User talk:PotsdamLamb/Archive 5
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Globally blocked
PDL has been socking on enwiki and harassing Mrschimpf, and was globally blocked on August 8. In July he started an unblock request on enwiki, saying he significantly changed how he interact with others, and that he had nothing but calm discussions on simple. Of course, seeing how he was blocked on here for not being calm, that clearly wasn't true. PDL, it sucks that you had to revert back to your socking. I didn't even know you were blocked on enwiki for socking for a year until just now as I write this. Again, it really genuinely stinks that you were blocked, because you could have been a great editor on here, if not for your behavior. Lallint (talk) 16:40, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
RfD nomination of Stubs
An editor has requested deletion of Stubs, an article you created. We appreciate your changes, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in the nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").
Please comment on the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Requests for deletion/Requests/2022/Stubs and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).
You may also change the article during the discussion to address the nominator's concerns. But you should not remove the requests for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you very much. Hockeycatcat (talk) (changes) 09:18, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-34
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
- Two problems with Kartographer maps have been fixed. Maps are no longer shown as empty when a geoline was created via VisualEditor. Geolines consisting of points with QIDs (e.g., subway lines) are no longer shown with pushpins. [1][2]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The colours of links and visited links will change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. [3]
Future changes
- The new [subscribe] button helps newcomers get answers. The Editing team is enabling this tool everywhere. You can turn it off in your preferences. [4]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:13, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-35
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
- The Realtime Preview is available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 2. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals. Please note that when this Beta feature is enabled, it may cause conflicts with some wiki-specific Gadgets.
Problems
- In recent months, there have been inaccurate numbers shown for various Special:Statistics at Commons, Wikidata, and English Wikipedia. This has now been fixed. [5]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation wants to improve how Wikimedia communities report harmful incidents by building the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) to make it easy and safe for users to make reports. You can leave comments on the talk page, by answering the questions provided. If you have ever faced a harmful situation that you wanted to report/reported, join a PIRS interview to share your experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.
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23:05, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
Editing news 2022 #2
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.
–Whatamidoing (WMF) 23:36, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-36
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 6 September at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 8 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of
#p-namespaces
should be updated to use themw.util.addPortletLink
function instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting#p-associated-pages
, the new id for this row. Examples are available. [6][7]
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23:22, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-37
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 search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [8]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).
- Syntax highlighting is now tracked as an expensive parser function. Only 500 expensive function calls can be used on a single page. Pages that exceed the limit are added to a tracking category. [9]
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01:50, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-38
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
- Two database fields in the
templatelinks
table are now being dropped:tl_namespace
andtl_title
. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field calledtl_target_id
. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [10][11]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
- In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [12][13]
Future changes
- In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.
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MediaWiki message delivery 22:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-39
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
- Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the
rel
attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 September. It will be on all wikis from 29 September (calendar).
- Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [14]
- Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [15] [16]
- In the Module namespace, pages ending with
.json
will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [17]
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MediaWiki message delivery 00:30, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 52
Books & Bytes
Issue 52, July – August 2022
- New instant-access collections:
- SpringerLink and Springer Nature
- Project MUSE
- Taylor & Francis
- ASHA
- Loeb
- Feedback requested on this newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:21, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-40
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
- Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [18] [19]
- The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
- Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [20] [21]
- The
scribunto-console
API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5] - The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.
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MediaWiki message delivery 00:24, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
RfD nomination of Template:Done/See also
An editor has requested deletion of Template:Done/See also, an article you created. We appreciate your changes, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in the nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").
Please comment on the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Requests for deletion/Requests/2022/Template:Done/See also and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).
