Qgil-WMF

Pre-LQT/Flow comments can be found at User talk:Qgil-WMF/Archive 1

Re: User talk:Mitevam#Vendors_table_in_own_page

Mitevam (talk) 17:07, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Amsterdam Hackathon 2013

Please don't move pages to useless names. Thank you, Multichill (talk) 20:57, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for helping us getting out of the box

Hi, I'm Clement Dietschy (or bedhed), founder of Seizam. Thanks for the note in the news about our Video (from the 18th). It's always great to feel we're doing good. Do not hesitate to contact me if you wish more information. Also, we'd be delighted to invite you (or friends) on Seizam for free. Cheers!

-- Clément Dietschy 75020 Paris tél. +33 6 87 75 99 27 -- Seizam Sàrl. 24, rue de Bâle 68300 Saint-Louis (France) tél. +33 970 448 200 www.seizam.com

ClementD (talk) 14:46, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
22:09, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, would you like to tell me how can I leave a message without being reverted?

Should I completely finish my proposal now and then post that to the page Summer of Code 2013? KeepOpera (talk) 16:25, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if I removed anything from you. What I reverted was in fact some spam that was added right before your post by another user. Feel free adding your text again and sorry again for the inconvenience. Qgil (talk) 16:40, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Outreach Program for Women

Hi Quim.

Regarding this edit, you should never use rollback on a non-vandalistic edit. It's seen as a "slap across the face" on nearly any MediaWiki or Wikimedia wiki. From m:rollback:

Rolling back a good-faith edit, without explanation, may be misinterpreted as "I think your edit was no better than vandalism and reverting it doesn't need an explanation". Some editors are sensitive to such perceived slights; if you use the rollback feature other than for vandalism (for example, because undo is impractical due to the large page size), it is courteous to leave an explanation on the article's talk page or on the talk page of the user, whose edit(s) you have reverted.

Your actions here were particularly egregious as you not only used rollback on a non-vandalistic edit, you also broke the Wikimedia Engineering page and didn't bother leaving a talk page note on my talk page or Talk:Outreach Program for Women.

BRD is an old wiki principle and I'd be happy to discuss my edits, however your behavior here has been simply unacceptable and I can flatly guarantee that if you continue to use rollback in this manner, you'll very quickly no longer be able to use rollback at all.

I've partially re-reverted your edit in this edit to fix Wikimedia Engineering. If there's some issue with the infobox (it's now being hidden with CSS), please explain the issue somewhere so that it can be discussed. Blindly reverting (particularly using rollback) is just about the fastest way to piss people off in a collaborative wiki environment. MZMcBride (talk) 17:21, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

(after a long IRC chat) Yes to everything and now everything is clear. Thank you for your effort and your patience with my excessively bold edits. Qgil (talk) 18:18, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Enabling LQT

Hey, could you please in the future refrain from enabling LQT on pages with existing discussions? Even in general the net benefits of LQT are questionable, but when a page is converted that makes the content a lot harder to follow and adds needless confusion.

I do bring this up in part precisely because the net benefits are so questionable, however, as I would argue that this initial confusion is not a necessary cost for something overally useful in the long run because LQT is if anything damaging in the long run. Instead of removing barriers for new users, it presents new barriers for those coming from other projects, as they are not used to it, it is massively unintuitive, and the differences cross-project are staggering enough as it is. It is hard enough for many users to step out of the comfort zones of their home projects without strange technical issues such as LQT presents.

And they are technical issues - having a reply button is nice, but the complete lack of integrated notifications when someone uses that reply button makes it a lot harder to follow updates to discussions, especially if they are happening at the same time as and relevant to stuff happening on one's watchlist. None of it shows up on the watchlist at all, as LQT does not have a meaningful history, and as a result apparently the only way to go back and find a discussion later (after already having marked it as read) is to go to the page and find it on the page.

So yeah, please don't do that. -— Isarra ༆ 18:05, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

"they are not used to it, it is massively unintuitive" is a very good description of a MediaWiki Talk page behavior for most humans out there. I'm pushing LQT in existing pages only when they have a clear outreach focus, beyond the Wikimedia usual suspects. That is the case of Product development, directly linked from How to contribute.

Sending newbies to raw Talk pages feels almost like suicide to me. We are lucky enough to have LQT enabled in mediawiki.org and maybe one day Flow will solve everything. In the meantime I believe that newcomers will enjoy a lot better an underfeatured web based forum than a MediaWiki Talk page.

But you do have a point, and from now on I will ask in advance when there is an existing Talk page that I want to replace with LQT. The decision will come from the discussion that page. Qgil (talk) 18:24, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

If LQT fully worked I'd agree entirely, but some aspects are pretty bad, especially the watchlist stuff. Add that the folks coming into this probably will be familiar with mediawiki, what with people working with open source usually because they use it, they probably don't need this anyway in most cases.

Anyhow, thanks. -— Isarra ༆ 21:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

You posted this on March 19th, but then enabled LQT on talk:MediaWiki-Vagrant without asking. The wiki principle of being bold is predicated on the ability to go back and do things differently, but with no way to opt-out without obliterating content, LQT is not wiki. I think you ought to stick to the guidelines you articulated above. Ori.livneh (talk) 04:23, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Ori.livneh! Well, the discussion was about existing Talk pages, not about new Talk pages, as it was the case with MediaWiki-Vagrant. I can't remember when was the last time I activated LQT in a page but I hereby commit to not do it anymore unless there is an explicit request. I'm waiting for Flow patiently. Qgil (talk) 05:59, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :) Ori.livneh (talk) 06:49, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

GSOC logo

You know, traditionally cc-by-nc-nd files are not allowed on Wikimedia projects - is the gsoc logo you just uploaded allowed? Maybe it would be considered fair use? Bawolff (talk) 17:31, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I uploaded it only in MediaWiki, not Commons, with the sole purpose of illustrating the GSOC page. If this is not good enough I can remove it. Qgil (talk) 18:05, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The license Google gave to it allowed the way it was used: attributed, non derived and in a non-commercial project. However our own policy at mediawiki.org is more restrictive. I think it made a service in a page like GSOC'13 but being an admin I'm in no position to contradict a policy.  :) It's deleted now. Qgil (talk) 06:06, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Responded to Message

Hey, I responded to your message on my talk page. Also, how is your talk page LQT? Parent5446 (talk) 06:31, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I saw it, thanks. LQT, just click Edit and you will see {{#UseLiquidThreads:1}}.  :) Qgil (talk) 16:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thanks! Parent5446 (talk) 18:15, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

GSOC 2013

Hi Quim, I want to apply for GSOC 2013. I have drafted a proposal on my user page. The project is not from the listed featured project ideas list, its my own idea. I would like to know its feasibility and whether am I late to post this? I wanted to come up with a full descriptive proposal. Gaurav Chawla (talk) 19:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello Gaurav! You are not late, you are just in time. It is good to see all the good work you have done so far.

This is an interesting idea but I'm unable to assess its feasibility, neither its potential reception by the community, or whether similar projects exist or have been attempted in the past. It would bring a very visible new feature, a new user interaction and a new editing process. This might be too much to digest for e.g. the Wikipedia community but maybe your idea is seen interesting as a MediaWiki prototype, and who knows what would come out of this.

The steps I recommend you are:

1. File an enhancement request in Bugzilla under MediaWiki Extensions - Entension requests proposing your project, introducing it briefly and linking to the URL with the full description. You can add me on CC and I will help you gathering a first wave of feedback. If this is not enough then you might want to post the idea to wikitech-l mailing list, linking to the URL of the project and requesting more feedback in your report in Bugzilla. Or you might want to do this directly, after creating your report.

I'm sure that a couple of days later you will ave enough feedback to decide what to do next. Good luck! And thank you for your interest contributing to Wikimedia. Qgil (talk) 01:16, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I have filed the request at bugzilla:46970. Gaurav Chawla (talk) 20:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Bosnian

Hi Qgil! Can you please add Bosnian to this list so that it shows on the list of languages on the start page? Template:Languages. Thanks in advance! -- Edinwiki (talk) 21:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

There is already a link to bosanski in the main page. Thank you for your work translating! Qgil (talk) 03:11, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Someone else had added the language before you had to chance. Thanks anyway. Edinwiki (talk) 18:47, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Summer of Code proposal feedback

Hi Qgil! I've been working on my Summer of Code/OPW proposal and was hoping to get some feedback on it before I got too far along. It's not on the list of recommended project ideas, so I wanted to make sure you thought it was feasible and that it had some chance of receiving broader support. Thanks! (talk) 12:49, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Interesting idea, and very good project proposal structure overall. You have clearly invested a lot of thought and time already. Congratulations?

Have you found a mentor? In any case, the next steps recommended are:

• Creating a new enhancement request in Bugzilla, unless there is already an open report about this.
• Sending an email to wikitech-l pointing to the wiki page of your proposal and the bug report.

Good luck! And see you there. Qgil (talk) 14:16, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I have not found a mentor yet, no. I sent an email yesterday to User:Raylton P. Sousa, who maintains the BookManager extension and was on the mentors list for GSoC 2012, but I've not heard back as of yet. Do you have any suggestions for people who might have relevant knowledge and would be willing to mentor?

As for Bugzilla, there are quite a few bugs that are somewhat related. The issue of having a way to represent books is namely mentioned in bug 15071. There are also a number of bugs specifically related to the BookManager extension here. Do you think I need to create a new request, or are these close enough?

I will send an email to wikitech-l shortly.

Thank you! GorillaWarfare (talk) 14:54, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Bug 15071 is blocking several others and it's followed already by 12 people, including some maintainers that have commented. So yes, it's a good destination to announce your project proposal.

Raylton was indeed interested in mentoring. Being a maintainer of the BookManager extension and a pt.wikibooks.org admin he seems to be the ideal mentor for your project, yes. But you don't need to wait for his answer to announce your project idea at Bugzilla and wikitech-l.

But before I would still try to polish your project summary a bit. Are you able to summarize in one sentence the solution your project aims to deliver? If you can, use it as opening of the summary. It's amazing how impatient readers are nowadays...  :) Qgil (talk) 15:22, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Alright, I will announce the project there and on wikitech-l after I put a little more work into the proposal! Thanks for the feedback. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:33, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

GSoC participation

Hi Qgil, I'm interested in participating in the GSoC 2013. I'm a graduate student (IT) in my last semester of college and a prolific contributor to Wikipedia. I've some queries. If and when the time comes, I am wondering whether it is necessary to reveal my private information publicly? And, how can I apply to work on any proposed project? Thanks and regards. Bill william compton (talk) 03:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Bill, thank you for your interest in working on a Wikimedia project. Summer_of_Code_2013#Where_to_start and Mentorship_programs/Application_template should answer your questions. Summary: everything public, please. And the sooner you start sharing your drafts the better. Qgil (talk) 03:18, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Wow, you are really quick on replies! Thanks. By everything you mean real name and location as well? Don't you think it's against the privacy policy? Due to some reasons, I cannot reveal my real name and location. I wonder how regular Wikipedia contributors participate in such events if they have to give up their personal info in the process. Bill william compton (talk) 04:04, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, it is up to you to disclose or not your personal data publicly. What we really care is about public proposals and public technical discussion in our regular community channels. Sorry for the misunderstanding and we hope this is clear now. Qgil (talk) 04:35, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes it is :) Merci beaucoup! Bill william compton (talk) 04:48, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

French-speaking MW community

Hi, I began a discussion in the French-speaking community about some exchange space (mailing-list, forum, whatever) about discussions in French related to MediaWiki. There is some demand from MW sysadmins who don’t know well MW and are not fluent in English; I don’t know where this discussion could lead, so we’ll see.

(I don’t know if I should speak of that to you or Sumanah or Guillaume, so I let you transmit if needed) ~ Seb35 12:19, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Bonjour! I'm a good contact for this and fwiw I can even read French (but not write it, all I get is my Catalan disguised).  ;)

Just in case this is useful: Mailing lists/Regional & Groups. Qgil (talk) 16:03, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

(Bumped into the thread by chance.) Seb, that's interesting. Past mailing lists (sv only?) don't seem successful. For Italian I know #mediawiki-it is dead (as well as #botolatori) so it wouldn't make sense to create a mailing list for us; the problem is that we don't even know who Italian MediaWiki users are... but if the French find a solution then there may be some emulation. ;) Nemo 05:50, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi, the list is created on the Wikimedia CH server [1]. I announced it on lists wikifr-l@, WMFR technical list (tech at lists.wikimedia.fr) and wikis-territoriaux at lists.infini.fr, I completed the page given by Nemo, and I announce it on wikitech-l@.

Regarding to a regional MW groups I discussed with some people interested by MW in France, and the first action we thought was some discussion space (hence this discussion list); perhaps there will be some other action like a meeting of French MW-interested people, and perhaps there will be a more formal group, but nothing is fixed for now.

@Nemo: in France, there are a lot of local/city wikis [2] [3], and their community managers frequently have technical questions (e.g. regarding the spam or config); I think some enterprise wiki managers could be interested also by such a list. We will see if the list survives. ~ Seb35 10:58, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

My general suggestions

Hi Qgil, some time ago you said you were curious about a bunch of general suggestions I had for the software. I haven't reported them through Bugzilla yet, but today I copied them to my userpage. Many are probably already reported, many others are probably bad ideas, but a few should have value. Just letting you know, cheers! LFS (talk) 11:46, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Template:New opportunities/Content

Heiya Qgil,

I am not absolutely sure if you are the right one to ask. However, it would be nice if you could add the following announcement to the new opportunities template (linked above):

• SMWCon Fall 2013

October 28-30, 2013 - Berlin, Germany

Thank you and cheers [[kgh]] (talk) 17:16, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

This did the trick. (Pause) Yeah, I know.  :) Qgil (talk) 20:31, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Admittedly I am puzzled by this trick. :) I will have to have a close look into this. Anyway, thank you for your help! Cheers [[kgh]] (talk) 21:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

It's all User:Guillom's fault. :D

By the way, you can send an email to wikitech-announce@lists.wikimedia.org and we will approve it for distribution. Qgil (talk) 21:27, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Aha, now I know. :) Thank you for suggesting the wikitech-announce. I guess we should give it a go. :) [[kgh]] (talk) 08:08, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

You are welcome!

