Wikiversity:Newsletters/Tech News

Tech News: 2023-02
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can use tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags.
 * Special:WhatLinksHere shows all pages that link to a specific page. There is now a prototype for how to sort those pages alphabetically. You can see the discussion in the Phabricator ticket.
 * You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page.
 * A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time.
 * Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use  to create Matrix links on wiki pages.
 * You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages.

Changes later this week
 * Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
 * Octicons-sync.svg Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on  at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:07, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-03
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Octicons-tools.svg The URLs in "" links on page history now contain  in place of  . This is to fix a problem with links pointing to incorrect diffs when history was filtered by a tag. Some user scripts may break as a result of this change.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Some changes to the appearance of talk pages have only been available on  and   namespaces.  These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such as  .  They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, including   pages (e.g., at the Village Pump).  You can change your preferences (beta feature).
 * On Wikisources, when an image is zoomed or panned in the Page: namespace, the same zoom and pan settings will be remembered for all Page: namespace pages that are linked to a particular Index: namespace page.
 * The Vector 2022 skin will become the default for the English Wikipedia desktop users. The change will take place on January 18 at 15:00 UTC. Learn more.

Future changes
 * The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey, which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts next week on 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC. You can start drafting your proposals in the CWS sandbox.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:10, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-04
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Last week, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity.
 * The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:46, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-05
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * Last week, for ~15 minutes, some users were unable to log in or edit pages. This was caused by a problem with session storage.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikis that use localized numbering schemes for references need to add new CSS. This will help to show citation numbers the same way in all reading and editing modes. If your wiki would prefer to do it yourselves, please see the details and example CSS to copy from, and also add your wiki to the list. Otherwise, the developers will directly help out starting the week of February 5.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:05, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-06
 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
 * In the Vector 2022 skin, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
 * Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
 * Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will stop receiving new proposals on Monday, 6 February 2023, at 18:00 UTC. Proposers should complete any edits by then, to give time for translations and review. Voting will begin on Friday, 10 February.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add  for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 10:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-07
 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 wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The Reply tool and other parts of DiscussionTools will be deployed for all editors using the mobile site. You can read more about this decision.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:48, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-08
 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
 * Last week, during planned maintenance of Cloud Services, unforeseen complications forced the team to turn off all tools for 2–3 hours to prevent data corruption. Work is ongoing to prevent similar problems in the future.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The voting phase for the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 ends on 24 February at 18:00 UTC. The results of the survey will be announced on 28 February.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W08"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:57, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-09
<section begin="technews-2023-W09"/> 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
 * Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W09"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:47, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-10
<section begin="technews-2023-W10"/> 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 Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
 * On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Wikipedia) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W10"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:49, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-11
<section begin="technews-2023-W11"/> 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
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W11"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:20, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-12
<section begin="technews-2023-W12"/> 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
 * Last week, some users experienced issues loading image thumbnails. This was due to incorrectly cached images.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-gift.svg A link to the user's page will appear on  — some user scripts which previously added this link may cause conflicts. This feature request was voted #17 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Octicons-gift.svg The edit window will be resizable and larger by default. This feature request was voted #80 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * There will be a new option for Administrators when they are unblocking a user, to add the unblocked user’s user page to their watchlist. This will work both via and via the API.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 24 March at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W12"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:25, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-13
<section begin="technews-2023-W13"/> 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 AbuseFilter condition limit was increased from 1000 to 2000.
 * Some Global AbuseFilter actions will no longer apply to local projects.
 * Desktop users are now able to subscribe to talk pages by clicking on the link in the  menu. If you subscribe to a talk page, you receive notifications when new topics are started on that talk page. This is separate from putting the page on your watchlist or subscribing to a single discussion.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * You will be able to choose visual diffs on all history pages at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Developers are encouraged to switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W13"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:13, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-14
<section begin="technews-2023-W14"/> 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 system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The deprecated <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQuery <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> or <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide.
 * Some of the links in will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account.
 * You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> magic word. There will also be a new <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page.

