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 can now set users as confirmed. Previously only stewards could do this on most wikis. Nothing will change for wikis that have previously decided to let administrators set users as confirmed. [2]
Problems
The symbols in the language list that show that an article is good or featured in that language doesn't work. Links to the Commons category in the sidebar doesn't work either. The developers are working on fixing it. [3][4]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 August. It will be on all wikis from 17 August (calendar).
Hi i was only new here in wiki , and recently i just editing articles with adding un referenced tags to the unsourced /cited statements so here's my question just want to ask what should needed to be grant an auto-patrol the pages i edit ? thank you? Palasulam-angtalk
Thanks for fixing that error up over at RFPP. Turns out the bot archived stuff, meaning when I clicked edit on the section it took me to the wrong edit box. I gave 1 month to Peppadew, but I have no opinion on Šiprage. If you want to change it from 1 month PC, do it by all means. I never looked into that article's history, so I don't have an opinion. Anarchyte (work | talk)04:27, 18 August 2017 (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.
Your watchlist can now have the option to unwatch pages. You have to turn this on in your preferences. [7]
If a table has several columns you can often choose which column you want to use to sort the table. This has not worked for some columns for readers who have used Firefox or Safari. This has now been fixed. [8]
The RelatedArticles extension has shown related pages on Wikivoyages. You will now see the related pages at the end of the article together with an image. Previously the links were in the sidebar. Wikis that want this extension can request it on Phabricator.
Changes later this week
Videos will now be played in the WebM format in all browsers. Previously some browsers used Ogg Theora (.ogv). If you use Safari, Internet Explorer or Edge you may see slower playback speed at high resolutions. Instead we will get better quality and smaller file size. You can still upload video as Ogg files. They are automatically converted to WebM. This doesn't affect Ogg audio files. [9]
The default font in the edit window will change for some users this week. Instead of using the browser default, it will be monospace. Users can change this in their preferences. This should only change this for some users on Macs and iOS devices. [10]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 August. It will be on all wikis from 24 August (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 23 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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 22 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Hi, Nakon. I was wondering if you could please look into this editor - 67.165.17.94 - due to their constant disruptive editing? They have been disruptively adding material either without citations or ones that do not support their claims, while constantly replacing their information whenever other editors remove it, without any explanation (other than claiming its correct) nor any attempt at any discussion. Here are two examples of the many pages they have been disruptively editing, The Left (Germany) and Alliance 90/The Greens. I would greatly appreciate if you could please look into this. Thank you for your time. Helper201 (talk) 23:13, 22 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I see that you've protected the Fifth Harmony page. Since only autoconfirmed users can edit and you protected it, I came here to see about making an edit. I think it's appropriate to remove the second paragraph from Camilla Cabello's description in the members section. Since she has her own article and is no longer a member of the group, only information pertinent to her time with the actual group should now be mentioned. Not really sure if this is how the process works but let me know if I can remove it!
Howdy, I'd recommend requesting this edit on the article's talk page. Other editors more familiar with the article may be able to better help with this edit. Thanks, Nakon19:10, 23 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Advertising-only appears to be a valid reason for blocking this account. I don't expect the spambot to request an unblock. Thanks, Nakon00:16, 27 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I'm not sure why you wouldn't be able to see the log entry, but I've included it below: "2017-08-26T15:58:26 Nakon (talk | contribs | block) changed group membership for Deisenbe from extended confirmed user to extended confirmed user and autopatrolled (+autoreviewer; Requested at WP:PERM; Special:PermaLink/797364165#User:Deisenbe (using userRightsManager))" Thanks, Nakon01:26, 29 August 2017 (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.
Recent changes
Syntax highlighting is now a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It will come to right-to-left wikis later. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. [11][12]
You will now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. You can turn this off or choose to get an email notification in your preferences. You can also turn on to get an email when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. [13]
Problems
Some pages show the error Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject. This problem happens on pages with a Lua module that use Wikidata. This has now been fixed and no new pages will get this problem. You still need to fix pages that were broken before and still show the error message. You can see how on this page. [14]
Changes later this week
You can block users from sending you notifications. [15]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (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 29 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
In the future you will have global preferences. This means you could set something in your preferences to work in the same way on all wikis. You will not be forced to use global preferences. The developers are now asking if editors need exceptions. This is where you want to use global settings on almost all wikis, but have some wikis where you want it to work in a different way. If you want this you need to tell the developers now. You can do so on the talk page. [16]
New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [17]
The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 in September 2017. Wikis can ask on Phabricator to get it early, so they can help find and solve problems now.