You may also change the article during the discussion to address the nominator's concerns. But you should not remove the requests for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you very much. --Ferien (talk) 10:32, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-41
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
- On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [22][23]
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14:09, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-42
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 recently implemented feature of article thumbnails in Special:Search will be limited to Wikipedia projects only. Further details are in T320510. [24]
- A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
- Lua module authors can use
mw.loadJsonData()
to load data from JSON pages. [25] - Lua module authors can enable
require( "strict" )
to add errors for some possible code problems. This replaces "Module:No globals" on most wikis. [26]
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated at most wikis. The "reply" button will look different after this change. [27]
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MediaWiki message delivery 21:46, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-43
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
- There have been some minor visual fixes in Special:Search, regarding audio player alignment and image placeholder height. Further details are in T319230.
- On Wikipedias, a new preference has been added to hide article thumbnails in Special:Search. Full details are in T320337.
Problems
- Last week, three wikis (French Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia) had read-only access for 25 minutes. This was caused by a hardware problem. [28]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 October. It will be on all wikis from 27 October (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 October at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 27 October at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Assamese Wikipedia, Bashkir Wikipedia, Balinese Wikipedia, Bavarian Wikipedia, Samogitian Wikipedia, Bikol Central Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Bhojpuri Wikipedia, Bislama Wikipedia, Banjar Wikipedia, Bambara Wikipedia, Bishnupriya Wikipedia, Breton Wikipedia, Bosnian Wikipedia, Buginese Wikipedia, Buryat Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [29]
- Starting on Wednesday October 26, 2022, the list of mentors will be upgraded at wikis where Growth mentorship is available. The mentorship system will continue to work as it does now. The signup process will be replaced, and a new management option will be provided. Also, this change simplifies the creation of mentorship systems at Wikipedias. [30][31][32]
- Pages with titles that start with a lower-case letter according to Unicode 11 will be renamed or deleted. There is a list of affected pages at m:Unicode 11 case map migration. More information can be found at T292552.
- The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikipedias. Learn more.
Future changes
- The Reply tool and New Topic tool will soon get a special characters menu. [33]
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MediaWiki message delivery 21:23, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-44
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
- When using keyboard navigation on a Kartographer map, the focus will become more visible. [34]
- In Special:RecentChanges, you can now hide the log entries for new user creations with the filter for "⧼rcfilters-filter-newuserlogactions-label⧽". [35]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 November. It will be on all wikis from 3 November (calendar).
- The maps dialog in VisualEditor now has some help texts. [36]
- It is now possible to select the language of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor via a dropdown menu. [37]
- It is now possible to add a caption to a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [38]
- It is now possible to hide the frame of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [39]
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MediaWiki message delivery 21:16, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-45
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
- An updated version of the Event Registration tool is now available for testing at testwiki and test2wiki. The tool provides features for event organizers and participants. Your feedback is welcome at our project talkpage. More information about the project is available. [40]
Problems
- Twice last week, for about 45 minutes, some files and thumbnails failed to load and uploads failed, mostly for logged-in users. The cause is being investigated and an incident report will be available soon.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
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MediaWiki message delivery 00:32, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-46
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
- At Wikidata, an interwiki link can now point to a redirect page if certain conditions are met. This new feature is called sitelinks to redirects. It is needed when one wiki uses one page to cover multiple concepts but another wiki uses more pages to cover the same concepts. Your feedback on the talkpage of the new proposed guideline is welcome. [41]
- The www.wikinews.org, www.wikiversity.org, and www.wikivoyage.org portal pages now use an automated update system. [42]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 November. It will be on all wikis from 17 November (calendar).
- There will be a new link to directly "Edit template data" on Template pages. [43]
Future changes
- Wikis where mobile DiscussionTools are enabled (these ones) will soon use full CSS styling to display any templates that are placed at the top of talk pages. To adapt these “talk page boxes” for narrow mobile devices you can use media queries, such as in this example. [44]
- Starting in January 2023, Community Tech will be running the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) every two years. This means that in 2024, there will be no new proposals or voting.
