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

Problems

• Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of thecurrent pandemic. You can seethe new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
• There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed.[1][2]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 March. It will be on all wikis from 26 March (calendar).

Future changes

• There isa project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project bychecking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.

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

• From the editors:The bad and the good

• News and notes:2018 Wikipedian of the year blocked

• WikiProject report:WikiProject COVID-19: A WikiProject Report

• Special report:Wikipedia on COVID-19: what we publish and why it matters

• In the media:Blocked in Iran but still covering the big story

• Discussion report:Rethinking draft space

• Arbitration report:Unfinished business

• In focus:"I have been asked by Jeffrey Epstein …"

• Community view:Wikimedia community responds to COVID-19

• Recent research:Disease outbreak uncertainties, AfD forecasting, auto-updating Wikipedia

• From the archives:Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own

• Traffic report:The only thing that matters in the world

• Gallery:Visible Women on Wikipedia

• News from the WMF:Amid COVID-19, Wikimedia Foundation offers full pay for reduced hours, mobilizes all staff to work remote, and waives sick time

• 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

• The beta version of theWikipedia app for Android can now help usersadd tags on Commons. These tags are calleddepicts.[3]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 April. It will be on all wikis from 2 April (calendar).

Future changes

• The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed.[4]
• There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on theproject page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback.[5]

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.

Problems

• There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. It will soon be fixed.[6]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 April. It will be on all wikis from 9 April (calendar).

Future changes

• MediaWiki will use a newer version ofUnicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seenon Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the userMaintenance script. This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to.[7]

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

• You can now use thearticletopic search word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic.[8]
• You can see wiki tools in the newTools Gallery.[9]
• You can see edits from theWikimedia Cloud Services in a newdashboard.
• When you use filters on a history page you sometimes don't see any edits. There is a text explaining this now. Before it was just empty.[10]
• There is a newWikimedia Technical Blog.[11]

Problems

• There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest.[12][13][14]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 15. It will be on all wikis from April 16 (calendar).

Future changes

• Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed.[15]
• The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You canleave feedback on this.
• For pages usingsyntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated<source> tag, as well as the use of the deprecatedenclose parameter, will add tracking categories.

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.

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.

Recent changes

• Thesmall wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills.[16]
• Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed.div#content is now.mw-body.div.portal is now.portal.div#footer is now#footer. This is so the skins can useHTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them.[17]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work inInternet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011.[18]
• The font in the diffs will change.[19]
• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).

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

• News and notes:Unbiased information from Ukraine's government?

• In the media:Coronavirus, again and again

• Discussion report:Redesigning Wikipedia, bit by bit

• Featured content:Featured content returns

• Arbitration report:Two difficult cases

• Traffic report:Disease the Rhythm of the Night

• Gallery:Roy is doing fine and sending more photos

• Recent research:Trending topics across languages; auto-detecting bias

• Essay:Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing

• By the numbers:Open data and COVID-19: Wikipedia as an informational resource during the pandemic

• Opinion:Trusting Everybody to Work Together

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

• Interview:Health and RfA's: An interview with Guy Macon

• In focus:Multilingual Wikipedia

• WikiProject report:The Guild of Copy Editors

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

Problems

• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 5 May. This will happen around05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.[20]
• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 7 May. This will also affectCentralAuth. This can for example affect global renames, password changes, changing or confirming your email address and logging in to new wikis. This will happen around05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.[21]

Changes later this week

• You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can soon turn these notifications off for individual pages.[22]
• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 May. It will be on all wikis from 7 May (calendar).

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

• Everyone can now import photos fromFlickr to Commons with theUploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr.[23]

Problems

• Commons will be on read-only for a few minutes on 12 May. This will happen around05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.[24]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.[25][26]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 May. It will be on all wikis from 14 May (calendar).

Future changes

• JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once viamw.config.exists() ormw.user.tokens.exists(). You can useexists() orget() to check one at a time instead.[27]

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

• If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis.[28][29]

Problems

• There is a bug that creates problems for iPhone users withiOS 13 andSafari. If you use an iPhone to read or edit Wikipedia and see bugs on the mobile site you canreport them.[30]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.[31][32]

Changes later this week

• TheWikipedia app for Android can let usersadddepicts on Commons. The beta version usedcomputer-aided tagging. This was removed to get more specific depicts.[33]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Graphs will berendered in the reader's browser. This will useJavascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files.[34]
• Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affectsdiv#p-personal,div#p-navigation,div#p-interaction,div#p-tb,div#p-lang,div#p-namespaces,div#p-variants anddiv#footer. They will have to removediv. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can useHTML5.[35]
• Some CSS forthe Vector skin has been changed. This affects#p-variants,#p-namespaces,#p-personal,#p-views and#p-cactions. They can no longer use> ul. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles.See how.

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.

Changes later this week

• The visual editor will now work in theModern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets.[36]
• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).

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