Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Wikimedia no longer uses visitor statistics from comScore. [1]
Internet Explorer 8 will no longer have JavaScript support. You will still be able to browse and edit Wikipedia if you use Internet Explorer 8, but will not be able to use some features. This can be solved by upgrading to a newer version or switching to a different browser. [6][7]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. [8]
The edit tabs for the wikitext editor and the visual editor will be combined to one single edit tab. You will be able to choose which one you prefer. If you are not logged in, your choice will be saved as a cookie in your browser. You can test the single edit tab. [9][10]
There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. This works much like the links to for example Wikipedia articles in other languages. It will go out of beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [11][12]
The difference between "alerts" and "messages" notifications is unclear to some. The developers want feedback at the Phabricator task or on MediaWiki.org so they can make this better. You can give feedback in your language if you can't write in English.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You will be able to find or mark bugs and suggestions in Phabricator that are specific for your language or wiki. [13]
Notifications have been upgraded with more detailed and easier-to-access information. See the documentation. Cross-wiki notifications will be available soon on the two test wikis. [14]
Changes this week
The visual editor uses the TemplateData extension to make editing templates easier. You will now get a warning when you edit a TemplateData form and leave it without saving. [15]
MediaWiki will get a new authentication and authorization system called AuthManager. This is planned to happen in a month or two. Some bots will need to change how they log in. Two new and more stable authentication methods will be available now: Owner-only OAuth credentials and bot passwords. You can read more about the change. [16]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all Wikipedias from 21 January (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is governance model. The meeting will be on 20 January at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now follow when pages are added or removed from a category on German Wikipedia. The plan is to add it to Wikimedia Commons and other Wikipedias this week. [17][18]
Administrators can hide individual entries of a page with RevisionDelete. There is now a button to choose "all", "none" or "inverse" in Special:Log. The article history will get the same buttons soon. Wikis that have done this locally with JavaScript will be able to remove that code. [19]
Changes this week
You will be able to see the references when you preview a section you are editing. This will happen even if there is no <references /> tag in that section. [20]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
There is now an extension called ArticlePlaceholder. It can automatically generate content on Wikipedia with data from Wikidata if there is no Wikipedia article. It will have a tag to remind the reader it is not an article and ask the reader to create one. The developer is now looking for smaller Wikipedias that want to try the extension. [21]
The OTRS system will be upgraded. The plan is to do this on 3 February at 08:00 (UTC). It will probably take 6 to 8 hours. OTRS will be down during the upgrade. [22]
Users will soon be automatically congratulated when they reach some edit count milestones. [23]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
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. [24]
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. [25][26]
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. [27]
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. [28]
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. [29][30]
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. [31]
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. [32][33][34]
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. [35][36]
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.
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. [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.
When you get a notification that an edit has been reverted, the notification now quotes part of the edit summary. [39]
RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [40]
Changes this week
Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [41][42]
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.
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. [43][44]
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. [45][46][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
You can now edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [48]
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. [50][51]
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. [52][53]
Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [54]
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. [55]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [58][59]
Changes this week
After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [60]
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.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The 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. [61][62]
The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [63][64]
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. [65]
Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [66]
Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [67]
Meetings
Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [68]
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.
Latest tech 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. [69]
Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [70]
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. [71]
It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [72]
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. [73]
Problems
Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [74]
The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [75]
The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [76]
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. [77]
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. [78]
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. [79]
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. [80]
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. [81]
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. [82]
Latest tech 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. [83]
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. [85]
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. [86]
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.
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. [87]
Changes this week
It will now be easier to list IP addresses that don't have to solve CAPTCHAs. [88]
You will now be able to mark Echo notifications as unread. [89]
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. [90]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Adding references with Citoid was broken for approximately 6 hours on 24 March. This was fixed. [93]
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. [94]
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. [95]
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.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Wikimedia wikis have a new way of counting visitors. [97]
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).
Latest tech 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. [98][99]
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. [100][101]
ORES is using new models. Tools that use ORES' predictions can behave strangely. ORES also has a new API. [102]
The visual editor now supports classical Greek characters. [103]
Problems
There was a bug when you used keyboard arrows in templates in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [104]
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. [105]
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.