Future changes
 * The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W14"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:39, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-15
<section begin="technews-2023-W15"/> 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
 * Octicons-gift.svg In the visual editor, it is now possible to edit captions of images in galleries without opening the gallery dialog. This feature request was voted #61 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Octicons-gift.svg You can now receive notifications when another user edits your user page. See the "" option in your Preferences. This feature request was voted #3 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems
 * There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W15"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 20:05, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-16
<section begin="technews-2023-W16"/> 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 see nearby articles on a Kartographer map with the button for the new feature "". Six wikis have been testing this feature since October.
 * Octicons-gift.svg The Special:GlobalWatchlist page now has links for "" for each entry. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems
 * At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week.
 * Octicons-tools.svg For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W16"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:54, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-17
<section begin="technews-2023-W17"/> 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
 * Octicons-gift.svg The date-selection menu on pages such as will now show year-ranges that are in the current and past decade, instead of the current and future decade. This feature request was voted #145 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems
 * Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities.
 * For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * The Editing team plans an A/B test for a usability analysis of the Talk page project. The planned measurements are available. Your wiki may be invited to participate. Please suggest improvements to the measurement plan at the discussion page.
 * The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input until May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023 on Meta-wiki.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W17"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:03, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-18
<section begin="technews-2023-W18"/> 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
 * Octicons-gift.svg The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the French and Italian Wikipedias. More languages will be added in the near future. This is part of the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads.
 * The page has been redesigned on mobile web. The new design makes it easier to browse the different categories and settings at low screen widths. You can also now access the page via a link in the Settings menu in the mobile web sidebar.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W18"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:45, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-19
<section begin="technews-2023-W19"/> 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
 * Octicons-gift.svg When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such as, , and , can now be replaced.
 * Preloading text to new pages/sections now supports preloading from localized MediaWiki interface messages. Here is an example at the that uses <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr">.

Problems
 * Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like w:de:Modul:Graph . The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review.

Future changes
 * During the next year, MediaWiki will stop using IP addresses to identify logged-out users, and will start automatically assigning unique temporary usernames. Read more at IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Updates. You can join the discussion about the format of the temporary usernames.
 * There will be an A/B test on 10 Wikipedias where the Vector 2022 skin is the default skin. Half of logged-in desktop users will see an interface where the different parts of the page are more clearly separated. You can read more.
 * Octicons-tools.svg  will be removed from the MediaWiki core. This will affect some user scripts. Many lines with   can be commented out.   can be used to keep things working like they are now. You can read more and read about how to find broken scripts.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W19"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:36, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-20
<section begin="technews-2023-W20"/> 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
 * Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Future changes
 * There is a recently formed team at the Wikimedia Foundation which will be focusing on experimenting with new tools. Currently they are building a prototype ChatGPT plugin that allows information generated by ChatGPT to be properly attributed to the Wikimedia projects.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadget and userscript developers should replace <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . The <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> library will be removed in ~1 month, and staff developers will run a script to replace any remaining uses at that time.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W20"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-21
<section begin="technews-2023-W21"/> 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
 * Octicons-gift.svg The "recent edits" time period for page watchers is now 30 days. It used to be 180 days. This was a Community Wishlist Survey proposal.

Changes later this week
 * An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W21"/>

16:55, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-22
<section begin="technews-2023-W22"/> 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
 * Citations can once again be added automatically from ISBNs, thanks to Zotero's ISBN searches. The current data sources are the Library of Congress (United States), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library), and K10plus ISBN (German repository). Additional data source searches can be proposed to Zotero. The ISBN labels in the VisualEditor Automatic tab will reappear later this week.
 * Octicons-gift.svg The page now has "" options to select all the pages within a namespace. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Problems
 * For a few days earlier this month, the "Add interlanguage link" item in the Tools menu did not work properly. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on small and medium wikis this week. Large wikis will follow in the coming weeks. This is part of the effort to move Parsoid into MediaWiki core. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W22"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:03, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-23
<section begin="technews-2023-W23"/> 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 RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
 * Octicons-gift.svg Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "". This has now been fixed.

Problems
 * For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W23"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:52, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-24
<section begin="technews-2023-W24"/> 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
 * Octicons-gift.svg The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias. This was the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article.
 * The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software.
 * The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages.

Problems
 * For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended  (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed.
 * Currently, the "" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing  keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr" style="white-space: nowrap;"> . See an example fix.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here.

Future changes
 * From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W24"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 14:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-25
<section begin="technews-2023-W25"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing  or pressing  . It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W25"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 20:08, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-26
<section begin="technews-2023-W26"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> to all <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the  database table.