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MediaWiki message delivery 21:55, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 53
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 53, September – October 2022
- New collections:
- Edward Elgar
- E-Yearbook
- Corriere della Serra
- Wikilala
- Collections moved to Library Bundle:
- Ancestry
- New feature: Outage notification
- Spotlight: Collections indexed in EDS
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:20, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-47
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
- The display of non-free media in the search bar and for article thumbnails in Special:Search has been deactivated. Further details are in T320661.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 22 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 24 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:22, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-48
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 preference, “Enable limited width mode”, has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also available as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. It allows for increasing the width of the page for logged-out and logged-in users. [45]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 29 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 December at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- Mathematical formulas shown in SVG image format will no longer have PNG fall-backs for browsers that don't support them. This is part of work to modernise the generation system. Showing only PNG versions was the default option until in February 2018. [46][47][48]
- On some wikis that use flagged revisions, a new checkbox will be added to Special:Contributions that enables you to see only the pending changes by a user. [49]
Future changes
- How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change early next week at group1 wikis (but not Wikimedia Commons or Meta-Wiki). This change improves the accessibility of content, and makes it easier to write related CSS. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems. [50]
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MediaWiki message delivery 20:03, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-49
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
- The Wikisources use a tool called ProofreadPage. ProofreadPage uses OpenSeadragon which is an open source tool. The OpenSeadragon JavaScript API has been significantly re-written to support dynamically loading images. The functionality provided by the older version of the API should still work but it is no longer supported. User scripts and gadgets should migrate over to the newer version of the API. The functionality provided by the newer version of the API is documented on MediaWiki. [51][52]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).
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MediaWiki message delivery 00:41, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-50
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
- An A/B test has begun at 15 Wikipedias for DiscussionTools on mobile. Half of the editors on the mobile web site will have access to the Reply tool and other features. [53]
- The character
=
cannot be used in new usernames, to make usernames work better with templates. Existing usernames are not affected. [54]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).
- The HTML markup used by DiscussionTools to show discussion metadata below section headings will be inserted after these headings, not inside of them. This change improves the accessibility of discussion pages for screen reader software. [55]
Events
- The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award will happen online on Friday 16 December 2022 at 17:00 UTC! The event will be live-streamed on YouTube in the MediaWiki channel and added to Commons afterwards.
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MediaWiki message delivery 23:35, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-51
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 2023.
Recent changes
- On a user's contributions page, you can filter it for edits with a tag like 'reverted'. Now, you can also filter for all edits that are not tagged like that. This was part of a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [56]
- A new function has been used for gadget developers to add content underneath the title on article pages. This is considered a stable API that should work across all skins. Documentation is available. [57]
- One of our test wikis is now being served from a new infrastructure powered by Kubernetes (read more). More Wikis will switch to this new infrastructure in early 2023. Please test and let us know of any issues. [58]
Problems
- Last week, all wikis had no edit access for 9 minutes. This was caused by a database problem. [59]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
- The word "Reply" is very short in some languages, such as Arabic ("ردّ"). This makes the Discussion tools button on talk pages difficult to use. An arrow icon will be added to those languages. This will only be visible to editors who have the Beta Feature turned on. [60] [61]
Future changes
- Edits can be automatically "tagged" by the system software or the Abuse filter management system. Those tags link to a help page about the tags. Soon they will also link to Recent Changes to let you see other edits tagged this way. This was a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [62]
- The Trust & Safety tools team have shared new plans for building the Private Incident Reporting System. The system will make it easier for editors to ask for help if they are harassed or abused.
- Realtime Preview for Wikitext is coming out of beta as an enabled feature for every user of the 2010 Wikitext editor in the week of January 9, 2023. It will be available to use via the toolbar in the 2010 Wikitext editor. The feature was the 4th most popular wish of the Community Wishlist Survey 2021.
Events
- You can now register for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023, taking place on May 19–21 in Athens, Greece. You can also apply for a scholarship until January 14th.