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. [106]
Latest tech 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. [107][108]
MediaWiki wikis can handle bigger file uploads. The new limit is 4 GB. [110]
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. [111]
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.
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. [112]
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. [113]
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. [114]
It will be easier to choose if you want to watch files you have uploaded with the upload wizard. [115]
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 "Simpan halaman" 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. [116]
Latest tech 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. [117]
Problems
There was a security problem with the MobileFrontend extension. It showed information that had been oversighted. This has now been fixed. [118]
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).
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. [120]
Latest tech 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. [121]
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. [123][124]
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). [125]
Uploading files bigger than 100 megabytes on Wikimedia Commons required to opt-in in your preferences. This is not necessary anymore. [126]
The UploadsLink extension is now available on Wikimedia Commons. [127]
Deleting a translation unit page didn't remove the corresponding content from the translation page. This is now solved. [128]
Translation suggestions based on Apertium are now available on Mediawiki.org. [129]
Problems
MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.23 has been rolled back from Wikimedia wikis, due to a performance issue. [130]
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.
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. [131]
Latest tech 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. [132]
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki version was late on some wikis. [133]
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. [134]
Wikis can now locally decide what wikitext they want the signature button to produce. [135]
A one-time welcome message for users will now be shown in the wikitext editor. This will include existing users. [136]
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).
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. [137]
Latest tech 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. [138]
Problems
Commons had problems with server lag. This meant that it took longer time for files to turn up in categories. [139]
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. [140]
Latest tech 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. [141]
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. [142][143]
CentralNotice didn't work in some older browsers. This has now been fixed. [144]
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. [145]
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. [147][148]
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. [149]
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.
Latest tech 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. [150][151]
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. [152]
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).
Latest tech 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. [153]
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. [154][155][156][157]
Changes this week
You can filter user contributions to hide minor edits. [158]
It will be easier to edit galleries with the visual editor. [159]
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).
Latest tech 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. [160]
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. [161][162]
Alerts (the red badge) will not be automatically marked as read when you open the Notifications popup. [163]
When you get several thanks you can see them as one notification. This is instead of one notification for each thanks. [164]
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).
Latest tech 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. [165]
The order of wikis in collapsed cross-wiki notifications was different than when the list was expanded. This is now fixed. [166]
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. [170]
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. [171]
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. [172]
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. [173][174][175]
From 29 June git.wikimedia.org (running Gitblit) will redirect all requests to Phabricator. The vast majority of requests should be correctly redirected. [176]
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. [177]
Latest tech 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. [178]
Changes this week
The "⧼citoid-citefromidtool-title⧽" button in the visual editor's toolbar will move into the "Sisipkan" menu except for Wikipedias, Wikibookses and Wikiversities. This is to make it less prominent on wikis that don't use it as much. [179]
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.
Latest tech 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. [180][181][182]
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. [183][184][185]
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. [186][187][188]
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. [189]
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.
Latest tech 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. [190]
In notifications, "Messages" are now called "Perhatian". [192]
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. [193][194]
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).
The RevisionSlider can be tested on the beta cluster. From 22 July, it will be available as a beta feature at: Wikipedia bahasa Jerman, Wikipedia bahasa Arab, Wikipedia bahasa Ibrani
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. [196]
Future changes
User scripts and bots can no longer use http:// to edit wiki pages. [197][198]
Gerrit is going to be updated. Developers are invited to test it. [199]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Sometimes, the visual editor required saving twice. That problem is now fixed. [201]
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. [202]
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. [203]
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. [204]
Future changes
The current icon for Notifications "Perhatian" (in English "Notices") will be changed from a bubble-speech icon to a tray icon for consistency. [205]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The 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. [208]
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.
Latest tech 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 Perhatian has been changed from a speech-bubble icon () to a tray icon () for consistency. The Peringatan icon has been redesigned too. The colors have been changed for accessibility. [209]
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. [210]
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. [211]
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. [212]
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. [213]
The button to read something in another language will move for mobile users. This will happen on 9 August. [214]
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. [215]
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).