I believe at times we learn from sharing thoughts and ideas. I thank you as well for yours... I fear that even if I were an evolved human being, my second brain would not be idling but stuck on something silly as well... Cheers! BillKing (talk) 03:46, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Ohloh updates

Hello, projects like https://www.ohloh.net/p/mediawiki-extensions-wmf have not been updated in 8 months: do you know of a way to force the update, or can you ask more info on the reasons and what to do to your ohloh contacts? Regards, Nemo 10:27, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing! The scan got stuck in three repos for some reason:

• https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/extensions/TimedMediaHandler.git master
• https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/extensions/Translate.git master
• https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/extensions/wikidiff2.git master

I have removed. I will let a scan process the current data and then I will try to add them again. Qgil (talk) 05:05, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Too bad for those repos, but thanks. Now it says the code for each repo was updated yesterday, but still no updates for the project as a whole. Nemo 14:00, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

There was still

• https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/extensions/ProofreadPage.git master

I will be adding the repos again, lets see what happens. Qgil (talk) 15:35, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

With the help or Erik Zachte I went through other proects that had also problems with repos. Now everything listed in Ohloh is updated except four repositories that have been reported at https://www.ohloh.net/forums/10/topics/8539 Qgil (talk) 18:39, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Great, I see they are already fixing the problem and the Translate re-import is at about 60 % in this moment. Nemo 10:24, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Template:MediaWiki News

Back in March, you edited Template:MediaWiki News to reformat "the items visible at the homepage" in response to my request on the talk page (thanks). Could you go ahead and change the rest of the items, too? It seems weird to leave it half-done like that. dcljr (talk) 02:17, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi dcljr,

The Qgil requested me to continue this work but I don't have permission to edit this page. Do you know who can give me permission to do that? Thanks in advance. monteirobrena (talk) 14:10, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi monteirobrena, you can do the changes in a subpage under your user page, and I will copy te content from there. Thank you! Qgil (talk) 15:25, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Just a note to say that monteirobrena completed the little task. Thank you! Qgil (talk) 18:12, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Google Code-In

Hello,

I've checked with MatmaRex, I'm volunteer to be comentor for the frontend tasks he offers. --Dereckson (talk) 19:24, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Great! I'm very happy to see you active around. Let's talk if/when we get accepted. Qgil (talk) 19:56, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

RFC review

Thank you for the notification. I posted a question at Talk:Architecture meetings/RFC review 2013-11-06 asking whether there's time to add Requests for comment/Page deletion to the agenda; if not for this meeting, maybe for the next one. It seems like the discussion on that RfC has pretty much petered out, with all arguments having been already presented, so that it's ready for the lead developers to make a decision. The issue was originally brought up 18 May 2010. Aaron S. wants to go with the new table scheme; I think we all can agree that either of the two proposed options would be superior to what we currently have. Thanks. Leucosticte (talk) 04:33, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

The idea is to have RFC reviewed every other week. I'm not an architect but I think the easiest is to propose it for the next meeting at Architecture meetings. Qgil (talk) 18:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Problem in Template:MediaWiki News

Hi, in your edit, you inserted a duplicated #if (with its “Older news” heading), leaving the wikicode visible even on the Main Page (at the bottom of the news box), so you might want to fix that. Mormegil (talk) 16:45, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Ooops! Thank you very much for the report. Fixed. Sorry, multitasking has its risks. Qgil (talk) 18:09, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-49

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

This newsletter is now posted using MediaWiki message delivery.

New features

• The CommonsMetadata feature was added to all wikis. It creates metadata information about multimedia files (like their license) that can be read automatically by computer programs. It not only works for Commons, but for all wikis, and you can use it for files on your wiki by editing templates used to describe metadata. [4]
• JavaScript code used on Wikimedia sites is now saved locally on your computer to load faster. [5]

VisualEditor

• You can now paste formatted content copied from external sources (not just as plain text) into VisualEditor; this includes copy/pasting from other VisualEditor windows. [6]
• You can now open VisualEditor by adding ?veaction=edit to the page URL, regardless of your user preferences. [7]
• Many bugs have been fixed, and VisualEditor should also look faster, for example when you save a page. [8]

Problems

• Due to issues, the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") was recently removed from wikis where it was enabled, then added again. [9]

Future

• MediaWiki 1.23wmf6 was added to test wikis on December 5. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 10 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 12 (calendar).
• The old Etherpad tool (replaced by a new version) will be removed on December 30, 2013. You can still save old pads before that date using the old address: https://etherpad-old.wikimedia.org. [10]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:38, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:38, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Engineering Community Team/Meetings#2013-11-12

In the header, the date of the ECT IRC meeting is stated to be December 11 UTC, but the datetime link says December 10 UTC... Yair rand (talk) 02:32, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry! The meeting is happening in 12 minutes, Yair rand. Thank you for reporting. See you there? Qgil (talk) 16:48, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-51

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on December 19. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on December 31 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 2, 2014 (calendar).
• You can now test the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") on all Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikimedia chapter wikis hosted on Foundation servers. Enable "New search" in your Beta features preferences. [11]
• There was a bug where notifications were not sent when the signature of the user leaving the message linked to a translated namespace. The problem was fixed in the software and will soon be fixed on Wikimedia sites. [12] [13]
• You can now use the log-in system for external tools (OAuth) on all Wikimedia wikis that use the unified login. [14]
• If your wiki adds stars or other icons to interwiki links for featured articles in other languages, you may need to change the JavaScript code. [15]
• You can thank other users for their edits even if your browser does not have JavaScript. [16] [17]
• All edits made through Flow, the new discussion system for MediaWiki, are now visible in user's contributions. You can test it on the Flow talk page on MediaWiki.org. [18] [19]
• You can test a visual tool that shows edits made to an article over time. It only works for English Wikipedia pages for now and is slow on long articles. [20]
• You can test the first version of the new mobile Wikipedia app for Android and iOS. [21]
• Translatewiki.net, the site where you can translate the MediaWiki software, now has a new main page for users without an account. [22]

Future software changes

• There will be no technical changes this week (December 23 to December 29) due to end-of-year holidays.
• When someone deletes, restores, uploads, or moves a file on Commons, pages on all wikis that use that file will be refreshed. [23] [24]
• New users will soon have their user and talk pages added to their watchlist as soon as they create an account. [25] [26].
• The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will not show the text of versions of a page that have been hidden. [27] [28]
• You will soon be able to see the raw HTML created by some wikitext by using the Special:ExpandTemplates tool. [29] [30]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:22, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:22, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-01

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

Recent software changes

• You can now see the text of DjVu and PDF files in search results on wikis testing the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [31] [32]
• With the new version of the Wikibase DataModel extension, you can install it outside Wikimedia wikis. [33]

VisualEditor news

• Images are now shown inside VisualEditor as HTML5 <figure /> elements. Comments are welcome. [34]
• You can now test a basic version of VisualEditor on mobile devices; see this article as an example.

Problems

• On December 23, Wikimedia Labs was broken for 4 hours due to an NFS problem. [35]

Future software changes

• CirrusSearch will be added as the second search method for Spanish (es), French (fr), Portuguese (pt) and Russian (ru) wikis on December 30. Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies and Wikinews users will also be able to enable it in their Beta Features options.
• AbuseFilter log entries will be visible in CheckUser tool reports. [36] [37]
• It will soon be possible to search for log entries done by users without an account. [38] [39]
• It will no longer be possible to globally hide users with more than 1,000 edits. [40] [41]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:40, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:40, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-02

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 2. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on January 7 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 9 (calendar).
• The old note-taking site (Etherpad) was removed on December 30, 2013. You can see most of the documents on the new site. [42]

Problems

• On January 2, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage projects were broken for 2 hours due to language cache update issues.
• On the same day, it was not possible to edit most wikis for about 30 minutes, due to a database replication problem.

Future software changes

• The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the default search method for Italian Wikipedia, French Wikisource, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage sites, and as a second search method for the German Wikipedia and all Wikibooks sites on January 6. [43]
• Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian Wikipedia users will also be able to enable CirrusSearch in their Beta Features options. [44]
• Plural form rules for some languages will be changed. Many translations of the user interface for Belarusian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian and other languages will need to be changed. [45] [46] [47]
• You will see a warning when you try to delete a page linked to from other pages. [48] [49]
• You will be able to hide redirect pages on the list of protected pages. [50] [51]
• You will be able to use keyboard shortcuts in the Translate tool, by pressing Alt+1 and similar key groups. [52] [53]
• E-mails sent by MediaWiki will include the name of the site in their From: line. You will be able to change this name on your wiki by editing the MediaWiki:Emailsender page. [54] [55]
• Images viewed in the Beta Features media viewer will load faster. [56] [57]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 08:34, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:34, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-03

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

You can read a recent blog post about how Tech News is put together, translated and sent to you across wikis each week.

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 9. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 14, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 16 (calendar).
• Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons may be slow due to a search engine issue. [58]

VisualEditor news

• VisualEditor will be added for all users on several Wikipedias on January 13. [59]
• You can now add and remove __NOTOC__, __FORCETOC__ and __NOEDITSECTION__ in the page metadata menu. [60] [61] [62]

Problems

• For a few hours on January 6, it was not possible to edit pages using the Translate tool on Wikimedia Commons and the Wikimania 2013 wiki, due to a settings error. [63] [64]
• For about 20 minutes on January 9, there were problems with CSS and JavaScript due to high server load.

Future software changes

• Wikidata will be added to all Wikisource wikis on January 14. [65]
• The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the second search method for the English Wikipedia on January 13. On Wikibooks and the German Wikipedia, you will also be able to test it by adding it in your Beta Features options.
• You will soon be able to export page collections into other formats than PDF. [66]
• It will soon be possible to upload groups of photos from Flickr using UploadWizard. [67] [68]
• The Wikimedia Foundation has shared a multimedia vision for 2016. You are invited to comment. [69]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 09:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-04

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).
• You can now see relatively recent results on special pages like Special:DoubleRedirects, Special:UncategorizedPages or Special:WantedCategories. They were disabled before because they were very slow. The results are now updated once a month. [70]
• As of January 16, you can make and use guided tours on the Asturian, Farsi and Russian Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [71] [72]
• You can give comments on an idea to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [73]
• You can watch a video to learn how to report problems in Bugzilla. [74]

VisualEditor news

• In the toolbar, the menu to edit the styles (like bold, italic, etc.) now has a down arrow (). The order of the Insert menu has also changed a little.
• You can now edit <gallery /> tags with a very basic tool. [75]
• You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu. [76]
• When you change categories, you will now see them when you save the page. [77]
• When you edit templates, you will now see the parameters in the right order. The ones that you must add have a star (*). [78] [79]
• The page will now be saved faster, thanks to a new way of coding the text that sends 40% less text to the servers. [80]
• Your wiki can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData. [81]

Problems

• There was a problem with search on the English and German Wikipedias between January 6 and January 14. You could not see new pages and changes in search results. [82]
• There were "pool timeouts" errors on several wikis on January 13; it was caused by a code change that was made to fix another problem. [83]
• On January 17, Bugzilla and Wikimedia Labs were broken for about 20 minutes due to network problems. IRC channels with recent changes (irc.wikimedia.org) were broken for about two hours. [84]

Future software changes

• If you have removed JavaScript in your web browser, you will soon be able to see the orange bar saying that you have new messages. If you have changed how the bar looks with a gadget, you may need to change the gadget again. [85] [86]
• You will soon be able to add a given Flickr user to a blacklist so that their files can't be uploaded using UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons and other wikis. [87]
• You will see a warning when you try to delete a page included in at least one other page. [88]
• You will so longer see disambiguation pages in Special:LonelyPages. [89] [90]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 10:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-05

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• Pages from Wikimedia sites now load faster in your browser thanks to "module storage", a way for your browser to save data like JavaScript and CSS on your computer to avoid downloading them again. See video. [91]
• The code used to show videos has changed. You should be able to play the video on the page, with the play button on top of the video. If you see the play button on the right of the video, or if clicking on the video leads you to the original file, please file a bug or tell User:Bawolff. [92]
• The Special:ActiveUsers page will be removed because it's too slow. [93]
• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).

Problems

• On January 21, Universal Language Selector was turned off on all Wikimedia sites because it makes pages load slowly. If you want to use web fonts, or write in scripts that aren't on your keyboard, you need to add it as an option in your preferences. It will be turned back on when the issues are resolved. [94]
• For about 20 minutes on the same day, there were problems with CSS and JavaScript due to high server load.

Future software changes

• You can give comments about the new version of "Winter", a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [95]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 09:46, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:46, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Thread:Talk:MediaWiki/Thumbnails_are_not_being_created_(2)

How did you move this thread without leaving behind a link to indicate where it should go? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 10:27, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi TeleComNasSprVen. Honestly, I don't know. Maybe what happened is that I moved it to a page, and then it was moved again from there?

I found it here: Thread:Project:Support_desk/MediaWiki_thumbnails_are_not_being_created#x.5BRESOLVED.5D_Thumbnails_are_not_being_created_38166.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Qgil (talk) 16:43, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-06

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 30. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 6 (calendar).
• Global AbuseFilter rules are now active on all small wikis. [96] [97]
• The buttons used in pages like log-in, account creation and search are now using the same colors and styles. [98] [99]
• You can now link to diffs using [[Special:Diff/12345]] and similar links. [100]
• There is no longer an option to hide tables of contents on all pages. [101]
• Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons is now faster, after a bug was fixed on January 29. [102]
• All Wikimedia wikis now have high-resolution favicons. [103]

VisualEditor news

• You can now see a list of keyboard shortcuts by pressing Ctrl+/ inside VisualEditor. [104]

Future software changes

• Edits and files hidden with the Oversight tool will be moved to the RevisionDelete system. The Oversight tool will then be removed from Wikimedia wikis. [105] [106] [107]
• For languages where not all sister projects exist, you will be able to link to other language projects using double interwikis (:ko:v, :v:ko, etc.). [108]
• It will soon be possible to use the GettingStarted tool on other wikis than the English Wikipedia. You can translate it on Translatewiki.net. [109]
• You will soon be able to include the Special:Contributions page into other pages. [110]
• You will be able to see where a file is used inside MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files. [111] [112]
• It will soon be possible to send MassMessage messages using the API. [113]
• You will soon see audio statistics on the Special:TimedMediaHandler page. [114]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 08:30, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:30, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-07

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 13 (calendar).
• The Vector search box was changed to fix old display and accessibility issues; for example, you can now use full-text search even if you have disabled JavaScript. Please report any problems you see. The option to disable the "simplified search bar" on Vector will also be removed. [115] [116] [117] [118] [119]
• You are now notified when someone adds a link to your user page on wikis where it didn't work before (wikis with dates in the year-month-day order, including Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and some variants of Chinese). [120]

VisualEditor news

• You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool. [121] [122]
• The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed. [123] [124] [125]

Problems

• On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue. [126]
• On February 6, some wikis were broken for about half an hour in total due to a problem with the Math extension.

