 or so most regular patrollers.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software.
Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021.
- MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [465]
- A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.
Problems
- There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [466]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
- The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The
piprop
parameter has been renamed toprpiprop
. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [467]
Future changes
- The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [468]
- The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:30, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 46
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 46, July – August 2021
- Library design improvements deployed
- New collections available in English and German
- Wikimania presentation
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:14, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.
Problems
- Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class
.vector-menu-dropdown-noicon
. [469]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
- The GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October. [470]
- A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can read more.
- You can receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find more information in T282029.
Future changes
- The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. See the list of wikis. [471]
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22:20, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
Requesting Review/Feedback
[edit]Hi John. I was hoping you might have a minute to look at the "Issues" section on the Foxit Reader page (I work for Foxit). It is cited to forums, Github, a personal blog, etc. This source for example is extremely positive ("It is a small, fast, feature-rich & multilingual PDF tool") but is only cited for criticisms.
A lot of this content was added in response to my Talk page comments asking to trim poor sources in the original “Issues” section. I thought it would be really obvious that making half the page an "Issues" section using these sources was inappropriate, but the editor that responded said they were all fine. I tried to get a second opinion at RSN twice with no response. I was hoping you might take a look and tell me if I'm wrong. Alisafetic (talk) 16:04, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
Requesting your support
[edit]I was hoping you might have a minute to review the “Software and services” section here I proposed for the Zendesk page with a disclosed COI about a month ago. The editor that approved most of my proposed changes said they were too busy with grad school. Tskillin (talk) 21:26, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
- Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The
hidden
property will no longer say an entry isimplicit
for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the valuefalse
for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [472] - A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.
Future changes
- You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [473]
- The JavaScript variables
wgExtraSignatureNamespaces
,wgLegalTitleChars
, andwgIllegalFileChars
will soon be removed frommw.config
. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [474] - The JavaScript variables
wgCookiePrefix
,wgCookieDomain
,wgCookiePath
, andwgCookieExpiration
will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead usemw.cookie
from the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [475]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:28, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).
- The "auto-number headings" preference is being removed. You can read phab:T284921 for the reasons and discussion. This change was previously announced. A JavaScript snippet is available which can be used to create a Gadget on wikis that still want to support auto-numbering.
Meetings
- You can join a meeting about the Desktop Improvements. A demonstration version of the newest feature will be shown. The event will take place on Tuesday, 12 October at 16:00 UTC. See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can read more.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (calendar).
Future changes
- The developers of the Wikipedia Android app are working on communication in the app. You can now answer questions in survey to help the development.
- 3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a proxy or a VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
- Wikimedia Enterprise is a new API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can read more. You can also ask the team questions on Zoom on 22 October 15:00 UTC.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:52, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
November 2021 backlog drive
[edit]New Page Patrol | November 2021 Backlog Drive | |
| |
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. |
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 Coolest Tool Award 2021 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 27 October.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 October. It will be on all wikis from 28 October (calendar).
Future changes
- Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience. The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax. [476]
- The version of the Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change. [477]
Meetings
- You can join a meeting about the Community Wishlist Survey. News about the disambiguation and the real-time preview wishes will be shown. The event will take place on Wednesday, 27 October at 14:30 UTC. See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:07, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard- October 2021
[edit]Hi, John Broughton! Here is the October 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard!
Wikipedia News
[edit]- Wikimedia Asian Month is beginning once again!
- Check out the 2021 Community Wishlist's results!
- For those interested, check out the "Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021" (Click on link for more details and to find out if you can register!)
- Check out this new feature for The Wikipedia Library!
Humour
[edit]- It's Halloween coming up again, and that means you can have an excuse to eat candy and binge edit Wikipedia again
- Frankenstein told me this does not exist... (Does not make sense, but okay...)
- Is Humour funny? I guess we'll have to find out!
Editor's Notes
[edit]- Thank you for your patience, I was busy, and still am, so issues of TWW may be delayed.
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. Enjoy this Issue and have a safe and happy Halloween/October! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 00:22, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
- This Issue was sent to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 00:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Growth Newsletter #19
[edit]Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasks
[edit]- "Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
- "Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.
News for mentors
[edit]- The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test. [478]
- At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors [479]
Community configuration
[edit]- Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.
Scaling
[edit]- We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis. The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons. [480]
- The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features. [481][482]
- A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
- Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.
News for communities
[edit]- Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work.
- The Growth features were recently used in a test amongst Latin American donors to give donors the opportunity to learn to edit. You can see the results here.
- Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
- Help:GettingStarted was a feature developed in 2013, which directed newcomers to articles that needed editing. We recently removed this feature from all wikis, because it has been replaced by the Growth features.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a limit on the amount of emails a user can send each day. This limit is now global instead of per-wiki. This change is to prevent abuse. [483]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 November. It will be on all wikis from 4 November (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:26, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Mobile IP editors are now able to receive warning notices indicating they have a talk page message on the mobile website (similar to the orange banners available on desktop). These notices will be displayed on every page outside of the main namespace and every time the user attempts to edit. The notice on desktop now has a slightly different colour. [484][485]
Changes later this week
- Wikidata will be read-only for a few minutes on 11 November. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [486]
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- In the future, unregistered editors will be given an identity that is not their IP address. This is for legal reasons. A new user right will let editors who need to know the IPs of unregistered accounts to fight vandalism, spam, and harassment, see the IP. You can read the suggestions for how that identity could work and discuss on the talk page.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:35, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 47
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 47, September – October 2021
- On-wiki Wikipedia Library notification rolling out
- Search tool deployed
- New My Library design improvements
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:58, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Most large file uploads errors that had messages like "
stashfailed
" or "DBQueryError
" have now been fixed. An incident report is available.
Problems
- Sometimes, edits made on iOS using the visual editor save groups of numbers as telephone number links, because of a feature in the operating system. This problem is under investigation. [487]
- There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of a configuration error. [488]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 November. It will be on all wikis from 18 November (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
Proposed New Draft for Jon Baker Page
[edit]About 5 weeks ago I shared a proposed draft to rework the Jon Baker page to remove promotionalism (addressing the advert tags) and make the page more up-to-date. I haven’t been able to find any editors willing to review the draft for consideration and was hoping you might be willing to take a look. Kindest. Daizypeach (talk) 09:07, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
- The template dialog in VisualEditor and in the new wikitext mode Beta feature will be heavily improved on a few wikis. Your feedback is welcome.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:01, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message
[edit]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 30 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 December. It will be on all wikis from 2 December (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:13, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 December. It will be on all wikis from 9 December (calendar).
- At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at
Special:MentorDashboard
. It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project. - The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008),
action=ajax
, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module. [489] - An old ResourceLoader module,
jquery.jStorage
, which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch tomediawiki.storage
instead. [490]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:57, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard- December 2021
[edit]Hi, John Broughton! Here is the December 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard!
Humour
[edit]- Christmas is here again, time to bug people to get you the stuff you really, really want! (Anyone going to get me some butter cookies, or that giant Costco teddy bear?)
- If you don't like turkey, there's always the rotisserie chicken!
- If you ate too much turkey and regret it, then you should have read the above message ;)
Wikipedia News
[edit]- We don't have much to report this month, but we do have the following...
- The Simple English Wikipedia has almost reached 200,000 articles!
- Wikipedia Asian Month which took place in November, has finished. Now, all the articles are judged and then it is determined who gets the postcards, even if you don't get one, or didn't participate, there is always next year, and we thank you for everything you have done!
- Arbitration Committee Elections December 2021 took place earlier this month, for elegible editors. (At the time of this writing it was still taking place, but I assumed by the time this issue was sent, it would have been finished - It is set to finish at December 6 2021 at 23:59 UTC )
Editor's Notes
[edit]- I haven't forgotten about TWW ;) Don't worry.
- TWW is in the process of getting a new main page, if you have any ideas, or would like to help, please shoot a message on the TWW talk page.
- That's it for this issue! This is the last issue for 2021. See you all in 2022! Have a safe and happy holiday season!
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- Happy Holidays! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
- This issue was sent to you with the help of MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 01:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There are now default short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis,
[[WB:]]
will go to the local language default for the[[Project:]]
namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via the usual process. [491]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 December. It will be on all wikis from 16 December (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.
Recent changes
- Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension (
<DynamicPageList>
) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis. [492]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
Future changes
- The developers of the Wikipedia iOS app are looking for testers who edit in multiple languages. You can read more and let them know if you are interested.
- The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February. [493]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:04, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 22
[edit]Hello everyone, and welcome to the 22nd issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter. This issue will be covering new and updated user scripts from the past seven months (June through December 2021).
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
|
|
- Ahecht:
- draft-sorter sorts AfC drafts by adding WikiProject banners to their talk pages. It supersedes User:Enterprisey/draft-sorter, adding a few features and fixing some bugs.
- massmove, a modified User:Plastikspork/massmove.js that adds a link to the left column, allows adding and removing both prefixes and suffixes.
- watchlistcleaner removes missing pages (redlinks), redirects, pages you haven't edited recently, and/or pages you've never edited from your watchlist.
- Awesome Aasim:
- Infiniscroll adds infinite scrolling to user contributions, page histories, and log pages.
- Quick create allows for the fast creation of red-linked pages with two clicks.
- Caburum:
- UTCclock adds a clock displaying the current UTC time.
- Chlod:
- CopiedTemplateEditor, mainly for CCI case handlers, allows graphically editing a talk page's {{copied}} templates.
- DaxServer:
- BooksToSfn adds a portlet link in Visual Editor's source mode editing, in main namespace articles or in the user's Sandbox. When clicked, it converts one
{{cite book}}
inside a<ref>...</ref>
tag block into an{{Sfn}}
.
- BooksToSfn adds a portlet link in Visual Editor's source mode editing, in main namespace articles or in the user's Sandbox. When clicked, it converts one
- FlightTime:
- OneClickArchiver is a custom version of User:Technical_13/Scripts/OneClickArchiver which doesn't prepend {{Clear}} to the top of each section on the archive page.
- Jon Harald Søby:
- diffedit enables editing directly from viewing a diff "when, for instance, you notice a tiny mistake deep into an article, and don't want to edit the entire article and re-find that one line to fix that tiny mistake".
- warnOnLargeFile warns you if you're about to open a very large file (width/height >10,000px or file size >100 MB) from a file page.
- JPxG:
- PressPass adds a collection of tools for Newspapers.com including configurable automatic citation generation in five different formats.
- CurrentSwitcher gives you links on the contribs page to hide duplicate entries, current revisions, rollbacks, huggles, twinkles, and redwarns.
- TrackSum lets you automatically sum the lengths of tracks in templates like {{track listing}} and get total runtimes.
- Nardog:
- CopySectLink adds a button to copy the unencoded page title or section path next to each heading.
- IPAInput allows you to type in IPA symbols by directly looking at an IPA key like Help:IPA/English and clicking on the symbols.
- TemplatePreviewGuard warns when you try to use "Preview page with this template" with a page that doesn't transclude the template.
- NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh:
- ContribsTabVector adds "Contributions" and "Statistics" tabs to user and user talk pages on the Vector skin.
- CopyvioChecker adds a "CopyvioCheck" tab to all pages, except Special (Vector skin only).
- LiveDiffLink is a version of Equazcion's LiveDiffLink which shows a wikilink instead of a URL.
- QuickDiff (by OneTwoThreeFall at Fandom) lets you quickly view any diff link on a wiki, whether on Recent Changes, contribs pages, history pages, the diff view itself, or elsewhere. For more information, view its page on Fandom.
- Novem Linguae:
- DetectSNG scans a list of 1,600 SNG keywords and displays them at the top of the article.
- NotSoFast highlights recently created articles in the new pages feed, to discourage patrolling them too quickly.
- UserRightsDiff concisely displays what perm was added or removed when viewing Special:UserRights.
- VoteCounter displays a rough count of keeps and deletes at XFDs, RFCs, etc.
- WatchlistAFD automatically watchlists the AFDs of any pages you AFC accept or NPP patrol, to help you calibrate your reviewing.
- P.T.Đ:
- TwinkleMobile enables Twinkle on mobile view (Minerva skin).
- Qwerfjkl:
- editRedirect adds a → link after redirects to edit them.
- RegExTypoFix, a script for fixing typos, is a wrapper for User:Joeytje50/RETF.js.
- talkback creates links after user talk page links like this: |C|TB (with the first linking to the user's contributions, and the latter giving the option of sending a {{talkback}} notice). It also adds a [copy] link next to section headers.
- Rublov:
- diff-link shows "copy" links on history and contributions pages that copy an internal link to the diff (e.g., Special:Diff/1026402230) to your clipboard when clicked.
- Rummskartoffel:
- auto-watchlist-expiry automatically watchlists every page you edit for a user-definable duration (you can still pick a different time using the dropdown, though).
- generate pings generates the wikitext needed to ping all members of a category, up to 50 editors (the limit defined by MediaWiki).
- share ExpandTemplates url allows for easy sharing of your inputs to Special:ExpandTemplates. It adds a button that, when clicked, copies a shareable URL to your exact invocation of the page, like this. Other editors do not need to have this script installed in order to access the URL generated.
- show tag names shows the real names of tags next to their display names in places such as page revision histories or the watchlist.
- Tol:
- VisualEditor Citation Needed adds a button (under "Insert") in VisualEditor to add a {{citation needed}} tag.
- Venkat TL:
- ColourContrib color-codes the user contributions page so that pages you've edited last are sharply distinguished from pages where another editor was the last to edit the page.
- Vukky:
- StatusChanger is a fork of Enterprisey's Status Changer, which adds a UI to the script. (using Morebits, so you'll need to have Twinkle enabled to use it).
All in all, some very neat scripts were written in these last few months. Hoping to see many more in the next issue -- drop us a line on the talk page if you've been writing (or seeing) anything cool and good. Filling in for DannyS712, this has been jp×g. Take care, and merry Christmas! jp×g 07:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- A
oauth_consumer
variable has been added to the AbuseFilter to enable identifying changes made by specific tools. [494] - Gadgets are now able to directly include JSON pages. This means some gadgets can now be configured by administrators without needing the interface administrator permission, such as with the Geonotice gadget. [495]
- Gadgets can now specify page actions on which they are available. For example,
|actions=edit,history
will load a gadget only while editing and on history pages. [496] - Gadgets can now be loaded on demand with the
withgadget
URL parameter. This can be used to replace an earlier snippet that typically looks likewithJS
orwithCSS
. [497] - At wikis where the Mentorship system is configured, you can now use the Action API to get a list of a mentor's mentees. [498]
- The heading on the main page can now be configured using MediaWiki:Mainpage-title-loggedin for logged-in users and MediaWiki:Mainpage-title for logged-out users. Any CSS that was previously used to hide the heading should be removed. [499] [500]
- Four special pages (and their API counterparts) now have a maximum database query execution time of 30 seconds. These special pages are: RecentChanges, Watchlist, Contributions, and Log. This change will help with site performance and stability. You can read more details about this change including some possible solutions if this affects your workflows. [501]
- The sticky header has been deployed for 50% of logged-in users on more than 10 wikis. This is part of the Desktop Improvements. See how to take part in the project.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 January. It will be on all wikis from 13 January (calendar).
Events
- Community Wishlist Survey 2022 begins. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
01:22, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- When using WikiEditor (also known as the 2010 wikitext editor), people will now see a warning if they link to disambiguation pages. If you click "Review link" in the warning, it will ask you to correct the link to a more specific term. You can read more information about this completed 2021 Community Wishlist item.
- You can automatically subscribe to all of the talk page discussions that you start or comment in using DiscussionTools. You will receive notifications when another editor replies. This is available at most wikis. Go to your Preferences and turn on "Automatically subscribe to topics". [502]
- When asked to create a new page or talk page section, input fields can be "preloaded" with some text. This feature is now limited to wikitext pages. This is so users can't be tricked into making malicious edits. There is a discussion about if this feature should be re-enabled for some content types.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 January. It will be on all wikis from 20 January (calendar).
Events
- Community Wishlist Survey 2022 continues. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 January. It will be on all wikis from 27 January (calendar).
- The following languages can now be used with syntax highlighting: BDD, Elpi, LilyPond, Maxima, Rita, Savi, Sed, Sophia, Spice, .SRCINFO.
- You can now access your watchlist from outside of the user menu in the new Vector skin. The watchlist link appears next to the notification icons if you are at the top of the page. [503]
Events
- You can see the results of the Coolest Tool Award 2021 and learn more about 14 tools which were selected this year.
- You can translate, promote, or comment on the proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. Voting will begin on 28 January.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:37, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- If a gadget should support the new
?withgadget
URL parameter that was announced 3 weeks ago, then it must now also specifysupportsUrlLoad
in the gadget definition (documentation). [504]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 February. It will be on all wikis from 3 February (calendar).
Future changes
- A change that was announced last year was delayed. It is now ready to move ahead:
- The user group
oversight
will be renamedsuppress
. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in three weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections. As usual, these labels can be translated on translatewiki (direct links are available) or by administrators on your wiki.
- The user group
Events
- You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 28 January and 11 February. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:41, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 48
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 48, November – December 2021
- 1Lib1Ref 2022
- Wikipedia Library notifications deployed
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --15:12, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- English Wikipedia recently set up a gadget for dark mode. You can enable it there, or request help from an interface administrator to set it up on your wiki (instructions and screenshot).
- Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month. [505]
Problems
- A code-change last week to fix a bug with Live Preview may have caused problems with some local gadgets and user-scripts. Any code with skin-specific behaviour for
vector
should be updated to also check forvector-2022
. A code-snippet, global search, and example are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 February. It will be on all wikis from 10 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:14, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard- Jan/Feb 2022
[edit]Hi, John Broughton! Here is the first issue of 2022 for the TheWikiWizard!
Humor
[edit]- Since it's/was Lunar New Year, you can bug your boss at work for that extra fifty dollar bill ;)
- New Year, New world, Same TWW :P
- Did you work off that turkey? Don't worry, editing Wikipedia burns calories... I am pretty sure...
Wiki(p/m)edia News
[edit]- Check out The "Education/Eduwiki Week 2022"!
- Modussiccandi had a successful RFA!
- The 2022 Steward Elections are open to editors who meet the criterion.
Editor's Notes
[edit]- We are combining two months' issues into one, to try out a new format. This is the first issue of 2022. Happy New Year!
- That's it for this time, see you in the next issue!
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- Wishing you a good 2022! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
- This issue was sent to you with the help of MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 01:55, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Purging a category page with fewer than 5,000 members will now recount it completely. This will allow editors to fix incorrect counts when it is wrong. [506]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 February. It will be on all wikis from 17 February (calendar).
- In the AbuseFilter extension, the
rmspecials()
function has been updated so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses ofrmspecials()
withrmwhitespace()
wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [507]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Special:Nuke will now provide the standard deletion reasons (editable at MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown) to use when mass-deleting pages. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [508]
- At Wikipedias, all new accounts now get the Growth features by default when creating an account. Communities are encouraged to update their help resources. Previously, only 80% of new accounts would get the Growth features. A few Wikipedias remain unaffected by this change. [509]
- You can now prevent specific images that are used in a page from appearing in other locations, such as within PagePreviews or Search results. This is done with the markup
class=notpageimage
. For example,[[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]]
. [510] - There has been a change to the HTML of Special:Contributions, Special:MergeHistory, and History pages, to support the grouping of changes by date in the mobile skin. While unlikely, this may affect gadgets and user scripts. A list of all the HTML changes is on Phabricator.
Events
- Community Wishlist Survey results have been published. The ranking of prioritized proposals is also available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 February. It will be on all wikis from 24 February (calendar).
Future changes
- The software to play videos and audio files on pages will change soon on all wikis. The old player will be removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [511][512]
- Toolforge's underlying operating system is being updated. If you maintain any tools there, there are two options for migrating your tools into the new system. There are details, deadlines, and instructions on Wikitech. [513]
- Administrators will soon have the option to delete/undelete the associated "talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option will also be available. This was a request from the 2021 Wishlist Survey.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:10, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 February 2022
[edit]- From the team: Selection of a new Signpost Editor-in-Chief
- News and notes: Impacts of Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Special report: A presidential candidate's team takes on Wikipedia
- In the media: Wiki-drama in the UK House of Commons
- Technology report: Community Wishlist Survey results
- WikiProject report: 10 years of tea
- Featured content: Featured Content returns
- Deletion report: The 10 most SHOCKING deletion discussions of February
- Recent research: How editors and readers may be emotionally affected by disasters and terrorist attacks
- Arbitration report: Parties remonstrate, arbs contemplate, skeptics coordinate
- Gallery: The vintage exhibit
- Traffic report: Euphoria, Pamela Anderson, lies and Netflix
- News from Diff: The Wikimania 2022 Core Organizing Team
- Crossword: A Crossword, featuring Featured Articles
- Humour: Notability of mailboxes
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- When searching for edits by change tags, e.g. in page history or user contributions, there is now a dropdown list of possible tags. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [514]
- Mentors using the Growth Mentor dashboard will now see newcomers assigned to them who have made at least one edit, up to 200 edits. Previously, all newcomers assigned to the mentor were visible on the dashboard, even ones without any edit or ones who made hundred of edits. Mentors can still change these values using the filters on their dashboard. Also, the last choice of filters will now be saved. [515][516]
- The user group
oversight
was renamedsuppress
. This is for technical reasons. You may need to update any local references to the old name, e.g. gadgets, links to Special:Listusers, or uses of NUMBERINGROUP.
Problems
- The recent change to the HTML of tracking changes pages caused some problems for screenreaders. This is being fixed. [517]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 March. It will be on all wikis from 3 March (calendar).
Future changes
- Working with templates will become easier. Several improvements are planned for March 9 on most wikis and on March 16 on English Wikipedia. The improvements include: Bracket matching, syntax highlighting colors, finding and inserting templates, and related visual editor features.
- If you are a template developer or an interface administrator, and you are intentionally overriding or using the default CSS styles of user feedback boxes (the classes:
successbox, messagebox, errorbox, warningbox
), please note that these classes and associated CSS will soon be removed from MediaWiki core. This is to prevent problems when the same class-names are also used on a wiki. Please let us know by commenting at phab:T300314 if you think you might be affected.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:58, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There was a problem with some interface labels last week. It will be fixed this week. This change was part of ongoing work to simplify the support for skins which do not have active maintainers. [518]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:15, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- In the Wikipedia Android app it is now possible to change the toolbar at the bottom so the tools you use more often are easier to click on. The app now also has a focused reading mode. [519][520]
Problems
- There was a problem with the collection of some page-view data from June 2021 to January 2022 on all wikis. This means the statistics are incomplete. To help calculate which projects and regions were most affected, relevant datasets are being retained for 30 extra days. You can read more on Meta-wiki.