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.
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. [217]
Creating and editing links to sections on other pages on the wiki now works again in the visual editor. [218]
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. [219][220]
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. [221]
Some abuse filters will have to be updated during the week. This is because a bug will be fixed. [222]
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". [223][224]
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. [225]
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. [226]
Latest tech 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. [227]
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. [228]
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. [229]
Problems
Some big image files could not be thumbnailed. This has now been fixed. [230]
When you moved a page over a redirect it would delete the redirect without saving it in the logs. This has now been fixed. [231]
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. [232][233]
How you add text after an edit conflict might work in a different way in the future. You can test the prototype. [234]
Latest tech 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. [235]
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. [236]
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.
Latest tech 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. [239]
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. [240]
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. [241]
Changes this week
You will be able to use <maplink> on all Wikipedias. It creates a link to a full screen map. [242][243]
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. [244][245]
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.
Latest tech 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. [247]
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. [250]
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.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The 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.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
When you edit text and mention a new username they are notified if you add your signature. Before this only happened under certain conditions. [257]
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. [258]
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. [259][260]
Changes this week
There will be no new MediaWiki version this week. [261]
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. [262]
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. [263]
<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. [264]
Latest tech 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}}. [265]
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. [266]
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. [267]
Changes this week
Hidden HTML comments will be more visible when you edit with the visual editor. <!-- You write hidden HTML comments like this. -->[268]
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.
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. [269]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [270]
Editors couldn't edit semi-protected pages in the Wikipedia app for Android. This has now been fixed in the beta version. [271]
Changes this week
There will be no new MediaWiki version this week. [272]
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.
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. [273]
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". [274]
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.
Latest tech 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. [276]
The visual editor is now available on all wikis using only one language script. [278]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 1st. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 2nd. It will be on all wikis from November 3rd (calendar).
Now you can use autocomplete for page names in "Pratayang halaman dengan templat ini" field when editing templates. [279]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The 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).
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. [287][288][289]
Latest tech 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. [290]
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. [291]
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.
Latest tech 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. [293]
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. [294]
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. [295]
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. [296][297][298]
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. [299]
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. [300]
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. [301]
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. [302]
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]. [303][304]
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.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Everyone can now see Special:UserRights. Previously only those who could change user rights could. Other users got an error message. [306]
ORES can now show how likely an edit is to be damaging to the wiki with different colours. This only works for languages that have trained ORES to recognize damaging edits. [307]
Changes this week
You will now see categories with 0 pages in Special:Categories. Previously you did not see empty categories there. [308]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 December at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Users who have Yahoo email addresses could not use Special:EmailUser to send emails. This has now been fixed. Emails will now come from a @wikimedia.org address. Users who get an email from you will still reply to your email address and be able to see it. [309]
You can now see how many categories and pages there are in the categories in Special:TrackingCategories. This is to help you find pages that could need attention. [310]
Because of work on cross-wiki watchlistsglobal renaming is not working. The plan is to turn it on again on 16 December. Global renaming was turned off for a while in late November and early December as well. [312]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on December 13 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 9 January 2017.
The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2016? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us! You can write in your language. Thank you!
Recent changes
Administrators and translation administrators can now use Special:PageLanguage on wikis with the Translate extension. This means you can say what language a page is in. The Translate extension will use that language as the source language when you translate. Previously this was always the wiki's default language. This was usually English. [313]
Wikis connected to Wikidata can now use the parser function {{#statements: }} to get formatted data. You can also use {{#property: }} to get raw data. You can see the difference between the two statements. There are also similar new functions in Lua. [314]
Problems
Some abuse filters for uploaded files have not worked as they should. We don't know exactly which filters didn't work yet. This means some files that filters should have prevented from being uploaded were uploaded to the wikis. MediaWiki.org and Testwiki have been affected since 13 October. Commons and Meta have been affected since 17 October. Other wikis have been affected since 17 November. [315]
Changes this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.
Meetings
The next meeting with the VisualEditor team will be on 3 January at 20:00 (UTC). During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. See how to join.
