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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.
Recent changes
When you edit a template with the visual editor it follows the template's format configuration on how to save it. You can now change the format in more powerful ways if your wiki wants it. [1][2]
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 has been a beta feature for the last five months. You can now try out the new interface on a page where you will actually get simulated edit conflicts. You can give feedback to the developers.
Problems
There is a problem with recent changes pages and your watchlist that show a large number of pages. Until it is fixed, Wikidata edits will not be shown on recent changes or in your watchlist on Commons or Russian Wikipedia. If necessary, Wikidata edits will be removed from all wikis. [3]
Notifications are not working for some actions. For example some users don't get a notification when they are mentioned. The developers are working on fixing this. [4]
Users on some wikis could not change their preferences. This has now been fixed. [5]
Changes later this week
Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia from 17 October. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP. [6]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 October at 15:00 (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 use ccnorm_contains_any when you create an abuse filter. This can be used to look for multiple words or phrases within a string. It will find words where some characters have been replaced. You can read more in the documentation. [7]
Changes later this week
When you search in some languages the search function could use specific other languages if the first language didn't work. This is called a fallback language. This didn't work properly and created bad searches. The search index is being fixed to work better. [8]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 October at 15:00 (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 block users from emailing you through the Wikimedia wikis. [10]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 November 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
You will no longer see the patrol log on Special:Log unless you specifically select it. [11]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 November 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.
Changes later this week
The diff you see when you compare two different versions of a page has changed on MediaWiki.org and the test wiki. This is to make it easier to find a text change in a moved paragraph. It will hopefully soon come to more wikis. You can report bugs in Phabricator. [14]
A new user group on Commons will be able to upload MP3 files. The plan is to have this user group from 17 November. [15]
Wikis using Flagged Revisions will get the New filters for Edit Review by default on the recent changes pages. It will be possible to opt-out in user preferences. [16]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 November. It will be on all wikis from 16 November (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Support for uploading and viewing 3D models is coming soon to Wikimedia Commons. The feature will support the .STL file format. You can see an example on the test wiki. [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
If you use the Chrome web browser on Android you can see a download icon on the mobile website. You can download a formatted PDF. It will work in other mobile browsers in the future. [18]
The abuse filter now has a function called get_matches. You can use it to store matches from regular expressions – one of each capturing group. You can read more in Phabricator.
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki version didn't come to all Wikipedias because of a database crash. It will be on all wikis on 20 November. [19][20][21]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Language converter syntax will 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. This will happen next week. [22][23]
Filters for Watchlists are still on Beta. Please try them and give feedback before we release it for all users!
Shortcuts to filter Namespaces and Tags are now more visible. [24]
Discovery of the search bar has been improved. [25]
If the Recent Changes page or the Watchlist fails to load or is time-outed, a message is now displayed. [26][27]
The bookmark icon for creating a "Saved filter" is now grayed when it is not possible to save. Before it was not visible. Bookmarking is unavailable when, for example, the current filter set is already saved. [28]
Future changes
Live updates on Recent changes will be moved out of beta and into the standard feature set by the end of the year. [29]
Extension:Translate filters for RecentChanges are going to be integrated to the new filters. [30]
Automatic edit summaries will be filtered as tags. [31]
List items (suggested items and in-progress/published translations) layout restyled to prevent overflows on small screen sizes.
Search results for new translation dialog are now embedded, instead of being displayed in floating menu. Search results remain displayed when tabbed out and can be closed using ESC key.
Missing pages are no longer shown when there is no match for search query. Message informing that there are no results is displayed instead.
Embedded search results enabled to provide users with more translation opportunities. Articles user recently edited (in currently selected source language wiki) are surfaced when there is no input in search bar, with additional info if article is missing in user's currently selected target language.
Long suggestion descriptions are limited to three lines, and the rest is truncated, which is indicated by ellipsis.
Chart data representing user translation statistics in now showing all the months since user's first published translation. Months that went without translation are now displayed in chart as well.
A loading indicator is shown while suggestions are loading.
Button to discard dialog is now shown through the whole process of selecting article to translate.
Some work is ongoing to store Structured Discussions contents from HTML to wikitext. That change will allow some specific templates and magic words to work properly on Structured Discussions. [33]
Some tests are conducted in order to prepare the rewriting of Structured Discussions' interface. That rewriting will have no visible impact on users but it will ease future changes.
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 test the new advanced search function beta feature on mediawiki.org. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It will come to German and Arabic Wikipedia this week. It will come to more wikis later. [35]
You can now upload large files with the Internet Archive upload tool. Previously you could not upload files larger than 100 MB. [36]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Hello, Lor. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can now use live updates for recent changes if you use the new filters. This feature updates the filtered recent changes every three seconds when you activate it. [39]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 December. It will be on all wikis from 7 December (calendar).
Very old versions of the Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems. [41]
Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [42][43]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
The Community Liaisons team at the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for active tech ambassadors. This is to make sure the Wikimedia communities get all the information they need about new features and can be involved in the technical development. [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.
A new tag marks edits where a redirect was created or removed. This still works when the editor writes something else in the edit summary. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. [46]
If you use Chrome on Android, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article. [47]
Filter by number of edits or filter by time range have been grouped on a same menu on the recent changes page if you use the new filters. The "View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent. [48]
Some of the web fonts that were provided by the Universal Language Selector extension are being removed. This is to reduce the load time on pages. The web fonts were added many years ago to help users read text in scripts which did not have fonts or had broken fonts. This is not the case any more. You can check the status page for a list of all web fonts and whether they are currently being used and especially for special requirements. [49]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 December 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.
Tech News
Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2018.
Problems
When you import a page from another wiki the usernames of the users who edited the article on the wiki you imported it from are shown in the article history. This should link to the users on the original wiki. A script to fix this caused problems for Wikidata and German Wikipedia. It also created a large number of SUL accounts on wikis where editors had never edited. [50]
Some bot owners got email about their bots logging in from a new computer. If this is from one or a couple of wikis, you can turn these messages off in your preferences on those wikis until the problem has been solved. If not, you can report more about the problem in Phabricator.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Files on Commons will have structured metadata in the future. The developers are now looking for examples of different kinds of metadata to make sure they are aware of them when they build prototypes for structured data on Commons. You can read more and help by giving examples of interesting media files.
The Structured Commons team are making sure Commons work with structured data. If you regularly contribute to Commons and Wikidata you can answer a survey that helps the team prioritise the tools that are important for the Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey ends on 22 December. You can read more on Commons. You can also help the team decide on better names for "captions" and "descriptions". This ends on 3 January 2018.
The filters are now deployed as a default feature on all wikis on RecentChanges and RecentChangesLinked pages.
The filters are still available as a Beta feature on all wikis on Watchlists. Please try them!
LiveUpdates have been deployed as a default feature for all wikis.
On wikis using Extension:Translate, translated messages can now be filtered. System messages can be filtered as well, on all wikis. [51]
"View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent, to invite users to use that native feature to update the list of results. [52]
Pagination and time period selectors are now combined and located on the right on left-to-right wikis. [53]
When a user wanted to click outside of the filter menu to close it, it was possible to click on "revert" link by accident. It is not possible anymore. [54]
It is now possible to filter the following events using the Tags menu: Making a page a redirect, Changing redirect target, Changing an existing redirect into a non-redirect, Blanking of the page, Removing more than 90% of a page content, Rolling back an edit. [55]
Some design improvements have been done to Related Changes page to integrate the new filters. [56]
"Save current filter settings" menu and legend overlapped the results. This is now fixed. [57]
Some small design improvements have been done. [58]
Now Content Translation prevents source and target language to be set to same language. [59]
The dialog for selecting article to translate is standardized. It introduces a new component that is used for the selected page on both the "New translation" dialog and the "Suggested pages" list. [60]
More space is given to the language filter, to increase responsiveness and show more language names without truncation. [61]
While searching for a new page to translate, duplicates are not shown anymore for user search input. [62]
Various PHP warnings and JavaScript errors have been fixed. [63][64]
Hello copy editors! Welcome to the December 2017 GOCE newsletter, which contains nine months(!) of updates. The Guild has been busy and successful; your diligent efforts in 2017 has brought the backlog of articles requiring copy edit to below 1,000 articles for the first time. Thanks to all editors who have contributed their time and energy to help make this happen.
Our copy-editing drives (month-long backlog-reduction drives held in odd-numbered months) and blitzes (week-long themed editing in even-numbered months) have been very successful this year.
March drive: We set out to remove April, May, and June 2016 from our backlog and all February 2017 Requests (a total of 304 articles). By the end of the month, all but 22 of these articles were cleared. Officially, of the 28 who signed up, 22 editors recorded 257 copy edits (439,952 words). (These numbers do not always make sense when you compare them to the overall reduction in the backlog, because not all editors record every copy edit on the drive page.)
April blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 16 through 22 April; the theme was Requests. Of the 15 who signed up, 9 editors completed 43 articles (81,822 words).
May drive: The goals were to remove July, August, and September 2016 from the backlog and to complete all March 2017 Requests (a total of 300 articles). By the end of the month, we had reduced our overall backlog to an all-time low of 1,388 articles. Of the 28 who signed up, 17 editors completed 187 articles (321,810 words).
June blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 18 through 24 June; the theme was Requests. Of the 16 who signed up, 9 editors completed 28 copy edits (117,089 words).
2017 Coordinator elections: In June, coordinators for the second half of 2017 were elected. Jonesey95 moved back into the lead coordinator position, with Miniapolis stepping down to remain as coordinator; Tdslk and Corinne returned as coordinators, and Keira1996 rejoined after an extended absence. Thanks to all who participated!
July drive: We set out to remove August, September, October, and November 2016 from the backlog and to complete all May and June 2017 Requests (a total of 242 articles). The drive was an enormous success, and the target was nearly achieved within three weeks, so that December 2016 was added to the "old articles" list used as a goal for the drive. By the end of the month, only three articles from 2016 remained, and for the second drive in a row, the backlog was reduced to a new all-time low, this time to 1,363 articles. Of the 33 who signed up, 21 editors completed 337 articles (556,482 words).
August blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 20 through 26 August; the theme was biographical articles tagged for copy editing for more than six months (47 articles). Of the 13 who signed up, 11 editors completed 38 copy edits (42,589 words).
September drive: The goals were to remove January, February, and March 2017 from the backlog and to complete all August 2017 Requests (a total of 338 articles). Of the 19 who signed up, 14 editors completed 121 copy edits (267,227 words).
October blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 22 through 28 October; the theme was Requests. Of the 14 who signed up, 8 editors completed 20 articles (55,642 words).
November drive: We set out again to remove January, February, and March 2017 from the backlog and to complete all October 2017 Requests (a total of 207 articles). By the end of the month, these goals were reached and the backlog shrank to its lowest total ever, 997 articles, the first time it had fallen under one thousand (click on the graph above to see this amazing feat in graphical form). It was also the first time that the oldest copy-edit tag was less than eight months old. Of the 25 who signed up, 16 editors completed 159 articles (285,929 words).
2018 Coordinator elections: Voting is open for the election of coordinators for the first half of 2018. Please visit the election page to vote between now and December 31 at 23:59 (UTC). Thanks for participating!
Housekeeping note: We do not send a newsletter before (or after) 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: Jonesey95, Miniapolis, Corinne, Tdslk, and Keira1996.
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
On Wikidata, the "save" button when you edit is now called "publish". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "Save page" to "Publish changes". This is to help new editors understand what it does. [69][70]
Some edits will get an automatic tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways. [71]
Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki. [72]
Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation has been updated. [73][74]
Problems
Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem. [75]
With the new filters in the recent changes, "Exclude selected" in "Namespaces" did not work for "Saved filters" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again. [76]
The latest version of Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see #R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9 instead of #Résumé even if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March). [77]
Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed. [78]
Changes later this week
Wikidata will be moved to its own database servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis. [79]
The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems. [80][81]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).
WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one: ext.wikiEditor. All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed. [82]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 January 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
Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed. [83]
There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development. [84]
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited. [85][86]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [87][88]
