This is an archive of past discussions with User:Jackmcbarn. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Latest tech 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. [1][2]
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. [3]
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. [4]
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. [5]
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. [6]
Users will soon be automatically congratulated when they reach some edit count milestones. [7]
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. [8]
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. [9][10]
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. [11]
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. [12]
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. [13][14]
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. [15]
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. [16][17][18]
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. [19][20]
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. [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.
When you get a notification that an edit has been reverted, the notification now quotes part of the edit summary. [23]
RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [24]
Changes this week
Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [25][26]
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. [27][28]
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. [29][30][31]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [32]
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. [34][35]
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. [36][37]
Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [38]
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. [39]
I am John Heards ex wife and the mother of his two kids. He has a half brother Jack (John Matthew) BUT know kid Taylor Mae. A girl from my daughters school put this up and I want it down as he is sick and does not need this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Darknesslightness101 (talk • contribs) 03:05, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [42][43]
Changes this week
After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [44]
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.
Hello Jackmcbarn! I'm not exactly sure where to post this, so I thought it best to just ask you. It seems that EPH isn't working. The buttons no longer appear on the request templates. I confirmed with another user that this is happening (and not just something with my computer/script). Been happening for about a day or so. Any idea what's up? EvergreenFir(talk) Please {{re}} 19:17, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [45][46]
The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [47][48]
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. [49]
Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [50]
Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [51]
Meetings
Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [52]
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. [53]
Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [54]
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. [55]
It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [56]
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. [57]
Problems
Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [58]
The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [59]
The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [60]
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. [61]
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. [62]
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. [63]
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. [64]
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. [65]
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. [66]
Latest tech 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. [67]
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. [69]
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. [70]
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. [71]
Changes this week
It will now be easier to list IP addresses that don't have to solve CAPTCHAs. [72]
You will now be able to mark Echo notifications as unread. [73]
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. [74]
I noticed earlier that Module talk:Location map hadn't archived in 2 years. It was moved from Template talk and was still trying to archive to the Template talk namespace. A bit of digging in AWB threw up Module talk:Sidebar as having a similar problem. I know they're ancient history but, since both moves were carried out by you, I though I should give you a heads-up that the User:MiszaBot/config parameters need altering when moving across namespaces. Hopefully both should archive tonight. Cheers, Bazj (talk) 15:55, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Adding references with Citoid was broken for approximately 6 hours on 24 March. This was fixed. [77]
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. [78]
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. [79]
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.
I will reply here, as I am not good with links, and already seem to have confused things.
First off, thank you for such a quick response.
Next, the problem is, there are at least two different locations in Tennessee which use the name Nutbush. Tina Turner's home is likely the older of the two, but there are folks, probably not just a few, who believe Tina grew up, not in Haywood County Nutbush, but in the east Memphis neighborhood. There are neighborhood articles for many Memphis neighborhoods, so a page could be created, but I have neither the time, nor the resources. But I would say the primary topic of the present article is the geographical place, not the name, so, no, it would not be the same topic. Thanks.Rags (talk) 20:02, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
@Ragityman: "Primary topic" means something specific with regards to disambiguation pages. It refers to an article with a given name and no extra text in parentheses. As such, an article never "has" a primary topic, and primary topics are defined and changed by moving pages, not by article content. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:46, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Wikimedia wikis have a new way of counting visitors. [81]
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).
Old news ... redirects in the "Module:" namespace...
Jackmcbarn, I know this is really old news, but I know that we discussed this in some sort of fashion in the past: Do you have any updates or information about the MediaWiki interface allowing redirects in the "Module:" namespace? Steel1943 (talk) 17:37, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
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. [82][83]
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. [84][85]
ORES is using new models. Tools that use ORES' predictions can behave strangely. ORES also has a new API. [86]
The visual editor now supports classical Greek characters. [87]
Problems
There was a bug when you used keyboard arrows in templates in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [88]
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. [89]
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. [90]
I stated in the proposal that I would need some help with implementing placing the link in the templates. What I need is a standardized way to pass that link through to the templates. It should appear after all other content, after a line break. I am guessing what is needed is a new parameter in {{ambox}}. Maybe a parameter that, when set to "yes", places the link automatically? Like removal=yes or maybe it would be better typed out next to the parameter:
|removal=<span style="font-size:70%>{{*}}[[Help:Maintenance template removal|Learn how and when to remove this template message]].</span>
And now that I'm looking at ambox, it seems to be just a conduit for Module:Message box, and playing with Lua is way beyond my meager technical skills. Any ideas? If not, can you suggest someone else I might run this by? Thanks--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:18, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Hey Jack. That's how I placed it in all the help page examples. The problem is that each template's date parameter appears after the link, that is • Learn how and when to remove this template message. (April 2016). All I really need is a way to place it in the templates so it appears at the end and does not disturb the placement of the date, which should appear after each template's main text, and not after this separated link.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:57, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can filter Special:Log in more detail. You can filter different imports and new users. [91][92]
MediaWiki wikis can handle bigger file uploads. The new limit is 4 GB. [94]
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. [95]
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.
We need more neutral opinions here. I've followed instructions here and at Wikipedia:Feedback request service and to used the user lists there. I've sent a message for neutral input to everyone active recently and available for 10 per month or more on the lists in the Language and linguistics, Media, the arts, and architecture, Society-sports-culture, Unsorted and All-RFCs lists, none of whom have interacted with me before, that I can remember. Have done my best to act in good faith to try to get more neutral opinions. Please help! Thanx! SergeWoodzing (talk) 15:01, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
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. [96]
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. [97]
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. [98]
It will be easier to choose if you want to watch files you have uploaded with the upload wizard. [99]
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. [100]
Latest tech 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. [101]
Problems
There was a security problem with the MobileFrontend extension. It showed information that had been oversighted. This has now been fixed. [102]
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. [104]
2 pages with "Lua error: Expression error: Unrecognized word"; Module:Roman
Hi. I just wanted to leave a note about a very minor point. There are two pages which show the following error in the reference section: Lua error: Expression error: Unrecognized word.
I think you're aware of this, but I just wanted to let you know. For what it's worth, I'm parsing the 2016-04 English Wikipedia dump now, and these look like the only two pages you've missed so far. ;)
Let me know if it's okay for me to make the changes, and I'll do so with a reference to this section. Thanks. gnosygnu00:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
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. [105]
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. [107][108]
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). [109]
Uploading files bigger than 100 megabytes on Wikimedia Commons required to opt-in in your preferences. This is not necessary anymore. [110]
The UploadsLink extension is now available on Wikimedia Commons. [111]
Deleting a translation unit page didn't remove the corresponding content from the translation page. This is now solved. [112]
Translation suggestions based on Apertium are now available on Mediawiki.org. [113]
Problems
MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.23 has been rolled back from Wikimedia wikis, due to a performance issue. [114]
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. [115]
This is an archive of past discussions with User:Jackmcbarn. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