- There was a problem with the databases on March 10. All wikis were unreachable for logged-in users for 12 minutes. Logged-out users could read pages but could not edit or access uncached content then. [521]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
- When using
uselang=qqx
to find localisation messages, it will now show all possible message keys for navigation tabs such as "View history". [522] - Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have
deletelogentry
anddeletedhistory
rights through their group memberships. Before, only those with thedeleterevision
right could access this special page. [523] - On the Special:Undelete pages for diffs and revisions, there will be a link back to the main Undelete page with the list of revisions. [524]
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the IP Masking implementation strategy and next steps. The announcement can be read here.
- The Wikipedia Android app developers are working on new functions for user talk pages and article talk pages. [525]
Events
- The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place as a hybrid event on 20-22 May 2022. The Hackathon will be held online and there are grants available to support local in-person meetups around the world. Grants can be requested until 20 March.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:06, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Growth Newsletter #20
[edit]Welcome to the twentieth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.
Suggested edits
[edit]As of February, 300,000 suggested edits have been completed since the feature was first deployed in December 2019.
Add a link is the team's first structured task, deployed in May 2021. It has improved outcomes for newcomers. The team is now working on a second iteration based on community feedback and data analysis. Improvements will include: improved algorithmic suggestions, guardrails to prevent too many similar links to be added, and clearer encouragement for users to continue making edits. After adding these improvements, we will deploy this task to more Wikipedias.
Add an image is the second structured task built by our team. It was deployed in November 2021 to four pilot Wikipedias. This is a more challenging task for newcomers. However, it adds more value to articles (so far, over 1,000 images have been added). We are currently learning from communities and from the data on what is working well and what needs improvements. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. We will soon deploy this task to more Wikipedias as a test.
"Add a link" and "Add an image" now both have a limitation on how many of these tasks newcomers can do per day. It is meant to discourage careless newcomers from making too many problematic edits.
Positive reinforcement
[edit]Over the last two years, the Growth team has focused on building suggested edits: easy tasks for newcomers to start with. We have learned with this experience that these tasks help many newcomers to make their first edits. Now, the team is starting a new project : "positive reinforcement". Its goal is to make newcomers proud of their editing and to make them want to come back for more of them. With the positive reinforcement project, we are considering three kinds of features:
- Impact stats: give newcomers the ability to see how many people read the articles they edit.
- Leveling up: encourage newcomers to progress from easier tasks to harder tasks.
- Personalized praise: encourage mentors and other editors to "thank" and award newcomers for good work.
This project is just beginning, and we hope for community thoughts on the direction. We know that things can wrong if we offer the wrong incentives to newcomers, so we want to be careful. Please visit the talk page to help guide the project!
News for mentors
[edit]- The mentor dashboard is available at all wikis. It helps mentors see who their mentees are and keep track of their activity. It is automatically activated where a list of mentors has been created. If you need assistance to create a list of mentors, please contact us.
- The mentor dashboard has a new module: settings. It is now possible for mentors to define their status (active or away). They can specify the volume of questions they want to receive, and they can claim mentees in an easier way. It is also possible for mentors to quit, which will automatically reassign their mentees to other mentors.
- We are working on an ability for a mentee to opt-out (and back in) to having a mentor.
- Previously, in the table that displays mentees activity, the filters displayed all mentees, even the ones with zero edits or lots of edits. We have changed this so that only mentees with between 1 and 500 edits are visible by default. Mentors can change this value in their filters.
- We are currently working on a special page for mentors to sign-up.
Some wikis have created userboxes that mentors can display on the user pages. If your wiki has one, please link it to Wikidata!
Scaling
[edit]Previously, at most Wikipedias, only 80% of newcomers were getting the Growth features. This was done for experimentation, to have a control group. We have changed this setting. Now 100% of new accounts at all Wikipedias get the Growth features (except a few, kept as test wikis). We invite communities to update their onboarding documentation and tutorials. Please include the Growth features in it. To help you, we have created an help page that can be translated and adapted to your wiki.
How to help
[edit]Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work. We regularly update it.
Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New code release schedule for this week
- There will be four MediaWiki releases this week, instead of just one. This is an experiment which should lead to fewer problems and to faster feature updates. The releases will be on all wikis, at different times, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. You can read more about this project.
Recent changes
- You can now set how many search results to show by default in your Preferences. This was the 12th most popular wish in the Community Wishlist Survey 2022. [526]
- The Jupyter notebooks tool PAWS has been updated to a new interface. [527]
Future changes
- Interactive maps via Kartographer will soon work on wikis using the FlaggedRevisions extension. Please tell us which improvements you want to see in Kartographer. You can take this survey in simple English. [528]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 49
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 49, January – February 2022
- New library collections
- Blog post published detailing technical improvements
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:06, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 March 2022
[edit]- From the Signpost team: How The Signpost is documenting the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
- News and notes: Of safety and anonymity
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Kharkiv, Ukraine: Countering Russian aggression with a camera
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Western Ukraine: Working with Wikipedia helps
- Disinformation report: The oligarchs' socks
- In the media: Ukraine, Russia, and even some other stuff
- Wikimedian perspective: My heroes from Russia, Ukraine & beyond
- Discussion report: Athletes are less notable now
- Technology report: 2022 Wikimedia Hackathon
- Arbitration report: Skeptics given heavenly judgement, whirlwind of Discord drama begins to spin for tropical cyclone editors
- Traffic report: War, what is it good for?
- Deletion report: Ukraine, werewolves, Ukraine, YouTube pundits, and Ukraine
- From the archives: Burn, baby burn
- Essay: Yes, the sky is blue
- Tips and tricks: Become a keyboard ninja
- On the bright side: The bright side of news
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 simple new Wikimedia Commons upload tool available for macOS users, Sunflower.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of regular database maintenance. It will be performed on 29 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 31 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [529][530]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:53, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
Changes to Axos Financial
[edit]My name is Aubree and I work for Axos Financial. My predecessor Gfrostaxos has been trying to request changes to the Axos page since last November. He has gotten some responses, but few directly addressing the changes actually requested. He requested a smaller change here as requested to no avail. I was wondering if you would be willing to review that requested change and approve/decline or otherwise provide feedback. Anthompson44 (talk) 18:27, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- For a few days last week, edits that were suggested to newcomers were not tagged in the Special:RecentChanges feed. This bug has been fixed. [531]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 April. It will be on all wikis from 7 April (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 7 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future changes
- Starting next week, Tech News' title will be translatable. When the newsletter is distributed, its title may not be
Tech News: 2022-14
anymore. It may affect some filters that have been set up by some communities. [532] - Over the next few months, the "Add a link" Growth feature will become available to more Wikipedias. Each week, a few wikis will get the feature. You can test this tool at a few wikis where "Link recommendation" is already available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:00, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-15
[edit]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 public status page at www.wikimediastatus.net. This site shows five automated high-level metrics where you can see the overall health and performance of our wikis' technical environment. It also contains manually-written updates for widespread incidents, which are written as quickly as the engineers are able to do so while also fixing the actual problem. The site is separated from our production infrastructure and hosted by an external service, so that it can be accessed even if the wikis are briefly unavailable. You can read more about this project.
- On Wiktionary wikis, the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [533][534]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).
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19:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - April 2022
[edit]Hi, John Broughton! Here is the April 2022 issue for the TheWikiWizard!
Humour
[edit]- April 1 isn't April fools day if you say it isn't...
- April Showers should bring May Money flowers! I'd be rich!
- It's Spring again, Spring out of bed!
Wiki(p/m)edia News
[edit]- The final voter results in regards of the Universal Code of Conduct were released
- On the English Wikipedia we have had several successful RFAs! Some include, Colin M's RFA, and Sdrqaz's RFA!
- Check out this event! It's about a conversation that you can join!
Editor's Notes
[edit]- Sorry for missing the last issue!
- Have a suggestion or want to help us? Let us know!
- We wish all those in Ukraine and those affected by the war safety and peace :-)
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- See you in the next issue! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 19:49, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
- This message was sent to you automatically by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 19:55, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-16
[edit]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 19 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 April. It will be on all wikis from 21 April (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 19 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 21 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- Administrators will now have the option to delete/undelete the associated "Talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option is also available. This concludes the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
- On selected wikis, 50% of logged-in users will see the new table of contents. When scrolling up and down the page, the table of contents will stay in the same place on the screen. This is part of the Desktop Improvements project. [535]
- Message boxes produced by MediaWiki code will no longer have these CSS classes:
successbox
,errorbox
,warningbox
. The styles for those classes andmessagebox
will be removed from MediaWiki core. This only affects wikis that use these classes in wikitext, or change their appearance within site-wide CSS. Please review any local usage and definitions for these classes you may have. This was previously announced in the 28 February issue of Tech News.
Future changes
- Kartographer will become compatible with FlaggedRevisions page stabilization. Kartographer maps will also work on pages with pending changes. [536] The Kartographer documentation has been thoroughly updated. [537] [538] [539]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:10, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 April 2022
[edit]- News and notes: Double trouble
- In the media: The battlegrounds outside and inside Wikipedia
- Special report: Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (Part 2)
- Technology report: 8-year-old attribution issues in Media Viewer
- Featured content: Wikipedia's best content from March
- Interview: On a war and a map
- Serendipity: Wikipedia loves photographs, but hates photographers
- Traffic report: Justice Jackson, the Smiths, and an invasion
- News from the WMF: How Smart is the SMART Copyright Act?
- Humour: Really huge message boxes
- From the archives: Wales resigned WMF board chair in 2006 reorganization
Tech News: 2022-17
[edit]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 many wikis (group 1), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [540][541]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 April. It will be on all wikis from 28 April (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 26 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- Some very old browsers and operating systems are no longer supported. Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in very old browsers like Internet Explorer 9 or 10, Android 4, or Firefox 38 or older. [542]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:54, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-18
[edit]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 all remaining wikis (group 2), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [543][544]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 May. It will be on all wikis from 5 May (calendar).
Future changes
- The developers are working on talk pages in the Wikipedia app for iOS. You can give feedback. You can take the survey in English, German, Hebrew or Chinese.
- Most wikis will receive an improved template dialog in VisualEditor and New Wikitext mode. [545] [546]
- If you use syntax highlighting while editing wikitext, you can soon activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme. [547]
- Several CSS IDs related to MediaWiki interface messages will be removed. Technical editors should please review the list of IDs and links to their existing uses. These include
#mw-anon-edit-warning
,#mw-undelete-revision
and 3 others.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:32, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-19
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now see categories in the Wikipedia app for Android. [548]
Problems
- Last week, there was a problem with Wikidata's search autocomplete. This has now been fixed. [549]
- Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 20 minutes, for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a problem with a database change. [550]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [551]
- Incompatibility issues with Kartographer and the FlaggedRevs extension will be fixed: Deployment is planned for May 10 on all wikis. Kartographer will then be enabled on the five wikis which have not yet enabled the extension on May 24.
- The Vector (2022) skin will be set as the default on several more wikis, including Arabic and Catalan Wikipedias. Logged-in users will be able to switch back to the old Vector (2010). See the latest update about Vector (2022).
Future meetings
- The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place on 17 May. The following meetings are currently planned for: 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July.
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15:21, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-20
[edit]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
- Some wikis can soon use the add a link feature. This will start on Wednesday. The wikis are Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [552]
- The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place online on May 20–22. It will be in English. There are also local hackathon meetups in Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Nigeria and the United States. Technically interested Wikimedians can work on software projects and learn new skills. You can also host a session or post a project you want to work on.
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 May. It will be on all wikis from 19 May (calendar).
Future changes
- You can soon edit translatable pages in the visual editor. Translatable pages exist on for examples Meta and Commons. [553]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue.
Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant.
In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 804 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 853 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP.
This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear.
If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page.
If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sent 05:17, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-21
[edit]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
- Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. [554]
- The www.wiktionary.org portal page now uses an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months. [555]
Problems
- The Growth team maintains a mentorship program for newcomers. Previously, newcomers weren't able to opt out from the program. Starting May 19, 2022, newcomers are able to fully opt out from Growth mentorship, in case they do not wish to have any mentor at all. [556]
- Some editors cannot access the content translation tool if they load it by clicking from the contributions menu. This problem is being worked on. It should still work properly if accessed directly via Special:ContentTranslation. [557]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 May. It will be on all wikis from 26 May (calendar).
Future changes
- Gadget and user scripts developers are invited to give feedback on a proposed technical policy aiming to improve support from MediaWiki developers. [558]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - May 2022
[edit]Hey, John Broughton! Here is the May 2022 issue for the TheWikiWizard!
Humor
[edit]- What do May Showers bring?
- May the 4th be with you doesn't work anymore, but I can say it again in less than a year!
- If you love Wikipedia, and are editing it, is it a conflict of interest?
Wiki(P/M)edia News
[edit]- A discussion took place in regards to the desktop design for certain Wikis. You can find more information here.
- Tamzin, has had a successful RFA! Congrats!
- Check out this Conversation that will be hosted by the team "Community Resilience and Sustainability"! You can find out more details about the meeting by clicking on the link.
Editor's Notes
[edit]- We have a IRC Channel! Come by and say Hi! You can find us on Libra.Chat under the channel name #TheWikiWizard connect
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- See you in the next issue! (Remember, you can help us write our next issue!) --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 00:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
- This Issue was sent to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 00:33, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-22
[edit]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 AbuseFilter extension, an
ip_in_ranges()
function has been introduced to check if an IP is in any of the ranges. Wikis are advised to combine multipleip_in_range()
expressions joined by|
into a single expression for better performance. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [559] - The IP Info feature which helps abuse fighters access information about IPs, has been deployed to all wikis as a beta feature. This comes after weeks of beta testing on test.wikipedia.org.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (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 31 May at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at most wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [560][561]
- The list=usercontribs API will support fetching contributions from an IP range soon. API users can set the
uciprange
parameter to get contributions from any IP range within the limit. [562] - A new parser function will be introduced:
{{=}}
. It will replace existing templates named "=". It will insert an equal sign. This can be used to escape the equal sign in the parameter values of templates. [563]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:27, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
Editing newsletter 2022 – #1
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list for the multilingual newsletter • Local subscription list
The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at most WMF-hosted wikis. You can join the discussion about this tool for the English Wikipedia is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Enabling the New Topic Tool by default. You will be able to turn it off in the tool or at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.
The Editing team plans to change the appearance of talk pages. These are separate from the changes made by the mw:Desktop improvements project and will appear in both Vector 2010 and Vector 2022. The goal is to add some information and make discussions look visibly different from encyclopedia articles. You can see some ideas at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project#Prototype Ready for Feedback.
23:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 50
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 50, March – April 2022
- New library partner - SPIE
- 1Lib1Ref May 2022 underway
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:52, 1 June 2022 (UTC) (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-23
[edit]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 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).
- A new
str_replace_regexp()
function can be used in abuse filters to replace parts of text using a regular expression. [564]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
02:45, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-24
[edit]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
- All wikis can now use Kartographer maps. Kartographer maps now also work on pages with pending changes. [565][566]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (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 14 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [567]
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (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 how this feature works locally. [568]
- The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at Commons, Wikidata, and some other wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [569][570]
Future meetings
- The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place today (13 June). The following meetings will take place on: 28 June, 12 July, 26 July.
Future changes
- By the end of July, the Vector 2022 skin should be ready to become the default across all wikis. Discussions on how to adjust it to the communities' needs will begin in the next weeks. It will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-25
[edit]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 Wikipedia App for Android now has an option for editing the whole page at once, located in the overflow menu (three-dots menu ). [571]
- Some recent database changes may affect queries using the Quarry tool. Queries for
site_stats
at English Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata will need to be updated. Read more. - A new
user_global_editcount
variable can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. [572]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).
- Users of non-responsive skins (e.g. MonoBook or Vector) on mobile devices may notice a slight change in the default zoom level. This is intended to optimize zooming and ensure all interface elements are present on the page (for example the table of contents on Vector 2022). In the unlikely event this causes any problems with how you use the site, we'd love to understand better, please ping Jon (WMF) to any on-wiki conversations. [573]
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
- Parsoid's HTML output will soon stop annotating file links with different
typeof
attribute values, and instead usemw:File
for all types. Tool authors should adjust any code that expects:mw:Image
,mw:Audio
, ormw:Video
. [574]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:17, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter June 2022
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- Backlog status
At the time of the last newsletter (No.27, May 2022), the backlog was approaching 16,000, having shot up rapidly from 6,000 over the prior two months. The attention the newsletter brought to the backlog sparked a flurry of activity. There was new discussion on process improvements, efforts to invite new editors to participate in NPP increased and more editors requested the NPP user right so they could help, and most importantly, the number of reviews picked up and the backlog decreased, dipping below 14,000[a] at the end of May.
Since then, the news has not been so good. The backlog is basically flat, hovering around 14,200. I wish I could report the number of reviews done and the number of new articles added to the queue. But the available statistics we have are woefully inadequate. The only real number we have is the net queue size.[b]
In the last 30 days, the top 100 reviewers have all made more than 16 patrols (up from 8 last month), and about 70 have averaged one review a day (up from 50 last month).
While there are more people doing more reviews, many of the ~730 with the NPP right are doing little. Most of the reviews are being done by the top 50 or 100 reviewers. They need your help. We appreciate every review done, but please aim to do one a day (on average, or 30 a month).
- Backlog drive
A backlog reduction drive, coordinated by buidhe and Zippybonzo, will be held from July 1 to July 31. Sign up here. Barnstars will be awarded.
- TIP – New school articles
Many new articles on schools are being created by new users in developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. The authors are probably not even aware of Wikipedia's projects and policy pages. WP:WPSCH/AG has some excellent advice and resources specifically written for these users. Reviewers could consider providing such first-time article creators with a link to it while also mentioning that not all schools pass the GNG and that elementary schools are almost certainly not notable.
- Misc
There is a new template available, {{NPP backlog}}
, to show the current backlog. You can place it on your user or talk page as a reminder:
Very high unreviewed pages backlog: 11863 articles, as of 00:00, 10 November 2024 (UTC), according to DatBot
There has been significant discussion at WP:VPP recently on NPP-related matters (Draftification, Deletion, Notability, Verifiability, Burden). Proposals that would somewhat ease the burden on NPP aren't gaining much traction, although there are suggestions that the role of NPP be fundamentally changed to focus only on major CSD-type issues.
- Reminders
- Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
- If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing
{{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page. - If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
- To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
- Notes
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:02, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-26
[edit]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
- Wikimedia Enterprise API service now has self-service accounts with free on-demand requests and monthly snapshots (API documentation). Community access via database dumps & Wikimedia Cloud Services continues.
- All Wikimedia wikis can now use Wikidata Lexemes in Lua after creating local modules and templates. Discussions are welcome on the project talk page.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (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 28 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [575]
- Some global and cross-wiki services will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 June at 06:00 UTC. This will impact ContentTranslation, Echo, StructuredDiscussions, Growth experiments and a few more services. [576]
- Users will be able to sort columns within sortable tables in the mobile skin. [577]
Future meetings
- The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (28 June). The following meetings will take place on 12 July and 26 July.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:01, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
NPP July 2022 backlog drive is on!
[edit]New Page Patrol | July 2022 Backlog Drive | |
| |
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. |
(t · c) buidhe 20:25, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-27
[edit]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).
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
- This change only affects pages in the main namespace in Wikisource. The Javascript config variable
proofreadpage_source_href
will be removed frommw.config
and be replaced with the variableprpSourceIndexPage
. [578]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:30, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #21
[edit]Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!
New project: Positive reinforcement
[edit]- 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.
- Please let us know what you think of this project, in any language.
For mentors
[edit]- We have worked on two new features, to inform them about the mentorship:
Scaling
[edit]- "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. [579]
Suggested edits
[edit]- 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. [580]
- 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.
Community configuration
[edit]Communities can configure how the features work, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.
- Communities can set the maximum number of "add an image" suggested tasks a newcomer can complete daily. [581]
- Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [582]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-28
[edit]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. [583]
- It is now possible to easily view most of the configuration settings that apply to just one wiki, and to compare settings between two wikis if those settings are different. For example: Japanese Wiktionary settings, or settings that are different between the Spanish and Esperanto Wikipedias. Local communities may want to discuss and propose changes to their local settings. Details about each of the named settings can be found by searching MediaWiki.org. [584]
- 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).
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:23, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - July 2022
[edit]Hey, John Broughton! Here is the July 2022 issue for the TheWikiWizard!
Humour
[edit]- It's less than 6 months till Christmas (I think...)
- Start making the Christmas list! Never too early, or late for those who think Dec 26 is Dec 25 haha
- If I had a dollar for every word I typed, the world would run out of money ;)
Wiki(p/m)edia News
[edit]- The Japanese Wikipedia now uses the new vector skin! For those who speak Japanese or just want to take a look, check it out!
- There is a conversation event that you can check out. More details on the link.
- A meeting had taken place in regards to Interface of MediaWiki. More information of that meeting can be found here.
Editor's Notes
[edit]- Please note that due to me being busy/at times not much to report on Wiki(p/m)edia some issues of this newsletter may be skipped. Don't worry I haven't forgotten about it!
- Sometimes during the delivery of the issue, the mass message extension sends it twice for some reason. Please note I only send them once and not twice. I apologise for the inconvenience this causes.
- Remember that the Wikimedia Foundation also hosts other wikis too! So if you want to see what other wikis there are, give it a try! You might find something you like!
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- See you in the next issue! Have a great summer! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:00, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
- Delivered to you with the help of MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 01:08, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-29
[edit]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
- The feature on mobile web for Nearby Pages was missing last week. It will be fixed this week. [585]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 July. It will be on all wikis from 21 July (calendar).
Future changes
- The Technical Decision Forum is seeking community representatives. You can apply on wiki or by emailing TDFSupport@wikimedia.org before 12 August.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:58, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-30
[edit]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 www.wikibooks.org and www.wikiquote.org portal pages now use an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months. [586]
Problems
- Last week, some wikis were in read-only mode for a few minutes because of an emergency switch of their main database (targeted wikis). [587]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 July. It will be on all wikis from 28 July (calendar).
