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Tech News: 2018-50

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 later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts. [1][2]
• When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off. [3]

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

17:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 51, 2018)

A bookworm / beetle grub found inside a paperback book, showing some of the damage it has wrought Hello, Spurb. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Bookworm (insect) Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Nuuk • Lake surfing Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 17 December 2018 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tech News: 2018-51

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 7 January 2019.

Recent changes

• Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [4][5]
• Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [6]
• The ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy.

Problems

• <ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [7]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.
• tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [8]

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

20:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 52, 2018)

A diagram that includes the scalp Hello, Spurb. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Scalp Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Bookworm (insect) • Nuuk Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 24 December 2018 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

The Signpost: 24 December 2018

• From the editors: Where to draw the line in reporting?

• Op-ed: Wikipedia not trumped by Trump appointee

• Special report: The Signpost got 380,000+ views in 2018, sounds reasonable enough, right?

• News and notes: Some wishes do come true

• In the media: Political hijinks

• Discussion report: A new record low for RfA

• WikiProject report: Articlegenesis

• Arbitration report: Year ends with one active case

• Traffic report: Queen dethroned by U.S. presidents

• Gallery: Sun and Moon, water and stone

• Blog: News from the WMF

• Humour: I believe in Bigfoot

• Essay: Requests for medication

• From the archives: Compromised admin accounts – again

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:36, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 1, 2018)

Poster for a production of Boucicault's farce Contempt of Court, c. 1879. From the Library of Congress. Hello, Spurb. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Farce Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Scalp • Bookworm (insect) Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 31 December 2018 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).

Administrator changes

Galobtter

Orangemike

BorgQueen • Davidruben • Ocee • Revolving Bugbear • Theda • There'sNoTime • Timc • Tijuana Brass • Tristessa de St Ange

Bureaucrat changes

Addshore

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe • SilkTork

Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

AGK • Joe Roe • SilkTork

Euryalus • Newyorkbrad • There'sNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• There are a number of new or changed speedy deletion criteria, each previously part of WP:CSD#G6:

1. G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
2. R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
3. G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.

• The Wikimedia Foundation now requires all interface administrators to enable two-factor authentication.
• Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.

Technical news

• Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:

1. At least 8 characters in length
2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
3. Different from their username

User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.

• Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
• {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

• Following the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: AGK, Courcelles, GorillaWarfare, Joe Roe, Mkdw, SilkTork.

Miscellaneous

• Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
• Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:39, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 2, 2019)

An example of page orientation: a smartphone positioned upright (portrait orientation) and horizontally (landscape orientation) Hello, Spurb. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Page orientation Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Farce • Scalp Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:27, 7 January 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tech News: 2019-02

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

Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.

Recent changes

• RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [9]
• MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [10]
• codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [11]
• On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.

Problems

• In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [12]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.

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

18:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Notice regarding a user script

Hi. Recently, a request was made for someone to revise the User:Bility/convert24hourtime.js user script. I (DannyS712) took up that challenge, and have fixed the bug with the "thanks" button, fixed the bug regarding blocked users, fixed the bug regarding converting the times when examining a diff, and even added the feature to convert times when looking at logs. I have some more features planned, but I thought that, since you are currently importing Bility's script, you may want to know that a less buggy version is available at User:DannyS712/12Hours. This is intended as a one-time note. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 20:07, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:00, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 3, 2019)

Vicki Gunvalson in 2009 Hello, Spurb. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Vicki Gunvalson Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Page orientation • Farce Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 14 January 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tech News: 2019-03

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 use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [13][14]
• You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
• Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [15][16]
• Templates with could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [17]

Problems

• When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [18]

Changes later this week

• You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
• Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [19]
• The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15

17:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 4, 2019)

A view of the Quetschenfest street fair in the community of Geichlingen, Germany Hello, Spurb. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Street fair Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Vicki Gunvalson • Page orientation Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 21 January 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tech News: 2019-04

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

Tech News

• Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [20]

Recent changes

• The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
• https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

• When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [21]
• MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [22][23]
• Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [24]

Changes later this week

• You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [25]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:33, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Flooded with them hundreds' user scripts

Dear all. Recently, our community lost a dedicated user, Flooded with them hundreds (talk). Among their projects were a number of user scripts that were deleted when they left. I (DannyS712) have asked that they be undeleted, and have taken over maintaining them. You currently import Flooded's (deleted) script, and I thought that you might want to import a working version. Links to each script are provided below.

Page Mover Closure

Section Remover

Section Mover

If you have any questions, please reach out and talk to me. --DannyS712 (talk) 21:31, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:50, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 5, 2019)

Hello, Spurb. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Assassination attempts Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Street fair • Vicki Gunvalson Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 28 January 2019 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tech News: 2019-05

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 Wikimedia servers use HHVM to run the PHP code. They are going to use PHP7 and stop using HHVM. You can test PHP7 with a new beta feature. That way you can help find and report problems.

Problems

• When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [26]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

This Month in Education: January 2019

This Month in Education Volume 8 • Issue 1 • January 2019 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issue Registration for Wikimedia+Education Conference is open Collaboration with Yerevan State University of Languages and Social Sciences after V. Brusov Meet the first Programs & Events Dashboard sysops More than a hundred students gathered in Ecuador to edit Wikipedia Selet WikiSchool continues to teach young Tatar language Wikipedians The WikiClub contributes to the development of our human qualities Third prize for Wikipedia in schools project We've updated the design of Education space! The WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique is back Wiki Advanced Training at VVIT Creating our first WikiClub WikiClubs participate in edit-a-thon of cartoons Wikimedia and Education in Portugal: Where are we now Wikimedia Israel: “Wikipedia Ambassadors” program for Arabic-speaking schools is launched

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: Romaine 04:41, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2019

• Op-Ed: Random Rewards Rejected

• In focus: The Collective Consciousness of Admin Userpages

• News and notes: WMF staff turntable continues to spin; Endowment gets more cash; RfA continues to be a pit of steely knives

• In the media: The Signpost's investigative story recognized, Wikipedia turns 18 and gets a birthday gift from Google, and more editors are recognized

• Discussion report: The future of the reference desk

• Featured content: Don't miss your great opportunity

• Arbitration report: An admin under the microscope

• Traffic report: Death, royals and superheroes: Avengers, Black Panther

• Technology report: When broken is easily fixed

• Gallery: Let us build a memorial fit for such pain and suffering

• News from the WMF: News from WMF

• Recent research: Ad revenue from reused Wikipedia articles; are Wikipedia researchers asking the right questions?

• Essay: How

• Humour: Village pump

• From the archives: An editorial board that includes you

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:50, 31 January 2019 (UTC)