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Tech News: 2022-33[edit]

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 Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia community decided to block IP editing from October 2021 to April 2022. The Wikimedia Foundation's Product Analytics team tracked the impact of this change. An impact report is now available.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 August. It will be on all wikis from 18 August (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 16 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 18 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 1. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.

Future changes

The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout August. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes. [1][2][3]

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

21:07, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-34[edit]

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

Two problems with Kartographer maps have been fixed. Maps are no longer shown as empty when a geoline was created via VisualEditor. Geolines consisting of points with QIDs (e.g., subway lines) are no longer shown with pushpins. [4][5]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
The colours of links and visited links will change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. [6]

Future changes

The new [subscribe] button helps newcomers get answers. The Editing team is enabling this tool everywhere. You can turn it off in your preferences. [7]

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

00:10, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Feedback on Vector (2022) conversation[edit]

Hello! As a member of WikiProject Usability, I wanted to draw your attention to a conversation currently underway on WP:VPR (see the beginning of the discussion) around adopting Vector 2022 as the new default skin.

The Web team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been working on Vector 2022 for the past three years, collaborating with the English Wikipedia community as well as other wikis to ensure that the skin performs better qualitatively and quantitatively for readers and communities than the previous Vector skin. The goal of the new skin is to create a more welcoming and easier to use experience for readers and editors across the wiki. For more details, see our new FAQ.

For the past couple of months, we have collected thoughts from the English Wikipedia community on what changes need to be made to the skin prior to it being considered ready for deployment. Our next step would be to start an RfC to assess whether the community considers Vedtor 2022 ready.

Prior to the beginning of the RfC, we wanted to draw your attention to the current conversation and encourage your feedback on the skin.

Our results from Vector 2022 at a glance

The sticky header makes it easier to access tools that editors use often. It decreases scrolling to the top of the page by 16%
The new table of contents makes it easier to navigate to different sections. Readers and editors jumped between sections 50% more than with the old table of contents
The new search bar is easier to find and makes it easier to find the correct search result from the list. This increased the amount of searches started by 30% on the wikis we tested on
The collapsible sidebar allows readers and editors to choose whether they want to see the main menu or not. Our testing shows that this allows people to better focus on their current task - reading with a collapsed menu, or editing with an open menu
The language switching menu makes it possible to switch languages without scrolling
The user menu collects all user links in a single place, making it easier to understand what each link does. In testing, 71% of surveyed editors reported positive experiences with the new menu

Thank you, OVasileva (WMF), SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 12:27, 25 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Editing news 2022 #2[edit]

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Circular redirect[edit]

I just changed about 20 hatnotes in List of lakes of the United States (in this case using ((main list))) where the target was the same article. This would probably be a good error to flag, if reasonable to do so. I have no idea how feasible this is, so just passing this along for you to consider. MB 15:33, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That … would be fairly impractical to flag, plus redirect-target-checking operations are expensive. My judgement is that that's not worth the effort and cost to implement in the various modules. I'd start by looking/asking around if there's a database report or similar on circular redirects … perhaps starting at Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia? ((Nihiltres |talk |edits)) 16:10, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thought that it might be easy, like wherever you do the redlink check, just adding there if not redlink, then is the target same as this page? But I am probably over-simplifying.

I did look at WikiProject Check Wikipedia, but that is all focused on scanning the source code. It does find circular redirects that exist up as wikilinks in the source code. But these are not links in the code, they are template parameters. I guess I could make a bot request for someone to write a bot that scanned hatnotes for the article name used as a parameter, but even that would miss cases where there is an intermediate redirect involved. Since don't have any evidence this is a big problem, I'll just drop this. MB 00:46, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-35[edit]

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 Realtime Preview is available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 2. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals. Please note that when this Beta feature is enabled, it may cause conflicts with some wiki-specific Gadgets.

Problems

In recent months, there have been inaccurate numbers shown for various Special:Statistics at Commons, Wikidata, and English Wikipedia. This has now been fixed. [8]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

The Wikimedia Foundation wants to improve how Wikimedia communities report harmful incidents by building the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) to make it easy and safe for users to make reports. You can leave comments on the talk page, by answering the questions provided. If you have ever faced a harmful situation that you wanted to report/reported, join a PIRS interview to share your experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

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

23:03, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).

Administrator changes

DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720

Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Guideline and policy news

A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news

The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

Arbitration

An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Causes of redlink hatnotes[edit]

I think there are two main causes of these:

1. Sports editors who add

because they think that there should be an article on almost every aspect of anything sports related, but never actually write them.

2. Deleted articles. I have seen new additions to the category after deletions where the Admin ran Twinkle Unlink which removes wikilinks to deleted articles but doesn't do anything with links in hatnotes. There is probably not much we can do to prevent #1, but I have asked at Twinkle, if you have any comments to add there. MB 19:00, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-36[edit]

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 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 6 September at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 8 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of #p-namespaces should be updated to use the mw.util.addPortletLink function instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting #p-associated-pages, the new id for this row. Examples are available. [9][10]

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

23:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

other uses[edit]

OK, Boustan is throwing an error with the first:

I would normally change this to the second, even though the title is not an exact match, it should be obvious. What is "correct"? MB 15:15, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Hatnote templates using unusual parameters has a testcase. Can you prevent that so the category can be empty when all articles are fixed? Thanks. MB 15:20, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The second is correct, and I'll work on removing the testcases page in a moment. The template will output the category Category:Hatnote templates using unusual parameters if parameter 1 is case-insensitively equal to the page title (strictly, prefixed title) and there are at most 2 parameters. That catches cases that should use ((other uses)) instead of ((other uses of)), because if the "use" is the title, then it's redundant (even if the disambiguation title is slightly different). I made a mistake normalizing that one to the first version, so I just fixed it to the second. Oh, and for the record, I've been to Boustan, and their food is tasty! :) ((Nihiltres |talk |edits)) 15:26, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

About/For[edit]

Hallo, in this edit you replaced ((About)) with ((For)), saying "Simplified hatnote syntax"; I always use "About" because it is then easier to expand the hatnote if a second alternative link becomes necessary - "For" is less flexible and can't take a second argument. So I'm not sure that it's an improvement to "simplify" like this. PamD 06:45, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it to be an improvement and a simplification because using ((about)) with an empty first parameter makes understanding the wikitext require understanding how ((about)) works, whereas using ((for)) or ((for multi)) is more self-explanatory. Those who want to expand hatnotes can simply change ((for)) or ((for multi)) into ((for multi)) or ((about)) with little to no change in parameter syntax (and the ones I'm changing to ((for)) are ones with no change in syntax). Replacing instances of ((about)) with ((for)) or ((for multi)) also accomplishes a maintenance goal of having a slightly more strictly-defined use-case for each hatnote. ((Nihiltres |talk |edits)) 15:46, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: August 2022[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XII, Issue VIII, August 2022
Headlines
Albania report: Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Campaign in Albania and Kosovo in 2022 Australia report: Introducing Wikidata to the City of Sydney Brazil report: In-person and online activities hosted by Brazil during Wikimania 2022 Estonia report: Summer in WMEE - from collecting professors´ portraits to new potential co-operations Germany report: Coins and paintings by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation Indonesia report: 4 Islands Outreach; Digital Clippings; Balinese Wikisource Competition Italy report: Italian institutions ever closer to Wiki Loves Monuments Kosovo report: Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Campaign and Wikivoyage Netherlands report: West Africa in the Van der Kraaij Photo Collection 1972-1987 New Zealand report: A Wikipedian at Large Poland report: The summary of GLAM editing contest and the end of residency at the National Museum in Cracow; Cooperation with Wawel Royal Castle; Hack(art)hon for Zachęta Portugal report: Linking Portuguese culture to Wikidata Serbia report: Contemporary Art Edit-a-thon and Wikipedian in residence at the Historical Archive of Negotin Sweden report: 100 000 Bildminnen; Uniforms, images from New Sweden, colonial officers, the map book of Fryderyk Getkant, and more!; Swedish general election 2022 UK report: Culturally diversifying Wikipedia Uruguay report: Wikimuseos & editing clubs in Uruguay USA report: Wikimania, Meetups and More AvoinGLAM report: Crisis & GLAM Content Partnerships Hub report: Tools; Helpdesk; IGO/INGO Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: New tool in development utilizing Structured Data WMF GLAM report: Capacity building for Bophana Center Calendar: September's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 15:54, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-37[edit]