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MediaWiki message delivery 00:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-02
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 use tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags. [63]
- Special:WhatLinksHere shows all pages that link to a specific page. There is now a prototype for how to sort those pages alphabetically. You can see the discussion in the Phabricator ticket.
- You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page. [64]
- A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time. [65]
- Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use
matrix:
to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [66] - You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages. [67]
Changes later this week
- Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 10 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 12 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 January. It will be on all wikis from 12 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:07, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-03
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- The URLs in "last" links on page history now contain
diff=prev&oldid=[revision ID]
in place ofdiff=[revision ID]&oldid=[revision ID]
. This is to fix a problem with links pointing to incorrect diffs when history was filtered by a tag. Some user scripts may break as a result of this change. [68]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).
- Some changes to the appearance of talk pages have only been available on
Talk:
andUser talk:
namespaces. These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such asWikipedia talk:
. They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, includingWikipedia:
pages (e.g., at the Village Pump). You can change your preferences (beta feature). [69] - On Wikisources, when an image is zoomed or panned in the Page: namespace, the same zoom and pan settings will be remembered for all Page: namespace pages that are linked to a particular Index: namespace page. [70]
- The Vector 2022 skin will become the default for the English Wikipedia desktop users. The change will take place on January 18 at 15:00 UTC. Learn more.
Future changes
- The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey, which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts next week on 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC. You can start drafting your proposals in the CWS sandbox.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:10, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
RfD nomination of Template:Clickable button 3
An editor has requested deletion of Template:Clickable button 3, an article you created. We appreciate your changes, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in the nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").
Please comment on the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Requests for deletion/Requests/2023/Template:Clickable button 3 and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).
You may also change the article during the discussion to address the nominator's concerns. But you should not remove the requests for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you very much. Auntof6 (talk) 03:11, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 54
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 54, November – December 2022
- New collections:
- British Newspaper Archive
- Findmypast
- University of Michigan Press
- ACLS
- Duke University Press
- 1Lib1Ref 2023
- Spotlight: EDS Refine Results
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-04
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue. [71]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).
- If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity. [72][73]
- The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:46, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-05
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
- Last week, for ~15 minutes, some users were unable to log in or edit pages. This was caused by a problem with session storage. [74]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 February. It will be on all wikis from 2 February (calendar).
Future changes
- Wikis that use localized numbering schemes for references need to add new CSS. This will help to show citation numbers the same way in all reading and editing modes. If your wiki would prefer to do it yourselves, please see the details and example CSS to copy from, and also add your wiki to the list. Otherwise, the developers will directly help out starting the week of February 5.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:05, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-06
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
- In the Vector 2022 skin, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default. [75]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).
- Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays. [76]
- Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [77]
- Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will stop receiving new proposals on Monday, 6 February 2023, at 18:00 UTC. Proposers should complete any edits by then, to give time for translations and review. Voting will begin on Friday, 10 February.
Future changes
- Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add
skins=…
for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 10:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-07
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- On wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week. [78]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).
- The Reply tool and other parts of DiscussionTools will be deployed for all editors using the mobile site. You can read more about this decision. [79]
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [80][81][82]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:49, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-08
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week, during planned maintenance of Cloud Services, unforeseen complications forced the team to turn off all tools for 2–3 hours to prevent data corruption. Work is ongoing to prevent similar problems in the future. [83]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).
- The voting phase for the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 ends on 24 February at 18:00 UTC. The results of the survey will be announced on 28 February.
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [84][85][86]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:58, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
Editing news 2023 #1
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter
This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:
- The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
- They are beginning a new project, Edit check.
Talk pages project
The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.
It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.
An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.
New Project: Edit Check
The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.
–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:18, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-09
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
- Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task. [87][88]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [89]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:47, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-10
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
- The Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
- On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Wikipedia) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed. [90]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).
