User talk:Stewartadcock/Archive2014

This is an archive of Stewart's talk page covering the years 2014 to 2019, during which I wasn't very active! Please do not leave new messages here!

LA edit-a-thons on May 23 and 31

LA meetups: Adrianne Wadewitz memorial edit-a-thons on May 23 and May 31

Dear fellow Wikipedian, There are two LA edit-a-thons in memory of Adrianne Wadewitz, a prolific Wikipedia editor, in the coming weeks. Please join us May 23 at Occidental College and May 31 at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry to combat systemic bias and help further Adrianne's legacy. No experience needed! Please RSVP at the relevant page(s) if you plan to attend. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:42, 19 May 2014 (UTC) To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

L.A. events on June 21 and July 6

Upcoming L.A. events: Unforgetting L.A. edit-a-thon (Saturday, June 21, 12-5pm) and Wiknic (Sunday, July 6, ~9:30am-4pm)

File:356 S Mission.jpg Gallery at 356 S. Mission Rd. Get hungry for the Wiknic! Dear fellow Wikipedian, The L.A. Wikipedia community has two exciting events coming up in the next few weeks: an edit-a-thon sponsored by the online magazine East of Borneo, and the fourth annual Los Angeles Wiknic! The East of Borneo event is an edit-a-thon that aims to build a better history of art in Southern California. This next chapter of their Unforgetting L.A. series will take place on Saturday, June 21, 2014 from 12pm to 5pm at 356 S. Mission Rd. (map). Beginners welcome! Please RSVP here if you plan to attend. For more info, see eastofborneo.org/unforgetting. The Wiknic is a part of the nationwide Great American Wiknic. We'll be grilling, getting to know each other better, and building the L.A. Wikipedia community! The event is tentatively planned for Pan-Pacific Park (map) and will be held on Sunday, July 6, 2014 from 9:30am to 4pm or so. Please RSVP and volunteer to bring food or drinks if possible! I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:59, 11 June 2014 (UTC) To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2014-34

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf17) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 21 (calendar).
• There is a new protection level called superprotection. At the moment, only some Wikimedia Foundation employees have access to it. Administrators can't edit "superprotected" pages. [1] [2] [3]
• You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page. [4] [5]
• You can search for Wikimedia tools using a new list of tools. [6]
• You can watch the first videos from Wikimania 2014. Some of them are about technical topics. More videos will come later.

Wikidata

• After August 19, you can use Wikidata for inter language links on Wikinews. [7]
• After August 19, you can use Wikidata for badges like "good" or "featured" articles. Next week, you will be able to show the badges in the article sidebar on Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiquote. [8]

Problems

• There was an issue with ProofreadPage and WikiEditor on Wikisource wikis. It is now fixed. [9] [10]

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07:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Unforgetting L.A. edit-a-thon on September 6

Unforgetting L.A. edit-a-thon: Saturday, September 6 from 11am to 4pm

Dear fellow Wikipedian, You are invited to meet up with online magazine East of Borneo for an edit-a-thon to build a better history of art in Southern California. This next event in their Unforgetting L.A. series will take place on Saturday, September 6, 2014 from 11am - 4pm at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena (map). Beginners welcome! Please RSVP here if you plan to attend. For more info, see eastofborneo.org/unforgetting. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:39, 20 August 2014 (UTC) To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2014-35

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

VisualEditor news

• There was a error when you put your cursor directly after a reference list. It is now fixed. [11]
• You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages. [12]
• If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor. [13] [14] [15]

Future software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf18) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 28 (calendar).
• After August 26, you will have a central JavaScript and CSS page. They will be on Meta-Wiki and will work on all wikis. Read more on the help page. [16]

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09:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

L.A. Meetup on September 21

The 20th Los Angeles meetup: Sunday, September 21 from 11am to 4pm

Dear fellow Wikipedian, Join us on Sunday, September 21, from 11am to 4pm at Kramer Studio in Mid-City (map) for a meetup and edit-a-thon! Get to know the Los Angeles Wikipedia community and do some editing (or learn to edit!) in a collaborative environment. Please RSVP and consider becoming a member of the SoCal task force to help us improve articles about everything in the region. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:00, 27 August 2014 (UTC) To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2014-36

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

Recent software changes

• You can now test a new Beta Feature to see links to other wikis in the sidebar. The links come from Wikidata. [17] [18]
• You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the linksto: keyword in your search. [19] [20]
• A redirect to a section now changes the URL in the address bar of your browser. If "Dog" redirects to "Animals#Dog", you now see "Animals#Dog" instead of "Dog#Dog". [21] [22]
• If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages". [23]

VisualEditor news

• You can no longer delete required fields in templates. [24]
• We fixed many Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 11, you will get VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next. [25] [26] [27]
• VisualEditor now looks better in Monobook. [28]
• We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X). [29]
• You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category. [30]

Future software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf19) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 2, and on all Wikipedias on September 4 (calendar).
• There is a proposal to build a database on Commons for file data. It will make it easier to see the author, license and topics. You can give feedback on this idea. You can also come to the IRC chat on September 3 at 18:00 (UTC) in #wikimedia-office at freenode. [31]
• You can give feedback on Media Viewer until September 7. You can say what needs to be improved and ask other people to give feedback too. [32]
• You can test a new version of the tool to show math. It uses MathML. Report bugs in bugzilla.
• You will no longer be able to upload images from the mobile site. [33]

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07:49, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-37

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

VisualEditor news

• From Thursday, Internet Explorer 11 users will get VisualEditor. Support for earlier versions is coming next. [34] [35] [36]

Future software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf20) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 9, and on all Wikipedias on September 11 (calendar).
• You will soon confirm a "Thanks" inline instead of in a dialog. [37]
• You can read more about the plan to move to Phabricator, a tool that will help people develop the MediaWiki software and report bugs. [38]

Problems

• There were problems with JavaScript and CSS on Friday, September 5 because of a code error.

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09:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-38

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

Recent software changes

• You can now change the style of links to disambiguation pages. This is done with the mw-disambig CSS class. [39] [40]
• There was a problem on right-to-left wikis with Wikidata log entries. The text was messy in watchlists and recent changes. The problem is now fixed. The same problem will be fixed soon for user names. [41] [42] [43]
• New users are randomly chosen for a test on 12 Wikipedias. They get messages with ideas of articles to edit. The ideas come from what they have already edited. [44]

Problems

• There was a problem with loading images on September 10. [45]

VisualEditor news

• If you don't select text when you add a link, the link now shows a number. [46]
• The citation tool no longer offers to reuse a citation if there are none on the page yet. [47] [48]
• You can now use help buttons in the "Page settings" menu to see what the options are for. [49]

Future software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf21) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 16, and on all Wikipedias on September 18 (calendar).
• These changes are coming with the new version:
  • If you use Internet Explorer 7, JavaScript will no longer work. JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work in that browser. You should update to a newer browser. [50] [51] [52]

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08:34, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-39

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

Recent software changes

• You can test a new Beta Feature called HHVM. It should make editing faster. Please report bugs if you see them. [53]

Problems

• There was a problem on the English Wikipedia on September 19. It was due to edits on a template used on many pages.
• Sites were down for users in the Pacific area around 7:00 UTC on September 20. It was due to a problem in the San Francisco data center.
• There were two bad bugs messing up articles in some browsers in VisualEditor. We fixed the bugs and updated the sites. [54] [55]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf22) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 23, and on all Wikipedias on September 25 (calendar).
• If you have more than 2000 notifications, the oldest ones will be removed.[56] [57]
• In the "Vector" skin, the icon used for users will show a neutral gender. [58] [59]
• The VisualEditor template tool now tells you if a required field is missing. [60]
• The "Cancel" button of the VisualEditor save window is now called "Resume editing". This shows that you can still edit and you won't lose your changes. [61]
• There are new keyboard shortcuts in VisualEditor. Use Ctrl+Shift+6 for code and Ctrl+Shift+5 for strikethrough. [62] [63]
• In VisualEditor, you can now see that you are switching to the source editing mode. Before, it was not clear it was happening. [64]

Future site changes

• You can see a plan for the move to Phabricator. It's the new tool to track bugs. A guided tour will be done via video on September 24. [65]

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09:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-40

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

Recent software changes

• On Commons, you can now see what files are most used across all wikis. You can also see the same list for deleted or uncreated files. [66] [67]
• There are now many more translations for language names. [68]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf1) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 30, and on all Wikipedias on October 2 (calendar).
• Errors from Scribunto (Lua) are now shown on the page. Before, you had to click on "Script error" to see them. [69] [70]
• You can add an "autovalue" for a field in TemplateData. When users add the template to a page, the value will be added automatically. An example is when a clean-up template shows the date it was added. [71]
• If you change a user preference but don't save it, it now asks if you want to save it. [72] [73]
• The PDF export tool has changed. The new one has better language support but it doesn't offer ZIM and EPUB formats. [74]

Future changes

• You can watch a video showing Phabricator, the new tool to track bugs. You can also read more about the move from Bugzilla.
• JavaScript authors: Many old methods will be removed soon. Please check your scripts and gadgets and replace the old methods by the new ones if needed. [75]

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09:44, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

L.A. events on October 7 and 16

Upcoming L.A. events: Wik-Ed Women edit-a-thon (10/7, 6-10pm) and UCR edit-a-thon (10/16, 10am-4pm)

Dear fellow Wikipedian, The Southern California Wikipedia community has two exciting events coming up in the next few weeks: a Wik-Ed Women editing session downtown designed to combat systemic bias, and a Wikipedia Loves Libraries event at UC Riverside! Wik-Ed Women is a new monthly series of informal Wikipedia editing sessions for Los Angeles women-in-the-arts (though all are welcome) to contribute their expertise to Wikipedia, specifically expanding content about women artists. This second session will take place on Tuesday, October 7 from 6pm to 10pm at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive downtown. Please RSVP here if you plan to attend. The UC Riverside Wikipedia Loves Libraries event is an edit-a-thon targeting articles related to UC Riverside, SoCal, and beyond. Join students and faculty learning how to edit! This event will take place on Thursday, October 16 from 10am to 4pm at UCR's Tomás Rivera Library. Again, RSVPs are requested here. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:47, 29 September 2014 (UTC) To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2014-41

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

Recent changes

• You can use the phab: and phabricator: interwikis to link to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org. [76] [77]
• Some wikis have a template to track bugs in Bugzilla. You should update it to work with Phabricator. You can look at the one on mediawiki.org to see how. [78] [79]
• You can look at Special:MediaStatistics to see what kind of files are on your wiki. [80]
• A new tool can now create thumbnails of large TIFF images. This concerns files larger than 50 megapixels. These thumbnails are also sharpened. You can comment on Commons. [81]
• The Media Viewer tool has a clearer link to the file page. It also has buttons to download, share and embed the file. You can enlarge images by clicking on them. [82]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf2) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 7 October, and on all Wikipedias from 9 October (calendar).
• If you make a code mistake when editing a Lua script, you won't be able to save your edit. [83] [84]
• We fixed some more Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 10, you will be able to use VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next. [85]
• On Thursday, the tool to edit TemplateData will come to 30 more wikis. [86] [87]
• You can help sort bugs in the Book and PDF export tool on October 8. [88]
• 1% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [89]

Future changes

• You can look at the plan of the Mobile team for their future work. [90]
• More changes to Media Viewer are coming. It will be easier to disable it, and you will see the caption below the image. [91] [92]

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06:10, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-42

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

Recent software changes

• You can now log into Phabricator, the new tool to track bugs. Create your account and add your Bugzilla email address. We are copying the bugs from Bugzilla. Bugzilla is still open. [93] [94]
• You will now get the VisualEditor newsletter in your language if someone has translated it. You can add translations. You can know about the next translations by joining the translators list or asking Elitre (WMF).

Problems

• 10% of Tool Labs was down on October 7. [95]
• Tool Labs was also broken on October 11. [96]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf3) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since 9 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 14 October, and on all Wikipedias from 16 October (calendar).
• 5% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. You can also test it as a Beta Feature. [97]

Meetings

• You can join a meeting with Language developers on October 15, 2014 at 17:00 (UTC). [98]
• There is a proposal to organize file pages better. It would use the same tools as Wikidata. You can join a meeting about it on October 16, 2014 at 18:00 (UTC). [99]
• You can join a meeting about VisualEditor on October 18, 2014 at 18:00 (UTC). [100]

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08:54, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

SoCal edit-a-thons on October 21 and 25

Upcoming SoCal edit-a-thons: UC Riverside (10/21, 10am-3pm) and Unforgetting L.A. (10/25, 9am-5pm)

Dear fellow Wikipedian, The Southern California Wikipedia community has two more events scheduled for the month of October: a water-related edit-a-thon at UC Riverside, and an Unforgetting L.A. event at the Los Angeles Archives Bazaar in conjunction with L.A. as Subject! As part of Wikipedia Loves Libraries and to celebrate Open Access Week, UC Riverside is participating alongside other Western Waters Digital Library members in an edit-a-thon focusing on water issues. Join students and faculty learning how to edit! This event will take place on Tuesday, October 21 from 10am to 3pm at UCR's Orbach Science Library (map). RSVPs are requested here. The Unforgetting L.A. edit-a-thon and training workshop will take place at the 9th annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar, and is hosted by online magazine East of Borneo in partnership with L.A. as Subject. Join us on Saturday, October 25 from 9am to 5pm at the USC Doheny Memorial Library (map). Beginners welcome! Please RSVP here if you plan to attend. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:06, 17 October 2014 (UTC) To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2014-43

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. You can read translations.

Recent changes

• You can test a new system to see math using MathML. Go to your display options and choose "⧼mw math mathml⧽".
• You can add badges in Wikidata for quality articles and featured lists. [101] [102]

File information cleanup

• You can join a wiki project to help tools read file information. It will help people reuse files.
• See how to fix metadata. You can fix it by adding markers to templates and adding templates to files.
• You can see a list of files missing machine-readable information on your wiki.
• The files missing readable data are also in these categories: no license, no description, no author or no source. [103]

Problems

• Developers fixed a security problem. If you use Internet Explorer 6, you won't be able to log in any more. You should use a newer browser. [104]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf4) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 16. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 21, and on all Wikipedias from October 23 (calendar).
• 10% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. You can also test it as a Beta Feature. [105]
• If you add the same parameter twice in a template, it now puts the page in a tracking category. [106] [107]

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13:48, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-44

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

Problems

• There was an issue with files from Commons on October 21. You could only see those with names between 140 and 159 characters by visiting Commons itself. [108]
• There was a problem with cut and paste in VisualEditor in Firefox. It was fixed quickly. [109]
• There was a problem with editing math in VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [110]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will now come to Wikipedia sites every Wednesday, instead of every Thursday. [111]
• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28, and on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).
• VisualEditor now uses autovalues for templates if they are in TemplateData. [112] [113] [114]
• VisualEditor's menu items now show their shortcuts beside them. [115]
• VisualEditor now opens faster when you click "edit". [116]
• The rules for plurals in translations changed in some languages. Interface translations are currently not being updated from translatewiki.net; this process will start again on November 6. [117]

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05:21, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-45

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

Recent software changes

• The "Special:Cite" page is now called "Special:CiteThisPage". That way, you know it's to cite the page, not to add a reference. [118]
• You can no longer use the insource: keyword for text searches. It caused issues with the new search tool. It will come back later. [119] [120]

Problems

• There was a bug in VisualEditor with Internet Explorer. It hid tools like the link editor when you opened them. The bug was fixed on Monday. [121]
• Issues with the new search tool caused geo data code to show up on pages on Monday and Friday. The mobile "nearby" tool was also broken. The problem is now fixed. [122] [123] [124]
• HHVM caused server issues on Thursday. They are now fixed.

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4, and on all Wikipedias from November 5 (calendar).
• Some wikis have icons at the top of a page to show if it is protected or featured. Icons show up using CSS. You can now use the <indicator> tag in these templates instead to add the icons. [125] [126]
• VisualEditor now tells you if you're editing a re-used reference. This helps you avoid changing it if you just want to add a new one. [127]
• The icons in VisualEditor's template editor tool for adding more fields are back, along with other fixes. [128] [129] [130] [131] [132]
• After November 6, all wikis will have the tool to edit TemplateData. [133] [134] [135]

Future changes

• The new search tool will come to the last wikis in the coming weeks. This includes Wikipedia in French, Chinese, German and English. [136]

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17:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

L.A. event on November 11, and a new Facebook group

Wik-Ed Women editing session (11/11, 6-10pm), and join our new Facebook group!