- The external link icon will change slightly in the skins Vector legacy and Vector 2022. The new icon uses simpler shapes to be more recognizable on low-fidelity screens. [588]
- Administrators will now see buttons on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. [589]
Future meetings
- The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (26 July).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:26, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 51
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 51, May – June 2022
- New library partners
- SAGE Journals
- Elsevier ScienceDirect
- University of Chicago Press
- Information Processing Society of Japan
- Feedback requested on this newsletter
- 1Lib1Ref May 2022
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:45, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-31
[edit]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
- Improved LaTeX capabilities for math rendering are now available in the wikis thanks to supporting
Phantom
tags. This completes part of the #59 wish of the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 August. It will be on all wikis from 4 August (calendar).
- The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 0. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout August. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
Future meetings
- This week, three meetings about Vector (2022) with live interpretation will take place. On Tuesday, interpretation in Russian will be provided. On Thursday, meetings for Arabic and Spanish speakers will take place. See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:20, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- Backlog status
After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators Buidhe and Zippybonzo, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to Dr vulpes who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.
Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.
- Coordination
- MB and Novem Linguae have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out. MPGuy2824 will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.
- Open letter to the WMF
- The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.
- TIP - Reviewing by subject
- Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.
- New reviewers
- The NPP School is being underused. The learning curve for NPP is quite steep, but a detailed and easy-to-read tutorial exists, and the Curation Tool's many features are fully described and illustrated on the updated page here.
- Reminders
- Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
- If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing
{{subst:NPR invite}}
on their talk page. - If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
- To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:24, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-32
[edit]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
- GUS2Wiki copies the information from Special:GadgetUsage to an on-wiki page so you can review its history. If your project isn't already listed on the Wikidata entry for Project:GUS2Wiki you can either run GUS2Wiki yourself or make a request to receive updates. [590]
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 9 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 11 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future meetings
- The Wikimania Hackathon will take place online from August 12–14. Don't miss the pre-hacking showcase to learn about projects and find collaborators. Anyone can propose a project or host a session. Newcomers are welcome!
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:48, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-33
[edit]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 Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia community decided to block IP editing from October 2021 to April 2022. The Wikimedia Foundation's Product Analytics team tracked the impact of this change. An impact report is now available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 August. It will be on all wikis from 18 August (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 16 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 18 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 1. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout August. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes. [591][592][593]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:07, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
NPP message
[edit]Hi John Broughton,
- Invitation
For those who may have missed it in our last newsletter, here's a quick reminder to see the letter we have drafted, and if you support it, do please go ahead and sign it. If you already signed, thanks. Also, if you haven't noticed, the backlog has been trending up lately; all reviews are greatly appreciated.
To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-34
[edit]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
- Two problems with Kartographer maps have been fixed. Maps are no longer shown as empty when a geoline was created via VisualEditor. Geolines consisting of points with QIDs (e.g., subway lines) are no longer shown with pushpins. [594][595]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (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 25 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The colours of links and visited links will change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. [596]
Future changes
- The new [subscribe] button helps newcomers get answers. The Editing team is enabling this tool everywhere. You can turn it off in your preferences. [597]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:10, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
Editing news 2022 #2
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.
–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-35
[edit]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 Realtime Preview is available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 2. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals. Please note that when this Beta feature is enabled, it may cause conflicts with some wiki-specific Gadgets.
Problems
- In recent months, there have been inaccurate numbers shown for various Special:Statistics at Commons, Wikidata, and English Wikipedia. This has now been fixed. [598]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (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 30 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation wants to improve how Wikimedia communities report harmful incidents by building the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) to make it easy and safe for users to make reports. You can leave comments on the talk page, by answering the questions provided. If you have ever faced a harmful situation that you wanted to report/reported, join a PIRS interview to share your experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:03, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 August 2022
[edit]- News and notes: Admins wanted on English Wikipedia, IP editors not wanted on Farsi Wiki, donations wanted everywhere
- Special report: Wikimania 2022: no show, no show up?
- In the media: Truth or consequences? A tough month for truth
- Discussion report: Boarding the Trustees
- News from Wiki Education: 18 years a Wikipedian: what it means to me
- In focus: Thinking inside the box
- Tips and tricks: The unexpected rabbit hole of typo fixing in citations...
- Technology report: Vector (2022) deployment discussions happening now
- Serendipity: Two photos of every library on earth
- Featured content: Our man drills are safe for work, but our Labia is Fausta.
- Recent research: The dollar value of "official" external links
- Traffic report: What dreams (and heavily trafficked articles) may come
- Essay: Delete the junk!
- Humour: CommonsComix No. 1
- From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 years ago
Board of Trustees election
[edit]Thank you for supporting the NPP initiative to improve WMF support of the Page Curation tools. Another way you can help is by voting in the Board of Trustees election. The next Board composition might be giving attention to software development. The election closes on 6 September at 23:59 UTC. View candidate statement videos and Vote Here. MB 03:49, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-36
[edit]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 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (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 6 September at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 8 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of
#p-namespaces
should be updated to use themw.util.addPortletLink
function instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting#p-associated-pages
, the new id for this row. Examples are available. [599][600]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-37
[edit]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 search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [601]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).
- Syntax highlighting is now tracked as an expensive parser function. Only 500 expensive function calls can be used on a single page. Pages that exceed the limit are added to a tracking category. [602]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
01:48, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Declared paid editors for hire
[edit]Hi! No idea if you're still maintaining this list, but if so I'd like to be added. Thank you! Mary Gaulke (talk) 20:37, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-38
[edit]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
- Two database fields in the
templatelinks
table are now being dropped:tl_namespace
andtl_title
. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field calledtl_target_id
. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [603][604]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
- In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [605][606]
Future changes
- In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:14, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #22
[edit]Welcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the Growth team!
Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available
[edit]As of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.
- About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
- Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.
We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.
If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.
Ongoing projects and explorations
[edit]We are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.
We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.
Add an image was utilized at GLAM events in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. For an overview of what was learned from these events, read: #1Pic1Article I: how Latin American heritage experts added images to Wikipedia (in English).
Experiments analysis
[edit]Add a Link Experiment Analysis has been published. The most important points are:
- Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
- They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
- The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).
Newcomer task edit type analysis has been published.
- Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
- Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.
News for mentors
[edit]A new system for the mentors list
The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.
At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.
The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. [607][608]
Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.
Learn more about this new structured page on mediawiki.org.
A tip for mentors
Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.
And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges: Your starred mentees, Your unstarred mentees.
Other improvements
Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:
- While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved. [609]
- Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [610]
- Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [611]
Recent changes and fixed bugs
[edit]- We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [612]
- Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Greek Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia. [613]
- Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed. [614]
- In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [615]
Have a question? A suggestion?
[edit]Please let us know! You can also read our FAQ page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
October 2022 New Pages Patrol backlog drive
[edit]New Page Patrol | October 2022 backlog drive | |
| |
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. |
(t · c) buidhe 21:16, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-39
[edit]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
- Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the
rel
attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 September. It will be on all wikis from 29 September (calendar).
- Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [616]
- Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [617] [618]
- In the Module namespace, pages ending with
.json
will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [619]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:28, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 52
[edit]Books & Bytes
Issue 52, July – August 2022
- New instant-access collections:
- SpringerLink and Springer Nature
- Project MUSE
- Taylor & Francis
- ASHA
- Loeb
- Feedback requested on this newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:20, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard- September 2022
[edit]Hey, John Broughton! Here is the September 2022 Issue for the TheWikiWizard in October! We apologize for the delay.
Humor
[edit]- It's time for Christmas, summer is coming to an end
- What are you giving Santa for Chirstmas? (He told me to for you to leave more cookies and the Halloween Candy)
- Halloween, give out money instead :P
Wiki(p/m)edia News
[edit]- A discussion in regards to the new vector skin on EN Wikipedia had taken place, you can find it here
- The Foundation Elections occurred learn more here
- Quite a few successful RFA's took place, some include Z1720, and Dan Cherek! Congrats to all the successful RFA's!
Editor's Notes
[edit]- Thanks for your patience as we are late with issues, you can join us if you want to help out!
- Please note that sometimes the system may deliver this twice to you, but I only send it once
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- See you in the next issue! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 00:14, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
- This issue was sent to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 00:23, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-40
[edit]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
- Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [620] [621]
- The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
- Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [622] [623]
- The
scribunto-console
API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5] - The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:21, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-41
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
- On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [624][625]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:07, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.
Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.
Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.
Suggestions:
- There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed".
- Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial)
- Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue.
- This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar.
Backlog:
Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!
- Reminders
- Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
- If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers.
- Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Tech News: 2022-42
[edit]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 recently implemented feature of article thumbnails in Special:Search will be limited to Wikipedia projects only. Further details are in T320510. [626]
- A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
- Lua module authors can use
mw.loadJsonData()
to load data from JSON pages. [627] - Lua module authors can enable
require( "strict" )
to add errors for some possible code problems. This replaces "Module:No globals" on most wikis. [628]
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated at most wikis. The "reply" button will look different after this change. [629]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:44, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-43
[edit]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 have been some minor visual fixes in Special:Search, regarding audio player alignment and image placeholder height. Further details are in T319230.
- On Wikipedias, a new preference has been added to hide article thumbnails in Special:Search. Full details are in T320337.
Problems
- Last week, three wikis (French Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia) had read-only access for 25 minutes. This was caused by a hardware problem. [630]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 October. It will be on all wikis from 27 October (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 25 October at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 27 October at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Assamese Wikipedia, Bashkir Wikipedia, Balinese Wikipedia, Bavarian Wikipedia, Samogitian Wikipedia, Bikol Central Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Bhojpuri Wikipedia, Bislama Wikipedia, Banjar Wikipedia, Bambara Wikipedia, Bishnupriya Wikipedia, Breton Wikipedia, Bosnian Wikipedia, Buginese Wikipedia, Buryat Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [631]
- Starting on Wednesday October 26, 2022, the list of mentors will be upgraded at wikis where Growth mentorship is available. The mentorship system will continue to work as it does now. The signup process will be replaced, and a new management option will be provided. Also, this change simplifies the creation of mentorship systems at Wikipedias. [632][633][634]
- Pages with titles that start with a lower-case letter according to Unicode 11 will be renamed or deleted. There is a list of affected pages at m:Unicode 11 case map migration. More information can be found at T292552.
- The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikipedias. Learn more.
Future changes
- The Reply tool and New Topic tool will soon get a special characters menu. [635]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:20, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 October 2022
[edit]- From the team: A new goose on the roost
- News from the WMF: Governance updates from, and for, the Wikimedia Endowment
- Disinformation report: From Russia with WikiLove
- Featured content: Topics, lists, submarines and Gurl.com
- Serendipity: We all make mistakes – don’t we?
- Traffic report: Mama, they're in love with a criminal
Tech News: 2022-44
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- When using keyboard navigation on a Kartographer map, the focus will become more visible. [636]
- In Special:RecentChanges, you can now hide the log entries for new user creations with the filter for "⧼rcfilters-filter-newuserlogactions-label⧽". [637]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 November. It will be on all wikis from 3 November (calendar).
- The maps dialog in VisualEditor now has some help texts. [638]
- It is now possible to select the language of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor via a dropdown menu. [639]
- It is now possible to add a caption to a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [640]
- It is now possible to hide the frame of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [641]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:13, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-45
[edit]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
- An updated version of the Event Registration tool is now available for testing at testwiki and test2wiki. The tool provides features for event organizers and participants. Your feedback is welcome at our project talkpage. More information about the project is available. [642]
Problems
- Twice last week, for about 45 minutes, some files and thumbnails failed to load and uploads failed, mostly for logged-in users. The cause is being investigated and an incident report will be available soon.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:30, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-46
[edit]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
- At Wikidata, an interwiki link can now point to a redirect page if certain conditions are met. This new feature is called sitelinks to redirects. It is needed when one wiki uses one page to cover multiple concepts but another wiki uses more pages to cover the same concepts. Your feedback on the talkpage of the new proposed guideline is welcome. [643]
- The www.wikinews.org, www.wikiversity.org, and www.wikivoyage.org portal pages now use an automated update system. [644]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 November. It will be on all wikis from 17 November (calendar).
- There will be a new link to directly "Edit template data" on Template pages. [645]
Future changes
- Wikis where mobile DiscussionTools are enabled (these ones) will soon use full CSS styling to display any templates that are placed at the top of talk pages. To adapt these “talk page boxes” for narrow mobile devices you can use media queries, such as in this example. [646]
- Starting in January 2023, Community Tech will be running the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) every two years. This means that in 2024, there will be no new proposals or voting.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:53, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 53
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 53, September – October 2022
- New collections:
- Edward Elgar
- E-Yearbook
- Corriere della Serra
- Wikilala
- Collections moved to Library Bundle:
- Ancestry
- New feature: Outage notification
- Spotlight: Collections indexed in EDS
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:19, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-47
[edit]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 display of non-free media in the search bar and for article thumbnails in Special:Search has been deactivated. Further details are in T320661.
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 22 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 24 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-48
[edit]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
- A new preference, “Enable limited width mode”, has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also available as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. It allows for increasing the width of the page for logged-out and logged-in users. [647]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (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 29 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 December at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- Mathematical formulas shown in SVG image format will no longer have PNG fall-backs for browsers that don't support them. This is part of work to modernise the generation system. Showing only PNG versions was the default option until in February 2018. [648][649][650]
- On some wikis that use flagged revisions, a new checkbox will be added to Special:Contributions that enables you to see only the pending changes by a user. [651]
Future changes
- How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change early next week at group1 wikis (but not Wikimedia Commons or Meta-Wiki). This change improves the accessibility of content, and makes it easier to write related CSS. 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. [652]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:01, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message
[edit]Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. 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.
If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}}
to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:21, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #23
[edit]Welcome to the twenty-third newsletter from the Growth team!
Highlights
[edit]- Mentorship: We released the new structured mentor list to all wikis. This change makes mentorship easier to setup, manage and use.
- Positive reinforcement: An improved impact module is available for testing.
Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test
[edit]The goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.
Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.
This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.
Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback
[edit]After the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.
We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:
- Patroller fatigue:
- By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.
- Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
- Add a Link
- Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
- The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
- The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
- Add an Image
- Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
- Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
- We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [653]
- Add a Link
The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.
Recent changes
[edit]- All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [654]
- The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [655][656]
- Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.
News for mentors
[edit]- All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
- We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
- Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting
Special:MentorDashboard
. - Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
- A new special page —
Special:ManageMentors
— now displays the list of mentors. This page can be transcluded on any other page. There are also new processes to signup as a mentor or to quit mentorship, and we improved community mentorship management.
- The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [657]
Deployments
[edit]- Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [658]
Improving this newsletter
[edit]We plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-49
[edit]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 Wikisources use a tool called ProofreadPage. ProofreadPage uses OpenSeadragon which is an open source tool. The OpenSeadragon JavaScript API has been significantly re-written to support dynamically loading images. The functionality provided by the older version of the API should still work but it is no longer supported. User scripts and gadgets should migrate over to the newer version of the API. The functionality provided by the newer version of the API is documented on MediaWiki. [659][660]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:39, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - December 2022
[edit]Hey, John Broughton! Here is the December 2022 issue for the TheWikiWizard! We've been dormant for a few months!
Humor
[edit]- How many times will you write 2022 in 2023??
- Don't write Christmas Cards/do gift shopping in December, do it in the summer!
Wiki(p/m)edia News
[edit]Not much to report this issue, but we do have these to report!
- Quite a few RFAs took place since the last issue of this newsletter. You can view more here!
- The Voting for a sound logo is taking place on Wikimedia Commons, head over to that link to find out more!
- The Arbitration Committee Elections is happening on the English Wikipedia. (The elections may have finished by the time you see this message, please check the page for the date and time of the election deadline)
Editor's Notes
[edit]- Have a great holiday and new years! We'll see you in 2023.
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- See you next time. Happy Holidays! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 02:43, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
- This issue was delivered to you with MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on 02:50, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-50
[edit]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
- An A/B test has begun at 15 Wikipedias for DiscussionTools on mobile. Half of the editors on the mobile web site will have access to the Reply tool and other features. [661]
- The character
=
cannot be used in new usernames, to make usernames work better with templates. Existing usernames are not affected. [662]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).
- The HTML markup used by DiscussionTools to show discussion metadata below section headings will be inserted after these headings, not inside of them. This change improves the accessibility of discussion pages for screen reader software. [663]
Events
- The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award will happen online on Friday 16 December 2022 at 17:00 UTC! The event will be live-streamed on YouTube in the MediaWiki channel and added to Commons afterwards.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:32, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-51
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 9 January 2023.
Recent changes
- On a user's contributions page, you can filter it for edits with a tag like 'reverted'. Now, you can also filter for all edits that are not tagged like that. This was part of a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [664]
- A new function has been used for gadget developers to add content underneath the title on article pages. This is considered a stable API that should work across all skins. Documentation is available. [665]
- One of our test wikis is now being served from a new infrastructure powered by Kubernetes (read more). More Wikis will switch to this new infrastructure in early 2023. Please test and let us know of any issues. [666]
Problems
- Last week, all wikis had no edit access for 9 minutes. This was caused by a database problem. [667]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
- The word "Reply" is very short in some languages, such as Arabic ("ردّ"). This makes the Discussion tools button on talk pages difficult to use. An arrow icon will be added to those languages. This will only be visible to editors who have the Beta Feature turned on. [668] [669]
Future changes
- Edits can be automatically "tagged" by the system software or the Edit filter configuration system. Those tags link to a help page about the tags. Soon they will also link to Recent Changes to let you see other edits tagged this way. This was a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [670]
- The Trust & Safety tools team have shared new plans for building the Private Incident Reporting System. The system will make it easier for editors to ask for help if they are harassed or abused.
- Realtime Preview for Wikitext is coming out of beta as an enabled feature for every user of the 2010 Wikitext editor in the week of January 9, 2023. It will be available to use via the toolbar in the 2010 Wikitext editor. The feature was the 4th most popular wish of the Community Wishlist Survey 2021.
Events
- You can now register for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023, taking place on May 19–21 in Athens, Greece. You can also apply for a scholarship until January 14th.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:58, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 1 January 2023
[edit]- Interview: ComplexRational's RfA debrief
- Technology report: Wikimedia Foundation's Abstract Wikipedia project "at substantial risk of failure"
- Essay: Mobile editing
- Arbitration report: Arbitration Committee Election 2022
- Recent research: Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement in talk page disputes
- Featured content: Would you like to swing on a star?
- Traffic report: Football, football, football! Wikipedia Football Club!
- CommonsComix: #4: The Course of WikiEmpire
- From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago
New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
- Backlog
The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.
- 2022 Awards
Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!
Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)
New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js
to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js
Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.
Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.
- Reminders
- Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
- There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
- Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Tech News: 2023-02
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can use tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags. [671]
- Special:WhatLinksHere shows all pages that link to a specific page. There is now a prototype for how to sort those pages alphabetically. You can see the discussion in the Phabricator ticket.
- You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page. [672]
- A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time. [673]
- Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use
matrix:
to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [674] - You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages. [675]
Changes later this week
- Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 10 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 12 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 January. It will be on all wikis from 12 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:06, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Help with redundant and copyrighted edits
[edit]Hi. I am Prerna Gupta. A couple years ago I proposed some improvements to the page about me following COI policy and you chipped in here. An anonymous IP address recently added some content I think is redundant, promotional, and copy/paste of copyrighted content. I was hoping you would be willing to chip-in again at the discussion I started here. 138.118.80.34 (talk) 16:46, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 16 January 2023
[edit]- Special report: Coverage of 2022 bans reveals editors serving long sentences in Saudi Arabia since 2020
- News and notes: Revised Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines up for vote, WMF counsel departs, generative models under discussion
- In the media: Court orders user data in libel case, Saudi Wikipedia in the crosshairs, Larry Sanger at it again
- Technology report: View it! A new tool for image discovery
- In focus: Busting into Grand Central
- Serendipity: How I bought part of Wikipedia – for less than $100
- Featured content: Flip your lid
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2022
- From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago
Tech News: 2023-03
[edit]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
- The URLs in "prev" links on page history now contain
diff=prev&oldid=[revision ID]
in place ofdiff=[revision ID]&oldid=[revision ID]
. This is to fix a problem with links pointing to incorrect diffs when history was filtered by a tag. Some user scripts may break as a result of this change. [676]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).
- Some changes to the appearance of talk pages have only been available on
Talk:
andUser talk:
namespaces. These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such asWikipedia talk:
. They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, includingWikipedia:
pages (e.g., at the Village Pump). You can change your preferences (beta feature). [677] - On Wikisources, when an image is zoomed or panned in the Page: namespace, the same zoom and pan settings will be remembered for all Page: namespace pages that are linked to a particular Index: namespace page. [678]
- The Vector 2022 skin will become the default for the English Wikipedia desktop users. The change will take place on January 18 at 15:00 UTC. Learn more.
Future changes
- The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey, which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts next week on 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC. You can start drafting your proposals in the CWS sandbox.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:08, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 54
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 54, November – December 2022
- New collections:
- British Newspaper Archive
- Findmypast
- University of Michigan Press
- ACLS
- Duke University Press
- 1Lib1Ref 2023
- Spotlight: EDS Refine Results
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:14, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-04
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue. [679]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).
- If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity. [680][681]
- The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:44, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-05
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week, for ~15 minutes, some users were unable to log in or edit pages. This was caused by a problem with session storage. [682]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 February. It will be on all wikis from 2 February (calendar).
Future changes
- Wikis that use localized numbering schemes for references need to add new CSS. This will help to show citation numbers the same way in all reading and editing modes. If your wiki would prefer to do it yourselves, please see the details and example CSS to copy from, and also add your wiki to the list. Otherwise, the developers will directly help out starting the week of February 5.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:03, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #24
[edit]Welcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the Growth team!
Newcomer experience projects
[edit]The Growth team partnered with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments around increasing account creation and new editor retention. Results from four of these experiments are now available:
- Thank you pages & banners - Encourage donors to create accounts through thank you pages and banners.
- Marketing experiment - Run ads on-wiki and off-wiki to see how this impacts account activation.
- "Add an image" GLAM events - Host GLAM events that focus on using the "Add an image" tool.
- Welcome emails - Experiment sending welcome emails to newly created accounts.
Newcomer tasks
[edit]- Several communities suggested improving "add a link", by suggesting underlinked articles first. We released this change to Growth pilot wikis. We will review the data and collect feedback before considering releasing it to more wikis. [683]
- The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use a prediction model, which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models. [684]
Mentorship
[edit]- When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [685]
- Workshop hosts asked us to have workshop attendees assigned to them. They can soon use a custom URL parameter. This way, workshop hosts will continue mentoring the event's attendees after the workshop. It will be available in February. [686]
- Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?
