User talk:Mmxx/Archive 2
This is an archive of past discussions with User:Mmxx. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Attribution requirements
Replied at FPC. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:59, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
An image created by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, File:Photomontage (Forggensee Panorama).jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! Makeemlighter (talk) 22:43, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
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Featured Picture
I saw your picture titled: Mt. Rainer Panorama. I nominated it for featured picture (its an awesome photo) and a couple of people kinda said the caption was not informative enough. I was kinda hoping that maybe you can help in trying to make the caption more informative? I would appreciate it.
Thank you! Dusty777 (talk) 22:17, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Thank you, but this is not my work and I only retouched the picture, a better edit is available here. ■ MMXX talk 21:24, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh! Thanks for letting me know! Dusty777 (talk) 23:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
why?
Why was my Adam Marie page deleted?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MickysMonster23 (talk • contribs) 20:37, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
- It was deleted because 1) you had created it on a talk page 2) the article wasn't about a notable person. for more information please see the deletion reasons: WP:A7 and WP:G8 ■ MMXX talk 01:04, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Tecumseh vandalism
Thanks for reverting the vandalism on Tecumseh! I didn't even notice it until after I applied my edit, but everything looks OK! I appreciate it! --Chaswmsday (talk) 21:27, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
- No problem :) ■ MMXX talk 00:35, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Community input required: lowering delist bar at FPC
You are receiving this because of your current or past association with the Featured Pictures project. Following on from several cases where closers did not observe the prescribed minimum votes required for a delisting, there is now a motion to entirely dismiss the requirement for a minimum. Please participate in the discussion as wide-ranging changes may arise.
Link: Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates#Delist procedure changes Papa Lima Whiskey 2 (talk) 14:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for letting me know. ■ MMXX talk 23:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Re Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/USS Arizona after attack on Pearl Harbor
Ha, yes, I thought that could seem a little confusing. Actually I was originally going to do a conditional keep/delist vote on the Delist nom depending on the outcome of the other nom (which is why Delist and Replaces are easier), but on doing that analysis of the two photos I was rather disappointed with the original as well. Your edit showed the original to be lacking in detail compared to what potentially could be found, and I also found considerable artifacting in the original that had just been exacerbated by your edit; I was actually a bit surprised that it was, IIRC, unanimously supported through only a couple of months ago. That's why I changed to a straight delist on the delist nom. So, in other words, I meant keep the original if we are going to feature one, but I actually support delisting the original too. The equivalent of a "Delist, don't replace" vote on a standard D&R nom. Regards, --jjron (talk) 09:25, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- Well, you are right about the original version, however I believe edited version is better than the current FP, although its flaws are more visible now. ■ MMXX talk 22:58, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- I did have another look at your new edit, and would tend to agree with your analysis (I haven't looked at the original TIFF - is that what appears to be artifacting (especially around the smoke etc in the middle section) also in the TIFF?). Anyway, because of that conflict (improvements but more visible flaws) I was still a little undecided. Was also wondering whether the blacks in the new edit are a bit too heavy? Regards, --jjron (talk) 04:31, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- They are worsened by my brightness/contrast adjustment, I've uploaded another version and changed my adjustments a bit, it seems artifacts are reduced now, please see how is it. ■ MMXX talk 00:31, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
- I did have another look at your new edit, and would tend to agree with your analysis (I haven't looked at the original TIFF - is that what appears to be artifacting (especially around the smoke etc in the middle section) also in the TIFF?). Anyway, because of that conflict (improvements but more visible flaws) I was still a little undecided. Was also wondering whether the blacks in the new edit are a bit too heavy? Regards, --jjron (talk) 04:31, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Your Featured picture candidate has been promoted Your nomination for featured picture status, File:Arizona (BB39) Port Bow, Underway - NARA - 5900075 - 1930.jpg, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Makeemlighter (talk) 02:26, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
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An image created by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, File:Temple Square, Salt Lake City, 1899 retouched.jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! Makeemlighter (talk) 01:42, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
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Your Featured picture candidate has been promoted Your nomination for featured picture status, File:GD Kennedy SLV AllanGreen.jpg, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Makeemlighter (talk) 03:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
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An image created by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, File:Card puncher - NARA - 513295.jpg , was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! Papa Lima Whiskey 2 (talk) 10:02, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
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I think the second upload is better. Good enough for FPC? I'd support. Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:28, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for your comment, I'm not sure if it is good enough for FP, especially I don't like the blurred part on the left but feel free to nominate it if you like. ■ MMXX talk 16:13, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Your Featured picture candidate has been promoted Your nomination for featured picture status, File:ST vs LOU - 21.jpg, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Papa Lima Whiskey 2 (talk) 18:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
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Photoshop picture of the day
Enjoyed your POTD from a few days ago. Do you have suggestions for photoshop tutorials for beginners submitting images to wm? Thanks, Lenny Kaufman talk 09:05, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 March 2013
- News and notes: Resigning arbitrator slams Committee
- WikiProject report: Making music
- Featured content: Wikipedia stays warm
- Arbitration report: Richard case closes
- Technology report: Visual Editor "on schedule"
The Signpost: 25 March 2013
- WikiProject report: The 'Burgh: WikiProject Pittsburgh
- Featured content: One and a half soursops
- Arbitration report: Two open cases
- News and notes: Sue Gardner to leave WMF; German Wikipedians spearhead another effort to close Wikinews
- Technology report: The Visual Editor: Where are we now, and where are we headed?
POTD notification
Hi Mmxx,
Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Arizona (BB39) Port Bow, Underway - NARA - 5900075 - 1930.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on May 22, 2013. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2013-05-22. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:10, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks for letting me know. ■ MMXX talk 14:26, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
- Yep, cheers! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:49, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
POTD notification
Hi Mmxx,
Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:GD Kennedy SLV AllanGreen.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on June 6, 2013. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2013-06-06. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:25, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks! ■ MMXX talk 17:31, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
POTD notification
Hi Mmxx,
Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Temple Square, Salt Lake City, 1899 retouched.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on June 9, 2013. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2013-06-09. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
- Fairly close together, but I don't think that's a biggie. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks! ■ MMXX talk 20:10, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
POTD notification
Hi Mmxx,
Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Card puncher - NARA - 513295.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on June 19, 2013. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2013-06-19. Thank you for all of your contributions! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:56, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks. ■ MMXX talk 13:42, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
POTD notification
Hi Mmxx,
Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:ST vs LOU - 21.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on July 26, 2013. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2013-07-26. Thank you for all of your contributions! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you. ■ MMXX talk 18:46, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
POTD notification
Hi Mmxx,
Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:The USS Arizona (BB-39) burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - NARA 195617 - Edit.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on December 7, 2013. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2013-12-07. Thank you for all of your contributions! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks! ■ MMXX talk 16:17, 24 November 2013 (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 show Special:RecentChanges on a page by using
{{Special:RecentChanges}}
. You can now use tag filters by using{{Special:RecentChanges/tagfilter=tagname}}
. [1] - The notification badge is coloured if you have notifications. When you check the notification the badge will now turn grey on all wikis instead of just the local one. [2]
- Colours used in the Wikimedia wikis' main interface changed slightly. This is to make them easier to see for readers and editors with reduced eyesight. [3]
Changes this week
- Hidden HTML comments will be more visible when you edit with the visual editor.
<!-- You write hidden HTML comments like this. -->
[4] - 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week is CREDITS files. The meeting will be on 12 October at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Language converter syntax will soon no longer work inside external links. Wikitext like
http://-{zh-cn:foo.com; zh-hk:bar.com; zh-tw:baz.com}-
must be replaced. You will have to write-{zh-cn: http://foo.com ; zh-hk: http://bar.com ; zh-tw:http://baz.com }-
instead. This only affects languages with Language Converter enabled. Examples of such languages are Chinese and Serbian. [5]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:30, 10 October 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 October 2016
- News and notes: Fundraising, flora and fauna
- Discussion report: Cultivating leadership: Wikimedia Foundation seeks input
- Technology report: Upcoming tech projects for 2017
- Featured content: Variety is the spice of life
- Traffic report: Debates and escapes
- Recent research: A 2011 study resurfaces in a media report
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 newsletter from the Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation. It will have more details about for example Flow and notifications. You can read the first issue.
Problems
- Some users got a warning about Wikipedia's security certificate last week. This was because of a problem GlobalSign had. This has now been fixed. Only a small number of users got the warning. [6]
- Editors couldn't edit semi-protected pages in the Wikipedia app for Android. This has now been fixed in the beta version. [7]
Changes this week
- There will be no new MediaWiki version this week. [8]
Future changes
- The Editing Department are working on a new wikitext editor. It will have tools that are in the visual editor but not in the wikitext editor today. You can read more about this. This is an early plan and things can change. The old wikitext editor will still exist.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:42, 17 October 2016 (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 abuse filters had a problem and caught too many edits. This has now been fixed. [9]
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from October 26. It will be on all wikis from October 27 (calendar).
- The "Search" text in the search box will show the name of the project. For example, on Wikipedia it will say "Search Wikipedia". [10]
- About a dozen wikis now have numerical sorting in categories. If your wiki wants numerical sorting in categories you can ask for it. [11]
- Some wikis that want numerical sorting in categories can also ask to use UCA to sort categories. The biggest difference is that characters with diacritics will be sorted together. For example, for most languages Ä will be sorted with A instead of at the end of the alphabet. This is not true for languages that have Ä as a character in their alphabet. Wikis that already use UCA are listed on Meta. Languages that can use UCA are listed on MediaWiki.org. You can test it.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:39, 24 October 2016 (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
- Now you can include Commons video films with subtitles in your wiki language. Before you could see translated videos on file page at Commons only. [12]
- Search now has an updated preference tab to configure the search completion suggester. [13]
- The visual editor is now available on all wikis using only one language script. [14]
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 1st. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 2nd. It will be on all wikis from November 3rd (calendar).
- Now you can use autocomplete for page names in "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" field when editing templates. [15]
- Special:NewPages can now be filtered by page size. [16]
Future changes
- New MediaWiki deployments will be now based on MediaWiki 1.29. [17]
Miscellaneous
- The Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Collaboration Guideline is available for community review. Any feedback welcome, in any language.
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:18, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
WikiCup 2016 November newsletter: Final results
The final round of the 2016 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2016 WikiCup top three finalists:
- First Place - Cas Liber (submissions)
- Second Place - MPJ-DK (submissions)
- Third Place - Adam Cuerden (submissions)
In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:
- Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a three-way tie with themselves for two FAs in each of R2, R3, and R5).
- Good Article – MPJ-DK had 14 GAs promoted in R3.
- Featured List – Calvin999 (submissions) produced 2 FLs in R2
- Featured Pictures – Adam Cuerden restored 18 images to FP status in R4.
- Featured Portal – SSTflyer (submissions) produced the only FPO of the Cup in R2.
- Featured Topic – Cyclonebiskit (submissions) and Calvin were each responsible for one FT in R3 and R2, respectively.
- Good Topic – MPJ-DK created a GT with 9 GAs in R5.
- Did You Know – MPJ-DK put 53 DYKs on the main page in R4.
- In The News – Dharmadhyaksha (submissions) and Muboshgu (submissions), each with 5 ITN, both in R4.
- Good Article Review – MPJ-DK completed 61 GARs in R2.
Over the course of the 2016 WikiCup the following content was added to Wikipedia (only reporting on fixed value categories): 17 Featured Articles, 183 Good Articles, 8 Featured Lists, 87 Featured Pictures, 40 In The News, and 321 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:52, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2017 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email)
WikiProject Good Articles's 2016-2017 GA Cup
Greetings, all! We would like to announce the start of the 4th GA Cup, a competition that seeks to encourage the reviewing of Good article nominations! Thus far, there have been three GA Cups, which were successful in reaching our goals of significantly reducing the traditionally long queue at GAN, so we're doing it again. Currently, there are over 400 nominations listed. We hope that we can again make an impact this time. The 4th GA Cup will begin on November 1, 2016. Four rounds are currently scheduled (which will bring the competition to a close on February 28, 2017), but this may change based on participant numbers. We may take a break in December for the holidays, depending on the results of a poll of our participants taken shortly after the competition begins. The sign-up and submissions process will remain the same, as will the scoring. Sign-ups for the upcoming competition are currently open and will close on November 14, 2016. Everyone is welcome to join; new and old editors, so sign-up now! If you have any questions, take a look at the FAQ page and/or contact one of the judges. Cheers from 3family6, Figureskatingfan, Jaguar, MrWooHoo, and Zwerg Nase. We apologize for the delay in sending out this message until after the competition has started. Thank you to Krishna Chaitanya Velaga for aiding in getting this message out. To subscribe or unsubscribe to future GA Cup newsletters, please add or remove your name to our mailing list. If you are a participant, you will be on the mailing list no matter what as this is the easiest way to communicate between all participants.
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--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:40, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 November 2016
- In the media: Washington Post continues in-depth Wikipedia coverage
- Wikicup: WikiCup winners
- Discussion report: What's on your tech wishlist for the coming year?
- Technology report: New guideline for technical collaboration; citation templates now flag open access content
- Featured content: Cream of the crop
- Traffic report: Un-presidential politics
- Arbitration report: Recapping October's activities
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
- Victoria Coleman is the new Chief technology officer for the Wikimedia Foundation. [18]
- First release candidate for MediaWiki 1.28 is now available. [19]
-
.gitreview
for MediaWiki branches and extensions switched from targeting a specific branch to usingtrack=1
. [20] - Section numbers in Table of Contents boxes will use grey to improve readability. [21]
Changes this week
- The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 7 November.
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 8th. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 9th. It will be on all wikis from November 10th (calendar).
- Special:ActiveUsers will allow users groups selection. [22]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 November 2016 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are Image Thumbnail API and allow SVG files uploaded on MediaWiki to have XHTML namespaces. The meeting will be on 9 November at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- RevisionSlider will be enabled by default on all beta wikis, on testwiki, testwiki2, mediawikiwiki and de.wikipedia.org. [23][24][25]
- Upcoming holidays will impact deployments. The schedule has been published.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:01, 7 November 2016 (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 edit with the visual editor you can use
meta
+shift
+k
to add a reference. The meta key is often the control key or command key. [26]
Changes this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 16. It will be on all wikis from November 17 (calendar).
- In Special:Preferences you can choose which language menus and buttons will be in. If there is no translation for that language, MediaWiki has a list of fallback languages. A fallback language is a language many will understand better than English. MediaWiki will now use English when there is no Ukrainian translation. [27]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 15 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Magic links might not work in the future. [28]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:17, 14 November 2016 (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
- Administrators, bureaucrats, oversighters and checkusers can now use two-factor authentication. This makes their Wikimedia accounts more secure. This can be turned on in Special:Preferences. There are discussions on how to best turn it on for everyone. [29]
- You can now search for file properties. For example you can search for media type, how big a file is or what resolution it has. [30]
- The latest Collaboration team products newsletter has been published. It has more details about their work than Tech News has.
Problems
- A hacker group is hacking Wikimedia accounts. They can probably do this because users have the same passwords on Wikimedia wikis as on other sites. Please have a password you use only on the Wikimedia wikis and nowhere else. This is especially important for administrators, bureaucrats, oversighters and checkusers. These users can also turn on two-factor authentication. [31]
Changes this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
- RevisionSlider will be a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia. This will happen on 22 November. It will come to other wikis later. [32][33][34]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- It will be possible to do cross-wiki search. The developers who work on this are looking for communities that want to test this. [35]
- Hovercards will leave the beta stage. The Wikimedia Foundation Reading Web team wants communities to set Hovercards as a default option for readers who are not logged in. Communities that are interested can say so on the Hovercards talk page. [36]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:33, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
Hello, Mmxx. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
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 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 November 2016
- News and notes: Arbitration Committee elections commence
- Featured content: Featured mix
- Special report: Taking stock of the Good Article backlog
- Traffic report: President-elect Trump
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 this week
- When someone tries to log in to a blocked account they will be blocked by a cookie. This means their browser will be blocked even if they change their IP address. This makes it more difficult for returning vandals. [37]
- When you use Content Translation to adapt a template to a new translation it will work differently. You can adapt big templates such as infoboxes. Translators will have control over the template parameters. A first version of this is released this week. It is possible it will not work correctly with all templates. There will be more updates for this soon. [38]
- 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).
- Gadgets will have a new option called "hidden". This means you can register gadgets that can't be turned on or off from the preferences page. Hiding gadgets was already possible by using
[rights=hidden]
. You should now use[hidden]
instead.[rights=hidden]
in old gadgets should be changed to[hidden]
. [39][40]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Tool Labs could get two new policies. One would be to be able to adopt tools without an active developer. The other would be a right to fork. There is a request for comment on Meta.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:17, 28 November 2016 (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 see users from specific user groups in Special:ActiveUsers. [41]
- Everyone can now see Special:UserRights. Previously only those who could change user rights could. Other users got an error message. [42]
- ORES can now show how likely an edit is to be damaging to the wiki with different colours. This only works for languages that have trained ORES to recognize damaging edits. [43]
Changes this week
- You will now see categories with 0 pages in Special:Categories. Previously you did not see empty categories there. [44]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 December at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey will decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year. You vote for wishes on the survey page until 12 December. You can see what has happened to last year's wishes on the 2015 results page.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:07, 5 December 2016 (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 who have Yahoo email addresses could not use Special:EmailUser to send emails. This has now been fixed. Emails will now come from a @wikimedia.org address. Users who get an email from you will still reply to your email address and be able to see it. [45]
- You can now see how many categories and pages there are in the categories in Special:TrackingCategories. This is to help you find pages that could need attention. [46]
- Markup colours for reviewed and pending revisions in the page history and recent changes and logs now match Wikimedia standard colours. The "You have a new message on your talk page" notification will have a slightly different colour. [47]
Problems
- Because of work on cross-wiki watchlists global renaming is not working. The plan is to turn it on again on 16 December. Global renaming was turned off for a while in late November and early December as well. [48]
Changes 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on December 13 at 20:00 (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, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
WikiCup December newsletter: WikiCup 2017
On 1 January 2017, WikiCup 2017 (the 10th Annual WikiCup) will begin. This year we are trying something a little different – monetary prizes.
For the WC2017 the prizes will be as follows (amounts are based in US$ and will be awarded in the form of an online Amazon gift certificate):
- First place – $200
- Second & Third place – $50 each
- Category prizes – $25 per category (which will be limited to FA, FL, FP, GA, and DYK for 2017). Winning a category prize does not require making it to the final round.
Note: Monetary prizes are a one-year experiment for 2017 and may or may not be continued in the future. In order to be eligible to receive any of the prizes above, the competing Wikipedia account must have a valid/active email address.
After two years as a WikiCup judge, Figureskatingfan is stepping down. We thank her for her contributions as a WikiCup judge. We are pleased to announce that our newest judge is two-time WikiCup champion Cwmhiraeth.
The judges for the 2017 WikiCup are Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email).
Signups are open now and will remain open until 5 February 2017. You can sign up here.
If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:02, 14 December 2016 (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 9 January 2017.
- The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2016? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us! You can write in your language. Thank you!
Recent changes
- Administrators and translation administrators can now use Special:PageLanguage on wikis with the Translate extension. This means you can say what language a page is in. The Translate extension will use that language as the source language when you translate. Previously this was always the wiki's default language. This was usually English. [49]
- Wikis connected to Wikidata can now use the parser function
{{#statements: }}
to get formatted data. You can also use{{#property: }}
to get raw data. You can see the difference between the two statements. There are also similar new functions in Lua. [50]
Problems
- Some abuse filters for uploaded files have not worked as they should. We don't know exactly which filters didn't work yet. This means some files that filters should have prevented from being uploaded were uploaded to the wikis. MediaWiki.org and Testwiki have been affected since 13 October. Commons and Meta have been affected since 17 October. Other wikis have been affected since 17 November. [51]
Changes this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.
Meetings
- The next meeting with the VisualEditor team will be on 3 January at 20:00 (UTC). During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. See how to join.
Future changes
- The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey is done. It decides what the Community Tech team will work on during 2017. You can see the results.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:33, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 December 2016
- Year in review: Looking back on 2016
- News and notes: Strategic planning update; English ArbCom election results
- Special report: German ArbCom implodes
- Featured content: The Christmas edition
- Technology report: Labs improvements impact 2016 Tool Labs survey results
- Traffic report: Post-election traffic blues
- Recent research: One study and several abstracts
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 datasets on Commons. You can see an example that is using this source. [52]
- There is a new opt-in beta feature of a wikitext mode for the visual editor. You can try it out.
- When you update a page with translations on wikis with the Translate extension the existing translations will be marked as outdated instead of removed. [53]
- The new version of MediaWiki was released to all wikis last week (calendar).
- MoodBar has been removed from the Wikimedia wikis. [54]
- The
live
option for the Tipsy notice tool has been removed. Gadgets and user scripts which use it need to be updated. [55]
Problems
- Editors who use Firefox 50 might get logged out or fail to save their edits. This is because of a browser bug. Until this is fixed you can enter
about:config
in the address bar and setnetwork.cookie.maxPerHost
to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. [56]
Changes this week
- There is no new version of MediaWiki this week because of the Wikimedia Developer Summit.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:12, 9 January 2017 (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 upload WebP files to Commons. [57]
Problems
- video2commons was down for two weeks. This was because of a problem with Commons video transcoders. It is now back up. [58]
Changes this week
- There is a new magic word called
{{PAGELANGUAGE}}
. It returns the language of the page you are at. This can be used on wikis with more than one language to make it easier for translators. [59] - When an admin blocks a user or deletes or protects a page they give a reason why. They can now get suggestions when they write. The suggestions will be based on the messages in the dropdown menu. [60]
- You will be able to use
<chem>
to write chemical formulas. Before you could use<ce>
.<ce>
should be replaced by<chem>
. [61] - You now can add exceptions for categories which shouldn't be shown on Special:UncategorizedCategories. The list is at MediaWiki:Uncategorized-categories-exceptionlist. [62]
- The "Columns" and "Rows" settings will be removed from the Editing tab in Preferences. If you wish to keep what the "Rows" setting did you can add this code to your personal CSS:
#wpTextbox1 { height: 50em; }
You can change the number50
to make it look like you want to. [63] - Sometimes edits in MediaWiki by mistake are shown coming from private IP addresses such as 127.0.0.1. Edits and other contributions logged to these IP addresses will be blocked and shown the reason from MediaWiki:Softblockrangesreason. This should not affect most users. Bots and other tools running on Wikimedia Labs, including Tool Labs will receive a "blocked" error if they try to edit without being logged in. [64]
- When you edit with the visual editor categories will be on the top of the page options menu. [65]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on January 17 at 20:00 (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.
23:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 17 January 2017
- From the editor: Next steps for the Signpost
- News and notes: Surge in RFA promotions—a sign of lasting change?