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 search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [11]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).
Syntax highlighting is now tracked as an expensive parser function. Only 500 expensive function calls can be used on a single page. Pages that exceed the limit are added to a tracking category. [12]

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

01:48, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Feedback on proposed talk page design changes[edit]

hi @Nihiltres – I wonder: would you be open to having a look at the design changes the Foundation's Editing Team planning to introduce for talk pages and sharing what thoughts/ideas/questions/concerns/etc. they bring to mind?

Here are some links to two prototypes if you end up having the time to look at them:

And for some added context:

The changes you see in the links above are intended to make it easier for: 1) people who are new to recognize and use talk pages as places to communicate with other volunteers and 2) people who are more experienced to understand the activity happening on a given talk page. More context.
I'm Peter. I work as the product manager for the Editing Team. I'm reaching to you in response to @Pelagic making – what I thought was, – the wise suggestion of reaching out to interface admins for feedback considering the unique perspective and expertise they've developed on how pages are laid out and presented to people.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

User:OldTimerBillySlater[edit]

Hello, Nihiltres,

I saw you decline the speedy deletion tag on this User page. That's interesting to me because this year there have been massive deletions of User pages that had, what I consider, little biographical content. We're talking about thousands of old User pages deleted. Recently, I've seen User pages tagged for deletion that just contained the name of the editor and where they lived. Somehow this was considered "promotional"!

Maybe one day there should be a longer discussion on what a User page should be allowed to contain before it's considered a "webhost", a discussion involving both members of the New Page Patrol along with admins who regularly check out the Speedy Deletion categories. I think most of them would have deleted that User page without a second thought. Any way, I hope you have a good weekend! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:40, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

U5 is … an interesting criterion. I take the position that some user page self-description is reasonable content that we'd expect for a user page, rather than being "not closely related to Wikipedia's goals" as in the U5 wording. A strict reading of U5 risks biting newbies by making their "few or no edits" something that will get their user page deleted (discouraging them from editing further!) when the content is otherwise what we'd expect a user page to contain. If we really meant for newbies to not have user pages at all, then we'd just restrict user page creation to autoconfirmed or similar. OldTimerBillySlater's page is a prime example of user pages being relevant because it explains how they have past experience with Wikipedia as an IP editor, which is useful information for anyone encountering them and thus in my view somewhat "related to Wikipedia's goals" enough to justify declining (plus maybe they get some credit on the "few or no edits" front, but I hope that that is not relevant).

I'd definitely agree with a review of this criterion—certainly I think others apply it too liberally, especially with regards to its bitey potential. Perhaps I'm just being persnickety about the speedy criteria, but if the alternative is being bitey, it's probably worth it.

Please have a lovely weekend yourself. :) ((Nihiltres |talk |edits)) 23:50, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-38[edit]

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

Two database fields in the templatelinks table are now being dropped: tl_namespace and tl_title. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field called tl_target_id. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [13][14]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [15][16]

Future changes

In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:14, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Contesting Speedy Deletion: Raffiey Nasir[edit]

Dear Nihiltres,

You have nominated a page created by me for speedy deletion. The page was in order, with references to almost all of the biography info in it - the ones that matter, at least. May I ask why you nominated it for speedy deletion? I see the reason you have given was "unambiguous advertising or promotion". Can you please elaborate on that?

Kind regards, ResearchedEditor100 ResearchedEditor100 (talk) 21:22, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I did not nominate it for deletion; I carried out the deletion. As the deletion log shows, I deleted it under speedy deletion criterion G11, which qualifies unambiguous advertising or promotion for deletion. I agreed with Edwardx's nomination of the article on those grounds; that's about it. I'm satisfied that the deletion was in order, but if you feel otherwise, please feel free to bring the issue to deletion review. ((Nihiltres |talk |edits)) 23:30, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, you could have another attempt as Draft:Raffiey Nasir, and then submit it for consideration at Wikipedia:Articles for creation. Edwardx (talk) 00:32, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

== Deletion review for Raffiey Nasir ==

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Raffiey Nasir. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. ResearchedEditor100 (talk) 14:03, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

deleting redirects from draftspace[edit]

17:02, 25 September 2022 Nihiltres talk contribs deleted page Draft:The Upstairs Downstairs Bears (G6: redirect from draftspace)

Why did you delete this redirect? I understand that consensus was that trailing redirects from draftspace to mainspace should not be deleted. They provide important pointers for people looking for the draft. The redirect discourages forking by someone starting the draft again. Can you please undelete the redirect? -- SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:52, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It was moved to draft essentially at Mondernponderer's request at DRV, was there for barely five hours before being moving back to mainspace, and then the redirect was tagged for deletion by Modernponderer. Nobody else is going to be "looking for the draft" there. It was, at the very worst, a mislabeled G7. —Cryptic 14:16, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

User:Cryptic, I am happy to call it a "mislabelled G7", but would like User:Nihiltres to know that "G6: redirect from draftspace" is not a proper deletion rationale. Draftspace to mainspace redirects are often helpful to various people, especially authors and their offline bookmarks and memories. Even if this is a trivial case, it should not be routine to delete them. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:40, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-39[edit]

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

Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the rel attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 September. It will be on all wikis from 29 September (calendar).
Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [17]
Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [18] [19]
In the Module namespace, pages ending with .json will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [20]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:28, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Draft:The Upstairs Downstairs Bears[edit]

Why did you delete this draft? It was a redirect to The Upstairs Downstairs Bears after the draft was moved to article space. Redirects from draft space to article space are kept, except under unusual circumstances. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:59, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I missed that draft-to-mainspace redirects are typically kept, so I've made a few such G6 deletions in error, but won't be making any more. I'll undelete this example. ((Nihiltres |talk |edits)) 14:59, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).

Administrator changes

ScottishFinnishRadish

Staxringold

Ahoerstemeier (deceased) • Ched

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678

CheckUser changes

GorillaWarfare

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, consensus was found that if the rationale for a block depends on information that is not available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee, a checkuser or an oversighter for action (as applicable, per ArbCom's recent updated guidance) instead of the administrator making the block.
Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
Community comment on the revised Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines is requested until 8 October.

Technical news

The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.

Arbitration

Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
A modification to the deletion RfC remedy in the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been made to reaffirm the independence of the RfC and allow the moderators to split the RfC in two.
The second phase of the 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review closes 3 October.