- Please visit Special:MentorDashboard to check on the conditions to be a mentor, and sign up.
- If your wiki does not have Mentorship enabled, consider setting it up. The Growth team can provide advice and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.
Other news
[edit]- In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [687]
- This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.
Translations
[edit]- Newsletter translation: We are looking for translators for this newsletter. If you are interested and have the needed English language proficiency to assist, then please add your name to this list. You will receive an invite on your talk page to translate the newsletter when it is ready.
- Interface translation: You can also help by translating the interface, or reviewing translations to make them more inclusive. Interface translations are hosted at translatewiki.net.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.• Help with translations
14:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 February 2023
[edit]- From the editor: New for the Signpost: Author pages, tag pages, and a decent article search function
- News and notes: Foundation update on fundraising, new page patrol, Tides, and Wikipedia blocked in Pakistan
- Disinformation report: Wikipedia on Santos
- Op-Ed: Estonian businessman and political donor brings lawsuit against head of national Wikimedia chapter
- Recent research: Wikipedia's "moderate yet systematic" liberal citation bias
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Organized Labour
- Tips and tricks: XTools: Data analytics for your list of created articles
- Featured content: 20,000 Featureds under the Sea
- Traffic report: Films, deaths and ChatGPT
Tech News: 2023-06
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- In the Vector 2022 skin, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default. [688]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).
- Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays. [689]
- Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [690]
- Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will stop receiving new proposals on Monday, 6 February 2023, at 18:00 UTC. Proposers should complete any edits by then, to give time for translations and review. Voting will begin on Friday, 10 February.
Future changes
- Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add
skins=…
for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 10:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-07
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- On wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week. [691]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).
- The Reply tool and other parts of DiscussionTools will be deployed for all editors using the mobile site. You can read more about this decision. [692]
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [693][694][695]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 20 February 2023
[edit]- In the media: Arbitrators open case after article alleges Wikipedia "intentionally distorts" Holocaust coverage
- Disinformation report: The "largest con in corporate history"?
- Tips and tricks: All about writing at DYK
- Featured content: Eden, lost.
- Gallery: Love is in the air
- From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 years ago: Let's (not) delete the Main Page!
- Humour: The RfA Candidate's Song
Tech News: 2023-08
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week, during planned maintenance of Cloud Services, unforeseen complications forced the team to turn off all tools for 2–3 hours to prevent data corruption. Work is ongoing to prevent similar problems in the future. [696]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).
- The voting phase for the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 ends on 24 February at 18:00 UTC. The results of the survey will be announced on 28 February.
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [697][698][699]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:56, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
Editing news 2023 #1
[edit]Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter
This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:
- The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
- They are beginning a new project, Edit check.
Talk pages project
The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.
It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.
An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.
New Project: Edit Check
The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.
–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - February 2023
[edit]Hey, John Broughton! Here is the February 2023 issue for the TheWikiWizard!
Humor
[edit]- Have you finished raking up those leaves from fall?
- Are you making your list yet for next Christmas? Only 10ish more months to go! It's never too early ;-)
Wiki(P/M)edia News
[edit]- Wikipedia (EN) has a new look! Remember, if you prefer the old look and are logged in, you can go to preferences to change back to the old vector skin!
- WMF (Wikimedia Foundation) is going to update it's terms of use, you can find out more here
- There is a planned test that will take place with the servers, and it may affect your ability to make changes for a period of time, more information can be found here
- We've got some new RFA's (Requests for Adminship) on EN Wikipedia that took place since the last issue!
Editor's Notes
[edit]- Happy 2023! This is the first issue of the year!
- If you ever want to help out with TWW please let us know! Please note TWW issues may be delayed, but we haven't forgotten about TWW!
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- See you next time. We hope you have a great 2023! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:10, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
- This issue was delivered to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 01:17, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
- See you next time. We hope you have a great 2023! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:10, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-09
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task. [700][701]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [702]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Pure Storage page edits
[edit]Hi John. My name is Zac and I work for a flash storage company called Pure Storage. I disclosed a COI and requested some changes here including correcting that the Purity operating system is used in most, but not all, of the company's products, and correcting/updating the list of major product families.
You'll see there that there's been some back and forth already with other editors and I have addressed all the feedback received. However, it's not clear what the next step is in terms of getting corrections/updates actually implemented. Do you have time to chip in? If there's something else I need to do or some other feedback I need to address, please let me know. ZacBond (talk) 18:03, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-10
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
- On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Wikipedia) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed. [703]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).
- A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon. [704]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-11
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Chavacano de Zamboanga Wikipedia, Min Dong Chinese Wikipedia, Chechen Wikipedia, Cebuano Wikipedia, Chamorro Wikipedia, Cherokee Wikipedia, Cheyenne Wikipedia, Central Kurdish Wikipedia, Corsican Wikipedia, Kashubian Wikipedia, Church Slavic Wikipedia, Chuvash Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [705][706]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:18, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 55
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 55, January – February 2023
- New bundle partners:
- Newspapers.com
- Fold3
- 1Lib1Ref January report
- Spotlight: EDS SmartText Searching
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-12
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week, some users experienced issues loading image thumbnails. This was due to incorrectly cached images. [707]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).
- A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will appear on Special:Contributions — some user scripts which previously added this link may cause conflicts. This feature request was voted #17 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
- The Special:AbuseFilter edit window will be resizable and larger by default. This feature request was voted #80 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
- There will be a new option for Administrators when they are unblocking a user, to add the unblocked user’s user page to their watchlist. This will work both via Special:Unblock and via the API. [708]
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 24 March at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:24, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-13
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The AbuseFilter condition limit was increased from 1000 to 2000. [709]
- Some Global AbuseFilter actions will no longer apply to local projects. [710]
- Desktop users are now able to subscribe to talk pages by clicking on the Subscribe link in the Tools menu. If you subscribe to a talk page, you receive notifications when new topics are started on that talk page. This is separate from putting the page on your watchlist or subscribing to a single discussion. [711]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 March. It will be on all wikis from 30 March (calendar).
Future changes
- You will be able to choose visual diffs on all history pages at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [712]
- The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Developers are encouraged to switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity. [713]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:11, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #25
[edit]Welcome to the twenty-fifth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Celebrations
[edit]Leveling up release
- We released Leveling up features to our pilot wikis on March 22 for an initial A/B test.
- In this test, we use post-edit dialogs (pop-ups shown after publishing an edit) and notifications to encourage new editors to try new types of newcomer-friendly suggested edits.
- We are closely monitoring the short term impact of this feature as well as the longer term effect on newcomer productivity and retention. If the experiment shows positive results, we will release this feature to more wikis.
5,000+ images added via the newcomer task in February
- In February 2023, 5,035 images were added via the newcomer “add an image” feature (on all wikis where available); 155 were reverted.
- Since the feature “add an image” was launched: 36,803 images have been added; 2,957 images were reverted.
Recent changes
[edit]- Add a link
- Community Ambassadors completed an initial evaluation that confirmed that prioritizing underlinked articles resulted in better article suggestions. We then evaluated the change on Growth pilot wikis, and results suggest that more newcomers are successfully completing the task and experiencing fewer reverts. We have now deployed the new prioritization model to all wikis with "add a link" enabled. [714][715]
- We continue the deployment of "add a link" to more wikis. These changes are regularly announced in Tech News. To know if newcomers at your wiki have access to this feature, please visit your Homepage.
- The Impact module was deployed on our pilot wikis, where we conducted an A/B test. We published initial findings, and a data scientist is now completing experiment analysis. [716]
- Donor Thank you page experiment – Donors land on a “thank you” page after donation, and that landing page now includes a call to action to try editing: Example Thank you page in French. This promising feature is tested at several Wikipedias (French Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia).
- Growth features are now the default experience on both test.wikipedia.org and test2.wikipedia.org. You can test our features there.
Upcoming work
[edit]- Add an image – We plan to offer section-level image suggestions as a structured task for newcomers.
- IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation – We will support this project for all Growth Team maintained products and extensions that may be affected by IP Masking. [720]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-14
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories. [721][722][723][724][725]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
- Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version. [726]
- The deprecated
jquery.hoverIntent
module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQueryhover()
oron()
instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide. [727] - Some of the links in Special:SpecialPages will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account. [728]
- You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new
__ARCHIVEDTALK__
magic word. There will also be a new.mw-archivedtalk
CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page. [729][730][731]
Future changes
- The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:38, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-15
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- In the visual editor, it is now possible to edit captions of images in galleries without opening the gallery dialog. This feature request was voted #61 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [732]
- You can now receive notifications when another user edits your user page. See the "Edits to my user page" option in your Preferences. This feature request was voted #3 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [733]
Problems
- There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed. [734]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Dinka Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Ewe Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Emiliano-Romagnolo Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Estonian Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Tumbuka Wikipedia, Fulah Wikipedia, Finnish Wikipedia, Võro Wikipedia, Fijian Wikipedia, Faroese Wikipedia, Arpitan Wikipedia, Northern Frisian Wikipedia, Friulian Wikipedia, Irish Wikipedia, Guianan Creole Wikipedia, Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Galician Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia, Guarani Wikipedia, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Gothic Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikipedia, Manx Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [735][736]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:03, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Lenovo IdeaPad Edits
[edit]Hi John Broughton. I work for Lenovo. I disclosed a COI and started a conversation at Talk:IdeaPad#Potential_Revisions_to_Page about a year ago about the page being flooded with out-dated technical specs of individual products. I shared a table similar to what's on ThinkPad#Current_model_lines that would bring it up-to-date and make the page less unwieldly. It seems like editors generally support incorporating the table, but nobody has actually made any edits. I understand that I'm not supposed to make edits myself. My hope is that you might be willing to chime in and make whatever edits you deem best for Wikipedia? StuartGill (talk) 15:08, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-16
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now see nearby articles on a Kartographer map with the button for the new feature "Show nearby articles". Six wikis have been testing this feature since October. [737][738]
- The Special:GlobalWatchlist page now has links for "mark page as read" for each entry. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [739]
Problems
- At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week. [740][741]
- For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [742]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 April. It will be on all wikis from 20 April (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:52, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive
[edit]New Page Patrol | May 2023 Backlog Drive | |
| |
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-17
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The date-selection menu on pages such as Special:Contributions will now show year-ranges that are in the current and past decade, instead of the current and future decade. This feature request was voted #145 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [743]
Problems
- Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities. [744]
- For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed. [745][746][747]
Changes later this week
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [748]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).
Future changes
- The Editing team plans an A/B test for a usability analysis of the Talk page project. The planned measurements are available. Your wiki may be invited to participate. Please suggest improvements to the measurement plan at the discussion page.
- The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input until May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023 on Meta-wiki.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:02, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-18
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the French and Italian Wikipedias. More languages will be added in the near future. This is part of the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [749][750][751]
- The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads. [752]
- The Special:Preferences page has been redesigned on mobile web. The new design makes it easier to browse the different categories and settings at low screen widths. You can also now access the page via a link in the Settings menu in the mobile web sidebar. [753]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 May. It will be on all wikis from 4 May (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-19
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Last week, Community Tech released the first update for providing better diffs, the #1 request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. This update adds legends and tooltips to inline diffs so that users unfamiliar with the blue and yellow highlights can better understand the type of edits made.
- When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [754]
- The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports
wikitext
as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such ashtml5
,moin
, andhtml+handlebars
, can now be replaced. [755] - Preloading text to new pages/sections now supports preloading from localized MediaWiki interface messages. Here is an example at the Czech Wikipedia that uses
preload=MediaWiki:July
. [756]
Problems
- Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like de:Modul:Graph. The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities. [757]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).
- Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review. [758]
Future changes
- During the next year, MediaWiki will stop using IP addresses to identify logged-out users, and will start automatically assigning unique temporary usernames. Read more at IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Updates. You can join the discussion about the format of the temporary usernames. [759]
- There will be an A/B test on 10 Wikipedias where the Vector 2022 skin is the default skin. Half of logged-in desktop users will see an interface where the different parts of the page are more clearly separated. You can read more. [760][761]
-
jquery.tipsy
will be removed from the MediaWiki core. This will affect some user scripts. Many lines with.tipsy(
can be commented out.OO.ui.PopupWidget
can be used to keep things working like they are now. You can read more and read about how to find broken scripts. [762]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:34, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-20
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature. [763]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 May. It will be on all wikis from 18 May (calendar).
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Gorontalo Wikipedia, Hausa Wikipedia, Hakka Chinese Wikipedia, Hawaiian Wikipedia, Fiji Hindi Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Upper Sorbian Wikipedia, Haitian Creole Wikipedia, Interlingua Wikipedia, Interlingue Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Iloko Wikipedia, Ingush Wikipedia, Ido Wikipedia, Icelandic Wikipedia, Inuktitut Wikipedia, Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, Javanese Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [764]
Future changes
- There is a recently formed team at the Wikimedia Foundation which will be focusing on experimenting with new tools. Currently they are building a prototype ChatGPT plugin that allows information generated by ChatGPT to be properly attributed to the Wikimedia projects.
- Gadget and userscript developers should replace
jquery.cookie
withmediawiki.cookie
. Thejquery.cookie
library will be removed in ~1 month, and staff developers will run a script to replace any remaining uses at that time. [765]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:43, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-21
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The "recent edits" time period for page watchers is now 30 days. It used to be 180 days. This was a Community Wishlist Survey proposal. [766]
Changes later this week
- An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact. [767]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:53, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 56
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 56, March – April 2023
- New partner:
- Perlego
- Library access tips and tricks
- Spotlight: EveryBookItsReader
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:03, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - May 2023
[edit]Hey, John Broughton! Here is the May 2023 edition for the TheWikiWizard!
Humor
[edit]- Now is the time to start writing those Christmas cards and do the Christmas shopping! Come December, you can sit back and edit Wikipedia! ;)
- When it snows in December/Winter, stock up the snow in your freezer, so when it gets hot you can do a snowball fight in the summer!
Wiki(P/M)edia News
[edit]- A conversation with trustees event took place on the 18th of May. You can read more details on the event here!
- On the English Wikipedia some RFAs which took place the past few months. You can see the full details at the RFA main page.
- There is a event (Conference) that is taking place in city of Belgrade. More details on the event can be found by clicking on the link!
Editor's Notes
[edit]- I apologies for the delay in the issues, however I can guarantee you that I am always thinking of TWW and haven't forgotten about it :) School's so busy!
- If you want to help out TWW, let me know!
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- Please note: Sometimes the system may deliver the issue twice for you, but I only send it once. I'm not sure what the issue is so I apologize for this.
- Hope you enjoyed this issue! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 00:23, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
- This issue was sent to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 00:36, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #26
[edit]Welcome to the twenty-sixth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
One million Suggested Edits
[edit]We passed the 1 million Suggested edits milestone in late April!
- The Suggested edits feature (AKA Newcomer tasks) increase newcomer activation by ~12%, which flows on through to increased retention. (source)
- Suggested edits increase the number of edits newcomers complete in their first two weeks and have a relatively low revert rate. (source)
- Suggested edits are available on all Wikipedia language editions.
- Newer Suggested edits, like Add a link and Add an image, aren’t yet deployed to all wikis, but these structured tasks further increase the probability that newcomers will make their first edit. (source)
Positive reinforcement
[edit]Positive reinforcement aims to encourage newcomers who have visited our homepage and tried Growth features to keep editing.
- The new Impact module was released to Growth pilot wikis in December 2022, and we are now scaling the feature to another ten wikis. [768]
- The Leveling up features are deployed at our pilot wikis.
- The Personalized praise features were deployed at our pilot wikis on May 24. Mentors at pilot wikis will start to receive notifications weekly when they have “praise-worthy” mentees. Mentors can configure their notification preferences or disable these notifications.
Add an image
[edit]- We are creating a new section-level variation of the “add an image” task. We have tested the accuracy of suggestions, and the development of this new task is well-underway. [769]
Other updates
[edit]- We are progressively releasing Add a link to more wikis. [770]
- After adding Thanks to Recent Changes, Watchlist and Special:Contributions, we investigated Thanks usage on the wikis. There is no evidence that thanks increased after the feature was added on more pages.
- We helped with code review for the 2023 Community Wish to add Notifications for user page edits. [771]
- We have been attending several community events, that we documented in our Growth’s Community events report.
What's next for Growth?
[edit]- We shared an overview of Growth annual planning ideas, and have started community discussion about these potential projects. We would love to hear your feedback on these ideas!
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-22
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Citations can once again be added automatically from ISBNs, thanks to Zotero's ISBN searches. The current data sources are the Library of Congress (United States), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library), and K10plus ISBN (German repository). Additional data source searches can be proposed to Zotero. The ISBN labels in the VisualEditor Automatic tab will reappear later this week. [772]
- The page Special:EditWatchlist now has "Check all" options to select all the pages within a namespace. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [773]
Problems
- For a few days earlier this month, the "Add interlanguage link" item in the Tools menu did not work properly. This has now been fixed. [774]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 May. It will be on all wikis from 1 June (calendar).
- VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on small and medium wikis this week. Large wikis will follow in the coming weeks. This is part of the effort to move Parsoid into MediaWiki core. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [775]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:59, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-23
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
- Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [776]
- Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "Group results by page". This has now been fixed. [777]
Problems
- For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed. [778]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
- Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist. [779]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Great minds think alike—we saw and used the same source to update the article, and had the same reaction to the positioning of the section. I went ahead and overwrote your fixed-up version with my own more extensively fixed-up version. So I think I owe you an apology, and you may want to check for any stupid typos I made. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:03, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Yngvadottir: I like your version more than mine - I was just passing through, making minimal edits, plus adding a citation. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:19, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-24
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias. This was the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [780]
- The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article. [781]
- The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software. [782]
- The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages. [783]
Problems
- For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended
__TOC__
(or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed. [784] - Currently, the "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing
{{DEFAULTSORT:...}}
keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing. [785] - Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace
#wpReason
with#wpReason > input
. See an example fix. [786]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).
- VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [787]
Future changes
- From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 14:48, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
Backlog
Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.
Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.
WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.
Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.
You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.
Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).
Reminders
- Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
- There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord and #wikimedia-npp connect on IRC.
- Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Tech News: 2023-25
[edit]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
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
- There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing
\
or pressingctrl + shift + p
. It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor. [790][791]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:07, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-26
[edit]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 allprop=extlinks
responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in theexternallinks
database table. [792]
Problems
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-Wikipedia 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. [795][796] - 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. [797] - 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. [798]
- The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components. [799]
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. [800]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:17, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
New pages patrol needs your help!
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
The New Page Patrol team is sending you this impromptu message to inform you of a steeply rising backlog of articles needing review. If you have any extra time to spare, please consider reviewing one or two articles each day to help lower the backlog. You can start reviewing by visiting Special:NewPagesFeed. Thank you very much for your help.
Reminders:
- There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
- Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Sent by Zippybonzo using MediaWiki message delivery at 06:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-27
[edit]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. [801]
- 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. [802]
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-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 July. It will be on all wikis from 6 July (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:49, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-28
[edit]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. [803]
- 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. [804]
- 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-Wikipedia 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. [805]
- 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. [806]
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 Wikipedia. It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Wikipedia plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20. [807]
- 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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:52, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-29
[edit]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-Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia doesn't have to create
en-ca
anden-gb
subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides. [808] - The
action=growthsetmentorstatus
API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use theaction=growthmanagementorlist
API now. [809]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 57
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 57, May – June 2023
- Suggestion improvements
- Favorite collections tips
- Spotlight: Promoting Nigerian Books and Authors
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-30
[edit]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-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 July. It will be on all wikis from 27 July (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 02:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-31
[edit]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. [810][811]
- 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. [812]
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. [813]
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. [814]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #27
[edit]Welcome to the twenty-seventh newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Annual plan for Growth
[edit]We shared our annual plan, for the period July 2023 - June 2024.
Our first project of the year will be Community configuration 2.0, which helps editors with extended rights transparently and easily configure important on-wiki functionality.
After we finish work on Community configuration 2.0, we will hope to fit in one of the following projects:
- Article creation: This project aims to provide new editors with better guidance and guardrails in the article creation process, with the intention of lightening the load of new page reviewers.
- Non-editing participation: This project aims to create low-risk ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia with the intention of funneling more readers into contributing to the Wikimedia movement.
Please let us know what you think about these projects on the related talk page, or Growth's annual plan talk page.
Suggested edits
[edit]We released a new Section-level “add an image” structured task to Growth pilot wikis (Arabic, Bengali, Czech, and Spanish). This task was part of the Structured Data Across Wikipedia project. We are monitoring the edits made, and we look for community feedback as well.
Suggested Edits are now receiving topic predictions via the new Language-Agnostic Topic Classification. This change affects non-English Wikipedia wikis. It will ensure newcomers receive a greater diversity of task recommendations. Before, as this feature was a test, English Wikipedia was used to select topics. The change is gradual as lists of topics are refreshed when they become empty. The Research team will evaluate the impact in a few months. [815]
Starting on August 1, 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, Cornish Wikipedia.
Mentorship
[edit]The Growth team provides dedicated features to establish a mentorship program for newcomers. Every newcomer gets a volunteer mentor who provides encouragement and answers questions. Communities can set up or join this mentorship system by visiting Special:ManageMentors. This mentorship system is configurable by the community at Special:EditGrowthConfig.
More communities have implemented mentorship. A Wikimedia Foundation data scientist will be looking at the impact of Mentorship. We will look at the impact on Spanish and English Wikipedia. [816]
The Growth team will also host a Mentoring new editors on Wikipedia session at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Workshop attendees will help brainstorm improvements to Growth’s mentorship features.
Positive reinforcement
[edit]We will share more complete experiment analysis for all the three parts of the Positive reinforcement project soon. At the moment, the new Impact module, Leveling up, and Personalized praise are still being A/B tested on the Growth team's pilot wikis.
In the meantime, initial leading indicators for the Personalized praise project have been published. Although this is still a relatively small sample, results seem healthy. They show that Mentors are indeed receiving notifications and clicking through to view their praise-worthy mentees.