- In the media: Year-end roundups, Wikipedia's 16th birthday, and more
- Featured content: One year ends, and another begins
- Arbitration report: Concluding 2016 and covering 2017's first two cases
- Traffic report: Out with the old, in with the new
- Technology report: Tech present, past, and future
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 see a list of the templates on a page you edit with the visual editor. [66]
Changes 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).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:15, 23 January 2017 (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
Changes this week
- ElectronPdfService will be enabled by default on Meta and German Wikipedia. This is a new way to get articles as PDF files you can download. It will come to more wikis later. [68]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 31. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from February 1. It will be on all wikis from February 2 (calendar).
Future changes
- The Community Tech team will develop more tools to handle harassment of Wikimedia editors. The goal is to give the communities better tools to find, report and evaluate harassment. They will also work on more effective blocking tools. [69][70]
- The Wikimedia technical community is doing a Developer Wishlist survey. Developers can propose ideas before 31 January 23:59 UTC. This is soon.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 6 February 2017
- Arbitration report: WMF Legal and ArbCom weigh in on tension between disclosure requirements and user privacy
- WikiProject report: For the birds!
- Technology report: Better PDFs, backup plans, and birthday wishes
- Traffic report: Cool It Now
- Featured content: Three weeks dominated by articles
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 block log sometimes showed blocks as being much longer than they were. This has now been fixed. [71]
Changes this week
- Wikimedia pages will now be better at showing pictures when you share them on social media. The descriptions will be different too. You can see an example of before and after. [72]
- There are some changes to the OOjs UI. Some old functions will not work anymore or not work as they used to. This could be a breaking change. [73]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Tidy will be replaced later this year. Instead, the HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be used to clean up bad HTML in wikitext. This will cause problems on a number of wikis. They need to be fixed first. You can see if your wiki still has something to fix here for one of the HTML problems. This list does not cover all problems. You can read about more problems. [74][75]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:45, 6 February 2017 (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
- EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. For now it works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. [76]
Problems
- The Firefox add-on Firefogg can cause problems with the Upload Wizard. This will not be fixed, because Firefox will not support Firefogg in the future. The Upload Wizard will no longer work with Firefogg. [77]
- Tool Labs and Wikimedia Labs databases will be under maintenance on 15 February. This will start at 17:00 (UTC) and last for about six hours. Some tools could have problems during or after this. [78]
Changes this week
- The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It will come to Meta and German Wikipedia this week. It is already available on MediaWiki.org. It will come to more wikis later. [79]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on the Catalan, Greek, Russian, and Italian Wikipedias in the middle of February. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. It will come to more wikis later this spring. [80]
- The Developer Wishlist is a list where developers prioritize tools they need. The voting closes at 14 February 23:59 (UTC). This process is only for developers.
Review
- You can read the 2016 product summary from the Wikimedia Foundation Product group to see what they did with things they said they would work on in the annual plan.
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18:06, 13 February 2017 (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 edit summary box is now a little bit bigger. This is to make it follow the Wikimedia design guide. [81]
Changes this week
- Page Previews will be updated on 23 February. This fixes many bugs. Page Previews can be turned on as the Beta Feature called Hovercards. [82]
- There has been a problem where the CSS of gadgets has been loading twice. The Gadgets extension has two new options:
type
andpeers
. Thetype
option solves this problem. You can usepeers
to create gadgets with more than one style module. Read more about type and peers. [83] - OAuth will handle blocked users in a more consistent way. [84]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 February at 20:00 (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.
19:25, 20 February 2017 (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
- On 22 February the wikipedia.org portal did not work for an hour. This was because of a problem with a JavaScript file. [85]
Changes this week
- You will be able to use
<chem>
to write chemical formulas in the visual editor. Previously this only worked in the wikitext editor. [86] - 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You can soon upload 3D files to Commons. The file formats are AMF and STL. The plan is for this to work later this week but it could be later. [87]
- The name "Wikipedia" will be more obvious at the top of the page when you read Wikipedia in the mobile view. This is because many readers don't realize they are on Wikipedia. [88][89]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:56, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 February 2017
- From the editors: Results from our poll on subscription and delivery, and a new RSS feed
- Recent research: Special issue: Wikipedia in education
- Technology report: Responsive content on desktop; Offline content in Android app
- In the media: The Daily Mail does not run Wikipedia
- Gallery: A Met montage
- Special report: Peer review – a history and call for reviewers
- Op-ed: Wikipedia has cancer
- Featured content: The dominance of articles continues
- Traffic report: Love, football, and politics
March 2017 WikiCup newsletter
And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. It would have been 5 points, but when a late entrant was permitted to join the contest in February, a promise was made that his inclusion would not result in the exclusion of any other competitor. To achieve this, the six entrants that had the lowest positive score of 4 points have been added to the 64 people who otherwise would have qualified. As a result, some of the groups have nine contestants rather than eight. Our top four scorers in round 1 were:
- Cas Liber, last year's winner, led the field with two featured articles on birds and a total score of 674.
- Iry-Hor, a WikiCup newcomer, came next with a featured article, a good article and a tally of 282 bonus points for a score of 517. All these points came from the article Nyuserre Ini, an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh,
- 1989, another WikiCup newcomer, was in joint third place at 240. 1989 has claimed points for two featured lists and one good article relating to anime and comedy series, all of which were awarded bonus points.
- Peacemaker67 shared third place with five good articles and thirteen good article reviews, mostly on naval vessels. He is also new to the competition.
The largest number of DYKs have been submitted by Vivvt and The C of E, who each claimed for seven, and MBlaze Lightning achieved eight articles at ITN. Carbrera and Peacemaker67 each claimed for five GAs and Krishna Chaitanya Velaga was well out in front for GARs, having reviewed 32. No featured pictures, featured topics or good topics yet, but we have achieved three featured articles and a splendid total of fifty good articles.
So, on to the second round. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 13:52, 1 March 2017 (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 search on English, French, Hebrew and Greek wikis and find words even if you forget the diacritics. It also works if you use diacritics in your search but the wiki doesn't. [90]
- When you use the mobile view and click on a link to an article in another language you will see that article in the mobile view. Previously it changed to the desktop view. [91]
Problems
- Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time last week. This has now been fixed. [92]
- Admins who click on "mass delete" on a user's Special:Contributions will be taken directly to a list pages created by that user. It has worked like this before, but not lately. [93]
Changes this week
- The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It is now a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. [94]
- The "flag the edit in the abuse log" checkbox will be removed from the abuse filter interface. This is because the edits are always flagged in the abuse log. [95]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Clarification
- The 2017/09 issue of Tech News mentioned 3D file formats you can soon upload to Commons. The AMF format will be available later.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:23, 6 March 2017 (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 this week
- You will be able to show references from
<references />
tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use<references />
tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists. [96][97] - 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some old web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis in the future. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [98]
- CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. [99][100]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:25, 13 March 2017 (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
Save page
button now saysPublish page
orPublish changes
on the Wikimedia wikis except for Wikipedias and Wikinewses. This change will come to Wikipedias later. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately.Publish page
is when you save a new page andPublish changes
when you edit an existing page. [101] - DMOZ no longer works. Templates that use DMOZ can be redirected to archive.org or another mirror. DMOZ has been removed from the RelatedSites extension on Wikivoyage. [102]
- You can see monthly page views when you click on
Page information
in the sidebar. Developers can also get monthly page views through the API. [103] - The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later. [104]
- The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers. [105]
Problems
- On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it. [106]
Changes this week
- When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut
Ctrl
+Shift
+X
on PCs orCmd
+Shift
+X
on Macs. [107] - 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 March at 19:00 (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.
22:03, 20 March 2017 (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 edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [108]
Problems
- Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [109][110]
Changes this week
- New filters for Recent changes will be released on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias and MediaWikiwiki on March 28. Other wikis will get it progressively. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and, on certain wikis, user intent prediction.
