User talk:ZandDev/feed/Archive 2024

Tech News: 2024-02

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

Recent changes

• mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
• The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing. [1]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar). [2][3]

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 January 2024

• From the editor: NINETEEN MORE YEARS! NINETEEN MORE YEARS!

• Special report: Public Domain Day 2024

• Technology report: Wikipedia: A Multigenerational Pursuit

• News and notes: In other news ... see ya in court!

• In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate

• In the media: What is plagiarism? Oklahoma Disneyland? Reaching a human being at Wikipedia?

• WikiProject report: WikiProjects Israel and Palestine

• Obituary: Anthony Bradbury

• Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2023

• Crossword: everybody gangsta till the style sheets start cascading

• Comix: Conflict resolution

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-03

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

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. [4]
• Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the requiresES6 option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future. [5]
• Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [6]
• You can now thank edits made by bots. [7]
• An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar). [8][9]
• Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately. [10]
• The jquery.cookie module was deprecated and replaced with the mediawiki.cookie module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed. [11]

Future changes

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

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-04

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

Problems

• A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed. [12]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 January. It will be on all wikis from 25 January (calendar). [13][14]

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05

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

• Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [15]
• There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 January. It will be on all wikis from 1 February (calendar). [16][17]
• On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new Special:QrCode page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [18]
• Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the targets option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the skins option instead. [19]

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

The Signpost: 31 January 2024

• News and notes: Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail

• Opinion: Until it happens to you

• Disinformation report: How paid editors squeeze you dry

• In the media: Katherine Maher new NPR CEO, go check Wikipedia, race in the race

• In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate, part 2

• Recent research: Croatian takeover was enabled by "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining [admins]"

• Comix: We've all got to start somewhere

• Traffic report: DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-06

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

Recent changes

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to the phabricator task.
• On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity. Learn more about "action blocks". [20][21]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar). [22][23]
• Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [24]

Future changes

• 24 Wikipedias with Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For 46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February, unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings. [25][26]

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 February 2024

• News and notes: Wikimedia Russia director declared "foreign agent" by Russian gov; EU prepares to pile on the papers

• Disinformation report: How low can the scammers go?

• Gallery: Before and After: Why you don't need to touch grass to dramatically improve images of flora and fauna

• In the media: Speaking in tongues, toeing the line, and dressing the part

• Serendipity: Is this guy the same as the one who was a Nazi?

• Traffic report: Griselda, Nikki, Carl, Jannik and two types of football

• Crossword: Our crossword to bear

• Comix: Strongly

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:37, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-07

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

• The WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. [27][28][29] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [30][31]

Problems

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar). [32][33]
• As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[34] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped. [35]

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MediaWiki message delivery 05:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-08

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

• If you have the "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [36]
• There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
• Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
• The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB. [37]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar). [38][39]

• Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
• The CSS filter property can now be used in HTML style attributes in wikitext. [40]

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-09

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

• The mobile visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well. [41]
• The mw.config value wgGlobalGroups now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is: if (/globalgroupname/.test(mw.config.get("wgGlobalGroups"))). [42]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 29 February (calendar). [43][44]

Future changes

• The right to change edit tags (changetags) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:21, 26 February 2024 (UTC)