This is an archive of past discussions with User:Lor. 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.
When you update a page with translations on wikis with the Translate extension the existing translations will be marked as outdated instead of removed. [2]
The new version of MediaWiki was released to all wikis last week (calendar).
MoodBar has been removed from the Wikimedia wikis. [3]
The live option for the Tipsy notice tool has been removed. Gadgets and user scripts which use it need to be updated. [4]
Problems
Editors who use Firefox 50 might get logged out or fail to save their edits. This is because of a browser bug. Until this is fixed you can enter about:config in the address bar and set network.cookie.maxPerHost to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. [5]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
video2commons was down for two weeks. This was because of a problem with Commons video transcoders. It is now back up. [7]
Changes this week
There is a new magic word called {{PAGELANGUAGE}}. It returns the language of the page you are at. This can be used on wikis with more than one language to make it easier for translators. [8]
When an admin blocks a user or deletes or protects a page they give a reason why. They can now get suggestions when they write. The suggestions will be based on the messages in the dropdown menu. [9]
You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas. Before you could use <ce>. <ce> should be replaced by <chem>. [10]
The "Columns" and "Rows" settings will be removed from the Editing tab in Preferences. If you wish to keep what the "Rows" setting did you can add this code to your personal CSS: #wpTextbox1 { height: 50em; } You can change the number 50 to make it look like you want to. [12]
Sometimes edits in MediaWiki by mistake are shown coming from private IP addresses such as 127.0.0.1. Edits and other contributions logged to these IP addresses will be blocked and shown the reason from MediaWiki:Softblockrangesreason. This should not affect most users. Bots and other tools running on Wikimedia Labs, including Tool Labs will receive a "blocked" error if they try to edit without being logged in. [13]
When you edit with the visual editor categories will be on the top of the page options menu. [14]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).
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 January 17 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Our goal to add filters to the Recent Changes page is going well. We will contact soon some communities - the ones where ORES is available as a Beta feature - to plan a possible trial.
We plan to change Flow's URLs to make them more human readable. Your feedback is welcome.
Communities which have allowed Flow trials with manual enabling (Hebrew Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia) will be asked if they want to switch to Beta feature activation. [16]
A small maintenance on Flow database will happen during week 4. No impact is expected. [17]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can see a list of the templates on a page you edit with the visual editor. [18]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).
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 OAuth management interfaces now look slightly different. [19]
Changes this week
ElectronPdfService will be enabled by default on Meta and German Wikipedia. This is a new way to get articles as PDF files you can download. It will come to more wikis later. [20]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 31. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from February 1. It will be on all wikis from February 2 (calendar).
Future changes
The Community Tech team will develop more tools to handle harassment of Wikimedia editors. The goal is to give the communities better tools to find, report and evaluate harassment. They will also work on more effective blocking tools. [21][22]
The Wikimedia technical community is doing a Developer Wishlist survey. Developers can propose ideas before 31 January 23:59 UTC. This is soon.
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 block log sometimes showed blocks as being much longer than they were. This has now been fixed. [23]
Changes this week
Wikimedia pages will now be better at showing pictures when you share them on social media. The descriptions will be different too. You can see an example of before and after. [24]
There are some changes to the OOjs UI. Some old functions will not work anymore or not work as they used to. This could be a breaking change. [25]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).
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 7 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Tidy will be replaced later this year. Instead, the HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be used to clean up bad HTML in wikitext. This will cause problems on a number of wikis. They need to be fixed first. You can see if your wiki still has something to fix here for one of the HTML problems. This list does not cover all problems. You can read about more problems. [26][27]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. For now it works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. [28]
Problems
The Firefox add-onFirefogg can cause problems with the Upload Wizard. This will not be fixed, because Firefox will not support Firefogg in the future. The Upload Wizard will no longer work with Firefogg. [29]
Tool Labs and Wikimedia Labs databases will be under maintenance on 15 February. This will start at 17:00 (UTC) and last for about six hours. Some tools could have problems during or after this. [30]
Changes this week
The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It will come to Meta and German Wikipedia this week. It is already available on MediaWiki.org. It will come to more wikis later. [31]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).
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 14 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on the Catalan, Greek, Russian, and Italian Wikipedias in the middle of February. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. It will come to more wikis later this spring. [32]
Flow satisfaction survey’s results are available. The survey provides useful data on what users like and don't like about Flow. This information will be helpful in discussions recently begun as part of the editing team's Annual Plan process. As the editing team investigates its priorities for next fiscal year (which begins in July), many ideas for improvements have been suggested, including projects to research the future of wiki discussions and to fix Flow's shortcomings.
Mentions were not recognized when more than one section is added during the same edit or when an new section was added and a change (new message or deletion) was done in another section. This is now solved. [34]
Rich text mode is now the default in Flow replies. Some inconsistencies used to exist. Now the preference between visual mode and wikitext mode is updated when a content change is made in the selected editor, literally when it is typed in, not when it is saved or when the editor is switched. [35]
We plan to change Flow's URLs to make them more human readable. Your feedback is still welcome, the conversation will be closed on February 28th.
December blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 11 through 17 December; the themes were Requests and eliminating the November 2015 backlog. Of the 14 editors who signed up, nine editors completed 29 articles. Barnstars and rollover totals are located here. Thanks to all who took part.
January drive: The January drive was a great success. We set out to remove December 2015 and January and February 2016 from our backlog (195 articles), and by 22 January we had cleared those and had to add a third month (March 2016). At the end of the month we had almost cleared out that last month as well, for a total of 180 old articles removed from the backlog! We reduced our overall backlog by 337 articles, to a low of 1,465 articles, our second-lowest month-end total ever. We also handled all of the remaining requests from December 2016. Officially, 19 editors recorded 337 copy edits (over 679,000 words).
February blitz: The one-week February blitz, focusing on the remaining March 2016 backlog and January 2017 requests, ran from 12 to 18 February. Seven editors reduced the total in those two backlog segments from 32 to 10 articles, leaving us in good shape going in to the March drive.
Coordinator elections for the first half of 2017: In December, coordinators for the first half of 2017 were elected. Jonesey95 stepped aside as lead coordinator, remaining as coordinator and allowing Miniapolis to be the lead, and Tdslk and Corinne returned as coordinators. Thanks to all who participated!
Speaking of coordinators, congratulations to Jonesey95 on their well-deserved induction into the Guild of Copy Editors Hall of Fame. The plaque reads: "For dedicated service as lead coordinator (2014, 1 July – 31 December 2015 and all of 2016) and coordinator (1 January – 30 June 2015 and 1 January – 30 June 2017); exceptional template-creation work (considerably streamlining project administration), and their emphasis on keeping the GOCE a drama-free zone."
Housekeeping note: We do not send a newsletter before every drive or blitz. To have a better chance of knowing when the next event will start, add the GOCE's message box to your watchlist.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Miniapolis, Jonesey95, Corinne and Tdslk.
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 edit summary box is now a little bit bigger. This is to make it follow the Wikimedia design guide. [36]
Changes this week
Page Previews will be updated on 23 February. This fixes many bugs. Page Previews can be turned on as the Beta Feature called Hovercards. [37]
There has been a problem where the CSS of gadgets has been loading twice. The Gadgets extension has two new options: type and peers. The type option solves this problem. You can use peers to create gadgets with more than one style module. Read more about type and peers. [38]
OAuth will handle blocked users in a more consistent way. [39]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).
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 21 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.
Problems
On 22 February the wikipedia.org portal did not work for an hour. This was because of a problem with a JavaScript file. [40]
Changes this week
You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas in the visual editor. Previously this only worked in the wikitext editor. [41]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).
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 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You can soon upload 3D files to Commons. The file formats are AMF and STL. The plan is for this to work later this week but it could be later. [42]
The name "Wikipedia" will be more obvious at the top of the page when you read Wikipedia in the mobile view. This is because many readers don't realize they are on Wikipedia. [43][44]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now search on English, French, Hebrew and Greek wikis and find words even if you forget the diacritics. It also works if you use diacritics in your search but the wiki doesn't. [45]
When you use the mobile view and click on a link to an article in another language you will see that article in the mobile view. Previously it changed to the desktop view. [46]
Problems
Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time last week. This has now been fixed. [47]
Admins who click on "mass delete" on a user's Special:Contributions will be taken directly to a list pages created by that user. It has worked like this before, but not lately. [48]
Changes this week
The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It is now a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. [49]
The "flag the edit in the abuse log" checkbox will be removed from the abuse filter interface. This is because the edits are always flagged in the abuse log. [50]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).
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 7 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Clarification
The 2017/09 issue of Tech News mentioned 3D file formats you can soon upload to Commons. The AMF format will be available later.
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
You will be able to show references from <references /> tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use <references /> tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists. [51][52]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
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 14 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Some old web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis in the future. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [53]
CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. [54][55]
In the weeks following the initial release to Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias, the New Filters for Edit Review beta will go out to the following list of Wikipedias in waves (schedule to be done):
Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech Wikipedias and Wikidata. [56]
<math><hiero><score><syntax><source><ref> shortcuts are now working on Flow visual editing mode. Type a shortcut in the visual editing mode will open the control panel for the chosen option. [59]
Concerning <ref>, footnotes will be automatically included at the end of the message, unless if they are displayed elsewhere in the message by the appropriate template.
The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It will be a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. [61]
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 Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on the Wikimedia wikis except for Wikipedias and Wikinewses. This change will come to Wikipedias later. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [62]
You can see monthly page views when you click on Page information in the sidebar. Developers can also get monthly page views through the API. [64]
The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later. [65]
The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers. [66]
Problems
On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it. [67]
Changes this week
When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+X on PCs or Cmd+Shift+X on Macs. [68]
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 21 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.
Recent changes
When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [69]
Problems
Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [70][71]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 (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 Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [72]
The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [73]
English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [74]
Problems
Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [75]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
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 April 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.
Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [78]
New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [79]
The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [80]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
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 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.
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 add ?safemode=1 to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature?safemode=1. This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them. [81]
The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from [[File:Wiki.png]]. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. [83]
Problems
Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.
Changes this week
There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre 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 18 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. [84]
From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. [85][86]
