Wikipedia:Tech news/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Tech news. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page.

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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. [1]
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. [2][3]
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. [4]

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. [5]
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. [6][7]
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. [8]
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. [9][10][11]
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. [12][13]
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. [14]

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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. [15]
When you get a notification that an edit has been reverted, the notification now quotes part of the edit summary. [16]
RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [17]

Changes this week

Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [18][19]
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. [20][21]
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. [22][23][24]

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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. [25]
You can now use the Math extension to write chemistry formulas. [26]

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. [27][28]

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. [29][30]
Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [31]
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. [32]

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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. [33][34]

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. [35][36]

Changes this week

After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [37]

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.

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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. [38][39]
The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [40][41]

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. [42]
Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [43]
Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [44]

Meetings

Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [45]
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. [46]
Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [47]
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. [48]
It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [49]
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. [50]

Problems

Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [51]
The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [52]
The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [53]
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. [54]
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. [55]

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. [56]
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. [57]

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. [58]
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. [59]

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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. [60]
The search engine on wikipedia.org has been updated. [61]

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. [62]
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. [63]

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)

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. [64]

Changes this week

It will now be easier to list IP addresses that don't have to solve CAPTCHAs. [65]
You will now be able to mark Echo notifications as unread. [66]
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. [67]

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16:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, a minor correction: The MediaWiki deployment dates are March 22–24, not 21–23. My apologies. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 08:41, 22 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. [68] [69]

Problems

Adding references with Citoid was broken for approximately 6 hours on 24 March. This was fixed. [70]

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. [71]

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. [72]
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. [73]
Wikimedia wikis have a new way of counting visitors. [74]

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).

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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. [75][76]
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. [77][78]
ORES is using new models. Tools that use ORES' predictions can behave strangely. ORES also has a new API. [79]
The visual editor now supports classical Greek characters. [80]

Problems

There was a bug when you used keyboard arrows in templates in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [81]

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. [82]

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. [83]

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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. [84][85]
You can use Telnet to read Wikimedia wikis. [86]
MediaWiki wikis can handle bigger file uploads. The new limit is 4 GB. [87]

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. [88]
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.

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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. [89]
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. [90]

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. [91]
It will be easier to choose if you want to watch files you have uploaded with the upload wizard. [92]
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. [93]

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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. [94]

Problems

There was a security problem with the MobileFrontend extension. It showed information that had been oversighted. This has now been fixed. [95]

Changes this week

You can now see which notifications are available on a wiki on Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration. [96]
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. [97]

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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. [98]
You can use Wikipedia GapFinder to find missing articles between languages. [99]
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. [100][101]
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). [102]
Uploading files bigger than 100 megabytes on Wikimedia Commons required to opt-in in your preferences. This is not necessary anymore. [103]
The UploadsLink extension is now available on Wikimedia Commons. [104]
Deleting a translation unit page didn't remove the corresponding content from the translation page. This is now solved. [105]
Translation suggestions based on Apertium are now available on Mediawiki.org. [106]

Problems

MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.23 has been rolled back from Wikimedia wikis, due to a performance issue. [107]

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. [108]

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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. [109]

Problems

Last week's MediaWiki version was late on some wikis. [110]

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. [111]
Wikis can now locally decide what wikitext they want the signature button to produce. [112]
A one-time welcome message for users will now be shown in the wikitext editor. This will include existing users. [113]
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. [114]

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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. [115]

Problems

Commons had problems with server lag. This meant that it took longer time for files to turn up in categories. [116]

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. [117]

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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. [118]

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. [119][120]
CentralNotice didn't work in some older browsers. This has now been fixed. [121]

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. [122]
The Translate extension will get an edit summary field. [123]
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. [124][125]
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. [126]
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.

16:18, 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. [127][128]

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. [129]
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).

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

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. [130]
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. [131][132][133][134]

Changes this week

You can filter user contributions to hide minor edits. [135]
It will be easier to edit galleries with the visual editor. [136]
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. [137]

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. [138][139]
Alerts (the red badge) will not be automatically marked as read when you open the Notifications popup. [140]
When you get several thanks you can see them as one notification. This is instead of one notification for each thanks. [141]
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. [142]
The order of wikis in collapsed cross-wiki notifications was different than when the list was expanded. This is now fixed. [143]
A new category for tracking pages with math errors was added: Category:Pages with math errors. [144]

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. [145][146]

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. [147]

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. [148]
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. [149]
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. [150][151][152]
From 29 June git.wikimedia.org (running Gitblit) will redirect all requests to Phabricator. The vast majority of requests should be correctly redirected. [153]
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. [154]

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. [155]

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. [156]
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.

