Tech News: 2024-15

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

• Web browsers can use tools calledextensions. There is now a Chrome extension calledCitation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
• A newEdit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as auser preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on theproject talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• Initial results ofEdit check experimentshave been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature atthe wikis that tested it.Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check.[1][2]
• Readers using theMinerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings.[3]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).[4][5]
• New accounts and logged-out users will get thevisual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia.[6]

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Guild of Copy Editors April 2024 Newsletter

Tech News: 2024-16

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

Problems

• Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis usingFlagged Revisions, the "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed.[7][8]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar).[9][10]
• Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed infootnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked).[11]
• A new variablepage_last_edit_age will be added toabuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made.[12]

Future changes

• Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handletemporary accounts.Learn more.
• Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (includingQuarry). This affects only theabuse_filter andabuse_filter_history tables. Some queries might need to be updated.[13]

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Happy First Edit Day!

Tech News: 2024-17

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

• Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipediawill be encouraged to try structured tasks.Structured tasks have been shown toimprove newcomer activation and retention.[14]
• You cannominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar).[15][16]

Future changes

• This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents ofSpecial:MyPage/vector.js toSpecial:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There aremore technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia.[17]

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The Signpost: 25 April 2024

Tech News: 2024-18

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 appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this testgave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changesin user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks.[18]
• Seven new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia inBetawi (w:bew:)[19]
  • a Wikipedia inKusaal (w:kus:)[20]
  • a Wikipedia inIgala (w:igl:)[21]
  • a Wiktionary inKarakalpak (wikt:kaa:)[22]
  • a Wikisource inBurmese (s:my:)[23]
  • a Wikisource inMalay (s:ms:)[24]
  • a Wikisource inGeorgian (s:ka:)[25]
• You can nowwatch message groups/projects onTranslatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups.[26]
• Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into theadvanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited tocheck for accessibility issues on wikis. Seemore detailed guidelines.

Problems

• Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by usingmapstyle="osm". This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed.[27]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar).[28][29]

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Requested move

Tech News: 2024-19

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 appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changesonDiff. It is possible to opt-out these changesin user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks.[30][31]
• Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of theSiteAdminHelper. More information on how styles can be disabled can be foundat the extension's page.[32]
• Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services.[33]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar).[34][35]
• When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs".[36]

Future changes

• A new service will be built to replaceExtension:Graph. Details can be found inthe latest update regarding this extension.
• Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of theprogressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities canactivate and configure the feature locally.[37]

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Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Tech News: 2024-20

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

• On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word__EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list.[38]
• If you use theuser-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page.[39]
• Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via thealt= attribute. This is identical in usage to thealt= attribute in theimage and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive.[40]
• The oldGuided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people.[41]

Changes later this week

• Thenew version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar).[42][43]
• TheSpecial:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure.[44]

Future changes

• In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022.Learn more.[45]
• Two columns of thepagelinks database table (pl_namespace andpl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the newlinktarget table instead (lt_namespace andlt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
  1. ReplaceJOIN pagelinks withJOIN linktarget andpl_ withlt_ in theON statement
  2. Below that addJOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
  • Seephab:T222224 for technical reasoning.[46][47]

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