Wikipedia:Tech news/Archive 11

Tech News: 2023-30
 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg  On July 18, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a survey about the technical decision making process for people who do technical work that relies on software that is maintained by the Foundation or affiliates. If this applies to you, please take part in the survey. The survey will be open for three weeks, until August 7. You can find more information in the announcement e-mail on wikitech-l.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

MediaWiki message delivery 02:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-31
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Synchronizer tool is now available to keep Lua modules synced across Wikimedia wikis, along with updated documentation to develop global Lua modules and templates.
 * The tag filter on and revision history pages can now be inverted. For example, you can hide edits that were made using an automated tool.
 * The Wikipedia ChatGPT plugin experiment can now be used by ChatGPT users who can use plugins. You can participate in a video call if you want to talk about this experiment or similar work.

Problems
 * It was not possible to generate a PDF for pages with non-Latin characters in the title, for the last two weeks. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Tuesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-32
 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
 * Mobile Web editors can now edit a whole page at once. To use this feature, turn on "" in your settings and use the "" button in the "" menu.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

MediaWiki message delivery 21:18, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-33
 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 Content translation system is no longer using Youdao's machine translation service. The service was in place for several years, but due to no usage, and availability of alternatives, it was deprecated to reduce maintenance overheads. Other services which cover the same languages are still available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Future changes
 * A few gadgets/user scripts which add icons to the Minerva skin need to have their CSS updated. There are more details available including a search for all existing instances and how to update them.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

MediaWiki message delivery 05:57, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-34
 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 GDrive to Commons Uploader tool is now available. It enables securely selecting and uploading files from your Google Drive directly to Wikimedia Commons.
 * From now on, we will announce new Wikimedia wikis in Tech News, so you can update any tools or pages.
 * Since the last edition, two new wikis have been created:
 * a Wiktionary in Pa'O
 * a Wikisource in Sundanese
 * To catch up, the next most recent six wikis are:
 * Wikifunctions
 * a Wiktionary in Mandailing
 * a Wikipedia in Ghanaian Pidgin
 * a Wikinews in Gungbe
 * a Wiktionary in Kabardian
 * a Wikipedia in Fante

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is an existing stable interface policy for MediaWiki backend code. There is a proposed stable interface policy for frontend code. This is relevant for anyone who works on gadgets or Wikimedia frontend code. You can read it, discuss it, and let the proposer know if there are any problems.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

15:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-35
 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
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the changes for the better diff handling of paragraph splits, improved detection of splits is being rolled out. Over the last two weeks, we deployed this support to group0 and group1 wikis. This week it will be deployed to group2 wikis.
 * Octicons-gift.svg All pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date.
 * Wikisource users can now use the  label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the  tag.
 * Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "" is now shown on the "" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "" tab at some wikis. The preference "" is now also shown on the "" tab at all wikis, instead of the "" tab.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg New signups for a Wikimedia developer account will start being pushed towards idm.wikimedia.org, rather than going via Wikitech. Further information about the new system is available.
 * All right-to-left language wikis, plus Korean, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Wikipedias, will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. This feature will come to more wikis in future weeks.

Future changes
 * The removal of the DoubleWiki extension is being discussed. This extension currently allows Wikisource users to view articles from multiple language versions side by side when the  symbol next to a specific language edition is selected. Comments on this are welcomed at the phabricator task.
 * A proposal has been made to merge the second hidden-categories list (which appears below the wikitext editing form) with the main list of categories (which is further down the page). More information is available on Phabricator; feedback is welcome!

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

MediaWiki message delivery 13:58, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-36
 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 Problems
 * EditInSequence, a feature that allows users to edit pages faster on Wikisource has been moved to a Beta Feature based on community feedback. To enable it, you can navigate to the beta features tab in Preferences.
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the changes for the Generate Audio for IPA and Audio links that play on click wishlist proposals, the inline audio player mode of Phonos has been deployed to all projects.
 * There is a new option for Administrators when they are changing the usergroups for a user, to add the user’s user page to their watchlist. This works both via and via the API.
 * One new wiki has been created:
 * a in Talysh
 * The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W36"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:31, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-37
<section begin="technews-2023-W37"/> 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
 * ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "" and ""), please report them.
 * When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team invites anyone involved in the technical field of Wikimedia projects to signup to and join one of their listening sessions on 13 September. Another date will be scheduled later. The goal is to improve the technical decision-making processes.
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
 * The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Wikipedia. Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W37"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:05, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-38
<section begin="technews-2023-W38"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg MediaWiki now has a stable interface policy for frontend code that more clearly defines how we deprecate MediaWiki code and wiki-based code (e.g. gadgets and user scripts). Thank you to everyone who contributed to the content and discussions.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.
 * All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The team investigating the Graph Extension posted a proposal for reenabling it and they need your input.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W38"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:17, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-39
<section begin="technews-2023-W39"/> 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 Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The ResourceLoader <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
 * Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes
 * New variables will be added to AbuseFilter:  and  . They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 27 October at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W39"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-40
<section begin="technews-2023-W40"/> 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
 * There is a new user preference for "". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadget definitions now have a new " contentModels " option. The option takes a list of page content models, like  or  . Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Vector 2022 skin will no longer use the custom styles and scripts of Vector legacy (2010). The change will be made later this year or in early 2024. See how to adjust the CSS and JS pages on your wiki.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W40"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:24, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-41
<section begin="technews-2023-W41"/> 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
 * One new wiki has been created: a in Fon