Future software changes

• Some methods from Scribunto's mw.message library will be removed after February 18. If you use them in your templates or modules, please check to make sure that things will not break. [127] [128]
• You will soon be able to use GettingStarted on 23 new Wikipedias. It helps new users by listing possible tasks and giving help. The new version was also added to the English Wikipedia on February 7th. [129]
• You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [130] [131]
• The WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster. [132]
• Edits made with WikiLove or after a GettingStarted suggestion will be tagged. [133] [134]
• It will soon no longer be possible to hide section editing links in your preferences. [135]
• You will soon be able to use the revision deletion feature via the API. [136]
• You will soon be able to choose mobile view on non-mobile devices using a Beta Feature option. [137] [138]
• If you have questions about Universal Language Selector, you can join an IRC meeting on February 12 at 17:00 UTC, in the #wikimedia-office channel on Freenode. [139]
• Developers are preparing for Google Summer of Code 2014. You can propose ideas. [140]
• bugzilla.wikimedia.org will be updated this week. You won't be able to access it from 22:00 UTC on February 12 until 01:00 UTC on February 13 at the latest. [141]
• The <poem> tag will be renamed to <lines>. The old tag will still work. [142]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 09:30, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-08

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 20 (calendar).
• You can now use the list of active users again. [143] [144]
• The new search tool (CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces. [145]
• You can now directly link to files viewed with MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files. [146]
• You can read the summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014. [147]

Problems

• On February 9, Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an XFS file system problem. [148]
• On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue. [149]
• On the same day, for about 20 minutes there were issues with page loading due to database problems.
• There were issues with page loading between 21:00 UTC on February 13 and 11:00 UTC on February 14 for users in Europe. It was due to a cache server problem.
• On February 14, all sites were broken for about 15 minutes for users in Southeast Asia, Oceania and the western part of North America. It was due to problems with cache servers.

VisualEditor news

• The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. [150]
• You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor. [151]
• Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing. [152]
• You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor. [153] [154] [155]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 08:38, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:38, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-09

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 27 (calendar).
• The new search tool (CirrusSearch) was added to the Italian Wikiquote and all Wikiversity projects. Users can now enable it in their Beta options. [156] [157]
• The Universal Language Selector was enabled on all Wikimedia wikis again. You can enable web fonts in your ULS options (see how).

VisualEditor news

• You will soon be able to add and edit __STATICREDIRECT__, __[NO]INDEX__ and __[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__ in the page settings menu. [158] [159] [160]
• You will soon be able to use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘+Opt+S shortcuts to open the save window in VisualEditor. [161] [162]
• You will soon be able to preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window. [163] [164]

Future software changes

• You will soon be able to use the <categorytree> tag again. [165]
• You will soon be able to post messages with the MassMessage tool in all talk namespaces. [166] [167]
• Notifications will soon work in all namespaces. [168][169][170]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 10:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-10

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <labeledsectiontransclusion/begin /> Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 6 (calendar).
• When users enable web fonts by default, Universal Language Selector will now log if they don't have fonts to display pages correctly. This information will be used by developers to improve font support in the future. Read more about missing fonts. [171]
• You can now use Guided tours on the Czech and Japanese Wikipedia. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [172] [173]
• You can now use information from Wikidata in all Wikisource wikis. [174]
• The multimedia team is now posting weekly updates on their mailing list. [175]

VisualEditor news

• You can now change image size to default for your wiki. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. [176] [177] [178]
• If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged. [179]
• Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. [180]
• VisualEditor now has Arabic, Finnish and Kölsch icons for text styling. If you want icons for your language, ask in Bugzilla. [181] [182] [183]

Future software changes

• The new tool for viewing media files will soon show a progress bar and a thumbnail while loading full images. [184] [185]
• You will soon be able to make user contributions show only page creations. [186] [187]
• Article Feedback Tool will be removed from the English and French Wikipedias on March 3. It will also no longer be possible to add this tool to any Wikimedia wiki. [188] [189]
• Wikis using the new search tool will come back to the old tool for a few hours starting at 00:00 UTC on March 6. [190]

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> Problems

• For about an hour on February 23, there were problems with page loading due to a MediaWiki bug. [191]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 09:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

GSoC proposals namespace

Hello, about [192], can you please clarify the public documentation at Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects#Where_to_start? I had understood that «one lesson learned is that proposals should be drafted already in pages with correct titles», and the [193] says «Your title should be short, clear and interesting», so using main namespace (without any lengthy User:X/ prefix) or other content namespaces appears to be more effective. Nemo 17:52, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Replying quickly here for now: the problem with recommending candidates to create their proposals in the Main namespace is that a nice % of these proposals won't make it as a project, and will be abandoned in a few weeks. I think it is better to create these pages in the User namespace, and then move those belonging to accepted projects, when they are accepted. What do you think? The lesson learned points in the direction of pages called "GSoC proposal". Qgil (talk) 08:16, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

"Userfication" of failed proposals however is a common wiki practice. Having them as user pages means making them harder to find for months while they are proposals and are most in need of feedback... In addition finding a home for a project in the wiki is also a way to find a home for the code. Oh well, you decide. Nemo 14:28, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

No, in fact you decide. You are dealing with mediawiki.org more than me, and for a much longer period. You also have a better track than me sorting out GSoC pages. If you think the right thing to do is to create these proposals under Main, then let's do it. Qgil (talk) 15:41, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Ok, then I've made a couple edits that will hopefully address the issues you mentioned: [194] [195]. You were right that I was perhaps a bit too simplistic, and I'm not saying it will be heaven of course: there may be small conflicts over what pagename to choose or multiple people claiming the same title.

However, it's IMHO worth trying because students really must not work in insolation from the rest of the community and codebase. We don't have enough energies to actively go after each of them to integrate them, we have to "release them in the while" and see what happens. :) Nemo 13:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Nemo_bis, one reason to prepare proposals in your user namespace is that more than one user can apply for the same project idea. If the first one tahes the good title/URL, then the rest are left with weaker options.

There is no need to touch any proposal pages now, but if you agree on the principle then please revert the changes you made.  :) Qgil (talk) 21:02, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Now that selected projects were announced, it took only 26 minutes to userfy failed proposal and publish successful ones. There were no title clashes (all redirects kept), so I don't think there was big conflict caused by the namespace choice. On the other hand, poorly defined ideas often have bad titles. Nemo 10:03, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Hello Qgil,

Thanks for the message. I've been thinking about GSoc for a month or so, but I can't really come up with an idea to execute over the summer (much less so through a Wikimedia-based project). My previous couple programming projects have been long-term, interdisciplinary studies between bio and machine learning for EM-image processing, but this does not seem appropriate for a GSoc project. I can try to apply but... I'll need some ideas to ponder and dissect. I only have 2 days though.

Thanks, Hansmeet Thehansmeet (talk) 01:17, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-11

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

<div class="plainlinks>

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <labeledsectiontransclusion/begin /> Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf17) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 13 (calendar).
• You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all Wikiquote projects. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [196] [197]

VisualEditor news

• It is now easier to edit templates. Complex tools are now in the "advanced" mode. [198] [199]
• It is also easier to edit images. You now have more options and they are explained better. [200]
• VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. They are now smaller and animated to be different from actual blank lines. [201]
• We have improved the tool to add special characters. The buttons are now larger. More changes are coming. [202]
• You can now use new keyboard shortcuts to undo the last action, clear formatting, and show the shortcut help window. [203] [204] [205]

Future software changes

• You will soon be able to use a Beta option to show a shorter list of language links. That way, Universal Language Selector will only show languages that are relevant to you. You will still be able to search for other languages. [206]
• CirrusSearch will soon automatically index newly imported pages. [207] [208]
• It will soon be possible to use CSS to style buttons in templates on all Wikimedia wikis, without needing JavaScript. [209]
• An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Language Engineering team will take place on March 12 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [210]

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-12

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <labeledsectiontransclusion/begin /> Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf18) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 20 (calendar).
• You can now view smaller versions of PNG images bigger than 20 megapixels. [211]
• You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all small wikis. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [212] [213]
• You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for February 2014. [214]

VisualEditor news

• Searching for template parameters in now case-insensitive. [215] [216]
• Required template parameters now have an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. [217]
• Several template dialogs are now smaller, and their insert buttons have changed wording. [218]

Future software changes

• You will soon see an error message if you try to log-in or register with an invalid or taken username. [219]
• You can now test first version of a tool that includes OpenStreetMap maps inside the UploadWizard. Comments are welcome. [220]
• You will soon be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature. [221]

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> Problems

• VisualEditor was slow to load on March 13 because of an API issue. [222]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 07:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

GSoc 2014

Hello Qgil,

Thanks for the message. I've been thinking about GSoc for a month or so, but I can't really come up with an idea to execute over the summer (much less so through a Wikimedia-based project). My previous couple programming projects have been long-term, interdisciplinary studies between bio and machine learning for EM-image processing, but this does not seem appropriate for a GSoc project. I can try to apply but... I'll need some ideas to ponder and dissect. I only have 2 days though.

Thanks, Hansmeet Thehansmeet (talk) 01:16, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

At this point your only choice with Wikimedia is to pick one of the featured project ideas. There is not time to pull out a new project from scratch. Qgil (talk) 22:23, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

GSoC 2014 questions

Hi Quim Gil

I have a couple of questions concerning GSoC.

The problem is I found about it very late, just 5 days before deadline so my proposal is still a bit draft and I've found no mentors yet. The good thing is that the idea hasn't came to me from scratch; I have been working on this since last summer and besides that I am an active member of this community for more than 2 years. That makes me confident that there's still a change for me.

My question is, now that proposals are closed in Google, can I still keep editing my proposal in MediaWiki page? I want to fine tune it, maybe add a couple of more examples, and make a better timeline, because this one was actually in the most part pasted from others' timelines.

My other concern is that I have not a clue where and how to find mentors. You see, all the people I know here are either from the SMW area or from the translation area. So can you give me a hint on this?

Any other advice, remark or tip would be most welcome!

Thanks in advance! Ioannis Protonotarios 15:50, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Protnet, thank you for reaching out. See my post sent to wikitech-l and forwarded to the Design list. I hope it helps. In the meantime, I recommend you to display you skills by taking related bugs and providing patches, linking to them from your proposal and your entry at Google Summer of Code 2014. You can also consider learning more about the people asking interesting questions about your proposal, finding who are the experts, and inviting them to mentor your project. I will ask around as well. Qgil (talk) 17:45, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

IEG/Magic expression

Hi Quim. Siko (WMF) said that maybe you can help me. Please look at m:Grants talk:IEG/Magic expression#About_eligibility_rules_for_software_development. Pastakhov (talk) 12:43, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-13

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

<div class="plainlinks>

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <labeledsectiontransclusion/begin /> Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf19) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 27 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

• You can now double-click or press the ↲ Enter key on an image or template to change its settings. [223] [224]
• Pages that don't exist will now show as red links in the edit mode. [225]
• You will no longer be able to try to use VisualEditor on pages translated using the Translate extension, and you will see a warning if you try to edit pages marked for translation. [226]
• You will now see a full warning, including the most recent log entry, when you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor. [227]

Future software changes

• Typography Refresh will be enabled for test wiki and MediaWiki.org users who use the Vector skin on March 27. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3. If you don't use Vector as your skin, you will not be affected.
• You will be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature on all wikis from March 26.
• You will soon be able to include the Whatlinkshere special page in other pages. [228] [229]

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 18:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-15

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <labeledsectiontransclusion/begin /> Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf21) was scheduled to be deployed to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 3, however it was temporarily put on hold due to localization issues. (calendar).
• Typography Refresh was enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and on all Wikipedias on April 3. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin.
• CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on over 400 non-Wikipedia wikis on April 2. [230]

Future software changes

• A new special page (Special:TrackingCategories) will soon list all the tracking categories on a wiki. [231] [232]
• All Wikiquote projects will start using language links from Wikidata on April 8. [233]
• The Hovercards feature will soon work with right-to-left languages. [234] [235]
• You will soon be able to download files directly from MediaViewer, the new multimedia tool. [236]
• MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. Comments are welcome.
• You can help check that users can read CAPTCHAs in your language. [237]

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 08:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-16

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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <labeledsectiontransclusion/begin /> We are looking for contributors to help write new issues every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf22) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and all Wikipedias on April 17 (calendar).
• MediaViewer was enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be enabled for all users on the Catalan (ca), Hungarian (hu) and Korean (ko) Wikipedias and English Wikivoyage on April 17. Comments are welcome. [238] [239] [240]
• Font issues caused by Typography refresh for Windows users were fixed on April 7. [241] [242]

VisualEditor news

• You will now see only three options when you try to add a template parameter in VisualEditor; you will see other options after a click. [243]
• The size changing controls in VisualEditor media editing dialog were simplified further.
• The wikitext editor tab will now fold into a drop-down menu in the Vector skin if there is not enough space on your screen. [244] [245]

Future software changes

• The font used for body text on Wikimedia wikis will change to your system default sans-serif font. This temporary change will be enabled on all non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and on all Wikipedias on April 17. [246] [247]
• Files from Commons seen on another wiki will soon have a tab saying "View on Wikimedia Commons". The create tab will change to "Add local description" (see screenshot). [248]
• You will soon be able to hide Notification and Hovercards pop-ups by pressing the Esc key. [249] [250] [251] [252]
• Shorter lists of language links will soon work in right-to-left languages. Languages that you have used before will be shown in the list. [253]
• You will soon be able to send messages with the MassMessage tool to all pages in a given category. [254] [255]
• The date format user preference will soon be moved to the appearance tab. [256] [257]
• An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Multimedia team will take place on April 16 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [258]

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> Problems

• Wikimedia Foundation servers were updated after a security bug called Heartbleed was discovered last week. You should change your password as an extra precaution. [259]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 07:18, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:18, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-18

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar).
• You can now use interwiki prefix c: to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons. [260]

VisualEditor news

• You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [261]
• VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [262]
• VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.