Problems
 * Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition ) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution.
 * All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary.
 * The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change in the coming weeks at group2 wikis. This change improves the accessibility of content. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W26"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:18, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-27
<section begin="technews-2023-W27"/> 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
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the rolling out of the audio links that play on click wishlist proposal, small wikis will now be able to use the inline audio player that is implemented by the Phonos extension.
 * Octicons-tools.svg From this week all gadgets automatically load on mobile and desktop sites. If you see any problems with gadgets on your wikis, please adjust the gadget options in your gadget definitions file.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W27"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:51, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-28
<section begin="technews-2023-W28"/> 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 Section-level Image Suggestions feature has been deployed on seven Wikipedias (Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Catalan, Hungarian, Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål). The feature recommends images for articles on contributors' watchlists that are a good match for individual sections of those articles.
 * Global abuse filters have been enabled on all Wikimedia projects, except English and Japanese Wikipedias (who opted out). This change was made following a global request for comments.
 * is a new tool for administrators to help fight spam. It provides a clearer interface for blocking plain domains (and their subdomains), is more easily searchable, and is faster for the software to process for each edit on the wiki. It does not support regex (for complex cases), nor URL path-matching, nor the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist, but otherwise it replaces most of the functionalities of the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. There is a Python script to help migrate all simple domains into this tool, and more feature details, within the tool's documentation. It is available at all wikis except for Meta-wiki, Commons, and Wikidata.
 * The WikiEditor extension was updated. It includes some of the most frequently used features of wikitext editing. In the past, many of its messages could only be translated by administrators, but now all regular translators on translatewiki can translate them. Please check the state of WikiEditor localization into your language, and if the "Completion" for your language shows anything less than 100%, please complete the translation. See a more detailed explanation.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The default protocol of and API counterparts has changed from http to both http and https.
 * and its API counterparts will now search for all of the URL provided in the query. It used to be only the first 60 characters. This feature was requested fifteen years ago.

Future changes
 * There is an experiment with a ChatGPT plugin. This is to show users where the information is coming from when they read information from Wikipedia. It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Wikipedia plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20.
 * There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed Third-party resources policy. The proposal will impact the use of third-party resources in gadgets and userscripts. Based on the ideas received so far, policy includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, some best practices and exemption requirements such as code transparency and inspectability. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on on the policy talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W28"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:54, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-29
<section begin="technews-2023-W29"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg We are now serving 1% of all global user traffic from Kubernetes (you can read more technical details). We are planning to increment this percentage regularly. You can follow the progress of this work.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg MediaWiki system messages will now look for available local fallbacks, instead of always using the default fallback defined by software. This means wikis no longer need to override each language on the fallback chain separately. For example, English Wikipedia doesn't have to create <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> API now.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W29"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:08, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-30
<section begin="technews-2023-W30"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg  On July 18, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a survey about the technical decision making process for people who do technical work that relies on software that is maintained by the Foundation or affiliates. If this applies to you, please take part in the survey. The survey will be open for three weeks, until August 7. You can find more information in the announcement e-mail on wikitech-l.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W30"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 02:20, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-31
<section begin="technews-2023-W31"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Synchronizer tool is now available to keep Lua modules synced across Wikimedia wikis, along with updated documentation to develop global Lua modules and templates.
 * The tag filter on and revision history pages can now be inverted. For example, you can hide edits that were made using an automated tool.
 * The Wikipedia ChatGPT plugin experiment can now be used by ChatGPT users who can use plugins. You can participate in a video call if you want to talk about this experiment or similar work.

Problems
 * It was not possible to generate a PDF for pages with non-Latin characters in the title, for the last two weeks. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Tuesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W31"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:54, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-32
<section begin="technews-2023-W32"/> 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
 * Mobile Web editors can now edit a whole page at once. To use this feature, turn on "" in your settings and use the "" button in the "" menu.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W32"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:20, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-33
<section begin="technews-2023-W33"/> 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 Content translation system is no longer using Youdao's machine translation service. The service was in place for several years, but due to no usage, and availability of alternatives, it was deprecated to reduce maintenance overheads. Other services which cover the same languages are still available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Future changes
 * A few gadgets/user scripts which add icons to the Minerva skin need to have their CSS updated. There are more details available including a search for all existing instances and how to update them.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W33"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 05:59, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-34
<section begin="technews-2023-W34"/> 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 GDrive to Commons Uploader tool is now available. It enables securely selecting and uploading files from your Google Drive directly to Wikimedia Commons.
 * From now on, we will announce new Wikimedia wikis in Tech News, so you can update any tools or pages.
 * Since the last edition, two new wikis have been created:
 * a Wiktionary in Pa'O
 * a Wikisource in Sundanese
 * To catch up, the next most recent six wikis are:
 * Wikifunctions
 * a Wiktionary in Mandailing
 * a Wikipedia in Ghanaian Pidgin
 * a Wikinews in Gungbe
 * a Wiktionary in Kabardian
 * a Wikipedia in Fante