Miscellaneous

An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections open 2 October and close 8 October.
You are invited to comment on candidates in the 2022 CUOS appointments process.
An RfC is open to discuss whether to make Vector 2022 the default skin on desktop.
Tech tip: You can do a fuzzy search of all deleted page titles at Special:Undelete.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:43, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-40[edit]

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

Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [21] [22]
The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [23] [24]
The scribunto-console API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5]
The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:22, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: September 2022[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XII, Issue IX, September 2022
Headlines
Albania report: Wiki Loves EuroPride in Albania Australia report: Behind the scenes with Australia's Wiki Loves Earth 2022 winner Austria report: A Börthday present for Wikidata - the DACH Culture Contest Brazil report: Reopening of Museu Paulista and other news France report: Meeting with Prime minister cultural adviser; Residence at the Brittany Museum India report: Digitisation of O Bharat, a bilingual biweekly published in Goa from 1912 to 1949 Indonesia report: GLAM Socialization; Wikistories for GLAM Competition Italy report: September month of results and planning Netherlands report: Wiki Loves Monuments Suriname first edition: 554 photos New Zealand report: New Zealand Thesis Project and Te Papa Forget-me-nots Poland report: The results of GLAM editing contest; GLAM Coordinators Meeting Serbia report: External projects, great results and high level of independence Sweden report: Bookfair back on site; Cultural history in High Schools; More identifiers from National Historical Museums of Sweden on Wikidata; Swedish general election 2022 Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programm UK report: Islamic art and global art USA report: Advocacy and Invention; New Smithsonian WiR; Called to Create; DC Statehood and Home Rule; Annual meeting; Wikipedian in Residence Opportunity at the Pérez Art Museum Miami Content Partnerships Hub report: Workshops on tool prioritization and helpdesk Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: View it! tool development update Calendar: October's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 22:52, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-41[edit]

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 11 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [25][26]

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

14:07, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-42[edit]

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 recently implemented feature of article thumbnails in Special:Search will be limited to Wikipedia projects only. Further details are in T320510. [27]
A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
Lua module authors can use mw.loadJsonData() to load data from JSON pages. [28]
Lua module authors can enable require( "strict" ) to add errors for some possible code problems. This replaces "Module:No globals" on most wikis. [29]

Future changes

The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated at most wikis. The "reply" button will look different after this change. [30]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:44, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Assistance[edit]

Hello, I have been noticing disruptive edits to a page I maintain from the same user. This page is Jin Boyang. I have reverted their edits before, and I am not sure they are following the editing protocol properly. I have put my concerns on their talk page, as well as the talk page of the article I mentioned, I hope you can read them.

Could you provide me with any assistance? I saw conduct disputes can be resolved by admins online if we wish to "skip all the drama" which is how I got to your page. Editor120918756 (talk) 04:34, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Horse Eye's Back has gotten back to you on the talk page. While they could be significantly friendlier, they are technically right to demand reliable sources for your edits, including removing unsourced content; the biographies of living persons policy is clear. Administrator intervention doesn't seem necessary at this time; please continue to engage with them on the talk page for now. Should either you or they escalate the conflict in some way, please feel free to ping me there. ((Nihiltres |talk |edits)) 16:13, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, will do. :) Editor120918756 (talk) 16:23, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-43[edit]

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 have been some minor visual fixes in Special:Search, regarding audio player alignment and image placeholder height. Further details are in T319230.
On Wikipedias, a new preference has been added to hide article thumbnails in Special:Search. Full details are in T320337.

Problems

Last week, three wikis (French Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia) had read-only access for 25 minutes. This was caused by a hardware problem. [31]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 October. It will be on all wikis from 27 October (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 October at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 27 October at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Assamese Wikipedia, Bashkir Wikipedia, Balinese Wikipedia, Bavarian Wikipedia, Samogitian Wikipedia, Bikol Central Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Bhojpuri Wikipedia, Bislama Wikipedia, Banjar Wikipedia, Bambara Wikipedia, Bishnupriya Wikipedia, Breton Wikipedia, Bosnian Wikipedia, Buginese Wikipedia, Buryat Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [32]
Starting on Wednesday October 26, 2022, the list of mentors will be upgraded at wikis where Growth mentorship is available. The mentorship system will continue to work as it does now. The signup process will be replaced, and a new management option will be provided. Also, this change simplifies the creation of mentorship systems at Wikipedias. [33][34][35]
Pages with titles that start with a lower-case letter according to Unicode 11 will be renamed or deleted. There is a list of affected pages at m:Unicode 11 case map migration. More information can be found at T292552.
The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikipedias. Learn more.

Future changes

The Reply tool and New Topic tool will soon get a special characters menu. [36]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:21, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-44[edit]

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 using keyboard navigation on a Kartographer map, the focus will become more visible. [37]
In Special:RecentChanges, you can now hide the log entries for new user creations with the filter for "⧼rcfilters-filter-newuserlogactions-label⧽". [38]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 November. It will be on all wikis from 3 November (calendar).
The maps dialog in VisualEditor now has some help texts. [39]
It is now possible to select the language of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor via a dropdown menu. [40]
It is now possible to add a caption to a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [41]
It is now possible to hide the frame of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [42]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:13, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).

Administrator changes

- Isabelle Belato
- Whpq

Interface administrator changes

CheckUser changes

Oversight changes

Guideline and policy news

The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.

Arbitration

Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has entered the proposed decision stage.
AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.

Miscellaneous

The 2022 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of two new CheckUsers.
You can add yourself to the centralised page listing time zones of administrators.
Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like ((rangeblock|create=yes)) or ((uw-ublock|contains profanity)).

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:23, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Redhat observation[edit]

Just passing this along. I have emptied most of the end of the alphabet (letter starting after R). I often is click on the link to go to the creation page which tells me whether the article had been deleted. If not, I usually search for the term to see if it covered somewhere and should maybe redirect there. Now that I am able to watch for some newly added articles in the cat, I can see that sometimes a working link is just changed to a redlink and the fix is to revert. Right now, I can only notice this in S-Z. I'm probably deleting "old" corrupted hatnotes because it would take forever to search the edit history to see if the hatnote ever "worked". The point of this is just to say this is turning out to be quite useful and will be more so when the cat is eventually empty.

One specific request concerns Three Sisters (Oregon) and The Vanishing Race which both have hatnotes that link to Files. Can you figure out some way to get them out of the category? Though unusual, they seem to be useful hatnotes. I guess I could change them to use ((hatnote)) unless you recommend something else. MB 00:45, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you![edit]

		The Guidance Barnstar
		For your excellent answers to questions on the Wikipedia subreddit. Admins who perform outreach outside of Wikipedia go above and beyond. Opencooper (talk) 04:53, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has a subreddit? (god, there's a subreddit for everything) Waylon111 (talk) 20:31, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-45[edit]

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 updated version of the Event Registration tool is now available for testing at testwiki and test2wiki. The tool provides features for event organizers and participants. Your feedback is welcome at our project talkpage. More information about the project is available. [43]

Problems

Twice last week, for about 45 minutes, some files and thumbnails failed to load and uploads failed, mostly for logged-in users. The cause is being investigated and an incident report will be available soon.