Dear fellow Wikipedian, The LA Wikipedia community has a new Facebook group! Become a member to keep up to date with all of our upcoming events and to connect with local Wikipedians! In addition, we have one upcoming event: the third Wik-Ed Women editing session will take place on Tuesday, November 11 from 6pm to 10pm at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive downtown. This series of informal get-togethers is designed to encourage Los Angeles women-in-the-arts (though all are welcome!) to contribute their expertise to Wikipedia, specifically expanding content about women artists. Please RSVP here if you plan to attend. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:20, 4 November 2014 (UTC) To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

L.A. event on November 11 CANCELED

Wik-Ed Women editing session CANCELED

Due to health issues affecting one of the organizers, the third Wik-Ed Women editing session (originally scheduled for Tuesday, November 11) has been canceled. We expect the series to pick up again sometime in December. Sorry for the inconvenience, and hope to see you in the near future! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:08, 7 November 2014 (UTC) To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2014-46

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

Recent software changes

• You may see a new tool on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [137] [138]
• The MediaWiki API now shows information in a nice format. You can translate it in translatewiki.net. [139]

File information cleanup

• Reminder: You can help fix file information on your wiki. It will help robots understand the information. After that, it will be easier for you to search files and re-use them.
• You can join two IRC chats this week to learn more about the file cleanup project. One will be on Wednesday at 18:00 (UTC) and the other on Thursday at 04:00 (UTC). You can ask questions during the chat if you need help to fix files on your wiki.
• You can see a list of files to fix on the Labs tool. You can report bugs and ask questions on the talk page.

Problems

• Wikimedia Labs was broken for a few hours on Thursday. It was due to a hardware problem. [140]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf7) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11, and on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).
• You can now use more editing tools for tables in VisualEditor. You can add rows and columns, merge cells, and edit table captions. [141] [142]
• The style and insert menus in the toolbar of VisualEditor now show fewer tools. This helps you see the most common tasks. You can see all items by clicking "More". [143]
• The way windows inside VisualEditor work has changed. VisualEditor should be faster and have fewer bugs. [144]

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15:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-47

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

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf8) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 12. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18, and on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
• The new search tool ("CirrusSearch") will be on the English Wikipedia from November 19. [145]

Move from Bugzilla to Phabricator

• The tool to track bugs will change on November 21.
• You won't be able to add or edit bugs between November 21 and November 24.
• You can make the change easier for you by creating your account.
• Bugzilla will be frozen after the change. You will see, edit and report bugs in Phabricator.
• You can join two IRC chats to learn more about the change. The chats will be on Tuesday, November 18 at 16:00 (UTC) and 23:00 UTC. [146]

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18:28, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-48

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

Recent changes

• The move from Bugzilla to Phabricator is done. You can now report bugs in Phabricator. [147]

Problems

• There was a problem when editing tables in VisualEditor. VisualEditor was trying to fix bad values for the colspan or rowspan option. VisualEditor now leaves the bad values to avoid making things worse. This was fixed on November 17. [148]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf9) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 19. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 25, and on all Wikipedias from November 26 (calendar).
• You will be able to try VisualEditor on many new wikis for the first time. After November 26, VisualEditor will become available on Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews wikis. You can find it in your Beta options. [149]
• VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved. [150]
• You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window. [151]
• VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages. [152] [153]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-50

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

Recent software changes

• All users are now getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [154]
• You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues. [155]

Problems

• There was a problem with Phabricator on November 29. It was due to a network issue. [156]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf11) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 10 (calendar). [157]
• You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key. [158]
• It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better. [159] [160]
• The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs. [161] [162] [163]
• (Lua) You can no longer use mw.text.unstrip to get the HTML from special page transclusion. You can see a list of scripts to fix. [164] [165]

Future changes

• Starting next week JavaScript tools won't work if they use jQuery Migrate. [166]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

L.A. edit-a-thon this Sunday, December 14

L.A. meetup: December 14 edit-a-thon at the California African American Museum

Dear fellow Wikipedian, East of Borneo's "Unforgetting L.A." edit-a-thon series continues this weekend at the California African American Museum! Please join us this Sunday, December 14 from 11am to 4pm. Beginners welcome! You'll learn to create new articles that improve Wikipedia's coverage of African American art in Los Angeles, past and present. Please click here for full event details and to RSVP if you plan to attend. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:25, 10 December 2014 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2014-51

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

Recent software changes

• You may see a new tool tested on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [167]
• You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects. [168]
• You can test a new version of the Content Translation tool.

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf12) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 17 (calendar). [169]
• You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu, Ctrl+F or Cmd+F. [170]
• VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold. [171]
• The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change. [172]

Future changes

• The star image of the watchlist may change soon. [173] [174]
• You won't be able to use Phabricator on December 18, 2014. It will be down between 00:00 and 08:00 (UTC). [175] [176]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-52

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

Recent software changes

• The Technical Operations team is now using Phabricator to track their tasks. The Operations team manages the Wikimedia servers. In the future you will be able to see the tasks that are not private. [177]

Software changes this week

• There will be no software changes this week and next week. This is because of the end-of-year holidays. The next update of MediaWiki will be on January 6. [178]

Future changes

• The system that displays citations will change in the future. The new system will not change the style of citations. [179]
• A new design for VisualEditor will come in January. You can try it now on test wikis. [180]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:52, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-01

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

Software changes

• There are no technical changes this week.

Feedback about Tech News in 2014

• 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 2014? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us at m:Talk:Tech/News. You can write in your language. Thank you!

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-03

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

Recent software changes

• Rotated PDF files in landscape format used to show too small. They will now display correctly. You may need to purge older files. [181]
• You can now use the {{!}} magic word instead of Template:!. Many wikis used the template to create a pipe (|) in tables and templates. You can delete the template. [182]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf14) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from January 13. It will be on all Wikipedias from January 14 (calendar).
• A bug in VisualEditor sometimes added a ☀ (Sun) character. This is now fixed. [183]
• The search and replace tool in VisualEditor is now much faster in long pages. [184]
• The TemplateData editor now uses the same design as VisualEditor. [185] [186] [187]
• The thumb option is now shown in your language in the help of the classic editor toolbar. [188]

Future changes

• You can sign up to answer questions from designers. It will help them make editing easier. [189]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

L.A. event on Tuesday, January 20

Wik-Ed Women editing session (1/20, 6-10pm)

Dear fellow Wikipedian, Please join us at an event this coming Tuesday: the third Wik-Ed Women editing session will take place on January 20 from 6pm to 10pm at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive downtown. This series of informal get-togethers is designed to encourage Los Angeles women-in-the-arts (though all are welcome!) to contribute their expertise to Wikipedia, specifically expanding content about women artists. Please RSVP here if you plan to attend. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:06, 15 January 2015 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2015-04

Latest tech 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 download the new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. The new version shows lead images, better galleries and content from Wikidata. It also has many other new features.[190] [191]
• Programs and bots still can't read information about images on many wikis. You can see the list of wikis with the most files to fix. Wikipedia in Italian, Indonesian and Japanese language have the most files to fix. On the biggest wikis you should use bots. Bots can add information templates to groups of files. You can ask other tech users to help you.

Problems

• All JavaScript on Commons was broken for a few minutes on Tuesday. It was because of old code in the HotCat tool. The same problem happened on some Wikipedias on Wednesday. It is now fixed. [192]

Software changes this week

• There are no software changes this week and next week due to annual meetings. [193]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:13, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-05

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

Recent software changes

• You can now translate articles with the new ContentTranslation tool on several wikis. [194]

This week

• There are no software changes this week due to annual meetings. [195]

Future changes

• You can join a project to improve WikiProjects. [196]
• The Compact Personal Bar will be removed for now. It has a bug that breaks the tool to choose your language. It will come back when the bug is fixed. [197]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-06

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

Problems

• There was a security issue on Wikimedia Labs. Many Labs tools were down after the issue was fixed. [198]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 4 (calendar).
• The "Save page" button in the VisualEditor toolbar is now blue rather than green. This is the same as on the mobile site. [199]
• You can now edit pages on the draft namespace with VisualEditor on the Russian Wikipedia and Hebrew Wikipedia. You can ask to get VisualEditor for a namespace on your wiki. When your community agrees, ask in Phabricator. [200] [201]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:31, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

LA edit-a-thons on February 14, 17, and 21

Redondo Loves Wikipedia (2/14), Wik-Ed Women (2/17), and Unforgetting LA at the Getty (2/21)!

Dear fellow Wikipedian, The LA Wikipedia community has three events in mid-February -- please consider attending! First, we have a Valentine's Day edit-a-thon appropriately named Redondo Loves Wikipedia, which will take place at the Redondo Beach Public Library from 10am to 1pm on Saturday, February 14. Join library staff, the Redondo Beach Historical Society, and others to help improve Wikipedia's coverage of Redondo Beach! Second, we have a Wik-Ed Women editing session on Tuesday, February 17 from 6pm to 10pm at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive downtown. This series of informal get-togethers is designed to encourage Los Angeles women-in-the-arts (though all are welcome!) to contribute their expertise to Wikipedia, specifically expanding content about women artists. Third, we have an Unforgetting LA event put on by East of Borneo in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute. Come help improve Wikipedia's coverage of LA design and architecture, and have an awesome free day at the museum -- parking will be validated for edit-a-thon participants! If you'd like to use particular books from GRI's great collection, be sure to email before 2/13 (instructions at event page). And be sure to check out our main meetup page, because we already have three SoCal events scheduled for early March! I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:58, 5 February 2015 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2015-07

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

Recent software changes

• You can now use {{#lsth: PageName | SectionName }} to transclude a section with its title. [202]

Problems

• MediaWiki was reverted to the previous version on February 4. It was because of a performance issue. It was restored later. [203]
• UploadWizard was broken on February 4 because of the revert of MediaWiki. [204]
• All sites were broken for 30 minutes on February 5. It was due to a network problem. [205]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 11 (calendar).
• You can have one user page for all wikis. Your Meta user page will show if you don't have a user page on a wiki. You can test this tool on test wikis. [206] [207] [208]
• You can search for media files in VisualEditor more easily. Images are bigger and you see the size and license. [209] [210]
• It is easier to review your changes when you save the page in VisualEditor. The window is wider. [211]
• You can read the latest news about VisualEditor. You can now join weekly meetings with developers. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The first meeting is on February 11 at 20:00 (UTC).

Future changes

• Administrators will soon be able to delete change tags used fewer than 5,000 times. [212]
• In the future you will be able to have personal lists of articles on the mobile site. [213]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:27, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-08

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

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 18 (calendar).
• On Wednesday your Meta user page will be shown if you don't have a user page on a wiki. [214] [215] [216]
• You can now change the order of categories in VisualEditor using drag-and-drop. [217]
• In VisualEditor, you now need to make a change before you can "Apply Changes" to citations and templates. [218]
• The way the cursor moves in VisualEditor is changing. Your browser now handles the cursor directly. Most of you will see no change. In right-to-left text, the cursor now moves in a 'visible' rather than 'logical' way. This is like other sites but you may be surprised at first.​ [219]

Meetings

• The VisualEditor Team had their first public bug triage meeting on February 11. They will post the results on the meeting page. [220]
• You can join the second weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 18 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join. [221]
• You can join a meeting with the developers of the Content Translation tool. It will be on February 18 at 13:00 (UTC). [222]

Future changes

• You can comment on a proposal about abandoned Labs tools.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:57, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-09

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

Recent software changes

• All new accounts are now global. [223]
• Your Meta user page is now shown if you don't have a user page on a wiki. You can report problems if you see any. You can ask a bot to delete your old user pages. [224] [225] [226]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 25. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 26 (calendar).
• It is now easier to see template fields in VisualEditor. The fields are bigger. [227]
• It is now easier to see when a button is disabled in VisualEditor. [228]
• Sometimes when you copy-pasted a template in VisualEditor, it was replaced by HTML. This problem is now fixed. [229]
• Tools in Labs will stop working for a few hours on February 24. [230]

Meetings

• You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
• You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 26 at 00:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• At the moment you need to log in to edit Wikimedia wikis on mobile devices. You can say if anyone should be allowed to edit on the mobile sites. The discussion ends on March 15.
• Images in the interface will soon work better in Opera 12. [231]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:29, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-10

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 software changes

• A Lua function to use Wikidata has changed. You need to update the pages that use it. [232]
• You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Uzbek and Minangkabau. You need to enable it in your Beta options.
• You can now hide banners if you don't have an account. [233] [234]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 4 (calendar).
• You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Punjabi and Kyrgyz. You can ask for the tool in other languages.
• Editing the fake blank line in VisualEditor is now simpler. This change also fixed a few bugs. [235] [236] [237] [238]
• The TemplateData editor now warns you if a related page already has TemplateData. [239]
• The TemplateData table now tells you if a template doesn't take any parameters. [240]

Meetings

• You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
• You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 4 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join technical meetings in France and Mexico this year. You will be able to ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [241]

Future changes

• You will be able to get a direct link for a section of a page. [242]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:42, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-11

Latest tech 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 create books on almost all wikis. It doesn't work yet on wikis using the language converter. [243] [244]
• VisualEditor had problems with categories in Safari. It sometimes moved or removed the categories. The issue is now fixed. [245] [246] [247]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 11 (calendar).
• In VisualEditor the "Edit ^beta" button is now called "Edit" on the English Wikipedia. [248] [249]
• The feedback tool in VisualEditor now looks like the other tools. It also asks for information about your browser to help fix bugs. [250] [251]
• You now see the VisualEditor toolbar even if the rest of the page is still loading. [252] [253]
• You now see more information when you edit a link, a reference or other items in VisualEditor. You also see a clearer edit button in those tools. [254] [255]
• If you use the ContentTranslation tool you now see red links in the list of articles in other languages. The link is red if the article doesn't exist in the language of your options or of your browser. You can translate the article by clicking on the red link.

Meetings

• You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
• You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join a technical meeting in France in May. You can ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [256]

Future changes

• You can get help to become a developer. You can learn more on the Google Summer of Code and Outreachy pages. [257]
• You will soon be able to read technical reports in Phabricator. [258]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:19, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-12

Latest tech 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 servers that resize images are using new software. You should report new problems that you notice with images. [259]
• You can now see lists of bugs about Commons, Wikisource and Wiktionary. [260]
• It is now easier to add special characters in VisualEditor. You can edit the list of characters for your wiki. [261] [262]

Problems

• Wikis were broken for a few minutes on Thursday due to a code error.

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 18 (calendar).
• A puzzle piece icon () now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [263] [264]
• You can now add examples, and details about old parameters, in TemplateData. [265] [266]

Meetings

• You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
• You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 18 at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The list of bad user names on your wiki will no longer work. The global list will replace it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [267] [268]
• You can comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [269]
• The final steps of single user login (SUL) will happen in April. You can see the rules to rename accounts. [270]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:16, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

LA edit-a-thons on March 18 (tomorrow!) and 28

Wadewitz memorial edit-a-thon (3/18), Redondo Loves Wikipedia (3/28)

Dear fellow Wikipedian, The LA Wikipedia community has two events in this second half of March -- please consider attending! First, there is a memorial edit-a-thon in honor of the prolific LA Wikipedian Adrianne Wadewitz, which is being held downtown on March 18 (tomorrow!) from noon to 8pm as a part of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies' annual conference. Please drop by to contribute your own work or teach other users how to write for Wikipedia. Second, there will be an event at the Redondo Beach Public Library (following up on last month's session), in collaboration with the Redondo Beach Historical Society. Please join us from 10am to noon on Saturday, March 28 at the main branch of the Redondo Beach Public Library! I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:39, 17 March 2015 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2015-13

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 has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 25 (calendar).
• The text of a reference is now more visible when you click on it. It has a blue background. Many wikis already have the blue color. Those wikis can now remove it from their CSS page. [271]
• VisualEditor is now much faster. For many users it is now at least as fast as the wikitext editor. [272] [273] [274]
• When you add a list of references in VisualEditor, you now see it right away. You can still change its group by editing it. [275]

Meetings

• You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
• You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Talk pages using "LiquidThreads" on mediawiki.org will soon use the new system. [276]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:10, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-14

Latest tech 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 hide site banners even if you don't have an account. [277]
• You can now add citations more easily with VisualEditor on the French and Italian Wikipedia. The tool adds the information when you add some types of links. In the future you will be able to add this tool to your wiki. [278] [279] [280]
• All sites should now be faster if you have a recent browser. [281]
• You could see a serious bug when editing some templates with VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [282]
• VisualEditor could break when you edited an image. The issue was fixed quickly. [283]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 31. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 1 (calendar).
• VisualEditor is now the main editing tool on 53 more Wikipedias. [284]
• You can now edit the mobile site of all wikis without an account. [285]
• You can test a new tool on the beta mobile site on the English Wikipedia. With the new tool, you can create lists of articles. [286]
• You can now see that VisualEditor is opening even if you're not looking at the top of the page. [287]
• VisualEditor doesn't leave empty titles with just nowiki tags any more. [288] [289] [290] [291]

Meetings

• You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on IRC on March 31 at 16:00 (UTC). [292]
• You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 1 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:19, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-15

Latest tech 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 join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [293]
• You can read the last monthly report. In the future you can read team reports every three months. You can see current work on the roadmap. [294] [295]
• The number of articles in Special:Statistics is now updated once a month. [296]
• You can use a new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. Using the app, you can now share a fact with your friends. [297]

Problems

• The import tool was broken for a few days. Imports didn't add log entries. You can delete and import pages again if necessary. [298]
• Labs was broken several times this week. [299] [300] [301] [302]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).
• You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [303]
• Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [304] [305]
• You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [306]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [307]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:42, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-16

Latest tech 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 read the latest news about VisualEditor.
• You can now use the new translation tool on 22 Wikipedias. You now see the tool the first time you create a new page. [308]
• The list of bad user names on your wiki no longer works. The global list replaces it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [309] [310]

Problems

• Some wikis had issues on Wednesday. [311] [312]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
• Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [313] [314]
• All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [315]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:41, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-17

Latest tech 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 sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [316]
• VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [317]
• You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [318]
• If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [319]

Problems

• There was a problem with Labs on Monday. [320]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
• Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [321] [322] [323]
• If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [324]
• You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [325]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will soon be able to add and remove tags on edits. [326] [327]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-18

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

Recent changes

• All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [328] [329]
• You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [330]
• There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [331]
• You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [332]

Problems

• Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [333]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 29 (calendar).
• It is now clearer that you can delete several rows and columns when you edit tables in VisualEditor. [334]
• You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [335]
• You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [336]
• You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [337]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 29 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Support request with team editing experiment project

Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta.

