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Users eligible for autopatrolled

Hello,

During a conversation with @WereSpielChequers: and later @IJBall: the subject of identifying users who might be viable candidates for being granted the autopatrolled privilege came up. There is an existing database report which is intended to provide this information, but the report as it stands today isn't very useful. The main issues (as far as I am aware) are that it is not filtered to show editors who have created articles recently (say, in the last 30 days) and is does not exclude bots and a few other minor things.

I wrote a quick Perl script which uses the MediaWiki API to create a report which does take into account these factors. I have run it a few times, and have been manually pasting the output into my userspace page here.

This isn't a long-term solution, because apart from anything else I am both busy and forgetful :)

WereSpielChequers would ideally like the original database report page to be updated with my version of the report, instead of Community Tech Bot's version, but obviously at present the bot and I would be in conflict with each other, and it would be terribly untidy. So there are a few options I can think of for how we might move forward, and I wonder if you might have any suggestions or input.

1. Perhaps the tidiest thing would be if the existing report could be modified to use the same criteria that I use in mine (which are described at the top of the page), and then I would just stop running my report entirely. I don't know how likely that is to happen on a short timescale, but perhaps you would have some insight on this?

2. Alternatively, perhaps Community Tech Bot could be told to stop updating that page, and I could update it manually for now (and probably seek bot approval to have it run automatically each week).

3. I could update some new page elsewhere in the Wikipedia: namespace, and the existing database report page could maybe redirect to it.

4. Some other option? Community Tech Bot running my code maybe?

I'm not very familiar with the database reports service, or Community Tech Bot, so there may be some background I'm missing here which would make everything clearer; but for now we have two things. We have a page where everyone is looking for this information, and we have a report which is regularly being run to provide the information they are looking for. Unfortunately the two things are not connected in any way :)

Would appreciate your thoughts,

Thparkth (talk) 16:40, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Firstly my apologies for this late reply. I've been on vacation. Secondly, that's a fantastic idea, thank you. I'd be very happy to modify the bot to run your script. The only thing that I need is the SQL query you used to generate it. I'll update the bot when I get it. Thanks a lot for helping maintain the reports. :) NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for getting back to me, hope you enjoyed your vacation :)

The current code is not SQL-based but rather uses Perl and MediaWiki::API. Hopefully this week or next I will have time to look at a pure SQL version. I'll get back to you on this :)

Thparkth (talk) 02:47, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so I have a pure-SQL version of this now which I have tested and appears to work successfully. Note that it is an expensive and long-running query - it will probably take five to six hours to run. This is similar to the performance of the Perl version. The basic issue is that calculating how many articles a user created (with all the various conditions in place) is quite an expensive operation. It might be possible to optimize it further than I already have, but I have literally spend at least twelve hours refactoring this in various radical ways, and this is the fastest option I could find. Anyway, this code works, and I believe should be ready to go!

/*
        autopatrolled_eligible.sql

        Identify users who meet the criteria for being granted "autopatrolled"
        on the English Wikipedia but who don't already have it.

        Author: Andrew Crawford (thparkth) <[email protected]>

        License: Public Domain

*/

SELECT
        /* "editor" consisting of user_name, wrapped in HTML tags linking to the sigma "created" tool */
        CONCAT(
                '<a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/created.py?name=',
                user_name,
                '&server=enwiki&max=100&startdate=&ns=,,&redirects=none&deleted=undeleted">',
                user_name,
                '</a>'
              ) AS editor,
        /* derived column "created count" returned by this subquery */
        (
                SELECT
                        count(*)
                FROM
                        revision_userindex
                JOIN
                        page
                ON
                        page_id=rev_page
                WHERE
                                page_namespace=0
                        AND
                                rev_parent_id=0
                        AND
                                rev_user_text=user_name
                        AND
                                rev_deleted=0
                        AND
                                page_is_redirect=0
        ) AS created_count
FROM
        (
        /* This query returns users who have created pages in the last 30 days
           and who are not already members of autoreviewed */