- A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon. [91]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:50, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-11
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 later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Chavacano de Zamboanga Wikipedia, Min Dong Chinese Wikipedia, Chechen Wikipedia, Cebuano Wikipedia, Chamorro Wikipedia, Cherokee Wikipedia, Cheyenne Wikipedia, Central Kurdish Wikipedia, Corsican Wikipedia, Kashubian Wikipedia, Church Slavic Wikipedia, Chuvash Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [92][93]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:20, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 55
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 55, January – February 2023
- New bundle partners:
- Newspapers.com
- Fold3
- 1Lib1Ref January report
- Spotlight: EDS SmartText Searching
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:46, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 55
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 55, January – February 2023
- New bundle partners:
- Newspapers.com
- Fold3
- 1Lib1Ref January report
- Spotlight: EDS SmartText Searching
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --02:46, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-12
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
- Last week, some users experienced issues loading image thumbnails. This was due to incorrectly cached images. [94]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).
- A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will appear on Special:Contributions — some user scripts which previously added this link may cause conflicts. This feature request was voted #17 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
- The Special:AbuseFilter edit window will be resizable and larger by default. This feature request was voted #80 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
- There will be a new option for Administrators when they are unblocking a user, to add the unblocked user’s user page to their watchlist. This will work both via Special:Unblock and via the API. [95]
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 24 March at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:26, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-13
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
- The AbuseFilter condition limit was increased from 1000 to 2000. [96]
- Some Global AbuseFilter actions will no longer apply to local projects. [97]
- Desktop users are now able to subscribe to talk pages by clicking on the Subscribe link in the Tools menu. If you subscribe to a talk page, you receive notifications when new topics are started on that talk page. This is separate from putting the page on your watchlist or subscribing to a single discussion. [98]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 March. It will be on all wikis from 30 March (calendar).
Future changes
- You will be able to choose visual diffs on all history pages at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [99]
- The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Developers are encouraged to switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity. [100]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:13, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Unlock Request December 4, 2023
@Ferien Per your last comment, I am requesting the unlocking of my account so I can request my unblock as it has been over 6 months since I’ve last edited, as requested. Since my account is globally locked I cannot log in and request anything.
Thanks. PDL
174.236.98.95 (talk) 08:47, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Unblock Request August 14, 2023
- @Ferien Thank you. I am not sure how to request an unlock as it would require me to be not be blocked on two or more wikis per the rules. You as a crat may be able to better help me to go about doing this and when I should start the request. If you would like, you can email me. Thanks 2600:8801:CA05:EF00:1D51:8BEC:EB5:B9D8 (talk) 06:14, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Ferien Thank you for starting the request https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Global#Global_unlock_for_PotsdamLamb. I appreciate it. 2600:8801:CA05:EF00:386E:38F5:3FBB:CFD3 (talk) 02:31, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
- I don't want to make this a thing. It's been a thing long enough. For me, the answer is hard no. The lock remains in place, the blocks should remain in place, the user should move on. The user should not evade blocks by using IPs. Emailing the admins isn't going to change that stance for me. They should be blocked on sight for evasion. --Gordonrox24 | Talk 04:06, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Ferien Thank you for starting the request https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Global#Global_unlock_for_PotsdamLamb. I appreciate it. 2600:8801:CA05:EF00:386E:38F5:3FBB:CFD3 (talk) 02:31, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
Block
I understand that you have marked yourself as retired, though the comments you made while leaving, (1, 2) combined with other instances of recent incivility (3, 4, and others) have necessitated that this be enforced with a block. I understand it can be difficult to handle disagreements, but resorting to incivility is never an acceptable option. Regards, Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 23:46, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-14
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 system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories. [101][102][103][104][105]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
- Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version. [106]
- The deprecated
jquery.hoverIntent
module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQueryhover()
oron()
instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide. [107] - Some of the links in Special:SpecialPages will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account. [108]
- You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new
__ARCHIVEDTALK__
magic word. There will also be a new.mw-archivedtalk
CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page. [109][110][111]
Future changes
- The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:40, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-15
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