Future software changes

• CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
• MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome. [263]
• The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [264]
• CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings. [265] [266]
• You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome. [267]

Problems

• For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load. [268] [269]
• On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move. [270] [271]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 07:23, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:23, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-20

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf4) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 8. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and all Wikipedias on May 15 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

• A new citation system in VisualEditor was enabled on the English Wikipedia. It will soon be enabled on more wikis. [272]
• Templates that were previously broken in VisualEditor should now appear correctly. [273]

Future software changes

• It will soon be possible to move category description pages. Pages in changed categories will still have to be moved independently. [274] [275]
• You will soon be able to clear your watchlist with one click or through the API. [276] [277] [278] [279]
• You will soon be able to link to Flow posts and workflows with Special:Flow. [280] [281]
• The jQuery JavaScript library will soon be updated. Please check that your gadgets and scripts will still work. [282]
• The Vector skin will work faster, as the sidebar will no longer collapse partly after being loaded. [283] [284] [285]
• MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on Wikimedia Commons on May 15. Feedback is welcome.
• An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on May 14 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [286]
• Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead. [287]

Problems

• There were problems with generating file thumbnails for all wikis between May 3 and May 6 due to a configuration error. [288] [289]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 06:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

sidebar collapsing: mystery solved :P

I just found out why the sidebar in mediawiki.org isn't collapsing anymore: bugzilla:39035 Waldir (talk) 10:03, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-21

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

Tech News updates

• Tech News is one year old this week; thank you for being with us!

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf5) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 15. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 20, and all Wikipedias on May 22 (calendar).
• The jQuery JavaScript library was updated on May 16. Please check that your gadgets and scripts still work. [290] [291] [292]
• MediaViewer was enabled for all users on the Kannada (kn) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 13. It will be enabled on the German (de), English (en), Italian (it) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias and on all Wikisource wikis on May 22. Feedback is welcome. [293] [294]
• VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences. [295] [296]
• You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for April 2014.

VisualEditor news

• VisualEditor's buttons and icons can now be accessed using keyboard keys. [297] [298]
• VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like {{cite_web}} and not just {{Cite web}}. [299] [300]
• VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it. [301] [302]
• VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit. [303]
• The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. [304] [305]

Future software changes

• User ID number will no longer be visible in preferences. [306] [307]

Problems

• For several hours on May 16, there were problems with loading gadgets on some wikis due to a server problem. [308]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 07:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-24

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 5. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 10, and to all Wikipedias on June 12 (calendar).
• You can now use guided tours on the Arabic (ar), Bengali (bn) and Norwegian (no) Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [309] [310]

VisualEditor news

• You should no longer be able to add empty references with VisualEditor. [311] [312]
• The "use an existing reference" button in the reference tool is now shown as disabled, rather than hidden, when the reference has content. [313] [314] [315]
• You will now see category contents again after saving an edit to a category page with VisualEditor. [316] [317]

Future software changes

• MediaViewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 12. Feedback is welcome. [318]
• You will be able to use information from Wikidata directly in Wikiquote pages starting on June 10. [319]
• On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, translation administrators will soon be able to use the page migration tool to import existing translations to the new system. [320] [321]
• You will soon see metadata on file description pages for Ogg files (example video, example audio). Some metadata with non-English characters may need to be purged or transcoded to UTF-8 before they show correctly. [322] [323]
• Templates containing <ref> or <references> tags will no longer need dummy parameters to prevent caching. [324] [325] [326]
• You will no longer be able to use Special:Thanks directly. The page will soon show an error message when you visit it. [327] [328]
• Hovercards will no longer flicker. [329]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 07:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Adding Gerrit project owners

Hello again!

I've authored Extension:UserGroups and I would like to be able to add additional project owners to the extension using https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/admin/groups/769,members but the "Add" button is greyed out. I thought Gerrit/Project ownership permitted owners to give ownership status to others as well? This is mainly because I'd like to have another person +2 and double-check my code rather than me +2ing changes myself. Do you think you could somehow configure it to allow me to set ownership solely for this extension? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 19:34, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I had missed this thread. Have you solved the problem? Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:02, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-26

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 19. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 24, and to all Wikipedias on June 26 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

• You can now drag-and-drop selections of content, not just files and templates. [330] [331]
• When dragging an item, you will now see a line that helps you to drop it. [332] [333]
• You can now only move an image to the start of a paragraph, not to the middle of it, so you don't accidentally split it. [334] [335]
• You will now be warned if you add wikitext to file captions and references. [336] [337]

Future software changes

• You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [338] [339]
• CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on additional 70 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia Incubator, during the next week. [340]
• CirrusSearch results will soon take into account categories, the first paragraph and the wikitext of a page. You will also be able to use regular expressions to search the wikitext. It will take a few days for the changes to be enabled on all wikis. [341]
• You will soon be able to watch translations for e-mail notifications without receiving an e-mail when they are reviewed by another translator. [342] [343]
• An IRC meeting to organize old high priority MediaWiki bug reports will take place on June 24 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [344]

Problems

• On June 19, all wikis were broken for about 15 minutes due to a high server load.
• Between June 13 and June 15 there were problems with the scaling of video files due to a configuration error. [345]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 07:20, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:20, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-27

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 26. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 1, and to all Wikipedias on July 3 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

• Context menus in VisualEditor will no longer flicker and disappear when you insert a new reference, formula, image, etc. [346] [347]
• A bug that prevented relocating items due to cache was fixed last week. [348] [349]
• VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the bottom of the page when you try to edit section 0. When you try to add a formula, VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the top of the page. [350] [351] [352] [353]
• Links to category pages or file pages added with VisualEditor will now work correctly. [354] [355]

Future software changes

• You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [356] [357]
• Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead.
• CirrusSearch will be enabled on June 30 as the primary search method on 34 new wikis, including the Czech (cs), Danish (da), Finnish (fi) and Hebrew (he) Wikipedias. [358]
• All Wikimedia wikis will be using a security method called perfect forward secrecy starting on July 1. If you see a problem, please report it. [359] [360]
• Starting on July 1, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. [361]
• You will soon see block information when you visit the contributions page or try to edit the user page or user talk page of a user who is affected by an IP range block. [362] [363]
• You will soon be able to use {{!}} as a magic word to produce the pipe character, for instance for use in tables. [364]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 06:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-29

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 15, and to all Wikipedias on July 17 (calendar).
• It is now possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. Please go to the username changes page on Meta if you want to rename your account on all wikis. [365] [366]
• You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for June 2014.
• You can now read the latest issue of the Wikidata newsletter and translate it into your language.

VisualEditor news

• The tool to add templates and citations will now work for templates that include HTML comments or templates in their titles. [367] [368]
• The button to make images full size should now work correctly. [369] [370] [371]
• References will now be shown in the default font size again. [372]

Future software changes

• CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on the Dutch (nl) and Japanese (ja) Wikipedias on July 14, and on the Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias on July 16. [373]
• The Special:Version page will soon show the exact version of MediaWiki and all extensions installed on your wiki (example). [374] [375]
• It will soon no longer be possible to order printed books of wiki articles via PediaPress. You will still be able to create PDF files. [376]
• Pages that use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''}} more than once will soon show a warning. You can use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''|noerror}} to hide it. [377] [378]
• Pages that have the list of references added automatically will soon be added to a tracking category. Administrators will be able to configure the name of the category on their wikis. [379] [380]
• Administrators will soon be able to easily merge histories of two pages using Special:MergeHistory. [381] [382]
• Administrators will soon see links to delete files on Special:ListFiles. [383]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 07:48, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:48, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-30

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 22, and to all Wikipedias on July 24 (calendar).
• CirrusSearch was removed as the primary search method from Wikimedia Commons and the Spanish (es) Wikipedia due to a high server load. The plan to enable it on the Dutch (nl), Japanese (ja), Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias was also postponed to a later date. [384] [385] [386]
• The tool that stores information about languages (CLDR) was updated to its latest version. You can still help translate language names into your own language so they can be used in the sidebar and other places. [387]
• Translation memory for newly translatable pages should now offer more suggestions. [388] [389]
• A tool to convert MediaWiki pages to LaTeX is now available on Tool Labs. [390]

VisualEditor news

• Tablet users visiting the mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will be able to use a special version of VisualEditor starting on July 31. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu. Feedback is welcome. [391]
• All windows in VisualEditor have now a new design. Main action buttons will always be located in the top bar and will use simple words rather than icons. [392]
• You can now easily open links inside the link editor, for example to see their target. [393]
• Several bugs related to the positioning of the cursor around some items (like images and references) were fixed last week. [394] [395] [396] [397] [398] [399]

Future software changes

• It will soon be possible to watch individual discussions in the Topic namespace rather than whole pages for talk pages using Flow. [400]
• You can give comments about the new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [401]
• An IRC meeting to organize Pywikibot bugs will take place from July 24 to July 27 on the channel #pywikibot on freenode. [402]
• A request for comments on how to improve MediaWiki API was re-started on MediaWiki.org. Your feedback is welcome.

Problems

• Mailing lists were broken for about 16 hours between July 14 and July 15 due to a server problem. [403]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 07:41, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:41, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-31

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 29, and to all Wikipedias on July 31 (calendar).
• You can now download the latest version of the anti-vandalism tool Huggle.

VisualEditor news

• You can now create, edit, and view HTML comments in VisualEditor. [404] [405]
• The cancel button in VisualEditor toolbar has been removed. You can still use the Read tab and the Back button in your browser to cancel your edit. [406]
• If you try to use a template which has no suggested or required parameters in TemplateData, you will now be asked to add the parameters. [407] [408]
• You will no longer be able to edit a page if you can't create it, for example on pages protected against recreation. [409] [410]

Future software changes

• You will soon be able to filter Meta-Wiki's user rights log by wiki and user. [411] [412]
• Wikidata will soon be able to store data about article status, for example "good article" or "featured article". If your wiki has highlighted content, please make sure it is on Wikidata's list. [413]
• It will soon be possible to directly create empty pages, for example in the user namespace. [414] [415]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 08:09, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:09, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Phabricator migration

Hi. How long is the Phabricator migration going to take? It'd be very nice as I'm losing track of some bugs some Teams (core features team, multimedia team) are working on. (They refuse to file bugs in Bugzilla or use it as primary means of collaboration.) Gryllida 03:50, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

By the end of September -- see Wikimedia_Engineering/2014-15_Goals#Engineering_Community Qgil (talk) 10:00, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeah right. I should have been more considerate and not asked at 3 places. I apologize. Gryllida 04:53, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-43

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. You can read translations.

Recent changes

• You can test a new system to see math using MathML. Go to your display options and choose "⧼mw math mathml⧽".
• You can add badges in Wikidata for quality articles and featured lists. [416] [417]

File information cleanup

• You can join a wiki project to help tools read file information. It will help people reuse files.
• See how to fix metadata. You can fix it by adding markers to templates and adding templates to files.
• You can see a list of files missing machine-readable information on your wiki.
• The files missing readable data are also in these categories: no license, no description, no author or no source. [418]

Problems

• Developers fixed a security problem. If you use Internet Explorer 6, you won't be able to log in any more. You should use a newer browser. [419]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf4) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 16. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 21, and on all Wikipedias from October 23 (calendar).
• 10% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. You can also test it as a Beta Feature. [420]
• If you add the same parameter twice in a template, it now puts the page in a tracking category. [421] [422]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 13:47, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:48, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-44

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

• There was an issue with files from Commons on October 21. You could only see those with names between 140 and 159 characters by visiting Commons itself. [423]
• There was a problem with cut and paste in VisualEditor in Firefox. It was fixed quickly. [424]
• There was a problem with editing math in VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [425]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will now come to Wikipedia sites every Wednesday, instead of every Thursday. [426]
• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28, and on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).
• VisualEditor now uses autovalues for templates if they are in TemplateData. [427] [428] [429]
• VisualEditor's menu items now show their shortcuts beside them. [430]
• VisualEditor now opens faster when you click "edit". [431]
• The rules for plurals in translations changed in some languages. Interface translations are currently not being updated from translatewiki.net; this process will start again on November 6. [432]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 05:20, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:20, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-45

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 software changes

• The "Special:Cite" page is now called "Special:CiteThisPage". That way, you know it's to cite the page, not to add a reference. [433]
• You can no longer use the insource: keyword for text searches. It caused issues with the new search tool. It will come back later. [434] [435]

Problems

• There was a bug in VisualEditor with Internet Explorer. It hid tools like the link editor when you opened them. The bug was fixed on Monday. [436]
• Issues with the new search tool caused geo data code to show up on pages on Monday and Friday. The mobile "nearby" tool was also broken. The problem is now fixed. [437] [438] [439]
• HHVM caused server issues on Thursday. They are now fixed.

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4, and on all Wikipedias from November 5 (calendar).
• Some wikis have icons at the top of a page to show if it is protected or featured. Icons show up using CSS. You can now use the <indicator> tag in these templates instead to add the icons. [440] [441]
• VisualEditor now tells you if you're editing a re-used reference. This helps you avoid changing it if you just want to add a new one. [442]
• The icons in VisualEditor's template editor tool for adding more fields are back, along with other fixes. [443] [444] [445] [446] [447]
• After November 6, all wikis will have the tool to edit TemplateData. [448] [449] [450]

Future changes

• The new search tool will come to the last wikis in the coming weeks. This includes Wikipedia in French, Chinese, German and English. [451]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 17:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-46

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

Recent software changes

• You may see a new tool on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [452] [453]
• The MediaWiki API now shows information in a nice format. You can translate it in translatewiki.net. [454]

File information cleanup

• Reminder: You can help fix file information on your wiki. It will help robots understand the information. After that, it will be easier for you to search files and re-use them.
• You can join two IRC chats this week to learn more about the file cleanup project. One will be on Wednesday at 18:00 (UTC) and the other on Thursday at 04:00 (UTC). You can ask questions during the chat if you need help to fix files on your wiki.
• You can see a list of files to fix on the Labs tool. You can report bugs and ask questions on the talk page.

Problems

• Wikimedia Labs was broken for a few hours on Thursday. It was due to a hardware problem. [455]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf7) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11, and on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).
• You can now use more editing tools for tables in VisualEditor. You can add rows and columns, merge cells, and edit table captions. [456] [457]
• The style and insert menus in the toolbar of VisualEditor now show fewer tools. This helps you see the most common tasks. You can see all items by clicking "More". [458]
• The way windows inside VisualEditor work has changed. VisualEditor should be faster and have fewer bugs. [459]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-51

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 software changes

• You may see a new tool tested on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [460]
• You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects. [461]
• You can test a new version of the Content Translation tool.