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 00:30, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: October 2022[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XII, Issue X, October 2022
Headlines
Albania report: Wikimedian in Residence in Albania Australia report: Celebrating Wikidata, and over 400 new Wikipedia pages Brazil report: WLM Brazil, HR & Environment Wikicontest, and GLAM with Atlantic Forest National Institut Estonia report: Chuvash people in WMEE and Photo contest Indonesia report: GLAM Talk; Javanese Wikisource Workshop Italy report: Touring Club Italiano: updates and uploads Netherlands report: About the Dutch Wiki Loves Fashion 2022 New Zealand report: TDWG2022 and Molluscs Poland report: Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 selection process in progress; GLAM online meeting on evaluation of ten editions Wiki Loves Monuments in Poland Serbia report: GLAMorous October; Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade; CEE Meeting Sweden report: Women and architechture Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Program UK report: Khalili Foundation USA report: Asian American Edit-a-thons and More Content Partnerships Hub report: First batch upload; list of tools Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: View it! tool: now with Commons category search! WMF GLAM report: AfLIA Wikisource webinar, Wiki Rescues Manuscripts & European GLAMwiki Coordinators meeting Calendar: November's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 17:12, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of noticeboard discussion[edit]

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.Tasleem Shah Junejo (talk) 16:15, 13 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-46[edit]

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

At Wikidata, an interwiki link can now point to a redirect page if certain conditions are met. This new feature is called sitelinks to redirects. It is needed when one wiki uses one page to cover multiple concepts but another wiki uses more pages to cover the same concepts. Your feedback on the talkpage of the new proposed guideline is welcome. [44]
The www.wikinews.org, www.wikiversity.org, and www.wikivoyage.org portal pages now use an automated update system. [45]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 November. It will be on all wikis from 17 November (calendar).
There will be a new link to directly "Edit template data" on Template pages. [46]

Future changes

Wikis where mobile DiscussionTools are enabled (these ones) will soon use full CSS styling to display any templates that are placed at the top of talk pages. To adapt these “talk page boxes” for narrow mobile devices you can use media queries, such as in this example. [47]
Starting in January 2023, Community Tech will be running the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) every two years. This means that in 2024, there will be no new proposals or voting.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:53, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Page move redhats[edit]

This redhat occurred after Alison White was moved to Alison White (cricketer). The mover should have noticed and fixed this, but this is not the first one I have seen and there are still almost 8K in Category:Articles with hatnote templates targeting a nonexistent page. If your redhat check looked for things with double disambiguation and put them in a separate subcat - I could probably fix them in bulk with a AWB run. Just an idea to consider. MB 20:46, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-47[edit]

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 display of non-free media in the search bar and for article thumbnails in Special:Search has been deactivated. Further details are in T320661.

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 22 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 24 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-48[edit]

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

A new preference, “Enable limited width mode”, has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also available as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. It allows for increasing the width of the page for logged-out and logged-in users. [48]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 29 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 December at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Mathematical formulas shown in SVG image format will no longer have PNG fall-backs for browsers that don't support them. This is part of work to modernise the generation system. Showing only PNG versions was the default option until in February 2018. [49][50][51]
On some wikis that use flagged revisions, a new checkbox will be added to Special:Contributions that enables you to see only the pending changes by a user. [52]

Future changes

How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change early next week at group1 wikis (but not Wikimedia Commons or Meta-Wiki). This change improves the accessibility of content, and makes it easier to write related CSS. 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. [53]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:01, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed 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.

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add ((NoACEMM)) to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:27, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).

Administrator changes

Interface administrator changes

TheresNoTime

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
The article creation at scale RfC has been closed.
An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.

Technical news

A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)

Arbitration

Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
The proposed decision for the 2021-22 review of the discretionary sanctions system is open.
The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has been closed.
The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.

Miscellaneous

Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:44, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-49[edit]

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 Wikisources use a tool called ProofreadPage. ProofreadPage uses OpenSeadragon which is an open source tool. The OpenSeadragon JavaScript API has been significantly re-written to support dynamically loading images. The functionality provided by the older version of the API should still work but it is no longer supported. User scripts and gadgets should migrate over to the newer version of the API. The functionality provided by the newer version of the API is documented on MediaWiki. [54][55]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:39, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: November 2022[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XII, Issue XI, November 2022
Headlines
Africa report: Wiki Loves Africa 2022 Winners & 2022 ISA Drive Albania report: An event at the National History Museum in Tirana Brazil report: WLM tool, Wiki Takes, New WMB's Strategy, and 2 new GLAMs India report: Two Open Culture films on India's Odia language, made with volunteer labour Indonesia report: Open GLAM Conference; Sundanese Wikisource Workshop; Minangkabau books digitization Italy report: Video and photo to share the beauty of Italy's heritage Netherlands report: Linking heritage data at HackaLOD New Zealand report: Integrating with the BHL, loading natural science specimens and data Poland report: How Wiki helps to explore and enjoy art & culture; Wiki workshop for the National Museum in Krakow; GLAM online meeting on ideas for 2023; Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 Serbia report: Wikipedian in residence at Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and National Museum of Zrenjanin Sweden report: Wikipedian in Residence at Musikverket; Women and architecture; Gymnasiearbete; New uploads from the Swedish National Archives; WLM winners; Images of Äpplet Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Program UK report: Khalili Foundation Uruguay report: Let's GLAM Together in Uruguay: Help us organize the GLAM Wiki Conference 2023 USA report: WikiConference North America 2022; Punk Wikipedia Edit-a-thon; Kensho Technologies Impact-a-thon Special story: We need your opinion: GLAM Wiki Conference 2023 & Your Favorite Tools Content Partnerships Hub report: Survey: your favorite tools Calendar: December's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 04:14, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-50[edit]

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 A/B test has begun at 15 Wikipedias for DiscussionTools on mobile. Half of the editors on the mobile web site will have access to the Reply tool and other features. [56]
The character = cannot be used in new usernames, to make usernames work better with templates. Existing usernames are not affected. [57]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).
The HTML markup used by DiscussionTools to show discussion metadata below section headings will be inserted after these headings, not inside of them. This change improves the accessibility of discussion pages for screen reader software. [58]

Events

The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award will happen online on Friday 16 December 2022 at 17:00 UTC! The event will be live-streamed on YouTube in the MediaWiki channel and added to Commons afterwards.

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, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-51[edit]

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 9 January 2023.

Recent changes

On a user's contributions page, you can filter it for edits with a tag like 'reverted'. Now, you can also filter for all edits that are not tagged like that. This was part of a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [59]
A new function has been used for gadget developers to add content underneath the title on article pages. This is considered a stable API that should work across all skins. Documentation is available. [60]
One of our test wikis is now being served from a new infrastructure powered by Kubernetes (read more). More Wikis will switch to this new infrastructure in early 2023. Please test and let us know of any issues. [61]

Problems

Last week, all wikis had no edit access for 9 minutes. This was caused by a database problem. [62]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
The word "Reply" is very short in some languages, such as Arabic ("ردّ"). This makes the Discussion tools button on talk pages difficult to use. An arrow icon will be added to those languages. This will only be visible to editors who have the Beta Feature turned on. [63] [64]

Future changes

Edits can be automatically "tagged" by the system software or the Edit filter configuration system. Those tags link to a help page about the tags. Soon they will also link to Recent Changes to let you see other edits tagged this way. This was a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [65]
The Trust & Safety tools team have shared new plans for building the Private Incident Reporting System. The system will make it easier for editors to ask for help if they are harassed or abused.
Realtime Preview for Wikitext is coming out of beta as an enabled feature for every user of the 2010 Wikitext editor in the week of January 9, 2023. It will be available to use via the toolbar in the 2010 Wikitext editor. The feature was the 4th most popular wish of the Community Wishlist Survey 2021.

Events

You can now register for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023, taking place on May 19–21 in Athens, Greece. You can also apply for a scholarship until January 14th.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:58, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your intadmin flag[edit]

Hello Nihiltres, as you have been inactive in interface admin areas, this flag has been removed from your account per the intadmin policy. Should you require this again in the future, you may re-request at WP:BN. This removal has no affect on your +sysop access. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:42, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year, Nihiltres![edit]

Happy New Year!

Nihiltres,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Abishe (talk) 21:49, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Send New Year cheer by adding ((subst:Happy New Year fireworks)) to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 21:49, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year, Nihiltres![edit]

Happy New Year!

Nihiltres,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
— Moops ^⋠T⋡ 16:49, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Send New Year cheer by adding ((subst:Happy New Year fireworks)) to user talk pages.