Hi, you recently protected the page The Time (Bros album), due to a supposed edit war. However, if you look at this page, you will see that the user adding the unsourced claim of 3 million sales worldwide for this album has a history of vandalising Bros-related pages, and one pattern in their vandalism is accusing those who revert their edits of being vandals themselves. They recently re-instated the 3 million sales figure claim to this article, before the page was locked, and now I am unable to revert this unsourced, and exaggerated sales claim. Can you please revert this edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Time_%28Bros_album%29&type=revision&diff=798500540&oldid=798498914 yourself? It is an unverified claim.Nqr9 (talk) 08:45, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
My protection of the page is not an endorsement of the current version. I'd recommend discussing the change on the article's talk page. If there was vandalism on the page, please report it on the talk page so it can be removed. Thanks, Nakon08:49, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand why the page has been locked so that only administrators can edit it. I requested page protection on it due to the return of the vandal with multiple accounts and IP addresses (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/TomWatkins1970) after page protection recently lapsed. You will notice that several different IP addresses have recently added the "3 million sales" claim, and reverted my edits when I revert theirs. While this may appear to an outsider as an edit war, it is not - I am reverting vandalism. I have added the IP addresses to the sock puppet investigation page. This user is a vandal; it is not a controversial addition where consensus needs to be established - they are adding an unverified worldwide sales claim to the article. I don't see how reverting that is controversial.Nqr9 (talk) 08:54, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The source shows 3m+ copies sold. I'm not going to get into a discussion on the validity of the source here. If you'd like to dispute the content or the validity of the source, please do so and gain consensus on the article's talk page. Any admin is free to unlock the page once consensus has been gained. Thanks, Nakon09:00, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Discogs is a user-generated site, and is not an authoritative, or even sufficiently reliable for wikipedia's standards, source when it comes to worldwide sales claims. The wikipedia article only lists 2 certifications, both for 100,000 copies. How you then get 3 million worldwide sales from that, I don't know.Nqr9 (talk) 09:02, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Please bring this to the article's talk page. The source was in the article prior to the edit dispute. As previously said, my protection is not an endorsement of the article's current content. Thanks, Nakon09:05, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, did you look at the talk pages for any of the recent IP users who have added this claim to the article? All of them have vandalism warnings from other users.Nqr9 (talk) 09:11, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This doesn't negate the edit war on the article. Please continue to discuss the disputed content on the article's talk page. Thanks, Nakon09:13, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Except it isn't an "edit war". Reverting unsourced content is not a controversial action that requires consensus. Even if, for argument's sake, the information is correct, that they have not provided a *reliable* source to support it means that it's fair game to remove it. The article has had little recent activity, other than me reverting the vandalism added by this user, so I doubt there would be much point 'discussing' it on the talk page. I am not particularly interested in this article or group, but have it on my watch list as this user is a serial vandal across Bros pages. I don't have a personal stake in this; I'm trying to rid these pages of vandalism and unsupported claims.Nqr9 (talk) 09:18, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I'd recommend disputing the content/source on the article's talk page. I'm not going to unprotect the article based on discussions here, and since you have already requested the protection be reviewed, you should make any additional arguments on the RFPP page. Thanks, Nakon09:22, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Have you even read WP:EW? "Reverting actions performed by banned users in violation of their ban, and sockpuppets of banned or blocked users" is one of its exceptions. Given that fact, together with what you will find at [18], [19], and [20], I am most interested to hear how this protection could possibly be construed as appropriate. Nyttend (talk) 11:22, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
My reasoning was that when the SPI request had been filed, the IP wasn't a confirmed sock of the banned editor. The initial protection request presented itself as an edit dispute. This initial review turned out to be incorrect on my part, and I've reduced protection on the article as per the discussion below. Nakon11:36, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Page protect
Hi, Nakon, I think this was a bit over the top.Rather than using sysop-protect, a good option was to wield the block button esp. when it's a many vs. one-case and two of the issues have been discussed on t/p already.And as much as an sysop-protect prevents edit-warring, it leaves out good-faith-contributors from editing.As a side note, will an ECP be valid?Regards:) Winged Blades Godric09:51, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that you executed the protection after visiting the RFPP request which, I'm afraid, was poorly worded.All through the while, I see selective reversion of True Insan's edits by Bishonen, Utcursch, Shinnosukeandme and the filer himself.And I believe Shrikanth was a fly-by contributor.Winged Blades Godric09:59, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Nakon, I came here to ask about that protection, too. Did you really mean to fully protect the article for over four months? I see the latest semiprotection, by User:SpacemanSpiff, was set to expire at 04:36 17 January 2018, UTC, i. e. at exactly the same minute as your current full protection, so perhaps you somehow accidentally kept Space's end time? (And I too would have preferred the block button in this case, but that's another matter.) Bishonen | talk10:09, 2 September 2017 (UTC).[reply]