        SELECT DISTINCT
                user_name
        FROM
                recentchanges
        JOIN
                user
        ON
                rc_user=user_id
        JOIN
                page
        ON
                rc_cur_id=page_id
        WHERE
                        /* User created a page within the last thirty days */
                        rc_timestamp>date_format(date_sub(NOW(),INTERVAL 30 DAY),'%Y%m%d%H%i%S')
                AND
                        /* It was an article */
                        rc_namespace=0
                AND
                        /* The user was human */
                        rc_bot=0
                AND
                        /* It was a new page */
                        rc_new=1
                AND
                        /* It's not a redirect */
                        page_is_redirect=0
                AND
                        /* User doesn't already have autoreviewer */
                        NOT EXISTS
                        (
                                SELECT 1 FROM user_groups WHERE ug_user=user_id AND (ug_group='autoreviewer' OR ug_group='sysop')
                        )
        ) as InnerQuery
HAVING
        created_count > 24
ORDER BY
        created_count DESC
LIMIT
        500
;

This can also be found as /data/project/thparkthsql/autopatrolled_eligible.sql on Tool Labs.

By the way, I enjoy this kind of work, and I am gaining some familiarity with the schema and the Tool Labs environment so please do let me know if there is a backlog I could be helping with.

Cheers,

Thparkth (talk) 14:11, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Thparkth: I'm extremely sorry it took me this long to get back to you. I just updated the report. Let's hope this works. I'm a little worried since it's an expensive query and often queries running more than a couple of hours are killed abruptly. Aside, would you like to be a co-maintainer for the database-reports labs tool? There are several other reports lying dead which could use some love. :) It's a simple python-based bot, whose code can be seen at https://github.com/Niharika29/database-reports Thank you so much! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 09:47, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks NKohli, that's great. Thanks for tolerating my eccentric SQL indentation style ;). Virtually all of the processing time is spent in working out the created count for each user. An index on rev.rev_parent_id would probably help a great deal with that. I will probably go back to this now and try to find away to avoid using that column entirely; finding the lowest rev.rev_id for the page should be logically the same thing and it's a primary key!

Yes, I would love to be a co-maintainer for database-reports, and thank-you for the opportunity.

Thparkth (talk) 10:44, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I added you as a maintainer for the tool. Are you on Github? Then I can add you as a collaborator on the repo and you can push code easily. :) Also, are you on IRC? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 15:34, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just created a github user (thparkth). I am very familiar with git but less so with github. I am "thparkth" on IRC also. Thparkth (talk) 16:37, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

Hi NKohli (WMF)! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

-- 15:58, Wednesday, January 13, 2016 (UTC)

Mission 1	Mission 2	Mission 3	Mission 4	Mission 5	Mission 6	Mission 7
Say Hello to the World	An Invitation to Earth	Small Changes, Big Impact	The Neutral Point of View	The Veil of Verifiability	The Civility Code	Looking Good Together

Get Help

About The Wikipedia Adventure | Hang out in the Interstellar Lounge

API change will break your bot

Hi Niharika,

Did you see the announcement that http:// access to the API is going away in a few weeks? It looks like the Community Tech bot is going to break as a result of this change.

BTW, I'm encouraging people who need help updating their code to ask at w:en:Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard or on the mailing list. I don't know whether there will be any requests, but if you can help, it'd probably make someone's day much happier. :-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:50, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for pointing this out to me, Whatamidoing (WMF)! I did indeed miss the announcement. I'll fix up the bot over the weekend and try to keep an eye on the mailing list and the noticeboard as well. Really happy to help. :) Thank you so much. NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:29, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Whatamidoing (WMF) Can you point me to where I should be making the https fix? I couldn't see where I'm using http in my code instead of https (in a very cursory glance through). Thanks! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 06:43, 21 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really know anything except that your bot was on the list. :-(

Brandon Black in Ops should be able to provide you with more information. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:11, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay! Thank you. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 06:07, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Database Report

Hi Niharika. Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused templates has been broken for over two years, and I haven't had much luck finding someone from the community interested in getting it back up and running. Is this something you or others on your team might be able to help with? If it's a technically trivial extension, low transclusion templates (1 or 2 transclusions) would be of interest as well. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:27, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rob, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'd try and look into it soon. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 16:24, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Community Tech bot

I noticed that Community Tech bot has stopped updating as of the end of August. Can you give the bot a push and get it working again? Or if this is a known problem, do you have an ETA on when it might be back up? Thanks. Pinging Thparkth on this, too. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 01:58, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @Gogo Dodo:, thanks for the ping. I'll look into the problem today. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 08:30, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, this should be fixed now. The bot will resume updating pages as usual. Feel free to report back if you find any more problems with this. Thanks! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 11:51, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for fixing it. It is updating now. While I'm here, I noticed that a few talk pages listed are false positives and have been appearing for awhile now. Can you check it out? The ones that keep reappearing are:

It is a rather bizarre mix and I don't see any obvious connection between them. Thanks again. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 05:19, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Gogo Dodo: which report is this for? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 11:15, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's Wikipedia:Database reports/Orphaned talk pages. All the above pages except Talk:DDWG were created between 22 April and 3 May 2016. DDWG was moved to that name 6 May 2016. Maybe a database got some bad entries in that period. I recall an incident where some pages were designated as mainspace pages somewhere even though their name specified another namespace, but I think that was longer ago. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:42, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The latest database reports by the bot have omitted <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> around the timestamp. Example: [1]. It's needed to only transclude the timestamp and not the whole report at Wikipedia:Database reports. I have fixed two reports so right now there is no problem at Wikipedia:Database reports. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:00, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @PrimeHunter: I don't see any difference between [2] and [3]. What's different? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The page itself looks the same. onlyinclude only affects how it looks when it's transcluded on another page like Wikipedia:Database reports where only the part inside <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> will be shown. When the bot version was current the entire page was shown in a single cell in the "Data as of" column at the "PRODed articles with deletion logs" row. My edit [4] means only "06:30, 10 September 2016 (UTC)" is currently shown in that cell. For testing, try previewing this section without nowiki around the below code. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:49, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Understood. I'll fix it by Sunday. Thanks! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a parameter to omit the transclusion for now so there is no rush.[5] PrimeHunter (talk) 11:02, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. This should be fixed now (in future report updates, that is). I pushed those reports today so they should update soon. I'll try to keep an eye on it and make sure it behaves. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 11:12, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for adding onlyinclude taqs. The timestamp should be inside the tags like the old revision in [6] in order to display on transclusion at Wikipedia:Database reports. The current revision only displays "..." on transclusion. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:10, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, sorry. I changed it to <onlyinclude>~~~</onlyinclude>. Is that okay? Thanks. -NKohli (WMF) (talk) 15:43, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You need five tildes for a timestamp alone. Three tildes make a username without timestamp so this should work: ~~~ <onlyinclude>~~~~~</onlyinclude>. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:47, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's working perfectly now. I manually moved the timestamp in some weekly and monthly reports which I guess will automatically do it in future updates. Regarding the above post by Gogo Dodo, Wikipedia talk:Database reports#Zombies in the database shows a report by another bot is also unable to detect that Category:216 BC births and Category:235 BC births exist, so I guess it's a database issue and not a problem in the bot code. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:36, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[[Wikipedia:Database reports/PRODed articles with deletion logs]]: {{Wikipedia:Database reports/PRODed articles with deletion logs}} [[Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles by size]] (doesn't use onlyinclude but isn't currently transcluded at [[Wikipedia:Database reports]]: {{Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles by size}}

User:NKohli (WMF)/megawatch.js

To get around the 50 page restriction, you can split the result array into multiple arrays each with 50 pages...

//Split into lists of 50 (max number for api)
result_split = new Array( Math.ceil(result.length/50) );
for (var j=0; j<result.length; j+=50) {
	result_split[j/50] = result.slice(j, j+49);
}

and then make multiple api calls with a loop...

var count=0;
for (var ii = 0; ii < result_split.length; ii++) {
	new mw.Api().get( {
	// ... (your code) ...
	titles: result_split[ii].join( '|' )
	// ... (your code) ...
	.done( function () { 
		count++;
		if (count === result_split.length) {
			$( '#megawatch' ).addClass( 'watched' );
		}
	} );
}

Though you might still want to limit the number of watched pages to a reasonable number, as there are some pretty large categories out there. - Evad37 [talk] 23:48, 27 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is useful. Thanks! I'll update the script soon. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 11:06, 2 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your BRFA

Your BRFA, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Community Tech bot 3 has been approved. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:16, 22 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:46, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your feedback matters: Final reminder to take the global Wikimedia survey

Hello! This is a final reminder that the Wikimedia Foundation survey will close on 28 February, 2017 (23:59 UTC). The survey is available in various languages and will take between 20 and 40 minutes. Take the survey now.

If you already took the survey - thank you! We won't bother you again.