- In the visual editor, it is now possible to edit captions of images in galleries without opening the gallery dialog. This feature request was voted #61 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [112]
- You can now receive notifications when another user edits your user page. See the "Edits to my user page" option in your Preferences. This feature request was voted #3 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [113]
Problems
- There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed. [114]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Dinka Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Ewe Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Emiliano-Romagnolo Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Estonian Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Tumbuka Wikipedia, Fulah Wikipedia, Finnish Wikipedia, Võro Wikipedia, Fijian Wikipedia, Faroese Wikipedia, Arpitan Wikipedia, Northern Frisian Wikipedia, Friulian Wikipedia, Irish Wikipedia, Guianan Creole Wikipedia, Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Galician Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia, Guarani Wikipedia, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Gothic Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikipedia, Manx Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [115][116]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:05, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Movement Charter Drafting Committee's monthly newsletter
- Starting conversations on how to ratify the Movement Charter: The Committee invites the Wikimedia movement to express opinions on the proposed Movement Charter ratification methodology from April 10 to April 28. Everyone is invited to share feedback on the Meta talk page or the Movement Strategy forum. Two community conversation hours are planned to take place: on April 18 at 10.00 UTC and April 24 at 17.00 UTC. Please read the details here.
- MCDC’s responses to the community feedback are now on Meta: The Committee has shared a summary of their responses and next steps based on the feedback from the first round of community consultation which took place late 2022.
- What to read on Diff?
- Learn more about the Movement Charter Ambassadors work: Movement Charter Ambassadors from the French-speaking community share their experience.
- MCDC member Manavpreet Kaur has written a blog post titled “An excerpt from my life, movement, strategy and MCDC”.
- Learn about Movement Charter Drafting Committee’s work in March: the monthly Committee’s updates include information about the coordination efforts with Wikimedia Germany, update on membership, submission to Wikimania 2023, participation at the Wikimedia Foundations Board of Trustees’ strategic retreat in New York in March 2023.
Coming up:
- Revised chapters: The Committee is preparing to publish the revised draft chapters of The Preamble, Values & Principles, and Roles & Responsibilities intentions statement, based on the community feedback received in November and December 2022.
- Inviting advisors and experts: The Committee is preparing to welcome a number of advisors from outside the Committee. All interested Wikimedians were invited to apply earlier (you can still apply here!). Additionally, the Committee is planning and scheduling meetings with individuals with specific sets of expertise in various topics, including stewards, movement committees, Wikimedia Foundation and affiliate staff, and others.
Subscribe to this newsletter on Meta wiki
--19:18, 15 April 2023 (UTC).
Tech News: 2023-16
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 now see nearby articles on a Kartographer map with the button for the new feature "Show nearby articles". Six wikis have been testing this feature since October. [117][118]
- The Special:GlobalWatchlist page now has links for "mark page as read" for each entry. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [119]
Problems
- At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week. [120][121]
- For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [122]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 April. It will be on all wikis from 20 April (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:54, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-17
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
- The date-selection menu on pages such as Special:Contributions will now show year-ranges that are in the current and past decade, instead of the current and future decade. This feature request was voted #145 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [123]
Problems
- Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities. [124]
- For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed. [125][126][127]
Changes later this week
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [128]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).
Future changes
- The Editing team plans an A/B test for a usability analysis of the Talk page project. The planned measurements are available. Your wiki may be invited to participate. Please suggest improvements to the measurement plan at the discussion page.
- The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input until May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023 on Meta-wiki.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:03, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-18
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 attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the French and Italian Wikipedias. More languages will be added in the near future. This is part of the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [129][130][131]
- The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads. [132]
- The Special:Preferences page has been redesigned on mobile web. The new design makes it easier to browse the different categories and settings at low screen widths. You can also now access the page via a link in the Settings menu in the mobile web sidebar. [133]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 May. It will be on all wikis from 4 May (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:45, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-19
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
- Last week, Community Tech released the first update for providing better diffs, the #1 request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. This update adds legends and tooltips to inline diffs so that users unfamiliar with the blue and yellow highlights can better understand the type of edits made.