Growth contributes to IP Editing migration
[edit]The Growth team is currently focusing on IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. It is a project that touches many different Wikimedia Foundation teams. The Growth team will focus on temporary accounts through two main points:
- the user experience of a logged-out user, that switches to a temporary account,
- change Growth-owned extensions and features, so that they work as expected with temporary accounts. [817]
Community Configuration 2.0
[edit]We are still in the early planning stage of the Community Configuration 2.0 project:
- We are gathering internal Wikimedia Foundation teams' needs, so as community feedback. [818]
- We have started to investigate design improvements. [819]
- We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products. [820]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
12:42, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-32
[edit]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. [821]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:19, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-33
[edit]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. [822]
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. [823]
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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 05:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-34
[edit]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. [824]
- 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:
- To catch up, the next most recent six wikis are:
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-Wikipedia 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. [833]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-35
[edit]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. [834]
- All Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. [835]
- Wikisource users can now use the
prpbengalicurrency
label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the<pagelist>
tag. [836] - 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. [837][838]
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).
- 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. [839]
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!
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 13:58, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
IP Block - Appeal
[edit]John Broughton (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))
Request reason:
I'm blocked from editing because I'm connecting from IP address 173.222.3.121 . I'm using a Verizon hotspot (borrowed from a library) to connect to the internet, and so the IP address is in no way a personal one. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:45, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Accept reason:
I'm marking you as WP:IPBE for a year. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 22:10, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
-- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:45, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-36
[edit]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. [840]
- 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. [841]
- 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. [842]
- One new wiki has been created:
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. [844]
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. [845][846]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:31, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
New page patrol October 2023 Backlog drive
[edit]New Page Patrol | October 2023 Backlog Drive | |
| |
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:13, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-37
[edit]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. [847]
- 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. [848]
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).
- 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. [849]
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. [850]
- 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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 58
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 58, July – August 2023
- New partners - De Standaard and Duncker & Humblot
- Tech tip: Filters
- Wikimania presentation
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:27, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-38
[edit]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. [851][852]
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).
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [853]
- All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. [854]
Future changes
- The team investigating the Graph Extension posted a proposal for reenabling it and they need your input.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
New pages patrol newsletter
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
Backlog update: At the time of this message, there are 11,300 articles and 15,600 redirects awaiting review. This is the highest backlog in a long time. Please help out by doing additional reviews!
October backlog elimination drive: A one-month backlog drive for October will start in one week! Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Articles will earn 4x as many points compared to redirects. You can sign up here.
PageTriage code upgrades: Upgrades to the PageTriage code, initiated by the NPP open letter in 2022 and actioned by the WMF Moderator Tools Team in 2023, are ongoing. More information can be found here. As part of this work, the Special:NewPagesFeed now has a new version in beta! The update leaves the NewPagesFeed appearance and function mostly identical to the old one, but updates the underlying code, making it easier to maintain and helping make sure the extension is not decommissioned due to maintenance issues in the future. You can try out the new Special:NewPagesFeed here - it will replace the current version soon.
Notability tip: Professors can meet WP:PROF #1 by having their academic papers be widely cited by their peers. When reviewing professor articles, it is a good idea to find their Google Scholar or Scopus profile and take a look at their h-index and number of citations. As a very rough rule of thumb, for most fields, articles on people with a h-index of twenty or more, a first-authored paper with more than a thousand citations, or multiple papers each with more than a hundred citations are likely to be kept at AfD.
Reviewing tip: If you would like like a second opinion on your reviews or simply want another new page reviewer by your side when patrolling, we recommend pair reviewing! This is where two reviewers use Discord voice chat and screen sharing to communicate with each other while reviewing the same article simultaneously. This is a great way to learn and transfer knowledge.
Reminders:
- You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
- Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Hi. I have reverted an edit of yours on this article, and would like to remind you about WP:BRD. When your Bold edit has been Reverted by another editor, the recommended next step, if you continue to think the edit is necessary, is to Discuss the dispute on the article talk page with other editors, but not to re-revert it, which is the first step to edit warring, a disruptive activity which is not allowed. Discussion on the talk page is the only way we have of reaching consensus, which is central to resolving editing disputes in an amicable and collegial manner, which is why communicating your concerns to your fellow editors is essential. While the discussion is going on, the article generally should remain in the status quo ante until the consensus as to what to do is reached (see WP:STATUSQUO).
Please remember that as the person attempting to make a change to the article, the WP:ONUS is on you to justify the change, and to get a consensus if it is disputed; and again, please do not edit war. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:53, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Beyond My Ken: I was hoping that you'd actually explain the reasons for your revert; apparently you're reluctant to do that. So I'll post something on the article talk page, as you request, in the hopes that you'll actually explain your objections. Also, FYI, (1) WP:BRD is an essay, not a guideline or policy, and (2) WP:ONUS doesn't have anything to do with this discussion (please follow the link). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:06, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
- I reverted because you removed pertinent and sourced information from the article without a consensus to do so, and your explanation for the removal was not relevant.And yeah, I've been here 18 years with over 300,000 edits, I know BRD is an essay. I also know that the vast majority of Wikipedia editors follow it, including almost all admins. Did you known that removing sourced material without a consensus to do so is considered by those admins to be WP:Disruptive editing? Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:12, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Beyond My Ken: No, I didn't know that removing sourced material without a consensus was considered disruptive editing. (Removing "pertinent" information seems disruptive to me, but of course "pertinent" is a subjective criteria, while "sourced" is not.) Would you mind pointing out the specific wording in WP:Disruptive editing to which you're referring? (I can't find that.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-39
[edit]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. [855]
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).
- 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
andglobal_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. [856][857]
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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - September 2023
[edit]Hello, John Broughton! Here is the September 2023 for the TheWikiWizard!
Wiki(p/m)edia News
[edit]- On the EN Wikipedia, there were 4 successful RFAs between the period of July and September! Congrats to the candidates! Also on Simple English Wikipedia, they had 1 successful RFA in August!
- For those wondering why you were unable to edit for a period of time on 20th September, there was a server testing going on. You can follow the link to read more. We will always inform you here if one of these kinds of tests is going to take place, or has taken place. You can also head on over to the Meta Wiki main page, information on these kinds of tests will always be displayed there.
- Did you know you that Wikimedia Commons has monthly photo challenges? You can check out more here!
- The USA has viewed Wikipedia 4 Billion times in August!
- The Talysh Wikipedia was recently created!
Humor
[edit]- It's almost fall again! (or is it already?) Don't fall on fallen leaves!
- One moment it's raining, the next its too hot. Welcome to fall!
Editor's Notes
[edit]- Quite a bit has happened since our last issue! Thanks for your patience during our gap of inactivity between issues!
- Thank you for reading TWW!
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
See you again in the next issue! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 15:54, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
This issue was sent to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 15:56, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-40
[edit]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. [858]
- Gadget definitions now have a new "contentModels" option. The option takes a list of page content models, like
wikitext
orcss
. 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. [859]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-41
[edit]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
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. [861]
- 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. [862]
- 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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 14:37, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #28
[edit]Welcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Community configuration 2.0
[edit]- Community Configuration 2.0 is a feature that will enable Wikimedia communities to easily customize and configure features to meet their unique needs. This approach provides non-technical moderators with more independence and control over enabling/disabling and customizing features for their communities.
- Technical approach and associated tasks are detailed in this Epic task on Phabricator.
- Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors (T346109). Please let us know if you have feedback on the design approach, or want to participate in prototype testing.
IP Masking
[edit]- The Growth team has been working on several updates to ensure Growth maintained features will be compatible with future IP Masking changes. This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes (T343322), Echo notifications (T333531), the Thanks extension (T345679) and Mentorship (T341390).
- Before December, the Growth team will initiate community discussions with the goal of migrating communities from Flow to DiscussionTools. This move aims to minimize the necessity for additional engineering work to make Flow compatible with IP Masking. (T346108)
Mentorship
[edit]- We assembled some resources for mentors at Mediawiki wiki. This resource page is translatable and will be linked from the mentor dashboard.
- We are working to resolve a bug related to mentors properly returning after being marked as "Away". (T347024)
- Half of newcomers at English Wikipedia get a mentor assigned to them. To ensure every newcomer receives mentorship, we need additional volunteer mentors at English Wikipedia to achieve a 100% coverage rate. We also encourage experienced users from other wikis to help newcomers at their own community.
Scaling Growth features
[edit]- We continue the deployment of the structured task "add a link" to all Wikipedias. We plan to scale the task to all Wikipedias that have link suggestions available by the end of 2023.
- We plan to scale the new Impact Module to all Wikipedias soon, but first we are investigating a bug with the job that refreshes the Impact Module data. (T344428)
- At some wikis, newcomers have access to the "add an image" structured task. This task suggests images that may be relevant to add to unillustrated articles. Newcomers at these wikis can now add images to unillustrated articles sections. (T345940) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table.
Other news
[edit]- We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily (T345188) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline (T345141). This is now fixed.
- You can read a report about the Growth team’s representation at Wikimania in Singapore here. Growth team members presented two sessions at Wikimania Singapore.
- After a 2.5 years-long collaboration with Bangala Wikipedia, we have decided to start a collaboration with another wiki. Swahili Wikipedia is now a pilot wiki for Growth experiments.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Trizek_(WMF) Talk 23:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-42
[edit]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. [863]
- Edit notices are now available within the MobileFrontend/Minerva skin. This feature was inspired by the gadget on English Wikipedia. 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-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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-43
[edit]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. [864]
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).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:14, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-44
[edit]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-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. [865][866]
- 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. [867]
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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
November Articles for creation backlog drive
[edit]Hello John Broughton:
WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.
You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.
Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.
Tech News: 2023-45
[edit]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. [868]
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. [869]
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. [870][871]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-46
[edit]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:
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. [876]
- Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved. [877]
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. [878]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 20 November 2023
[edit]- In the media: Propaganda and photos, lunatics and a lunar backup
- News and notes: Update on Wikimedia's financial health
- Traffic report: If it bleeds, it leads
- Recent research: Canceling disputes as the real function of ArbCom
- Wikimania: Wikimania 2024 scholarships
Tech News: 2023-47
[edit]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. [879][880]
- 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. [881][882][883]
- 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. [884]
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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:53, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 59
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 59, September – October 2023
- Spotlight: Introducing a repository of anti-disinformation projects
- Tech tip: Library access methods
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:15, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-48
[edit]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. [885][886]
- 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. [887] - The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message
[edit]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.
If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}}
to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:23, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #29
[edit]Welcome to the twenty-ninth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Community Conversations
[edit]The Growth team will host its first community conversation Monday, 4 December (19:00 - 20:30 UTC). The topic for this meeting will be Mentorship.
This first meeting language will be English, but we plan to host conversations in other languages, and about other topics. Please visit the conversation page on-wiki for the details on how to join. You can also watch the page, or suggest ideas for upcoming conversations there.
Impact Module
[edit]At the beginning of November 2023, the Growth team deployed the New Impact Module to all Wikipedias. We recently released a follow up improvement to how edit data was displayed based on editor feedback. [888]
Add a Link
[edit]We released “add a link” to 35 more Wikipedias. [889] [890]
We have a few Wikipedias remaining:
- German and English Wikipedia will be contacted at the beginning of January 2024.
- There are a few small wikis that will not receive the task until they have enough articles for the algorithm to work properly.
Community Configuration
[edit]- We shared Community Configuration 2.0 plans with technical stakeholders. [891] 🖂
- Initial Community Configuration design ideas have been shared and discussed with community members.
- A basic Community Configuration 2.0 demo is released on ToolForge.
- Developers can find some initial proof of concept code shared on gitlab.
Mentorship
[edit]When a mentor marked themselves as "Away", they were not getting their name assigned to new accounts when they returned. This has been fixed. [892]
We improved the message received by newcomers when their mentor quits, to reduce confusion. [893]
We worked on ensuring that all mentees are assigned to an active mentor. This required reassigning mentees with no mentors to a new mentor. We paused this as the clean-up script confused some editors. We will resume it when the identified blockers are resolved. [894]
It is now possible to create an Abuse Filter to prevent one user from signing up as a mentor. [895]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 December 2023
[edit]- In the media: Turmoil on Hebrew Wikipedia, grave dancing, Olga's impact and inspiring Bhutanese nuns
- Disinformation report: "Wikipedia and the assault on history"
- Comix: Bold comics for a new age
- Essay: I am going to die
- Featured content: Real gangsters move in silence
- Traffic report: And it's hard to watch some cricket, in the cold November Rain
- Humour: Mandy Rice-Davies Applies
Tech News: 2023-49
[edit]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. [896]
- 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. [897]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [898][899]
- 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. [900]
- 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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-50
[edit]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. [901][902]
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. [903][904]
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). [905][906]
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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 02:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-51
[edit]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. [907][908]
- 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. [909]
- 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. [910]
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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:16, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
New pages patrol January 2024 Backlog drive
[edit]New Page Patrol | January 2024 Articles Backlog Drive | |
| |
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Assessment of Rashmika Mandanna
[edit]Can you please assess the class rating of the article of Rashmika Mandanna as I have essentially redone the entirety of it. Thank you! Iknowthingsaboutstuff1 (talk) 20:08, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
- @Iknowthingsaboutstuff1: Sure, done. Thank you for all the work you did to improve the article. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:38, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you so much! Iknowthingsaboutstuff1 (talk) 21:40, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 23
[edit]New year, new scripts. Welcome to the 23rd issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering around 39% of our favorite new and updated user scripts since 24 December 2021. That’s right, we haven’t published in two years! Can you believe it? Did you miss us?
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
[edit]- RefRenamer by Nardog is this issue's featured script. For whatever reason, the foundation will only give us better reference names in VisualEditor if we wish for it in the next survey. Nardog to the rescue! This script has a ton of options to satisfy almost anyone who wishes to use better refnames than ":0" and ":418".
Updated scripts
[edit]- Nardog: MoveHistory can now look up the move history of any page from anywhere on the site.
- User:Enterprisey/diff-permalink now has a version that copies the Special:Diff link with square brackets.
- User:GhostInTheMachine/WatchlistTidy now moves the Active Filters panel to the right so that the Show/Hide button doesn't constantly jump.
- User:Alexander Davronov/HistoryHelper has now become stable with some bugfixes and features such as automatically highlighting potentially uncivil edit summaries and automatically pinging all the users selected.
- Wikipedia:AutoEd/unicodehex.js will no longer replace legacy MediaWiki dot-entities (dot followed by two uppercase alphanumeric characters) in article links, which caused several links to become broken.
Improve a script
[edit]- Many of our favorite scripts such as User:Fred Gandt/userResourceManager, User:Guarapiranga/search-shortcuts and User:Bradv/Scripts/Superlinks haven't been updated for Vector 2022. You could be the one to change that!
- User:Elominius/gadget/media timer works, but its UI looks alien. Someone could improve it...
- To a lesser extent, the same goes for User:PrimeHunter/Search sort.js. I wish someone would integrate the sorts into the sort menu instead of adding 11 portlet links.
- We want...
- ...a mark-as-read button for Watchlyst Greybar Unsin
- ...a tool to automatically fix CAT:BROKENREFs, preferably a fork/addition to User:TheJJJunk/ARA
- ...a fix/fork of User:DannyS712/SectionRemover.js to make it work
Requested scripts
[edit]- A WP:3O requesting and responding tool, similar to Terasil's classic edit request tool
- A "bytes removed"/"added" filter on the user contribs page
- A review tool for WP:proposed deletions
- Mass patrol new pages by a user for use in WP:RFP/A
- ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests
New scripts
[edit]- Aaron Liu: Watchlyst Greybar Unsin is a rewrite of Ais's Watchlist Notifier with modern APIs and several new features such as not displaying watchlist items marked as seen (hence the name), not bolding diffs of unseen watchlist elements which doesn’t work properly anyways, displaying the rendered edit summary, proper display of log and creation actions and more links.
- Alexis Jazz: Factotum is a spiritual successor to reply-link with a host of extra features like section adding, link rewriting, regular expressions and more.
- User:Aveaoz/AutoMobileRedirect: This script will automatically redirect MobileFrontend (en.m.wikipedia) to normal Wikipedia. Unlike existing scripts, this one will actually check if your browser is mobile or not through its secret agent string, so you can stay logged in on mobile! Hooray screen estate!
- Chlod:
- Deputy is a first-of-its-kind copyright cleanup toolkit. It overrides the interface for Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations for easy case processing. It also includes the functionality of the following (also new) scripts:
- Attribution Notice Template Editor (ANTE) graphically modifies content attribution notices. It is the successor to User:Chlod/Scripts/CopiedTemplateEditor and supports more templates than {{copied}} ones.
- Infringement Assistant allows a user to hide sections of a page for suspected copyright violations and report the page to the appropriate Wikipedia:Copyright problems noticeboard.
- Deputy is a first-of-its-kind copyright cleanup toolkit. It overrides the interface for Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations for easy case processing. It also includes the functionality of the following (also new) scripts:
- User:Elominius/gadget/diff arrow keys allows navigation between diffs with the arrow keys. It also has a version that requires holding Ctrl with the arrow key.
- Enterprisey
- diff-permalink-2 allows quickly copying wikilinks to diff and permalink pages from those pages, a variation of existing script User:Enterprisey/diff-permalink
- archiver is a fork of Σ's Archiver with several bugfixes.
- /parent-cats highlights categories that are a subcategory of a category already included in a page's categories.
- User:Guarapiranga/accessKeysCheatSheet adds an access key shortcut to display all shortcuts based on code provided by Nardog and NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh.
- User:HungKhanh0106/ProperDisplay loads a bunch of fonts to add correct rendering supports for "esoteric" languages.
- User:Jeeputer/highlightPiped will make piped links irresistible (or else).
- User:Jerome Frank Disciple/curlyfixer.js adds an WP:AutoEd function that straightens curly quotes per MOS. That's right! Such a module was only made in the 14th year of AutoEd's existence! Configure away!
- Frequently link to Wikipedia on your websites yet find generating CC-BY credits to be such a hassle? Say no more! User:Luke10.27/attribute will automatically do it for ya and copy the credit to yer clipboard.
- User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft, a spiritual successor (i.e. fork) to Evad37's script, with a few bugs solved, and a host of extra features like check-boxes for choosing draftification reasons, multi-contributor notification, and appropriate warnings based on last edit time.
- Nardog
- /CopyCodeBlock: one of the most important operations for any scripter and script-user is to copy and paste. This script adds a copy button in the top right of every code block (not to be confused with <code>) that will, well, copy it to your clipboard!
- /RCMuter: Hide specific users, perhaps User:MediaWiki message delivery, from the Watchlist and Recent Changes.
- /VitalTopicon makes you see the vital article topicon on WP:vital articles.
- m:User:NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh/AceForLuaDebugConsole.js adds the Ace editor (a.k.a. the editor you see when editing JS, CSS and Lua on Wikimedia wikis) to the Lua debug console. "In my opinion, whoever designed it to be a plain <textarea> needs to seriously reconsider their decision."
- Novem Linguae
- DraftCleaner fixes formatting of new articles.
- GANReviewTool quickly and easily closes good article nominations.
- ReviewStatus displays whether or not a mainspace page is marked as reviewed.
- SpeciesHelper tries to add the correct speciesbox, category, taxonbar, and stub template to species articles.
- User:Opencooper/svgReplace and Tol's fork replaces all rasterized SVGs with their original SVG codes for your loading pleasures. Tell us which one is better!
- User:Phlsph7/HighlightUnreferencedPassages adds a button to highlight all unreferenced paragraphs in reds, and can even do it automatically.
- Still hate Vector 2022's floating TOC? User:Phlsph7/UnfoldedNumberedTOC(Vector2022) might make you give it a try.
- Quite a bit of pages at Special:WantedCategories either exist now or got removed. User:Qwerfjkl/scripts/hideUnwantedCategories automatically hides those.
- User:SuperHamster's Wikipedia:Tools/View it! generates a gallery of images for a given subject on any Wikimedia project utilizing Structured Data on Commons. Images can then be added as needed.
- Terasail
- ArticleInfo displays page information at the top of the page, directly below the title.
- /HeaderIcons takes away the Vector 2022 user dropdown and replaces it with all of the icons within, top level, right next to the Watchlist. One less click away! There's also an alternate version that uses text links instead of icons.
- ...and any more, all available at WP:US/L.
Due to budget and procrastination limitations, we've only had time to review the first ~39% of the scripts since last issue. Help us out here! Aaron Liu (talk) 13:24, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-02
[edit]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. [911]
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). [912][913]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-03
[edit]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. [914]
- 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. [915] - Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [916]
- You can now thank edits made by bots. [917]
- 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). [918][919]
- 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. [920]
- The
jquery.cookie
module was deprecated and replaced with themediawiki.cookie
module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed. [921]
Future changes
- Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-04
[edit]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. [922]
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). [923][924]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 60
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 60, November – December 2023
- Three new partners
- Google Scholar integration
- How to track partner suggestions
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --13:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
TheWikiWizard - February 2024
[edit]Humour
[edit]- Does editing Wikipedia burn calories? If it does, does it count as exercise? ;)
- TWW is back from being long dormant. It was a nice "Hibernation" lol.
Wiki(P/M)edia news
[edit]- Voting regarding the Universal Code of Conduct is taking place on Meta Wiki. More information can be found via the link
- EN Wikipedia has a few new Administrators following their successful RFA!
- Information on the upcoming Steward Election on Meta can be found here
- A new feature called Reference Previews has been created. More information: here
Editor's Notes
[edit]- I apologise for the delay, I was not able to edit until recently.
- I hope to have TWW published more frequently from this issue onwards. Ideally at least every 2 months. Since its near the end of the month, I decided to name this issue February.
- We are always looking for help! If you would like to help out, please let us know!
- Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
- Hope you enjoyed this issue! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 04:25, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
This issue was sent to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 04:28, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-05
[edit]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. [925]
- 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). [926][927]
- On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new Special:QrCode page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [928]
- 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 theskins
option instead. [929]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:29, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
Welcome to the drive!
[edit]Welcome, welcome, welcome John Broughton! I'm glad that you are joining the drive! Please, have a cup of WikiTea, and go cite some articles.
CactiStaccingCrane (talk)18:52, 1 February 2024 UTC [refresh]via JWB and Geardona (talk to me?)