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is an existing stable interface policy for MediaWiki backend code. There is a proposed stable interface policy for frontend code. This is relevant for anyone who works on gadgets or Wikimedia frontend code. You can read it, discuss it, and let the proposer know if there are any problems.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W34"/>

15:25, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-35
<section begin="technews-2023-W35"/> 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
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the changes for the better diff handling of paragraph splits, improved detection of splits is being rolled out. Over the last two weeks, we deployed this support to group0 and group1 wikis. This week it will be deployed to group2 wikis.
 * Octicons-gift.svg All pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date.
 * Wikisource users can now use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> tag.
 * Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "" is now shown on the "" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "" tab at some wikis. The preference "" is now also shown on the "" tab at all wikis, instead of the "" tab.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg New signups for a Wikimedia developer account will start being pushed towards idm.wikimedia.org, rather than going via Wikitech. Further information about the new system is available.
 * All right-to-left language wikis, plus Korean, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Wikipedias, will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. This feature will come to more wikis in future weeks.

Future changes
 * The removal of the DoubleWiki extension is being discussed. This extension currently allows Wikisource users to view articles from multiple language versions side by side when the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> symbol next to a specific language edition is selected. Comments on this are welcomed at the phabricator task.
 * A proposal has been made to merge the second hidden-categories list (which appears below the wikitext editing form) with the main list of categories (which is further down the page). More information is available on Phabricator; feedback is welcome!

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W35"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 14:00, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-36
<section begin="technews-2023-W36"/> 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 Problems
 * EditInSequence, a feature that allows users to edit pages faster on Wikisource has been moved to a Beta Feature based on community feedback. To enable it, you can navigate to the beta features tab in Preferences.
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the changes for the Generate Audio for IPA and Audio links that play on click wishlist proposals, the inline audio player mode of Phonos has been deployed to all projects.
 * There is a new option for Administrators when they are changing the usergroups for a user, to add the user’s user page to their watchlist. This works both via and via the API.
 * One new wiki has been created:
 * a in Talysh
 * The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W36"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-37
<section begin="technews-2023-W37"/> 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
 * ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "" and ""), please report them.
 * When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team invites anyone involved in the technical field of Wikimedia projects to signup to and join one of their listening sessions on 13 September. Another date will be scheduled later. The goal is to improve the technical decision-making processes.
 * Octicons-gift.svg As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
 * The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Wikipedia. Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W37"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:07, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-38
<section begin="technews-2023-W38"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg MediaWiki now has a stable interface policy for frontend code that more clearly defines how we deprecate MediaWiki code and wiki-based code (e.g. gadgets and user scripts). Thank you to everyone who contributed to the content and discussions.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.
 * All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The team investigating the Graph Extension posted a proposal for reenabling it and they need your input.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W38"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:19, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-39
<section begin="technews-2023-W39"/> 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 Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The ResourceLoader <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
 * Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes
 * New variables will be added to AbuseFilter:  and  . They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 27 October at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W39"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:51, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-40
<section begin="technews-2023-W40"/> 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
 * There is a new user preference for "". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadget definitions now have a new " contentModels " option. The option takes a list of page content models, like  or  . Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Vector 2022 skin will no longer use the custom styles and scripts of Vector legacy (2010). The change will be made later this year or in early 2024. See how to adjust the CSS and JS pages on your wiki.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W40"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-41
<section begin="technews-2023-W41"/> 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
 * One new wiki has been created: a in Fon