- When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [134]
- The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports
wikitext
as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such ashtml5
,moin
, andhtml+handlebars
, can now be replaced. [135] - Preloading text to new pages/sections now supports preloading from localized MediaWiki interface messages. Here is an example at the Czech Wikipedia that uses
preload=MediaWiki:July
. [136]
Problems
- Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like de:Modul:Graph. The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities. [137]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).
- Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review. [138]
Future changes
- During the next year, MediaWiki will stop using IP addresses to identify logged-out users, and will start automatically assigning unique temporary usernames. Read more at IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Updates. You can join the discussion about the format of the temporary usernames. [139]
- There will be an A/B test on 10 Wikipedias where the Vector 2022 skin is the default skin. Half of logged-in desktop users will see an interface where the different parts of the page are more clearly separated. You can read more. [140][141]
-
jquery.tipsy
will be removed from the MediaWiki core. This will affect some user scripts. Many lines with.tipsy(
can be commented out.OO.ui.PopupWidget
can be used to keep things working like they are now. You can read more and read about how to find broken scripts. [142]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:36, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-20
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature. [143]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 May. It will be on all wikis from 18 May (calendar).
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Gorontalo Wikipedia, Hausa Wikipedia, Hakka Chinese Wikipedia, Hawaiian Wikipedia, Fiji Hindi Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Upper Sorbian Wikipedia, Haitian Creole Wikipedia, Interlingua Wikipedia, Interlingue Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Iloko Wikipedia, Ingush Wikipedia, Ido Wikipedia, Icelandic Wikipedia, Inuktitut Wikipedia, Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, Javanese Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [144]
Future changes
- There is a recently formed team at the Wikimedia Foundation which will be focusing on experimenting with new tools. Currently they are building a prototype ChatGPT plugin that allows information generated by ChatGPT to be properly attributed to the Wikimedia projects.
- Gadget and userscript developers should replace
jquery.cookie
withmediawiki.cookie
. Thejquery.cookie
library will be removed in ~1 month, and staff developers will run a script to replace any remaining uses at that time. [145]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-21
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
- The "recent edits" time period for page watchers is now 30 days. It used to be 180 days. This was a Community Wishlist Survey proposal. [146]
Changes later this week
- An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact. [147]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:55, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 56
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 56, March – April 2023
- New partner:
- Perlego
- Library access tips and tricks
- Spotlight: EveryBookItsReader
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:04, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
RfD nomination of Template:Non-admin closure
An editor has requested deletion of Template:Non-admin closure, a page you created. We appreciate your changes, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in the nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").
Please comment on the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Requests for deletion/Requests/2023/Template:Non-admin closure and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).
You may also change the article during the discussion to address the nominator's concerns. But you should not remove the requests for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you very much. --Ferien (talk) 14:26, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
Unblock Request - December 6, 2023
@Ferien per your request to wait until December, I am requesting an unblock.
- @Auntof6 I cannot request an unlock as my account is locked and the page requires auto-confirm status. I do not feel requesting my unblock is evading my block, as I am not editing any part of Wikipedia other than my talk page. If I email the stewards page they will not respond unless I’m unblocked as that is what happened before, even when I should not have been globally locked. Therefore, I would need to have to request the unblock and be granted it then an admin could request my unlocking to expedite it rather than me waiting months for a response from the stewards then requesting to be unblocked here (and based on what you stated, even if under my account posting an unblock request would be considered evading my block). I can be verified by IP by a crat and Ferien has my info and I’ve emailed him so he is aware I did indeed post this request. I’m not sure of any other way to do this. I also like it on the page so I can answer any questions someone has, which I know you have said to me previously :). Thanks - PDL 2600:8801:CA09:CC00:5078:1E07:15D0:2D47 (talk) 07:06, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
- @Auntof6 To let you know I emailed the stewards list a few moments ago. Thank you. If granted the unlock, I’ll re-request the unblock. 2600:8801:CA09:CC00:5078:1E07:15D0:2D47 (talk) 08:07, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
- @Auntof6 @Gordonrox24 @Ferien
- This is the reply I got from the stewards:
- ”Dear (redacted)(they used my real name),
- They may sponsor an unlock appeal for you by posting to: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Global
- Yours sincerely,
- Shaemous Flocks
- (below signature was standard disclaimer)
- So this takes me back to I need someone to do this for me please. Whomever does, please post the link here so I can follow.