Tech News: 2015-19

Latest tech 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 chat with other users in Phabricator. [338]
• There was a rare problem with VisualEditor. The text of another wiki could be added to your edit. The issue is now fixed. [339] [340]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 6 (calendar).
• It is now easier to add a link in VisualEditor. You can see an image and a description about the page. [341]

Meetings

• You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on May 5 at 14:30 (UTC). [342]
• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 6 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join an event in France on May 22−25. You need to sign up before May 8. [343]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:20, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-20

Latest tech 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 make charts and maps on your wiki with the new "graph" tool. If you have an old browser, you will see images instead. It uses a tool called Vega; you can learn how to use it and write help pages for your wiki. You can use the Vega edit tool to make charts and copy the code to your wiki. Charts and maps use complex code and you should put them into templates. In the future, you will be able to create charts with VisualEditor. [344] [345] [346]
• You can apply for technical jobs to develop tools for the community. [347]
• The logos of all wikis are now in a new place. It will make pages load faster. You can still ask to change the logo. You can also use local CSS for brief changes. [348] [349]

Problems

• There was a problem that caused slow editing. [350]
• Pages were sometimes removed from your watchlist in VisualEditor. This problem is now fixed. [351]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 13 (calendar).
• You can now use data from Wikidata on more pages. The page doesn't need to be linked to the Wikidata item. It works on a few wikis and more wikis will be added soon. [352] [353]
• You should get fewer errors when you add files to Commons. [354]
• When you use an external link to link to a wiki page, VisualEditor now converts it to a wiki link. [355]
• When you add a link in VisualEditor, you see pages that match what you type. It is now easier to see where they match. [356]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 13 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:59, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-21

Latest tech 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 watch a video about the new graph tool.

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 20 (calendar).
• References are now always in the right order. Also, the reference list now only shows references used on the page. [357]
• You can no longer create an account with a colon ':' in it. If you already have one, it still works. [358]
• The toolbar in VisualEditor now looks different. It is easier to see the icons. [359]
• You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [360] [361]
• UploadWizard now shows better matches when you add a category to your file. [362]
• A test about VisualEditor will start on the English Wikipedia on Thursday. [363]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 21 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join a technical meeting in France this week.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:35, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-22

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

• VisualEditor was broken for 30 minutes on Tuesday. The problem was due to a tool it uses. [364]
• Some Labs tools had issues last week. [365] [366]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 20. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 27 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 28 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can add your ideas of new tools to help active users like you. [367]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:29, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-23

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

• Many wikis were slow for a few hours on Wednesday due to a code error. Sometimes the pages did not load at all and showed an error. [368]
• Some tools in Labs were broken on Wednesday and Thursday. [369]
• Edit tags added by the software were broken on all wikis from May 23 to May 28. [370] [371]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 3 (calendar).
• You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [372]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 3 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:42, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-24

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 June 9. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 11 (calendar). [373] [374]
• If you use the Monobook skin, the buttons and other controls now look more the same in VisualEditor and other tools. [375]
• When you edit links and other items in VisualEditor, you now need to apply your change before closing the tool. [376]
• The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons. [377]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 9 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on June 10 at 14:30 (UTC). [378]

Future changes

• If you have a bot, you may need to fix it. The default continuation mode of the API for action=query will change at the end of June. [379]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:18, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-25

Latest tech 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 have created more than 5000 articles with the new translation tool. [380]
• Editing a page is now faster. This is because some statistics about edit filters were removed. [381]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 17 June. It will be on all Wikipedias from 18 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 16 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. It will be on June 19 at 16:00 (UTC). [382]

Future changes

• Developers are working on a new tool to get and send newsletters. If you read or write a newsletter, share your ideas about it. [383]
• If you use Pywikibot, soon you won't be able to use compat anymore. [384] [385] [386]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:04, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

5th Annual Wiknic

5th Annual Wiknic (Saturday, July 11, 2015, ~9:30am-4pm)

Dear fellow Wikipedian, You are cordinally invited to the fifth annual Los Angeles Wiknic! The Wiknic is a part of the nationwide Great American Wiknic. We'll be grilling, getting to know each other better, and building the L.A. Wikipedia community! The event is tentatively planned for Pan-Pacific Park (map) and will be held on Saturday, July 11, 2014 from 9:30am to 4pm or so. Please RSVP and volunteer to bring food or drinks if possible! I hope to see you there! Howcheng (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:41, 21 June 2015 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2015-26

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

Recent changes

• Some wikis can now be used only with HTTPS. This includes the English, Russian and Chinese Wikipedias, among others. Soon all wikis will use only HTTPS for all users. [387] [388]
• You can't use HTTPS wikis with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. You need to use another browser. [389]

Problems

• On June 15, search was broken on all wikis for several hours. [390] [391] [392]
• On June 16, images were broken for several hours on wikis that use InstantCommons. [393] [394] [395]
• Many Labs tools were broken for several days. Almost all of them are back now. They may be missing some data for the last 10 days. [396] [397] [398]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 25 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 23 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:24, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-27

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

Recent changes

• Long lines in code blocks now look better. [399]
• You can now see graphs in VisualEditor. [400]
• When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [401]
• The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [402] [403] [404]
• You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [405]

Problems

• JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [406]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
• You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [407]
• When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [408]
• If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [409]
• Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [410]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future

• When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [411]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-28

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

Recent changes

• On the mobile site, you now see more information when you search for a page. It now shows the description from Wikidata. [412]

Problems

• The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [413]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 8. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 9 (calendar).
• The "Page information" tool shows how many users watch the page. You can now see how many are active. [414] [415]
• You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [416]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 7 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikinic rescheduled

5th Annual Wiknic rescheduled to Saturday, July 25, 2015, ~9:30am-4pm

Due to a conflict with the Redondo Loves Wikipedia edit-a-thon, the fifth annual Los Angeles Wiknic has been rescheduled. As before, the location will be at Pan-Pacific Park (map) and will be held on Saturday, July 25, 2015 from 9:30am to 4pm or so. Please RSVP and volunteer to bring food or drinks if possible! I hope to see you there! —howcheng {chat} - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:28, 7 July 2015 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2015-29

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

Recent changes

• You can now see a list of pages with errors in code coloring. [417]

Problems

• There was a problem with editing on Thursday. Some tools like bots and VisualEditor were broken on all wikis for 10 minutes. [418]
• There was a problem with images on Thursday. They were broken on all wikis for 15 minutes. [419]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

• You can join a technical meeting at Wikimania in Mexico City this week. [420]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:06, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-30

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

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 22. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 23 (calendar).
• You now see more warnings in the image viewer. They tell you to be careful when using the image, for example if it shows a person. [421]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 21 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Soon you won't be able to use MathJax to display math. [422]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

03:06, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-31

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

Recent changes

• You can now use redirects to link to JavaScript pages. [423]
• You cannot use the compact user bar any more. [424]
• You can change your options to see bigger images. [425]
• You can watch short videos about how to use VisualEditor. [426]
• You can now edit pages linked in "what links here" more easily. [427]

Problems

• There was a problem with some Lua modules on July 22 and 23. Some pages using them did not list them in "what links here". You can fix those pages with a null edit: edit and save the page without making any change.
• There was a problem with the abuse filter page on big wikis on July 23. It was due to a code error. [428]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 29. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 30 (calendar).
• JavaScript authors: You cannot use wgNoticeUserData to get edit counts anymore. [429]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 28 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-32

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

Recent changes

• The ContentTranslation extension has been updated:
  • You can now type in list paragraphs on wikis with right-to-left scripts. [430]
  • Some user interface updates changed how details in the ContentTranslation extension look. [431] [432] [433] [434]
• The error page you see when the sites are not working is now simpler and easier to read. It also shows the Wikimedia logo. [435]
• MediaWiki now supports redirects for CSS pages. [436]
• Bots can't guess captchas unlimited times anymore. [437]

Problems

• There was a problem with thumbnails on wikis with local images on July 24 and 25. It was due to a code error. [438]
• We can't search by file type on Wikimedia wikis now. [439]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 6 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 4 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:51, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-33

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

Recent changes

• MediaWiki can now hide the signature button when you edit a content page. [440]
• The "Your preferences have been saved" message has changed. You can now see more easily what was saved when you change preferences several times. [441]
• You can now play Ogg video files in some browsers that don't support this format. This solution uses JavaScript and works on desktop browsers only for now. It will work on mobile later. [442]
• You can now use the same tools to edit style in VisualEditor on mobile as in desktop browsers. [443]
• It is now easier to see if there is a JavaScript error in a user or site script. [444]
• JavaScript authors:
  • You can no longer use the Sajax library. You can see a list of pages to fix. [445] [446]
  • You can no longer use document.write on Wikimedia wikis. You can see a list of pages to fix. [447] [448]
• The content translation tool now works better. It is easier to use math, and useless tags are no longer added. [449]

Problems

• More edits have been rejected due to loss of session data lately. This is now fixed. [450]
• Importing a Lua module sometimes didn't work. This is now fixed. [451]
• Text was sometimes lost in the content translation tool. One part of the problem is now fixed. [452]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 13 (calendar).
• UploadWizard is getting a new look. The look of buttons and checkboxes has already changed. This week, UploadWizard gets a new date picker. The other text fields will change soon. [453]
• You can now test VisualEditor on mobile devices of all sizes. [454]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some things in the watchlist will get a new look. [455]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:58, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-34

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

Recent changes

• Many Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Before they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article. [456] [457] [458]
• Some auto-saving problems and other issues in the Content Translation tool are now fixed. Please report to the Content Translation feedback page if you still have problems. [459]

Problems

• Older gadgets that are not using ResourceLoader are not loading anymore. They need to be updated. [460] [461]
• On August 12 the machine translation servers and the Content Translation tool didn't work. This was fixed on the same day. [462]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 20 (calendar).
• You can soon watch when something is added to or removed from a category. [463]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 18 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:17, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Notification of pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in more than one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions will be removed pending your return if you do not return to activity within the next month. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated should this occur, please post to the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, and that you have not been inactive for a three-year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three-year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. Worm^TT(talk) 11:11, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-35

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

Recent changes

• Disambiguation pages are now excluded from the random page function. [464]

Problems

• There was a problem with CAPTCHAs in VisualEditor. This has now been fixed. [465]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 27 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:02, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-36

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

Recent changes

• VisualEditor will now automatically create a link when you type in or paste an ISBN, PMID, or RFC. [466][467]
• The link editor in VisualEditor is now a bit wider. It's now the same width as the automatic citation tool. [468]
• VisualEditor gadget authors can no longer use the backwards-compatibility module ext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.init. Use ext.visualEditor.desktopArticleTarget.init instead. [469]
• Gadget writers can now use mediawiki.ForeignApi to communicate between different Wikimedia wikis. [470]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 3 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 1 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikidata API will be updated with breaking changes. This will probably happen on September 9. [471]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:37, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-37

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

Recent changes

• You can now mention up to 50 users in a post and they will get a notification. Previously you could notify up to 20 users. [472]
• A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support. [473]
• You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version. [474]

Problems

• There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed. [475]
• The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed. [476][477]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 10 (calendar).
• The maximum character length when you search for something on the Wikimedia wikis is now 300 characters. [478]
• The notifications list has been split into two lists. As a first step, notifications about messages on your user talk page will be placed in the second list. Feedback is requested at the Echo talk page. [479][480]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 8 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the Wikitech ambassadors mailing list. The list is for Wikimedians interested in spreading information about Wikimedia technology news. See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia mailing lists will be moved to a new server and the software will be upgraded. This will happen on September 9 at 14:00 (UTC). The mailing lists will not be working during the move. It can take up to four hours. [481]
• Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places. [482][483]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:29, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Notification of imminent suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in more than one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions will be removed pending your return if you do not return to activity within the next several days. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated should this occur, please post to the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, and that you have not been inactive for a three-year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three-year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. MadmanBot (talk) 17:09, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-38

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

Recent changes

• You can now use the Wikidata query service. [484]
• Belarusian-Taraškievica Wikipedia was moved from be-x-old.wikipedia.org to be-tarask.wikipedia.org. This caused some issues, but most of them were resolved. [485]
• Language preferences might not be changed immediately when you adjust them. Language selection might work slower. Please report any problems. [486][487]

Problems

• There was a problem when editing International Standard Book Numbers in Visual Editor. This has now been fixed. [488]
• The Wikimedia mailing lists should have been upgraded on September 9. It didn't work as planned and will now happen later. [489]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 17 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 15 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• ContentTranslation will show more data on the Special:ContentTranslationStats page. For example, it will show translation trends and information about deleted translations. [490]
• The first version of the translation suggestions feature will be deployed soon. [491]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:18, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-39

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

Recent changes

• There is now an experimental Wikimedia maps service. You can give feedback here. [492][493]
• Last week a few issues with UploadWizard were fixed. Before this was done, UploadWizard would stop you from uploading your files if something went wrong. [494][495][496][497]
• More Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Previously they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article. [498]
• The VisualEditor welcome dialogue has been changed. The intention is to make it more helpful for new users. [499]

Problems

• Wikimedia Labs' HTTPS certificate expired for most of Tuesday 15 September. To reach Wikimedia Labs and Tool Labs securely you had to ignore your browser's security error message. There was no risk to data security during this time. [500]
• Last week the notification system was split into two parts. This was temporarily undone because of a bug and performance concerns. It will return to two parts this week. [501][502]
• UploadWizard couldn't upload files larger than 5 MB when using chunked uploads. This has now been fixed. [503]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 23. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 24 (calendar).
• The page move tool has been switched over to the new standard look for forms. [504]
• You can now choose whether to extend a link or not when editing one in VisualEditor. This means it is easier to choose how much of what you type before and after the link is part of it. [505]
• Wikibooks can now use data from Wikidata. [506]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. It will be on September 23 at 17:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can register to the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016 in San Francisco 4–6 January 2016. Gadget, template, bot, and tool developers are welcome as well. Call for participation and travel sponsorship requests are open until 2 October.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Following a community discussion in June 2011, consensus was reached to provisionally suspend the administrative permissions of users who have been inactive for one year (i.e. administrators who have not made any edits or logged actions in more than one year). As a result of this discussion, your administrative permissions have been removed pending your return. If you wish to have these permissions reinstated, please post to the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard and the userright will be restored per the re-sysopping process (i.e. as long as the attending bureaucrats are reasonably satisfied that your account has not been compromised, that your inactivity did not have the effect of evading scrutiny of any actions which might have led to sanctions, and that you have not been inactive for a three-year period of time). If you remain inactive for a three-year period of time, including the present year you have been inactive, you will need to request reinstatement at WP:RFA. This removal of access is procedural only, and not intended to reflect negatively upon you in any way. We wish you the best in future endeavors, and thank you for your past administrative efforts. –xeno^talk 21:41, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-40

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

Recent changes

• In UploadWizard, the dialog to see an image preview has been removed. You already see the images in the thumbnails when you upload them. [507]
• UploadWizard dialogs look a bit different now. They have been updated to the new OOUI look. [508]
• You can now edit music scores in VisualEditor. You can add new sheet music scores and get live updates when you edit one. [509]
• When you send an e-mail to another editor using Special:EmailUser, that user will now get a notification on the wiki as well. [510]
• You can now see 500 images when you upload images from Flickr with UploadWizard. Before this change the limit was 50. [511]
• The Wikimedia mailing lists have been upgraded. [512]
• MediaWiki developers spent a day looking at proposed code changes in Gerrit. The goal was to clean up the backlog and give feedback to volunteer developers. [513]

Problems

• Some visitors had problems reaching the Wikimedia sites for an hour on September 24. [514][515]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 30. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 1 (calendar).
• There will be a new beta feature that allows editors to use Flow on their user talkpage if they want to. Each wiki can decide if they want to enable it. [516]
• The Content Translation tool can give translation suggestions. This feature will now be available in more languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, Italian, and Catalan. [517]

Meetings

• You can join the strategy process of the Reading department of Wikimedia Engineering. [518]
• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation developers want the community to decide who can use OAuth in the future. You can discuss it on Meta.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-41