Howdy, I didn't intend on keeping the page protected that long. It was simply the increase of the protection strength without resetting the previous semiprotection period. While I don't have anything against another admin reducing the protection on the article, I'll go ahead and restore the previous protection settings as I've caused more disruption than necessary on the article. Thanks for the additional insight and review. Nakon11:34, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'll go ahead and leave everything as-is for the moment (both reduced to semi). If anyone wishes to make further changes to the protection status of either article, please feel free to do so without further inquiries. Thanks, Nakon11:54, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like I've confused the two sections as well. I've reduced the article to semiprotection. Sorry for any confusion! Thanks, Nakon11:47, 2 September 2017 (UTC)have[reply]
@Winged Blades of Godric: It's normally a courtesy to ping someone when you discuss their "poorly worded" requests in order to get more insight into why they made such a request. I made the request to get the users to the talk page since their were many hands involved and blocking would have been inefficient. The lack of protection has just allowed the edits to continue. — nihlus kryik (talk) 21:46, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed user
Hi, regarding this, I would really like confirmed user rights. As reverting vandalism is my primary mission for now, I'm tired of having to enter CAPTCHA's whenever adding external links (sometimes restoring external links removed via vandalism is necessary). I'm also tired of getting tripped up by abuse filters such as this one and this one which prevent me from tagging WP:NOTWEBHOST violations in the userspace. Please reconsider my request. Thanks. Pillowfluffyhead (talk) 18:36, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Howdy, I'm afraid that the 'confirmed' right is only given out in certain special circumstances such as confirming a legitimate alternate account. Wanting to bypass CAPTCHAs and abuse filters does not fall under this criteria. Thanks, Nakon23:36, 5 September 2017 (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.
Tech News
We are asking Tech News readers five questions to make the newsletter better. You can answer the questions here. We are grateful for every reply we get.
Recent changes
The RevisionSlider user interface has changed. You can now select revisions by clicking on the bars. You can move the blue knob past the yellow one and the yellow one will move along, and the other way around. [21][22]
Problems
Some users have problems loading very large watchlists. It is working better than earlier but the problem has not been solved. The developers are working on fixing it. Until it has been fixed you can turn on "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" in your preferences and see if it helps. [23]
Changes later this week
New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [24]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (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 5 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. You can choose to get these notifications in your preferences. Some wikis already had this option. It is now available on all wikis. [26]
The Newsletter extension is now on mediawiki.org. The newsletter extension is for newsletters where you can subscribe by getting a notification when a new issue has been published. It will come to more wikis later. [27]
The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. There is now a new high-priority category: tidy-whitespace-bug. This usually affects templates with horizontal lists. You can read more about using Linter and the Tidy whitespace bug. [28]
Problems
Tech News 2017/36 reported about new filters for edit review coming to watchlists. This was planned to happen last week. It will happen next week instead. [29]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can use Electron instead. Most PDFs are already created with Electron. Electron will get missing features before 1 October. You can create books but they will not have all planned features until November or December. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
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 see contributions from an IP range at Special:Contributions. Before you could only see contributions from single IP addresses. Some older contributions from IP ranges could be missing at first because it will take some time to add them. [31][32]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (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 19 September 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 20 September 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
Wikitext syntax highlighting is a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. You can now search through the entire article with CTRL+F or cmd+F when you edit. Before it just searched through a part of the article. The developers are also fixing a couple of other bugs. [34][35]
You now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. For security reasons you will soon get an email by default when someone tries to log in to your account and when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. This can be turned off in your preferences. [37]
Users with extremely old browsers (for example Netscape 2–4, released from 1995–1997) which do not support Unicode will no longer be able to edit. They should try to install a new browser. [38]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September. (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 27 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can still create PDFs. Tech News 2017/37 said the function to create PDFs from books would still work. It is now clear it will not work for the next few months. The developers are working on fixing this. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
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 use preload features in the visual editor. This means you can create links to create new pages and some text will already be in the edit window when someone clicks on it. [39]
Changes later this week
If you have turned on "Automatically enable most beta features" you will now get the 2017 wikitext editor. Before this you had to turn it on manually even though it is a beta feature. [40]
The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 on all Wiktionary wikis from 2 October. It will be on all non-Wikipedia wikis from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October. [42]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 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 3 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 4 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
A new feature called Reading Lists are coming to the Wikipedia mobile apps. First it will be in the Android version. Reading Lists are a private user preference where you can see lists of articles on multiple devices. You can give feedback on this feature. [43]
The search function has used fallback languages for language analysis. This means a language could be analysed with the grammar of a completely unrelated language to find related words. This will be removed from most wikis the week starting with 9 October. You can read more and give feedback.