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:46, 27 March 2017 (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
Save page
button now saysPublish page
orPublish changes
on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately.Publish page
is when you save a new page andPublish changes
when you edit an existing page. [111] - The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [112]
- English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [113]
Problems
- Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [114]
Changes 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on 5 April at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech and Hebrew Wikipedia on 11 April. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and user intent prediction. User intent prediction means the filter tries to help editors determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [115]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:53, 3 April 2017 (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
- Tidy is going to be replaced with an HTML5 parsing algorithm. Bad HTML in wikitext would cause problems on a number of wikis. There is now a ParserMigration extension on all wikis that you can use to help clean this up. You can read more about how you can use it. [116]
Changes this week
- Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [117]
- New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [118]
- The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [119]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
- RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:35, 10 April 2017 (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
?safemode=1
to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature?safemode=1
. This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them. [120] - You can now see a list of all autoblocks on Special:AutoblockList. [121]
- The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from
[[File:Wiki.png]]
. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. [122]
Problems
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.
Changes this week
- There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- stats.wikimedia.org will be replaced. You can see the new prototype. You can leave feedback on this change.
- Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. [123]
- From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. [124][125]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:32, 17 April 2017 (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
- New filters for recent changes are now available as a beta feature on most wikis. You can turn it on in your preferences. Remaining wikis will have the new filters on 9 May. [126]
- When administrators, bureaucrats and stewards make a user a member of a user group they can now set an expiry date. A user group is for example "administrators" or "bots". This means that they can give someone user rights for a limited time. This is similar to how blocks and page protections can be limited in time. Special:UserRights will have new options for this. You can read more about user groups. [127]
Problems
- Since the data centre test last week the content translation tool has been disabled. This is because of a database problem. It will be back as soon as the problem has been solved. [128]
Changes this week
- The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. [129]
- Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this. [130]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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16:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
May 2017 WikiCup newsletter
The second round of the competition has now closed, with just under 100 points being required to qualify for round 3. YellowEvan just scraped into the next round with 98 points but we have to say goodbye to the thirty or so competitors who didn't achieve this threshold; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. Our top scorers in round 2 were:
- Cas Liber, led the field with five featured articles, four on birds and one on astronomy, and a total score of 2049, half of which came from bonus points.
- 1989 was in second place with 826 points, 466 of which were bonus points. 1989 has claimed points mostly relating to anime and Japanese-related articles.
- Peacemaker67 took third place with two FAs, one GA and seven GARs, mostly on naval vessels or military personnel, scoring 543 points.
- Other contestants who scored over 400 points were Freikorp, Carbrera, and Czar. Of course all these points are now wiped out and the 32 remaining contestants start again from zero in round 3.
Vivvt submitted the largest number of DYKs (30), and MBlaze Lightning achieved 13 articles at ITN. Carbrera claimed for 11 GAs and Argento Surfer performed the most GARs, having reviewed 11. So far we have achieved 38 featured articles and a splendid 132 good articles. Commendably, 279 GARs have been achieved so far, more than double the number of GAs.
So, on to the third round. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.
If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 13:16, 1 May 2017 (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 content translation tool works again. It was turned off because of a database problem. [131]
- Scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. This is the same thing as Tech News wrote about in issue 2017/16. You need to add
mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' )
block for your scripts also, or addmediawiki.util
dependency in gadget ResourceLoader section in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. [132][133]
Problems
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
Changes this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- All Wikimedia wikis will have cookie blocks from May 8. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [134]
- The
Publish changes
,Show preview
andShow changes
buttons will look slightly different. This is to fit with the OOUI look. Users can test scripts, gadgets and so on to see if they work with the new interface by adding&ooui=1
to the URL. [135]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:50, 1 May 2017 (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 users have a problem with the watchlist. Some changes in categories make the watchlist a blank page. The developers are working on this. Until this is fixed you can try some things that have helped other editors if you have this problem. You can turn on
Hide categorization of pages
in your watchlist preferences. You can turn offExpand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent
in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw. [136] - There was a problem with the visual editor for several days. You could not save edits that triggered a CAPTCHA. This would for example be when a new user added external links in references. This was fixed on 2 May. [137]
Changes this week
- When you edit you can switch between the visual editor and the wikitext editor. This works if the wiki you edit has the visual editor. The menu will now say
Visual editing
andSource editing
instead ofSwitch to visual editing
andSwitch to code editing
. This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using. [138] - 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will be able to get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. This will come to Wikivoyage on 9 May. If there are no problems it will come to most Wikipedias on 30 May. It will come to other projects and English, French and German Wikipedia later in the summer. It will be opt-in for existing users and opt-out for new users. [139][140]
- Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. If
-{
is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use-<nowiki/>{
for transclusions and%2D{
in web addresses. A transclusion could for example be when you use-{
in a template:{{1x| sad :-{ face }}
. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. [141][142]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
02:25, 9 May 2017 (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 ISBNs to automatically generate citations in the visual editor. This works on wikis that have enabled Citoid. [143]
- The Two Column Edit Conflict View is available as a beta feature on all wikis. It is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page. [144]
Problems
- The
mediawiki.util
library does not load automatically any more. Your Special:MyPage/common.js may use it. If you have technical problems that started a couple of weeks ago you can try addingmw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ).done(function(){
as the first line in the file and});
as a last one. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/18 issue. [145]
Changes this week
- The RevisionSlider extension will be a default feature on all wikis. RevisionSlider is an easier way to move between changes in the page history. It has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia and a beta feature on all wikis. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences. [146]
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- Administrators will soon be able to search through deleted pages. [147][148]
- Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. Tech News wrote about this last week. If
-{
is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use-<nowiki/>{
for transclusions and%2D{
in web addresses. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. You can now see the full list of wikis with this problem and help fix them to avoid that things break later this month. You might find false positives. You can read more about what to fix. [149][150]
Older unreported changes
- Your Meta user page is shown on all wikis where you don't have a local user page. You can now add the magic word
__NOGLOBAL__
to your Meta user page to stop this. [151][152]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:48, 15 May 2017 (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 this week
- 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).
- There will be a
<div>
tag around HTML from the MediaWiki wikitext parser. Gadgets with code that does not follow recommendations could have problems with this. You can report new problems you think are related to this. [153]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:09, 22 May 2017 (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 MediaWiki version was rolled back from some wikis because of a problem. This means planned changes did not happen. [154]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 30 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will be able to control who can notify you on the Wikimedia wikis. You will have a user blacklist. When you add a user to the blacklist you will not get a notification when they mention you. You can test this on Beta Wikipedia. You can read more and give feedback on Meta. [155]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
12:18, 30 May 2017 (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 see new files on Special:NewFiles. You can now pick which dates you want to see files from. [156]
- When you read Wikipedia on a mobile device the first paragraph now comes before the infobox. [157]
- You can now remove navigation elements from your results when you search. This could for example be part of an infobox that is only there to help you find the previous or next article. [158]
- New users on Wikivoyages and Wikipedias (except French, English and German) now get a notification when a page they created is connected to Wikidata. Other wikis will get it 13 June. [159]
Problems
- The MediaWiki version from two weeks ago was rolled back. It was fixed late last week. Changes that were planned to go out last week did not happen. [160]
Changes this week
- Wikimedia wikis can show fewer links to articles in other languages. This is to make it easier to find the languages likely to be useful to the reader or editor. Everyone can still click to see the full list. Logged-in users who use the compact language links will see languages they have in their Babel box on their user page in the first, shorter list. You can turn the compact language list off or on in your preferences. [161]
- You can choose what dates to look at when you look at a user's contributions. [162]
- When you click on your watchlist in the mobile view you get a list of all pages in the watchlist instead of the latest changes to them. Logged-in users with at least ten edits will now get the latest changes instead. [163]
- 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).