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

Recent changes

• The link editor in the visual editor now shows results below the search box. This improves the usability on desktop and mobile. [519]
• The description at Special:ChangeEmail now clearly explains that the page can also be used to remove your email. [520]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 8 (calendar).
• UploadWizard will remind users to add a category. [521]
• UploadWizard's category selectors will be easier to use. [522]
• A new Cite error will be shown if a named reference is defined more than once in the same article. [523]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikidata requests your input on how to improve the editing of Wikidata's data in other locations, such as Wikipedias.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:33, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-42

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

Recent changes

• The database size lists have been updated. These control special page update frequency and which wikis use global abuse filters. [524]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 15 (calendar).
• You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons using the visual editor. When the image is uploaded it will be added to the article you're editing. [525]
• Pages that show citation error messages will automatically be placed in a hidden category. [526]

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 13 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:29, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

This Thursday: Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Getty Center

You are invited to join the Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Getty Center in LA on October 15! (drop-in any time, 10am-4pm)--Pharos (talk) 18:26, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-43

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

Recent changes

• Tech News is trying to make reading the newsletter easier. The icon means the item is in the newsletter every week, but with new dates. The icon means the item is mainly relevant for readers with technical knowledge. You can leave feedback on this change.
• Timestamps in the protection log will now be in the user's timezone. Previously they would show Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). [527]

Problems

• A problem with MediaWiki made some pages show no content on October 14. This has now been fixed. [528]
• Some templates were misplaced in the Flow description bar. This could make it impossible to click on links. This will be fixed this week. [529]
• The deployment of the new MediaWiki version was stopped on October 14. No new code was deployed for the rest of week. This meant planned changes did not happen. [530]

Changes this week

• Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week. [531]
• Wikispecies, Meta and MediaWiki.org will be able to use Wikidata for sitelinks. [532][533][534][535]

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 20 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:02, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-44

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

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).
• The first time you use the visual editor, pop-ups will explain why and when you should use the citation and link tools. [536]
• You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons from inside the wikitext editor by clicking "Upload" in the "Insert file" dialog. You will also be able to drag and drop them into an article when using the visual editor. [537][538]
• When you edit a code block in visual editor, you will have the syntax highlighted. [539][540]
• Index and Page namespaces on Wikisource will be defined as content namespaces in $wgContentNamespaces. [541]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:04, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-45

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

Recent changes

• You can now see how many editors are using a gadget on a wiki on Special:GadgetUsage. [542]
• If you are using the mobile version of Wikipedia, you can now see Wikidata descriptions under article titles in search results. [543]
• Editing conflicts are now detected when you edit on a mobile device. Before, this did not work properly on mobile. [544]

Problems

• On October 26 the Wikimedia sites went down for ten minutes. [545]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 5 (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 3 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join. You can also read the latest VisualEditor newsletter.

Future changes

• A help link will be added to Special:Search. Administrators might have to update the MediaWiki:Search-summary message to avoid two help links. [546]
• Empty list items could be allowed in the future. If so, this could affect some templates. [547]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:43, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-46

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

Recent changes

• Superprotect has been removed. [548]
• You can now switch between the wikitext editor and the visual editor without saving. You will not lose the changes you have made. [549]
• JSON dumps of the production search indexes are now available. They can be imported to Elasticsearch. [550]

Problems

• Some translations for the Thanks and Echo extensions were missing. Translators have been asked to help and this should be solved soon. [551]

Changes this week

• Thumbnails of 16-bit TIFF files will be displayed properly. Before, this didn't work. [552]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 12 (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 10 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• A new tool to navigate through diff pages is being developed. You can test it out and give feedback. [553]
• The options on Special:Watchlist will look slightly different. [554]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:18, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-47

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

Changes this week

• You can use TemplateData to indicate how you want a template to be displayed in wikitext. Tools like VisualEditor that edit templates will soon use this information. [555]
• Echo notification icons in MonoBook will look more like other icons in the theme. [556]
• The Community Tech team is doing a community wishlist survey to understand what they should be working on. They are now accepting proposals in all languages. You can create your proposal in the small box above the blue button and click it when you're done.
• Wikis can make the welcome notification link to a specific page. [557]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 19 (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 17 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Internet Explorer 8 will no longer have JavaScript support. You will still be able to browse and edit Wikipedia, but will not be able to use some features. This can be solved by upgrading to a newer version or switching to a different browser. The change will happen in January 2016. [558][559]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:39, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability 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, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-48

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

Recent changes

• A new Pageview API has been announced. Feedback is requested to help decide which data to add to it next.

Changes this week

• There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Language Engineering team. The topic is: Content Translation updates and Questions & Answers. The meeting will be on 25 November at 13:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• 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 24 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "RfC: Raise MediaWiki's PHP version requirement and update coding standards". The meeting will be on 25 November at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• From 1 December, the MediaWiki API will no longer support the dbg, txt, and yaml output formats. [560]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:26, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-49

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

The symbol for advanced news items has been changed. This is because the symbols were too similar. If a news item is for more technical readers it now looks like this: . You can give feedback on this change.

Problems

• On September 29 users' skin preferences were removed by mistake on small and medium-sized wikis. This changed preferences back to Vector. Restoring all data would cause even more problems. Affected users who want to have their preference changed back globally can ask for it as a comment on Phabricator task T119206 until December 21 2015. [561]
• Some scheduled tasks were not working properly from September to recently. This meant some pages in the special pages namespace were not updated. It has now been fixed. [562]

Changes this week

• Wikinews, Wikispecies, MediaWiki.org and Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [563][564]
• There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (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 1 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is using the <figure> tag for media. The meeting will be on 2 December at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Category watchlists are now available on test wikis and MediaWiki.org. The plan is to enable it on most wikis in January. [565]
• Cross-wiki notifications are being developed. When this is done you will not have to go to the wiki where something happened to be notified. [566]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-50

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

Recent changes

• Revision scoring will help to automatically identify bad-faith and good-faith edits. The point is to make it easier to block vandals and welcome newcomers. It currently supports Wikidata and 14 Wikipedias. [567]

Problems

• Meta was not given access to information from Wikidata last week. This will happen later. [568]

Changes this week

• You will be able to use wikilinks in Flow topic titles. [569]
• IP users will have a toolbar with links to the user talk page and user contributions. Some Wikipedias already have this feature. [570]
• You will be able to edit the graph size in the visual editor. You can either specify the size in the graph dialog or drag it to be the size you want it to be. [571]
• It will be easier to write math in the visual editor if you don't know LaTeX. You can use symbol buttons instead. [572]
• You will be able to use syntax highlighting when you write math with LaTeX in the visual editor. [573]
• UploadWizard will look a bit different. [574]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all Wikipedias from 10 December. (calendar).
• New MediaWiki versions will now be on Catalan and Hebrew Wikipedia on Wednesdays. Other Wikipedias get the new MediaWiki version on Thursdays. [575]

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 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are "Graph/Graphoid/Kartographer – data storage architecture" and "Parametric JSON builder". The meeting will be on 9 December at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• A new beta feature will show users links to related articles at the bottom of an article. It will not be enabled by default. [576]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:53, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-51

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

Changes this week

• Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [577]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all Wikipedias from 17 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 15 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is talking about the agenda for the Wikimedia Developer Summit. The meeting will be on 16 December at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join. [578]

Future changes

• A new gadget manager will come next year. The new gadget system is called Gadgets 2.0. [579]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-52

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays, the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2016.
• 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 2015? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us! You can write in your language. Thank you!

Recent changes

• CompletionSuggester is a new suggestions algorithm for Search. It is available as a Beta feature since 17 December. (more information)
• The Multimedia team is running an A/B test for the cross-wiki upload tool. They are testing four different interfaces. The test is running from 16-23 December. (more information)

Changes this week

• There is no deployment of MediaWiki scheduled until 12 January 2016 (calendar).

Meetings

• Should administrators and other users with advanced tools need stronger passwords? You can discuss about it in a Request for Comments.
• No meeting with the VisualEditor team on 22 and 29 December, and 5 January.

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18:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-02

Latest tech 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 no longer uses visitor statistics from comScore. [580]
• You can make interactive graphs with the Graph extension. There is now a tutorial for how to do this. [581]

Problems

• Some pages do not turn in up in categories where they should be. This is because link tables are sometimes not populated. [582]

Changes this week

• The Nuke extension will work with Flow. This will make it easier to handle spam in Flow. [583]
• New file uploads will now be patrollable. [584]
• Internet Explorer 8 will no longer have JavaScript support. You will still be able to browse and edit Wikipedia if you use Internet Explorer 8, but will not be able to use some features. This can be solved by upgrading to a newer version or switching to a different browser. [585][586]

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 12 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. [587]
• The edit tabs for the wikitext editor and the visual editor will be combined to one single edit tab. You will be able to choose which one you prefer. If you are not logged in, your choice will be saved as a cookie in your browser. You can test the single edit tab. [588][589]
• There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. This works much like the links to for example Wikipedia articles in other languages. It will go out of beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [590][591]
• The difference between "alerts" and "messages" notifications is unclear to some. The developers want feedback at the Phabricator task or on MediaWiki.org so they can make this better. You can give feedback in your language if you can't write in English.

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16:59, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-03

Latest tech 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 be able to find or mark bugs and suggestions in Phabricator that are specific for your language or wiki. [592]
• Notifications have been upgraded with more detailed and easier-to-access information. See the documentation. Cross-wiki notifications will be available soon on the two test wikis. [593]

Changes this week

• The visual editor uses the TemplateData extension to make editing templates easier. You will now get a warning when you edit a TemplateData form and leave it without saving. [594]
• MediaWiki will get a new authentication and authorization system called AuthManager. This is planned to happen in a month or two. Some bots will need to change how they log in. Two new and more stable authentication methods will be available now: Owner-only OAuth credentials and bot passwords. You can read more about the change. [595]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all Wikipedias from 21 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 19 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is governance model. The meeting will be on 20 January at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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17:56, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-04

Latest tech 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 follow when pages are added or removed from a category on German Wikipedia. The plan is to add it to Wikimedia Commons and other Wikipedias this week. [596][597]
• Administrators can hide individual entries of a page with RevisionDelete. There is now a button to choose "all", "none" or "inverse" in Special:Log. The article history will get the same buttons soon. Wikis that have done this locally with JavaScript will be able to remove that code. [598]

Changes this week

• You will be able to see the references when you preview a section you are editing. This will happen even if there is no <references /> tag in that section. [599]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

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 26 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is now an extension called ArticlePlaceholder. It can automatically generate content on Wikipedia with data from Wikidata if there is no Wikipedia article. It will have a tag to remind the reader it is not an article and ask the reader to create one. The developer is now looking for smaller Wikipedias that want to try the extension. [600]
• The OTRS system will be upgraded. The plan is to do this on 3 February at 08:00 (UTC). It will probably take 6 to 8 hours. OTRS will be down during the upgrade. [601]
• Users will soon be automatically congratulated when they reach some edit count milestones. [602]

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16:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-05

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

• Sites with a wikimedia.org address were by mistake redirected to the Wikimedia Foundation wiki on 26 January. This included Meta and Wikimedia Commons. The mistake was fixed after an hour. [603]
• Some users had problems logging in and out around 22 January. Bots also had problems and edit previews did not work properly. This was because of problems related to the new component SessionManager. It was undone on 23 January. [604][605]
• Because of new problems with SessionManager the latest version of MediaWiki was removed from the Wikimedia wikis again on 31 January. The new version this week will be without SessionManager. [606]

Changes this week

• The page history will get a help link. This will go to Help:Page history on Meta. Wikis can exchange it for a link to their local pages. [607]
• Notifications will only show part of a page name if it is very long. You will also have another way to mark notifications as read. [608][609]
• The Universal Language Selector input methods are now available with the visual editor. This means many who write in non-Latin scripts can now use the visual editor. [610]
• The visual editor will now give you more tools to edit tables. You can move rows and columns in a table and copy parts of tables to make new ones. You can also copy and paste more than one cell at the same time. [611][612][613]
• The visual editor has a new warning message when you leave a page you are editing without saving. Non-English wikis might need to translate it. [614][615]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).

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 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is expiring watch list entries. The meeting will be on 3 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The rest.wikimedia.org domain will be shut down. This is planned to happen in March. You should use /api/rest_v1/ at each individual project domain instead. [616]

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21:02, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-06

Latest tech 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 support is now available for 53 more computer languages. [617]
• When you get a notification that an edit has been reverted, the notification now quotes part of the edit summary. [618]
• RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [619]

Changes this week

• Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [620][621]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).

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 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is per-language URLs for pages of multilingual wikis. The meeting will be on 10 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Other sites will be able to tell when visitors come from links on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. They used to be able to do this until we started using forced HTTPS in June 2015. This is planned to happen on 15 February. [622][623]
• Wikidata will have a new data type called "external-id". It will be used for references to external resources. It will be enabled on February 16. Some properties will be changed to the new data type. [624][625][626]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:58, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-07

Latest tech 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 edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [627]
• You can now use the Math extension to write chemistry formulas. [628]

Problems

• A few editors might have been logged in as someone else because of a bug. For security reasons everyone was logged out on 9 February. If you have seen this bug, you can report it. [629][630]

Changes this week

• There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. The plan was to have it leave beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. It will happen on 16 February instead. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [631][632]
• Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [633]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).

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 16 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The search function on Wikimedia wikis will get a completion suggester that tries to find the right pages as the user is typing. It will also recognize some typos. This will probably happen in March. It is currently in beta. [634]

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16:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-08

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

Recent changes

• Phabricator has been upgraded. [635][636]

Problems

• There was no new MediaWiki version last week. Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week instead. This is because of a bug that made saving pages take longer time. [637][638]

Changes this week

• After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [639]

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 23 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is Assign RFCs to ArchCom shepherds. The meeting will be on 24 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:22, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-09

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

Recent changes

• Thanks to the Graph extension and Pageview API, we now have {{Graph:PageViews}} templates that can show pageviews for any wiki page for any of the wikis. See the examples.
• The Capiunto extension is installed on test wiki. Capiunto provides flexible infobox functionality for Scribunto and generates HTML for infobox features such as headers and rows. It is designed for clean and modern infoboxes that are driven by data from Wikidata, easily usable across different language versions, and easily extensible.
• The visual editor now follows the TemplateData format setting announced in November. When you edit or add a use of a template, the wikitext will be laid out in one of the two ways. [640][641]
• The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [642][643]

Changes this week

• On wikis where the visual editor is available in single edit tab mode, red links may open the visual editor instead of the wikitext editor, depending on user preferences. [644]
• Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [645]
• Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [646]

Meetings

• Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [647]
• 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 1 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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20:12, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-10

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

• Files on Wikimedia Commons can now be 2 GB big. The old limit was 1 GB. [648]
• Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [649]
• The Wikimedia memory cache servers in the Eqiad cluster have now been upgraded to Debian 8 (Jessie). Some users might have had to log in again because of this. [650]
• It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [651]
• Bare attributes in tags now parse according to the HTML5 specifications. <pages from= to= section=1> will parse as <pages from="to=" section="1"> instead of <pages from="" to="" section="1"> as it used to. Please use <pages from="" to="" section=1> or <pages section=1> instead. This is mostly likely to affect pages on Wikisource projects. [652]

Problems

• Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [653]
• The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [654]
• The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [655]
• You may see falsely formatted edit links on both mobile and desktop devices. Mobile devices can also show incorrect formatted table of contents. This should be fixed soon. [656]
• Templates using TemplateData that were edited with the visual editor might have some problems in wikitext mode. This can be fixed by editing and saving the page by using the visual editor without making any changes. [657]

Changes this week

• Cross-wiki notifications will be enabled as a beta feature on all wikis on 10 March. You will be able to get notifications when something happens on another Wikimedia wiki. [658]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
• Wikivoyages will get the Kartographer extension. Kartographer will allow <mapframe> and <maplink> tags in an article to insert an interactive map and overlay it with different markers. You can add ideas and suggestions to the Maps talk page. If you find any bugs, you can report them in Phabricator. [659]

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 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [660]
• The Wikimedia technical operations team plans to do some server work on 22 March. This could cause some problems, for example make it possible to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a short period of time. The date for this might change. [661]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:24, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-11

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

Recent changes

• The mobile web interface no longer suggests HiDPI thumbnails. This is to take up less bandwidth on slow or expensive connections. [662]
• The search engine on wikipedia.org has been updated. [663]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 22 March and 24 March. This could be postponed to April 18. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. Because of a test, there will also be a couple of minutes where you can't edit the wikis on 15 March starting 07:00 UTC. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
• Administrators and other users with advanced permissions will need to have an 8-byte long passwords. This change takes place on 15 March. Users with too short passwords will be asked to change password the next time they log in. This was decided in a discussion on Meta and is because they can use tools that can hurt the wikis. [664]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [665]

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 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are backlog and thumb API. The meeting will be on 16 March at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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18:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Wik-Ed Women Session #5

Wik-Ed Women Session #5

Dear fellow Wikipedian, I would like to personally invite you to the March edition of the Wik-Ed Women meetup, which will take place on March 15, from 6-10 in the evening. It will occur at Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, 2245 E Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90021 (downtown LA -- map). The building has a pink top with old signage for American Accessories, Inc. dba Princess Accessories (Photos [PDF]). There is on-site parking in the back, which also has an entrance. If you cannot attend in person, you are more than willing to work remotely, as we appreciate all help that you can provide. Finally, here is a link to the Facebook event, in case you want to invite friends, as we are always looking for new editors to help expand coverage of women on Wikipedia! I hope to see you there! Cosmicphantom (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:55, 15 March 2016 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2016-12

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

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. The Wikimedia Technology department planned to test it this week. This will take place the week of April 18 instead. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
• In Firefox, the visual editor would sometimes just jump down to the bottom of the page when you double-clicked on a table cell. This has now been fixed. [666]

Changes this week

• It will now be easier to list IP addresses that don't have to solve CAPTCHAs. [667]
• You will now be able to mark Echo notifications as unread. [668]
• 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 22 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. This will happen on May 2. [669]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-13

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

Recent changes

• MediaWiki now supports the semantic web standards of Microdata and RDFa 1.0. On Wikimedia projects, a configuration change must be requested in order to enable RDFa 1.0. [670] [671]

Problems

• Adding references with Citoid was broken for approximately 6 hours on 24 March. This was fixed. [672]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
• You will be able to remove the header and footer style from User language (babel) boxes. This will make it easier to use them with other userboxes. [673]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with part of the Architecture committee, which will discuss a few topics. The meeting will be on 30 March at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• The Architecture committee has sent a summary of new and ongoing RFC discussions.