About this survey: You can find more information about this project here or you can read the frequently asked questions. This survey is hosted by a third-party service and governed by this privacy statement. If you need additional help, or if you wish to opt-out of future communications about this survey, send an email through EmailUser function to User:EGalvez (WMF). About the Wikimedia Foundation: The Wikimedia Foundation supports you by working on the software and technology to keep the sites fast, secure, and accessible, as well as supports Wikimedia programs and initiatives to expand access and support free knowledge globally. Thank you! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 08:15, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Popular pages report

What is the popular pages report and should WP:CHICAGO have one?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:02, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! The popular pages report shows the top-viewed 500/1000 projects in a Wikiproject in the past month. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Alaska/Popular pages for example. There was a bot, Mr. Z bot which used to generate these reports previously but it died a few months ago and the reports were broken. So we made a new bot to do the same job. If you do not want a report for WikiProject Chicago I can remove it from the bot config. The current report is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago/Popular pages. Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:16, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages config.json

How do I set up User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages config.json for a project? Looking to do it for Wikipedia:WikiProject Disney and Wikipedia:WikiProject Amusement Parks. Elisfkc (talk) 03:59, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Elisfkc, I see that both WikiProject Disney and Amusement Parks are listed in that config. So that means that the bot is already working on generating their reports. The bot is running a little behind schedule since this is its second run and the code is getting changed frequently but both of those projects should be updated soon. You can find the reports here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Amusement Parks/Popular pages and Wikipedia:WikiProject Disney/Popular pages. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 04:51, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I just didn't see them. Thanks. Elisfkc (talk) 13:47, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject New York City Public Transportation/Popular pages

Could you possibly help set up this page? Thanks.--Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 12:17, 6 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done! Sorry for the delay, I was on vacation. Let me know if anything looks out of place. Thank you! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-29

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

Recent changes

You can now use global preferences on Wikimedia wikis. You can set them on the global preferences page. [7]
You can now see a new log of pages being created at Special:Log/create. It includes pages which are later deleted. It is now available on all Wikimedia wikis except Commons and Wikidata. [8]
You can see how many pageviews a wiki had from specific countries. The Wikistats2 maps have now been updated. [9]

Changes later this week

Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change. [10]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on July 17 at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on July 18 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can read more and leave feedback.
You can use <inputbox> to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead of prefix:Page name you will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

16:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-30

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

Recent changes

When you log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [11]
Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [12]
Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [13]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 July. It will be on all wikis from 26 July (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

09:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-31

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 design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems. [14]

Problems

Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [15][16]
Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [17][18]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 August (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 August at 15:00 (UTC) as well as at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

After a community discussion, a new group for users will be created. "Interface administrators" will be the only users allowed to edit interface pages like MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Common.js. This is done to avoid technical issues and improve security. That change will be effective by the end of August 2018.

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

14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-32

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

Special:NewPages now has the OOUI look. [19]

Problems

The MediaWiki version that was released two weeks ago was late to some Wikimedia wikis. This was because of bugs. It was on all wikis 30 July. [20][21]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 August. It will be on all wikis from 9 August.

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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19:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-33

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

CSS in templates can now be stored in a separate page on all wikis. This is called TemplateStyles. This is to make it easier to edit how templates look. [22]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can read more. You can leave feedback on the talk page. [23]

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

17:53, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-34

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

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The 2018 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
Legacy JavaScript global variables have been deprecated for seven years. They will soon be removed from all wikis. Gadgets and scripts that use them will stop working. You can test your community's gadgets on "group0" wikis. For example Test Wikipedia or mediawiki.org. The legacy JavaScript global variables are already disabled there. You can read the migration guide to fix old scripts. [24]

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16:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-35

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 moved paragraphs in diffs in the mobile view. It also works on all languages in the desktop view. [25]
Bureaucrats on all Wikimedia wikis can now remove the interface admin user right. [26]

Problems

Some diffs show lines in the wrong order. The developers are working on fixing it. [27]

Changes later this week

The message you see when you thank a user will change. This is to make it easier to understand. [28]
AWB will stop adding using AWB in the edit summary. Instead it will add a tag that says AWB. [29]
Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title. [30]
Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age. [31]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 August. It will be on all wikis from 30 August (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

