Vital Articles Grammar

Tip of the day...

General topics lists

There are two types of general topics lists: Outlines and Indexes. Outlines are arranged hierarchically, while the topics in indexes are presented alphabetically.

The vast majority of lists on Wikipedia present the items of a class of things – those are item lists. The rest are general topics lists which are different than item lists because they present the subtopics of a given subject – their scope is an entire subject.

For example, for sharks, the item list is List of sharks and it presents shark species. A general topics list on sharks is the Outline of sharks, and its scope is everything about sharks.

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Hello, Vital Articles Grammar!

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Learn what Wikipedians do and discover how to help.

Tips

• Don't be afraid to edit! Just find something that can be improved and make it better. Other editors will help fix any mistakes you make.
• It's normal to feel a little overwhelmed, but don't worry if you don't understand everything at first—it's fine to edit using common sense.
• If an edit you make is reverted, you can discuss the issue at the article's talk page. Be civil, and don't restore the edit unless there is consensus.
• Always use edit summaries to explain your changes.
• When adding new content to an article, always include a citation to a reliable source.
• If you wish to edit about a subject with which you are affiliated, read our conflict of interest guide and disclose your connection.
• Have fun! Your presence in the Wikipedia community is welcome.

Happy editing! Cheers, The ⬡ Bestagon^[t][c] 06:10, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 January 2023

• News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation ousts, bans quarter of Arabic Wikipedia admins

• In the media: Odd bedfellows, Elon and Jimbo, reliable sources for divorces, and more

• Interview: ComplexRational's RfA debrief

• Technology report: Wikimedia Foundation's Abstract Wikipedia project "at substantial risk of failure"

• Essay: Mobile editing

• Arbitration report: Arbitration Committee Election 2022

• Recent research: Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement in talk page disputes

• Serendipity: Wikipedia about FIFA World Cup 2022: quick, factual and critical

• Featured content: Would you like to swing on a star?

• Traffic report: Football, football, football! Wikipedia Football Club!

• CommonsComix: #4: The Course of WikiEmpire

• From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:47, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Practice

Trying this messeage thing. Can you remove ensymbles ringing in my head? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luis Marroquin 83 (talk • contribs) 05:45, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@Luis Marroquin 83: I don’t understand what you said. Vital Articles Grammar (talk) 04:45, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-02

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 tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags. [1]
• Special:WhatLinksHere shows all pages that link to a specific page. There is now a prototype for how to sort those pages alphabetically. You can see the discussion in the Phabricator ticket.
• You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page. [2]
• A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time. [3]
• Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use matrix: to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [4]
• You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages. [5]

Changes later this week

• Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 10 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 12 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 January. It will be on all wikis from 12 January (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:06, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 January 2023

• From the team: We heard zoomers liked fortnights: the biweekly Signpost rides again

• Special report: Coverage of 2022 bans reveals editors serving long sentences in Saudi Arabia since 2020

• News and notes: Revised Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines up for vote, WMF counsel departs, generative models under discussion

• In the media: Court orders user data in libel case, Saudi Wikipedia in the crosshairs, Larry Sanger at it again

• Technology report: View it! A new tool for image discovery

• In focus: Busting into Grand Central

• Serendipity: How I bought part of Wikipedia – for less than $100

• Gallery: What is our responsibility when it comes to images?

• Humour: New geologically speedy deletion criteria introduced

• Opinion: Good old days, in which fifth-symbol-lacking lipograms roam'd our librarious litany

• Featured content: Flip your lid

• Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2022

• From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:15, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-03

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

• The URLs in "prev" links on page history now contain diff=prev&oldid=[revision ID] in place of diff=[revision ID]&oldid=[revision ID]. This is to fix a problem with links pointing to incorrect diffs when history was filtered by a tag. Some user scripts may break as a result of this change. [6]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).
• Some changes to the appearance of talk pages have only been available on Talk: and User talk: namespaces. These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such as Wikipedia talk:. They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, including Wikipedia: pages (e.g., at the Village Pump). You can change your preferences (beta feature). [7]
• On Wikisources, when an image is zoomed or panned in the Page: namespace, the same zoom and pan settings will be remembered for all Page: namespace pages that are linked to a particular Index: namespace page. [8]
• The Vector 2022 skin will become the default for the English Wikipedia desktop users. The change will take place on January 18 at 15:00 UTC. Learn more.

Future changes

• The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey, which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts next week on 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC. You can start drafting your proposals in the CWS sandbox.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:08, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-04

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

• Last week, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue. [9]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).
• If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity. [10][11]
• The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:44, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-05

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

• Last week, for ~15 minutes, some users were unable to log in or edit pages. This was caused by a problem with session storage. [12]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 February. It will be on all wikis from 2 February (calendar).

Future changes

• Wikis that use localized numbering schemes for references need to add new CSS. This will help to show citation numbers the same way in all reading and editing modes. If your wiki would prefer to do it yourselves, please see the details and example CSS to copy from, and also add your wiki to the list. Otherwise, the developers will directly help out starting the week of February 5.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:04, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 February 2023

• From the editor: New for the Signpost: Author pages, tag pages, and a decent article search function

• News and notes: Foundation update on fundraising, new page patrol, Tides, and Wikipedia blocked in Pakistan

• Section 230: Twenty-six words that created the internet, and the future of an encyclopedia

• Disinformation report: Wikipedia on Santos

• Special report: Legal status of Wikimedia projects "unclear" under potential European legislation

• In the media: Furor over new Wikipedia skin, followup on Saudi bans, and legislative debate

• Op-Ed: Estonian businessman and political donor brings lawsuit against head of national Wikimedia chapter

• Opinion: Study examines cultural leanings of Wikimedia projects' visual art coverage

• Recent research: Wikipedia's "moderate yet systematic" liberal citation bias

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Organized Labour

• Tips and tricks: XTools: Data analytics for your list of created articles

• Featured content: 20,000 Featureds under the Sea

• Traffic report: Films, deaths and ChatGPT

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:46, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-06

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, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default. [13]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).
• Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays. [14]
• Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [15]
• Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will stop receiving new proposals on Monday, 6 February 2023, at 18:00 UTC. Proposers should complete any edits by then, to give time for translations and review. Voting will begin on Friday, 10 February.

Future changes

• Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add skins=… for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 10:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-07

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

• On wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week. [16]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).
• The Reply tool and other parts of DiscussionTools will be deployed for all editors using the mobile site. You can read more about this decision. [17]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [18][19][20]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 February 2023

• News and notes: Terms of Use update, Steward elections, and Wikipedia back in Pakistan

• In the media: Arbitrators open case after article alleges Wikipedia "intentionally distorts" Holocaust coverage

• Disinformation report: The "largest con in corporate history"?

• Essay: Machine-written articles: a new challenge for Wikipedia

• Tips and tricks: All about writing at DYK

• Featured content: Eden, lost.

• Gallery: Love is in the air

• Traffic report: Superbowl? Pfft. Give me some Bollywood! Yours sincerely, the world

• From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 years ago: Let's (not) delete the Main Page!

• Cobwebs: Editorial: The loss of the moral high ground

• Humour: The RfA Candidate's Song

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:04, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-08

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

• Last week, during planned maintenance of Cloud Services, unforeseen complications forced the team to turn off all tools for 2–3 hours to prevent data corruption. Work is ongoing to prevent similar problems in the future. [21]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).
• The voting phase for the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 ends on 24 February at 18:00 UTC. The results of the survey will be announced on 28 February.

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [22][23][24]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:56, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-09

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

• Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task. [25][26]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [27]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-10

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 Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
• On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Wikipedia) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed. [28]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).
• A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon. [29]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 9 March 2023

• News and notes: What's going on with the Wikimedia Endowment?

• Technology report: Second flight of the Soviet space bears: Testing ChatGPT's accuracy

• In the media: What should Wikipedia do? Publish Russian propaganda? Be less woke? Cover the Holocaust in Poland differently?

• Featured content: In which over two-thirds of the featured articles section needs to be copied over to WikiProject Military History's newsletter

• Recent research: "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the Holocaust" in Poland and "self-focus bias" in coverage of global events

• From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:43, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-11

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 new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Chavacano de Zamboanga Wikipedia, Min Dong Chinese Wikipedia, Chechen Wikipedia, Cebuano Wikipedia, Chamorro Wikipedia, Cherokee Wikipedia, Cheyenne Wikipedia, Central Kurdish Wikipedia, Corsican Wikipedia, Kashubian Wikipedia, Church Slavic Wikipedia, Chuvash Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [30][31]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:18, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 March 2023

• News and notes: Wikimania submissions deadline looms, Russian government after our lucky charms, AI woes nix CNET from RS slate

• Eyewitness: Three more stories from Ukrainian Wikimedians

• In the media: Paid editing, plagiarism payouts, proponents of a ploy, and people peeved at perceived preferences

• Featured content: Way too many featured articles

• Interview: 228/2/1: the inside scoop on Aoidh's RfA

• Traffic report: Who died? Who won? Who lost?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:18, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-12

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

• Last week, some users experienced issues loading image thumbnails. This was due to incorrectly cached images. [32]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will appear on Special:Contributions — some user scripts which previously added this link may cause conflicts. This feature request was voted #17 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• The Special:AbuseFilter edit window will be resizable and larger by default. This feature request was voted #80 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• There will be a new option for Administrators when they are unblocking a user, to add the unblocked user’s user page to their watchlist. This will work both via Special:Unblock and via the API. [33]

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 24 March 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.

MediaWiki message delivery 01:24, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-13

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 AbuseFilter condition limit was increased from 1000 to 2000. [34]
• Some Global AbuseFilter actions will no longer apply to local projects. [35]
• Desktop users are now able to subscribe to talk pages by clicking on the Subscribe link in the Tools menu. If you subscribe to a talk page, you receive notifications when new topics are started on that talk page. This is separate from putting the page on your watchlist or subscribing to a single discussion. [36]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 March. It will be on all wikis from 30 March (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to choose visual diffs on all history pages at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [37]
• The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Developers are encouraged to switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity. [38]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:12, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 April 2023

• From the editor: Some long-overdue retractions

• News and notes: Sounding out, a universal code of conduct, and dealing with AI

• In the media: Twiddling Wikipedia during an online contest, and other news

• Arbitration report: "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland" case is ongoing

• Featured content: Hail, poetry! Thou heav'n-born maid

• Recent research: Language bias: Wikipedia captures at least the "silhouette of the elephant", unlike ChatGPT

• From the archives: April Fools' through the ages

• Disinformation report: Sus socks support suits, seems systemic

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-14

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 system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories. [39][40][41][42][43]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
• Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version. [44]
• The deprecated jquery.hoverIntent module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQuery hover() or on() instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide. [45]
• Some of the links in Special:SpecialPages will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account. [46]
• You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new __ARCHIVEDTALK__ magic word. There will also be a new .mw-archivedtalk CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page. [47][48][49]

Future changes

• The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:38, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-15

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 visual editor, it is now possible to edit captions of images in galleries without opening the gallery dialog. This feature request was voted #61 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [50]
• You can now receive notifications when another user edits your user page. See the "Edits to my user page" option in your Preferences. This feature request was voted #3 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [51]

Problems

• There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed. [52]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Dinka Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Ewe Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Emiliano-Romagnolo Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Estonian Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Tumbuka Wikipedia, Fulah Wikipedia, Finnish Wikipedia, Võro Wikipedia, Fijian Wikipedia, Faroese Wikipedia, Arpitan Wikipedia, Northern Frisian Wikipedia, Friulian Wikipedia, Irish Wikipedia, Guianan Creole Wikipedia, Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Galician Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia, Guarani Wikipedia, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Gothic Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikipedia, Manx Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [53][54]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:04, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-16

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 nearby articles on a Kartographer map with the button for the new feature "Show nearby articles". Six wikis have been testing this feature since October. [55][56]
• The Special:GlobalWatchlist page now has links for "mark page as read" for each entry. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [57]

Problems

• At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week. [58][59]
• For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [60]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 April. It will be on all wikis from 20 April (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:53, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-17

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

Recent changes

• The date-selection menu on pages such as Special:Contributions will now show year-ranges that are in the current and past decade, instead of the current and future decade. This feature request was voted #145 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [61]

Problems

• Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities. [62]
• For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed. [63][64][65]

Changes later this week

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [66]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Future changes

• The Editing team plans an A/B test for a usability analysis of the Talk page project. The planned measurements are available. Your wiki may be invited to participate. Please suggest improvements to the measurement plan at the discussion page.
• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input until May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023 on Meta-wiki.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:02, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 April 2023

• News and notes: Staff departures at Wikimedia Foundation, Jimbo hands in the bits, and graphs' zeppelin burns

• In the media: Contested truth claims in Wikipedia

• Obituary: Remembering David "DGG" Goodman

• Arbitration report: Holocaust in Poland, Jimbo in the hot seat, and a desysopping

• Opinion: What Jimbo's question revealed about scamming

• Op-Ed: Wikipedia as an anchor of truth

• Special report: Signpost statistics between years 2005 and 2022

• News from the WMF: Collective planning with the Wikimedia Foundation

• Featured content: In which we described the featured articles in rhyme again

• From the archives: April Fools' through the ages, part two

• Humour: The law of hats

• Traffic report: Long live machine, the future supreme

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:18, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-18

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 attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the French and Italian Wikipedias. More languages will be added in the near future. This is part of the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [67][68][69]
• The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads. [70]
• The Special:Preferences page has been redesigned on mobile web. The new design makes it easier to browse the different categories and settings at low screen widths. You can also now access the page via a link in the Settings menu in the mobile web sidebar. [71]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 May. It will be on all wikis from 4 May (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 8 May 2023

• News and notes: New legal "deVLOPments" in the EU

• In the media: Vivek's smelly socks, online safety, and politics

• Recent research: Gender, race and notability in deletion discussions

• Featured content: I wrote a poem for each article, I found rhymes for all the lists; My first featured picture of this year now finally exists!

• Arbitration report: "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland" approaches conclusion

• News from the WMF: Planning together with the Wikimedia Foundation

• Special report: There Shall Be Seasons Refreshing – Stories from WikiConference India 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:26, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-19

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

• Last week, Community Tech released the first update for providing better diffs, the #1 request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. This update adds legends and tooltips to inline diffs so that users unfamiliar with the blue and yellow highlights can better understand the type of edits made.
• When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [72]
• The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports wikitext as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such as html5, moin, and html+handlebars, can now be replaced. [73]
• Preloading text to new pages/sections now supports preloading from localized MediaWiki interface messages. Here is an example at the Czech Wikipedia that uses preload=MediaWiki:July. [74]

Problems

• Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like de:Modul:Graph. The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities. [75]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).
• Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review. [76]

Future changes

• During the next year, MediaWiki will stop using IP addresses to identify logged-out users, and will start automatically assigning unique temporary usernames. Read more at IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Updates. You can join the discussion about the format of the temporary usernames. [77]
• There will be an A/B test on 10 Wikipedias where the Vector 2022 skin is the default skin. Half of logged-in desktop users will see an interface where the different parts of the page are more clearly separated. You can read more. [78][79]
• jquery.tipsy will be removed from the MediaWiki core. This will affect some user scripts. Many lines with .tipsy( can be commented out. OO.ui.PopupWidget can be used to keep things working like they are now. You can read more and read about how to find broken scripts. [80]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:34, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-20

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

• Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature. [81]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 May. It will be on all wikis from 18 May (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Gorontalo Wikipedia, Hausa Wikipedia, Hakka Chinese Wikipedia, Hawaiian Wikipedia, Fiji Hindi Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Upper Sorbian Wikipedia, Haitian Creole Wikipedia, Interlingua Wikipedia, Interlingue Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Iloko Wikipedia, Ingush Wikipedia, Ido Wikipedia, Icelandic Wikipedia, Inuktitut Wikipedia, Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, Javanese Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [82]

Future changes

• There is a recently formed team at the Wikimedia Foundation which will be focusing on experimenting with new tools. Currently they are building a prototype ChatGPT plugin that allows information generated by ChatGPT to be properly attributed to the Wikimedia projects.
• Gadget and userscript developers should replace jquery.cookie with mediawiki.cookie. The jquery.cookie library will be removed in ~1 month, and staff developers will run a script to replace any remaining uses at that time. [83]

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:43, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 May 2023

• News and notes: Golden parachutes: Record severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation

• In the media: History, propaganda and censorship

• Arbitration report: Final decision in "World War II and the history of Jews in Poland"

• Recent research: Create or curate, cooperate or compete? Game theory for Wikipedia editors

• Featured content: A very musical week for featured articles

• Traffic report: Coronation, chatbot, celebs

• WikiProject report: Wikipedians Convene for Queering Wikipedia 2023: The First International LGBT+ Wikipedia Conference

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:41, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-21

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 "recent edits" time period for page watchers is now 30 days. It used to be 180 days. This was a Community Wishlist Survey proposal. [84]

Changes later this week

• An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact. [85]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).

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

16:53, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-22

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

• Citations can once again be added automatically from ISBNs, thanks to Zotero's ISBN searches. The current data sources are the Library of Congress (United States), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library), and K10plus ISBN (German repository). Additional data source searches can be proposed to Zotero. The ISBN labels in the VisualEditor Automatic tab will reappear later this week. [86]
• The page Special:EditWatchlist now has "Check all" options to select all the pages within a namespace. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [87]

Problems

• For a few days earlier this month, the "Add interlanguage link" item in the Tools menu did not work properly. This has now been fixed. [88]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 May. It will be on all wikis from 1 June (calendar).
• VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on small and medium wikis this week. Large wikis will follow in the coming weeks. This is part of the effort to move Parsoid into MediaWiki core. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [89]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:00, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 5 June 2023

• News and notes: WMRU director forks new 'pedia, birds flap in top '22 piccy, WMF weighs in on Indian gov's map axe plea

• In the media: Section 230 stands tall, WP vs. UK bill, Miss Information dissed again

• Featured content: Poetry under pressure

• Traffic report: Celebs, controversies and a chatbot in the public eye

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:23, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-23

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 RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
• Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [90]
• Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "Group results by page". This has now been fixed. [91]

Problems

• For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed. [92]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
• Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist. [93]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-24

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 attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias. This was the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [94]
• The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article. [95]
• The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software. [96]
• The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages. [97]

Problems

• For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended __TOC__ (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed. [98]
• Currently, the "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing. [99]
• Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace #wpReason with #wpReason > input. See an example fix. [100]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).
• VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [101]

Future changes

• From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 14:49, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 June 2023

• News and notes: WMF Terms of Use now in force, new Creative Commons licensing

• In the media: English WP editor glocked after BLP row on Italian 'pedia

• Featured content: Content, featured

• Recent research: Hoaxers prefer currently-popular topics

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:11, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-25

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

• Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug. [102][103]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing \ or pressing ctrl + shift + p. It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor. [104][105]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:07, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-26

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 Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing / to all prop=extlinks responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the externallinks database table. [106]

Problems

• Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours. [107][108]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
• The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the .mbox-text CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki. [109][110]
• Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the |targets= parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the |skins= parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution. [111]
• All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary. [112]
• The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components. [113]

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change in the coming weeks at group2 wikis. This change improves the accessibility of content. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems. [114]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:17, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 3 July 2023

• News and notes: Online Safety Bill: Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK launch open letter

• Disinformation report: Imploded submersible outfit foiled trying to sing own praises on Wikipedia

• In the media: Journo proposes mass Wiki dox, sponsored articles on Fandom, Section 230 discussed

• Featured content: Incensed

• Traffic report: Are you afraid of spiders? Arnold? The Idol? ChatGPT?

• Humour: United Nations dispatches peacekeeping force to Wikipedia policy discussions

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:16, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-27

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

• As part of the rolling out of the audio links that play on click wishlist proposal, small wikis will now be able to use the inline audio player that is implemented by the Phonos extension. [115]
• From this week all gadgets automatically load on mobile and desktop sites. If you see any problems with gadgets on your wikis, please adjust the gadget options in your gadget definitions file. [116]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 July. It will be on all wikis from 6 July (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:49, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-28

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 Section-level Image Suggestions feature has been deployed on seven Wikipedias (Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Catalan, Hungarian, Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål). The feature recommends images for articles on contributors' watchlists that are a good match for individual sections of those articles.
• Global abuse filters have been enabled on all Wikimedia projects, except English and Japanese Wikipedias (who opted out). This change was made following a global request for comments. [117]
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool for administrators to help fight spam. It provides a clearer interface for blocking plain domains (and their subdomains), is more easily searchable, and is faster for the software to process for each edit on the wiki. It does not support regex (for complex cases), nor URL path-matching, nor the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist, but otherwise it replaces most of the functionalities of the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. There is a Python script to help migrate all simple domains into this tool, and more feature details, within the tool's documentation. It is available at all wikis except for Meta-wiki, Commons, and Wikidata. [118]
• The WikiEditor extension was updated. It includes some of the most frequently used features of wikitext editing. In the past, many of its messages could only be translated by administrators, but now all regular translators on translatewiki can translate them. Please check the state of WikiEditor localization into your language, and if the "Completion" for your language shows anything less than 100%, please complete the translation. See a more detailed explanation.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (calendar).
• The default protocol of Special:LinkSearch and API counterparts has changed from http to both http and https. [119]
• Special:LinkSearch and its API counterparts will now search for all of the URL provided in the query. It used to be only the first 60 characters. This feature was requested fifteen years ago. [120]

Future changes

• There is an experiment with a ChatGPT plugin. This is to show users where the information is coming from when they read information from Wikipedia. It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Wikipedia plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20. [121]
• There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed Third-party resources policy. The proposal will impact the use of third-party resources in gadgets and userscripts. Based on the ideas received so far, policy includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, some best practices and exemption requirements such as code transparency and inspectability. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on on the policy talk page.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:52, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 July 2023

• News and notes: Big bux hidden beneath wine-dark sea as we wait for the Tides to go out?

• In the media: Tentacles of Emirates plot attempt to ensnare Wikipedia

• Obituary: David Thomsen (Dthomsen8) and Ingo Koll (Kipala)

• News from the WMF: ABC for Fundraising: Advancing Banner Collaboration for fundraising campaigns

• In focus: Are the children of celebrities over-represented in French cinema?

• Tips and tricks: What automation can do for you (and your WikiProject)

• Recent research: Wikipedia-grounded chatbot "outperforms all baselines" on factual accuracy

• Humour: New fringe theories to be introduced

• Cobwebs: If you're reading this, you're probably on a desktop

• Featured content: Scrollin', scrollin', scrollin', keep those readers scrollin', got to keep on scrollin', Rawhide!

• Traffic report: The Idol becomes the Master

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:02, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-29

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

• We are now serving 1% of all global user traffic from Kubernetes (you can read more technical details). We are planning to increment this percentage regularly. You can follow the progress of this work.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 July. It will be on all wikis from 20 July (calendar).
• MediaWiki system messages will now look for available local fallbacks, instead of always using the default fallback defined by software. This means wikis no longer need to override each language on the fallback chain separately. For example, English Wikipedia doesn't have to create en-ca and en-gb subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides. [122]
• The action=growthsetmentorstatus API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use the action=growthmanagementorlist API now. [123]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:07, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

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

• 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

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 July. It will be on all wikis from 27 July (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 02:19, 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

• 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 Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. For example, you can hide edits that were made using an automated tool. [124][125]
• 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. [126]

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. [127]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 August. It will be on all wikis from 3 August (calendar).
• Starting on Tuesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [128]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:53, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 August 2023

• News and notes: City officials attempt to doxx Wikipedians, Ruwiki founder banned, WMF launches Mastodon server

• In the media: Truth, AI, bull from politicians, and climate change

• Disinformation report: Hot climate, hot hit, hot money, hot news hot off the presses!

• Obituary: Donald Cram, Peter McCawley, and Eagleash

• Tips and tricks: Citation tools for dummies!

• Humour: Does Wikipedia present neutral perspectives?

• In focus: Journals cited by Wikipedia

• Opinion: Are global bans the last step?

• Featured content: Featured Content, 1 to 15 July

• Traffic report: Come on Oppie, let's go party

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:39, 1 August 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 "⧼Mobile-frontend-mobile-option-amc⧽" in your settings and use the "Edit full page" button in the "More" menu. [129]

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 21:19, 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. [130]

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).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Latin Wikipedia, Ladino Wikipedia, Luxembourgish Wikipedia, Lak Wikipedia, Lezghian Wikipedia, Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia, Ganda Wikipedia, Limburgish Wikipedia, Ligurian Wikipedia, Lombard Wikipedia, Lingala Wikipedia, Latgalian Wikipedia, Latvian Wikipedia, Maithili Wikipedia, Basa Banyumasan Wikipedia, Moksha Wikipedia, Malagasy Wikipedia, Armenian Wikipedia, Kyrgyz Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [131]

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 05:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 August 2023

• News and notes: Dude, Where's My Donations? Wikimedia Foundation announces another million in grants for non-Wikimedia-related projects

• In the media: An accusation of bias from Brazil, a lawsuit from Portugal, plagiarism from Florida

• In focus: 2023 Good Article Nomination drive is underway: get your barnstars here!

• Special report: Thirteen years later, why are most administrators still from 2005?

• Tips and tricks: How to find images for your articles, check their copyright, upload them, and restore them

• Cobwebs: Getting serious about writing

• Opinion: Copyright trolls, or the last beautiful free souls on this planet?

• Serendipity: Why I stopped taking photographs almost altogether

• Featured content: Barbenheimer confirmed

• Humour: Arbitration Committee to accept case against Right Honorable Frimbley Cantingham, 15th Viscount Bellington-upon-Porkshire

• Traffic report: 'Cause today it just goes with the fashion

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:18, 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. [132]
• 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 (wikt:blk:) [133]
    • a Wikisource in Sundanese (s:su:) [134]
  • To catch up, the next most recent six wikis are:
    • Wikifunctions (f:) [135]
    • a Wiktionary in Mandailing (wikt:btm:) [136]
    • a Wikipedia in Ghanaian Pidgin (w:gpe:) [137]
    • a Wikinews in Gungbe (n:guw:) [138]
    • a Wiktionary in Kabardian (wikt:kbd:) [139]
    • a Wikipedia in Fante (w:fat:) [140]

Changes later this week

• 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).

Future changes

• 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. [141]

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

• 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. [142]
• All Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. [143]
• Wikisource users can now use the prpbengalicurrency label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <pagelist> tag. [144]
• Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "Enable the visual editor" is now shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "Beta features" tab at some wikis. The preference "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor" is now also shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis, instead of the "Beta features" tab. [145][146]

Changes later this week

• 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).
• 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. [147]

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!

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MediaWiki message delivery 13:59, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 August 2023

• From the editor: Beta version of signpost.news now online

• News and notes: You like RecentChanges?

• In the media: Taking it sleazy

• Recent research: The five barriers that impede "stitching" collaboration between Commons and Wikipedia

• Draftspace: Bad Jokes and Other Draftspace Novelties

• Humour: The Dehumourification Plan

• Traffic report: Raise your drinking glass, here's to yesterday

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:45, 31 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

• 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. [148]
• 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. [149]
• 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 Special:UserRights and via the API. [150]
• One new wiki has been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Talysh (w:tly:) [151]

Problems

• 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. [152]

Changes later this week

• 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).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Eastern Mari Wikipedia, Maori Wikipedia, Minangkabau Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Mongolian Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Western Mari Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Maltese Wikipedia, Mirandese Wikipedia, Erzya Wikipedia, Mazanderani Wikipedia, Nāhuatl Wikipedia, Neapolitan Wikipedia, Low German Wikipedia, Low Saxon Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Newari Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Novial Wikipedia, N'Ko Wikipedia, Nouormand Wikipedia, Northern Sotho Wikipedia, Navajo Wikipedia, Nyanja Wikipedia, Occitan Wikipedia, Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia, Oromo Wikipedia, Oriya Wikipedia, Ossetic Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Pangasinan Wikipedia, Pampanga Wikipedia, Papiamento Wikipedia, Picard Wikipedia, Pennsylvania German Wikipedia, Palatine German Wikipedia, Norfuk / Pitkern Wikipedia, Piedmontese Wikipedia, Western Punjabi Wikipedia, Pontic Wikipedia, Pashto Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [153][154]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:32, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-37

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, "Contribution quality predictions" and "User intent predictions"), please report them. [155]
• 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. [156]

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).
• 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.
• 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. [157]

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. [158]
• 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.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 September 2023

• News and notes: Wikimedia power sharing – just an advisory role for the volunteer community?

• In the media: "Just flirting", going Dutch and Shapps for the defence?

• Obituary: Nosebagbear

• Serendipity: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no paywall, for thou, Wikipedia Library, art with me

• Featured content: Catching up

• Concept: Strange portal opened by CERN researchers brings Wikipedia articles from "other worlds"

• Traffic report: Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:38, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-38

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

• 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. [159][160]

Changes later this week

• 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).
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [161]
• All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. [162]

Future changes

• 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.

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

Tech News: 2023-39

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. [163]

Changes later this week

• 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).
• The ResourceLoader mediawiki.ui 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: global_account_groups and global_account_editcount. 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. [164][165]

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.

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

Tech News: 2023-40

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 "Always enable safe mode". 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. [166]
• Gadget definitions now have a new "contentModels" option. The option takes a list of page content models, like wikitext or css. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

Changes later this week

• 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).

Future changes

• 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. [167]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 3 October 2023

• News and notes: Wikimedia Endowment financial statement published

• In the media: History is written by whoever can harness the most editors

• Recent research: Readers prefer ChatGPT over Wikipedia; concerns about limiting "anyone can edit" principle "may be overstated"

• Featured content: By your logic,

• Concept: Wikipedia policies from other worlds: WP:NOANTLERS

• Poetry: "The Sight"

• Traffic report: There shall be no slaves in the land of lands, it's a Bollywood jam

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:32, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-41

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 Wikipedia in Fon (w:fon:) [168]

Changes later this week

• 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).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Swahili Wikipedia, Walloon Wikipedia, Waray Wikipedia, Wolof Wikipedia, Kalmyk Wikipedia, Xhosa Wikipedia, Mingrelian Wikipedia, Yiddish Wikipedia, Yoruba Wikipedia, Zhuang Wikipedia, Zeelandic Wikipedia, Min Nan Wikipedia, Zulu Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [169]
• 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. [170]
• In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID #page-actions will be replaced with #p-views. 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.

MediaWiki message delivery 14:37, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-42

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. [171]
• 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

• 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).

Future changes

• In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to addPortletLink and #p-namespaces 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.

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

The Signpost: 23 October 2023

• News and notes: Where have all the administrators gone?

• In the media: Thirst traps, the fastest loading sites on the web, and the original collaborative writing

• Gallery: Before and After: Why you don't need to know how to restore images to make massive improvements

• Featured content: Yo, ho! Blow the man down!

• Traffic report: The calm and the storm

• News from Diff: Sawtpedia: Giving a Voice to Wikipedia Using QR Codes

• Humour: New citation template introduced for divine revelations, drug use, and really thinking about it

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:02, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-43

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.
• 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. [172]

Changes later this week

• 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).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:15, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-44

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

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

• 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).
• 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. [173][174]
• 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. [175]

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.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:20, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 6 November 2023

• Arbitration report: Admin bewilderingly unmasks self as sockpuppet of other admin who was extremely banned in 2015

• In the media: UK shadow chancellor accused of ripping off WP articles for book, Wikipedians accused of being dicks by a rich man

• News and notes: Board candidacy process posted, editors protest WMF privacy measure, sweet meetups

• Opinion: An open letter to Elon Musk

• WikiCup report: The WikiCup 2023

• News from Wiki Ed: Equity lists on Wikipedia

• Recent research: How English Wikipedia drove out fringe editors over two decades

• Featured content: Like putting a golf course in a historic site.

• Wikidata: Evaluating qualitative systemic bias in large article sets on Wikipedia

• Traffic report: Cricket jumpscare

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:45, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-45

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. [176]

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. [177]

Changes later this week

• 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).
• 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. [178][179]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:04, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-46

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 (w:zgh:) [180]
  • a Wikipedia in Dagaare (w:dga:) [181]
  • a Wikipedia in Toba Batak (w:bbc:) [182]
  • a Wikiquote in Banjar (q:bjn:) [183]

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. [184]
• Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved. [185]

Changes later this week

• 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).

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.
• 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 meta.domain == "canary". Updates to Pywikibot or wikimedia-streams will discard these events by default. [186]

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

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

The Signpost: 20 November 2023

• In the media: Propaganda and photos, lunatics and a lunar backup

• News and notes: Update on Wikimedia's financial health

• Traffic report: If it bleeds, it leads

• Recent research: Canceling disputes as the real function of ArbCom

• Wikimania: Wikimania 2024 scholarships

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:45, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-47

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. [187][188]
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Quechua Wikipedia, Romansh Wikipedia, Romani Wikipedia, Rundi Wikipedia, Aromanian Wikipedia, Tarandíne Wikipedia, Rusyn Wikipedia, Kinyarwanda Wikipedia, Sanskrit Wikipedia, Sakha Wikipedia, Santali Wikipedia, Sardinian Wikipedia, Sicilian Wikipedia, Scots Wikipedia, Sindhi Wikipedia, Northern Sami Wikipedia, Sango Wikipedia, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, Sinhala Wikipedia, Slovak Wikipedia, Slovenian Wikipedia, Samoan Wikipedia, Somali Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Serbian Wikipedia, Sranan Tongo Wikipedia, Swati Wikipedia, Southern Sotho Wikipedia, Saterland Frisian Wikipedia, Sundanese Wikipedia, Silesian Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Tulu Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Tetum Wikipedia, Tajik Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkmen Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia, Tswana Wikipedia, Tongan Wikipedia, Tok Pisin Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Tsonga Wikipedia, Tatar Wikipedia, Twi Wikipedia, Tahitian Wikipedia, Tuvinian Wikipedia, Udmurt Wikipedia, Uyghur Wikipedia, Uzbek Wikipedia, Venda Wikipedia, Venetian Wikipedia, Veps Wikipedia, West Flemish Wikipedia, Volapük Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [189][190][191]
• 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. [192]

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.

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

Tech News: 2023-48

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 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). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [193][194]
• MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow async/await syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately. [195]
• The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:07, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 December 2023

• News and notes: Beeblebrox ejected from Arbitration Committee following posts on Wikipediocracy

• In the media: Turmoil on Hebrew Wikipedia, grave dancing, Olga's impact and inspiring Bhutanese nuns

• Disinformation report: "Wikipedia and the assault on history"

• In focus: Tens of thousands of freely available sources flagged

• Comix: Bold comics for a new age

• Essay: I am going to die

• Featured content: Real gangsters move in silence

• Traffic report: And it's hard to watch some cricket, in the cold November Rain

• Humour: Mandy Rice-Davies Applies

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:11, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-49

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. [196]
• The "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is working again. You no longer need to switch to source editing to edit {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords. [197]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [198][199]
• On 6 December, people who have the enabled the preference for "Show discussion activity" will notice the talk page usability improvements appear on pages that include the __NEWSECTIONLINK__ magic word. If you notice any issues, please share them with the team on Phabricator.

Future changes

• 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. [200]
• 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.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-50

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. [201][202]

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. [203][204]

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). [205][206]

Future changes

• 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.

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MediaWiki message delivery 02:11, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-51

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

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 December. It will be on all wikis from 21 December (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [207][208]
• 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. [209]
• 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 Special:UnconnectedPages). There will also be support for manual redirects. [210]

Future changes

• 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.

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

The Signpost: 24 December 2023

• Special report: Did the Chinese Communist Party send astroturfers to sabotage a hacktivist's Wikipedia article?

• News and notes: The Italian Public Domain wars continue, Wikimedia RU set to dissolve, and a recap of WLM 2023

• In the media: Consider the humble fork

• Discussion report: Arabic Wikipedia blackout; Wikimedians discuss SpongeBob, copyrights, and AI

• In focus: Liquidation of Wikimedia RU

• Technology report: Dark mode is coming

• Recent research: "LLMs Know More, Hallucinate Less" with Wikidata

• Gallery: A feast of holidays and carols

• Comix: Lollus lmaois 200C tincture

• Crossword: when the crossword is sus

• Traffic report: What's the big deal? I'm an animal!

• From the editor: A piccy iz worth OVAR 9000!!!11oneone! wordz ^_^

• Apocrypha: Local editor discovered 1,380 lost subheadings in ancient Signpost scrolls. And what he found was shocking.

• Humour: Guess the joke contest

• BJAODN: Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:59, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-02

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.
• 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. [211]

Changes later this week

• 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). [212][213]

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 January 2024

• From the editor: NINETEEN MORE YEARS! NINETEEN MORE YEARS!

• Special report: Public Domain Day 2024

• Technology report: Wikipedia: A Multigenerational Pursuit

• News and notes: In other news ... see ya in court!

• In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate

• In the media: What is plagiarism? Oklahoma Disneyland? Reaching a human being at Wikipedia?

• WikiProject report: WikiProjects Israel and Palestine

• Obituary: Anthony Bradbury

• Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2023

• Crossword: everybody gangsta till the style sheets start cascading

• Comix: Conflict resolution

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-03

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

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. [214]
• 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 requiresES6 option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future. [215]
• Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [216]
• You can now thank edits made by bots. [217]
• 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

• 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). [218][219]
• 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. [220]
• The jquery.cookie module was deprecated and replaced with the mediawiki.cookie module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed. [221]

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.

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

Tech News: 2024-04

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. [222]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 January. It will be on all wikis from 25 January (calendar). [223][224]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05

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. [225]
• 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

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 January. It will be on all wikis from 1 February (calendar). [226][227]
• 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 Special:QrCode page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [228]
• Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the targets option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the skins option instead. [229]

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

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

The Signpost: 31 January 2024

• News and notes: Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail

• Opinion: Until it happens to you

• Disinformation report: How paid editors squeeze you dry

• In the media: Katherine Maher new NPR CEO, go check Wikipedia, race in the race

• In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate, part 2

• Recent research: Croatian takeover was enabled by "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining [admins]"

• Comix: We've all got to start somewhere

• Traffic report: DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-06

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". [230][231]

Changes later this week

• 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). [232][233]
• Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [234]

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. [235][236]

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 February 2024

• News and notes: Wikimedia Russia director declared "foreign agent" by Russian gov; EU prepares to pile on the papers

• Disinformation report: How low can the scammers go?

• Gallery: Before and After: Why you don't need to touch grass to dramatically improve images of flora and fauna

• In the media: Speaking in tongues, toeing the line, and dressing the part

• Serendipity: Is this guy the same as the one who was a Nazi?

• Traffic report: Griselda, Nikki, Carl, Jannik and two types of football

• Crossword: Our crossword to bear

• Comix: Strongly

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:37, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-07

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. [237][238][239] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [240][241]

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

• 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). [242][243]
• As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[244] 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. [245]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 05:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-08

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 "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [246]
• 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. [247]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar). [248][249]

• 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 filter property can now be used in HTML style attributes in wikitext. [250]

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-09

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. [251]
• The mw.config value wgGlobalGroups 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: if (/globalgroupname/.test(mw.config.get("wgGlobalGroups"))). [252]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 29 February (calendar). [253][254]

Future changes

• The right to change edit tags (changetags) 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.

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

The Signpost: 2 March 2024

• News and notes: Wikimedia enters US Supreme court hearings as "the dolphin inadvertently caught in the net"

• Recent research: Images on Wikipedia "amplify gender bias"

• In the media: The Scottish Parliament gets involved, a wikirace on live TV, and the Foundation's CTO goes on record

• Obituary: Vami_IV

• Traffic report: Supervalentinefilmbowlday

• WikiCup report: High-scoring WikiCup first round comes to a close

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-10

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 Special:Book 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. [255]
• 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.
• Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The Gadget and Gadget_definition namespaces and gadgets-definition-edit 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. [256]
• A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [257]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar). [258][259]

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. [260]
• 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 ?useparsoid=1 to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).

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

Tech News: 2024-11

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 new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar). [261][262]
• 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. [263]
• The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [264]
• 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. [265]

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. [266][267]

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

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

Tech News: 2024-12

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. [268]
• 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. [269]
• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [270][271][272]
• Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [273]

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. [274]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar). [275][276]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [277][278]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-13

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

• 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

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar). [279][280]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:54, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 March 2024

• Technology report: Millions of readers still seeing broken pages as "temporary" disabling of graph extension nears its second year

• Interview: Interview on Wikimedia Foundation fundraising and finance strategy

• Special report: 19-page PDF accuses Wikipedia of bias against Israel, suggests editors be forced to reveal their real names, and demands a new feature allowing people to view the history of Wikipedia articles

• Op-Ed: Wikipedia in the age of personality-driven knowledge

• Recent research: "Newcomer Homepage" feature mostly fails to boost new editors

• News and notes: Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Charter ratified

• In the media: "For me it’s the autism": AARoad editors on the fork more traveled

• Traffic report: He rules over everything, on the land called planet Dune

• Humour: Letters from the editors

• Comix: Layout issue

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:41, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-14

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. [281]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [282][283]

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.

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MediaWiki message delivery 03:34, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-15

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.
• 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. [284][285]
• Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [286]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [287][288]
• 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. [289]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-16

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 "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed. [290][291]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar). [292][293]
• 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). [294]
• A new variable page_last_edit_age will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made. [295]

Future changes

• Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
• Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the abuse_filter and abuse_filter_history tables. Some queries might need to be updated. [296]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:27, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-17

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

Recent changes

• Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention. [297]
• 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

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [298][299]

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 Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/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. [300]

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 April 2024

• In the media: Censorship and wikiwashing looming over RuWiki, edit wars over San Francisco politics and another wikirace on live TV

• News and notes: A sigh of relief for open access as Italy makes a slight U-turn on their cultural heritage reproduction law

• WikiConference report: WikiConference North America 2023 in Toronto recap

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Newspapers (Not WP:NOTNEWS)

• Recent research: New survey of over 100,000 Wikipedia users

• Traffic report: O.J., cricket and a three body problem

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:50, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-18

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

Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.

• The appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. 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 ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks. [301]
• Seven new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Betawi (w:bew:) [302]
  • a Wikipedia in Kusaal (w:kus:) [303]
  • a Wikipedia in Igala (w:igl:) [304]
  • a Wiktionary in Karakalpak (wikt:kaa:) [305]
  • a Wikisource in Burmese (s:my:) [306]
  • a Wikisource in Malay (s:ms:) [307]
  • a Wikisource in Georgian (s:ka:) [308]
• You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups. [309]
• 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 mapstyle="osm". This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed. [310]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar). [311][312]

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

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

Tech News: 2024-19

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

Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.

• 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 ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [313][314]
• Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the SiteAdminHelper. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [315]
• 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. [316]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [317][318]
• 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". [319]

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. [320]

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MediaWiki message delivery 16:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)