Future changes

• Commons will soon have improved access to Wikidata's data. It will then be possible to access data about any concept on any page on Commons. Assistance with testing this on the beta cluster is appreciated. [674]
• Wikibits.js will not be loaded by default anymore starting April 2016. Gadget and script authors should have already updated their code since the previous announcements, but there is another migration path available if needed. See wikitech-l for details.

Corrections

• Last week Tech News said the new MediaWiki version would come to wikis from 21 March to 23 March. The right dates were 22 March to 24 March.

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19:43, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-14

Latest tech 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 filter Special:Log in more detail. [675]
• Wikimedia wikis have a new way of counting visitors. [676]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 6. It will be on all wikis from April 7 (calendar).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:13, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-15

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

Recent changes

• The visual editor can generate wikicode with image options in your language. Examples of image options are "thumb" or "left". You can ask to change to options in your language in Phabricator. [677][678]
• Wiktionaries and Wikisources can now use the visual editor. It is an opt-in beta feature. It still needs development to work better with these projects. [679][680]
• ORES is using new models. Tools that use ORES' predictions can behave strangely. ORES also has a new API. [681]
• The visual editor now supports classical Greek characters. [682]

Problems

• There was a bug when you used keyboard arrows in templates in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [683]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).
• The wikipedia.org portal will get many small bug fixes and improvements. Most will be for the search box and suggested results that were added in March. [684]

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 12 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are improving transclusion of templates for Parsoid and balanced templates. The meeting will be on 13 April at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 19 April and 21 April. This will start at 14:00 UTC and last for 15 to 30 minutes. [685]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:44, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-16

Latest tech 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 filter Special:Log in more detail. You can filter different imports and new users. [686][687]
• You can use Telnet to read Wikimedia wikis. [688]
• MediaWiki wikis can handle bigger file uploads. The new limit is 4 GB. [689]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 19 April and 21 April. This will start at 14:00 UTC and last for 15 to 30 minutes. [690]
• There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data center 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 April 19 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is shadow namespaces. The meeting will be on 20 April at 21:30 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:40, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-17

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

• Wikimedia tested a new data center last week. This meant that the wikis could be read but not edited for 45 minutes on April 19 and for 20 minutes on April 21. [691]
• When the data center was tested, new edits were not shown in the recent changes log for 20 minutes. They are in the logs now. You can read more about how to find the edits.
• Unread notifications were sometimes counted incorrectly. This has now been fixed. [692]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia Commons will have better access to Wikidata. They can use data from any page on Wikidata on any page on Commons. This will happen on April 26. [693]
• It will be easier to choose if you want to watch files you have uploaded with the upload wizard. [694]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 27. It will be on all wikis from April 28 (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 April 26 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The "Save page" button when you edit will be called "Publish" instead. This is to help new editors understand what it does. It already works like this on some wikis. [695]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:02, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-18

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

Recent changes

• The visual editor now works when you use Internet Explorer 9. [696]

Problems

• There was a security problem with the MobileFrontend extension. It showed information that had been oversighted. This has now been fixed. [697]

Changes this week

• You can now see which notifications are available on a wiki on Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration. [698]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 4. It will be on all wikis from May 5 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "PSR-6 Cache interface in Mediawiki core". The meeting will be on May 4 at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Pages could be added to new users' watchlists by default when they edit them. New users could also by default get email notifications when pages they watch are edited. This is discussed on Meta. [699]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-19

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

Recent changes

• Wikiversities now have better access to Wikidata. They can use data from any page on Wikidata on any page on Wikiversity. This happened on May 3. [700]
• You can use Wikipedia GapFinder to find missing articles between languages. [701]
• Users are invited to try Cross-wiki Notifications on all wikis. This is the last test session before the release by default, scheduled for May 12th at 23:00 UTC. [702][703]
• You can use keyboard shortcuts to open the visual editor (meta+V) or the wikitext editor (meta+E) (on certain wikis, even if you have chosen a favorite editor). [704]
• Uploading files bigger than 100 megabytes on Wikimedia Commons required to opt-in in your preferences. This is not necessary anymore. [705]
• The UploadsLink extension is now available on Wikimedia Commons. [706]
• Deleting a translation unit page didn't remove the corresponding content from the translation page. This is now solved. [707]
• Translation suggestions based on Apertium are now available on Mediawiki.org. [708]

Problems

• MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.23 has been rolled back from Wikimedia wikis, due to a performance issue. [709]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 11. It will be on all wikis from May 12 (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 May 10 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are Overhaul Interwiki map, unify with Sites and WikiMap. The meeting will be on May 11 at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• 2017 European hackathon will happen on May 19 - 21, in Vienna (Austria).

Future changes

• Today, in categories, a page titled "11" comes before "2". We plan to reorder that: "2" will come before "11". Please tell the developers if the change will cause problems. [710]

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23:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-20

Latest tech 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 image thumbnails now load faster on mobile. They also take up less bandwidth. [711]

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki version was late on some wikis. [712]

Changes this week

• Special:Notifications will have "mark as read" buttons for each day. The non-JavaScript version will get it this week. A JavaScript version will come later. [713]
• Wikis can now locally decide what wikitext they want the signature button to produce. [714]
• A one-time welcome message for users will now be shown in the wikitext editor. This will include existing users. [715]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 18. It will be on all wikis from May 19 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are "Requirements for change propagation". The meeting will be on May 18 at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Using self-closing tags like <div/> and <span/> to mean <div></div> and <span></span> will not work in the future. Templates and pages that use these tags should be fixed. When Phabricator ticket T134423 is fixed these tags will parse as <div> and <span> instead. This is normal in HTML5. [716]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:01, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-21

Latest tech 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 now see a warning message on pages that try to use {{DISPLAYTITLE}} but it doesn't work because it doesn't match the page's actual title. [717]

Problems

• Commons had problems with server lag. This meant that it took longer time for files to turn up in categories. [718]

Changes this week

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

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 May 24 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• All HTTP access to Wikimedia sites and APIs will stop working. Some bots still use HTTP. They will need to use HTTPS instead. This will happen on June 12. [719]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:40, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-22

Latest tech 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 now a standard way to get the target of a redirect page from a Lua module. [720]

Problems

• A new way to handle rollback was introduced. It broke some tools and scripts and was reverted. This will be re-planned after review. [721][722]
• CentralNotice didn't work in some older browsers. This has now been fixed. [723]

Changes this week

• When you edit a file or category page with the visual editor the rest of the page will be shown in its normal place. [724]
• The Translate extension will get an edit summary field. [725]
• A change to the <charinsert> feature could break some user scripts. Contact Bawolff if the "click to insert special characters" links in the edit window break on your wiki. [726][727]
• Elasticsearch will be upgraded on Wikimedia wikis this week. This should not affect you, but if you have problems with the search function this is probably the reason. [728]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).

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 31 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-23

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

Recent changes

• MathML/SVG is now the default <math> rendering mode on Wikimedia projects. [729][730]

Changes this week

• The history page can tell you if a page on your watchlist was updated since you last visited it. This now works the same way in Vector as in other skins. The change broke local designs on some wikis. This will be fixed this week. [731]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).

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20:51, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-24

Latest tech 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 wikis now use AuthManager. If you have new problems related to logging in or being logged in, report them. [732]
• Visiting Special:Notifications doesn't automatically mark notifications as read anymore. You can go between read, unread or all notifications on Special:Notifications. Notifications on Special:Notifications are grouped by day. You can mark every daily group as read individually. Notifications are displayed by groups of 50 on Special:Notifications and you can find former notifications by using navigation arrows. [733][734][735][736]

Changes this week

• You can filter user contributions to hide minor edits. [737]
• It will be easier to edit galleries with the visual editor. [738]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (calendar).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:41, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-25

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

Recent changes

• Notifications were not always marked as read when you followed a link from an email notification. This will now happen. [739]

Changes this week

• The list of other languages an article is available in will be shorter on small Wikipedias and non-Wikipedia projects. This is to make it easier to find the most relevant languages for each user. You will still be able to see the other languages. [740][741]
• Alerts (the red badge) will not be automatically marked as read when you open the Notifications popup. [742]
• When you get several thanks you can see them as one notification. This is instead of one notification for each thanks. [743]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is develop Markdown support strategy for MediaWiki. The meeting will be on 22 June at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:14, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-26

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

Recent changes

• The ORES service has now moved to a new location. This should make it easier to use ORES. The ORES review service is now available as a beta feature on Wikidata and Persian Wikipedia. ORES is an artificial intelligence system for Wikimedia wikis to help editors. [744]
• The order of wikis in collapsed cross-wiki notifications was different than when the list was expanded. This is now fixed. [745]
• A new category for tracking pages with math errors was added: Category:Pages with math errors. [746]

Problems

• The Wikimedia Etherpad crashed on June 23. Some edits done that day have been lost. They can be found at etherpad-restore.wikimedia.org for another few days. [747][748]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (calendar).
• The way to mark notifications as read or unread will be changed to be more clear. [749]

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 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation will look at developing better tools for edit review. This is because research suggests we scare away newcomers who want to help. [750]
• An e-mail from the Editing Department explains the technical work that is planned and being researched for the future. Items include better wikitext and visual editing, prompts for edits, language improvements, annotations, and meta-data separation. [751]
• The sorting of Notifications into the two fly-out menus is going to change on July 5 to 7. Bundled notifications should be easier to explore and mark as read individually. [752][753][754]
• From 29 June git.wikimedia.org (running Gitblit) will redirect all requests to Phabricator. The vast majority of requests should be correctly redirected. [755]
• Catalan and Polish Wikipedias will have Wikidata descriptions added to articles in the mobile view by default. This is currently a beta option for the mobile versions. This might come to other wikis later. [756]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:42, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-27

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

Recent changes

• A daily email summary of notifications could be sent even when there were no notifications from the wiki. Now no email will be sent if there is no activity. [757]

Changes this week

• The "⧼citoid-citefromidtool-title⧽" button in the visual editor's toolbar will move into the "Insert" menu except for Wikipedias, Wikibookses and Wikiversities. This is to make it less prominent on wikis that don't use it as much. [758]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can take part in the next office hour for Wikidata on IRC on July 8 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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19:45, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-28

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

Recent changes

• A new image scaler fixed a number of bugs for showing SVG files. Some new problems turned up. [759][760][761]
• Notifications are grouped by types. They are now counted by number of notifications and not by unread groups. That change may increase the number of notifications displayed. The earlier way of counting was often incorrect. Unread notifications will also be displayed first. [762][763][764]
• Special:Notifications now has a maximum width for the notifications list on desktop computers. This allows long titles and descriptions to be cut properly. Notifications are now also better parsed. [765][766][767]

Problems

• On 5 July Wikimedia Commons had problems and could not be edited for 20 minutes. For a short while after that the recent changes log and some gadgets were not working properly. It affected administrative actions on other projects too. [768]
• Users who have multiple unread notifications can mark them as read by visiting Special:Notifications page on their wiki.

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 July. It will be on all wikis from 14 July (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 12 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:15, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-29

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

Recent changes

• Due to the rollback, new sorting of Notifications on the Fly-Out Menus has been deployed with a delay. [769]
• Due to the rollback, the daily special patch deployment process has been changed. [770]
• In notifications, "Messages" are now called "Notices". [771]

Problems

• On July 12 all wikis were rolled back to MediaWiki 1.28.0-wmf.8 due to a problem in the log-in system. [772][773]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 July. It will be on all wikis from 21 July (calendar).
• Special:Log now has a help link. [774]
• The RevisionSlider can be tested on the beta cluster. From 22 July, it will be available as a beta feature at: German Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia

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 19 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "Devise plan for a cross-wiki watchlist back-end". The meeting will be on 20 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join. [775]

Future changes

• User scripts and bots can no longer use http:// to edit wiki pages. [776][777]
• Gerrit is going to be updated. Developers are invited to test it. [778]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

12:01, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-30

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

Recent changes

• Interactive maps have been enabled for Meta wiki and the Catalan, Hebrew, and Macedonian Wikipedias. Learn how to add interactive maps to wiki pages.
• Last week's rollback is now documented. [779]

Problems

• Sometimes, the visual editor required saving twice. That problem is now fixed. [780]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 July. It will be on all wikis from 28 July (calendar).
• It is now possible to mark all Notifications as read on Special:Notifications, by clicking on the cog icon. [781]
• Wikipedia search will now detect the language of your search if 2 or fewer results are found. It will then show results from the matching language Wikipedia, if any relevant article exists. It will start to roll out in 5 languages. [782]

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 26 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "an extension that implements an authenticated key-value store". The meeting will be on 27 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join. [783]

Future changes

• The current icon for Notifications "Notices" (in English "Notices") will be changed from a bubble-speech icon to a tray icon for consistency. [784]
• Special:Notifications page code will be changed to be more Mobile friendly. [785]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:54, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-31

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

Recent changes

• A prototype for structured data on Commons is available now. [786]
• The RevisionSlider beta feature can now be tested on mediawiki.org, German Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia and Hebrew Wikipedia.

Problems

• Renamed users on some wikis were not connected to their account on other wikis between 20 July and 21 July. This has been fixed. [787]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 August. It will be on all wikis from 4 August (calendar).

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 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• The next CREDIT showcase will be on 3 August at 18:00 (UTC). This is to present and comment on new gadgets, small projects and works in progress. See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "notifications in core". The meeting will be on 3 August at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:48, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-32

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

Recent changes

• In notifications, the icon for Notices has been changed from a speech-bubble icon () to a tray icon () for consistency. The Alerts icon has been redesigned too. The colors have been changed for accessibility. [788]

Problems

• If you use the wikEd gadget, changes you made were not kept when you switched from the wikitext editor to the visual editor while you were editing. This has now been fixed. [789]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia search will now ignore question marks at the end of the sentences or words you use when you search. Until now the question mark was just a wildcard. [790]
• On Commons, UploadWizard will now be available on mobile, rather than just the old upload form. This should reduce the workload for the community in reviewing images. [791]
• When you edit with the visual editor a puzzle symbol tells you there is an invisible template in the article. It will now mention the name of the template. [792]
• The button to read something in another language will move for mobile users. This will happen on 9 August. [793]
• When someone mentions you and links to your user page you get a notification. You will now get a notification when you mention yourself this way. [794]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 August. It will be on all wikis from 11 August (calendar).
• A message on Notifications panel will invite users to try Special:Notifications page. [795]

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 August 9 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:41, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-33

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

Problems

• Last week Tech News announced you will get a notification when you mention yourself the same way as if someone else had mentioned you. This caused some problems and will happen later instead. [796]
• Creating and editing links to sections on other pages on the wiki now works again in the visual editor. [797]
• For some users, cross-wiki notifications haven't been working properly. The count has been wrong when only cross-wiki notifications were present. The cross-wiki bundle has been showing only the names of wikis and not the actual notifications. This will be fixed soon. [798][799]

Changes this week

• The login session when you choose "Keep me logged in" will now last a year. Previously it was 30 days. This will happen on August 16. [800]
• Some abuse filters will have to be updated during the week. This is because a bug will be fixed. [801]
• In compact language links, two new kinds of languages will be shown in the shorter language list: Languages that are used in the article's text, and languages where the article has a badge like "featured article" or "good article". [802][803]
• The visual editor will be available by default for logged-out editors on Wikipedias that use the Arabic script. It is already default for logged-in editors. [804]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 16. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 17. It will be on all wikis from August 18 (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 August 16 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Starting the week of August 22 there will be three software deployment windows. They will be at 13:00, 18:00, and 23:00 UTC. This is to have more times when software of the wikis can be updated and make it easier for developers in different parts of the world. [805]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:37, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-34

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

Recent changes

• The ORES review tool is now available on Special:Contributions as a beta feature. It can make it easier to find contributions that are probably damaging the wikis. The ORES review tool is available on Wikidata and Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, Turkish and Russian Wikipedia. [806]
• The norm and ccnorm functions have been updated to make it easier to write abuse filters. This also affects the TitleBlacklist extension. You don't have to transform "I" and "L" to "1", "O" to "0" and "S" to "5" anymore. [807]
• The old pageview data in the "pagecounts-raw" and "pagecounts-all-sites" files is no longer being updated. You can find the new pageview data here. This happened on August 5. [808]

Problems

• Some big image files could not be thumbnailed. This has now been fixed. [809]
• When you moved a page over a redirect it would delete the redirect without saving it in the logs. This has now been fixed. [810]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).