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

16:16, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-36

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 right for users who can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. Before this all admins could edit CSS and JavaScript. This was a security risk. This group is called interface administrators. Administrators can delete user CSS and JavaScript pages. [32][33]
There will be an A/B test on the Wikipedia mobile website. It starts this week. It tests how we show templates that show information about an article. The test will last two weeks. [34][35]
You can now use different CSS rules for different skins when you edit templates. This is because of TemplateStyles. [36]
wp10 in ORES is now called articlequality. [37]
When you get a new message on your talk page you get a yellow message in the toolbar. The preference to show or not show this has been removed. [38]

Problems

UploadWizard had problems with campaigns. Users could not upload files. This has now been fixed. [39]
You can get a notification when a link is made to a page you created. This has not worked since June. It was fixed last week. [40]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 September. It will be on all wikis from 6 September (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department will work on advanced mobile editing. You can read more about this and other things they plan to work on over the next year. You can also see the presentation.
The RelatedSites extension will be removed from Wikivoyage.
Unused projects on the Wikimedia Cloud virtual private server will be removed. This will happen in October. Projects can be marked if they are being used. [41]

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

16:47, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-37

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

Recent changes

When you added or edited a template with the visual editor the input boxes were very big. This has been fixed. The input boxes will now be smaller until you click on them. Then they will change size to fit the text. [42]

Problems

Some diffs showed lines in the wrong order. This was fixed last week. [43]
Marking a cross-wiki notification as read didn't work every time. The other wiki was not updated. This has now been fixed. [44]
<maplink> did not work for a few days. This was because of a bug. This has now been fixed. [45]
{{subst:REVISIONUSER}} is used by some templates. For a period edits saved with {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} would save the previous user's name and not your username. This is now fixed. Edits made before the bug was fixed will still be wrong and need to be corrected. [46]
When you move a page the title still shows the old page name. The developers are working on fixing this. [47]

Changes later this week

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 Septmber at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The developers work on making the wikis work better on mobile phones. There is a list of common problems when making content easier to read in the mobile view. You can add things to the page and ask others to help.

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

22:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-38

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

Recent changes

The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. Images uploaded using Nearby are now automatically added to the associated Wikidata item. You can browse other images on Commons. You can see your achievements and your upload statistics. It has also fixed some bugs. [48]
MediaWiki web requests now have a time limit of 60 seconds for GET requests and 200 seconds for POST requests. [49]

Problems

You could not see the menu on the notifications page on the mobile version. This has now been fixed. [50]

Changes later this week

Special:AncientPages can hide disambiguation pages. [51]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 September. It will be on all wikis from 20 September (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The developers are testing new mobile web navigation. You can use it and give feedback.

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

21:58, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-39

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

Changes later this week

The preferences form will change to use the standard look. If you see any problems please report them on Phabricator. [52]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 September. It will be on all wikis from 27 September (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 26 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:22, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-40

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

Ordinary pages can no longer be loaded as javascript. You could do this using ?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript in the URL. Only fully protected pages in the MediaWiki: namespace or user javascript subpages can be loaded as javascript now. This is for better security. [53][54]

Problems

New and updated translations from translatewiki.net will not reach the wikis for a while. You can still translate messages on translatewiki.net. The Wikimedia wikis will be updated with the new translations later. This is because of work on the translation system. [55][56]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 October. It will be on all wikis from 4 October (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Search Platform team. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 UTC. See how to join if you want to know how the search function works or have questions.

Future changes

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

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

17:34, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-41

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 Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. You can use the Programs and Events Dashboard or the Fountain instead. [57]

Problems

There was a problem when you copied and pasted from a table with the visual editor. It could add href where it shouldn't be. This has now been fixed. [58]

Changes later this week

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

23:38, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-42

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

Some pages, edits and users disappeared for a short while after the server switch. Missing content and users was fixed within a day. Some preferences and other things might take a few more days to fix. [59]
Wikis are updated with new and updated translations from translatewiki.net again. This will happen once a week. The developers are working on fixing the problem so we can have translation updates more often again. [60]

Changes later this week

When you create an abuse filter that prevents edits you can now write a specific error message for it. Before this all abuse filters that prevented edits had the same error message. [61]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 October. It will be on all wikis from 18 October (calendar).

Meetings

There will be no more meetings with the Editing team. This is because not enough Wikimedians were interested. To tell developers which bugs you think are the most important you can use Phabricator as normal. [62]
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

22:40, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-43

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

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 October. It will be on all wikis from 25 October (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.