— Moops ^⋠T⋡ 16:49, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Administrator changes

Stephen

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

CheckUser changes

Moneytrees

Oversighter changes

Guideline and policy news

Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.

Arbitration

Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, CaptainEek, GeneralNotability, Guerillero, L235, Moneytrees, Primefac, SilkTork.
The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.

Miscellaneous

Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-02[edit]

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. [66]
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. [67]
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. [68]
Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use matrix: to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [69]
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. [70]

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)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: December 2022[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XII, Issue XII, December 2022
Headlines
Argentina report: Ongoing projects with open culture Croatia report: A YEAR in REarVIEW! Denmark report: Edit-a-thon on contemporary Danish artists from the former Yugoslavia India report: CIS-A2K launches GLAM projects in Aurangabad, Maharashtra Indonesia report: Digitalization in Deli Serdang and Yogyakarta; #1Lib1Ref Workshop; Structured Data Marathon Italy report: Museo Egizio - collection import New Zealand report: The Great Macron War, Critter of the Week, and West Couast Wikisource Nigeria report: WikiLovesLibraries Nigeria:An initiative beyond 1Lib1Ref for Librarians in Nigeria Poland report: The first European GLAM Coordinators online meet-up; New articles on the collection of Wawel Royal Castle; Results of Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 Portugal report: Wikibase in social sciences and Public Domain Day celebrations Spain report: Wikidata Birthday and ongoing projects Sweden report: Musikverket; Media literacy graphics; Reports for project and to project partners Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programme: look back to 2022 Uganda report: GLAM in Uganda 2022 UK report: Khalili project year in review USA report: Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon: International Volunteer Day; ICP x Art + Feminism AvoinGLAM report: Introducing Wiki Loves Living Heritage Content Partnerships Hub report: Helpdesk; IGO/INGO Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: View it!: New FULL version is ready to launch WMF GLAM report: GLAM-Wiki Con 2023, DPLA's new Sloan Foundation funding, and more Calendar: January's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 12:17, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-03[edit]

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. [71]

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). [72]
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. [73]
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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-04[edit]

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. [74]

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. [75][76]
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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-05[edit]

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. [77]

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 00:03, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Administrator changes

Gimmetrow

CheckUser changes

Oversighter changes

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, the administrator policy now requires that prior written consent be gained from the Arbitration Committee to mark a block as only appealable to the committee.
Following a community discussion, consensus has been found to impose the extended-confirmed restriction over the topic areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan and Kurds and Kurdistan.

Technical news

The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

The arbitration case Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 24 February 2023.
In December, the contentious topics procedure was adopted which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period. There is a detailed summary of the changes and administrator instructions for the new procedure. The arbitration clerk team are taking suggestions, concerns, and unresolved questions about this new system at their noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:38, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-06[edit]

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. [78]

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. [79]
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. [80]
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)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: January 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue I, January 2023
Headlines
Albania report: Wikipedia Birthday in Tirana, Albania Belgium report: DESINGEL arts centre and Wikimedia platforms Brazil report: Open Midiateca: Licensing and analysis of collections of Midiateca Capixaba Colombia report: Let's celebrate public domain day 2023 Finland report: Photo walks for Wiki Loves Monuments and rephotography Indonesia report: Public Domain Day in Indonesia; #1Lib1Ref Campaign and Workshop Italy report: Wikimedia Italy's calls for free knowledge Netherlands report: Opening old books at Maastricht University Poland report: GLAM stepping into 2023; New “did you know” articles on the collection of Wawel Royal Castle Spain report: #1Lib1Ref Sweden report: Tekniska museet makes 3000 polar images available on Commons Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programme UK report: National Trust and cultural diversity USA report: Effie Kapsalis remembered; Mathematicians + Wikipedia; Wikipedia Day 2023; San Diego meetup Content Partnerships Hub report: Report of survey about Wikimedia content partnerships tools Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: View it! Editing Functionality: Final Update! Calendar: February's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 20:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-07[edit]

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. [81]

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. [82]

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. [83][84][85]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-08[edit]

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. [86]

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. [87][88][89]

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)[reply]

Editing news 2023 #1[edit]

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter

This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-09[edit]

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. [90][91]

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. [92]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Administrator changes

The Wordsmith

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.

Technical news

The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.

Arbitration

Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.

Miscellaneous

The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-10[edit]

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. [93]

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. [94]

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)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: February 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue II, February 2023
Headlines
Albania report: I Edit Wikipedia Online Campaign 2023 Belgium report: Public Domain Day Belgium 2023 Brazil report: GLAM-Wiki initiatives in Brazil spark academic investigation Croatia report: Activities during first two months of 2023 Indonesia report: Launching of Wikisource Loves Manuscripts; Bincang GLAM continues Italy report: New project and collaboration in February Kosovo report: I Edit Wikipedia Online Campaign 2023 New Zealand report: Wikidata and the Biodiversity Heritage Library, Wellington WikiCon 2023 and Auckland Museum local suburb project funding Poland report: The European GLAM Coordinators online meet-up; GLAM-Wiki workshop at the Wawel Royal Castle State Art Collection; Wikimedians-in-residence online meet up Sweden report: 100 000 Bildminnen; Report from The Association of Swedish Museums; Wikipedia for all of Sweden; ArkDes edit-a-thons UK report: In Memoriam Jo Pugh / Cultural Diversity USA report: Black History Month and More Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: Wiki Loves Living Heritage launches 17 March 1pm UTC WMF GLAM report: Gender, language, and living heritage events in collaboration with affiliates Calendar: March's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 06:19, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-11[edit]

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. [95][96]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-12[edit]

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. [97]

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. [98]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-13[edit]

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. [99]
Some Global AbuseFilter actions will no longer apply to local projects. [100]
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. [101]

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. [102]
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. [103]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-14[edit]

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. [104][105][106][107][108]

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. [109]
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. [110]
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. [111]
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. [112][113][114]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Administrator changes

Aoidh

KillerChihuahua

CheckUser changes

Ferret

Guideline and policy news

A community RfC is open to discuss whether reports primarily involving gender-related disputes or controversies should be referred to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

Technical news

Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis starting this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. (T178356)
The rollback of Vector 2022 RfC has found no consensus to rollback to Vector legacy, but has found rough consensus to disable "limited width" mode by default.
A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will now appear in the subtitle links shown on Special:Contributions. This was voted #17 in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023.

Arbitration

The Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case has been closed.
A case about World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been opened, with the first evidence phase closing 6 April 2023.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-15[edit]

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. [115]
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. [116]

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. [117]

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. [118][119]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:03, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: March 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue III, March 2023
Headlines
Albania report: WikiGap Tirana 2023, Albania Argentina report: Starting the year at WMAR Australia report: Know My Name edit-a-thon at the National Gallery of Australia Brazil report: Wiki Loves Pará, Women's month and a huge upload for biologists Estonia report: From Ruhnu to Vääna a.k.a. Winterspring in WMEE France report: Residency at the Brittany Museum Indonesia report: Javanese Wikisource Competition; 5 More Bincang GLAMs; GLAM Socialization to University of Sriwijaya Italy report: GLAM Spring Kosovo report: Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon in Istog New Zealand report: Auckland War Memorial Museum Local Suburb Project updates Poland report: GLAM meet-ups, Wikiresidencies and GLAM partners contributiong to editing contest Serbia report: GLAM in March Sweden report: Photo memories from three industrial towns; Update from the archives; ArkDes edit-a-thons Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programme UK report: Khalili Foundation USA report: Projects and activities in March Wikidata report: Mismatch Finder: Resolving Mismatches in Wikidata’s 100 Million Items Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: The Ethics of Open Sharing Calendar: April's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 23:47, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-16[edit]

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. [120][121]
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. [122]

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. [123][124]
For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [125]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-17[edit]

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. [126]

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. [127]
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. [128][129][130]

Changes later this week

All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [131]
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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-18[edit]

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. [132][133][134]
The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads. [135]
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. [136]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Administrator changes

Spicy

CheckUser changes

Jimbo Wales

Oversighter changes

Jimbo Wales

Guideline and policy news

A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.

