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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Sites with a wikimedia.org address were by mistake redirected to the Wikimedia Foundation wiki on 26 January. This included Meta and Wikimedia Commons. The mistake was fixed after an hour. [1]
Some users had problems logging in and out around 22 January. Bots also had problems and edit previews did not work properly. This was because of problems related to the new component SessionManager. It was undone on 23 January. [2][3]
Because of new problems with SessionManager the latest version of MediaWiki was removed from the Wikimedia wikis again on 31 January. The new version this week will be without SessionManager. [4]
Changes this week
The page history will get a help link. This will go to Help:Page history on Meta. Wikis can exchange it for a link to their local pages. [5]
Notifications will only show part of a page name if it is very long. You will also have another way to mark notifications as read. [6][7]
The Universal Language Selector input methods are now available with the visual editor. This means many who write in non-Latin scripts can now use the visual editor. [8]
The visual editor will now give you more tools to edit tables. You can move rows and columns in a table and copy parts of tables to make new ones. You can also copy and paste more than one cell at the same time. [9][10][11]
The visual editor has a new warning message when you leave a page you are editing without saving. Non-English wikis might need to translate it. [12][13]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
The rest.wikimedia.org domain will be shut down. This is planned to happen in March. You should use /api/rest_v1/ at each individual project domain instead. [14]
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. [16]
RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [17]
Changes this week
Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [18][19]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Other sites will be able to tell when visitors come from links on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. They used to be able to do this until we started using forced HTTPS in June 2015. This is planned to happen on 15 February. [20][21]
Wikidata will have a new data type called "external-id". It will be used for references to external resources. It will be enabled on February 16. Some properties will be changed to the new data type. [22][23][24]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [25]
A few editors might have been logged in as someone else because of a bug. For security reasons everyone was logged out on 9 February. If you have seen this bug, you can report it. [27][28]
Changes this week
There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. The plan was to have it leave beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. It will happen on 16 February instead. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [29][30]
Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [31]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The search function on Wikimedia wikis will get a completion suggester that tries to find the right pages as the user is typing. It will also recognize some typos. This will probably happen in March. It is currently in beta. [32]
Hi. I hope you don't mind my asking a question about global renaming. I saw the Kingibk → True_N request, tried it and got a warning that there's a similar username already there called Truen. Truen has made no edits since registering in 2009, so I thought it was probably not a real problem, but
I decided to leave it and see how an expert would handle it. I see you did the rename, so am I along the right lines in assuming it was OK because Truen was old and had no edits? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Boing! said Zebedee. Unfortunately, the policy around similar usernames (AntiSpoof) for global renamers is quite vague. I renamed because I felt that "Truen" couldn't possibly be confused for "True N" as the differences between them are quite distinct. If the username were slightly more similar, say, "True N" versus "Truε n" (or "k6ka" versus "k5ka"), then AntiSpoof would definitely come in handy; notifying the requesting user about the conflict is advised. However, if the account with the conflicting username is inactive, then it may be acceptable to proceed with the renaming and notify the user who got renamed about the conflict, and advise them to be prepared to change their username again should there be confusion. I proposed a policy for this at m:Talk:Steward requests/Username changes but discussion has largely dried up. —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 15:20, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your thoughts - that makes a lot of sense. My own thinking was that confusion between the two would be unlikely, especially as one is inactive, so I would certainly agree with a rename in this case. Interesting discussion at m:Talk:Steward requests/Username changes too, and it's a shame it dried up - what you suggest, if used as policy-based guidelines with some discretion allowed, makes sense, and I guess that's the way such things are de facto treated anyway. I guess it's a bit late now, but I might add a comment to it myself. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:03, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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. [35][36]
Changes this week
After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [37]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 23 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
I request you review the text that I had deleted. It is composed entirely of a long screed by apparently a litigant against the company and/or its founders. It makes allegations of child rape against one of the founders among other allegations. I can not believe text like that could be left on a wikipedia page or from a purely legal perspective allowed to be published on the site. Can you explain why it should not be deleted? Wba1990 (talk) 18:01, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Among experienced editors, the visual editor's table editing is one of the most popular features. If you select the top of a column or the end of a row, you can quickly insert and remove columns and rows.
Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.
Recent changes
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.
Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.
The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:
Remember my last editor,
Always give me the visual editor if possible,
Always give me the source editor, and
Show me both editor tabs. (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)
The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.
Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Language engineer David Chan needs help from people who often type in these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Report your results on wiki (Korean – Japanese – all languages).
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thanks!
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. [38][39]
The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [40][41]
Changes this week
On wikis where the visual editor is available in single edit tab mode, red links may open the visual editor instead of the wikitext editor, depending on user preferences. [42]
Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [43]
Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [44]
Meetings
Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [45]
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