- String comparisons in Scribunto modules are now always done case-insensitively by byte order. Before they were sometimes in a case-sensitive US-English collation order. This could break some modules. [164]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The 2006 wikitext editor will be removed the week of 27 June. This is the old toolbar with small square blue buttons. You can see a picture of it. 0.03% of active Wikimedia editors use this old tool. They will not see a toolbar at all. [165][166]
- Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron already works on German Wikipedia. It will be on English Wikipedia later this week so you can test it there too. [167]
- The Architecture Committee will change and get a new name. You can read and comment on the draft that describes the new committee.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:04, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 9 June 2017
- From the editors: Signpost status: On reserve power, help wanted!
- News and notes: Global Elections
- Arbitration report: Cases closed in the Pacific and with Magioladitis
- Featured content: Three months in the land of the featured
- In the media: Did Wikipedia just assume Garfield's gender?
- Recent research: Wikipedia bot wars capture the imagination of the popular press
- Technology report: Tech news catch-up
- Traffic report: Film on Top: Sampling the weekly top 10
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Some wikis have the larger and brighter OOjs UI edit page buttons. When you write an edit summary there you can now see how many bytes you have left before the summary is too long. [168]
- When you search on Wikipedia you can now find pages on other Wikimedia projects that could be relevant. You see them next to the search results. [169]
Changes 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will soon be able to get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account. You can test this on the test wiki. This will only work if they fail to log in to your account. [170]
- Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron now works on all Wikimedia projects. [171]
- Administrators can soon search for deleted page titles and find results that are similar to what they searched for. Today the search only finds pages that are exactly the same as what you search for. This is to make it easier to find pages when you don't know the exact title. Administrators on Arabic, Catalan, English, Persian, German, Italian, Polish, and Russian Wikipedia and on mediawiki.org can test this by adding
&fuzzy=1
to the end of the web address when looking at Special:Undelete. [172][173]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:29, 12 June 2017 (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
Changes this week
irc.wikimedia.org
has to be rebooted. This will probably happen on 21 June. It may be postponed. Some tools use this to get the recent changes feed. They will not work when it is down. [175]-
Special:PageData
will be an entry point for machine-readable page data. [176] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 June. It will be on all wikis from 22 June (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. You can now see how the TemplateStyles extension works on Beta Labs.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 23 June 2017
- News and notes: Departments reorganized at Wikimedia Foundation, and a month without new RfAs (so far)
- In the media: Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill
- Op-ed: Facto Post: a fresh take
- Featured content: Will there ever be a break? The slew of featured content continues
- Traffic report: Wonder Woman beats Batman, The Mummy, Darth Vader and the Earth
- Technology report: Improved search, and WMF data scientist tells all
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 <inputbox> has a new
searchfilter
parameter. You can add values likesearchfilter=insource:foo
. It will add that to the user's search query. [177]
Changes 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).
- Users will be able to choose whether they want to see Wikidata changes in enhanced watchlist/recent changes. Previously, this was disabled for everyone. [178]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the next WMF Language team office hour, an open session to talk about Wikimedia Language projects. The meeting will be on 27 June at 13:00 UTC. [179]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
WikiCup 2017 July newsletter
The third round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 288 points being required to qualify for round 4. It was a hotly competitive round with all but four of the contestants exceeding the 106 points that was necessary to proceed to round 4 last year. Coemgenus and Freikorp tied on 288, and both have been allowed to proceed, so round 4 now has one pool of eight competitors and one of nine.
Round 3 saw the achievement of a 26-topic Featured topic by MPJ-DK as well as 5 featured lists and 13 featured articles. PanagiotisZois and SounderBruce achieved their first ever featured articles. Carbrera led the GA score with 10, Tachs achieved 17 DYKs and MBlaze Lightning 10 In the news items. There were 167 DYKs, 93 GARs and 82 GAs overall, this last figure being higher than the number of GAs in round 2, when twice as many people were taking part. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.
As we start round 4, we say goodbye to the fifteen or so competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).
If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 05:37, 30 June 2017 (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 was a problem with maps on Wikimedia wikis that used <mapframe> when you clicked on the link to another map service. Open Street Map or Google Maps are examples of other map services. If you had marked a place on the map the marker would not be in the same place on the other map service. It was in the middle of the map. This has now been fixed. [180]
Changes this week
- Very old and inactive unpublished translations in the Content Translation database will be removed. This is because of technical maintenance. If you have not worked on a translation after 1 January 2016 you will lose it after 6 July. If you want to keep the unfinished translation you need to open it before 6 July with the Content Translation tool. You can continue working on it later. Translations that were started or have been worked on after 1 January 2016 will not be affected.
- There is no new Mediawiki version this week.
- EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. It works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/07 issue. [181]
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15:31, 3 July 2017 (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 sometimes links to pages about the same thing on other Wikimedia projects. A Wikipedia article about Berlin can link to the Wikivoyage guide or Wiktionary entry about Berlin. You can now see when that page has a badge. A badge could be the star that shows that an article is a featured article. [182]
Changes 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Mobile users will be able to edit Wikipedia without JavaScript. This will make it possible to edit the wikis from older mobile phones. This will probably happen on 18 July for most wikis. [183]
- We will not use Tidy on Wikimedia wikis in the future. It will be replaced by June 2018. It could be earlier. Editors will need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 15 July 2017
- News and notes: French chapter woes, new affiliates and more WMF team changes
- Featured content: Spectacular animals, Pine Trees screens, and more
- In the media: Concern about access and fairness, Foundation expenditures, and relationship to real-world politics and commerce
- Recent research: The chilling effect of surveillance on Wikipedia readers
- Gallery: A mix of patterns
- Humour: The Infobox Game
- Traffic report: Film, television and Internet phenomena reign with some room left over for America's birthday
- Technology report: New features in development; more breaking changes for scripts
- Wikicup: 2017 WikiCup round 3 wrap-up
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 Labs" is now called "Cloud VPS". "Wikimedia Tool Labs" is now called "Wikimedia Toolforge". This is to help clarify the purpose of these services. [184]
Problems
- On some pages, the Table of Contents is not being shown. It will normally appear if you edit the page again. Investigation is currently ongoing. [185]
Changes 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is: Migrate to HTML5 section ids. [186] The meeting will be on 19 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Page Previews, currently a Beta Feature, will be enabled for logged-out users for all remaining Wikipedias (with the exception of English and German) the week of 24 July. An A/B test will be run on English Wikipedia to collect data before approaching the community for further discussion. [187]
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22:59, 17 July 2017 (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
- CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. This will make it easier to make templates look good on mobile devices. This now works on mediawiki.org and Wikitech. It will come to more wikis later. [188][189][190]
-
.mw-ui-constructive
modifier class is deprecated and has been removed. [191]
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).
- It will be possible to restrict who can send you notifications on a wiki. This new feature will accessible in your preferences, in the Notifications tab, on Wednesday, July 26. Please see the documentation. [192]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the Wikimedia Foundation July 2017 Metrics & Activities Meeting. The meeting is about how Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement are perceived and understood by the world. The meeting will be on 27 July at 19:00 (UTC). See the agenda and how to join.
Future changes
- New Filters for Edit Review, at the moment available as a Beta feature, will be released by default for the Recent Changes in September.
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15:58, 24 July 2017 (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 pages show the error
Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject
. This problem happens on pages with a Lua module that uses Wikidata. The developers are working on fixing the problem. You can fix a page by opening it for editing and then saving without changing anything. [193] - Wikidata and German Wikipedia could not be edited for an hour on 28 July. You can read why and how we could avoid it in the future in the incident report.