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
 * At some wikis, newcomers are suggested images from Commons to add to articles without any images. Starting on Tuesday, newcomers at these wikis will be able to add images to unillustrated article sections. The specific wikis are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table. You can learn more about this feature.
 * Octicons-tools.svg In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> will be replaced with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . This change is to make it consistent with other skins and to improve support for gadgets and extensions in the mobile skin. A few gadgets may need to be updated; there are details and search-links in the task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W41"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 14:36, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-42
<section begin="technews-2023-W42"/> 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 Unified login system's edge login should now be fixed for some browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera). This means that if you visit a new sister project wiki, you should be logged in automatically without the need to click "Log in" or reload the page. Feedback on whether it's working for you is welcome.
 * Edit notices are now available within the MobileFrontend/Minerva skin. This feature was inspired by the gadget on English Wikipedia. See more details in T316178.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> that was deprecated one year ago will be removed. If you notice tools that should appear next to the "Discussion" tab are then missing, please tell the gadget's maintainers to see instructions in the Phabricator task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W42"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-43
<section begin="technews-2023-W43"/> 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
 * There is a new Language and internationalization newsletter, written quarterly. It contains updates on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects, and related support work.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Source map support has been enabled on all wikis. When you open the debugger in your browser's developer tools, you should be able to see the unminified JavaScript source code.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W43"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:14, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-44
<section begin="technews-2023-W44"/> 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 Structured Content team, as part of its project of improving UploadWizard on Commons, made some UX improvements to the upload step of choosing own vs not own work (T347590), as well as to the licensing step for own work (T347756).
 * The Design Systems team has released version 1.0.0 of Codex, the new design system for Wikimedia. See the full announcement about the release of Codex 1.0.0.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 2 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for many languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more.
 * Starting November 1, the impact module (Special:Impact) will be upgraded by the Growth team. The new impact module shows newcomers more data regarding their impact on the wiki. It was tested by a few wikis during the last few months.

Future changes
 * There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. You can help by reviewing this proposal and sharing what you think about it.
 * The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W44"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-45
<section begin="technews-2023-W45"/> 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
 * In the Vector 2022 skin, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content.

Problems
 * Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W45"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-46
<section begin="technews-2023-W46"/> 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
 * Four new wikis have been created:
 * a Wikipedia in Moroccan Amazigh
 * a Wikipedia in Dagaare
 * a Wikipedia in Toba Batak
 * a Wikiquote in Banjar

Problems
 * Last week, users who previously visited Meta-Wiki or Wikimedia Commons and then became logged out on those wikis could not log in again. The problem is now resolved.
 * Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Reference Previews are coming to many wikis as a default feature. They are popups for references, similar to the PagePreviews feature. You can opt out of seeing them. If you are using the gadgets Reference Tooltips or Navigation Popups, you won’t see Reference Previews. Deployment is planned for November 22, 2023.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Canary (also known as heartbeat) events will be produced into Wikimedia event streams from December 11. Streams users are advised to filter out these events, by discarding all events where <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . Updates to Pywikibot or wikimedia-streams will discard these events by default.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W46"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-47
<section begin="technews-2023-W47"/> 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.
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
 * The Vector 2022 skin will have some minor visual changes to drop-down menus, column widths, and more. These changes were added to four Wikipedias last week. If no issues are found, these changes will proceed to all wikis this week. These changes will make it possible to add new menus for readability and dark mode. Learn more.

Future changes
 * There is an update on re-enabling the Graph Extension. To speed up the process, Vega 2 will not be supported and only some protocols will be available at launch. You can help by sharing what you think about the plan.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W47"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:53, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-48
<section begin="technews-2023-W48"/> 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
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
 * Octicons-tools.svg MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> / syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately.
 * The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W48"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-49
<section begin="technews-2023-W49"/> 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 spacing between paragraphs on Vector 2022 has been changed from 7px to 14px to match the size of the text. This will make it easier to distinguish paragraphs from sentences.
 * The "" feature in VisualEditor is working again. You no longer need to switch to source editing to edit <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> keywords.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * On 6 December, people who have the enabled the preference for "" will notice the talk page usability improvements appear on pages that include the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> magic word. If you notice any issues, please share them with the team on Phabricator.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Toolforge Grid Engine shutdown process will start on December 14. Maintainers of tools that still use this old system should plan to migrate to Kubernetes, or tell the team your plans on Phabricator in the task about your tool, before that date.
 * Communities using Structured Discussions are being contacted regarding the upcoming deprecation of Structured Discussions. You can read more about this project, and share your comments, on the project's page.