Arbitration

The proposed decision in the World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case is expected 11 May 2023.

Miscellaneous

The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input through May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-19[edit]

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. [137]
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. [138]
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. [139]

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. [140]

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. [141]

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. [142]
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. [143][144]
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. [145]

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)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: April 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue IV, April 2023
Headlines
Albania report: International Roma Day Edit-a-thon in Albania, 2023 Brazil report: "Every Book its Public" Campaign and Strategic Committee on Libraries Czech Republic report: What's new at GLAM in the Czech Republic Indonesia report: GLAM Mini Grants; Structured Data Marathon VIII; Wikisource Online Workshop Italy report: Bridges between Wikimedia and culture New Zealand report: BHL Whitepaper and outreach for Citizen Science Month and WeDigBio, Auckland Museum suburbs project update, New Zealand Women in Architecture Wikidata Project Poland report: Another meeting of EU GLAM Coordinators; Guided tours for Wikipedians in museums in Krakow; Presentation on Art in Wikipedia; Online training on the basics of copyright law; Polish monuments among the top winners of WLM Sweden report: ISOF workshop; More articles from students; SAAB veterans shared their knowledge during metadata edit-a-thon; ArkDes edit-a-thons UK report: Democratising knowledge and cultural diversity USA report: Into the Wikiverse; Earth Day 2023 Bushwick Content Partnerships Hub report: Wikipedia day pitches by FAO and IEA Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: Activities are starting! WMF GLAM report: Biodiversity Heritage Library whitepaper and the #1Lib1Ref campaign Calendar: May's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 22:33, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-20[edit]

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. [146]

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. [147]

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. [148]

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

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

Tech News: 2023-21[edit]

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. [149]

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. [150]
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[edit]

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. [151]
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. [152]

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. [153]

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. [154]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Administrator changes

Ingenuity

CheckUser changes

Courcelles

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

Following a community referendum, the arbitration policy has been modified to remove the ability for users to appeal remedies to Jimbo Wales.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-23[edit]

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. [155]
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. [156]

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. [157]

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. [158]

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)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: May 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue V, May 2023
Headlines
From the team: E-mail account issue Albania report: Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon in Shëngjin, Albania, 2023 Australia report: Improving Wikipedia pages about Australian women filmmakers at ACMI Brazil report: First GLAM-Wiki partnership from Pará Finland report: Adding authority control templates with Pywikibot India report: Digitization of Behar Herald starts in Patna Indonesia report: Wikisource Workshop in Madura; Outreach to Bandung; Indonesian Wikisource Competition Italy report: Open access from North to South Kosovo report: Summer of Wikivoyage Edit-a-thon 2023 New Zealand report: Women in Architecture Edit-a-thon and Auckland suburb updates Philippines report: Wikisource promotion at UNC Museum Sweden report: Air travel and city streets Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programme Uganda report: These last few months in Uganda UK report: Promoting cultural diversity on Wikipedia USA report: A Spotlight on Black Women Birders; DC Nobel Solution Sessions; Women of Color in the Renwick Gallery; Anthropology and Community Connections; SAGE edit-a-thon; WikiWednesday Salon; Into the Wikiverse: AANHPIs in Science Fiction and Pop Culture; Queering Wikipedia 2023 Special story: Help Wikimedia Map Your Efforts to Improve Copyright! GLAM Wiki conference report: GLAM Wiki Conference 2023: Announcing the venue & scholarship application process open Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: Photo contests WMF GLAM report: WILMA, DPLA + SDAW, and BHL whitepaper updates Calendar: June's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 00:47, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-24[edit]

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. [159]
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. [160]
The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software. [161]
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. [162]

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. [163]
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. [164]
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. [165]

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. [166]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-25[edit]

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. [167][168]

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. [169][170]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-26[edit]

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. [171]

Problems

Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours. [172][173]

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. [174][175]
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. [176]
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. [177]
The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components. [178]

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. [179]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Bureaucrat changes

MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

Contributions to the English Wikipedia are now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) license instead of CC BY-SA 3.0. Contributions are still also released under the GFDL license.

Technical news

Discussion is open regarding a proposed global policy regarding third-party resources. Third-party resources are computer resources that reside outside of Wikimedia production websites.

Arbitration

Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-27[edit]

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. [180]
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. [181]

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)[reply]

messages[edit]

telegram Felishali (talk) 22:08, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: June 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue VI, June 2023
Headlines
Albania report: CEE Spring Campaign 2023, Albania and Kosovo Asia report: Donation of images from the National Centre for Biological Sciences Brazil report: Native Brazilian photographer wins Wiki Loves Folklore Brazil 2023 Croatia report: Half done in 2023 Germany report: Museum tour, WLM, handouts and image donation India report: Wiki Exploration Programme GLAM activities Indonesia report: Conclusion of Mini Grants; Second #1Lib1Ref Campaign; Wikisource Workshop in Bali Italy report: TCI and Turin Academy of Science Kosovo report: CEE Spring Campaign 2023, Albania and Kosovo Netherlands report: A new book, new Wikipedia articles, videos and further images on Africa New Zealand report: Report on the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections Conference 2023 and Auckland suburb updates Philippines report: GLAM outreach activity at University of Nueva Caceres: Digitization, workshops and proofread-a-thons as future collaboration Poland report: GLAM-Wiki workshops for the Czartoryski Library; Work on the GLAM-Wiki Project Page Continues; End of Internship within the "Praktykuj w Kulturze" Program Sweden report: Knowledge overview; Almedalen week Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programm UK report: Cultural diversity USA report: WikiWednesday returns to Manhattan; Wikimedia NYC and Art+Feminism; WikiConference North America 2023; GLAM Wiki 2023 Special story: Flickr Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation partner to build Flickypedia GLAM Wiki conference report: The call for proposals is now open for the GLAM Wiki Conference Calendar: July's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 07:10, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-28[edit]

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. [182]
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. [183]
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. [184]
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. [185]

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. [186]
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)[reply]

"Template:For2" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

The redirect Template:For2 has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 July 11 § Template:For2 until a consensus is reached. CLYDE ^{TALK TO ME}/_{STUFF DONE} (please mention me on reply) 03:50, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-29[edit]

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. [187]
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. [188]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-30[edit]

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 02:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-31[edit]

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. [189][190]
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. [191]

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. [192]

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. [193]

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

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

Tech News: 2023-32[edit]

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. [194]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

Firefangledfeathers

Interface administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Technical news

The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)

Arbitration

The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: July 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue VII, July 2023
Headlines
Albania report: Wiki Photowalk Albania and Kosovo, 2023 Argentina report: First batch of a big upload Australia report: Where's The Source? Adding Citations to Wikipedia Brazil report: Two new GLAM-wiki partnerships and Three large uploads France report: New milestone reached: already 500 portraits of geographers uploaded on Commons India report: Open Knowledge Fellowship by Heritage Lab and Wikibase set foot in India Netherlands report: Videos and filmmakers of Africa, Open Churches Photochallenge and Wiki goes Caribbean meet-up in Dutch National Archive Poland report: EU GLAM Coordinators; WikiMatejko; Polona; internship program Serbia report: Wikipedian in residence raises the standards UK report: Roads, Kingdoms and Assassins USA report: WikiWednesday Salon; New York Botanical Garden; Meetup San Diego Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: Join Wiki Loves Living Heritage at Wikimania! WMF GLAM report: WiLMa updates Calendar: August's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 07:15, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-33[edit]