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf12) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 17 (calendar). [462]
• You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu, Ctrl+F or Cmd+F. [463]
• VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold. [464]
• The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change. [465]

Future changes

• The star image of the watchlist may change soon. [466] [467]
• You won't be able to use Phabricator on December 18, 2014. It will be down between 00:00 and 08:00 (UTC). [468] [469]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 16:43, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-03

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 software changes

• Rotated PDF files in landscape format used to show too small. They will now display correctly. You may need to purge older files. [470]
• You can now use the {{!}} magic word instead of Template:!. Many wikis used the template to create a pipe (|) in tables and templates. You can delete the template. [471]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf14) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from January 13. It will be on all Wikipedias from January 14 (calendar).
• A bug in VisualEditor sometimes added a ☀ (Sun) character. This is now fixed. [472]
• The search and replace tool in VisualEditor is now much faster in long pages. [473]
• The TemplateData editor now uses the same design as VisualEditor. [474] [475] [476]
• The thumb option is now shown in your language in the help of the classic editor toolbar. [477]

Future changes

• You can sign up to answer questions from designers. It will help them make editing easier. [478]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 16:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-04

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 download the new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. The new version shows lead images, better galleries and content from Wikidata. It also has many other new features.[479] [480]
• Programs and bots still can't read information about images on many wikis. You can see the list of wikis with the most files to fix. Wikipedia in Italian, Indonesian and Japanese language have the most files to fix. On the biggest wikis you should use bots. Bots can add information templates to groups of files. You can ask other tech users to help you.

Problems

• All JavaScript on Commons was broken for a few minutes on Tuesday. It was because of old code in the HotCat tool. The same problem happened on some Wikipedias on Wednesday. It is now fixed. [481]

Software changes this week

• There are no software changes this week and next week due to annual meetings. [482]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 18:12, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:12, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Events/FOSDEM/2015

Events/FOSDEM/2015 is on the road and in our topic for the first General assembly of Wikimedia Belgium this Saturday. Let's start to manage the wikimedia stand. Cheers, Lionel Scheepmans (talk) 18:10, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Lionel_Scheepmans! Thank you for driving this. See also phab:T84971. Qgil-WMF (talk) 03:19, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-05

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 software changes

• You can now translate articles with the new ContentTranslation tool on several wikis. [483]

This week

• There are no software changes this week due to annual meetings. [484]

Future changes

• You can join a project to improve WikiProjects. [485]
• The Compact Personal Bar will be removed for now. It has a bug that breaks the tool to choose your language. It will come back when the bug is fixed. [486]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 16:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-07

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 software changes

• You can now use {{#lsth: PageName | SectionName }} to transclude a section with its title. [487]

Problems

• MediaWiki was reverted to the previous version on February 4. It was because of a performance issue. It was restored later. [488]
• UploadWizard was broken on February 4 because of the revert of MediaWiki. [489]
• All sites were broken for 30 minutes on February 5. It was due to a network problem. [490]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 11 (calendar).
• You can have one user page for all wikis. Your Meta user page will show if you don't have a user page on a wiki. You can test this tool on test wikis. [491] [492] [493]
• You can search for media files in VisualEditor more easily. Images are bigger and you see the size and license. [494] [495]
• It is easier to review your changes when you save the page in VisualEditor. The window is wider. [496]
• You can read the latest news about VisualEditor. You can now join weekly meetings with developers. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The first meeting is on February 11 at 20:00 (UTC).

Future changes

• Administrators will soon be able to delete change tags used fewer than 5,000 times. [497]
• In the future you will be able to have personal lists of articles on the mobile site. [498]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 16:26, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:26, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-08

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 18 (calendar).
• On Wednesday your Meta user page will be shown if you don't have a user page on a wiki. [499] [500] [501]
• You can now change the order of categories in VisualEditor using drag-and-drop. [502]
• In VisualEditor, you now need to make a change before you can "Apply Changes" to citations and templates. [503]
• The way the cursor moves in VisualEditor is changing. Your browser now handles the cursor directly. Most of you will see no change. In right-to-left text, the cursor now moves in a 'visible' rather than 'logical' way. This is like other sites but you may be surprised at first.​ [504]

Meetings

• The VisualEditor Team had their first public bug triage meeting on February 11. They will post the results on the meeting page. [505]
• You can join the second weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 18 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join. [506]
• You can join a meeting with the developers of the Content Translation tool. It will be on February 18 at 13:00 (UTC). [507]

Future changes

• You can comment on a proposal about abandoned Labs tools.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 17:57, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:57, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-10

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

Recent software changes

• A Lua function to use Wikidata has changed. You need to update the pages that use it. [508]
• You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Uzbek and Minangkabau. You need to enable it in your Beta options.
• You can now hide banners if you don't have an account. [509] [510]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 4 (calendar).
• You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Punjabi and Kyrgyz. You can ask for the tool in other languages.
• Editing the fake blank line in VisualEditor is now simpler. This change also fixed a few bugs. [511] [512] [513] [514]
• The TemplateData editor now warns you if a related page already has TemplateData. [515]
• The TemplateData table now tells you if a template doesn't take any parameters. [516]

Meetings

• You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
• You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 4 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join technical meetings in France and Mexico this year. You will be able to ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [517]

Future changes

• You will be able to get a direct link for a section of a page. [518]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 16:41, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:41, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-13

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 25 (calendar).
• The text of a reference is now more visible when you click on it. It has a blue background. Many wikis already have the blue color. Those wikis can now remove it from their CSS page. [519]
• VisualEditor is now much faster. For many users it is now at least as fast as the wikitext editor. [520] [521] [522]
• When you add a list of references in VisualEditor, you now see it right away. You can still change its group by editing it. [523]

Meetings

• You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
• You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Talk pages using "LiquidThreads" on mediawiki.org will soon use the new system. [524]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:09, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:09, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-14

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 hide site banners even if you don't have an account. [525]
• You can now add citations more easily with VisualEditor on the French and Italian Wikipedia. The tool adds the information when you add some types of links. In the future you will be able to add this tool to your wiki. [526] [527] [528]
• All sites should now be faster if you have a recent browser. [529]
• You could see a serious bug when editing some templates with VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [530]
• VisualEditor could break when you edited an image. The issue was fixed quickly. [531]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 31. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 1 (calendar).
• VisualEditor is now the main editing tool on 53 more Wikipedias. [532]
• You can now edit the mobile site of all wikis without an account. [533]
• You can test a new tool on the beta mobile site on the English Wikipedia. With the new tool, you can create lists of articles. [534]
• You can now see that VisualEditor is opening even if you're not looking at the top of the page. [535]
• VisualEditor doesn't leave empty titles with just nowiki tags any more. [536] [537] [538] [539]

Meetings

• You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on IRC on March 31 at 16:00 (UTC). [540]
• You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 1 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:18, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:18, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-15

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [541]
• You can read the last monthly report. In the future you can read team reports every three months. You can see current work on the roadmap. [542] [543]
• The number of articles in Special:Statistics is now updated once a month. [544]
• You can use a new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. Using the app, you can now share a fact with your friends. [545]

Problems

• The import tool was broken for a few days. Imports didn't add log entries. You can delete and import pages again if necessary. [546]
• Labs was broken several times this week. [547] [548] [549] [550]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).
• You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [551]
• Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [552] [553]
• You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [554]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [555]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:41, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:41, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-16

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

Recent changes

• You can read the latest news about VisualEditor.
• You can now use the new translation tool on 22 Wikipedias. You now see the tool the first time you create a new page. [556]
• The list of bad user names on your wiki no longer works. The global list replaces it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [557] [558]

Problems

• Some wikis had issues on Wednesday. [559] [560]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
• Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [561] [562]
• All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [563]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 16:40, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:40, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-17

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [564]
• VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [565]
• You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [566]
• If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [567]

Problems

• There was a problem with Labs on Monday. [568]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
• Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [569] [570] [571]
• If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [572]
• You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [573]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will soon be able to add and remove tags on edits. [574] [575]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:29, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:29, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-18

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [576] [577]
• You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [578]
• There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [579]
• You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [580]

Problems

• Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [581]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 29 (calendar).
• It is now clearer that you can delete several rows and columns when you edit tables in VisualEditor. [582]
• You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [583]
• You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [584]
• You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [585]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 29 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:10, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:10, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Support request with team editing experiment project

Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:32, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-19

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

Recent changes

• You can now chat with other users in Phabricator. [586]
• There was a rare problem with VisualEditor. The text of another wiki could be added to your edit. The issue is now fixed. [587] [588]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 6 (calendar).
• It is now easier to add a link in VisualEditor. You can see an image and a description about the page. [589]

Meetings

• You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on May 5 at 14:30 (UTC). [590]
• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 6 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join an event in France on May 22−25. You need to sign up before May 8. [591]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:04, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:04, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-20

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 make charts and maps on your wiki with the new "graph" tool. If you have an old browser, you will see images instead. It uses a tool called Vega; you can learn how to use it and write help pages for your wiki. You can use the Vega edit tool to make charts and copy the code to your wiki. Charts and maps use complex code and you should put them into templates. In the future, you will be able to create charts with VisualEditor. [592] [593] [594]
• You can apply for technical jobs to develop tools for the community. [595]
• The logos of all wikis are now in a new place. It will make pages load faster. You can still ask to change the logo. You can also use local CSS for brief changes. [596] [597]

Problems

• There was a problem that caused slow editing. [598]
• Pages were sometimes removed from your watchlist in VisualEditor. This problem is now fixed. [599]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 13 (calendar).
• You can now use data from Wikidata on more pages. The page doesn't need to be linked to the Wikidata item. It works on a few wikis and more wikis will be added soon. [600] [601]
• You should get fewer errors when you add files to Commons. [602]
• When you use an external link to link to a wiki page, VisualEditor now converts it to a wiki link. [603]
• When you add a link in VisualEditor, you see pages that match what you type. It is now easier to see where they match. [604]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 13 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:34, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:34, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-21

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

Recent changes

• You can watch a video about the new graph tool.

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 20 (calendar).
• References are now always in the right order. Also, the reference list now only shows references used on the page. [605]
• You can no longer create an account with a colon ':' in it. If you already have one, it still works. [606]
• The toolbar in VisualEditor now looks different. It is easier to see the icons. [607]
• You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [608] [609]
• UploadWizard now shows better matches when you add a category to your file. [610]
• A test about VisualEditor will start on the English Wikipedia on Thursday. [611]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 21 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join a technical meeting in France this week.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-22

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

• VisualEditor was broken for 30 minutes on Tuesday. The problem was due to a tool it uses. [612]
• Some Labs tools had issues last week. [613] [614]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 20. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 27 (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 28 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can add your ideas of new tools to help active users like you. [615]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 16:15, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:15, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-23

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

• Many wikis were slow for a few hours on Wednesday due to a code error. Sometimes the pages did not load at all and showed an error. [616]
• Some tools in Labs were broken on Wednesday and Thursday. [617]
• Edit tags added by the software were broken on all wikis from May 23 to May 28. [618] [619]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 3 (calendar).
• You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [620]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 3 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:35, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:35, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-27

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

• Long lines in code blocks now look better. [621]
• You can now see graphs in VisualEditor. [622]
• When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [623]
• The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [624] [625] [626]
• You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [627]

Problems

• JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [628]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
• You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [629]
• When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [630]
• If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [631]
• Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [632]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future

• When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [633]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-27

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

• Long lines in code blocks now look better. [634]
• You can now see graphs in VisualEditor. [635]
• When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [636]
• The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [637] [638] [639]
• You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [640]

Problems

• JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [641]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
• You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [642]
• When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [643]
• If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [644]
• Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [645]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future

• When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [646]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 18:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-27

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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

• Long lines in code blocks now look better. [647]
• You can now see graphs in VisualEditor. [648]
• When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [649]
• The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [650] [651] [652]
• You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [653]

Problems

• JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [654]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
• You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [655]
• When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [656]
• If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [657]
• Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [658]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future

• When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [659]

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 20:13, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:13, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-28

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 the mobile site, you now see more information when you search for a page. It now shows the description from Wikidata. [660]

Problems

• The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [661]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 8. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 9 (calendar).
• The "Page information" tool shows how many users watch the page. You can now see how many are active. [662] [663]
• You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [664]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 7 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 15:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-28

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 the mobile site, you now see more information when you search for a page. It now shows the description from Wikidata. [665]

Problems

• The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [666]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 8. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 9 (calendar).
• The "Page information" tool shows how many users watch the page. You can now see how many are active. [667] [668]
• You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [669]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 7 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 16:44, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-28

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

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 the mobile site, you now see more information when you search for a page. It now shows the description from Wikidata. [670]

Problems

• The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [671]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 8. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 9 (calendar).
• The "Page information" tool shows how many users watch the page. You can now see how many are active. [672] [673]
• You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [674]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 7 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end /> 18:30, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:30, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016

Unfortunately Flow does not allow me to add a comment to this page so I am unable to continue our discussion about whether the conference is insular. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:57, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi @Rogol Domedonfors, not perfect but good enough: Topic:Sp573ryponvhr8jk. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

WMF-Community engagment

It's fine if you don't reply right away, enjoy the holidays :)

I mentioned here that there were two issues where I had unsuccessfully tried to get WMF engagement. The first one was regarding the Workflow project. (It currently appears to be in limbo, so there's no rush here.) There was an announcement that the WMF wanted to start working on it. I looked into the available info and the general concept is great. I think the community could potentially be very happy with it. One of the preliminary sketches looks like it would provide an awesome replacement for things like Twinkle. However I spoke with the (former) project manager and I'm concerned with the planned project direction. He indicated that it would be a Flow project, and that it would "not serve" communities or workflows that didn't switch to Flow. I believe the community would strongly want a system that supports existing pages, a system which might be compatible with Flow pages if/when/where we find Flow pages useful. The manager and liaison were less than enthusiastic with my suggested project direction. They were less than enthusiastic when I asked about an RFC on the subject. They were less than enthusiastic when I asked if they would pay attention to cross-wiki RFC's representing a majority of the global community. You can see the current situation here. The project manager was transferred and the liaison promised me a response. I tried for weeks, and got nothing. I think(?) I posted an extremely reasonable request there.

It's not currently an active project, I wasn't expecting it to go silent for two months, but the whole point was to seek community input on project-direction before things get to the development phase. The earlier the better. My biggest concern is that the WMF was actively averse to the idea of community input.

Do you think my request there was a good model for WMF-Community engagement? Can WMF processes and culture shift to actively invite community input before stuff starts getting built? I wasn't even asking for a specific outcome on the Workflow issue - I was asking for the WMF to be open to discussion on project planning. Announce a project idea, and if there are concerns then we discuss it. Alsee (talk) 14:27, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi @Alsee, thank you for reaching out and for bringing that thread to my attention. I don't think anybody in that discussion was/is averse to community input. When you have no new information (because the question is complex and you are working on something else) one option is not to force yourself to provide a half-baked answer, or an answer based on premature assumptions that might turn out to be not true in the future.

Being silent while developing a big new feature set like Workflows would be bad indeed, but as you can see that development is not happening yet. In terms of product development process, they are still in the Concept stage, no plans to request prioritization and enter the Plan stage. The team wants to do proper research, including engagement with our communities, when the right time comes.