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
 * At some wikis, newcomers are suggested images from Commons to add to articles without any images. Starting on Tuesday, newcomers at these wikis will be able to add images to unillustrated article sections. The specific wikis are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table. You can learn more about this feature.
 * Octicons-tools.svg In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> will be replaced with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . This change is to make it consistent with other skins and to improve support for gadgets and extensions in the mobile skin. A few gadgets may need to be updated; there are details and search-links in the task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W41"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 14:39, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-42
<section begin="technews-2023-W42"/> 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 Unified login system's edge login should now be fixed for some browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera). This means that if you visit a new sister project wiki, you should be logged in automatically without the need to click "Log in" or reload the page. Feedback on whether it's working for you is welcome.
 * Edit notices are now available within the MobileFrontend/Minerva skin. This feature was inspired by the gadget on English Wikipedia. See more details in T316178.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> that was deprecated one year ago will be removed. If you notice tools that should appear next to the "Discussion" tab are then missing, please tell the gadget's maintainers to see instructions in the Phabricator task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W42"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:47, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-43
<section begin="technews-2023-W43"/> 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
 * There is a new Language and internationalization newsletter, written quarterly. It contains updates on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects, and related support work.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Source map support has been enabled on all wikis. When you open the debugger in your browser's developer tools, you should be able to see the unminified JavaScript source code.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W43"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:16, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-44
<section begin="technews-2023-W44"/> 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 Structured Content team, as part of its project of improving UploadWizard on Commons, made some UX improvements to the upload step of choosing own vs not own work (T347590), as well as to the licensing step for own work (T347756).
 * The Design Systems team has released version 1.0.0 of Codex, the new design system for Wikimedia. See the full announcement about the release of Codex 1.0.0.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 2 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for many languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more.
 * Starting November 1, the impact module (Special:Impact) will be upgraded by the Growth team. The new impact module shows newcomers more data regarding their impact on the wiki. It was tested by a few wikis during the last few months.

Future changes
 * There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. You can help by reviewing this proposal and sharing what you think about it.
 * The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W44"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:21, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-45
<section begin="technews-2023-W45"/> 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
 * In the Vector 2022 skin, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content.

Problems
 * Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W45"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:05, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-46
<section begin="technews-2023-W46"/> 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
 * Four new wikis have been created:
 * a Wikipedia in Moroccan Amazigh
 * a Wikipedia in Dagaare
 * a Wikipedia in Toba Batak
 * a Wikiquote in Banjar

Problems
 * Last week, users who previously visited Meta-Wiki or Wikimedia Commons and then became logged out on those wikis could not log in again. The problem is now resolved.
 * Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Reference Previews are coming to many wikis as a default feature. They are popups for references, similar to the PagePreviews feature. You can opt out of seeing them. If you are using the gadgets Reference Tooltips or Navigation Popups, you won’t see Reference Previews. Deployment is planned for November 22, 2023.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Canary (also known as heartbeat) events will be produced into Wikimedia event streams from December 11. Streams users are advised to filter out these events, by discarding all events where <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . Updates to Pywikibot or wikimedia-streams will discard these events by default.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W46"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-47
<section begin="technews-2023-W47"/> 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
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" . This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally.
 * The Vector 2022 skin will have some minor visual changes to drop-down menus, column widths, and more. These changes were added to four Wikipedias last week. If no issues are found, these changes will proceed to all wikis this week. These changes will make it possible to add new menus for readability and dark mode. Learn more.

Future changes
 * There is an update on re-enabling the Graph Extension. To speed up the process, Vega 2 will not be supported and only some protocols will be available at launch. You can help by sharing what you think about the plan.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W47"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:55, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-48
<section begin="technews-2023-W48"/> 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
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
 * Octicons-tools.svg MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> / syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately.
 * The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W48"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-49
<section begin="technews-2023-W49"/> 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 spacing between paragraphs on Vector 2022 has been changed from 7px to 14px to match the size of the text. This will make it easier to distinguish paragraphs from sentences.
 * The "" feature in VisualEditor is working again. You no longer need to switch to source editing to edit <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> keywords.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * On 6 December, people who have the enabled the preference for "" will notice the talk page usability improvements appear on pages that include the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> magic word. If you notice any issues, please share them with the team on Phabricator.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Toolforge Grid Engine shutdown process will start on December 14. Maintainers of tools that still use this old system should plan to migrate to Kubernetes, or tell the team your plans on Phabricator in the task about your tool, before that date.
 * Communities using Structured Discussions are being contacted regarding the upcoming deprecation of Structured Discussions. You can read more about this project, and share your comments, on the project's page.