Tech News: 2024-06
[edit]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". [930][931]
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). [932][933]
- Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [934]
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. [935][936]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Can you please assess the class rating of the article of Maya Ali as I have essentially redone the entirety of it. Thank you Iknowthingsaboutstuff1 (talk) 18:50, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Iknowthingsaboutstuff1: Done. You might want to revise this sentence:
- According to Maya Ali, her father was against her working in the entertainment industry and did not talk to her for six years and According to Maya Ali, his father was died in 2016 and she was in very gulit why she choose showbiz industry
- -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:04, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
- Oh my, I'm so sorry, I evidently didn't check clearly enough. I've altered the sentence. What do I have to do to get the article to B-Class? Iknowthingsaboutstuff1 (talk) 19:40, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Iknowthingsaboutstuff1: I've created a page - Talk:Maya Ali/B Class Discussion - with comments about wording and other issues. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:52, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you so much for taking time to make this! I’ve made all possible corrections but the resources available for Pakistani actors is very limited so I was unable to find anything more on Ali’s degree, but otherwise everything has been completed. Iknowthingsaboutstuff1 (talk) 00:56, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Iknowthingsaboutstuff1: I've created a page - Talk:Maya Ali/B Class Discussion - with comments about wording and other issues. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:52, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-07
[edit]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. [937][938][939] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [940][941]
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). [942][943]
- As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[944] 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. [945]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 05:46, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-08
[edit]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
- If you have the "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [946]
- There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
- Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
- The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB. [947]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar). [948][949]
- Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
- The CSS
filter
property can now be used in HTMLstyle
attributes in wikitext. [950]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 15:34, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-09
[edit]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 visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well. [951]
- The mw.config value
wgGlobalGroups
now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is:if (/globalgroupname/.test(mw.config.get("wgGlobalGroups")))
. [952]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 29 February (calendar). [953][954]
Future changes
- The right to change edit tags (
changetags
) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:21, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 24
[edit]Hello everyone, and welcome to the 24th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 24 December 2021. Uh-huh, we're finally covering the good ones among the rest! Aren't you excited? Remember to include a link in double brackets to the script's .js page when you install the script, so that we can see who uses the script in WhatLinksHere! The ScriptInstaller gadget automatically does this. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:00, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
[edit]- Making user scripts load faster by SD0001 is this month's featured script, which caches userscripts every day to eliminate the overhead caused by force-downloading the newest version of scripts every time you open a Wikipedia page. Despite being released in April 2021, our best script scouters have failed to locate it due to its omission from the US of L. For security reasons, the script only supports loading JavaScript pages.
Newly maintained scripts
[edit]After earthly attempts at improving the original have failed...
- Aaron Liu has created What redirects here from Guarapiranga/WhatRedirectsHere; his fork includes support for every MediaWiki wiki, corrected link positions, an access key, and some rudimentary translation.
- Ahecht has created a fork of SiBr4/TemplateSearch, which adds the "TP:" shortcut for "Template:" in the search box, and updated it to be compatible with Vector 2022.
- AquilaFasciata/goToTopFast is a much faster fork of the classic goToTop script that also adds compatibility for Minerva and Vector 2022.
- Mesidast/Tidy citations is a fork of Meteor sandwich yum/Tidy citations is a fork of Waldyrious/formatcitations. It configurably harmonizes whitespace and cleans up parameters in citation templates, descriptive edit summary included.
Improve a script
[edit]Unfortunately, this section has remained nearly identical. Help us out here!
- Many of our favorite scripts such as Fred Gandt/userResourceManager, Guarapiranga/search-shortcuts and Bradv/Superlinks haven't been updated for Vector 2022. You could be the one to change that!
- Elominius/media timer works, but its UI looks alien. Someone could improve it...
- To a lesser extent, the same goes for PrimeHunter/Search sort. I wish someone would integrate the sorts into the sort menu instead of adding 11 portlet links.
- We want...
- ...a mark-as-read button and watchlist notices support for Aaron Liu/Watchlyst Greybar Unsin
- ...a tool to automatically fix CAT:BROKENREFs, preferably a fork/addition to TheJJJunk/ARA
- ...a fix/fork of DannyS712/SectionRemover to make it work
Requested scripts
[edit]- A simple script to second or archive proposed deletions
- A script to auto-expand V22 ToC sections like this demo
- A WP:3O response tool that can automatically remove the relevant request from the 3O dashboard
- A byte filter to be split from Nux/LongTableFilters
- ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests
New scripts
[edit]- DannyS712/AbuseFilterMessageLinks add links to the "warn" and "disallow" messages in edit filters.
- Diegodlh/Web2Cit/script adds an option to use m:Web2Cit (which WP:ProveIt also uses) instead of mw:Citoid to generate citations in the Visual Editor.
- Dragoniez/SuppressEnterInForm stops you from accidentally submitting anything due to pressing enter while in the smaller box, and works on almost anything... except the InputBox element itself, used in subscription lists and the Signpost Crossword! Oh, the humanity!
- Doǵu/Adiutor (pictured) provides a nice, integrated interface to do some twinkley tasks such as copyvio detection, CSD tagging, and viewing the most recent diff.
- Eejit43 has quite the aesthetically pleasing scripts, all made in TypeScript.
- /afcrc-helper is a replacement for the unmaintained Enterprisey/AFCRHS and processes Redirects for Creation and Categories for Creation requests.
- /ajax-undo stops the "undo" button from taking you to another page while providing a text box to provide a reason for the revert.
- /redirect-helper (pictured) adds a much better interface for editing and redirects, including categorization, for which valid categories are dictated by /redirect-helper.json.
- /rmtr-helper helps process technical requested moves without being able to actually move them.
- Guycn2/UserInfoPopup (pictured) adds a flyout after the watchlist star on userspace pages that displays the common information you might use about a user.
- Jeeputer/editCounter, under userspace, adds a portlet link to count your edits by namespace, put them in a table, and put that table in a hardcoded subpage, all in the background.
- Hilst/Scripts/sectionLinks converts all section links to use the § sign, which are known to be preferred over the ugly # by 99% of the devils I've met.
- Moonythedwarf/extra-unreliable highlights phrases commonly used in spammed and POV'd paragraphs.
- NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh/FormattedEditRequest (pictured) generates a wikitext-formatted diff view of any changes you've made that you can copy and paste anywhere.
- PrimeHunter/Category source.js adds portlet links to tell you where a category for an article comes from and supports those from template transclusions.
- Qwerfjkl/massCFD creates mass WP:CfD nominations.
- Rublov/refspace highlights footnote spacing errors in red.
- Sophivorus's MiniEdit adds some nice, li'l buttons next to paragraphs to edit their wikitext with a minimal interface.
Edit-listings
[edit]- Dragoniez/ToollinkTweaks adds more and customizable links next to users in page history, logs, watchlist, recent changes, etc.
- Firefly/more-block-info optimizes the display of rangeblocks in contribution pages. Doesn't work outside the English locale of any wiki, unfortunately.
- Ingenuity/AbuseFilterContribs adds the edit filters that an edit tripped (if any) to a user's contributions page.
- Nardog/ExamineMore makes it so the paging at Special:AbuseFilter/examine actually works, pending a fix to T292764.
- NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh/AjaxLoader makes paging links (e.g. older 50, 500, newest) load without refreshing and makes you realize how slow your internet actually is.
Appearance-ricing
[edit]- Ahecht/RedirectID adds the redirect target to all redirects. For all the WP:NAVPOPS haters. (Do these exist?)
- Dragoniez/MarkBLockedGlobal: Remember the "strike blocked usernames" gadget? Now you can use a red, dotted line to highlight rangeblocks and global locks!
- GhostInTheMachine/GraphicReplyLink replaces the [ reply ] link with 💬, which is some sort of rainy cloud I guess?[Joke]
- Jonesey/common (pictured) has some styles to overhaul your Vector 2022 experience. It reduces padding everywhere, and makes the top bar animation faster.
- Aaron Liu/V22 is a fork that narrows the sidebars instead of upheaving them, reverts the January 2024 dropdown changes, and restores the old page-link color for links that don't go outside the current wiki.
- Nardog: SmartDiff is a spiritual successor to Enterprisey/fancy-diffs. It makes the page title part of links in diffs clickable, along with template and parser function calls. Unnamed parameters can be configured per template to also be linked. All links are styled based on the normal CSS classes of rendered links.
- Phlsph7/ClassicalTOC (Vector 2022) reinserts the inline table of contents to pages under Vector 2022.
- For the paranoid: Rublov/anonymize replaces your username at the top of the screen with the generic "User page" text. Remember, it is your duty to persuade everyone that editing is an honor.
- Sideswipe9th/Vector 2022 Floating Tools Menu moves the Page Tools menu to the left and makes it float along with the table of contents.
- Sm8ps/SectionEditing makes pressing Tab ↹ toggle the visibility of the tiny [ edit ] links next to section headings.. Not a great name, eh?
- The wub/tocExpandAll adds a button on top of the floating ToC to expand or collapse subheadings.
Permissions required!
[edit]- Ahecht/potd-helper: A script to post the picture of the day. A powerful upgrade for your mop.
- Dragoniez
- /AjaxBlock provides a dialog box for easy input of reasons while blocking users.
- /Selective Rollback (pictured) provides a dialog box to customize rollback edit summaries and does them without reloading the page. Seriously, why doesn't MediaWiki already do this?
- Theleekycauldron/DYK promoter automates (nearly) all the work needed to post a DYK hook.
QOL shortcuts
[edit]- BrandonXLF/SVGEditor lets you edit any file that is an SVG, straight from the file page.
- DanCherek/UAABotRemover adds a portlet link to enable a removal shortcut of faulty reports from Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention.
- DreamRimmer/BlankUserPage helps you destroy webhost-ers' hopes and dreams with a user-friendly dialog box.
- ESanders (WMF)/commentlinks.js adds a "link" button right after the "reply" button while the WMF struggles to reach feature parity with Convenient Discussions.
- Isaacl/copy-comment-link-to-clipboard does exactly what you'd think it does, but in Wikitext.
- FenrisAureus/SimpleStatus adds a shortcut at the top to edit your /Status subpage while providing a pre-made template.
- Fred Gandt/addCloneClearButtonAboveScributoConsole: What a mouthful! Yet all it does (no offense) is add another Clear button on top of the Lua module debug console.
- Guarapiranga/GlobalWatchlistLink adds a link to metawiki:Special:GlobalWatchlist next to the normal watchlist.
- Nardog
- PasteToCommons adds a paste handler to upload the pasted image to Wikimedia Commons.
- Unpipe tries to detect violations of WP:NOPIPE and fix them as much as possible.
- Ohconfucius/tometricunits automatically adds unit conversions of imperial units in brackets after their uses per MOS:UNITS.
- Suntooooth
- /flickrsearch adds a portlet link to search for uploadable flickr images about the subject.
- /randomincategory adds a portlet link when on Category pages to go to a random page in the current category.
- Vghfr/EasyTemplates adds a portlet link to automatically insert some of the most common inline {{fix}} templates.
Yes, we're just doing 'em as we go now. Thanks for reading through this looong issue, if you did! I'm sure this'll send a record for the longest issue ev-ah. You may need to wait even longer for the last issue, as our reserve of old-y and goodie scripts have ran out... We encourage you to try and do some of the requests or improvement tasks. See you in Summer, hopefully!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 2 March 2024
[edit]- News and notes: Wikimedia enters US Supreme court hearings as "the dolphin inadvertently caught in the net"
- Recent research: Images on Wikipedia "amplify gender bias"
- In the media: The Scottish Parliament gets involved, a wikirace on live TV, and the Foundation's CTO goes on record
- Obituary: Vami_IV
- Traffic report: Supervalentinefilmbowlday
- WikiCup report: High-scoring WikiCup first round comes to a close
Tech News: 2024-10
[edit]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
Special:Book
page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension. [955] - Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
- Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
- Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The
Gadget
andGadget_definition
namespaces andgadgets-definition-edit
user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made. [956] - A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [957]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar). [958][959]
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. 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. [960]
- The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add
?useparsoid=1
to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 61
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 61, January – February 2024
- Bristol University Press and British Online Archives now available
- 1Lib1Ref results
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-11
[edit]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 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar). [961][962]
- After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed. [963]
- The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [964]
- Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost. [965]
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. 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. [966][967]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-12
[edit]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 notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher. [968]
- IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers. [969]
- The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [970][971][972]
- Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [973]
Problems
- RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now. [974]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar). [975][976]
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [977][978]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 17:37, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-13
[edit]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
- An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar). [979][980]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 18:54, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-14
[edit]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
- Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [981]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [982][983]
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 03:33, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
New Pages Patrol newsletter April 2024
[edit]Hello John Broughton,
Backlog update: The October drive reduced the article backlog from 11,626 to 7,609 and the redirect backlog from 16,985 to 6,431! Congratulations to Schminnte, who led with over 2,300 points.
Following that, New Page Patrol organized another backlog drive for articles in January 2024. The January drive started with 13,650 articles and reduced the backlog to 7,430 articles. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 1,340 points in this drive.
Looking at the graph, it seems like backlog drives are one of the only things keeping the backlog under control. Another backlog drive is being planned for May. Feel free to participate in the May backlog drive planning discussion.
It's worth noting that both queues are gradually increasing again and are nearing 14,034 articles and 22,540 redirects. We encourage you to keep contributing, even if it's just a single patrol per day. Your support is greatly appreciated!
2023 Awards
Onel5969 won the 2023 cup with 17,761 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 50/day. There was one Platinum Award (10,000+ reviews), 2 Gold Awards (5000+ reviews), 6 Silver (2000+), 8 Bronze (1000+), 30 Iron (360+) and 70 more for the 100+ barnstar. Hey man im josh led on redirect reviews by clearing 36,175 of them. For the full details, see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone for their efforts in reviewing!
WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers deployed the rewritten NewPagesFeed in October, and then gave the NewPagesFeed a slight visual facelift in November. This concludes most major work to Special:NewPagesFeed, and most major work by the WMF Moderator Tools team, who wrapped up their major work on PageTriage in October. The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers will continue small work on PageTriage as time permits.
Recruitment: A couple of the coordinators have been inviting editors to become reviewers, via mass-messages to their talk pages. If you know someone who you'd think would make a good reviewer, then a personal invitation to them would be great. Additionally, if there are Wikiprojects that you are active on, then you can add a post there asking participants to join NPP. Please be careful not to double invite folks that have already been invited.
Reviewing tip: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages within their most familiar subjects can use the regularly updated NPP Browser tool.
Reminders:
- You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Pages Patrol Discord.
- Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:28, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-15
[edit]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
- Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
- A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
- Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check. [984][985]
- Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [986]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [987][988]
- New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [989]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-16
[edit]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
- Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed. [990][991]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar). [992][993]
- Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked). [994]
- A new variable
page_last_edit_age
will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made. [995]
Future changes
- Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
- Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the
abuse_filter
andabuse_filter_history
tables. Some queries might need to be updated. [996]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:27, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
New page patrol May 2024 Backlog drive
[edit]New Page Patrol | May 2024 Articles Backlog Drive | |
| |
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:14, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Reassessment of Rashmika Mandanna to GA Class
[edit]Hi, I was wondering if you could please reassess the article for Rashmika Mandanna as I have made alterations that I believe allow it to qualify for GA-Class, if these are not enough, could you please provide notes as to where I can make further improvements? Thanks. 19Arham (talk) 20:06, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
- @19Arham: I'm not a GA reviewer, so I can't help you directly. But there is a standard process for getting an article assessed as GA-class - see Wikipedia:Good article nominations. I recommend that you post something there. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:46, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
- Oh, okay, thank you anyway 19Arham (talk) 06:54, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-17
[edit]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 this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention. [997]
- You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [998][999]
Future changes
- This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia. [1,000]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:25, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 62
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 62, March – April 2024
- IEEE and Haaretz now available
- Let's Connect Clinics about The Wikipedia Library
- Spotlight and Wikipedia Library tips
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Growth News, April 2024
[edit]The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.
If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Community Configuration
[edit]Growth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig
. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.
An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.
In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.
Experiment Results
[edit]Add a Image experiment analysis results
The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:
- The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
- The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
- The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
- A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).
Personalized praise experiment results
This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)
English donors encouraged to try editing
As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)
Future work
[edit]Annual Plan
The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)
Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 April 2024
[edit]- In the media: Censorship and wikiwashing looming over RuWiki, edit wars over San Francisco politics and another wikirace on live TV
- News and notes: A sigh of relief for open access as Italy makes a slight U-turn on their cultural heritage reproduction law
- WikiConference report: WikiConference North America 2023 in Toronto recap
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Newspapers (Not WP:NOTNEWS)
- Recent research: New survey of over 100,000 Wikipedia users
- Traffic report: O.J., cricket and a three body problem
Tech News: 2024-18
[edit]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 appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks. [1,001]
- Seven new wikis have been created:
- You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups. [1,009]
- Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.
Problems
- Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using
mapstyle="osm"
. This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed. [1,010]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar). [1,011][1,012]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 03:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-19
[edit]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 appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [1,013][1,014]
- Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the
SiteAdminHelper
. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [1,015] - Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services. [1,016]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [1,017][1,018]
- When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs". [1,019]
Future changes
- A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the latest update regarding this extension.
- Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally. [1,020]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:41, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-20
[edit]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 Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word
__EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__
to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [1,021] - If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [1,022]
- Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the
alt=
attribute. This is identical in usage to thealt=
attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [1,023] - The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [1,024]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [1,025][1,026]
- The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [1,027]
Future changes
- In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [1,028]
- Two columns of the
pagelinks
database table (pl_namespace
andpl_title
) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the newlinktarget
table instead (lt_namespace
andlt_title
). In your existing SQL queries:- Replace
JOIN pagelinks
withJOIN linktarget
andpl_
withlt_
in theON
statement - Below that add
JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
- See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [1,029][1,030]
- Replace
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-21
[edit]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 Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [1,031]
- New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [1,032][1,033]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [1,034][1,035]
- The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for May 27
[edit]An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Chase Oliver, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page The Hill.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 05:57, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-22
[edit]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
- Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
- In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
- Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes:
.collapsible
,.multicol
,.reflist
,.coordinates
,.topicon
. Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar). [1,036][1,037]
- When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules. [1,038]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:13, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-23
[edit]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
- It is now possible for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript. Documentation is available. [1,039]
- The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "
MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category
" to "MediaWiki:Wikihiero-usage-tracking-category
". [1,040] - One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Kadazandusun (
w:dtp:
) [1,041]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 June. It will be on all wikis from 6 June (calendar). [1,042][1,043]
Future changes
- Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:32, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-24
[edit]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 software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [1,044]
- The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
- The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the
mw-reference-text
class, Parsoid now also adds thereference-text
class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available. [1,045]
Problems
- There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed. [1,046]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (calendar). [1,047][1,048]
- The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a
<span class="mw-cite-backlink">
wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available. [1,049] - On multilingual wikis that use the
<translate>
system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it. [1,050]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:18, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-25
[edit]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
- People who attempt to add an external link in the visual editor will now receive immediate feedback if they attempt to link to a domain that a project has decided to block. Please see Edit check for more details. [1,051]
- The new Community Configuration extension is available on Test Wikipedia. This extension allows communities to customize specific features to meet their local needs. Currently only Growth features are configurable, but the extension will support other Community Configuration use cases in the future. [1,052][1,053]
- The dark mode beta feature is now available on category and help pages, as well as more special pages. There may be contrast issues. Please report bugs on the project talk page. [1,054]
Problems
- Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center. [1,055]
- Last week, styling updates were made to the Vector 2022 skin. This caused unforeseen issues with templates, hatnotes, and images. Changes to templates and hatnotes were reverted. Most issues with images were fixed. If you still see any, report them here. [1,056]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar). [1,057][1,058]
- Starting June 18, the Reference Edit Check will be deployed to a new set of Wikipedias. This feature is intended to help newcomers and to assist edit-patrollers by inviting people who are adding new content to a Wikipedia article to add a citation when they do not do so themselves. During a test at 11 wikis, the number of citations added more than doubled when Reference Check was shown to people. Reference Check is community configurable. [1,059]
- Mailing lists will be unavailable for roughly two hours on Tuesday 10:00–12:00 UTC. This is to enable migration to a new server and upgrade its software. [1,060]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-26
[edit]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
- Editors will notice that there have been some changes to the background color of text in the diff view, and the color of the byte-change numbers, last week. These changes are intended to make text more readable in both light mode and dark mode, and are part of a larger effort to increase accessibility. You can share your comments or questions on the project talkpage. [1,061]
- The text colors that are used for visited-links, hovered-links, and active-links, were also slightly changed last week to improve their accessibility in both light mode and dark mode. [1,062]
Problems
- You can copy permanent links to talk page comments by clicking on a comment's timestamp. This feature did not always work when the topic title was very long and the link was used as a wikitext link. This has been fixed. Thanks to Lofhi for submitting the bug. [1,063]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar). [1,064][1,065]
- Starting 26 June, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link at English Wikipedia, making this feature available for you to use at all wikis. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they were linked to, even if this comment has since been moved elsewhere. You can read more about this feature on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [1,066]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:30, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-27
[edit]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
- Over the next three weeks, dark mode will become available for all users, both logged-in and logged-out, starting with the mobile web version. This fulfils one of the top-requested community wishes, and improves low-contrast reading and usage in low-light settings. As part of these changes, dark mode will also work on User-pages and Portals. There is more information in the latest Web team update. [1,067]
- Logged-in users can now set global preferences for the text-size and dark-mode, thanks to a combined effort across Foundation teams. This allows Wikimedians using multiple wikis to set up a consistent reading experience easily, for example by switching between light and dark mode only once for all wikis. [1,068]
- If you use a very old web browser some features might not work on the Wikimedia wikis. This affects Internet Explorer 11 and versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari older than 2016. This change makes it possible to use new CSS features and to send less code to all readers. [1,069][1,070]
- Wikipedia Admins can customize local wiki configuration options easily using Community Configuration. Community Configuration was created to allow communities to customize how some features work, because each language wiki has unique needs. At the moment, admins can configure Growth features on their home wikis, in order to better recruit and retain new editors. More options will be provided in the coming months. [1,071]
- Editors interested in language issues that are related to Unicode standards, can now discuss those topics at a new conversation space in MediaWiki.org. The Wikimedia Foundation is now a member of the Unicode Consortium, and the coordination group can collaboratively review the issues discussed and, where appropriate, bring them to the attention of the Unicode Consortium.
- One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Mandailing (
w:btm:
) [1,072]
Problems
- Editors can once again click on links within the visual editor's citation-preview, thanks to a bug fix by the Editing Team. [1,073]
Future changes
- Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 2 weeks. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:57, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 July 2024
[edit]- News and notes: WMF board elections and fundraising updates
- Special report: Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification vote underway, new Council may surpass power of Board
- In focus: How the Russian Wikipedia keeps it clean despite having just a couple dozen administrators
- Discussion report: Wikipedians are hung up on the meaning of Madonna
- In the media: War and information in war and politics
- Sister projects: On editing Wikisource
- Opinion: Etika: a Pop Culture Champion
- Gallery: Spokane Willy's photos
- Humour: A joke
- Recent research: Is Wikipedia Politically Biased? Perhaps
- Traffic report: Talking about you and me, and the games people play
Tech News: 2024-28
[edit]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
- At the Wikimedia Foundation a new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graph with more secure, easy to use, and extensible Chart. You can subscribe to the newsletter to get notified about new project updates and other news about Chart.