Hi,
Is Poorvi Bhatt page eligible for Wikipedia, as she is Under 14 tennis player and own the ASIAN Tournament title this week.[1].
GKCH (talk) 10:45, 7 October 2017 (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.
Recent changes
The number of active users listed by {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} and on Special:Statistics will now only include Wikidata edits as activity on Wikidata and not on other wikis too. [44]
You will not be able to edit or upload files to Commons for around 30 minutes on 11 October. This will start at 06:00 UTC. This is because of work to let Commons show 3D models. [46]
Changes later this week
The font in the edit window is monospace by default. Today you can change preferences to another font family or use "the browser default" instead of monospace. Switching to the browser default has only changed the font on Macs. The option to use browser default will be removed this week. [47]
If you want to print a page or make a PDF of a page you can do so in the side menu. The way the pages look when you do this will change. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 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 10 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 11 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Howdy, apologies for the delay in a replay as I've been busy with a new job opportunity. I'm always available on #wikipedia-en if you'd like to chat. Thanks, Nakon06:10, 2 December 2017 (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.
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. [48][49]
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. [50]
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. [51]
Users on some wikis could not change their preferences. This has now been fixed. [52]
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. [53]
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. [54]
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. [55]
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. [57]
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. [58]
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. [61]
A new user group on Commons will be able to upload MP3 files. The plan is to have this user group from 17 November. [62]
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. [63]
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. [64]
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. [65]
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. [66][67][68]
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. [69][70]
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. [71]
You can now upload large files with the Internet Archive upload tool. Previously you could not upload files larger than 100 MB. [72]
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, Nakon. 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. [75]
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. [77]
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. [78][79]
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. [80]
Hi Nakon, would you please restore this article so I can work on it? If you could put it in my draft space that would be fine. Thanks very much. FloridaArmy (talk) 21:46, 6 December 2017 (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.
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. [82]
If you use Chrome on Android, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article. [83]
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. [84]
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. [85]
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. [86]
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.
Hi Nakon, I want to give you my apologizes, and say sorry. I rudely called you "sweetie pie" here when requesting pending changes rights back in 2016. It was very inappropriate of me. Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for that. Hope your year has been wonderful. Cheers, CookieMonster755✉05:28, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
For an ongoing event, weeks seems like overkill. Please consider a few days, or blocking the edit warriors, instead. El_C08:28, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sure thing, I'll reduce it to 3 days. If you feel it should be modified again please feel free to do so. Thanks, Nakon08:36, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. We'll see if the issue (whatever it is, I'm not quite sure yet) can be resolved on the talk page in that time. El_C08:40, 4 January 2018 (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.
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. [87][88]
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. [89]
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. [90]
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. [91][92]
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. [93]
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. [94]
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). [95]
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. [96]
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. [97]
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. [98][99]
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. [100]
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.
I've noticed how you deleted one of the pages that I created recently due to a copyright infringement. I apologize for my actions and so now I'm asking permission to recreate the page except having it done in my own words.
I promise that from now on, my contributions to Wikipedia will be created with my own words and won't be copied from other websites.
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. [101]
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. [102]
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. [103][104]
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. [105][106]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Filters on Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features. [107][108]
Problems
With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed. [109]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
irc.wikimedia.org will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically. [110]
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
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Hi Nakon. You protected Palaye Royale last week for a few days to stop the disruption caused by IPs and SPAs over content related to the band's members. The disruption has started up again since the protection ran out, so I'm wondering if you have any suggestions on how to proceed from here. Posts have been added to user talk pages, and hidden notes have even been added to the article itself, but the person or persons behind the edit warring do not seem interested in discussing things. WP:AN3 or WP:SPI are options, but it's likely more SPAs or IPs will show up to replace any which are blocked. Maybe some kind of extended temporary protection would work instead? -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:12, 5 February 2018 (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.
Recent changes
Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to. [112]
The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language. [113]
Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded. [114]
Problems
Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this. [115]
Changes later this week
When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users. [116]
When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like gallery widths="150px". You could use em or % instead of px but it would make no difference. You can now only use 150px or nothing (150). If you write something else, instead of treating it like px, it will not work. [117]
The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of Yes or No it will say Thank and Cancel. It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public. [118]
Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it. [119]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (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 6 February 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 7 February 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
TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please submit a task on Phabricator. [122][123][124]
You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use visual diffs on history pages. [125]
The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like {{reflist}}, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates. [126]
The abuse filter extension has a new feature contains_all that you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string. [127]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (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 13 February 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 14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