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. [195]

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. [196]

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)[reply]

Orphaned non-free image File:Blacksunrising.jpg[edit]

⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Blacksunrising.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:04, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-34[edit]

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. [197]
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:) [198]
  - a Wikisource in Sundanese (s:su:) [199]
- To catch up, the next most recent six wikis are:
  - Wikifunctions (f:) [200]
  - a Wiktionary in Mandailing (wikt:btm:) [201]
  - a Wikipedia in Ghanaian Pidgin (w:gpe:) [202]
  - a Wikinews in Gungbe (n:guw:) [203]
  - a Wiktionary in Kabardian (wikt:kbd:) [204]
  - a Wikipedia in Fante (w:fat:) [205]

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. [206]

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[edit]

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. [207]
All Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. [208]
Wikisource users can now use the prpbengalicurrency label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <pagelist> tag. [209]
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. [210][211]

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. [212]

Future changes

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

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

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

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Administrator changes

CheckUser changes

Bradv

Oversighter changes

Bradv

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)

Arbitration

The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-36[edit]

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. [213]
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. [214]
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. [215]
One new wiki has been created:
- a Wikipedia in Talysh (w:tly:) [216]

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. [217]

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. [218][219]

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

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

Tech News: 2023-37[edit]

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. [220]
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. [221]

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. [222]

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. [223]
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)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: August 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue VIII, August 2023
Headlines
Albania report: Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos in Albania and Kosovo Argentina report: Highlights on Wikimania 2023 Armenia report: Wikimedia Armenia GLAM projects in August Belgium report: Activities in Belgium September-December 2023 Brazil report: 4 new GLAM-Wiki partnerships and uploads from several institutions Canada report: Wiki-Wednesdays: Digital Literacy for GLAM workers Italy report: Summer does not stop the wiki collaborations Kosovo report: The Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos in Albania and Kosovo; Wiki Loves Earth in Albania and Kosovo New Zealand report: Public sculpture photo trail: documenting Auckland sculptures in Wikidata; Aotearoa's Wikimedia Laureate Poland report: Presentation for school librarians at Wikiteka, Ongoing projects Serbia report: A month in the shine of Wikidata and new cooperation Sweden report: Showcasing collaboration with the Nordic Museum at Wikimania 2023; Working with Swedish folk high schools Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programm UK report: Islamic art exhibitions and heritage innovation USA report: Great North American Wiknic AvoinGLAM report: Wikidocumentaries to import images from the web to Structured Data on Commons – a Google Summer of Code project Content Partnerships Hub report: Hub updates at Wikimania 2023; Supporting Wiki Loves Monuments teams Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: Open call: OpenRefine-Wikimedia train-the-trainer course, November 2023-April 2024 Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: Looking back, looking ahead WREN at Wikimania report: Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network at Wikimania Singapore Calendar: September's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 11:00, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-38[edit]

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. [224][225]

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. [226]
All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. [227]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-39[edit]

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. [228]

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. [229][230]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-40[edit]

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. [231]
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. [232]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2023).

Administrator changes

Hey man im josh

CheckUser changes

DatGuy

Oversighter changes

RickinBaltimore

Guideline and policy news

An RfC is open regarding amending the paid-contribution disclosure policy to add the following text: Any administrator soliciting clients for paid Wikipedia-related consulting or advising services not covered by other paid-contribution rules must disclose all clients on their userpage.

Technical news

Administrators can now choose to add the user's user page to their watchlist when changing the usergroups for a user. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. (T272294)

Arbitration

Remedy 9 ("MarioProtIV topic ban") of the WikiProject Tropical Cyclones case has been rescinded.

Miscellaneous

The 2023 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of one new CheckUser.
Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections opens on 2 October and closes on 8 October.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:41, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-41[edit]

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:) [233]

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. [234]
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. [235]
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)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: September 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue IX, September 2023
Headlines
Argentina report: Disseminating open culture Brazil report: Amazonia on Wiki Colombia report: Wikidata and the editing of Ibero-American scientific journals France report: Celebrating Rugby Herstory and History in Toulouse; Les Lorraines sans pages India report: Wikimedia Commons Contest connects Pune citizens with the rivers Mula & Mutha Italy report: 10,000 institutions on the Wikimedia projects New Zealand report: West Coast Wikipedian at Large Poland report: GLAM-Wiki educational activities Portugal report: With multiple events, September was a busy month for Wikimedia Portugal Sweden report: Wikipedia in education; Continuation at Swedish folk high schools; Wikipedians at the Bookfair UK report: A new WIR and a very old book USA report: Wikimedia New York City Election 2023; San Diego/September 2023; Climate Change and Food Safety Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: OpenRefine and Wikimedia Commons: train the trainer course participants and two surveys Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: European photo contest finalists, Local Contexts Wikiproject at GLAMhack WMF GLAM report: Wikisource Loves Manuscripts, ICOM outreach, Flickr Foundation partnership, OpenRefine adoption, new sources in The Wikipedia Library, Image Description Month events, and the GLAM Wiki Conference Calendar: October's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 15:02, 11 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-42[edit]

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. [236]
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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-43[edit]

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. [237]

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 23:14, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-44[edit]

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. [238][239]
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. [240]

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 23:19, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-45[edit]

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. [241]

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. [242]

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. [243][244]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

Tamzin

Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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.
There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.

Arbitration

Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous

The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: October 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue X, October 2023
Headlines
Albania report: Celebrating Wikipedia's 20th Birthday in Albanian Language Argentina report: Content, resources and platforms for open access! Australia report: October Report Brazil report: Wiki Loves Monuments Brasil 2023 and Open Midiateca Colombia report: Open Access Week and Wikidata; Opening Culture and Heritage training Côte d'Ivoire report: Wikimedia Côte d'Ivoire and Apsid-ci collaboration for Glam Croatia report: Looong summer is over Czech Republic report: Great first results in State Regional Archives and Wikiresident Group coworking Ireland report: Wikimedia Community Ireland Host WikiWomen Partner Meeting at Dublin's historical Port Italy report: Results of funded projects within Call GLAM 2023 Netherlands report: Wiki Loves Fashion in the Netherlands New Zealand report: Biodiversity Information Standards Conference 2023 (TDWG2023) and the Entomological Collection Network Meeting (ECN2023) Poland report: WikiMatejko, Internships, Open Heritage, folk costumes Portugal report: Open Access Week celebrations and an edit-a-thon to increase the visibility of black lusophone communities Serbia report: Dynamic October in Serbia South Africa report: Edit-a-thon for Librarians at the annual Library and Information Association of South Africa 2023 Conference Sweden report: Wikipedia for all of Sweden; Museums and Wikidata – why and how?; Photo memories from Stockholm and Rome; Negotiating Knowledge on Wikipedia Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programm UK report: Good omens for a rosy future USA report: Women in Environmental Justice; October WikiSalon AvoinGLAM report: AvoinGLAM joins the long-awaited GLAM Wiki 2023 Content Partnerships Hub report: Let's Connect Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: Learning and sharing Wikimedia and Libraries User Group report: The Wikimedia and Libraries AI Salons Calendar: November's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 03:14, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-46[edit]

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:) [245]
- a Wikipedia in Dagaare (w:dga:) [246]
- a Wikipedia in Toba Batak (w:bbc:) [247]
- a Wikiquote in Banjar (q:bjn:) [248]

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. [249]
Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved. [250]

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. [251]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-47[edit]

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. [252][253]
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. [254][255][256]
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. [257]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-48[edit]

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. [258][259]
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. [260]
The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.