Changes later this week
- Some wikis already have the larger and brighter OOjs UI edit page buttons. All remaining wikis except Commons will have these from 1 August. [194]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The default font in the edit window will soon change for some users. Instead of using the browser default it will be monospace. Users can change this in their preferences. This should only change this for some users on Macs and iOS devices. [195]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:45, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 5 August 2017
- Recent research: Wikipedia can increase local tourism by +9%; predicting article quality with deep learning; recent behavior predicts quality
- WikiProject report: Comic relief
- In the media: Wikipedia used to judge death penalty, arms smuggling, Indonesian governance, and HOTTEST celebrity
- Traffic report: Swedish countess tops the list
- Featured content: Everywhere in the lead
- Technology report: Introducing TechCom
- Humour: WWASOHs and ETCSSs
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 which Wikipedia language versions are read in a specific country. This tool is called Wikipedia Views Visualized. [196]
- The Architecture Committee is now the Wikimedia Technical Committee. You can read the charter. [197]
Problems
- You can get an email when a page on your watchlist was edited. You can choose not to get emails for minor edits. There is a bug that means that you then don't get an email when someone does a normal edit after a minor edit. The developers are working on fixing this. Until it has been fixed you can activate "Email me also for minor edits of pages and files" at the bottom of "User profile" in your preferences if you want to. [198]
- The thanks button sometimes didn't work for mobile users. This was because of a new bug and has now been fixed. [199]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 August. It will be on all wikis from 10 August (calendar).
Future changes
- Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP. [200]
- Links to sections on Wikipedia don't work well in languages that don't use the Latin script. The URL in the address bar in your browser shows Latin characters like
.D0.A1.D1.81.D1.8B.D0.BB.D0.BA.D0.B8
instead of the section heading in the wiki's language. Links to sections in non-Latin scripts will be in the script of that wiki in the future. This will happen in the next few months. [201][202] - Wiki pages printed by the web browser "Print" function will have an updated style. This new style will be similar to the when you download a page as PDF. It will be better at showing tables, infoboxes and headings. [203][204]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:45, 7 August 2017 (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
- Bureaucrats can now set users as confirmed. Previously only stewards could do this on most wikis. Nothing will change for wikis that have previously decided to let administrators set users as confirmed. [205]
Problems
- The symbols in the language list that show that an article is good or featured in that language doesn't work. Links to the Commons category in the sidebar doesn't work either. The developers are working on fixing it. [206][207]
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).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:29, 14 August 2017 (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 test the new Timeless skin on the test wiki and mediawiki.org. You can turn it on in your preferences. You can report bugs in Phabricator. It will come to more wikis soon. [208][209]
- Your watchlist can now have the option to unwatch pages. You have to turn this on in your preferences. [210]
- If a table has several columns you can often choose which column you want to use to sort the table. This has not worked for some columns for readers who have used Firefox or Safari. This has now been fixed. [211]
- The RelatedArticles extension has shown related pages on Wikivoyages. You will now see the related pages at the end of the article together with an image. Previously the links were in the sidebar. Wikis that want this extension can request it on Phabricator.
Changes later this week
- Videos will now be played in the WebM format in all browsers. Previously some browsers used Ogg Theora (.ogv). If you use Safari, Internet Explorer or Edge you may see slower playback speed at high resolutions. Instead we will get better quality and smaller file size. You can still upload video as Ogg files. They are automatically converted to WebM. This doesn't affect Ogg audio files. [212]
- The default font in the edit window will change for some users this week. Instead of using the browser default, it will be monospace. Users can change this in their preferences. This should only change this for some users on Macs and iOS devices. [213]
- 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).
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 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 August at 19:00 (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.
18:01, 21 August 2017 (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
- Syntax highlighting is now a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It will come to right-to-left wikis later. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. [214][215]
- You will now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. You can turn this off or choose to get an email notification in your preferences. You can also turn on to get an email when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. [216]
Problems
- Some pages show the error
Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject
. This problem happens on pages with a Lua module that use Wikidata. This has now been fixed and no new pages will get this problem. You still need to fix pages that were broken before and still show the error message. You can see how on this page. [217]
Changes later this week
- You can block users from sending you notifications. [218]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the next meeting with the Technical Committee. The topic this week is Migrate to HTML5 section ids. The meeting will be on 30 August at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- In the future you will have global preferences. This means you could set something in your preferences to work in the same way on all wikis. You will not be forced to use global preferences. The developers are now asking if editors need exceptions. This is where you want to use global settings on almost all wikis, but have some wikis where you want it to work in a different way. If you want this you need to tell the developers now. You can do so on the talk page. [219]
- New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [220]
- The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 in September 2017. Wikis can ask on Phabricator to get it early, so they can help find and solve problems now.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:10, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
WikiCup 2017 September newsletter
Round 4 of the WikiCup has ended and we move forward into the final round. In round 4, a total of 12 FAs, 3 FLs, 44 GAs, 3 FLs, 79 DYKs, 1 ITN and 42 GARs was achieved, with no FPs or FTs this time. Congratulations to Peacemaker67 on the Royal Yugoslav Navy Good Topic of 36 items, and the 12 featured articles achieved by Cas Liber (5), Vanamonde93 (3), Peacemaker67 (2), Adityavagarwal (1) and 12george1 (1). With a FA scoring 200 points, and bonus points available on top of this, FAs are likely to feature heavily in the final round. Meanwhile Yellow Evan, a typhoon specialist, was contributing 12 DYKs and 10 GAs, while Adityavagarwal and Freikorp topped the GAR list with 8 reviews each. As we enter the final round, we are down to eight contestants, and we would like to thank those of you who have been eliminated for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. The lowest score needed to reach round 5 was 305, and I think we can expect a highly competitive final round.
Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck, and let the best man (or woman) win! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 06:25, 1 September 2017 (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
- We are asking Tech News readers five questions to make the newsletter better. You can answer the questions here. We are grateful for every reply we get.
Recent changes
- The RevisionSlider user interface has changed. You can now select revisions by clicking on the bars. You can move the blue knob past the yellow one and the yellow one will move along, and the other way around. [221][222]
Problems
- Some users have problems loading very large watchlists. It is working better than earlier but the problem has not been solved. The developers are working on fixing it. Until it has been fixed you can turn on "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" in your preferences and see if it helps. [223]
Changes later this week
- New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [224]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can see a presentation about and discuss the new Technical Committee on 5 September at 17:30 (UTC). There will be a presentation on YouTube and a discussion in
#wikimedia-office
on Freenode. You can use the web chat. [225]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:14, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 6 September 2017
- From the editors: What happened at Wikimania?
- News and notes: Basselpedia; WMF Board of Trustees appointments
- Featured content: Warfighters and their tools or trees and butterflies
- Traffic report: A fortnight of conflicts
- Special report: Biomedical content, and some thoughts on its future
- Recent research: Discussion summarization; Twitter bots tracking government edits; extracting trivia from Wikipedia
- WikiProject report: WikiProject YouTube
- Technology report: Latest tech news
- Wikicup: 2017 WikiCup round 4 wrap-up
- Humour: Bots
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 get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. You can choose to get these notifications in your preferences. Some wikis already had this option. It is now available on all wikis. [226]
- The Newsletter extension is now on mediawiki.org. The newsletter extension is for newsletters where you can subscribe by getting a notification when a new issue has been published. It will come to more wikis later. [227]
- The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. There is now a new high-priority category:
tidy-whitespace-bug
. This usually affects templates with horizontal lists. You can read more about using Linter and the Tidy whitespace bug. [228]
Problems
- Tech News 2017/36 reported about new filters for edit review coming to watchlists. This was planned to happen last week. It will happen next week instead. [229]
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).
- OOjs UI will be updated. This could affect some icons. You can read more about the changes.
