Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-02-27/Technology report

Community Wishlist Survey results
The Wikimedia Foundation established the Community Tech team in 2015 as a product team devoted to building features and making changes that active Wikimedia contributors need the most. Rather than those on the team coming up with their own ideas and proposing them to the community, the team decided to let the community tell us what to work on. To do this, they invited the community to participate in a cross-project survey to set our agenda for the year. This consisted of two weeks for contributors to propose ideas, followed by two weeks of support voting.

325 proposals were submitted to the 2022 survey, with 1578 editors contributing 9554 support votes, producing a ranked list of 270 ideas. Community Tech committed to investigating and addressing the as many as it gets in light of the results of the prioritization process and external factors [they] can't change — designing and building new tools themselves, or collaborating with other teams and volunteers who were working in those areas.

Progress on the 2021 wishlist
Out of the top 10 winning proposals, Community Tech has completed two of them (copy-pasting from diffs, and disambiguation link warnings), and is currently working on one, leaving 7 that are incomplete. Some community members expressed concerns that the 2022 Survey would yield the same result, with wishes having long delays in implementation. Community Tech responded, pointing to their prioritization method and policy of research[ing] projects before committing to them. With the 2021 Survey, the Team picked 4 wishes to implement and publicly declined one. More details are available on Meta.

DiscussionTools from the Editing team
The Editing team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been hard at work developing tools for the talk pages project. As of 18 February, the Reply Tool is available to everyone (logged in and out) on desktop at all Wikimedia wikis except for fi.wiki (T297533), and ru.wiki (T297410). The Reply Tool is planned to be turned on at the English Wikipedia for all editors using the desktop interface on 7 March 2022 (Phabricator task). Registered editors are welcome to opt-in to the final testing period and provide any feedback, ask questions, or report issues to the Talk Pages project team in the discussion at the project talk page. Additionally, the team is working on introducing functionality that will alert you, in real-time, when someone posts a new comment in the discussion you are using the Reply Tool within. Instructions for how to try the prototype and share feedback about it can be found here. You can see the full list of what talk pages project features are available at what wikis by visiting the MediaWiki wiki.

Dark mode arrives – as a gadget
After many feature requests for a dark mode gadget, one has been created in December 2021. It is based on the work of Wikimedia Design team members Volker E. and Alex Hollender, supported by volunteer MusikAnimal and others. To enable the gadget, go to your gadget preferences, and enable the gadget "". The tool has been criticized for its completely black background color with a white foreground causing eye strain for some. More details can be found here. Happy darkness!

Recently approved tasks
Bots that have been approved for operations after a successful BRFA will be listed here for informational purposes. No other approval action is required for these bots. Recently approved requests can be found here (edit), while old requests can be found in the archives.


 * Approved 15:00, 13 February 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 15:00, 13 February 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 15:48, 10 February 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 20:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 20:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 16:28, 25 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 15:17, 23 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 17:18, 18 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 09:39, 13 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 22:25, 10 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 14:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 18:38, 3 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 10:01, 2 January 2022 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 16:31, 31 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 16:31, 31 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 17:38, 30 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 17:32, 30 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 07:27, 29 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 22:40, 28 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 09:43, 16 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 09:43, 16 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 12:42, 8 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 13:41, 5 December 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 18:12, 21 November 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 14:20, 17 November 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 08:54, 17 November 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 11:43, 16 November 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 11:43, 16 November 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 12:01, 11 November 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)
 * Approved 11:56, 11 November 2021 (UTC) (bot has flag)

Latest tech news
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2022 #9, #8, & #7. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.

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.