Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-03-31/Technology report

Automated article section recommendations
The Wikimedia Research team is creating a new tool to suggest sections to add to articles. This could be useful for suggesting improvements new editors could make to stub articles. Machine learning would be used to recommend sections to add, based on what sections other similar articles have.

Before actually building the tool, the developers need to test the quality of the suggestions. Experienced editors can help by evaluating recommendations and providing feedback using the testing tool (instructions).

Further questions and feedback can be left on the Meta-Wiki talk page.

Sitewide CSS
A new site-wide CSS page was activated this month: MediaWiki:Group-checkuser.css. At the same time, an increasing number of CSS classes are being removed from MediaWiki:Common.css as the community takes advantage of the TemplateStyles extension. This month, the styles for portals and the Letterhead template migrated to individual style pages.

New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience

 * – Make editing with the Minerva (mobile) web interface easier
 * – Make editing with the Timeless skin easier
 * – Easily navigate to the thumbnailed list of files uploaded by users
 * – Easily link to sections of a page
 * – Remove deleted pages from your watchlist

Admin bots

 * – Approved
 * – Trial complete

Recently approved tasks

 * (Tasks: 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 22)
 * (Tasks: 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 22)
 * (Tasks: 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 22)
 * (Tasks: 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 22)
 * (Tasks: 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 22)
 * (Tasks: 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 22)

Current requests for approval

 * – Open
 * – Open
 * Task 13 – Open
 * Task 16 – In trial
 * Tasks 12 15, 17 - Trial complete
 * – Open
 * – Open
 * – Open
 * – Open
 * Task 23 – In trial
 * Task 5 – Extended trial
 * Task 12 – Trial complete
 * – In trial
 * – In trial
 * – Trial complete
 * – Trial complete
 * – Trial Complete

Latest tech news
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2019 #10, #11, #12, & #13. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.

Mobile

 * The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts.
 * There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed.
 * The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon.

Maps

 * Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the  Lua function or the   parser function. If they do, they will now be shown using mw:Special:MyLanguage/Help:Extension:Kartographer if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator.
 * Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed.

Recent changes

 * There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.
 * When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March.
 * Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.
 * The new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version.

Problems

 * Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed.
 * Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them.

Meetings

 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting takes place every Wednesday from 4:00–5:00 p.m. UTC. See how to join here.