Let's continue in that thread? Qgil-WMF (talk) 22:56, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

The... erm...apparent disinterest in community input... was in particular on the former project manager's talk page, prior to that thread. Where I was told that an RFC was not needed, apparently not wanted, and I got the impression that the impression that the possibility of a majority global community view was not warmly received.

I'll continue that there, but I'll post the second issue here later. My brain is too tired to give it due care right now. Alsee (talk) 23:12, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi @Alsee, I'm the new PM for the Collaboration team. Pleased to meet you, and thanks for giving a push on this important body of work. As @Quiddity (WMF) noted in your other thread, this is very much in the early stages. Right now, the team is focused on bringing out a raft of new Notification features. I'm focusing on that and on getting up to speed with everything the Editing team has been working on. So as @Qgil-WMF says, it's very early days. From what I can see, there's a lot of interest in taking a hard look at everything connected with Flow. As we do that and begin to focus more on Workflows, I'll look forward to collaborating with and getting lots of input from you and others in the community. Thanks for reaching out. JMatazzoni (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

JMatazzoni (WMF) , I don't feel my question has been answered. You're still referring to Workflow as connected to Flow. The latest discussion about Flow at En-VillagePump was unanimously opposed to Flow.

If there is a demonstrated community consensus, could the community change the project direction to be completely independent of Flow? Alsee (talk) 19:16, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Please don't discuss Flow (or any important topics) in my Talk page. Do it in the corresponding project pages instead, where the interested people is watching and can participate better. Qgil-WMF (talk) 15:50, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

That is an excellent point.

I've been trying to get an answer to this at Talk:Collaboration/Workflows for months. I replied here because this is where JMatazzoni replied. I would be eager to see my question to be answered over there. Alsee (talk) 22:26, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

As far as I know, the team is working on a good reply, not only to your specific question, but to the whole puzzle. It is time to discuss strategy and time to define a solid mid term plan. Qgil-WMF (talk) 02:51, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi. What I'm really trying to get at is your Project Manager approach to community engagement. (That's the topic title here, grin.) The WMF should disregard input from me or other individuals at will. Any random yahoo with fringe or dumb ideas can make an account. But the community should be a partner. A consensus is the community position.

I believe the community in general isn't going to like the idea of a Flow-based-Workflow. We have been eliminating the few Flow boards we do have, and we'll probably be Flow-Free soon. If you want to draft the concept and benefits, and pitch the idea to the community pre-build, sure. Maybe I'm wrong about the Community view, maybe you've got some great concept with valuable benefits.

On the other hand if I'm right, if there is an English wiki consensus (or consensus at English + other wikis representing a majority of the global community), and that consensus is against the Flow-based design, do you agree that it would be a bad idea to build something that the community doesn't want? Alsee (talk) 22:45, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Please provide feedback on suggested improvements to the Code of Conduct

Thanks to everyone who’s helped work on the Code of Conduct so far.

People have brought up issues they feel were missed when working on "Unacceptable behavior" and "Report a problem". Consultants have also suggested changes in these same sections.

These are important sections, so please take a look at the proposed changes. I apologize that this feedback arrived later than planned, but I think this will create a better document.

If you prefer to give your opinion privately, feedback via e-mail is welcome at conduct-discussionwikimedia.org.

Thanks. Mattflaschen-WMF via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:18, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Please participate in discussion on updated "Marginalized and underrepresented groups" text

Thanks for participating in the earlier discussion on Talk:Code of Conduct/Draft#Marginalized and underrepresented groups. There was some support and some issues were raised. I've attempted to propose a better draft to address the issues.

Please participate at Talk:Code of Conduct/Draft#New proposed wording. Thanks. User:Mattflaschen-WMF via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:40, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Please participate in discussion on updated "Enforcement issues" text

Thanks for participating in the earlier discussion on Talk:Code of Conduct/Draft#Enforcement issues. There was strong support for the first two points, so they have been closed. Most people either supported the third at least in principle, or were neutral. However, there are some suggested wording changes (partly by Smalyshev (WMF), and partly by me).

Please participate again at Talk:Code of Conduct/Draft#New proposed wording. Thanks. User:Mattflaschen-WMF via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:48, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Please participate in discussion on updated "Enforcement issues" text

Sorry, the correct link for the discussion about wording re Talk:Code of Conduct/Draft#Enforcement issues is Talk:Code of Conduct/Draft#Circumvention text new wording. Thanks. I apologize for the double-message. User:Mattflaschen-WMF via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:51, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Remote coordination for Wikimedia Hackathon

Hi, Quim, regarding phab:T120788 recommended for the Israel hackathon, can you please give me some info about the remote coordination (mode, timing, any video conference etc.) The developer of the project will not attend the event in person, and so we need to arrange remotely. Bodhisattwa (talk) 15:48, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh Jesus it's here too

I was coming to this talk page to discuss how to remove Flow from Talk:Wikipedia.org add mobile app badges and now I notice it's here as well. :-( Flow is really quite bad. Is there a way remove Flow from talk pages? Is it now the default for new talk pages here? I really don't think we should be making users suffer this, even on a more technical wiki such as mediawiki.org. MZMcBride (talk) 01:01, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi, yes, Flow has been the default for new pages in mw.o for a while now. I actually have nothing to do with this, even if as a user of mw.o I agree with this decision. This is a site welcoming technical novelties and software looking for testing, feedback, and improvements.

I disagree with your assessment about Flow, and I enjoy using it over wikitext discussion pages. I especially like the possibility to select the topics of a discussion page I want to watch, and the fact that indentations are made automatically (I wonder why in 2016 I need to count colons to post a reply, especially in comments with bullet points). In my experience here and in ca.wiki, I believe the "suffer" you describe is caused more by political reasons than purely technical, but that is just my personal opinion. I think newcomers and most of the regular editors enjoy Flow better all in all, and one of my priorities is to make life easier for newcomers. Veterans can adapt, and for instance in ca.wiki they do adapt because there they also share a priority on the newcomers' experience over their veteran love for wikitext everywhere.

It's a matter of priorities, perspectives and flexibility, I guess. Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:50, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	I enjoyed reading your presentations on ways to improve Wikimedia through software. Julianharty (talk) 14:34, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Please participate again in improving the "Conflict of interest" section

The "Conflict of interest" section was not approved earlier.

There has been further discussion on it, aiming to solve those issues. Please participate in the sub-sections of Talk:Code of Conduct/Draft#Finalize "Conflict of interest" section? and make sure your concerns are being addressed.

Thanks.

User:Mattflaschen-WMF 03:55, 28 September 2016 (UTC) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:55, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-10

<labeledsectiontransclusion/begin />

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

The Collaboration team is delighted to publish its first newsletter! Your feedback is welcome.

This quarter the team will focus on improving Special:RecentChanges and create a ReviewStream, a new feed designed to improve the edit-review process. Both are part of the new Edit Review Improvements project.

Notifications [ More information · Help pages ]

Recent changes

• Documentation concerning Notifications types has been updated. That page is ready for translations. [675]
• For developers, how to create a new Notification type has been updated. [676]
• Tools owners will be notified when OAuth app changes state. [677]
• When you edit text and mention a new username they are notified if you add your signature. Before this only happened under certain conditions. [678]
• Users are notified if they are mentioned in a section where you add your own signature even if you edit more than one section. Before, users were not notified if you edited more than one section in one edit. [679]
• Sometimes when you mention another user they don't get a notification. Now you can get a notification when you successfully send out a mention to someone or be told if they did not get a notification. This is an opt-in option in your preferences. [680][681]
• On Notifications, the badge is colored if you have some notifications. If you see these notifications, the badge will turn grey on all wikis instead of just the local one. [682]

Problems

• For some users, cross-wiki notifications haven't been working properly. The count has been wrong when only cross-wiki notifications were present. The cross-wiki bundle has been showing only the names of wikis and not the actual notifications. It has been fixed. [683][684]
• When a title was created with some wikitext inside of it, Notifications were not linking that title when they were mentioned. This is now fixed. [685]
• Some Notifications messages were not supporting {{GENDER:}}. This is now fixed. [686]

Future changes

• On Special:Notifications, pages and counts related to disabled notification types will not be shown anymore. [687]

Flow [ More information · Help pages ]

Recent changes

• Flow is available as a Beta feature on Greek Wikipedia. [688]
• A satisfaction survey was conducted concerning Flow in September 2016. Results will be published in December 2016. [689]
• Wikitext interface for Flow is now using a monospaced font. [690]
• It is now possible to moderate a Flow topic that have been resolved without re-opening it. [691]
• It is now possible to watch and unwatch topics directly from the Notification panel. [692]

Problems

• It is not possible to enable or disable Flow as a Beta feature on wikis where that option is available. This is under investigation. [693]
• Some Flow messages were not supporting {{GENDER:}}. This is now fixed. [694]

Future changes

• Communities that have Flow enabled manually on user talk pages will be asked to move on to a Beta feature activation to simplify the process. [695]
• Notifications related to Flow will be grouped on your Notifications preferences. It will be easier to choose which Notifications you want to have from Flow. [696]

Edit Review Improvements [ More information ]

Recent changes

• Informations about Edit Review Improvements project have been published. That page is ready for translations. [697]
• ReviewStream feed product description is available. ReviewStream is a machine-readable feed that’s designed to be used by a variety of edit-review tools.

Future changes

• Some improvements will be done to Special:RecentChanges, by adding new filters based on ORES.
  • Some tests are done with users to refine the design of those filters. You can volunteer for such tests. [698]
  • Communities that already have ORES goodfaith and damaging filters enabled will be contacted to try that change as a Beta feature. [699]

Miscellaneous

• On that newsletter, some particular items are highlighted by an icon, to ease reading. The icon highlights items that may interest volunteer translators and the icon highlights items that are relevant for readers with technical knowledge.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

<labeledsectiontransclusion/end />

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:07, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2016-11

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

Our quarterly goal is to add filters to the Recent Changes page, that show ORES good-faith and damaging tests and filters around new users. The work on this is proceeding mostly as planned. We hope it shall be available as a Beta feature (only on wikis where ORES is available as a Beta feature) before the end of the quarter.

Edit Review Improvements [More information]

Recent changes

• The filters design prototype for Special:RecentChanges is now stable. Development of these filters will now start. [700][701]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Notifications concerning Flow are no longer all grouped together in your preferences. The "Edits to my talk page" category will now include Flow notifications about your user talk page (if your user talk page uses Flow), and the "Mentions" category will now include mentions on Flow pages. Previously, all notifications related to Flow were grouped together in the "Structured Discussion" category. [702]
• The orange bar will now also be displayed when a message is posted on a your user talk page if your talk page uses Flow; previously, it was only displayed if you had a wikitext talk page. [703]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:32, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:32, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Weigh in on whether to finalize the new version of the "Conflict of interest" section

You participated earlier in discussion about the "Conflict of interest" section of the draft Code of Conduct for technical spaces. There was not consensus to approve an earlier version of this section. I'm contacting you to let you know the draft has been updated, and we are now discussing whether to finalize the new version.

Please participate here.

Thank you,

User:Mattflaschen-WMF via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:32, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2016-12

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

A decision has been made about how the Recent Changes filtering scheme will affect current ORES beta feature users. When this new filtering system rolls out as part of the beta, it will replace the current ORES display on the Recent Changes page. That means the automatic color coding, the red “r” symbol and the “hide probably good edits” filter will go away, to be replaced by the new, more nuanced set of filters and user-defined color coding. All other pages that have ORES features, like Watchlist and Related Changes, will remain as they are now for ORES beta users. We think those pages could also benefit from the new filtering system. But we'll wait to see how users react to the beta test—and make any necessary changes—before we start spreading the new UI around. That's the plan as it currently stands. As always, please let us know if you have any thoughts, in any language.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• The Filters for Special:RecentChanges description page is now finished and ready for translation.
• On wikis that use ORES, new colors have been chosen for damaging changes displayed on a list of changes. [704]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Problems

• Sometimes, after marking an important number of cross-wiki notifications as read, the counter remained at 1. This is now fixed. [705]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Due to a bug, it was not possible to activate Flow on user talk pages as a Beta feature. This is possible again for wikis that have that feature. [706]
• Flow boards can be moved without constraints. However, this requires the move-Flow-board right. [707]

Miscellaneous

• The MoodBar extension has been removed from all wikis. [708]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:08, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:08, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

A test of the Technical Collaboration Guideline

In the Metawiki proposal to remove Flow,[709] you suggested treating it as a test for the TCG.

I don't think that case is really much use as an effective test. I think the collaboration guideline is about to face a real test. I wanted to let you know in advance, and I invite any thoughts you have on it.

The situation:

The WMF decided to build a new Wikitext Editor. It is currently available as an opt-in beta test feature. According to the plan, in a few months it would become the default wikitext editor. The current editor would temporarily remain as an opt-in option, but eventually it would be removed.

There are currently a big pile of bugs on the project. And of course that's normal and fine. I'm not concerned about them. I have full confidence that our devs will do an excellent job addressing the routine issues. I'm also confident that the WMF isn't going to try to move it out of beta until those routine issue are resolved to a high quality.

However I believe there are two "non-routine" issues. Several editors have told the WMF that these are significant issues. 100% of the (non-staff) comments on the issues agree that they are significant issues. Most of those comments explicitly identified the issues as severe enough to disqualify the project from deployment as the default editor.

I opened a topic on each issue, each topic explicitly stating that the issue should be categorized as an actionable blocker. That statement was in the body of the comment. In retrospect, I probably should have put that in the title of the topic, and I probably should have explicitly mentioned that they were intended as TCG-actionable-blockers. Staff on the project do not seem to have made the connection, and they do not seem to have placed any special significance on them.

Staff have acknowledged the basic validity of the concerns. However the two issues would be either very difficult, or virtually impossible to resolve, given the fundamental plan and design of the project. The response of the staff has basically amounted to "oh well, we can't/won't fix them, and we don't consider them very important".

This is where things always run into trouble. The WMF is great at bugfixes and enhancement requests. But when an issue can't be resolved within the pre-defined project plan, staff deal with it as politely as they can and they just go back to work. And if it's just one person with a dumb issue, that's fine. But then a second editor says this issue disqualifies the project from deployment, and they are politely dismissed. Then the third editor is politely dismissed. Then the fourth editor is politely dismissed. And the project just keeps rolling forwards. Then phases like "talking to a brick wall" start to become common vocabulary in the community.

When you have random individuals showing up with assorted comments, I understand it can be hard to sort out the important issues from the unimportant-individual-fluff. I think part of the problem here is that, for most staff, the only time they encounter an RFC is when it looks like a giant catastrophic meteor falling from the sky. In the community, RFCs are an important, useful, and routine tool. If someone posts on a project page saying they think a project shouldn't be deployed because (issue), I think it would be great if the response was something like this:

That's a hard issue. I don't think that's something we can/will fix. But we will certainly escalate the issue if you point us to a community consensus saying it's really that severe.

