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

Tech News

• There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

• Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You canread more to see how to fix the filters.
• Only six accounts can be created from oneIP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again.[1]

Changes later this week

• Only a limited number of accounts can be created from oneIP address. An IP address can bewhitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not showCAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday.[2]
• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on21 August at 15:00 (UTC). Seehow to join.

Future changes

• There is anRFC about creating a new global user group with the right to editabuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You canread more and comment.
• Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead.[3]

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

• News and notes:Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings

• In focus:Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff

• In the media:Many layers of fake news: Fake fiction and fake news vandalism

• Discussion report:Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users

• Traffic report:Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes

• Op-Ed:We couldn't have told you this, but Wikipedia was censored

• Opinion:The Curious Case of Croatian Wikipedia

• Community view:Chinese Wikipedia and the battle against extradition from Hong Kong

• News from the WMF:Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year

• Recent research:Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research

• On the bright side:What's making you happy this month?

Latesttech 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 the newtermbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages.[4]
• Thenew version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
• The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues.[5]
• The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute.[6]
• The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in theProject: orWikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening onProject talk: or theWikipedia talk:.[7]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
• When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows thePassword policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider tochange your password for astronger password.[8]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on4 September at 15:00 (UTC). Seehow to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes onSeptember 10 at 05:00 (UTC).[9]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutesSeptember 17 at 05:00 (UTC). You cansee which wikis.[10]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutesSeptember 24 at 05:00 (UTC). You cansee which wikis.[11]
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes onSeptember 26 at 05:00 (UTC).[12]

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

• From the editors:Where do we go from here?

• Special report:Post-Framgate wrapup

• In the media:A net loss: Wikipedia attacked, closing off Russia? welcoming back Turkey?

• Traffic report:Varied and intriguing entries, less Luck, and some retreads

• News from the WMF:How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green

• Recent research:Wikipedia's role in assessing credibility of news sources; using wikis against procrastination; OpenSym 2019 report

• Gallery:Finding freely licensed photo collections

• On the bright side:What's making you happy this month?

• In focus:Wikidata & Wikibase for national libraries: the inaugural meeting

Latesttech 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's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed.[13]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on2 October at 15:00 (UTC). Seehow to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia FoundationCommunity Tech team is working on awatchlist expiry feature. This means you can put things on your watchlist for a period of time instead of forever. They are looking forfeedback on the questions they have.
• Special:Contributions will get the standardOOUI look. This makes it easier to use on mobile and makes it look like otherSpecial: pages. There is ascript you can use to make the form smaller if you want to.[14]

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

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

Recent changes

• Theabuse filter function now has a fasterparser. This is to shorten the waiting time when you save an edit.[15]

Problems

• There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon.[16]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on9 October at 15:00 (UTC). Seehow to join.

Future changes

• TheCommunity Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You canleave feedback.
• TheURL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For examplehttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page would behttps://www.wikidata.org/ instead. You cantell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki.
• There is a newtechnical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community.Subscribe to get the information in the future.
• Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteriacan apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.

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