- The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on your wiki. This extension helps in managing and making events more visible, giving Event organizers the ability to use tools like the Event registration tool. To learn more about the deployment status and how to request this extension for your wiki, visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-wiki.
- Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
- Thank you to all of the authors who have contributed to MediaWiki Core. As a result of these contributions, the percentage of authors contributing more than 5 patches has increased by 25% since last year, which helps ensure the sustainability of the platform for the Wikimedia projects.
Problems
- A problem with the color of the talkpage tabs always showing as blue, even for non-existent pages which should have been red, affecting the Vector 2022 skin, has been fixed.
Future changes
- The Trust and Safety Product team wants to introduce temporary accounts with as little disruption to tools and workflows as possible. Volunteer developers, including gadget and user-script maintainers, are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. The team has created documentation explaining how to do the update. Learn more.
Tech News survey
- Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 1 more week. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-29
[edit]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 survey
- Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 3 more days. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikimedia developers can now officially continue to use both Gerrit and GitLab, due to a June 24 decision by the Wikimedia Foundation to support software development on both platforms. Gerrit and GitLab are both code repositories used by developers to write, review, and deploy the software code that supports the MediaWiki software that the wiki projects are built on, as well as the tools used by editors to create and improve content. This decision will safeguard the productivity of our developers and prevent problems in code review from affecting our users. More details are available in the Migration status page.
- The Wikimedia Foundation seeks applicants for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). This group will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. Council members will evaluate and consult on the movement's product and technical activities, so that we develop multi-generational projects. We are looking for a range of technical contributors across the globe, from a variety of Wikimedia projects. Please apply here by August 10.
- Editors with rollback user-rights who use the Wikipedia App for Android can use the new Edit Patrol features. These features include a new feed of Recent Changes, related links such as Undo and Rollback, and the ability to create and save a personal library of user talk messages to use while patrolling. If your wiki wants to make these features available to users who do not have rollback rights but have reached a certain edit threshold, you can contact the team. You can read more about this project on Diff blog.
- Editors who have access to The Wikipedia Library can once again use non-open access content in SpringerLinks, after the Foundation contacted them to restore access. You can read more about this and 21 other community-submitted tasks that were completed last week.
Changes later this week
- This week, dark mode will be available on a number of Wikipedias, both desktop and mobile, for logged-in and logged-out users. Interface admins and user script maintainers are encouraged to check gadgets and user scripts in the dark mode, to find any hard-coded colors and fix them. There are some recommendations for dark mode compatibility to help.
Future changes
- Next week, functionaries, volunteers maintaining tools, and software development teams are invited to test the temporary accounts feature on testwiki. Temporary accounts is a feature that will help improve privacy on the wikis. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page. [1,074]
- Editors who upload files cross-wiki, or teach other people how to do so, may wish to join a Wikimedia Commons discussion. The Commons community is discussing limiting who can upload files through the cross-wiki upload/Upload dialog feature to users auto-confirmed on Wikimedia Commons. This is due to the large amount of copyright violations uploaded this way. There is a short summary at Commons:Cross-wiki upload and discussion at Commons:Village Pump.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:28, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 63
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 63, May – June 2024
- One new partner
- 1Lib1Ref
- Spotlight: References check
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:15, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 July 2024
[edit]- Discussion report: Internet users flock to Wikipedia to debate its image policy over Trump raised-fist photo
- News and notes: Wikimedia community votes to ratify Movement Charter; Wikimedia Foundation opposes ratification
- Obituary: JamesR
- Crossword: Vaguely bird-shaped crossword
Tech News: 2024-30
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature News
- Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
- Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [1,075]
- Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [1,076]
- Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone.
- Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [1,077]
Project Updates
- Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.
Learn more
- Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff.
- How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin and Add a Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-31
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Editors using the Visual Editor in languages that use non-Latin characters for numbers, such as Hindi, Manipuri and Eastern Arabic, may notice some changes in the formatting of reference numbers. This is a side effect of preparing a new sub-referencing feature, and will also allow fixing some general numbering issues in Visual Editor. If you notice any related problems on your wiki, please share details at the project talkpage.
Bugs status
- Some logged-in editors were briefly unable to edit or load pages last week. These errors were mainly due to the addition of new linter rules which led to caching problems. Fixes have been applied and investigations are continuing.
- Editors can use the IP Information tool to get information about IP addresses. This tool is available as a Beta Feature in your preferences. The tool was not available for a few days last week, but is now working again. Thank you to Shizhao for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
- There are new features and improvements to Phabricator from the Release Engineering and Collaboration Services teams, and some volunteers, including: the search systems, the new task creation system, the login systems, the translation setup which has resulted in support for more languages (thanks to Pppery), and fixes for many edge-case errors. You can read details about these and other improvements in this summary.
- There is an update on the Charts project. The team has decided which visualization library to use, which chart types to start focusing on, and where to store chart definitions.
- One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Czech (
voy:cs:
) [1,078]
Learn more
- There is a new Wikimedia Foundation data center in São Paulo, Brazil which helps to reduce load times.
- There is new user research on problems with the process of uploading images.
- Commons Impact Metrics are now available via data dumps and API.
- The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:08, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Growth News, July 2024
[edit]Community Configuration
[edit]The Growth team released Community Configuration at all Wikipedias. You can access it at Special:CommunityConfiguration
.
This new special page replaces Special:EditGrowthConfig
. For now, all Growth features can be configured using Community Configuration. Configuration for AutoModerator (T365046) and other features will be available in the future.
You can help with translations. The interface translation is done at Translatewiki.net. You can also help translate the documentation.
If you attend Wikimania 2024, please join us for the session about Community configuration's future!
Current work
[edit]Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We will add a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version available to beta wikis. We will conduct an A/B test at our pilot wikis using the new Metrics Platform. We still welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
Future work
[edit]Increase constructive activation on mobile
As part of the Growth team 2024/2025 Annual Plan, the Growth team will explore various ways to increase the percentage of newcomers who successfully start editing.
Editing a Wikipedia page requires too much context and patience. It means many trial and error for newcomers to contribute, meaning a steeper learning curve and potential discouraging reverts. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks). The Growth team will primarily focus on Structured Tasks, while working closely with the Editing team to ensure our work integrates well with Edit Check.
Stay informed
[edit]Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:08, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 25
[edit]Hey there, welcome to the 25th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 1 March 2024. We've got a ton of wonderful editors taking back their pitchforks today. Don't worry, for they come in peace, to forcibly fix and extend existing scripts you use with sheer passion. There's so many, them forks have got what's basically their own column now! gift us with some rows before it's too late Aaron Liu (talk) 04:01, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
[edit]- inline-diff-inline-patrol by Ponor is this edition's featured script. By loading diffs inline on every page that shows a list of changes, it implements the 2023 community wish m:Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Admins and patrollers/Inline diffs and inline patrol. Hopefully we won't need this script anymore soon, with the WMF's focus on the backlog...
Improve a script
[edit]- Many of our favorite scripts such as Fred Gandt/userResourceManager, Guarapiranga/search-shortcuts and Bradv/Superlinks haven't been updated for Vector 2022. You could be the one to change that!
- Elominius/media timer works, but its UI looks alien. Someone could improve it...
- To a lesser extent, the same goes for PrimeHunter/Search sort. I wish someone would integrate the sorts into the sort menu instead of adding 11 portlet links.
- We want...
- ...watchlist notices support for Aaron Liu/Watchlyst Greybar Unsin
- ...a tool to automatically fix CAT:BROKENREFs, preferably a fork/addition to TheJJJunk/ARA
- ...a fix/fork of DannyS712/SectionRemover to make it work
Requested scripts
[edit]- Automatically delink all duplicate links within the same section per MOS:LINKONCE.
- Collapsible parentheses in body text, which had a ridiculously long original request title and was accidentally moved to WP:US/L by me. Oops!
- An easily configurable script to add a link to the #p-vector-user-menu-overflow portlet with a name, target, and icon. This one should be a relatively easier one. I would do it myself, but I'm too busy rotting away on Celeste (video game).
- Preview an edit under the mobile viewport on desktop, with perhaps MediaWiki:Gadget-mobile-sidebar.js used for inspiration.
- ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests. Jeeputer and Nardog have been the most active on the page in the past five months.
Updated scripts
[edit]- After the RIIJ update, Aaron Liu: Watchlyst Greybar Unsin has a dismiss button that allows you to mark an item as read in one click and cycle to the next Watchlist item.
- Lordseriouspig/StatusChangerImproved is just like Enterprisey's script, except you select your status from a dropdown instead of cycling through them with a button. The WMF operates out of car-centric infrastructure anyway. Shame!
Newly maintained scripts
[edit]- Aaron Liu has created Duplinks from Evad37/duplinks-alt; his fork adds a config variable to automatically highlight duplicate links on the loading of any page where the portlet link would've appeared.
- BilledMammal/Move+ expands the powers of User:TheTVExpert/rmCloser to include common procedures done with the art of moving pages.
- On a holiday? Somewhere? Gotta learn ye ABCs? CanonNi/StatusSetter puts the fun into Enterprisey/StatusChanger with a quadruple more statuses. That starts with a C!
- In our continuing trend(s?), DaxServer/DiscussionCloser forks DannyS712/DiscussionCloser to make it work. Sadly, this is the end of our lexicographic combo.
- Andrybak:
- user-tabs-on-contribs is a fork of User:Enterprisey/user-tabs-on-contribs for Vector 2022.
- Archiver is a fork of User:Enterprisey/archiver with automatic calculation of the destination archive subpage and with support for non-Vector skins.
- Quite coincidentally, Elli/OneClickArchiver has been forked from User:Equazcion/OneClickArchiver to work with the mw:Heading HTML changes.
- FlightTime/OneClickArchiver forks the same thing but also no longer nonsensically prepends {{clear}} to page archives.
New scripts
[edit]- Aaron Liu: MoveTop adds a different padlock topicon for each level of move-protection.
- Andrybak/Not around can help you mark talk pages of inactive users with {{not around}}.
- BrandonXLF/AddCopied automatically tags talk pages of pages you've copied between with {{copied}}.
- Bugghost/UserRoleIndicator adds text labels (which default to emoji) to user links that label the user's usergroups. Wow, that's a mouthful
- CanonNi/AlertAssistant adds a Twinkle-style dialog for alerting users about contentious topics.
- CFA/AttributeTranslation automatically tags articles translated from other places with appropriate attribution.
- In the defense of the 'pedia, the humble Jeeputer/defconIndicator adds the WP:WIKIDEFCON status to the toolbar.
- Tired of staring at a bunch of filtering text and waiting for darn filter logs to load? Msz2001/AbuseFilter analyzer can parse abuse filters into a visual syntax tree and evaluate locally on-demand!
- Polygnotus/DuplicateReferences finds references with the same link and displays the number of them along with a button to add the {{duplicated citations}} tag under the references section. Being lazy has never been easier!
- fastest gun on the net Ponor/really-quick-block really quick add to contribution lists three buttons awesome
- TheTechie/Help Me Tool is a quick and easy way of responding to {{help me}} requests.
- Per MOS:CONFORM, ZKang123/TitleCaseConverter converts all citation titles to... title case, unfortunately.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin July Issue 2
[edit]Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues
- Where to from here? A message from Wikimedia Foundation CEO, Maryana Iskander.
- The program for Wikimania Katowice (7–10 August 2024) is now live! Register now to attend virtually!
- Are you speaking at Wikimania? Here are some resources for speakers.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org
- The Foundation recently opened our first data center in South America. Read about how it is already lowering load times.
- Feature updates from the Tech News: Stewards can now globally block accounts; Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest; and interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as “Pending Changes”) is improved.
- Dark mode will transform Wikipedia's accessibility. Interface admins and user script maintainers are encouraged to check gadgets and user scripts in the dark mode, to find any hard-coded colors and fix them.
- Measure the impact of Wikimedia Commons with Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard, now available via data dumps and API.
- Key findings from user research about confusion in uploading images to Wikipedia.
- This month’s Wikimedia Research Showcase highlighted the impact machine translation has on both content and readers of Wikipedia and provided interesting insights on how to overcome related challenges. Watch the recording.
- The Charts project officially kicked off. The goal of this new initiative is to restore basic data visualization capabilities to the wikis. Check out the project page and follow our progress on Phabricator.
- The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on other wikis. This extension helps manage and make events more visible. Learn about how to request this extension.
- The Campaigns Product & Programs teams have launched a consultation on WikiProjects and other forms of collaboration on the wikis. They want to understand why they work (or don’t work) for some Wikimedia communities, and they want to learn what can be done to improve the experience. Everyone is encouraged to share their feedback.
- Are you a technical contributor? Check out the latest Technical Community Newsletter.
Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta
- The Wikimania Core Organizing Team (COT) for 2025 is delighted to announce that the 20th Wikimania will be hosted in Nairobi, Kenya.
- The Wikipedia Library secured new partnerships with Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Central European University Press, and l’Informé and is adding more content collections in the library.
- Three new A Wiki Minute videos have been released which address reader privacy and content management on Wikipedia, as well as how Wikipedia differs from social media platforms. Learn how A Wiki Minute videos have helped increase awareness about our work.
- The Committee Support Team year-in-review and reflections.
- A new 20-minute audio interview about the WikiLearn platform with Asaf Bartov, in an episode of the WikipediaPodden podcast.
- More of the Wikipedia core policies curriculum developed for the Africa Growth Pilot is available for review. After edits and improvements by the community, recorded videos would become a permanent core policies course on WikiLearn.
- One new wiki has been created: Wikivoyage in Czech.
Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- Voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now until August 10. Learn more about voting and voter eligibility.
- US Supreme Court ruling on NetChoice cases: What does it mean for Wikipedia?
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports
- Announcing the 2023-2024 Research Fund Grantees and their funded projects.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- The outcomes of the June Board meeting are published on Meta. Agenda for the August meeting is here.
- Welcoming new affiliates: Recognition of Wikimedistas Wayuu User Group, Wikimedia Community of Togo User Group, and Wikimedians of Singapore User Group.
- The Board of Trustees selection pre-onboarding and campaign period is open from July 25 to August 26.
- Foundation Trustee Dariusz Jemelniak was appointed to the Governing Board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, established as part of the EU’s key funding program for research and innovation.
- Movement Charter voter feedback: All comments are now on Meta-wiki (65 comments from the affiliates voters and 447 comments from the individual voters).
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:
- Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
- Regions: Central and Eastern Europe
Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
MediaWiki message delivery 21:48, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-32
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Two new parser functions will be available this week:
{{#dir}}
and{{#bcp47}}
. These will reduce the need forTemplate:Dir
andTemplate:BCP47
on Commons and allow us to drop 100 million rows from the "what links here" database. Editors at any wiki that use these templates, can help by replacing the templates with these new functions. The templates at Commons will be updated during the Hackathon at Wikimania. [1,079][1,080] - Communities can request the activation of the visual editor on entire namespaces where discussions sometimes happen (for instance Wikipedia: or Wikisource: namespaces) if they understand the known limitations. For discussions, users can already use DiscussionTools in these namespaces.
- The tracking category "Pages using Timeline" has been renamed to "Pages using the EasyTimeline extension" in TranslateWiki. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match.
Project updates
- Editors who help to organize WikiProjects and similar on-wiki collaborations, are invited to share ideas and examples of successful collaborations with the Campaigns and Programs teams. You can fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage. The teams are particularly looking for details about successful collaborations on non-English wikis.
- The new parser is being rolled out on Wikivoyage wikis over the next few months. The English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikivoyage were switched to Parsoid last week. For more information, see Parsoid/Parser Unification.
Learn more
- There will be more than 200 sessions at Wikimania this week. Here is a summary of some of the key sessions related to the product and technology area.
- The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available.
- The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New design previews for Translatable pages; Updates about MinT for Wiki Readers; the release of Translation dumps; and more.
- The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available.
- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:41, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-33
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- AbuseFilter editors and maintainers can now make a CAPTCHA show if a filter matches an edit. This allows communities to quickly respond to spamming by automated bots. [1,081]
- Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change by the Trust and Safety Product Team, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.
Project updates
- Nominations are open on Wikitech for new members to refresh the Toolforge standards committee. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open until at least 2024-08-26.
- One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in West Coast Bajau (
w:bdr:
) [1,082]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 August 2024
[edit]- In the media: Portland pol profile paid for from public purse
- In focus: Twitter marks the spot
- News and notes: Another Wikimania has concluded.
- Special report: Nano or just nothing: Will nano go nuclear?
- Opinion: HouseBlaster's RfA debriefing
- Traffic report: Ball games, movies, elections, but nothing really weird
- Humour: I'm proud to be a template
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin August Issue 1
[edit]Special Wikimania issue This is a special Wikimania issue of the Bulletin. We'll be back to our regular format in the next issue
- Catch up on missed sessions of Wikimania Katowice or revisit your favourites directly from the program, or review the day-long streams on YouTube: Day 1 streams, Day 2 streams, Day 3 streams, Day 4 streams.
- The Wikimedian of the Year Awards at Wikimania paid tribute to amazing Wikimedians who have made significant contributions to the movement. Learn about all of this year's winners.
- Daily highlights from Wikimania: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.
- Winners of the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award was announced at Wikimania.
- Highlights of product and tech sessions on Wikimania with links to description and recording.
- The Open Conversation with the Trustees at Wikimania hosted breakout discussions about the Movement Charter, affiliate strategy and hubs, the proposal for a Global Resource Distribution Committee (hybrid table--had streaming and is available to watch back online), the Product/Tech Advisory Council & Product/Tech priorities, building a sustainable revenue strategy for the movement: online fundraising, Wikimedia Enterprise and the Wikimedia Endowment, and responding to emerging threats to free knowledge: litigation, censorship, disinformation, and trust in an election year.
- Catch up on Foundation-led sessions from Wikimania on safety and information integrity: Protecting Children on-Wiki: a Child Rights Solutions Workshop, Information Integrity during Elections: Collective effort to address mis and disinformation, Policy Advocacy Showcase: Stories of policy advocacy work in the movement and future trends.
- Wikimania 2024 in Poland celebrates global volunteers who make Wikipedia and sister projects possible.
Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues
- Language Community Meeting: Have topics to share or discuss? Add agenda here. (August 30 at 15:00 UTC.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org
- Two new parser functions and more recent changes on Tech News.
- Help us better understand WikiProjects or similar online collaboration spaces. Fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage.
- Parsoid deployed on first production wikis and more updates on MediaWiki Product Insights.
- Applications to join the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) are extended until September 16.
Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta
- The 4th edition of the Language & Internationalization newsletter (Aug 2024) is available.
- Reviving history and spreading the Spirit of Wikisource Loves Manuscripts (WILMA) in Naga City, the Philippines and Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum, Global Digital Compact, and Anti-Disinformation Repository: Highlights from the Global Advocacy Team.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:
- Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
- Regions: Central and Eastern Europe
Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
MediaWiki message delivery 21:32, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-34
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Editors who want to re-use references but with different details such as page numbers, will be able to do so by the end of 2024, using a new sub-referencing feature. You can read more about the project and how to test the prototype.
- Editors using tracking categories to identify which pages use specific extensions may notice that six of the categories have been renamed to make them more easily understood and consistent. These categories are automatically added to pages that use specialized MediaWiki extensions. The affected names are for: DynamicPageList, Kartographer, Phonos, RSS, Score, WikiHiero. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match. Thanks to Pppery for these improvements. [1,083]
- Technical volunteers who edit modules and want to get a list of the categories used on a page, can now do so using the
categories
property ofmw.title objects
. This enables wikis to configure workflows such as category-specific edit notices. Thanks to SD001 for these improvements. [1,084][1,085]
Bugs status
- Your help is needed to check if any pages need to be moved or deleted. A maintenance script was run to clean up unreachable pages (due to Unicode issues or introduction of new namespaces/namespace aliases). The script tried to find appropriate names for the pages (e.g. by following the Unicode changes or by moving pages whose titles on Wikipedia start with
Talk:WP:
so that their titles start withWikipedia talk:
), but it may have failed for some pages, and moved them to Special:PrefixIndex/T195546/ instead. Your community should check if any pages are listed there, and move them to the correct titles, or delete them if they are no longer needed. A full log (including pages for which appropriate names could be found) is available in phab:P67388. - Editors who volunteer as mentors to newcomers on their wiki are once again able to access lists of potential mentees who they can connect with to offer help and guidance. This functionality was restored thanks to a bug fix. Thank you to Mbch331 for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 18 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
- The application deadline for the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has been extended to September 16. Members will help by providing advice to Foundation Product and Technology leadership on short and long term plans, on complex strategic problems, and help to get feedback from more contributors and technical communities. Selected members should expect to spend roughly 5 hours per month for the Council, during the one year pilot. Please consider applying, and spread the word to volunteers you think would make a positive contribution to the committee.
Learn more
- The 2024 Coolest Tool Awards were awarded at Wikimania, in seven categories. For example, one award went to the ISA Tool, used for adding structured data to files on Commons, which was recently improved during the Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon. You can see video demonstrations of each tool at the awards page. Congratulations to this year's recipients, and thank you to all tool creators and maintainers.
- The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available, and includes some highlights from Wikimania, an upcoming Language community meeting, and other news from the movement.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
New pages patrol September 2024 Backlog drive
[edit]New pages patrol | September 2024 Backlog Drive | |
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:10, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-35
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
- Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [1,086]
Bugs status
- Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
- Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
- Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.
Learn more
- If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Community Configuration - Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together (55 mins) - about the Community Configuration project.
- Future of MediaWiki. A sustainable platform to support a collaborative user base and billions of page views (30 mins) - an overview for both technical and non technical audiences, covering some of the challenges and open questions, related to the platform evolution, stewardship and developer experiences research.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:29, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin August Issue 2
[edit]Upcoming and current events and conversations Talking: 2024 continues
- Language Community meeting (August 30 at 15:00 UTC).
- Cross-Regional Grantee Partner Learning Conversation Part 1 (August 31 at 07:00 UTC, in English, French, and Chinese Mandarin).
- The Wikimedia+Libraries Convention 2025 will take place in Mexico City from January 15-17, 2025. The scholarship application deadline is August 31.