Result: The person knows they were heard. They were offered a constructive avenue to pursue their concern. And they have effectively been told to go away.... in the most positive and polite possible meaning of that phrase. Either they drop the non-issue, or the community shoots down their non-issue, or they come back with a consensus saying yes, this really is something important.

The last thing most staff want to do is invite someone to run an RFC, but it really is an excellent way to deal with the community. If the person is a pest ranting about a non-issue, the community will deal with them. If the person is genuinely representing the community view, if the issue really is as important as they're claiming, then that is an issue the project team needs to deal with whether they like it or not. Effectively inviting an RFC in the early stages is far better than a meteor-from-the-sky at deploy phase.

I got rather sidetracked in the last few paragraphs.... but I think it was a good sidetrack. Anyway, back to the two Actionable Blocker issues at hand:

Issue 1: Previews

The New Wikitext Editor does not provide genuine article previews. The "new editor" is actually being designed as a new mode within the Visual Editor extension. The "new editor" actually uses the VE software-stack to generate previews. This means that there's a vast number of things that render differently in the preview than when the page is actually saved.

Project team's perspective (as I understand it)

There have always been all sorts of things that don't display correctly in VE, but it's never been a major issue before so long as it gets most things right. VE is awesome, it's the Future Of Wikipedia, it is the long term plan, everything should move in that direction.

Community perspective (as I understand it)

VE is a secondary editor, used by almost no one. (About 95% of all edits are wikitext edits.) VE's goal was to make editing easier and bring in new people. VE failed that goal. The WMF's own research shows that VE helped an additional 0% of new users to successfully make a first edit. The research also shows it produced a 0% increase in editor retention, and 0% increase in total contributions. Almost everyone uses wikitext because it's simply a better tool for the job.

No one complains about rendering issues in VE because it's a secondary editor, because we understand VE was a difficult project to build, and because anyone who chooses to use VE is choosing to accept any warts that come with it.

We already have an excellent wikitext editor. It already gives 100% accurate previews. The essential purpose of previews is accuracy. Preview errors will frustrate experienced editors and confuse new editors. Replacing accurate previews with broken previews is an obvious downgrade. The team has stated that some of the rendering errors are CANTFIX/WONTFIX. There are currently a ton of serious rendering issues the team does intend to fix, but even if the team fixes a hundred bugs, even if the errors only show up in rare or weird cases, it's just plain dumb to break previews. Many people won't care if the project is aiming for "99+%" accuracy. The blocker here is that the the WMF stop trying to play whack-a-mole fixing most of the endless preview-bugs. The blocker is to provide genuine article views, using the genuine article view engine. That fixes 100% all at once.

Many people are going to be hostile. The view will be that the WMF is breaking our PRIMARY editor... and people will think it's because the WMF's obsession with VE is becoming pathological.

I know everyone at the WMF has good intentions, but the WMF's perspective and priorities sometimes don't quite parallel the perspectives, priories, and experience of editors. Good intentions tend to fall to the wayside when it seems like things are being broken for bad reasons.

Issue 2: Load time

With the current wikitext editor it only takes three seconds before I can begin editing a large and important article like United States.

With the current wikitext editor it only takes five seconds before I can begin editing our largest article.

The New Wikitext Editor is actually a new mode in VE. It requires far more code, it's a memory hog, and I think(?) that it has to spend time analyzing the wikitext before it can do anything.

With the New Wikitext Editor I have to wait thirty seconds before I can begin editing the United States article.

When I try to edit our largest article with the New Wikitext Editor, I'm stuck sitting here staring at my clock for one hundred and twenty seven seconds before I can begin editing.

I don't know if my time measurements will be typical for other people. However the issue is obvious, even if most people get better times than I do.

The perspectives on this issue will be essentially the same as before. For the VE team, slow load times are an accepted fact. No one ever screamed that it was a fatal problem for VE. For the community, slow load times are simply one of the warts that comes along with VE. If you don't like the VE's load time, then don't use VE.

And here too, people are going to get hostile. An editor that takes 30 seconds to load is BAD, an editor that can take 127 seconds to load is absolutely obscene. People will ask why is the WMF screwing up our primary editor? Some people will feel that the WMF's obsession with VE has become pathological, some people will feel that the WMF's disdain for wikitext is bordering on deliberate sabotage.

I first raised the preview issue three months ago, when the very first prototype was available on the test servers. Someone else first raised the load time issue two months ago. Multiple editors have said these issues BLOCK deployment. I explicitly said they should be categorized as "actionable blockers". So we're at the next step. I am in the middle of drafting an RFC to file a formal block against deployment (subject to finding a resolution, of course). I anticipate the RFC is going to pass overwhelmingly. Based on what I know about the project, I don't think these issues can be fully resolved without substantially scrapping the design. Alsee (talk) 20:16, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Almost every time that I have attempted to bring the TCG to a conversation about an ongoing project I have surprised / confused / annoyed someone, so I have decided to stop mixing both concepts unless the conversation is happening in a social context over drinks (or similar), as a purely mental and open-minded exercise.  :) I guess you have seen my recent comment about this at Meta:Babel.

If you want to propose blockers for the new wikitext editor, I recommend you to document them as tasks blocking T142523. Maybe the issues you are reporting here have already their own tasks? If not, feel free to create them. That is the best way to assure that they will not be missed by the development team or other users interested in the new wikitext editor, since any steps forward for that product will eventually pass through that funnel. That is also where it will be decided which tasks are considered blockers indeed, and which are considered non-blocking problems, no-problems... Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:06, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

My electricity dropped out and I need to start the RFC draft from scratch :(

In the mean time, I opened the two Phabs you suggested. T154843 and T154844. I don't have high hopes, but I assume the mention of RFC and potential deployment block will draw attention. Alsee (talk) 12:00, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Update:

It's been 9 days since I submitted the two Phab items. Neither has been accepted, neither has been rejected, no one on the project has addressed either issue in any fashion. I wish I could say I expected a more productive result. :(

I opened the RFC: Proposal_to_submit_blockers_on_replacing_our_wikitext_editor.

Aside from opening the RFC weeks ago, is there anything I should have done differently? Alsee (talk) 00:40, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Since you submitted the Phabricator items there has been a Wikimedia Developer Summit and a Wikimedia Foundation AllHands meeting that has kept many of us busy. Also, why the urgency? Qgil-WMF (talk) 02:51, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Urgency? We've been trying to get a constructive response from the project team for ~15 weeks on previews, and for ~11 weeks about load time.

The WMF is great at bug fixes and enhancement requests, but a certain pattern kicks in when an issue cannot be easily resolved within the predefined plan. For example fixing previews would require a fundamental design change. The issue is raised, saying that it's going to block deployment. It gets a polite and completely non-committal response. "Um yeah.... mumble mumble mumble". I'm not sure if people are trying too hard to be "polite" and not say "no", but they either can't or won't change the core plan and the issue just falls down the memory-hole without a meaningful response. Multiple people try to raise the issue multiple times, saying this will block deployment, and it never gets a "yes" or "no" or any other sort of resolution. The issue just keeps disappearing into the page history. The project train just keeps rolling forwards. The WMF just keeps digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole. More and more $$$ and dev-hours are piled on. Then the WMF is predictably surprised when there are problems at deployment phase. "OMG, we've spent all this time and money, and the community is battling us at the last minute."

I didn't know about the Developer Summit and stuff, and I know 9 days isn't a particularly long time up on Phab. But everyone up to and including JDForrester has known about this issue for months, and has been blowing off the issue for months. The only reason I waited the extra 9 days is because you suggested giving Phabricator a shot. There was no acceptance, no rejection, not a single comment indicating that anyone was evaluating it as a critical issue.

The earlier an issue is caught and addressed, the easier, cheaper, and less stressful it is to resolve. I regret that I didn't run the RFC 10 or more weeks ago. It would have helped the WMF to genuinely take note of the issue before investing so much time and money.

What I'd really like is to reach a place where an RFC isn't viewed as some evil combative thing. Where you don't think I was hasty running the RFC now, where the RFC would have been welcome 10 weeks ago. A place where an RFC has one of two positive outcomes. Either the community shoots down unreasonable objections for you (win), or the RFC brings you important and desired information about the project as early as possible (win). Alsee (talk) 14:23, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

The new wikitext editor is an opt-in beta feature in English Wikipedia. Discussion of potential problems of performance and previews belong to this stage. As far as I am aware, nobody is talking about graduating this beta. This is why I don't share your sense of urgency. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't see the issue as "urgent". I merely see it as overdue.

The worst time to address issues is when perpetual inaction drags out to deployment phase. So far the inaction has dragged out for ~15 weeks, despite repeated attempts by multiple editors to obtain a meaningful response.

The best time to address issues is as early as possible, ideally before any time and money is invested in coding. I tried to do exactly that, before a test version even existed. I was informed that there was no information available and that I had to wait until it was built. So we missed the best opportunity. After a prototype is built, the earlier issues are addressed the less costly and disruptive it is to the development process. If there is a change to the plan, it benefits the WMF to know that as early as possible. Alsee (talk) 21:07, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I think we are starting to repeat ourselves.

I thank you for submitting your proposals for blockers in Phabricator, connected to the right task. This is the most efficient way to assure that your reports are addressed.

Once the problems are reported... is there a benefit in insisting on them on a daily basis? If your ultimate goal is to help the development team releasing the new software with those problems resolved, then I don't think so.

The team is not inactive at all. You can check their priorities here. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:20, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Also, can it be that you haven't linked to the Phabricator tasks you opened from your RfC? You got some feedback in both, and people interested in your RfC might be interested in those conversations. Qgil-WMF (talk) 02:57, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanx. Good idea. I added Phab links to the RFC. Alsee (talk) 14:25, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

It looks like I was right, this is a real test case for collaboration.

I assume the team will make a good faith effort to look into the load time issue (T154843), although I question whether they can realistically reduce the time to be similar to the current editor. But let's set that aside.

Jdforrester has categorized the other consensus-blocker as "invalid" (T154844). Do you have any suggestion on how we should proceed? Alsee (talk) 20:09, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

That task is still open and the conversation is continuing there. Qgil-WMF (talk) 06:44, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-02

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

Flow satisfaction survey’s results are available. The survey provides useful data on what users like and don't like about Flow. This information will be helpful in discussions recently begun as part of the editing team's Annual Plan process. As the editing team investigates its priorities for next fiscal year (which begins in July), many ideas for improvements have been suggested, including projects to research the future of wiki discussions and to fix Flow's shortcomings.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

• Huggle users are asked to share their feedback concerning proposed improvements for Huggle.

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

• Flow notifications category in the Notification Preferences page will be changed from (in English) "Flow" to "Flow Discussion". Messages that have to be updated on TranslateWiki are echo-category-title-flow-discussion and echo-pref-tooltip-flow-discussion. [710]
• Mentions were not recognized when more than one section is added during the same edit or when an new section was added and a change (new message or deletion) was done in another section. This is now solved. [711]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

• Rich text mode is now the default in Flow replies. Some inconsistencies used to exist. Now the preference between visual mode and wikitext mode is updated when a content change is made in the selected editor, literally when it is typed in, not when it is saved or when the editor is switched. [712]
• We plan to change Flow's URLs to make them more human readable. Your feedback is still welcome, the conversation will be closed on February 28th.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:40, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:40, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-03

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

We have focused all our efforts on the New filters for edit review. You will discover these filters on your wiki soon (see below).

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• The documentation concerning the new filters for recent changes has been written and marked for translation.

Future changes

• We will release the ⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽ beta option on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias March 28. This beta option adds powerful filtering and other tools as well as an improved filtering interface to the Recent Changes page (and Recent Changes Linked). To try out these new tools on these two wikis, go to the Beta tab of the Preferences page (after the 28th) and select ⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽.
• In the weeks following the initial release to Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias, the New Filters for Edit Review beta will go out to the following list of Wikipedias in waves (schedule to be done):
  • Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech Wikipedias and Wikidata. [713]
  • English Wikipedia. [714]
  • All other wikis. [715]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• <math> <hiero> <score> <syntax> <source> <ref> shortcuts are now working on Flow visual editing mode. Type a shortcut in the visual editing mode will open the control panel for the chosen option. [716]
  • Concerning <ref>, footnotes will be automatically included at the end of the message, unless if they are displayed elsewhere in the message by the appropriate template.
• Flow has been removed from Metawiki. [717]

Future changes

• The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It will be a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. [718]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:02, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:02, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For your enormous good works so far. You are really a source of my inspiration to be honest. Thanks for your guidance and lead :) Alangi derick (talk) 23:42, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-05

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• “New Filters for Edit Review” beta released: As of May 9, the New Filters for Edit Review beta has been released to all wikis. The beta lets users review edits on Recent Changes using an easier and more powerful interface and many new tools, including user-defined highlighting and, on some wikis, predictive filters powered by ORES, a machine-learning program. You must opt in to the beta to try it out.
• More features coming soon: The New Filters are still very much in development. In addition to fixing bugs and making adjustments (here’s our current to-do list), we’re actively adding new features, many at users’ request. A few notable additions you can look for this month: A cool tool for saving filter settings; a “Watchlisted pages” filter; a “Flagged Revisions” filter (for some wikis only); a “Last revision” filter.
• Tell us your ideas—but don’t wait: The team is focused right now in making changes to the New Filters beta. But in a few months, we’ll be moving on to other projects. So now is the time to give the new tools a try and then tell us what you think. What works well? What could make things better for you?
• In the medium-term: By the end of summer, we plan to complete a suite of improvements that will, among other things: incorporate all the remaining Recent Changes tools into the new filtering interface; create new ways for reviewers to move back and forth through the filter queue; implement a “Reverted” filter; and, finally, bring the New Filters UI and tools to Watchlist.
• Have time for a talk? We're looking for people we can interview about their experiences with the new beta. If you’re a regular user of Recent Changes and have tried the new features—and if you can spare an hour to chat in English with our design researcher—please email dchenwikimedia.org with the subject line “user interview.” Let us know how to get in touch with you and what time zone (city, country...) you’re in.
• Wish you had ORES on your wiki? Some of the more interesting New Filters for Edit Review features are dependent on the machine-learning service ORES, which is available only on a small but growing list of wikis. For ORES to work on a wiki, volunteers from that wiki must train it by scoring some thousands of sample edits. Here’s a link that explains how the process works and how you can get it started on your wiki.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Many Recent Changes pages have on top a list of links. We plan to integrate those links in a collapsible menu. You are invited to comment the 3 proposals we have drafted on Phabricator.
• On wikis where Flagged Revisions are used, an edit highlighted as bad by ORES will not be highlighted anymore when the edit is reviewed by someone. [719]
• You can highlight pages that are in your Watchlist in Recent Changes. 3 different filters are available: in watchlist, not in watchlist, new changes in watchlist. [720]
• Wikidata, Dutch, Czech, Hebrew, Estonian and Finnish Wikipedia now have the new filters available as a Beta feature, and ORES is enabled by default on those wikis. [721]
• All wikis now have the Recent changes Filters as a Beta feature. [722]
• Users are invited to opt in to the Recent changes Filters beta when they visit the Recent Changes page. [723]
• On wikis that have ORES predictions enabled by default, it is now possible to choose how to display the predictions in watchlist and recent changes pages. [724]