Events
 * Registration & Scholarship applications are now open for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 that will take place from 3–5 May in Tallinn, Estonia. Scholarship applications are open until 5 January 2024.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W49"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:50, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-50
<section begin="technews-2023-W50"/> 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
 * On Wikimedia Commons, there are some minor user-interface improvements for the "choosing own vs not own work" step in the UploadWizard. This is part of the Structured Content team's project of improving UploadWizard on Commons.

Problems
 * There was a problem showing the Newcomer homepage feature with the "impact module" and their page-view graphs, for a few days in early December. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The 2023 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 5 January 2024, and has an associated privacy statement.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W50"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 02:12, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-51
<section begin="technews-2023-W51"/> 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
 * The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2024 because of the holidays.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week.
 * Starting December 18, it won't be possible to activate Structured Discussions on a user's own talk page using the Beta feature. The Beta feature option remains available for users who want to deactivate Structured Discussions. This is part of Structured Discussions' deprecation work.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There will be full support for redirects in the Module namespace. The "Move Page" feature will leave an appropriate redirect behind, and such redirects will be appropriately recognized by the software (e.g. hidden from ). There will also be support for manual redirects.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The MediaWiki JavaScript documentation is moving to a new format. During the move, you can read the old docs using version 1.41. Feedback about the new site is welcome on the project talk page.
 * The Wishathon is a new initiative that encourages collaboration across the Wikimedia community to develop solutions for wishes collected through the Community Wishlist Survey. The first community Wishathon will take place from 15–17 March. If you are interested in a project proposal as a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you can register for the event and read more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2023-W51"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-02
<section begin="technews-2024-W02"/> 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
 * mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W02"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-03
<section begin="technews-2024-W03"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages.
 * You can now thank edits made by bots.
 * An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> module was deprecated and replaced with the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed.

Future changes
 * Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W03"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:13, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-04
<section begin="technews-2024-W04"/> 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
 * A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W04"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05
<section begin="technews-2024-W05"/> 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
 * Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org.
 * There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-gift.svg On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W05"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-06
<section begin="technews-2024-W06"/> 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 mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to the phabricator task.
 * On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity. Learn more about "action blocks".

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed.

Future changes
 * 24 Wikipedias with Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For 46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February, unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W06"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-07
<section begin="technews-2024-W07"/> 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 WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service.

Problems
 * There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg As work continues on the grid engine deprecation, tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W07"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 05:48, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-08
<section begin="technews-2024-W08"/> 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
 * If you have the "" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails.
 * There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see  this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
 * Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
 * The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).


 * Octicons-tools.svg Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
 * The CSS <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> property can now be used in HTML <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> attributes in wikitext.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W08"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 15:36, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-09
<section begin="technews-2024-W09"/> 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 mobile visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research  shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The mw.config value  now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is: <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr">.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W09"/>
 * The right to change edit tags (<bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> ) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.

MediaWiki message delivery 19:23, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-10
<section begin="technews-2024-W10"/> 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 <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension.
 * Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
 * Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> namespaces and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made.
 * A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
 * The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W10"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:47, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-11
<section begin="technews-2024-W11"/> 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
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed.
 * The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices.
 * Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W11"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:04, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-12
<section begin="technews-2024-W12"/> 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 notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher.
 * Octicons-tools.svg IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes.
 * Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown.

Problems
 * RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W12"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 17:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-13
<section begin="technews-2024-W13"/> 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W13"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 18:56, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-14
<section begin="technews-2024-W14"/> 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
 * Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W14"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 03:36, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-15
<section begin="technews-2024-W15"/> 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
 * Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation 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.
 * Octicons-gift.svg A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user 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 the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check.
 * Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W15"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:37, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-16
<section begin="technews-2024-W16"/> 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
 * Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. 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).
 * A new variable <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made.

Future changes
 * Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> tables. Some queries might need to be updated.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W16"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-17
<section begin="technews-2024-W17"/> 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
 * Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention.
 * You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

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 of /vector.js to /vector-2022.js. There are more 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.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W17"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 20:28, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-18
<section begin="technews-2024-W18"/> 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 appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: . These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences (""). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks.
 * Seven new wikis have been created:
 * a in Betawi
 * a in Kusaal
 * a in Igala
 * a in Karakalpak
 * a in Burmese
 * a in Malay
 * a in Georgian
 * You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups.
 * Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.