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

23:11, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Popular pages

Hello. How I can request WikiProject to popular pages task? I thought it will be updated after I create certain page but it didn't happened. Eurohunter (talk) 13:04, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Eurohunter. The process for enabling the bot to work on a certain project involves adding the project to this config page. I can add the project to that page if you can tell me the details for which project you want this for, which page you want the report on and how many records would you like (maximum of 1000). Thank you. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Basshunter. It shouldn't exceed 500 records. Eurohunter (talk) 19:27, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-44

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 post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
The wikis now have a content security policy report. This means that you might get a warning in your javascript console when you load external resources in your user scripts. For security reasons it is recommended that you don't do this. It might not be possible to load external resources in your scripts in the future. [63]

Problems

Your watchlist can show which changes you have already seen. This did not work for a few days. It has been fixed. [64]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 October. It will be on all wikis from 1 November (calendar).
The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer available. It will be removed from Special:Preferences. It has not been the standard editor for a long time. It was replaced by the 2010 wikitext editor. [65][66]

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:08, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-45

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

Recent changes

You can now use TemplateWizard to edit templates. This works only with the 2010 wikitext editor and not in the visual editor or the 2017 wikitext editor. If you click on you can enter the information in a pop-up. You can turn on TemplateWizard in your beta feature preferences. [67]

Changes later this week

You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. The interface for the two-column edit conflict will change. You can read more.
When you edit with the visual editor you can use the "Automatic" citation tab. This helps you generate citations. You will now be able to write plain text citations or the title of a journal article or a book in this tab. This will search the Crossref and WorldCat databases and add the top result. [68]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 November. It will be on all wikis from 8 November (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:28, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-46

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

Some old mobile browsers can use the watchlist again. This has not worked for a while. These browsers are called grade C browsers. This helps for example Windows Phone 8.1 with Internet Explorer and Lumia 535 with Windows 10. [69]

Problems

You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. Users who use this view saw the edit conflict resolution page when they wanted to see a preview. This has been fixed. [70][71][72]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 November. It will be on all wikis from 15 November (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You can use the content translation tool to translate articles. The developers are working on a new version. One of the changes will be a maintenance category. Articles where users add a lot of text from machine translation without changing it will be in that category. This is so the community can review it. The users will also have been warned before they publish the article that it has a lot of unchanged text from machine translations. [73]

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

19:22, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-47

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 vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote until 30 November.
There is an A/B test for sameAs data. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks. [74]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated. [75]
The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page. [76]

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

23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-48

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 wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [77]

Changes later this week

The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [78]
Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [79]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 28 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warning Use of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead. [80]

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

22:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-49

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

Admins will not be able to unblock themselves if they are blocked by someone other than themselves. This is because it can cause damage if someone else takes over an admin account and other admins can't block them. If this is a problem for your community you can report it on Phabricator. You can also ask questions on Meta. There is a discussion on Phabricator about how to solve this if two admins fight with each other on a small wiki. [81]
Small SVG images are now bigger when you see them in MediaViewer. [82]
You can go to a section from the edit summary by clicking on the section name. Before this you had to click on the arrow. [83]
When you jumped to a footnote that was referenced several times in an article it could be difficult to see where you were in the text. Now there are jump marks and highlights to help you find your way back. [84][85]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 December at 16:00 (UTC) and at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-50

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

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

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

Future changes

New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts. [86][87]
When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off. [88]

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

17:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-51

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

Tech News

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

Recent changes

Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [89][90]
Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [91]
The ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy.

Problems

<ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [92]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

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

Future changes

The Wikimedia Foundation Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.
tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [93]

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

20:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-02

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

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

Recent changes

RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [94]
MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [95]
codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [96]
On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.

Problems

In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [97]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

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

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

18:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-03

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

Recent changes

You can now use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [98][99]
You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [100][101]
Templates with <templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [102]

Problems

When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [103]

Changes later this week

You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [104]
The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15 17:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-04

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

Tech News

Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [105]

Recent changes

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

Problems

When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [106]
MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [107][108]
Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [109]

Changes later this week

You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [110]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

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

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

20:36, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

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

Recent changes

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

Problems

When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [111]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

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

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18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-06

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

Changes later this week

It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [112]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-07

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

Recent changes

You can use the ambox CSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you use ambox there are classes you can use.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 February. It will be on all wikis from 14 February (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-08

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

Recent changes

When you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [113]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [114]

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

23:13, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Talk to us about talking

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

First, sign up your group here.
Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2019-09

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 version of the iOS Wikipedia app. It has for example syntax highlighting and new toolbars to make it easier to write wikitext. It also has night mode, a find-on-page function and other things. You can give feedback and suggestions. [115]

Changes later this week

When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [116]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

21:16, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-10

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

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [117][118]

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

16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Editnotices/Page/User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages config.json

Template:Editnotices/Page/User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages config.json has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 15:44, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2019-11

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

Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatements Lua function or the #statements parser function. If they do, they will now be shown using a Kartographer <maplink> if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator.
There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.