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 23 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Sometimes when you mention another user they don't get a notification. You will be able to get a notification when you successfully sent out a mention to someone or be told if they did not get a notification. This will be opt-in. You can test this on the test wiki. [811][812]
• How you add text after an edit conflict might work in a different way in the future. You can test the prototype. [813]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:18, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-35

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

Recent changes

• Wikimedia mobile sites now don't load images if the user doesn't see them. This is to save mobile data and make the pages load faster. [814]
• When you edit a table with the visual editor, pressing Tab in the last cell of a row will take you to the first cell in the next row. Pressing Shift and Tab in the first cell of a row will take you to the last cell in the previous row. [815]

Changes this week

• The name of the "Save page" button will change. The button will say "Publish page" when you create a new page. It will say "Publish changes" when you change an existing page. [816][817]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).

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 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "RfC: image and oldimage tables". The meeting will be on 31 August at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:02, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-36

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

Recent changes

• Word-level diffs now work in longer paragraphs. [818]
• Interactive maps now have a frame by default. This is to make them look like other multimedia objects. This affects all Wikivoyages, the Catalan, Hebrew, Macedonian Wikipedias and Meta. [819]
• When you preview the MediaWiki:Captcha-ip-whitelist page it will show a validation output of the listed IP addresses instead of the list of addresses only. This can help you to identify if your whitelist rules will work or not. [820]

Changes this week

• You will be able to use <maplink> on all Wikipedias. It creates a link to a full screen map. [821][822]
• Sometimes when you mention another user they don't get a notification. You will be able to get a notification when you successfully send out a mention to someone or be told if they did not get a notification. This will be opt-in. [823][824]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).

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 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The CheckUser extension could work differently in the future. There is a Request for Comments to figure out how. [825]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:12, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-37

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

Recent changes

• The Wikimedia Commons app for Android can now show nearby places that need photos. [826]
• <maplink> and <mapframe> can now use geodata from Open Street Map if Open Street Map has defined a region and given it an ID in Wikidata. You can use this to draw on the map and add information. [827][828]

Changes this week

• The RevisionSlider will be available as a beta feature on all wikis from 13 September. This will make it easier to navigate between diffs in the page history. [829]
• A new user right will allow most users to change the content model of pages. [830][831]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).

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 13 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• When you search on the Wikimedia wikis in the future you could see results from sister projects in your language. You can read more and discuss how this could work.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:04, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-38

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

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back because of bugs. Creating new accounts did not work between 15 September 19:10 UTC and 16 September 12:50 UTC. [832][833]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will hopefully be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar). This is the version that was meant to go out last week.

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 20 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is multi-content revisions. The meeting will be on 21 September at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikidata will start working on adding support for Wiktionary. The Wikidata development team is now taking one last look at the development plan. [834]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:09, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-39

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

Recent changes

• If your wiki wants numerical sorting in categories you can request it after a community decision. See how to request it. [835]
• When you edit text and mention a new username they are notified if you add your signature. Before this only happened under certain conditions. [836]
• Users are notified if they are mentioned in a section where you add your own signature even if you edit more than one section. Before, users were not notified if you edited more than one section in one edit. [837]

Problems

• The MediaWiki version that was supposed to come to the wikis two weeks ago was put on hold again because of new problems. The MediaWiki version after it is now on all wikis. [838][839]

Changes this week

• There will be no new MediaWiki version this week. [840]

Meetings

• You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on September 27 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Abandoned tools on Tool Labs could be taken over by other developers. There is a new discussion on Meta about this. It will be discussed until 12 October and then voted on. [841]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:07, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-40

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

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).

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 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Tidy will be replaced. Instead the HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be used to clean up bad HTML in wikitext. This would cause problems on a number of wikis. They need to be fixed first. [842]

• <slippymap> will not work on Wikivoyage after 24 October. You should use <mapframe> instead. If you need help to fix this before 24 October you should ask for it as soon as possible. [843]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:30, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-41

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

Recent changes

• You can show Special:RecentChanges on a page by using {{Special:RecentChanges}}. You can now use tag filters by using {{Special:RecentChanges/tagfilter=tagname}}. [844]
• 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. [845]
• 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. [846]

Changes this week

• Hidden HTML comments will be more visible when you edit with the visual editor. <!-- You write hidden HTML comments like this. --> [847]
• 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. [848]

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20:30, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-42

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

Recent changes

• 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. [849]
• Editors couldn't edit semi-protected pages in the Wikipedia app for Android. This has now been fixed in the beta version. [850]

Changes this week

• There will be no new MediaWiki version this week. [851]

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)

Tech News: 2016-43

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

Problems

• The abuse filters had a problem and caught too many edits. This has now been fixed. [852]

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". [853]
• About a dozen wikis now have numerical sorting in categories. If your wiki wants numerical sorting in categories you can ask for it. [854]
• 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)

Tech News: 2016-44

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

Recent changes

• 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. [855]
• Search now has an updated preference tab to configure the search completion suggester. [856]
• The visual editor is now available on all wikis using only one language script. [857]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 1^st. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 2^nd. It will be on all wikis from November 3^rd (calendar).
• Now you can use autocomplete for page names in "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" field when editing templates. [858]
• Special:NewPages can now be filtered by page size. [859]

Future changes

• New MediaWiki deployments will be now based on MediaWiki 1.29. [860]

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)

Tech News: 2016-45

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

Recent changes

• Victoria Coleman is the new Chief technology officer for the Wikimedia Foundation. [861]
• First release candidate for MediaWiki 1.28 is now available. [862]
• .gitreview for MediaWiki branches and extensions switched from targeting a specific branch to using track=1. [863]
• Section numbers in Table of Contents boxes will use grey to improve readability. [864]

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. [865]

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. [866][867][868]
• 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)

Tech News: 2016-46

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

Recent changes

• 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. [869]

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. [870]

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. [871]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:18, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-47

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

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. [872]
• 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. [873]
• 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. [874]

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. [875][876][877]

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. [878]
• 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. [879]

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)

Tech News: 2016-48

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

Changes 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. [880]
• 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. [881]
• 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]. [882][883]

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.

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21:17, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-49

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

Recent changes

• You can choose to see users from specific user groups in Special:ActiveUsers. [884]
• Everyone can now see Special:UserRights. Previously only those who could change user rights could. Other users got an error message. [885]
• 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. [886]

Changes this week

• You will now see categories with 0 pages in Special:Categories. Previously you did not see empty categories there. [887]
• 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)

Tech News: 2016-50

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

Recent changes

• 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. [888]
• 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. [889]
• 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. [890]

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. [891]

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.

19:30, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-51

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

Tech News

• 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. [892]
• 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. [893]

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. [894]

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)

Tech News: 2017-02

Latest tech 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. [895]
• 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. [896]
• The new version of MediaWiki was released to all wikis last week (calendar).
• MoodBar has been removed from the Wikimedia wikis. [897]
• The live option for the Tipsy notice tool has been removed. Gadgets and user scripts which use it need to be updated. [898]

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 set network.cookie.maxPerHost to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. [899]

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)

Tech News: 2017-03

Latest tech 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. [900]

Problems

• video2commons was down for two weeks. This was because of a problem with Commons video transcoders. It is now back up. [901]

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. [902]
• 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. [903]
• You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas. Before you could use <ce>. <ce> should be replaced by <chem>. [904]
• You now can add exceptions for categories which shouldn't be shown on Special:UncategorizedCategories. The list is at MediaWiki:Uncategorized-categories-exceptionlist. [905]
• 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 number 50 to make it look like you want to. [906]
• 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. [907]
• When you edit with the visual editor categories will be on the top of the page options menu. [908]
• 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)

Tech News: 2017-04

Latest tech 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. [909]

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)

Tech News: 2017-05

Latest tech 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 OAuth management interfaces now look slightly different. [910]

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. [911]
• 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. [912][913]
• 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)

February 18 Wikipedia Day event in DTLA

LA Wikipedia Day Celebration (February 18)

Dear fellow Wikipedian, Please join us at our Wikipedia Day celebration at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, February 18, 2017 from 11 am to 5 pm! This event will feature lectures, panel discussions, lightning talks, open space discussions and collaboration, and--most importantly--cake! Please RSVP on the event page if you're thinking of joining us. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 2 February 2017 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2017-06

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. [914]

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. [915]
• 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. [916]
• 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. [917][918]

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19:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-07

Latest tech 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. [919]

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. [920]
• 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. [921]

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. [922]
• 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. [923]
• 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)

Tech News: 2017-08

Latest tech 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. [924]

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. [925]
• There has been a problem where the CSS of gadgets has been loading twice. The Gadgets extension has two new options: type and peers. The type option solves this problem. You can use peers to create gadgets with more than one style module. Read more about type and peers. [926]
• OAuth will handle blocked users in a more consistent way. [927]
• 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.

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19:25, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-09

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. [928]

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. [929]
• 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. [930]
• 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. [931][932]

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19:56, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-10

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

• 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. [933]
• 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. [934]

Problems

• Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time last week. This has now been fixed. [935]
• 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. [936]

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. [937]
• 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. [938]
• 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.

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23:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-11

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. [939][940]
• 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. [941]
• CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. [942][943]

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15:25, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-12

Latest tech 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 says Publish page or Publish 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 and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [944]
• 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. [945]
• 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. [946]
• 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. [947]
• 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. [948]

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. [949]

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 or Cmd+Shift+X on Macs. [950]
• 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.

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22:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-13

Latest tech 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. [951]

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. [952][953]

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).

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14:46, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-14

Latest tech 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 says Publish page or Publish 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 and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [954]
• 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. [955]
• 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. [956]

Problems

• Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [957]

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. [958]

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17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-15

Latest tech 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. [959]

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. [960]
• 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. [961]
• The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [962]
• 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.

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18:35, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-16

Latest tech 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. [963]
• You can now see a list of all autoblocks on Special:AutoblockList. [964]
• 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. [965]

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. [966]
• 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. [967][968]

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19:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-17

Latest tech 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. [969]
• 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. [970]

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. [971]

Changes this week

• The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. [972]
• 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. [973]
• 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)

Tech News: 2017-18

Latest tech 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. [974]
• 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 add mediawiki.util dependency in gadget ResourceLoader section in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. [975][976]

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. [977]
• The Publish changes, Show preview and Show 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. [978]

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19:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-19

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 off Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw. [979]
• 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. [980]

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 and Source editing instead of Switch to visual editing and Switch to code editing. This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using. [981]
• 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. [982][983]
• 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. [984][985]

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02:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-20

Latest tech 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. [986]
• 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. [987]

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 adding mw.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. [988]

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. [989]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Administrators will soon be able to search through deleted pages. [990][991]
• 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. [992][993]

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. [994][995]

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21:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-21

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. [996]

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22:15, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Come and join us at the Wiknic

LA Meetup: 6th Wiknic, 7/15 @ Pan Pacific Park

Dear fellow Wikipedian, You are cordially invited to the 6th Los Angeles Wiknic, a part of the nationwide Great American Wiknic. We'll be grilling, getting to know each other better, and building the L.A. Wikipedia community! The event is planned for Pan-Pacific Park and will be held on Saturday, July 15, 2017 from 9:30am to 4pm or so. Please RSVP and volunteer to bring food or drinks if possible! I hope to see you there! Howcheng (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:02, 26 May 2017 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2017-22

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. [997]

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. [998]

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12:18, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-23

Latest tech 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. [999]
• When you read Wikipedia on a mobile device the first paragraph now comes before the infobox. [1,000]
• 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. [1,001]
• 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. [1,002]

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. [1,003]

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. [1,004]
• You can choose what dates to look at when you look at a user's contributions. [1,005]
• 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. [1,006]
• 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. [1,007]

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. [1,008][1,009]
• 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. [1,010]
• The Architecture Committee will change and get a new name. You can read and comment on the draft that describes the new committee.

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19:05, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-24

Latest tech 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. [1,011]
• 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. [1,012]

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. [1,013]
• 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. [1,014]
• 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. [1,015][1,016]

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)

Tech News: 2017-25

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

• ORES had some problems on 13 June between 16:00 and 19:40 UTC. It has now been fixed. [1,017]

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. [1,018]
• Special:PageData will be an entry point for machine-readable page data. [1,019]
• 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.

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15:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-26

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

Recent changes

• The <inputbox> has a new searchfilter parameter. You can add values like searchfilter=insource:foo. It will add that to the user's search query. [1,020]

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. [1,021]

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. [1,022]

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15:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-27

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,023]

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. [1,024]

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15:32, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-28

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,025]

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. [1,026]
• 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)

Tech News: 2017-29

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

Recent changes

• "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. [1,027]

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. [1,028]

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. [1,029] 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. [1,030]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:59, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-30

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,031][1,032][1,033]
• .mw-ui-constructive modifier class is deprecated and has been removed. [1,034]

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. [1,035]

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)

Tech News: 2017-31

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

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. [1,036]
• 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. [1,037]
• 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. [1,038]

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)

Tech News: 2017-32

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

Recent changes

• You can now see which Wikipedia language versions are read in a specific country. This tool is called Wikipedia Views Visualized. [1,039]
• The Architecture Committee is now the Wikimedia Technical Committee. You can read the charter. [1,040]

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. [1,041]
• The thanks button sometimes didn't work for mobile users. This was because of a new bug and has now been fixed. [1,042]

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. [1,043]
• 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. [1,044][1,045]
• 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. [1,046][1,047]

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)

Tech News: 2017-33

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,048]

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. [1,049][1,050]

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)

Tech News: 2017-34

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,051][1,052]
• Your watchlist can now have the option to unwatch pages. You have to turn this on in your preferences. [1,053]
• 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. [1,054]
• 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. [1,055]
• 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. [1,056]
• 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)

Tech News: 2017-35

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,057][1,058]
• 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. [1,059]

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. [1,060]

Changes later this week

• You can block users from sending you notifications. [1,061]
• 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. [1,062]
• New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [1,063]
• 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)

LA event this Thursday

LA Meetup: September 7 edit-a-thon near DTLA

Dear fellow Wikipedian, You have been invited to a meetup and edit-a-thon at the LA84 Foundation in Jefferson Park (near DTLA) on Thursday, September 7, 2017 from 5:45 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.! This event aims to improve coverage of female Olympians and Paralympians (some of whom will be attending!). There will be a deejay and food/drinks, and kids are welcome. I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:09, 2 September 2017 (UTC) Join our Facebook group, follow our Twitter account, and like our Facebook page!! To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2017-36

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

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. [1,064][1,065]

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. [1,066]

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. [1,067]
• 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. [1,068]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:15, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-37

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,069]
• 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. [1,070]
• 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. [1,071]

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. [1,072]

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. [1,073]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:16, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-38

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,074][1,075]
• Flow has been re-scoped to become Structured Discussions and the development has restarted. Phabricator projects and repositories have been renamed. [1,076]

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.

15:32, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-39

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

Recent changes

• 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 or cmd+F when you edit. Before it just searched through a part of the article. The developers are also fixing a couple of other bugs. [1,077][1,078]
• 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. [1,079]

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. [1,080]
• 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. [1,081]
• 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.

16:00, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-40

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,082]

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. [1,083]
• Special:Block and Special:Unblock will get the OOUI look. [1,084]
• 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. [1,085]
• 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. [1,086]
• 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)

Tech News: 2017-41

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,087]
• 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. [1,088]

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. [1,089]

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. [1,090]
• 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)

Tech News: 2017-42

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,091][1,092]
• 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. [1,093]
• 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. [1,094]
• Users on some wikis could not change their preferences. This has now been fixed. [1,095]

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. [1,096]
• 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)

Tech News: 2017-43

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

Recent changes

• 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. [1,097]

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. [1,098]
• 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. [1,099]

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)

Tech News: 2017-44

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

Recent changes

• You can now block users from emailing you through the Wikimedia wikis. [1,100]

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)

Tech News: 2017-45

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

Recent changes

• You will no longer see the patrol log on Special:Log unless you specifically select it. [1,101]

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 of https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#История. This will soon be fixed. Old links will still work. [1,102][1,103]

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)

Tech News: 2017-46

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

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. [1,104]
• A new user group on Commons will be able to upload MP3 files. The plan is to have this user group from 17 November. [1,105]
• 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. [1,106]
• 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. [1,107]

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)

Tech News: 2017-47

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

Recent changes

• If you use the Chrome web browser on Android you can see a download icon on the mobile website. You can download a formatted PDF. It will work in other mobile browsers in the future. [1,108]
• The abuse filter now has a function called get_matches. You can use it to store matches from regular expressions – one of each capturing group. You can read more in Phabricator.