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 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can use Electron instead. Most PDFs are already created with Electron. Electron will get missing features before 1 October. You can create books but they will not have all planned features until November or December. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
- New filters for edit review are available now on recent changes as a beta feature. Some of those filters and other features will be deployed as default features in the coming weeks. Users will be able to opt out in their preferences. [230]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:15, 11 September 2017 (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 see contributions from an IP range at Special:Contributions. Before you could only see contributions from single IP addresses. Some older contributions from IP ranges could be missing at first because it will take some time to add them. [231][232]
- Flow has been re-scoped to become Structured Discussions and the development has restarted. Phabricator projects and repositories have been renamed. [233]
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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 September at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- We are replacing Tidy on Wikimedia wikis. Editors need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors. Some wikis have already switched. If your wiki would like to switch to the new format now, you can file a task.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:31, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 September 2017
- News and notes: Chapter updates; ACTRIAL
- Humour: Chickenz
- Recent research: Wikipedia articles vs. concepts; Wikipedia usage in Europe
- Technology report: Flow restarted; Wikidata connection notifications
- Gallery: Chicken mania
- Traffic report: Fights and frights
- Featured content: Flying high
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
- Wikitext syntax highlighting is a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. You can now search through the entire article with
CTRL
+F
orcmd
+F
when you edit. Before it just searched through a part of the article. The developers are also fixing a couple of other bugs. [234][235] - Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions as a beta feature or by default can now create and move Structured Discussions boards. Structured Discussions was previously called Flow. [236]
Changes later this week
- You now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. For security reasons you will soon get an email by default when someone tries to log in to your account and when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. This can be turned off in your preferences. [237]
- Users with extremely old browsers (for example Netscape 2–4, released from 1995–1997) which do not support Unicode will no longer be able to edit. They should try to install a new browser. [238]
- 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).
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 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department has proposed changing the mobile website. You can read more on mediawiki.org. This would be a big change.
- You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can still create PDFs. Tech News 2017/37 said the function to create PDFs from books would still work. It is now clear it will not work for the next few months. The developers are working on fixing this. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:59, 25 September 2017 (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 preload features in the visual editor. This means you can create links to create new pages and some text will already be in the edit window when someone clicks on it. [239]
Changes later this week
- If you have turned on "Automatically enable most beta features" you will now get the 2017 wikitext editor. Before this you had to turn it on manually even though it is a beta feature. [240]
- Special:Block and Special:Unblock will get the OOUI look. [241]
- The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 on all Wiktionary wikis from 2 October. It will be on all non-Wikipedia wikis from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October. [242]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- A new feature called Reading Lists are coming to the Wikipedia mobile apps. First it will be in the Android version. Reading Lists are a private user preference where you can see lists of articles on multiple devices. You can give feedback on this feature. [243]
- The search function has used fallback languages for language analysis. This means a language could be analysed with the grammar of a completely unrelated language to find related words. This will be removed from most wikis the week starting with 9 October. You can read more and give feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:25, 2 October 2017 (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 number of active users listed by
{{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}
and on Special:Statistics will now only include Wikidata edits as activity on Wikidata and not on other wikis too. [244] - Previously you could create wiki links starting with two colons. Now you need to use one colon. [[::File:X.jpg]] now has to be [[:File:X.jpg]]. There is now a new Linter category. You can see a list on Special:Linterrors/multi-colon-escape. The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. You can read more about using Linter. [245]
Problems
- You will not be able to edit or upload files to Commons for around 30 minutes on 11 October. This will start at 06:00 UTC. This is because of work to let Commons show 3D models. [246]
Changes later this week
- The font in the edit window is monospace by default. Today you can change preferences to another font family or use "the browser default" instead of monospace. Switching to the browser default has only changed the font on Macs. The option to use browser default will be removed this week. [247]
- If you want to print a page or make a PDF of a page you can do so in the side menu. The way the pages look when you do this will change. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 October 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.
14:21, 9 October 2017 (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 edit a template with the visual editor it follows the template's
format
configuration on how to save it. You can now change the format in more powerful ways if your wiki wants it. [248][249] - The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It has been a beta feature for the last five months. You can now try out the new interface on a page where you will actually get simulated edit conflicts. You can give feedback to the developers.
Problems
- There is a problem with recent changes pages and your watchlist that show a large number of pages. Until it is fixed, Wikidata edits will not be shown on recent changes or in your watchlist on Commons or Russian Wikipedia. If necessary, Wikidata edits will be removed from all wikis. [250]
- Notifications are not working for some actions. For example some users don't get a notification when they are mentioned. The developers are working on fixing this. [251]
- Users on some wikis could not change their preferences. This has now been fixed. [252]
Changes later this week
- Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia from 17 October. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP. [253]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 October 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.
15:31, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
The Signpost: 23 October 2017
- News and notes: Money! WMF fundraising, Wikimedia strategy, WMF new office!
- Featured content: Don, Marcel, Emily, Jessica and other notables
- Humour: Guys named Ralph
- In the media: Facebook and poetry
- Special report: Working with GLAMs in the UK
- Traffic report: Death, disaster, and entertainment
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
ccnorm_contains_any
when you create an abuse filter. This can be used to look for multiple words or phrases within a string. It will find words where some characters have been replaced. You can read more in the documentation. [254]
Changes later this week
- When you search in some languages the search function could use specific other languages if the first language didn't work. This is called a fallback language. This didn't work properly and created bad searches. The search index is being fixed to work better. [255]
- 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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There is a Structured Commons community focus group for Commons and Wikidata contributors who want to give input on structured data on Wikimedia Commons. You can sign up to join it. [256]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:18, 23 October 2017 (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 block users from emailing you through the Wikimedia wikis. [257]
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).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 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.
00:20, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
WikiCup 2017 November newsletter: Final results
The final round of the 2017 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2017 WikiCup top three finalists:
- First Place - Adityavagarwal (submissions)
- Second Place - Vanamonde (submissions)
- Third Place - Cas Liber (submissions)
In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:
- Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a two-way tie with themselves for an astonishing five FAs in R2 and R4).
- Good Article – Adityavagarwal had 14 GAs promoted in R5.
- Featured List – Bloom6132 (submissions) and 1989 (submissions) both produced 2 FLs in R2
- Featured Pictures – SounderBruce (submissions) improved an image to FP status in R5, the only FP this year.
- Featured Topic – MPJ-DK (submissions) has the only FT of the Cup in R3.
- Good Topic – Four different editors created a GT in R2, R3 and R4.
- Did You Know – Adityavagarwal had 22 DYKs on the main page in R5.
- In The News – MBlaze Lightning (submissions) had 14 ITN on the main page in R2.
- Good Article Review – Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (submissions) completed 31 GARs in R1.
Over the course of the 2017 WikiCup the following content was added or improved on Wikipedia: 51 Featured Articles, 292 Good Articles, 18 Featured Lists, 1 Featured Picture, 1 Featured Topics, 4 Good Topics, around 400 Did You Knows, 75 In The News, and 442 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.
Regarding the prize vouchers - @Adityavagarwal, Vanamonde93, Casliber, Bloom6132, 1989, and SounderBruce: please send Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) an email from the email address to which you would like your Amazon voucher sent. Please include your preference of global Amazon marketplace as well. We hope to have the electronic gift cards processed and sent within a week.
We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2018 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:40, 2 November 2017 (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 will no longer see the patrol log on Special:Log unless you specifically select it. [258]
Changes later this week
- The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 6 November. You can post proposals from 19:00 UTC and until November 19.
- 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).
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 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- URLs that link to sections on Wikimedia wikis with non-Latin scripts have looked like this:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#.D0.98.D1.81.D1.82.D0.BE.D1.80.D0.B8.D1.8F
instead ofhttps://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#История
. This will soon be fixed. Old links will still work. [259][260]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:45, 6 November 2017 (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 diff you see when you compare two different versions of a page has changed on MediaWiki.org and the test wiki. This is to make it easier to find a text change in a moved paragraph. It will hopefully soon come to more wikis. You can report bugs in Phabricator. [261]
- A new user group on Commons will be able to upload MP3 files. The plan is to have this user group from 17 November. [262]
- Wikis using Flagged Revisions will get the New filters for Edit Review by default on the recent changes pages. It will be possible to opt-out in user preferences. [263]
- 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).
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 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Support for uploading and viewing 3D models is coming soon to Wikimedia Commons. The feature will support the .STL file format. You can see an example on the test wiki. [264]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:19, 13 November 2017 (UTC)