Problems

Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [119]
Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [120][121]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-12

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

When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [122][123]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [124]
Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

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

19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-13

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 new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version. [125]

Problems

There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed. [126]
The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon. [127]
Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them. [128]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-14

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

Notifications tell you about things that happen on the wiki. You can turn on notifications about new links to pages you created. For performance reasons you can no longer get e-mails about this. [129]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-15

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

More wikis are now testing visual editor section editing for mobile users. You can read more.
Admins on French and Polish Wikipedia can block someone from editing a page or a namespace. If your wiki wants to get these blocks before they are available to all wikis, you can tell the developers. [130][131]

Problems

You will be able read but not edit most wikis for 30 minutes on 11 April at 05:00 (UTC). This is because of a hardware problem. You can see a list of the affected wikis. [132]
A map update caused some problems on 29 March and 30 March. It was rolled back. [133]
Pages on some Wikivoyages had problems with the top headline. This has been fixed. [134]

Changes later this week

When you add an edit summary the VisualEditor will search your recent edit summaries in case you want to re-use one. This works in both the visual and wikitext modes on desktop. It also works on the mobile site. [135]
The Wikimedia wikis will get a URL shortener. This will work from 11 April. You can read more. [136]
The {{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it will return "" (empty string). When you read a page it will return "-" (dash). For now this will only affect content namespaces. [137]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You will be able to preview references. This means that when you hover over the link you will get a popup that shows you a preview of the reference. It will work much like page previews. This is so you don't have to go to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will now be available as a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia. [138][139]
The Wikidata JSON output will change. Empty containers will be serialised as empty objects. This is a breaking change that will affect tools that use JSON outputs and APIs. It will happen on 30 April. You can read more and see how to test your code.

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

18:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-16

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

All wikis now have the TemplateWizard for the wikitext editor.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Wikidata will get a new constraint status called suggestion. This will change how the WikibaseQualityConstraints constraint checking API works. [140][141]
You can test the depicts property for structured data on Commons.

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

23:00, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-17

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 advanced search function URL now shows which namespaces you search in. The namespace field is collapsed by default on the search page. You can also add new fields to the search interface through a hook. [142][143][144]
The wikis now look slightly different in the mobile web version. [145]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Wikipedia articles will have the sameAs meta property. It adds structured data. This makes it easier for search engines to find Wikipedia articles. It also makes it easier to reuse content. There will an A/B test. [146][147]

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

19:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-18

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 Wikipedia app for Android now invites users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. [148][149]

Problems

Tech News was late last week because of a MassMessage bug. Other newsletters had the same problem. [150]

Changes later this week

You will see when you last refreshed the recent changes page. This is so you can see how recent the changes are. [151]
When you write a comment in Structured Discussions but have not posted it yet your web browser will save it in local storage instead of session storage. This means you do not lose them even if you close your web browser. Structured Discussions used to be called Flow. [152]
You will be able to turn off milestone notifications. Milestone notifications congratulate you when you have made certain numbers of edits. [153]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikidata wb_terms table will be dropped. This will affect some Wikidata tools. They need to be updated. The table has become too big which is causing problems. This will happen on 29 May. You can read more. You can ask for help if you need it.
Wikimedia wikis will soon use a token when you log out. This changes how the API works. Some tools might need to be updated. [154]

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

22:27, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

User:NKohli_(WMF)/AfC-proposal

Hi. I am curious to note that the 'Next' buttons on your draft link to my sandbox. I do not believe that this is appropriate. As it is not acceptable to edit other users' personal sub pages, could I politely request you to do something about it. Regards, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:40, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kudpung: (talk page stalker) The 3 links other than the one to "My client" go to [[Special:MyPage/sandbox]], not specifically to yours. --DannyS712 (talk) 01:56, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, npw I understand. I'm so sorry I bothered you. My apologies. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:59, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2019-19

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

Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. The developers are working on solving the problem. [155]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-20

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

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

00:48, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-21

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 report for phase 1 of the talk pages consultation 2019 has been published. Communities are invited to start phase 2 of the consultation on their wikis.