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

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

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add ((NoACEMM)) to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:22, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-49[edit]

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. [261]
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. [262]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [263][264]
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. [265]
Communities using Structured Discussions are being contacted regarding the upcoming deprecation of Structured Discussions. You can read more about this project, and share your comments, on the project's page.

Events

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

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

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

Administrators' newsletter – December 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).

Administrator changes

Beeblebrox → Just Step Sideways

CheckUser changes

Oversight changes

Guideline and policy news

Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.

Arbitration

Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: November 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue XI, November 2023
Headlines
Albania report: Three-months of Wikimedian in Residence at the Qemal Baholli Public Library in Albania Brazil report: New partners in Rio and GLAM WikiCon Canada report: WCNA 2023: an key event for North American users Colombia report: Wiki GLAM Conf and Bogotá Libraries Meeting France report: Edit-a-thon Le retour de la momie Italy report: Record edition of Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy Netherlands report: Share your Data course, history month, REBOOT! and Dutch Public Domain Day event New Zealand report: Summer students at Auckland Museum Poland report: GLAM-Wiki Conference, WikiMatejko Portugal report: Catalan culture and showcasing Wikimedia on both side of the Atlantic Serbia report: Wikipedians in Residence, GLAM Wiki Conference Sweden report: National Historical Museums of Sweden contributions; Photo memories from all over the world engage the community; Museum of medieval photo safari UK report: Fifty article milestone AvoinGLAM report: AvoinGLAM at GLAM Wiki 2023 Content Partnerships Hub report: 3,000 medical images on Wikimedia Commons through the Helpdesk Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: 2023 Living Heritage elements are added to Wiki Loves Living Heritage Calendar: December's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 08:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2023-50[edit]

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. [266][267]

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. [268][269]

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). [270][271]

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.

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

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

Tech News: 2023-51[edit]

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. [272][273]
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. [274]
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. [275]

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.

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

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

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).

Administrator changes

Clovermoss

Dennis Brown

CheckUser changes

Maxim

Oversighter changes

Maxim

Arbitration

Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.

Miscellaneous

The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-02[edit]

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. [276]

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). [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 01:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: December 2023[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue XII, December 2023
Headlines
Albania report: Wiki Loves EuroPride in Albania 2023 Bosnia & Herzegovina report: A year in review ... Croatia report: 2023 in review Czech Republic report: Wiki-residents establishing meeting took place in December Germany report: Go-ahead for Wikidata Project of GLAM institutions from Baden-Württemberg Italy report: WLM Local winners and funds for 2024 GLAM projects New Zealand report: Auckland Museum summer updates Poland report: Intense end to a year of GLAM-Wiki activities in Poland Sweden report: Photo memories project concludes; Sörmlands museum passes 1000 uploads to Wikimedia Commons; Wikimedian in Residence supports an upload of music content; Subject terms from Queerlit; Wikidata for authority control: 3 years of work Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Program UK report: 2023 in Review USA report: WikiConference North America 2023; TSU and USF; Philadelphia WikiSalon; Wikimedia DC Annual Membership Meeting; Wikipedia Editing 101 for All; NYC Hacking Night; Upstate NY workshop; Wikiquote She Said Project Wiki Loves Living Heritage report: Thank you for making Wiki Loves Living Heritage happen! WMF GLAM report: Updates and invitation to test the Commons Impact Metrics prototype Calendar: January's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 05:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-03[edit]

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. [279]
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. [280]
Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [281]
You can now thank edits made by bots. [282]
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). [283][284]
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. [285]
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. [286]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-04[edit]

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. [287]

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). [288][289]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-05[edit]

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. [290]
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). [291][292]
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. [293]
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. [294]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).

Administrator changes

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

CheckUser changes

Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

Guideline and policy news

An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.

Technical news

Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)

Arbitration

Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.

Miscellaneous

Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with ((Unreferenced)). You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:00, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-06[edit]

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". [295][296]

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). [297][298]
Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [299]

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. [300][301]

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

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

This Month in GLAM: January 2024[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue I, January 2024
Headlines
Albania report: Wikipedia Day in Albania 2024 Belgium report: First international public domain day celebration in Europe coming up on March 7 Brazil report: A legal infrastructure for sharing public collections in Brazil: the case of Midiateca Capixaba Czech Republic report: January '24: Institute of Physics photos and Free culture discussion Finland report: Photographing at the second half of 2023 India report: Documenting ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) Museums in Bihar Netherlands report: Public Domain Day & Monumental Moments New Zealand report: Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large, and Auckland Museum updates Poland report: An update on the Wikimatejko editing action and an invitation to the international community to join the action Portugal report: Unveiling Catrapilha: A ReacTive approach to GLAM content import Sweden report: Freedom of Panorama in Sweden UK report: Indonesian praise for an Ottoman photograph of Arabia USA report: Wikipedia Day 2024; edit-a-thon; meetups AvoinGLAM report: Events! Events! Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: New OpenRefine documentation for Wikimedia Commons WMF GLAM report: WiLMa Updates, OpenRefine training, Biodiversity, and Librarians Calendar: February's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 01:59, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Precious anniversary[edit]

Precious
Nine years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:53, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-07[edit]

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. [302][303][304] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [305][306]

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). [307][308]
As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[309] 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. [310]

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-08[edit]

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. [311]
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. [312]

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). [313][314]

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. [315]

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

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

Tech News: 2024-09[edit]

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. [316]
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"))). [317]

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). [318][319]

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.

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

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

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).

Administrator changes

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-10[edit]

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. [320]
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. [321]
A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [322]

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). [323][324]

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. [325]
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).

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

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

This Month in GLAM: February 2024[edit]

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue II, February 2024
Headlines
Albania report: One village, One article in Albania and Kosovo Australia report: On tour Brazil report: News from Rio de Janeiro France report: Open Content Observatory letter Italy report: Antarctic Writing Month and GLAM call Kosovo report: One Village, One Article Campaign New Zealand report: WikiProject Te Papa Research Expeditions, wrapping up the Auckland / Tāmaki Makaurau local histories project, and the Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large Poland report: WikiMatejko editing action; The eighth European GLAM Wiki coordinators meet up Spain report: SMALL GLAM SLAM Pilot 1 Rapid Grant Sweden report: Working life museums UK report: National Trust, Leeds 2023, and Khalili Foundation USA report: Hacking Night; Seattle Meetups; Denver Huddle; Wikipedia Day LA; San Diego/February 2024; Supreme Court visit Biodiversity Heritage Library report: BHL-Wiki Working Group February Monthly Highlights Wikidata report: Working with catalogues: a Wikidata volunteer’s perspective WMF GLAM report: Updates on OpenRefine training and Wikisource Loves manuscripts Calendar: March's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 13:49, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-11[edit]

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). [326][327]
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. [328]
The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [329]
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. [330]

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. [331][332]

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)[reply]

Happy Birthday![edit]

Happy birthday!
Hi Nihiltres! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy birthday! Enjoy this special day! The Herald (Benison) (talk) 02:30, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-12[edit]

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. [333]
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. [334]
The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [335][336][337]
Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [338]

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. [339]

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). [340][341]
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [342][343]

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

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

Tech News: 2024-13[edit]

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). [344][345]

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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).

Administrator changes

Guideline and policy news

An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.

Technical news

The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".

Miscellaneous

Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-14[edit]

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. [346]

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). [347][348]

Future changes

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

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

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