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

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. The mobile main page special casing stopped working 14 July. 60 wikis now have main pages that don't work well on mobile. You can see which ones, how to fix it and how to get helpin Phabricator. This is the same problem that was reported in Tech News2020/24 and2020/26.

Problems

• There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution.[1]
• Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events.[2]
• Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably abrowser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the detailson Phabricator.[3]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 July. It will be on all wikis from 23 July (calendar).

Future changes

• There is aPrintable version link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway.[4]

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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

• TheStarter kit is now available for wiki communities. This page lists technical resources, tools, and recommendations. These are essential to operate a wiki project. This is mostly useful for smaller wikis where the community has limited experience with this.[5]
• The first features of theDesktop Improvements project are available for logged-in users on all wikis. In order to use them, uncheckUse Legacy Vector in yourlocal orglobal preferences in sectionSkin preferences. More improvements are planned.Feedback is welcome.
• On multiple wikis, a UTCLiveClock gadget is available. For wikis that import the gadgetdirectly from mediawiki.org, end users can nowchoose a different timezone to show instead of UTC.

Problems

• The deployment train for MediaWiki has been blocked this week.[6][7]
• Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed.[8]
• Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed.[9]

Changes later this week

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

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• Recent research:Receiving thanks increases retention, but not the time contributed to Wikipedia

• Essay:Not compatible with a collaborative project

• Obituaries:Hasteur and Brian McNeil

• In focus:WikiLoop DoubleCheck, reviewing edits made easy

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

Problems

• All queries to theWikidata Query Service failed between 17:50 and 17:59 UTC on Thursday 23 July. Some queries failed during a longer period.[10]
• Interlanguage links were ordered incorrectly for the past few weeks. This problem was also mentioned inTech News two weeks ago. The problem is now fixed.[11]
• There is a problem with theglobal preferences for the "Use Legacy Vector" option. Developers are working on fixing it.[12]
• A bug in the Wikibase extension had disabled the "move" and "create" types of protection in the main (Gallery) namespace on Wikimedia Commons. New protections could not be added, and existing protections were not enforced, allowing some page moves and page creations that should not have been possible. This has now been fixed.[13]

Changes later this week

• Thevideo player will change to be simpler and more modern. This week, the current beta feature will become the video player for everyone on most non-Wikipedia wikis. The old player will be removed.[14]
• Users'global.js andglobal.css pages will now also be loaded on the mobile site. You can readdocumentation for how to avoid applying styles to the mobile skin.[15]
• In theMonoBook skin, thesearchGoButton identifier is nowsearchButton. This may affect CSS and JS gadgets. Migration instructions can be found inT255953. This was previously mentioned inissue 27.
• Bot operators can use Pywikibot to regularly archive discussions. The behavior when the bot usescounter to prevent large archives was changed.[16]
• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 5. It will be on all wikis from August 6 (calendar).

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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

• FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact.[17]

Problems

• The mobile skin displays a message at the bottom of the page about who edited last. This message showed raw wikitext. This has now been fixed. Some messages inStructured Discussions andcontent translation may still appear as raw wikitext. Developers are working on it.[18]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 12. It will be on all wikis from August 13 (calendar).

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.[19][20]

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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 revert an edit using the undo link your edit is marked with anundo tag. This will now only happen if you don't change anything in the edit window before publishing the undo. This is to keep users from marking edits as undos when they actually do something else.[21]
• The newOOUI version will not work withInternet Explorer 8. This means the wikis will look strange and not work well in Internet Explorer 8. This was reported inTech/News/2020/17. This is because keeping the wikis working with very old browsers creates other problems.[22]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis next week. This is a reminder. You can help bytranslating the announcement message.[23][24]

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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

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

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• Recent research:Detecting spam, and pages to protect; non-anonymous editors signal their intelligence with high-quality articles

• Arbitration report:A slow couple of months

• From the archives:Wikipedia for promotional purposes?

• Obituaries:Marcus Sherman, Jerome West, and Pauline van Till

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

Problems

• This is a reminder. All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. Please check on the details onthe announcement message.[25][26]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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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

• Normally pages can be moved to a title that has no existing page yet or to a page that has only one revision, which is a redirect to the page to be moved. A new user right allows editors to move pages over one-revision pages that redirect to anywhere.[27]
• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 September. It will be on all wikis from 10 September (calendar).
• All MediaWikiAPI modules will now usewatchlist instead ofwatch. This was inconsistent before.[28]

Future changes

• TheWikipedia Android app team might work on patrolling tools in the future. You can let them know what tools would be useful for you or for less experienced patrollers. See thepage on mediawiki.org.
• OTRS will be updated to a new version. This will probably take around two days. OTRS agents will not have access to the system during these days. Emails that come in during the update will be delivered when the update is done. The plan is to start around 08:00 UTC on 14 September. This could change.[29]
• The Wikipedia Android app will sendpush notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will needGoogle Play Services to work. It will also be possible to get the app without Google Play Services but push notifications will not work. Google Play Services is also used to make the app work forAndroid 4.4 users.[30][31]
• Wikimedia code review could move toGitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. You can take part in theconsultation.
• Dropdown menus inthe Vector skin use a.menu class. This will not work in the future. Scripts can usenav ul instead..vectorTabs and.vectorMenu will also not work. Some scripts need to be updated. You canread more in Phabricator.

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