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki version didn't come to all Wikipedias because of a database crash. It will be on all wikis on 20 November. [1,109][1,110][1,111]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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 21 November at 19:30 (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 22 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Language converter syntax will 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. This will happen next week. [1,112][1,113]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:19, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-48

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

Recent changes

• You can now test the new advanced search function beta feature on mediawiki.org. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It will come to German and Arabic Wikipedia this week. It will come to more wikis later. [1,114]
• You can now upload large files with the Internet Archive upload tool. Previously you could not upload files larger than 100 MB. [1,115]
• You can now use the Timeless skin on all wikis. You can choose skins in Special:Preferences#Appearance. [1,116]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar).

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 28 November at 19:30 (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 29 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:30, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Stewartadcock. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-49

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

Recent changes

• It is now possible to upload MP3 files to Commons. Only users with MP3 file upload rights can upload MP3 files. [1,117]
• You can now use live updates for recent changes if you use the new filters. This feature updates the filtered recent changes every three seconds when you activate it. [1,118]
• There is an experimental onion service for Wikimedia projects. [1,119]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 December. It will be on all wikis from 7 December (calendar).
• Very old versions of the Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems. [1,120]
• Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [1,121][1,122]

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 December at 19:30 (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 6 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey will decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year. You can vote for wishes on the survey page until 10 December. You can see what has happened to last year's wishes on the 2016 results page.
• The Community Liaisons team at the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for active tech ambassadors. This is to make sure the Wikimedia communities get all the information they need about new features and can be involved in the technical development. [1,123]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:51, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-50

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

Recent changes

• 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 of https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#История. This has now been fixed on all wikis. Old links will still work. [1,124]
• A new tag marks edits where a redirect was created or removed. This still works when the editor writes something else in the edit summary. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. [1,125]
• If you use Chrome on Android, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article. [1,126]
• Filter by number of edits or filter by time range have been grouped on a same menu on the recent changes page if you use the new filters. The "View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent. [1,127]
• Some of the web fonts that were provided by the Universal Language Selector extension are being removed. This is to reduce the load time on pages. The web fonts were added many years ago to help users read text in scripts which did not have fonts or had broken fonts. This is not the case any more. You can check the status page for a list of all web fonts and whether they are currently being used and especially for special requirements. [1,128]

Changes later this week

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

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 12 December at 19:30 (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 13 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can discuss new or improved blocking tools with the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-Harassment Tools team. They will work on building better blocking tools. Leave comments on the talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:58, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-51

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2018.

Problems

• When you import a page from another wiki the usernames of the users who edited the article on the wiki you imported it from are shown in the article history. This should link to the users on the original wiki. A script to fix this caused problems for Wikidata and German Wikipedia. It also created a large number of SUL accounts on wikis where editors had never edited. [1,129]
• Some bot owners got email about their bots logging in from a new computer. If this is from one or a couple of wikis, you can turn these messages off in your preferences on those wikis until the problem has been solved. If not, you can report more about the problem in Phabricator.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.

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 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Files on Commons will have structured metadata in the future. The developers are now looking for examples of different kinds of metadata to make sure they are aware of them when they build prototypes for structured data on Commons. You can read more and help by giving examples of interesting media files.
• The Structured Commons team are making sure Commons work with structured data. If you regularly contribute to Commons and Wikidata you can answer a survey that helps the team prioritise the tools that are important for the Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey ends on 22 December. You can read more on Commons. You can also help the team decide on better names for "captions" and "descriptions". This ends on 3 January 2018.
• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey has now ended. You can see the results. They decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:27, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-02

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

Recent changes

• On Wikidata, the "save" button when you edit is now called "publish". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "Save page" to "Publish changes". This is to help new editors understand what it does. [1,130][1,131]
• Some edits will get an automatic tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways. [1,132]
• Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki. [1,133]
• Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation has been updated. [1,134][1,135]

Problems

• Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem. [1,136]
• With the new filters in the recent changes, "Exclude selected" in "Namespaces" did not work for "Saved filters" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again. [1,137]
• The latest version of Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see #R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9 instead of #Résumé even if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March). [1,138]
• Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed. [1,139]

Changes later this week

• Wikidata will be moved to its own database servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis. [1,140]
• The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems. [1,141][1,142]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).
• WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one: ext.wikiEditor. All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed. [1,143]

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 9 January at 19:30 (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 10 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-3

Latest tech 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 on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed. [1,144]
• There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development. [1,145]

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited. [1,146][1,147]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar).

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 16 January at 19:30 (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 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [1,148][1,149]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-04

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

Recent changes

• Filters on Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features. [1,150][1,151]

Problems

• With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed. [1,152]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• irc.wikimedia.org will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically. [1,153]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

23:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-05

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

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation is working on how to get less unmaintained code on Wikimedia wikis. This could be by finding maintainers or removing unmaintained features. They are now looking for feedback on what do do with AbuseFilter, the IRC RecentChanges feed, the RelatedSites extension and TimedMediaHandler. You can leave feedback on the linked talk pages. [1,154]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-06

Latest tech 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 add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to. [1,155]
• The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language. [1,156]
• Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded. [1,157]

Problems

• Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this. [1,158]

Changes later this week

• When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users. [1,159]
• When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like gallery widths="150px". You could use em or % instead of px but it would make no difference. You can now only use 150px or nothing (150). If you write something else, instead of treating it like px, it will not work. [1,160]
• The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of Yes or No it will say Thank and Cancel. It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public. [1,161]
• Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it. [1,162]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar).

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 6 February at 19:30 (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 7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Education Program extension will be removed on 30 June. It is replaced by the Programs and Events Dashboard. [1,163][1,164]

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20:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-07

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

Recent changes

• TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please submit a task on Phabricator. [1,165][1,166][1,167]
• Registration pages now collect keyboard/mouse usage information for research on identifying spambots.

Changes later this week

• You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use visual diffs on history pages. [1,168]
• The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like {{reflist}}, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates. [1,169]
• The abuse filter extension has a new feature contains_all that you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string. [1,170]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar).

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 February 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 14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The settings page and beta options for the mobile website are being improved. [1,171]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:59, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-08

Latest tech 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 explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed. [1,172][1,173]
• You can now see statistics for pageviews per wiki per country. You can see this on maps or in a table. [1,174]

Problems

• Linter is reporting estimated counts instead of actual counts for some wikis. This is because of performance problems. You might notice a false higher number in linter counts for some categories. This will be fixed as soon as the performance problem has been fixed. [1,175]
• Last week the way that Visual Editor displays references lists was changed. As a result, the references generated by specific templates like {{sfn}} are not visible in the references list whilst editing. [1,176][1,177]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar).

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 February at 19:30 (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 21 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The way edit summaries and log comments are stored in the database is being changed. In the future this will make longer comments possible. [1,178]
• Edit conflicts could be solved in a different way in the future. You can test a new prototype.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:55, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-09

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

Recent changes

• Checkusers and stewards can now view private data such as the IP address in the abuse log. This data is removed regularly. [1,179]

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki version was rolled back because of a bug. [1,180][1,181]
• Since the deployment train last week until late evening on 20 February UTC, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed. [1,182]
• Special:Statistics did not take newly created pages into account since 13 February 2018. Because of this the statistics are recreated. [1,183][1,184][1,185]

Changes later this week

• Users with version 10 of the Internet Explorer browser will no longer get JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis. If you use this browser on your computer, you can try upgrading to a newer version. [1,186]
• The Wikinews wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 27 February. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [1,187][1,188]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 1 March (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 27 February at 19:30 (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 28 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-10

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

• You can now make longer edit summaries. [1,189]

Changes later this week

• You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. [1,190]
• On Special:AbuseLog you can now choose to list only actions that actually made an edit. Other actions are when the filter warned the editor or blocked the edit from being made. There are also more search options. [1,191][1,192]
• Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but it is complex. The tool will now warn in the JavaScript console if the configuration isn't correct. Soon Citoid will disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [1,193]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 March. It will be on all wikis from 8 March (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 6 March at 19:30 (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 7 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• In the future you will be able to use global preferences. This means you could change a preference for all wikis instead of having to change it every time for each wiki. You can now test global preferences and give feedback.
• You can now read about planned works on maps during 2018. This will be done by June. You can give feedback on the planned maps work.

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17:12, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day LA, March 31

Wikipedia Day LA 2018

Please join us from 10:00 am - 5:00 pm on Saturday, March 31st for Wikipedia Day LA 2018 at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. There will be speakers, panel discussions, a presentation on Wikidata, flash sessions, and a discussion about the formation of an LA User Group. There could be dramatic readings of LA-related talk pages, and there will be truly excellent cake. Please RSVP on the event page if you're thinking of joining us. We hope to see you there! JSFarman (talk) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:19, 9 March 2018 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here, and follow us on Twitter . To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2018-11

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

Recent changes

• 3D models can now be uploaded to Commons. [1,194]
• Page Previews has been updated to use HTML for previews. This has fixed many issues. An A/B test was done on English and German Wikipedia to measure how it is used. Other changes were also made. [1,195]
• Some edits have to be checked against too many conditions before they can trigger an abuse filter. If that is the reason no filter is triggered the edit will be tagged for review. [1,196]
• Auto-saving has been added to the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. Right now it is meant to help if your browser crashes or if you accidentally close a tab. [1,197]

Problems

• The abuse filter did not tag all edits that should have been tagged after last week's MediaWiki version had come to the wikis. It was fixed on 9 March (UTC). [1,198]

Changes later this week

• You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. This was originally planned to happen last week. [1,199]
• It is now possible to specify the block parameters for each filter in Special:AbuseFilter. The parameters include block duration and if the user should be blocked from editing their own talk page. The block duration is separate for anonymous and registered users. [1,200][1,201]
• A hundred Wikimedia wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 13 and 14 March. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [1,202][1,203][1,204]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 March. It will be on all wikis from 15 March (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 March at 19:30 (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 14 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-12

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 March 12 early morning UTC, the number of 503 error messages increased due to an issue on esams datacenter. It has been fixed. [1,205]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 March. It will be on all wikis from 22 March (calendar).

Meetings

• There is no Editing team meeting this week.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• From April 4, the autopatrol status of edits will only be accessible in the Recent Changes database table, so only for 30 days. [1,206][1,207]
• In-Context Help and Onboarding is a new project, aiming to improve retention of new wiki editors. The goal is to give them short tutorials and other training experiences based on their activity. Collaboration team is expecting feedback and comments on the project talk page, especially from people working with newcomers.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-13

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

Changes later this week

• Some of the interface icons and text sizes will change slightly, as part of the updates for improved accessibility and consistency. These icons are used in many features, including Notifications, Recent Changes, Beta Features, Visual Editor, 2017 Wikitext Editor, Code Editor, and others. While editor toolbars, dialogs, and menus will appear slightly bigger; elements on special pages will be slightly smaller. Functionality will not change. [1,208] [1,209]
• The deprecated #toc and #toctitle CSS ids have been removed. If your wiki was still using these for fake Tables of Content (ToC) then these might lose their styling. They can be replaced with .toc and .toctitle classes where appropriate. [1,210]
• TemplateStyles will be deployed to the Wikivoyages on 28 March 2018. [1,211]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 March. It will be on all wikis from 29 March (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 27 March 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 one hour earlier than usual on 28 March at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• From 9 April, the sort order of categories will be distorted for a short time. We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a maintenance script to update existing database entries. This will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on wiki size. Read more details. [1,212]
• Changes are coming to search for Serbian projects. Cyrillic and Latin variants of a word and different grammatical forms of a word will be able to find each other. Read more on MediaWiki in Serbian or English.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-14

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

Recent changes

• Template Wizard script available for testing. It will show up as a puzzle-piece icon in the 2010 WikiEditor. You can click on the icon to insert a template.
• The Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey is to be sent to participants around the world this week. If you are volunteer developer, and have contributed code to any pieces of MediaWiki, gadgets, or tools, please take 20 to 40 minutes to complete the survey.

Problems

• MediaWiki deployment train has been rolled back to version 1.31.0-wmf.26 on week 13, due to a multiplication of lost connections during MySQL queries. Some of the recent changes may have not been applied. They will be deployed next week. [1,213][1,214][1,215]
• The Notifications badge icons were overlapping other links. This has been fixed. [1,216]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 April. It will be on all wikis from 5 April (calendar).
• User subpages ending in .json will now be protected from other people editing them, like .js and .css pages already are. If you have a tool that stores static configuration, you can now use a subpage like User:Example/mygadget.json to do this without concerns. [1,217]
• Tidy will be replaced by RemexHtml on the next set of wikis. On April 4, we plan to turn off Tidy on all Wikiquotes (except frwikiquote) and Wikimedia chapters and user groups wikis. 23 wikis will have Tidy replaced this time. [1,218][1,219][1,220]
• AbuseFilter will transition to use OOUI starting April 4, and the rule editor will also be changed to a CodeEditor (ACE) similar to what is found on user JavaScript pages. The move to OOUI will continue over the next few weeks. [1,221] [1,222]
• In Special:Preferences, the preference "Reload the watchlist automatically whenever a filter is changed (JavaScript required)" is now only visible for users who have opt-out the New Filters for the Watchlist. [1,223]
• You can see names of individual abuse filters in Special:AbuseLog. Now if the name of an abuse filter contains some wikisyntax like links, it will not change to a link when displayed. [1,224]
• You can now search through filter patterns at Special:AbuseFilter. You may specify either a plain string or a regular expression and the matching filters will show a snippet of their pattern with the match highlighted. [1,225]

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 April 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 4 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• If you're using, creating or improving Lua modules, you can give your feedback to help harmonizing the modules across wikis and add more useful functions.
• On April 11th, we plan to turn off Tidy on all wikis with less than 50 entries in all high priority linter categories. About 60 wikis will have Tidy replaced. Currently about 600 wikis have had Tidy replaced and we have another 300 wikis to go. We plan to finish this transition from Tidy to RemexHtml by end of June 2018. Please follow T175706 to monitor progress of Tidy replacement. [1,226][1,227]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:28, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-15

Latest tech 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 pages have templates that describe problems with that article. There is now more information for mobile readers and what is wrong with the article and how they could help fix it. [1,228]
• You can now thank users for many more actions than edits to a page. This was one of the top ten requests in the Wishlist Survey last year. [1,229]
• The sort order of categories will have errors for a short time starting Monday 9 April (UTC). We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a script to update the database. This will take between a few hours and a few days depending on wiki size. You can read more details. [1,230]
• Tag filter titles will now work better on wikis where the tag filter title is in a language that is written in another direction than the language of that wiki. This could for example be an English title (written from left to right) on a Hebrew or an Arabic wiki (written from right to left). [1,231]

Problems

• The bookmark icon for saved filters on the recent changes page disappeared because of new icon changes. This has now been fixed. [1,232]
• For a week in March rollbacks got both the rollback and the undo tag on the recent changes page and other pages where you see tags. This has now been fixed. [1,233]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 April. It will be on all wikis from 12 April (calendar).
• Patrolled edits now have three states instead of two. Recent changes filters are updated to show unpatrolled, autopatrolled and manually patrolled edits. [1,234]

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 April 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 11 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The iOS and Android apps will get synced reading lists later in April.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:09, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-16

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

• Profiling statistics for an abuse filter tell how often edits match the filter. The statistics for the abuse filters were reset after 10000 actions. Wikis can now decide to reset it more or less often. They can file a phabricator task to do so. [1,235]
• Abuse filters will now treat integers and floats more precisely. For example, 5/2 was rounded down to 2 but will now be 2.5 and 2*4 will be the integer 8 and not the floating-point number 8.0. Division values are the only ones changed. For the rest only strict comparisons (=== and !==) will be affected leaving the values unchanged. [1,236][1,237]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 April. It will be on all wikis from 19 April (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 April 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 18 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The new PDF renderer could not create PDFs from books. Books are in this case collections of pages on a Wikimedia wiki. PediaPress will take over development of the books-to-PDF function. [1,238]
• Pywikibot will no longer support Python 2.7.2 and 2.7.3. [1,239]
• Volunteer developers can fill out the Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey. The last day is April 22 (UTC). This is a third-party service survey. See the privacy statement.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:21, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-17

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

Recent changes

• All Wikipedias now have Page Previews.
• The iOS and Android apps now have synced reading lists. This means you can save articles to a private list that can be seen on your other devices if you use the apps.
• The icons in the 2010 wikitext editor have changed. [1,240]
• The visual editor and the 2017 wikitext ask you to write an edit summary after you press Publish. This button now also shows an ellipsis. This is to show that pressing Publish is not the last step. [1,241]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 April. It will be on all wikis from 26 April (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 April 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 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• <mapframe> will come to most Wikipedias in May. This means that you can put interactive maps in the articles. Nine Wikipedias that use a strict version of flagged revisions will not get this feature in May. [1,242]
• The rollback function could change. This was a German community request. All editors with rollback rights can leave feedback on the proposed solution. The last day to leave feedback is 4 May (UTC).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:17, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Arts Datathon!

LA County Civic Arts Datathon!