Problems
 * Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W18"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 03:33, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-19
<section begin="technews-2024-W19"/> 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 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 changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences (""). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the . More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page.
 * Octicons-tools.svg 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.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * 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".

Future changes
 * A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the 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 the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W19"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 16:44, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-20
<section begin="technews-2024-W20"/> 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
 * On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list.
 * If you use the user-preference "", then the template-page feature "" will now also work without reloading the page.
 * Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> attribute. This is identical in usage to the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive.
 * The old Guided 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.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The 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.

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.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Two columns of the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> database table (<bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> ) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> table instead (<bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> ). In your existing SQL queries:
 * Replace <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> and <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> with <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> in the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> statement
 * Below that add <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr">
 * See T222224 for technical reasoning.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W20"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:58, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-21
<section begin="technews-2024-W21"/> 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 Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title.
 * New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W21"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:04, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-22
<section begin="technews-2024-W22"/> 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
 * Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
 * Octicons-tools.svg In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes: <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> . Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W22"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:15, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-23
<section begin="technews-2024-W23"/> 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
 * It is now possible for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript. Documentation is available.
 * The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "<bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> " to "<bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> ".
 * One new wiki has been created: a in Kadazandusun

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

Future changes
 * Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read. Learn more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W23"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:35, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-24
<section begin="technews-2024-W24"/> 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 software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> class, Parsoid now also adds the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available.

Problems
 * There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available.
 * On multilingual wikis that use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W24"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 20:20, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-25
<section begin="technews-2024-W25"/> 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
 * People who attempt to add an external link in the visual editor will now receive immediate feedback if they attempt to link to a domain that a project has decided to block. Please see Edit check for more details.
 * The new Community Configuration extension is available on Test Wikipedia. This extension allows communities to customize specific features to meet their local needs. Currently only Growth features are configurable, but the extension will support other Community Configuration use cases in the future.
 * The dark mode beta feature is now available on category and help pages, as well as more special pages. There may be contrast issues. Please report bugs on the project talk page.

Problems
 * Octicons-tools.svg Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center.
 * Last week, styling updates were made to the Vector 2022 skin. This caused unforeseen issues with templates, hatnotes, and images. Changes to templates and hatnotes were reverted. Most issues with images were fixed. If you still see any, report them here.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting June 18, the Reference Edit Check will be deployed to a new set of Wikipedias. This feature is intended to help newcomers and to assist edit-patrollers by inviting people who are adding new content to a Wikipedia article to add a citation when they do not do so themselves. During a test at 11 wikis, the number of citations added more than doubled when Reference Check was shown to people. Reference Check is community configurable.
 * Mailing lists will be unavailable for roughly two hours on Tuesday 10:00–12:00 UTC. This is to enable migration to a new server and upgrade its software.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W25"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-26
<section begin="technews-2024-W26"/> 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
 * Editors will notice that there have been some changes to the background color of text in the diff view, and the color of the byte-change numbers, last week. These changes are intended to make text more readable in both light mode and dark mode, and are part of a larger effort to increase accessibility. You can share your comments or questions on the project talkpage.
 * The text colors that are used for visited-links, hovered-links, and active-links, were also slightly changed last week to improve their accessibility in both light mode and dark mode.

Problems
 * You can copy permanent links to talk page comments by clicking on a comment's timestamp. This feature did not always work when the topic title was very long and the link was used as a wikitext link. This has been fixed. Thanks to Lofhi for submitting the bug.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting 26 June, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link at English Wikipedia, making this feature available for you to use at all wikis. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they were linked to, even if this comment has since been moved elsewhere. You can read more about this feature on Diff or on Mediawiki.org.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W26"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 22:32, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-27
<section begin="technews-2024-W27"/> 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
 * Over the next three weeks, dark mode will become available for all users, both logged-in and logged-out, starting with the mobile web version. This fulfils one of the top-requested community wishes, and improves low-contrast reading and usage in low-light settings. As part of these changes, dark mode will also work on User-pages and Portals. There is more information in the latest Web team update.
 * Logged-in users can now set global preferences for the text-size and dark-mode, thanks to a combined effort across Foundation teams. This allows Wikimedians using multiple wikis to set up a consistent reading experience easily, for example by switching between light and dark mode only once for all wikis.
 * If you use a very old web browser some features might not work on the Wikimedia wikis. This affects Internet Explorer 11 and versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari older than 2016. This change makes it possible to use new CSS features and to send less code to all readers.
 * Wikipedia Admins can customize local wiki configuration options easily using Community Configuration. Community Configuration was created to allow communities to customize how some features work, because each language wiki has unique needs. At the moment, admins can configure Growth features on their home wikis, in order to better recruit and retain new editors. More options will be provided in the coming months.
 * Editors interested in language issues that are related to Unicode standards, can now discuss those topics at a new conversation space in MediaWiki.org. The Wikimedia Foundation is now a member of the Unicode Consortium, and the coordination group can collaboratively review the issues discussed and, where appropriate, bring them to the attention of the Unicode Consortium.
 * One new wiki has been created: a in Mandailing