- ESEAP Community Call (September 8 at 07:00 UTC).
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org
- Highlights of the Product & Technology department's recent work in improving the user experience.
- Editor tools related to references & categories and more tech updates on the latest Tech News.
- Outreachy (a paid, remote three-month internship to support underrepresented groups in tech) is open. Mentors should submit projects before September 11 at 16:00 UTC (more info).
- The Campaign Events extension is now available on Meta-Wiki, Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested in other language wikis.
- The Campaigns teams would like to learn more about how your communities do online collaboration such as WikiProjects, please take this Google Form survey or share examples of successful collaborations on Meta Wiki.
- Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
- Applications for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) are still open until September 16.
Annual Goals Progress on Equity See also a list of all movement events: on Meta
- Central Asian community members share their thoughts on Wikimania 2024.
- Take a look at updates on new feature developments and improvements in various language-related technical projects in the July 2024 edition of the Language and internationalization newsletter.
- The Conference and Events Fund is open for submission until September 2.
Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- Meet the Wikimedia Foundation Global Advocacy Team.
Board and Board committee updates See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Some next steps on a movement charter: A message from Wikimedia Foundation CEO, Maryana Iskander, Chair of Board of Trustees, Nataliia Tymkiv, and Chair of Governance Committee, Dariusz Jemielniak.
- Elections for four community-and-affiliate elected seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation will be held from September 3 to September 17. To learn more about the candidates, watch this short "Meet the Candidates" presentations.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:
- Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
- Regions: Central and Eastern Europe
Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-36
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualisation can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help to test the charts.
Feature news
- Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word
__EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__
to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [1,087] - Editors who use the New Topic tool on discussion pages, will now be reminded to add a section header, which should help reduce the quantity of newcomers who add sections without a header. You can read more about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Last week, some Toolforge tools had occasional connection problems. The cause is still being investigated, but the problems have been resolved for now. [1,088]
- Translation administrators at multilingual wikis, when editing multiple translation units, can now easily mark which changes require updates to the translation. This is possible with the new dropdown menu.
Project updates
- A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia's APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.
Learn more
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Charts, the successor of Graphs - A secure and extensible tool for data visualization (25 mins) – about the above-mentioned Charts project.
- State of Language Technology and Onboarding at Wikimedia (90 mins) – about some of the language tools that support Wikimedia sites, such as Content/Section Translation, MinT, and LanguageConverter; also the current state and future of languages onboarding. [1,089]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:03, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-37
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [1,090][1,091]
- Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions
entity:getSitelink()
andmw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid)
will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [1,092]
Project updates
- Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [1,093]
- Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new
MOS
namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning withMOS:
(usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language codemos
). [1,094]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 18:49, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 64
[edit]The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 64, July – August 2024
- The Hindu Group joins The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimania presentation
- New user script for easily searching The Wikipedia Library
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:33, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin September Issue 1
[edit]Upcoming and current events and conversations Talking: 2024 continues
- The Voting period for the 2024 Board of Trustees election is open until September 17. Go to the SecurePoll voting page to vote.
- Scholarship application for Wikisource Conference 2025 in Bali, Indonesia is open until September 20.
- WikiConference Nigeria 2024 will be held in Abuja, Nigeria from September 12–14.
- Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 will take place in Istanbul, Türkiye on September 20–22.
- Celtic Knot Wikimedia Languages Conference will take place in Waterford City, Ireland on September 25–27.
- Italian WikiConference will be held in Padua, Italy on September 27–29.
- Join Wiki Loves Onam, a photo campaign dedicated to documenting the vibrant and colorful festival of Onam on Wikimedia Commons. The campaign runs until September 30.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org
- Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes.
- The Alternative Text suggested edits feature has now been fully deployed to production on the iOS App for Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and French Wikipedias! This feature, part of WE1.2, is designed to enhance how newcomers add alt text to images, aiming to improve accessibility and engagement. For more details, visit the project page and explore the new feature in the app!
- Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualization can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help test the charts.
- A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia’s APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.
- More recent tech updates from Tech News.
- The latest status updates from Wikifunctions.
- Help us find WikiProjects or other online collaboration spaces!
Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta
- Revamping Movement Strategy Grants with Hub Focus.
- Watch the recordings of Let's Connect Grantee Partner Learning Conversation: Conversation #1 with Wiki in Africa, Wiki Advocates Philippines, and Indic MediaWiki Developers UG and Conversation #2 with Wikimedia Community UG Malta, Wikimedia MA UG, and Wikimedia Canada.
Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- Wikimedia Foundation defeats gambling magnate’s lawsuit in Germany.
- Wikimedia Indonesia and UNESCO Jakarta Team Up Against Harmful Content Online.
- Child Rights Impact Assessment at EduWiki Knowledge Showcase and more: Latest updates from the Global Advocacy team.
- Protecting the people: Some recommendations for safety while contributing to Wikimedia projects.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- The Movement Charter Drafting Committee published their recommendations and bid farewell.
- Read updates from the July 2024 Wikimedia Endowment Board Meeting.
- Learn more about 12 candidates running for 4 seats on the Board by reading their statements and their answers to community questions.
- See the new members of the U4C following the results of the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) special election, a new decision making group that will enforce the UCoC in specific circumstances.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:
- Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
- Regions: Central and Eastern Europe
Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
MediaWiki message delivery 21:40, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-38
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Improvements and Maintenance
- Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
- The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [1,095]
- References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [1,096]
- It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [1,097]
- Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes
mw-message-box
need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newercdx-message
group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [1,098]
Technical project updates
- Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [1,099]
Tech in depth
- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
- Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:59, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Future Audiences call
[edit]Hey, I tried to ping users who had signed up to be involved in the Future Audiences work at m:Talk:Future Audiences#The next monthly Future Audiences video call: September 26, 15:00 UTC, but a typo meant I never pinged you. Making sure you're aware of this call, in case you want to participate or look at it later. Johan (WMF) (talk) 21:15, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-39
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.
Updates for editors
- Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
- The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
- It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within
<syntaxhighlight>
tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax{{…}}
are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [1,100] - Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [1,101][1,102]
- View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- From Wikimedia Enterprise:
- The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
- The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.
In depth
- The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 September 2024
[edit]- In the media: Courts order Wikipedia to give up names of editors, legal strain anticipated from "online safety laws"
- Community view: Indian courts order Wikipedia to take down name of crime victim, editors strive towards consensus
- Serendipity: A Wikipedian at the 2024 Paralympics
- Opinion: asilvering's RfA debriefing
- News and notes: Are you ready for admin elections?
- Recent research: Article-writing AI is less "prone to reasoning errors (or hallucinations)" than human Wikipedia editors
- Traffic report: Jump in the line, rock your body in time
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin September Issue 2
[edit]Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues
- "Wikimania Katowice coverage travels around the world" – a curated list of community and media coverage of Wikimania 2024. Over 100 pieces so far have been published about the event.
- WikiForHumanRights will lead a conversation about the future of the campaign with the Africa region on September 25 at 15:00 UTC.
- Let’s Connect: “Technology for Language Diversity in Wikimedia” will take place on September 26 at 15:00 UTC.
- Wikisource Conference 2025, the deadline for scholarship applications has been extended to September 29.
- Big Fat Brussels Meeting 9 will be held in Brussels, Belgium from September 29–30.
- WikiConference North America will be held in Indianapolis, USA from October 3–6.
- WikiIndaba Conference 2024 will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa from October 4–6.
- Wikimedia Technology Summit (WTS 2024): will be held in Hyderabad, India from October 4–5.
- ESEAP Community Call will be held on October 6 at 07:00 UTC.
- Wikimedia+Libraries International Convention 2025 is accepting submissions until October 6.
- The Language and Product Localisation team is hosting two office hours to discuss this year's plans and gather feedback from event organizers. The first session is October 5 at 16:00 UTC (Europe-Africa-Americas friendly), and the second is on October 6 at 03:00 UTC (Asia-Pacific friendly).
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org
- MediaWiki Product Insights: The latest edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
- Tech News: Find out about the new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page, the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and more recent tech updates.
- Wikidata Query Service: A new change to Wikidata Query Service will impact certain uses. The project will enter a transition period until the end of February 2025. For more details, visit the announcement page.
- Wikimedia Enterprise: Enhanced Free API Accounts: Recurring Credits and More Frequent Updates, early beta release of Structured Contents in Snapshot API, and early beta dataset release to Hugging Face.
- Wikifunctions: Status updates from September 20.
- Wikipedia Mobile Apps: Over 20,000 images have been added via the "Add an Image" feature on both iOS and Android (T372954)!
- Knowledge is Human: Read about ongoing work on the 2024 iteration of the "Knowledge is Human" public awareness campaign
- Server Switch: A server switch was completed successfully on September 25 with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 45 seconds.
Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta
- Wikimedia Research Showcase: Watch the latest showcase with the theme of Curation of Wikimedia AI Datasets.
- Conference and Event Fund: Updates and changes to the Conference and Event Fund program beginning in September 2024.
Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- UN Summit of the Future Action Days: Watch the Wikimedia event titled "The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a more secure, inclusive, and resilient world" at The Summit of the Future. This is expected to result in a negotiated Global Digital Compact, which represents the final phase of our movement-wide campaign to impact the text of the Global Digital Compact.
- Wikipedia and the Digital Services Act: Lessons on the strength of community and the future of internet regulation.
Foundation statements
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:
- Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
- Regions: Central and Eastern Europe
Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
MediaWiki message delivery 17:10, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-40
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
- Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding
?veaction=editsource
to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [1,103] - For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [1,104]
- The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
- View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.
In depth
- The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [1,105]
Meetings and events
- October 4–6: WikiIndaba Conference's Hackathon in Johannesburg, South Africa
- November 4–6: MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 in Vienna, Austria
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:16, 30 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-41
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [1,106]
Updates for editors
- Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [1,107]
- View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- It is now possible for
<syntaxhighlight>
code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if thecopy=1
attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [1,108] - Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [1,109]
- Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
- Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
- Five new wikis have been created:
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:39, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin October Issue 1
[edit]Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues
- WikiArabia Conference 2024 will be held in Muscat, Oman, from October 25 to 27.
- WikiConvention francophone 2024 will be held in Québec, Canada, from November 2 to 3.
- AffCom, Case Review Committee (CRC) and the Ombuds commission (OC) are seeking new member applications from October 14.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org
- Tech News: Updates on Dark Mode, Vector 2022 skin, CampaignEvents extension, and more on tech news.
- Translation suggestion: Sign up to participate in the test project, Translation suggestions: Topic-based & Community-defined lists, which will help organisers identify and add relevant content based on high-impact topics to their Wikipedia.
- Wikifunctions: Status updates from September 26.
- Wikipedia Apps: Check out the latest issue of the Apps Quarterly Newsletter!
Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta
- WikiWomen Summit: Event summary at Wikimania 2024.
- Let's Connect: Watch recordings of the session Technology for Language Diversity in Wikimedia.
- WikiLearn: The latest online learning opportunities created by Wikimedians for Wikimedians.
- Indonesia: Training for Indonesian Wikipedia Administrators to Safeguard Knowledge Integrity Ahead of the Regional Elections
Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- Mexico: Wikimedia Foundation files amicus brief in Mexico urging continued use of intermediary liability protections for user-generated content in Richter v. Google.
- Paraguay: Wikimedia Foundation to Paraguayan Supreme Court: Do not allow people to abuse the law to suppress legitimate information
- Global: Celebrating a legal victory in Germany against censorship, reflections on Open Culture strategic workshop, and more global advocacy updates.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Board Governance: Update from Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee, a proposal to ask for help and co-creation in Movement Charter Mapping Exercise.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:
- Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
- Regions: Central and Eastern Europe
Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
MediaWiki message delivery 23:30, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-42
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [1,115][1,116]
- WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [1,117]
- View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.
Updates for technical contributors
- Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [1,118]
- Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [1,119]
- Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a
<bdi>
element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [1,120]
In depth
- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
- The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:17, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 19 October 2024
[edit]- News and notes: One election's end, another election's beginning
- Recent research: "As many as 5%" of new English Wikipedia articles "contain significant AI-generated content", says paper
- In the media: Off to the races! Wikipedia wins!
- Contest: A WikiCup for the Global South
- Traffic report: A scream breaks the still of the night
- Book review: The Editors
- Humour: The Newspaper Editors
- Crossword: Spilled Coffee Mug
Tech News: 2024-43
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app's navigation, and it is now available in the latest App store version. The team added a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view, and brings the "Donate" button into a more accessible place for users who are reading an article. This is the first phase of a larger planned navigation refresh to help the iOS app transition from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports reading and editing. The Wikimedia Foundation has added more editing features and support for on-wiki communication based on volunteer requests in recent years.
Updates for editors
- Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
- Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
- View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the South Ndebele, Pannonian Rusyn, Obolo, Iban and Tai Nüa Wikipedia languages were created last week. [1,121][1,122][1,123][1,124][1,125]
- It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.
Updates for technical contributors
- Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new
{{#timef:…}}
parser function. For example,{{#timef:now|date|en}}
will show as "10 November 2024". Previously,{{#time:…}}
could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation.#timef
(or#timefl
for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [1,126][1,127] - Commons and Meta users can now efficiently retrieve the user's language using
{{USERLANGUAGE}}
instead of using{{int:lang}}
. [1,128] - The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [1,129]
In depth
- The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: an upcoming Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module, new Community Configuration options, and details on new projects.
- The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official partner of the CVE program, which is an international effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This partnership will allow the Security Team to instantly publish common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) records that are affecting MediaWiki core, extensions, and skins, along with any other code the Foundation is a steward of.
- The Community Wishlist is now testing machine translations for Wishlist content. Volunteers can now read machine-translated versions of wishes and dive into discussions even before translators arrive to translate content.
Meetings and events
- 24 October - Wiki Education Speaker Series Webinar - Open Source Tech: Building the Wiki Education Dashboard, featuring Wikimedia interns and a Web developer in the panel.
- 20–22 December 2024 - Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Bhubaneswar 2024 in Odisha, India. A hackathon for community members, including developers, designers and content editors, to build technical solutions that improve contributors' experiences.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:49, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Growth News, October 2024
[edit]Current work
[edit]Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We will add a new module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version on beta wikis and we will soon start an A/B test on our pilot wikis. This module will only display on the Newcomer Homepage if communities decide to utilize it, so learn how to configure the Community Updates module, or share your thoughts on the project's talk page.
Constructive activation experimentation
After showcasing early design ideas at Wikimania, we conducted user testing of design prototypes. We now aim to engage communities in further discussions and plan to run a targeted experiment, presenting a structured task within the reading view to logged-in new account holders with zero edits.
This Community Configuration extension was developed to help communities customize wiki features to meet their unique needs. The Growth team is now helping other Wikimedia Foundation teams make their products configurable:
- The Moderation Tools team now provides Community Configuration for Automoderator. (T365046)
- Certain Babel extension settings will be configurable soon. (T328171)
Future work
[edit]As part of the Growth team annual plan, we will continue to investigate ways to increase constructive activation on mobile, while also working with Data Products to move forward A/B testing functionality via the Metrics Platform.
Community events
[edit]- Growth team members presented Community Configuration: Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together at Wikimania (slides). The session recording is available to watch on YouTube. This session provided an update on the Community Configuration project and introduced details about the upcoming features that communities will soon be able to configure. Representatives from the Moderator Tools, Editing, Web, and Campaigns teams shared their plans for utilizing Community Configuration in the future. Following these presentations, the WMF Growth team's Benoît Evellin and Martin Urbanec answered audience questions.
- Habib Mhenni gave a presentation of how mentorship works at WikiIndaba 2024. The recording is available.
Stay informed
[edit]Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Trizek_(WMF), 15:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin October Issue 2
[edit]Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues
- How Wikipedia is staying relevant in the AI era: Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander talks about Wikipedia and AI in an interview with the ‘Rapid Response’ podcast.
- Wiki for Human Rights is organizing a call for South Asia, East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific communities to discuss the Future of WikiForHumanRights on October 24 at 10 UTC.
- Campaign Events tool: a call with the Indonesian communities will be hosted on October 25.
- Translation suggestions: Topic-based & Community-defined lists project: an office hour with event/campaign organisers and contributors who use Content Translation tool will be hosted on October 26th. Visit this page for more details.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Tech News: In issue 2024/42, read about the removal of the Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow), work on making text searches easier, and more. In issue 2024/43, read about improvements to mobile app navigation, temporary accounts pilot details, the Content Discovery Experiments, and more updates.
- MediaWiki: The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available and include updates on Wikimedia’s authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, and more.
- CampaignEvents extension: The CampaignEvents extension provides tools to create, manage, and promote collaborative activities on the wikis, such as edit-a-thons, meetups, and more. You can visit the Deployment page to learn how to get the extension on your wiki.
- Research: The Research team and collaborators are launching new research on editors with extended rights.
- New Content Translation feature: Translators using Content Translation on wikis with mobile support can now customize their article suggestions with 41 filtering options. This feature helps translators find relevant articles based on their interests for translation.
- Wikifunctions: We are collecting feedback on the "About" widget that shows more info about the functions. Also, status updates from October 11 and October 17.
- Temporary Accounts: Temporary accounts will begin rolling out on October 29 to production wikis with an aim to do a complete deployment by May 2025. You can see the deployment plan and timeline on the project page. As we rollout this change, it is likely that some tools (gadgets, user scripts, templates and bots) will be impacted by it. We have a developer FAQ to help developers with making necessary changes to their maintained tool(s). Please let us know on our talk page if you have any tool in mind that may need updating or if you need help with updating your maintained tools.
- Knowledge is Human campaign: The Communications department has just launched a public awareness campaign (landing page) to showcase how real articles are edited and highlight Wikipedia as a source of information ahead of the 2024 “Big English” fundraising drive.
Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki
- Grants: Announcing the newest round of Knowledge Equity Fund grantees.
- Wikimedia Research Showcase: Watch the latest showcase with the theme of Wikipedia for Political and Election Analysis.
Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- Latest transparency report: The latest Transparency Report, covering the period from January to June 2024, is now live on the Foundation website. View also highlights from the report.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Board Elections: Preliminary results of the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections has been announced.
- Affiliates Strategy: Implementation status of a new affiliate health criteria and changes to User Groups recognition process.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:
- Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
- Regions: Central and Eastern Europe
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-44
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Later in November, the Charts extension will be deployed to the test wikis in order to help identify and fix any issue. A security review is underway to then enable deployment to pilot wikis for broader testing. You can read the October project update and see the latest documentation and examples on Beta Wikipedia.
- View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pediapress.com, an external service that creates books from Wikipedia, can now use Wikimedia Maps to include existing pre-rendered infobox map images in their printed books on Wikipedia. [1,130]
Updates for technical contributors
- Wikis can use the Guided Tour extension to help newcomers understand how to edit. The Guided Tours extension now works with dark mode. Guided Tour maintainers can check their tours to see that nothing looks odd. They can also set
emitTransitionOnStep
totrue
to fix an old bug. They can use the new flagallowAutomaticBack
to avoid back-buttons they don't want. [1,131] - Administrators in the Wikimedia projects who use the Nuke Extension will notice that mass deletions done with this tool have the "Nuke" tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. [1,132]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-45
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [1,133]
- Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
- The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [1,134]
- View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.
Updates for technical contributors
- XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [1,135]
In depth
- Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
- The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.
Meetings and events
- MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.
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MediaWiki message delivery 20:47, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin November Issue 1
[edit]Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues
- Commons Community Call: The first community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year will take place on November 21. The theme of this call will be about how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. The call will be hosted by Chief Product and Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann.
- Conferencia Justicia climática Perú 2024: Conference on climate justice, indigenous voices and Wikimedia platform will be held in Huaraz, Peru from November 8 to 10.
- Affiliations Committee: Applications for joining the Affiliations Committee is open until November 18.
- Ombuds Commission and Case Review Committee: Applications for joining the Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee are open until December 2.
- Language community meeting: A language community meeting will be hosted on November 29, 16:00 UTC, discussing technical updates and problem-solving.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Advisory Council: The new Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) was announced. The PTAC will try to publish a set of community-validated recommendations that can serve as a potential 2-3 year blueprint for product and technical success.
- Wikifunctions: The Abstract Wikipedia team is working toward a rewrite of our backend services in a different programming language, likely Rust. More status updates.
- Tech News: The Guided Tour extension, which help newcomers understand how to edit, now works with dark mode; Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with potential features that making it easier for readers to discover information on the wikis. More tech updates from tech news 44 and 43.
- Temporary accounts: Logged-out editors on 12 wikis, including Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Danish, and Cantonese Wikipedia, receive temporary accounts now. This new account type enhances the privacy of logged-out editors and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. Read the new Diff post to learn more about temporary accounts.
- Mobile apps: The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app’s navigation, now available in the latest App store version.
- Campaign Events Extension: The Campaign Events extension is now live on two more wikis, Wikidata and the Spanish Wikipedia.
- Admin Retention: A survey on Wikipedia Administrator Recruitment, Retention, and Attrition is open until November 11. As part of the Foundation's 2024-2025 Annual Plan, the research team and collaborators are studying recruitment, retention, and attrition patterns among long-tenured community members in official moderation and administration roles.
- Knowledge is Human: The campaign web page, which educates visitors on Wikipedia’s model and why it’s trustworthy, has earned over 140,000 clicks. The campaign has increased pageviews on WikimediaFoundation.org by more than 50%.
Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki
- WikiCelebrate: From making a minor maintenance edit in 2005 to being one of the most appreciated Wikimedians in the Central Eastern European (CEE) region: this month we celebrate Mārtiņš Bruņenieks.
- Wiki Loves Earth: Mountains, Birds and Lakes – Central Asia Edition
- Future of Language Incubation: As part of a new Future of Language Incubation initiative to support language onboarding, Wikipedia is now live for five languages: Pannonian Rusyn, Tai Nüa, Iban, Obolo, and Southern Ndebele.
Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- Global Advocacy: Reflecting on the anniversary of the EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA), Wikimedians share successes and public policy priorities at digital rights Global Gathering event, and more global advocacy updates.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports
- English Fundraising: The Road to Launch: Wikimedia’s 2024 English Fundraising Campaign.
- Fundraising Report: Our annual fundraising report for the 2023-2024 fiscal year is published. Last year, we had over 8 million donors giving an average donation of m:Fundraising/2023-24 Report0.58. We ran campaigns in 33 countries, 18 languages, and received donations from over 200 countries.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:
- Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
- Regions: Central and Eastern Europe
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