- This was my email:
- Username: PotsdamLamb
- Reason: I have two admins on Simple Wikipedia who are “inclined” to unblock me but have requested that I get my account unlocked first. My account was locked as X-wiki since I was/am blocked on simple and en Wikipedias.
- If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. I look forward to your answer so I may move to the next phase of my unblock request.
- Thanks,
- PDL 2600:8801:CA09:CC00:5078:1E07:15D0:2D47 (talk) 10:41, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
- @Auntof6 To let you know I emailed the stewards list a few moments ago. Thank you. If granted the unlock, I’ll re-request the unblock. 2600:8801:CA09:CC00:5078:1E07:15D0:2D47 (talk) 08:07, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
2600:8801:CA09:CC00:6CB9:B177:C816:7458 (talk) 23:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
- We can probably discuss this a bit. My initial thought is, once again, no. I have no reason to believe the user won't just fall back into the same old pattern. Do we have the energy to keep dealing with that? With one strike, I don't think we have any obligation to give the user a 2nd or 3rd or 4th chance.--Gordonrox24 | Talk 03:17, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
- @Gordonrox24 I see where you are going. I have reviewed a lot of where I erred before and when I look at it I ask myself why was I even commenting or starting anything to begin with. None of those violated anything that Wikipedia says is not allowed, albeit, something’s hit a gray area. I should have let those go and let someone else handle those and in that position to do so. Going forward, I am not going to let those things or what people say to me get to me nor comment uncivilized. It has been over a year and a lot of things change, including people. No one is perfect, including myself or admins, and I have on occasion seen admins be uncivil but I know where my place is now and that is to edit in good faith and fight obvious vandalism and help others out as needed. I am happy to answer any other questions you or others may have. Thank you. PDL 2600:8801:CA09:CC00:5078:1E07:15D0:2D47 (talk) 04:11, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Jebel Sahaba
It's Colonelsnow. I'll edit the article 'Jebel Sahaba'. If alright, please remove the deletion notification. If not, I'ts fine to keep it. Just that. Thanks. Colonelsnow (talk) 11:31, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
- There is no need to post your actions on talk pages. Most of us get the notifications of pages that get changed that we marked. Thank you for the information though. Thanks - Da LambTalk to me!Please don't eat da 🐑! 12:17, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Colonelsnow Thanks - Da LambTalk to me!Please don't eat da 🐑! 12:17, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
- You're welcome Colonelsnow (talk) 12:34, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
- Got it very clearly. Just doing the notes on what I did for fun and also to keep track of things I did, just in case. Colonelsnow (talk) 12:37, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Colonelsnow Thanks - Da LambTalk to me!Please don't eat da 🐑! 12:17, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
Sorry
Sorry, I've accidentally deleted your notification. I apologize, and you can put it back up again. Colonelsnow (talk) 11:34, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
Mano De futbol
Is that an accurate article of Handball in Soccer Star 223 (talk) 18:34, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Star 223 I am already looking into it. There is also no need to ask multiple on their talk pages. If you want community insight please use Wikipedia:Simple talk. Thanks - Da LambTalk to me!Please don't eat da 🐑! 18:37, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
- Ok thanks and sorry Star 223 (talk) 18:38, 17 February 2024 (UTC)