Events
 * Registration & Scholarship applications are now open for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 that will take place from 3–5 May in Tallinn, Estonia. Scholarship applications are open until 5 January 2024.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W49"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:47, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-50
<section begin="technews-2023-W50"/> 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 Wikimedia Commons, there are some minor user-interface improvements for the "choosing own vs not own work" step in the UploadWizard. This is part of the Structured Content team's project of improving UploadWizard on Commons.

Problems
 * There was a problem showing the Newcomer homepage feature with the "impact module" and their page-view graphs, for a few days in early December. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The 2023 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 5 January 2024, and has an associated privacy statement.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W50"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 02:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-51
<section begin="technews-2023-W51"/> 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
 * The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2024 because of the holidays.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
 * Starting December 18, it won't be possible to activate Structured Discussions on a user's own talk page using the Beta feature. The Beta feature option remains available for users who want to deactivate Structured Discussions. This is part of Structured Discussions' deprecation work.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There will be full support for redirects in the Module namespace. The "Move Page" feature will leave an appropriate redirect behind, and such redirects will be appropriately recognized by the software (e.g. hidden from ). There will also be support for manual redirects.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The MediaWiki JavaScript documentation is moving to a new format. During the move, you can read the old docs using version 1.41. Feedback about the new site is welcome on the project talk page.
 * The Wishathon is a new initiative that encourages collaboration across the Wikimedia community to develop solutions for wishes collected through the Community Wishlist Survey. The first community Wishathon will take place from 15–17 March. If you are interested in a project proposal as a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you can register for the event and read more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W51"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:15, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-02
<section begin="technews-2024-W02"/> 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
 * mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W02"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:17, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-03
<section begin="technews-2024-W03"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages.
 * You can now thank edits made by bots.
 * An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> module was deprecated and replaced with the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed.

Future changes
 * Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W03"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-04
<section begin="technews-2024-W04"/> 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
 * A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W04"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05
<section begin="technews-2024-W05"/> 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
 * Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org.
 * There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-gift.svg On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W05"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:29, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-06
<section begin="technews-2024-W06"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to the phabricator task.
 * On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity. Learn more about "action blocks".

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed.

Future changes
 * 24 Wikipedias with Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For 46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February, unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W06"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-07
<section begin="technews-2024-W07"/> 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 WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service.

Problems
 * There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg As work continues on the grid engine deprecation, tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W07"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 05:46, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-08
<section begin="technews-2024-W08"/> 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 have the "" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails.
 * There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see  this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
 * Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
 * The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).


 * Octicons-tools.svg Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
 * The CSS <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> property can now be used in HTML <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> attributes in wikitext.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W08"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 15:34, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-09
<section begin="technews-2024-W09"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The mobile visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research  shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The mw.config value  now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is: <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr">.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W09"/>
 * The right to change edit tags (<bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> ) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.

MediaWiki message delivery 19:21, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-10
<section begin="technews-2024-W10"/> 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 <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension.
 * Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
 * Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> namespaces and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made.
 * A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
 * The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W10"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-11
<section begin="technews-2024-W11"/> 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
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed.
 * The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices.
 * Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W11"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-12
<section begin="technews-2024-W12"/> 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 notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher.
 * Octicons-tools.svg IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes.
 * Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown.

Problems
 * RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W12"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 17:37, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-13
<section begin="technews-2024-W13"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W13"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 18:53, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-14
<section begin="technews-2024-W14"/> 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
 * Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W14"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 03:33, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-15
<section begin="technews-2024-W15"/> 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
 * Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
 * Octicons-gift.svg A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check.
 * Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W15"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:34, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-16
<section begin="technews-2024-W16"/> 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
 * Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked).
 * A new variable <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made.

Future changes
 * Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> tables. Some queries might need to be updated.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W16"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:26, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-17
<section begin="technews-2024-W17"/> 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
 * Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention.
 * You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of /vector.js to /vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W17"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 20:25, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-18
<section begin="technews-2024-W18"/> 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 appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: . These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences (""). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks.
 * Seven new wikis have been created:
 * a in Betawi
 * a in Kusaal
 * a in Igala
 * a in Karakalpak
 * a in Burmese
 * a in Malay
 * a in Georgian
 * You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups.
 * Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.

Problems
 * Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W18"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 03:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-19
<section begin="technews-2024-W19"/> 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 appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences (""). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the . More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs".

Future changes
 * A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the latest update regarding this extension.
 * Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W19"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:41, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-20
<section begin="technews-2024-W20"/> 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 Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list.
 * If you use the user-preference "", then the template-page feature "" will now also work without reloading the page.
 * Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> attribute. This is identical in usage to the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive.
 * The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure.

Future changes
 * In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Two columns of the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> database table (<bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> ) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> table instead (<bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> ). In your existing SQL queries:
 * Replace <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> in the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> statement
 * Below that add <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr">
 * See T222224 for technical reasoning.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W20"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-21
<section begin="technews-2024-W21"/> 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 Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title.
 * New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W21"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:01, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-22
<section begin="technews-2024-W22"/> 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
 * Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
 * Octicons-tools.svg In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes: <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W22"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:12, 28 May 2024 (UTC)