Problems

File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed. [156][157]
Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments. [158][159]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The content translation tool on Wikipedia can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team. [160]
The Wikidata wbeditentity API endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June. [161]

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

13:04, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-22

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

Big changes to the replica database will happen on 3 June. Some tools on Cloud Services will stop working if the maintainers do not update them to use the new schema. This probably affects tools that query for revisions or log entries made by a user. [162][163]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:33, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-23

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 write all special letters in all African Wikipedia languages. This works in the desktop version. [164]
There is now a field called depicts on Commons. This is a way to show what is in a picture with the help of Wikidata. It is still in development. [165]
Some tools on Toolforge may break on or after 3 June because of database changes. Maintainers should update their tools to use the new schema. [166][167]

Problems

You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [168]

Changes later this week

Some wikis have one tab for the visual editor and one tab for a wikitext editor. Others wikis just have one tab. If your wiki has two tabs, clicking a link to create a new page has always opened a wikitext editor. It will now open the editor you used the last time you edited. [169]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-24

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

Recent changes

When you create a PDF from a page on the wiki this is now done by Proton. Before this we used Electron. It should look the same but work better. Both use Chromium. This is a different system from when you collect several articles into a book and make a PDF from them. [170][171]
The Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standard OOUI icons. There will be additional minor fixes for positioning in the next deployment. [172]
Bots and other scripts that do not set an identifiable User-Agent may find their requests strictly rate-limited until they identify themselves properly. [173]

Problems

Please check if the Flagged Revisions configuration on your wiki is as you expect (or as it was a few weeks ago). If not, please report it. [174]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-25

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

You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [175]

Changes later this week

MIDI files can soon be played without the Score extension. You can then add them with [[File:Filename.midi]]. Later override_midi and override_audio will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score. [176]
A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems. [177]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old wgEnableAPI and wgEnableWriteAPI values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values. [178]

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

20:37, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-26

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

The new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday. [179]
Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced. [180]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

You can watch or join the next Wikimedia Language showcase. It will be about the usage of Machine Translation in Wikimedia projects. The showcase will be on 26 June at 13:00 (UTC). A recording will be kept for later viewing
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 26 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-27

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 development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [181]

Problems

Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [182]
Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [183]

Changes later this week

You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [184]
There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-28

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

For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [185]
Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [186]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [187]

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [188]
There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [189]

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

20:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-29

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 web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [190]

Changes later this week

The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called Edit filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [191]

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

15:29, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-30

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

Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check the conditions and the request process.
The Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania. [192]

Problems

The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [193]

Changes later this week

Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [194]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Some items in the visual editor will change later this week. This will make it easier to edit links, citations, and templates on both desktop and mobile. [195][196]
With advanced search turned on you will be able to choose the sorting order of the search results when you do a search. [197][198]
Users who edit from IP addresses whitelisted on a request for temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation will bypass CAPTCHAs. This will happen in August. If you think this should not happen for some reason, please let us know.
The variable user_wpzero will be removed from AbuseFilter. A list of filters needing a fix is provided.

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13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-31

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

Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [199]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-32

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

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).

Problems

A change in RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed. [200][201]

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.

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

13:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-33

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 using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [202]
Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [203]

Changes later this week

Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [204]

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

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

18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-34

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

There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [205]

Changes later this week

Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [206]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [207]

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

15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at User talk:Community Tech bot#Forgotten articles

You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:Community Tech bot#Forgotten articles. —usernamekiran(talk) 18:22, 19 August 2019 (UTC)Template:Z48[reply]

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+==Discussion at [[User talk:Community Tech bot#Forgotten articles]]==
+[[File:Farm-Fresh eye.png|15px|link=|alt=]]&nbsp;You are invited to join the discussion at [[User talk:Community Tech bot#Forgotten articles]].  —<span style="font-size: 93%; letter-spacing:1.2pt;"><span class="monospaced" style="font-family: monospace, monospace;">usernamekiran[[User talk:Usernamekiran|<span style="letter-spacing:1pt;">'''(talk)'''</span>]]</span></span> 18:22, 19 August 2019 (UTC){{Z48}}<!-- [[Template:Please see]] -->