Please join us for the LA County Arts Commission Civic Art Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Beginners are welcome! We'll provide training for new editors. (See the meetup page for more details.) Friday, April 27, 2018, 9:00-5:00 Bob Hope Patriotic Hall, 1816 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90015. We hope to see you there! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:09, 25 April 2018 (UTC) Join our Facebook group here, and follow us on Twitter . To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2018-18

Latest tech 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 parameter for unpatrolled edits in recent changes filters changed name. You might need to update saved filters and links. [1,243]

Problems

• We are migrating wikis from Tidy to Remex. Because of a bug the 250 wikis which do not yet use Remex were switched on 23 April. This is two months early. This meant that pages with broken wikitext showed wrongly to readers. The bug was undone the next day. You can help fix broken wikitext to avoid this problem when your wiki switches. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. You can follow the process on Phabricator. [1,244]

Changes later this week

• You will be able use CodeMirror in the 2017 wikitext editor on all wikis. CodeMirror helps with syntax highlighting. It has previously been a beta feature and only available on wikis with scripts that are written from left to right. [1,245]
• When an administrator blocks someone they will have a calendar they can use to choose when the block ends. This is to make it easier to pick a specific date. [1,246]
• You can soon turn on the Performance Inspector in the Editing section in your preferences. It shows information about the performance of pages. This could be the size of modules in the page, how many CSS selectors are defined on the page and how many are used, or the size of the images on the page. This tool is intended to help editors fix pages that load slowly. [1,247]
• There is a new abuse filter function called equals_to_any. You can use it to check if its first argument is equal (===) to any of the following ones. For example you can use it to check if the page's namespace is amongst a given set of values in a more compact way than you could earlier. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 May. It will be on all wikis from 3 May (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 May 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 2 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Cloud Services team is working on a new project called Toolhub. The goal is to make it easier for Wikimedians to discover software tools they can use. You can leave feedback on the talk page or email jharewikimedia.org to leave private feedback.
• All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in all namespaces will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 2 May. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Wikibooks wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch on 9 May. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. [1,248][1,249][1,250]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:18, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-19

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

Recent changes

• The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. It is now easier to find nearby places that need pictures. It helps you with direct uploads and title and category suggestions. The app only works on Android phones. [1,251]

Problems

• The abuse filters had a problem with blocks where you had changed how long they last. It used the default length everywhere. This was in late April. Abuse filter users should make sure the right block length is used and change them if needed. This is only for filters where how long blocks last had been changed. [1,252]

Changes later this week

• The advanced search function beta feature will be on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. [1,253]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 May. It will be on all wikis from 10 May (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 8 May 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 9 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 16 May. Other wikis will switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. [1,254][1,255]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:28, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-20

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

Recent changes

• Dynamic maps are now available on most Wikipedias. Labels on maps can also be in different languages.
• The new Advanced Search interface is now available as a Beta Feature on all wikis. This makes it easier to learn about and to use many of the powerful options in our search. Feedback is appreciated. [1,256]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 May. It will be on all wikis from 17 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 16 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• In the mobile view, warnings for when something is wrong with a page are not as clear as they should be. The developers are working on this. You can give feedback and suggestions.
• The developers are working on making the Wikipedia Android app available in more languages. You can give feedback, suggestions and help test it. Read more on mediawiki.org [1,257]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-21

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

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• It could become easier to reference different pages of a book in an article. You can give feedback. The last day for feedback is 27 May.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:34, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-22

Latest tech 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 global preferences on most wikis. This means you can set preferences for all wikis at the same time. Before this you had to change them on each individual wiki. Global preferences will come to the Wikipedias later this week. [1,258][1,259]
• It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked. [1,260]
• Wikidata now supports lexicographical data. This helps describe words.
• There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups. [1,261]
• Some rare invisible Unicode characters have recently been banned from page titles. This includes soft hyphens (U+00AD) and left-to-right (U+2066) and right-to-left (U+2067) isolate markers. Existing pages with these characters will soon be moved by a script. [1,262]
• There's a new Wikimedia Foundation team to support the Wikimedia technical communities. It's called the Technical Engagement team. Most of the team members did similar work in other teams before this. [1,263]

Problems

• Some translatable pages are showing old translations instead of latest ones. The cause of this issue has been fixed. We will update all pages automatically to show the latest translations. [1,264]

Changes later this week

• There will be a new special page named PasswordPolicies. This page gives information about the password rules for each user group on that wiki. [1,265]
• A new way to see moved paragraphs in diffs is coming to most wikis. This is to make it easier to find the moved paragraphs and the changes in them. [1,266]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 May. It will be on all wikis from 31 May (calendar).
• Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. This is complex. The tool will now disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. It has warned about this in the JavaScript console since February. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [1,267]

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 May 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 30 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Content Translation drafts which have not been updated in over a year will be removed. This allows other users to translate those articles. [1,268]
• A survey is collecting information on what users think about how Wikimedia wiki pages are loaded. This information could be used in future development. [1,269]
• Some wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 30 May and 13 June. Wikis with fewer than 100 linter issues in the main namespace in all high-priority linter categories will switch. This includes Wikidata. Tidy will probably be removed on all wikis in the first week of July. [1,270][1,271]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

12:40, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-23

Latest tech 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 MonoBook skin has been optimised for mobile devices. It now looks different. [1,272]
• Planet Wikimedia collects blogs about Wikimedia. It will now use the Rawdog feed aggregator to do this instead of Planet. [1,273][1,274]
• Redirect links in Special:WhatLinksHere now link to the original page and not the target page. This was done earlier and changed the used messages on some pages. This was a problem for wikis that customized the message. A new change fixed this by using the old messages with one more parameter for customization. Wikis that already changed their customized messages will have to move the customization back again. [1,275]

Problems

• You will not be able to edit some wikis between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 13 June. You can see if your wiki is one of them.
• MassMessage did not work 24–28 May. This is also why last week's Tech News was late. [1,276]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 June. It will be on all wikis from 7 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 5 June 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 6 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This is planned to happen in June or early July. [1,277][1,278]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:54, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-24

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

Recent changes

• In the Wikipedia app for Android or iOS users can create reading lists. The reading lists can be seen on different devices if you are logged in to your account. There is now a browser extension so you can add pages to your reading list from a web browser. At the moment it works with Firefox and Chrome. [1,279]
• There is a new version of Pywikibot. Pywikibot is a tool to automate tasks on MediaWiki wikis. [1,280]

Problems

• The MonoBook skin was changed to make it work better for mobile users. This caused some problems. The change was rolled back to fix them. The new version is now back on the wikis. MonoBook users can opt out from the new responsive design. [1,281]

Changes later this week

• The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. For most wikis this will happen on 18 June. For the rest it will happen on 25 June. [1,282][1,283]

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

Meetings

• You can join the Readers Web team IRC office hour. There you can discuss tools to contribute on the mobile web for the existing MediaWiki skins. The meeting will be on 18 June at 16:00 (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 June 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 13 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to move local wiki files to Commons and keep their original data intact. This is planned to come to the first wikis in June.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:55, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-25

Latest tech 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 has been a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It is now a normal feature. It is based on CodeMirror. [1,284]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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 June 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 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some old web browsers will not be able to read the Wikimedia wikis. This is because they use an insecure way to connect to them. This means that we get less security for everyone else too. This affects about 0.08% of all traffic to the Wikimedia wikis. This affects for example those who read Wikipedia on a PlayStation 3. [1,285][1,286]
• The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. Because there is no new MediaWiki version this week it will happen on 25 June for most wikis. For the rest it will happen in early July. [1,287][1,288]
• All wikis that have not already done so will switch to use the Remex parsing library on 5 July. This is to replace Tidy. You can help fix remaining errors. [1,289]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-26

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

Recent changes

• PAWS, our JupyterHub system, got an upgrade and a logo. Several bugs should be fixed.

Problems

• When a link text was in italics or had other formatting you could sometimes not edit it in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [1,290][1,291]

Changes later this week

• Content translation users who translate between any two of Arabic, English, French, Japanese and Russian will be asked to be part of a research project. This is to create better tools for translating articles. [1,292]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 June. It will be on all wikis from 28 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 26 June 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 27 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

23:10, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-27

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

Recent changes

• The database for tags will be changed. This will happen on 2 July on French Wikipedia and 9 July on all other wikis. Please report if recent changes get slower or you can't save edits. This could especially affect editors who use the database on ToolForge. [1,293]

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a database problem. [1,294]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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 July 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 4 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

00:46, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-28

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

Recent changes

• WebM video files have smaller file size but still be of the same quality. Creating WebM files will take longer time. [1,295]
• The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This was supposed to already have happened but was delayed. For most wikis this will happen on 9 July. For the rest it will happen on 16 July. [1,296]
• All wikis now use the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy. This could cause errors. You can help fix the errors. [1,297]

Problems

• When you rolled back an edit it could get both the Rollback and Undo tags. This has been fixed. [1,298]
• Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed. [1,299]

Changes later this week

• When you edit a link in the visual editor there will be two separate buttons to change which page the link goes to (target) or its text (label). [1,300][1,301]
• On the mobile version you can find a link to an editor's contributions from their user page. Now this will work even if they haven't created a user page. [1,302]
• When you edit a discussion on the mobile version you sometimes get your signature automatically added. This will now not happen if you have already added a signature manually. This is to avoid double signatures. [1,303]
• Structured discussions toolbars will have more style options. [1,304]
• When you look at Wikimedia code in Gerrit there will be a new interface. It is on by default for new users. This is also true for developers. This is to make it easier to understand what is happening. [1,305]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 July. It will be on all wikis from 12 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 10 July 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 11 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Today all administrators can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. There will be a new user group for editing CSS and JavaScript. Administrators will no longer automatically be able to do this. This is because it is a security risk when all administrator accounts can edit JavaScript even if they never plan to or do not know how it works. You can read more. [1,306]
• Page previews will be on by default for new accounts. [1,307]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

23:09, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-29

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

Recent changes

• You can now use global preferences on Wikimedia wikis. You can set them on the global preferences page. [1,308]
• You can now see a new log of pages being created at Special:Log/create. It includes pages which are later deleted. It is now available on all Wikimedia wikis except Commons and Wikidata. [1,309]
• You can see how many pageviews a wiki had from specific countries. The Wikistats2 maps have now been updated. [1,310]

Changes later this week

• Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change. [1,311]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (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 July 17 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 July 18 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can read more and leave feedback.
• You can use <inputbox> to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead of prefix:Page name you will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-30

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

Recent changes

• When you log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [1,312]
• Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [1,313]
• Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [1,314]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-31

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

Recent changes

• The design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems. [1,315]

Problems

• Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [1,316][1,317]
• Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [1,318][1,319]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 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 31 July 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 August at 15:00 (UTC) as well as at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• After a community discussion, a new group for users will be created. "Interface administrators" will be the only users allowed to edit interface pages like MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Common.js. This is done to avoid technical issues and improve security. That change will be effective by the end of August 2018.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-32

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

Recent changes

• Special:NewPages now has the OOUI look. [1,320]

Problems

• The MediaWiki version that was released two weeks ago was late to some Wikimedia wikis. This was because of bugs. It was on all wikis 30 July. [1,321][1,322]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 August. It will be on all wikis from 9 August.

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 7 August 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 8 August 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.

19:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-33

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

Recent changes

• CSS in templates can now be stored in a separate page on all wikis. This is called TemplateStyles. This is to make it easier to edit how templates look. [1,323]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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 14 August 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 15 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can read more. You can leave feedback on the talk page. [1,324]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:53, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-34

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 August. It will be on all wikis from 23 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 22 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2018 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
• Legacy JavaScript global variables have been deprecated for seven years. They will soon be removed from all wikis. Gadgets and scripts that use them will stop working. You can test your community's gadgets on "group0" wikis. For example Test Wikipedia or mediawiki.org. The legacy JavaScript global variables are already disabled there. You can read the migration guide to fix old scripts. [1,325]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-35

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

Recent changes

• You can now see moved paragraphs in diffs in the mobile view. It also works on all languages in the desktop view. [1,326]
• Bureaucrats on all Wikimedia wikis can now remove the interface admin user right. [1,327]

Problems

• Some diffs show lines in the wrong order. The developers are working on fixing it. [1,328]

Changes later this week

• The message you see when you thank a user will change. This is to make it easier to understand. [1,329]
• AWB will stop adding using AWB in the edit summary. Instead it will add a tag that says AWB. [1,330]
• Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title. [1,331]
• Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age. [1,332]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 August. It will be on all wikis from 30 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 28 August 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 29 August at 15:00 (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 up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:16, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-36

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

Recent changes

• There is a new user right for users who can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. Before this all admins could edit CSS and JavaScript. This was a security risk. This group is called interface administrators. Administrators can delete user CSS and JavaScript pages. [1,333][1,334]
• There will be an A/B test on the Wikipedia mobile website. It starts this week. It tests how we show templates that show information about an article. The test will last two weeks. [1,335][1,336]
• You can now use different CSS rules for different skins when you edit templates. This is because of TemplateStyles. [1,337]
• wp10 in ORES is now called articlequality. [1,338]
• When you get a new message on your talk page you get a yellow message in the toolbar. The preference to show or not show this has been removed. [1,339]

Problems

• UploadWizard had problems with campaigns. Users could not upload files. This has now been fixed. [1,340]
• You can get a notification when a link is made to a page you created. This has not worked since June. It was fixed last week. [1,341]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 September. It will be on all wikis from 6 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 5 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department will work on advanced mobile editing. You can read more about this and other things they plan to work on over the next year. You can also see the presentation.
• The RelatedSites extension will be removed from Wikivoyage.
• Unused projects on the Wikimedia Cloud virtual private server will be removed. This will happen in October. Projects can be marked if they are being used. [1,342]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:47, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

7th Annual Los Angeles Wiknic

It's the 7th Annual Los Angeles Wiknic!

Sunday, September 30, 11:00-4:00 PM
Pan Pacific Park, 7600 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Hang out. Consume crowd-sourced BBQ! Bask in the glory of late September in Los Angeles (and the glory
of our new user group, Wikimedians of Los Angeles).
RSVP (and volunteer) here.
We hope to see you there! JSFarman (talk) 02:50, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
Join our Facebook group, or follow us on Twitter!

To opt out of future mailings about LA meetups, please remove your name from this list.

Tech News: 2018-37

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

Recent changes

• When you added or edited a template with the visual editor the input boxes were very big. This has been fixed. The input boxes will now be smaller until you click on them. Then they will change size to fit the text. [1,343]

Problems

• Some diffs showed lines in the wrong order. This was fixed last week. [1,344]
• Marking a cross-wiki notification as read didn't work every time. The other wiki was not updated. This has now been fixed. [1,345]
• <maplink> did not work for a few days. This was because of a bug. This has now been fixed. [1,346]
• {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} is used by some templates. For a period edits saved with {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} would save the previous user's name and not your username. This is now fixed. Edits made before the bug was fixed will still be wrong and need to be corrected. [1,347]
• When you move a page the title still shows the old page name. The developers are working on fixing this. [1,348]

Changes later this week

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
• Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

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 Septmber 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 12 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The developers work on making the wikis work better on mobile phones. There is a list of common problems when making content easier to read in the mobile view. You can add things to the page and ask others to help.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-38

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

Recent changes

• The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. Images uploaded using Nearby are now automatically added to the associated Wikidata item. You can browse other images on Commons. You can see your achievements and your upload statistics. It has also fixed some bugs. [1,349]
• MediaWiki web requests now have a time limit of 60 seconds for GET requests and 200 seconds for POST requests. [1,350]

Problems

• You could not see the menu on the notifications page on the mobile version. This has now been fixed. [1,351]

Changes later this week

• Special:AncientPages can hide disambiguation pages. [1,352]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 September. It will be on all wikis from 20 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 19 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The developers are testing new mobile web navigation. You can use it and give feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:58, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-39

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

Changes later this week

• The preferences form will change to use the standard look. If you see any problems please report them on Phabricator. [1,353]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 September. It will be on all wikis from 27 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 26 September 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.

15:23, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-40

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

Recent changes

• Ordinary pages can no longer be loaded as javascript. You could do this using ?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript in the URL. Only fully protected pages in the MediaWiki: namespace or user javascript subpages can be loaded as javascript now. This is for better security. [1,354][1,355]

Problems

• New and updated translations from translatewiki.net will not reach the wikis for a while. You can still translate messages on translatewiki.net. The Wikimedia wikis will be updated with the new translations later. This is because of work on the translation system. [1,356][1,357]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 October. It will be on all wikis from 4 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Search Platform team. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 UTC. See how to join if you want to know how the search function works or have questions.

Future changes

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:34, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-41

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

Recent changes

• The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. You can use the Programs and Events Dashboard or the Fountain instead. [1,358]

Problems

• There was a problem when you copied and pasted from a table with the visual editor. It could add href where it shouldn't be. This has now been fixed. [1,359]

Changes later this week

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You migh

Invitation to join the Fifteen Year Society

Dear Stewartadcock/Archive2014,

I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Fifteen Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for fifteen years or more. ​

Best regards, Urhixidur (talk) 16:37, 9 May 2019 (UTC)