Problems
 * Editors can once again click on links within the visual editor's citation-preview, thanks to a bug fix by the Editing Team.

Future changes
 * Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 2 weeks. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W27"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 23:59, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-28
<section begin="technews-2024-W28"/> 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
 * At the Wikimedia Foundation a new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graph with more secure, easy to use, and extensible Chart. You can subscribe to the newsletter to get notified about new project updates and other news about Chart.
 * The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on your wiki. This extension helps in managing and making events more visible, giving Event organizers the ability to use tools like the Event registration tool. To learn more about the deployment status and how to request this extension for your wiki, visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-wiki.
 * Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
 * Thank you to all of the authors who have contributed to MediaWiki Core. As a result of these contributions, the percentage of authors contributing more than 5 patches has increased by 25% since last year, which helps ensure the sustainability of the platform for the Wikimedia projects.

Problems
 * A problem with the color of the talkpage tabs always showing as blue, even for non-existent pages which should have been red, affecting the Vector 2022 skin, has been fixed.

Future changes
 * The Trust and Safety Product team wants to introduce temporary accounts with as little disruption to tools and workflows as possible. Volunteer developers, including gadget and user-script maintainers, are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. The team has created documentation explaining how to do the update. Learn more.

Tech News survey
 * Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 1 more week. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W28"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 21:31, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-29
<section begin="technews-2024-W29"/> 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 survey
 * Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 3 more days. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikimedia developers can now officially continue to use both Gerrit and GitLab, due to a June 24 decision by the Wikimedia Foundation to support software development on both platforms. Gerrit and GitLab are both code repositories used by developers to write, review, and deploy the software code that supports the MediaWiki software that the wiki projects are built on, as well as the tools used by editors to create and improve content. This decision will safeguard the productivity of our developers and prevent problems in code review from affecting our users. More details are available in the Migration status page.
 * The Wikimedia Foundation seeks applicants for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). This group will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. Council members will evaluate and consult on the movement's product and technical activities, so that we develop multi-generational projects. We are looking for a range of technical contributors across the globe, from a variety of Wikimedia projects. Please apply here by August 10.
 * Editors with rollback user-rights who use the Wikipedia App for Android can use the new Edit Patrol features. These features include a new feed of Recent Changes, related links such as Undo and Rollback, and the ability to create and save a personal library of user talk messages to use while patrolling. If your wiki wants to make these features available to users who do not have rollback rights but have reached a certain edit threshold, you can contact the team. You can read more about this project on Diff blog.
 * Editors who have access to The Wikipedia Library can once again use non-open access content in SpringerLinks, after the Foundation contacted them to restore access. You can read more about this and 21 other community-submitted tasks that were completed last week.

Changes later this week
 * This week, dark mode will be available on a number of Wikipedias, both desktop and mobile, for logged-in and logged-out users. Interface admins and user script maintainers are encouraged to check gadgets and user scripts in the dark mode, to find any hard-coded colors and fix them. There are some recommendations for dark mode compatibility to help.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Next week, functionaries, volunteers maintaining tools, and software development teams are invited to test the temporary accounts feature on testwiki. Temporary accounts is a feature that will help improve privacy on the wikis. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
 * Editors who upload files cross-wiki, or teach other people how to do so, may wish to join a Wikimedia Commons discussion. The Commons community is discussing limiting who can upload files through the cross-wiki upload/Upload dialog feature to users auto-confirmed on Wikimedia Commons. This is due to the large amount of copyright violations uploaded this way. There is a short summary at Commons:Cross-wiki upload and discussion at Commons:Village Pump.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin. <section end="technews-2024-W29"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:31, 16 July 2024 (UTC)