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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 22 February the wikipedia.org portal did not work for an hour. This was because of a problem with a JavaScript file. [1]
Changes this week
You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas in the visual editor. Previously this only worked in the wikitext editor. [2]
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).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You can soon upload 3D files to Commons. The file formats are AMF and STL. The plan is for this to work later this week but it could be later. [3]
The name "Wikipedia" will be more obvious at the top of the page when you read Wikipedia in the mobile view. This is because many readers don't realize they are on Wikipedia. [4][5]
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 search on English, French, Hebrew and Greek wikis and find words even if you forget the diacritics. It also works if you use diacritics in your search but the wiki doesn't. [6]
When you use the mobile view and click on a link to an article in another language you will see that article in the mobile view. Previously it changed to the desktop view. [7]
Problems
Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time last week. This has now been fixed. [8]
Admins who click on "mass delete" on a user's Special:Contributions will be taken directly to a list pages created by that user. It has worked like this before, but not lately. [9]
Changes this week
The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It is now a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. [10]
The "flag the edit in the abuse log" checkbox will be removed from the abuse filter interface. This is because the edits are always flagged in the abuse log. [11]
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).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Clarification
The 2017/09 issue of Tech News mentioned 3D file formats you can soon upload to Commons. The AMF format will be available later.
@PoliticalBuff: I think that is a good start. However, WP:LISTN can give you an idea if the list is notable enough to have its own list. If you can find other sources, that should help. If not, the best could do is to redirect it to Meet the Press, because it seems plausible to me. —MRD2014📞What I've done 16:11, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
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 this week
You will be able to show references from <references /> tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use <references /> tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists. [12][13]
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).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Some old web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis in the future. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [14]
CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. [15][16]
Thanks again for doing this. For whatever reason, a large amount of users will try to rename themselves like that. Since you're a page mover, do you think you could move User:Vuyyala2 and User talk:Vuyyala2 back to the proper places? I tried to...and failed, and thanks to my bad move I can't even fix the mess I created. I never know where to request these kinds of moves. Sro23 (talk) 16:07, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
@Sro23: I couldn't figure out how to move them back because the redirects were probably blocking the moves, so I tagged the unnecessary pages/redirects for speedy deletion under CSD G6. —MRD2014📞contribs 17:33, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
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 Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on the Wikimedia wikis except for Wikipedias and Wikinewses. This change will come to Wikipedias later. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [17]
You can see monthly page views when you click on Page information in the sidebar. Developers can also get monthly page views through the API. [19]
The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later. [20]
The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers. [21]
Problems
On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it. [22]
Changes this week
When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+X on PCs or Cmd+Shift+X on Macs. [23]
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).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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 you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [24]
Problems
Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [25][26]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 (calendar).
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 Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [27]
The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [28]
English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [29]
Problems
Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [30]
Changes 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).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [33]
New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [34]
The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [35]
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).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.
My Article Newcreationxavier Has Been Marked for Deletion
Hello, please I noticed a deletion marker on my account name. Am I doing something wrongly? I am trying to create an article on the topic "Family Systems Engineering". I want to know if I am doing it wrongly, and to be shown the right way to do the article well. I have read up on the Do's and Don'ts. I didn't know I still made a slip. Thanks for your help. Newcreationxavier (talk) 01:39, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
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 add ?safemode=1 to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature?safemode=1. This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them. [36]
The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from [[File:Wiki.png]]. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. [38]
Problems
Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.
Changes this week
There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. [39]
From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. [40][41]
Sorry, I didn't realize you were trying to clean it up. I may have reverted to a version that lost some changes. I'll stay out of it since I don't know the topic at all. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 14:34, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
@Jauerback: I just reverted to the version from yesterday, which looked like the last good version. —MRD2014📞contribs 14:35, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
When administrators, bureaucrats and stewards make a user a member of a user group they can now set an expiry date. A user group is for example "administrators" or "bots". This means that they can give someone user rights for a limited time. This is similar to how blocks and page protections can be limited in time. Special:UserRights will have new options for this. You can read more about user groups.[43]
Problems
Since the data centre test last week the content translation tool has been disabled. This is because of a database problem. It will be back as soon as the problem has been solved. [44]
Changes this week
The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. [45]
Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this. [46]
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).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. This is the same thing as Tech News wrote about in issue 2017/16. You need to addmw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ) block for your scripts also, or add mediawiki.util dependency in gadget ResourceLoader section in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. [48][49]
Problems
Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
Changes this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
All Wikimedia wikis will have cookie blocks from May 8. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [50]
The Publish changes, Show preview and Show changes buttons will look slightly different. This is to fit with the OOUI look. Users can test scripts, gadgets and so on to see if they work with the new interface by adding &ooui=1 to the URL. [51]
An RfC has clarified that user categories should be emptied upon deletion, but redlinked user categories should not be removed if re-added by the user.
Discussions are ongoing regarding proposed changes to the COI policy. Changes so far have included clarification that adding a link on a Wikipedia forum to a job posting is not a violation of the harassment policy.
There is a new tool for adding archives to dead links. Administrators are able to restrict other user's ability to use the tool, and have additional permissions when changing URL and domain data.
Following an RfC, the editing restrictions page is now split into a list of active restrictions and an archive of those that are old or on inactive accounts. Make sure to check both pages if searching for a restriction.
Hi, I'm Mabalu. I wanted to let you know that I saw the page you reviewed, FloQast, and have un-reviewed it again. If you have any questions, please ask them on my talk page. Thank you.
Hello,
This was the first time I've contributed to Wikipedia, at the request of Guia Risari, who wanted me to translate her page and put it on wikipedia. I had no idea how complicated it would be, but I tried copying and pasting the Italian article before cancelling the Italian and writing the text in English in order to keep all the footnotes, references, etc.
I did not use google translator since I know it is generally bad quality, unethical, and could be my competitor (I'm a professional translator). Has it improved so much that it provides a translation of quality?
I would like the text to be deleted, please, since I wouldn't know how to complete the work.
Thank you for your attention
Cherylmengle (talk) 08:07, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
@Cherylmengle: I think it looks better now. The citations still need to be fixed, though, especially since they are just numbered brackets that correspond to the citations on the Italian Wikipedia that did not make it over here (e.g. [10]). You can click on "cite" in the toolbar at the top, click on the "Templates" drop-down menu, and then select the kind of citation you want. If you want the page to be deleted, place {{db-author|rationale=Optional rationale...}} at the top of the page and an administrator should delete it under section G7 of the criteria for speedy deletion. —MRD2014📞contribs 13:58, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
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