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

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. [157][158][159]
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. [160][161][162]
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. [163][164][165]

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. [166]
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.

15:14, 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. [167]
Due to the rollback, the daily special patch deployment process has been changed. [168]
In notifications, "Messages" are now called "Notices". [169]

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. [170][171]

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. [172]
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. [173][174][175]

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. [176]

Future changes

User scripts and bots can no longer use http:// to edit wiki pages. [177][178]
Gerrit is going to be updated. Developers are invited to test it. [179]

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

20:18, 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. [180]

Problems

Sometimes, the visual editor required saving twice. That problem is now fixed. [181]

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. [182]
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. [183]

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. [184]

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. [185]
Special:Notifications page code will be changed to be more Mobile friendly. [186]

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. [187]
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. [188]

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. [189]

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. [190]

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. [191]
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. [192]
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. [193]
The button to read something in another language will move for mobile users. This will happen on 9 August. [194]
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. [195]
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. [196]

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. [197]
Creating and editing links to sections on other pages on the wiki now works again in the visual editor. [198]
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. [199][200]

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. [201]
Some abuse filters will have to be updated during the week. This is because a bug will be fixed. [202]
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". [203][204]
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. [205]
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. [206]

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. [207]
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. [208]
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. [209]

Problems

Some big image files could not be thumbnailed. This has now been fixed. [210]
When you moved a page over a redirect it would delete the redirect without saving it in the logs. This has now been fixed. [211]

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. [212][213]
How you add text after an edit conflict might work in a different way in the future. You can test the prototype. [214]

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

21:17, 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. [215]
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. [216]

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. [217][218]
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.

16:01, 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. [219]
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. [220]
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. [221]

Changes this week

You will be able to use <maplink> on all Wikipedias. It creates a link to a full screen map. [222][223]
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. [224][225]
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. [226]

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. [227]
<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. [228][229]

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. [230]
A new user right will allow most users to change the content model of pages. [231][232]
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. [233][234]

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. [235]

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

22:08, 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. [236]
When you edit text and mention a new username they are notified if you add your signature. Before this only happened under certain conditions. [237]
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. [238]

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. [239][240]

Changes this week

There will be no new MediaWiki version this week. [241]

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. [242]

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. [243]

<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. [244]

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}}. [245]
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. [246]
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. [247]

Changes this week

Hidden HTML comments will be more visible when you edit with the visual editor.  [248]
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. [249]

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

20:29, 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. [250]
Editors couldn't edit semi-protected pages in the Wikipedia app for Android. This has now been fixed in the beta version. [251]

Changes this week

There will be no new MediaWiki version this week. [252]

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.

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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. [253]

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". [254]
About a dozen wikis now have numerical sorting in categories. If your wiki wants numerical sorting in categories you can ask for it. [255]
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.

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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. [256]
Search now has an updated preference tab to configure the search completion suggester. [257]
The visual editor is now available on all wikis using only one language script. [258]

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. [259]
Special:NewPages can now be filtered by page size. [260]

Future changes

New MediaWiki deployments will be now based on MediaWiki 1.29. [261]

Miscellaneous

The Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Collaboration Guideline is available for community review. Any feedback welcome, in any language.

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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. [262]
First release candidate for MediaWiki 1.28 is now available. [263]
.gitreview for MediaWiki branches and extensions switched from targeting a specific branch to using track=1. [264]
Section numbers in Table of Contents boxes will use grey to improve readability. [265]

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. [266]

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. [267][268][269]
Upcoming holidays will impact deployments. The schedule has been published.

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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. [270]

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. [271]

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. [272]

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

19:17, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

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. [273]
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. [274]
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. [275]

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. [276][277][278]

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. [279]
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. [280]

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

15:32, 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. [281]
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. [282]
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]. [283][284]

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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21:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC)