This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Thanks
... for adding coordinates to so many Chicago-related (and, I assume, others) articles recently. Saw your username in my watchlist a lot and just wanted to say your work does not go unnoticed. Thanks again, and happy editing! ---Another Believer(Talk) 20:16, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
When you edit a template with the visual editor it follows the template's format configuration on how to save it. You can now change the format in more powerful ways if your wiki wants it. [1][2]
The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It has been a beta feature for the last five months. You can now try out the new interface on a page where you will actually get simulated edit conflicts. You can give feedback to the developers.
Problems
There is a problem with recent changes pages and your watchlist that show a large number of pages. Until it is fixed, Wikidata edits will not be shown on recent changes or in your watchlist on Commons or Russian Wikipedia. If necessary, Wikidata edits will be removed from all wikis. [3]
Notifications are not working for some actions. For example some users don't get a notification when they are mentioned. The developers are working on fixing this. [4]
Users on some wikis could not change their preferences. This has now been fixed. [5]
Changes later this week
Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia from 17 October. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP. [6]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can use ccnorm_contains_any when you create an abuse filter. This can be used to look for multiple words or phrases within a string. It will find words where some characters have been replaced. You can read more in the documentation. [7]
Changes later this week
When you search in some languages the search function could use specific other languages if the first language didn't work. This is called a fallback language. This didn't work properly and created bad searches. The search index is being fixed to work better. [8]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now block users from emailing you through the Wikimedia wikis. [10]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
For some reason, I was under the impression that User:DataflowBot is using mw:ORES predictions (maybe article quality?). Is that the case? I can't find any reference to ORES in the docs. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:51, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, but now I see Berkeley and Silicon Valley are there too! Huntington Beach could be added (possibly Huntington pure and simple?), and there are probably some Valley towns that don't have corresponding names elsewhere in the US. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:35, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
@Yngvadottir: I have removed Berkeley and Silicon Valley and added Huntington Beach. Feel free to update the rules, replacing a space in a city name with \s. After saving the rules page, access the rules test page to verify that there are no errors. --Bamyers99 (talk) 17:40, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You will no longer see the patrol log on Special:Log unless you specifically select it. [11]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The diff you see when you compare two different versions of a page has changed on MediaWiki.org and the test wiki. This is to make it easier to find a text change in a moved paragraph. It will hopefully soon come to more wikis. You can report bugs in Phabricator. [14]
A new user group on Commons will be able to upload MP3 files. The plan is to have this user group from 17 November. [15]
Wikis using Flagged Revisions will get the New filters for Edit Review by default on the recent changes pages. It will be possible to opt-out in user preferences. [16]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 November. It will be on all wikis from 16 November (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Support for uploading and viewing 3D models is coming soon to Wikimedia Commons. The feature will support the .STL file format. You can see an example on the test wiki. [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
If you use the Chrome web browser on Android you can see a download icon on the mobile website. You can download a formatted PDF. It will work in other mobile browsers in the future. [18]
The abuse filter now has a function called get_matches. You can use it to store matches from regular expressions – one of each capturing group. You can read more in Phabricator.
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki version didn't come to all Wikipedias because of a database crash. It will be on all wikis on 20 November. [19][20][21]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Language converter syntax will no longer work inside external links. Wikitext like http://-{zh-cn:foo.com; zh-hk:bar.com; zh-tw:baz.com}- must be replaced. You will have to write -{zh-cn: http://foo.com ; zh-hk: http://bar.com ; zh-tw:http://baz.com }- instead. This only affects languages with Language Converter enabled. Examples of such languages are Chinese and Serbian. This will happen next week. [22][23]
I don't know what you did here, or what impact it will have, but it's valued. Thanks for your efforts! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:28, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
@Nedim Ardoğa: The article was moved from the Draft namespace here. All articles moved from the Draft namespace are considered new articles. The program isn't sophisticated enough to know that the article was renamed by moving it to the Draft namespace and back. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:35, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now test the new advanced search function beta feature on mediawiki.org. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It will come to German and Arabic Wikipedia this week. It will come to more wikis later. [24]
You can now upload large files with the Internet Archive upload tool. Previously you could not upload files larger than 100 MB. [25]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Assessing myself one idiocy point. I'm trying to clear out polluted categories. No idea why I thought this was a page in userspace.Naraht (talk) 14:26, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
And then...
Hi. I wanted to practice inflation temp so I've been fixing errors from the monthly error report. Do I report them as fixed somewhere, or is it updated automatically? 50.64.119.38 (talk) 15:11, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
The report is updated around the beginning of the month. --Bamyers99 (talk) 15:17, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
Hello, Bamyers99. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can now use live updates for recent changes if you use the new filters. This feature updates the filtered recent changes every three seconds when you activate it. [28]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 December. It will be on all wikis from 7 December (calendar).
Very old versions of the Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems. [30]
Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [31][32]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
The Community Liaisons team at the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for active tech ambassadors. This is to make sure the Wikimedia communities get all the information they need about new features and can be involved in the technical development. [33]
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Ariano Suassuna Trophy, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Penalty (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 19:59, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
A new tag marks edits where a redirect was created or removed. This still works when the editor writes something else in the edit summary. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. [35]
If you use Chrome on Android, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article. [36]
Filter by number of edits or filter by time range have been grouped on a same menu on the recent changes page if you use the new filters. The "View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent. [37]
Some of the web fonts that were provided by the Universal Language Selector extension are being removed. This is to reduce the load time on pages. The web fonts were added many years ago to help users read text in scripts which did not have fonts or had broken fonts. This is not the case any more. You can check the status page for a list of all web fonts and whether they are currently being used and especially for special requirements. [38]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2018.
Problems
When you import a page from another wiki the usernames of the users who edited the article on the wiki you imported it from are shown in the article history. This should link to the users on the original wiki. A script to fix this caused problems for Wikidata and German Wikipedia. It also created a large number of SUL accounts on wikis where editors had never edited. [39]
Some bot owners got email about their bots logging in from a new computer. If this is from one or a couple of wikis, you can turn these messages off in your preferences on those wikis until the problem has been solved. If not, you can report more about the problem in Phabricator.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Files on Commons will have structured metadata in the future. The developers are now looking for examples of different kinds of metadata to make sure they are aware of them when they build prototypes for structured data on Commons. You can read more and help by giving examples of interesting media files.
The Structured Commons team are making sure Commons work with structured data. If you regularly contribute to Commons and Wikidata you can answer a survey that helps the team prioritise the tools that are important for the Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey ends on 22 December. You can read more on Commons. You can also help the team decide on better names for "captions" and "descriptions". This ends on 3 January 2018.
Hi. I'm wondering if it would be reasonable to have InceptionBot also scan recent changes tagged with #mw-removed-redirect, so that it catches new pages that were previously redirects? --Paul_012 (talk) 07:55, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
@Paul 012: I have just added this to InceptionBot. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:12, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
New Page Reviewing
Hello, Bamyers99.
As one of Wikipedia's most experienced editors,
Would you please consider becoming a New Page Reviewer? Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; currently Wikipedia needs experienced users at this task. (After gaining the flag, patrolling is not mandatory. One can do it at their convenience). But kindly read the tutorial before making your decision. Thanks. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 22:17, 25 December 2017 (UTC)
I recently sent you an invitation to join NPP, but you also might be the right candidate for another related project, AfC, which is also extremely backlogged. Would you please consider becoming an Articles for Creation reviewer? Articles for Creation reviewers help new users learn the ropes of creating their first articles, and identify whether topics are suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia. Reviewing drafts doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia inclusion policies and guidelines; currently Wikipedia needs experienced users at this task. (After requesting to be added to the project, reviewing is not mandatory. One can do it at their convenience). But kindly read the reviewing instructions before making your decision. Thanks. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 01:38, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Generating list of lowest quality high-popularity articles in Thai Wikipedia
Hello, currently Thai Wikipedia is having a discussion about redesigning local Community Portal.
And I think the list of lowest quality high-popularity could be of great use.
With my limited programming skills, I would like to ask for some suggestions and the possibility of adapting DataflowBot for Thai Wikipedia. Thank you --Pilarbini (talk) 09:10, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
@Pilarbini: I don't think it would be worth the effort required. 1) Only 121,000 articles in wiki. 2) Non-latin character-set language. 3) Don't know if ORES would work to calculate lowest quality. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:23, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
At least that's good to know. Thanks --Pilarbini (talk) 16:29, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
2) I have updated the template parser to handle the ((math)) use case.
3) ">50 different values" subdivision would require to much programming work. A regular expression to validate a field can be added to the User:Bamyers99/TemplateParametersTool configuration page. Let me know if you would like any set up. --Bamyers99 (talk) 20:30, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
About the (2) case (pipe in regular wikilink): it shows a hit (false positive) when there is a linebreak in the input value (source). See [40]. -DePiep (talk) 17:02, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
@DePiep: Thanks, that bug got introduced while fixing the other bug. It is fixed for next months run. --Bamyers99 (talk) 18:16, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
Great. Thx for taking care. -DePiep (talk) 18:43, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
On Wikidata, the "save" button when you edit is now called "publish". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "Save page" to "Publish changes". This is to help new editors understand what it does. [41][42]
Some edits will get an automatic tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways. [43]
Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki. [44]
Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation has been updated. [45][46]
Problems
Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem. [47]
With the new filters in the recent changes, "Exclude selected" in "Namespaces" did not work for "Saved filters" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again. [48]
The latest version of Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see #R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9 instead of #Résumé even if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March). [49]
Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed. [50]
Changes later this week
Wikidata will be moved to its own database servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis. [51]
The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems. [52][53]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).
WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one: ext.wikiEditor. All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed. [54]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
If it is not difficult, would you mind refreshing the page here? (Or tell me how I can do it myself.) Two of us have worked through many, if not all, of the errors indicated at that page intending to fix them. I suspect the next regular update is in 2.5 weeks, but that is a long time to wait. My tools to effect repairs are fresh in mind.
@EncMstr: The parameter report is generated from a monthly database dump file. The dump file won't get created by WikiMedia staff until on/after February 1. --Bamyers99 (talk) 20:39, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Ah, that makes sense. Okay, I'll try to exercise some patience. :-) —EncMstr (talk) 20:42, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed. [55]
There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development. [56]
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited. [57][58]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [59][60]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Filters on Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features. [61][62]
Problems
With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed. [63]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
irc.wikimedia.org will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically. [64]