Future changes

• It will be possible soon to save and retreive your favorite filters combinations. [725]
• We are working on adding filter groups for last revisions, edits from Wikidata and reverted edits. [726][727][728]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• When an article you have created is linked to a Wikidata item, you can receive a notification. Wikidata and all the Wikivoyages have it since May 9th, other wikis will follow. [729]
• Special:Notifications tabs is now set to "Unread" if there are any unread messages. [730]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• You can enable Flow as a Beta feature on your talk page on Arabic Wikipedia and Catalan Wikiquote. [731][732]
• When you send more than 50 mentions on one Flow post, you are now warned you have hit the limit. [733]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:19, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:19, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-06

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

Integrated Filters

• The team is moving full speed ahead on a follow-up project to the New Filters for Edit Review beta dubbed "Integrated Filters." The name refers to the fact that we are integrating the Recent Changes tools that currently remain in the old user interface (like Namespace and Tag filters), along with some tools and capabilities from Watchlist and elsewhere, into the new Recent Changes interface.
• You can get an overview of the Integrated Filters projects, and the general release strategy, on the description page of the project Phabricator board. Among the more interesting new capabilities:
  • Category filters: We'll be adding the ability to filter by category. This is a little tricky, since wiki categories often work in a somewhat counter-intuitive way, with the broadest categories returning the fewest results—because categories like "Science" or "Art" tend to contain not articles but other categories. So we're exploring solutions where a category search will crawl at least a layer or two down the category treat to, hopefully, bring back more useful results. [734]
  • User filters: We're adding the ability to filter by any username, similar to what's available already on the the User Contributions page. [735]
  • Live update: Users will have the ability to look at a more or less continuous flow of changes. This is a much requested feature that we expect will open up new possibilities for Recent Changes, especially for patrollers who want to see vandalism or other changes as they happen. While the updates won't truly be "live," the page updates will be frequent, similar to the way real-time tools (like RTRC or LiveRC) works. [736]

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Have time for a talk?

• We're looking for people we can interview about their experiences with the new beta. If you’re a regular user of Recent Changes and have tried the new features—and if you can spare an hour to chat in English with our design researcher—please email dchenwikimedia.org with the subject line “user interview.” Let us know how to get in touch with you and what time zone (city, country...) you’re in.

Recent changes

• It is now possible to save your favorite filters sets by using bookmarks. [737]
  • This feature documentation can be translated.
• It is possible to filter only the last edits done on a page on the Recent Changes page. [738]
• ORES review tool has been deployed to French Wikipedia. This wiki can use predictions filters. To have the predictions filters on your wiki, you need to work on the labeling campaign for your wiki or request it. [739]
• There were some issues with loading highlighted results when the URL was copied and pasted. This is now fixed. [740]
• A "Watchlisted pages" filter group now lets reviewers use Recent Changes, and all its tools, to patrol changes to pages they've Watchlisted. If you have any feedback about how useful this is nor isn't—especially given that we plan to add the new filtering interface to the Watchlist page — let us know.
• There were issues with the tools still in the older filtering UI — like the Namespace filter and the number of results selectors. These have been fixed. [741]

Future changes

• Integration of new features on recent changes pages is planned. They will include menus to filter users, tagged edits, categories and namespaces. See the "What's new" section above for more information.
• Now that users can save filter settings, and declare any settings they want as the Recent Changes page default, we'll be reviewing the RC page Preferences with an eye to getting rid of as many as we can. For instance, if you want to hide minor edits or Category changes by default, you can now do that right on the RC page, instead of having to go to a separate page to manage defaults.
• On many Recent Changes Pages, the community has defined a large number of links that are displayed directly under the page name (example on Polish Wikipedia). Many of these links are unrelated or only peripherally related to Recent Changes, add informational complexity of the RC page. Research shows that they are used only rarely or never. We want to clarify RecentChanges page functionality, so we plan to put the links into a collapsible panel.
  • Should the panel default to open or closed? That is, should the default state (which users can change with one click) show the links as hidden or displayed? Let us know what you think.
  • The most used links are shortcuts to certain type of edits, (Mobile, Newcomers...). Users can already save their favorite filter settings to the Saved Settings menu, which should make some of the existing links redundant. We plan to provide default bookmarks for the most used filters combinations. [742]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Future changes

• Wikimedia Deutschland have scheduled the notifications of Wikibase notifications to Wikimedia projects: all the Wikivoyages on May 3; all the Wikipedias except en, fr, de on May 30; all other projects on June 13 and Wikipedias en, fr, de on September 5. [743]
• It will be possible to restrict who can send you notifications. [744]

Flow [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Flow has been activated on all talk pages on Catalan Wikiquote. [745]

Future changes

• On the Beta feature page, the activation message has been review to emphase the fact that the unstructured wikitext page will be archived. [746]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:41, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:41, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-07

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Notifications, Flow and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

The team is currently working on three main goals, which we expect to complete this summer or in September:

1. Graduate New Filters for Edit Review core features out of beta:
   • The core New Filters features slated to become standard parts of Recent Changes are the ones that have been out in beta for a while and fully road-tested by the community.
   • These include the new filtering interface, the machine-learning filter groups “User Intent Predictions” and “Quality Predictions,” the highlighting tools, the ability to save your filter settings for later use, and the new filter groups: “Watchlisted pages,” “Last revision” and "User registration and experience."
   • There’s a list of “blocker” tasks we need to complete before these features are ready to graduate out of beta.
   • We expect to release those features by default in September. A more precise message will be sent to communities. If you have questions about it, you can write a message on Mediawiki.org, in any language.
2. Extend the New Filters to Watchlist: The Watchlists of very active editors can include thousands of pages. To help these busy folks keep up with their work, we’re adding the New Filters UX and tools to Watchlist. The Watchlist and Recent Changes pages are similar, but there is some work involved in adapting the tools to their new setting. That work should be ready some time in late summer or early fall. Stay tuned for an announcement!
3. Continuing work on “Integrated Filters”:
   • While the New Filters for Edit Review beta brought probably 70% of the old-style Recent Changes features into the new user interface, it left some behind—like the Tag and Namespace filters and the controls for the number of days searched and number of results presented. As the name is meant to suggest, “Integrated filters” integrates those old-style tools into the new UI.
   • It also adds some new tools users have asked for, such as:
     • “Live updates” which provides a near real-time automatic refresh of the Recent Changes page.
     • Category filters, which enable users to search by category.
     • User filters, which let you define searches that include or exclude edits by particular users.
   • We will put the community-defined related links that cluster at the top of most Recent Changes pages into a collapsible panel, in order to clarify the Recent Changes page.

We should note that it’s not certain these last two additions will make the cut for inclusion this year. If you want a make the case for either one, we want to hear from you.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Some styling adjustments are ongoing on the filters for recent changes. [747]
• RecentChanges with the Beta feature were very slow to load on Wikidata. It is now fixed. [748]
• In the Beta feature, you can try the Live Updates feature. Just add &liveupdate=1 at the end of the URL in Recent Changes page. [749]

Future changes

• ORES review tool will be deployed to Romanian and Albanian Wikipedia soon. These wikis will be able to use predictions filters. To have the predictions filters on your wiki, you need to work on the labeling campaign for your wiki or request it. [750]
• Sometimes the RecentChanges page were reloading before the filters have ended to be loaded. It is going to be fixed. [751]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• It is now possible to display the number of unread notifications in the browser title bar, using a gadget. [752]

Future changes

• It will be possible to restrict who can send you notifications on a wiki. This new feature will accessible in your preferences, in the Notifications tab, on Wednesday, July 26. [753]
  • The documentation is ready to be translated.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Newsletter y descripciones que no soportan wikitexto

Hola Quim:

¿Existe ticket en Phabricator para Newsletter:Newsletter²?

Me refiero a que, como verás, aunque intentes dar formato a la descripción de la newsletter, se muestra todo como texto plano.

Aprovecho la ocasión para saludarte. Espero que estés bien.

Un saludo. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 21:39, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Hola de nuevo. He creado un ticket en Phabricator en relación a este asunto. Un saludo. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 18:50, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Hola @MarcoAurelio, muchas gracias por tu continuo interés en mejorar esta extensión. Acabo de responder en Phabricator. Qgil-WMF (talk) 19:58, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Sí, lo he visto. Gracias a tí por la ayuda. Me gusta newsletter, creo que tiene un gran potencial. Un saludo. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 20:14, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-11

Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Notifications, Structured discussions, Edit Review Improvements and Content translation. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• The Global collaboration report for October is now available.
• All wikis now have the Filters for edit review as the default system on Recent Changes page.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Most recent changes

• Filters for Watchlists are still on Beta. Please try them and give feedback before we release it for all users!
• Shortcuts to filter Namespaces and Tags are now more visible. [754]
• Discovery of the search bar has been improved. [755]
• If the Recent Changes page or the Watchlist fails to load or is time-outed, a message is now displayed. [756][757]
• The bookmark icon for creating a "Saved filter" is now grayed when it is not possible to save. Before it was not visible. Bookmarking is unavailable when, for example, the current filter set is already saved. [758]

Future changes

• Live updates on Recent changes will be moved out of beta and into the standard feature set by the end of the year. [759]
• Extension:Translate filters for RecentChanges are going to be integrated to the new filters. [760]
• Automatic edit summaries will be filtered as tags. [761]

Content translation [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• List items (suggested items and in-progress/published translations) layout restyled to prevent overflows on small screen sizes.
• Search results for new translation dialog are now embedded, instead of being displayed in floating menu. Search results remain displayed when tabbed out and can be closed using ESC key.
• Missing pages are no longer shown when there is no match for search query. Message informing that there are no results is displayed instead.
• Embedded search results enabled to provide users with more translation opportunities. Articles user recently edited (in currently selected source language wiki) are surfaced when there is no input in search bar, with additional info if article is missing in user's currently selected target language.
• Long suggestion descriptions are limited to three lines, and the rest is truncated, which is indicated by ellipsis.
• Chart data representing user translation statistics in now showing all the months since user's first published translation. Months that went without translation are now displayed in chart as well.
• A loading indicator is shown while suggestions are loading.
• Button to discard dialog is now shown through the whole process of selecting article to translate.

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Edit-user-talk notifications are now expandable. [762]

Structured Discussions [More information • Help pages]

Future changes

• Some work is ongoing to store Structured Discussions contents from HTML to wikitext. That change will allow some specific templates and magic words to work properly on Structured Discussions. [763]
• Some tests are conducted in order to prepare the rewriting of Structured Discussions' interface. That rewriting will have no visible impact on users but it will ease future changes.

Other projects

• Compact Language Links has been deployed on German Wikipedia. [764]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Global Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:36, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:36, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2017-12

Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Notifications, Structured discussions, Edit Review Improvements and Content translation. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• The last Global collaboration details report is now available (in English).

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

• <figure-inline></figure-inline> The filters are now deployed as a default feature on all wikis on RecentChanges and RecentChangesLinked pages.
• The filters are still available as a Beta feature on all wikis on Watchlists. Please try them!
• LiveUpdates have been deployed as a default feature for all wikis.
• On wikis using Extension:Translate, translated messages can now be filtered. System messages can be filtered as well, on all wikis. [765]
• "View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent, to invite users to use that native feature to update the list of results. [766]
• Pagination and time period selectors are now combined and located on the right on left-to-right wikis. [767]
• When a user wanted to click outside of the filter menu to close it, it was possible to click on "revert" link by accident. It is not possible anymore. [768]
• It is now possible to filter the following events using the Tags menu: Making a page a redirect, Changing redirect target, Changing an existing redirect into a non-redirect, Blanking of the page, Removing more than 90% of a page content, Rolling back an edit. [769]
• Some design improvements have been done to Related Changes page to integrate the new filters. [770]
• "Save current filter settings" menu and legend overlapped the results. This is now fixed. [771]
• Some small design improvements have been done. [772]

Content translation [More information • Help pages]

• Now Content Translation prevents source and target language to be set to same language. [773]
• The dialog for selecting article to translate is standardized. It introduces a new component that is used for the selected page on both the "New translation" dialog and the "Suggested pages" list. [774]
• More space is given to the language filter, to increase responsiveness and show more language names without truncation. [775]
• While searching for a new page to translate, duplicates are not shown anymore for user search input. [776]
• Various PHP warnings and JavaScript errors have been fixed. [777][778]

Structured discussions [More information • Help pages]

• It is now possible to use Special:Nuke on hidden Structured discussion topics. [779]
• The Reply button is not active anymore until something is typed. [780]

Miscellaneous

• For wikis that use ORES, preferences for ORES have been rationalized in Special:Preferences, on Recent Changes tab and Watchlist tab. [781]
• ORES will be deployed on Simple English Wikipedia. That wiki will be able to use the Prediction filters. [782]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Global Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:31, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:31, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Global Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-01

Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Notifications, Structured discussions, Edit Review Improvements and Content translation. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• The Global Collaboration report for December is now available (in English).
• Filters are better integrated on Related Changes (see below).
• Structured discussions now use the 2017 wikitext editor (see below).

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Bug fixes

• When searching, a click on a filter capsule moved the list of filters. [783]
• On Related Changes page, the page name entry box didn't show the entirety of long page names. [784]
• Transcludeing Special:RelatedChanges on a page added unexpected parameters to the URL. [785]
• Filter menu was opening upwards. [786]
• ORES preferences on Recent Changes and Watchlist preferences pages have been rationalized. [787]
• Users are now prevented from clicking on a link when they click outside of the dropdown menu to close it. [788]

Work in progress

• <figure-inline></figure-inline> Filters on Related Changes page are better integrated and get new features, for instance: [789]
  • The standard auto-completion mechanism is available when you search for a page to look at.
  • It is more clear if you are looking to pages linked from the target page or to the target page.
  • You no longer need to click the "Show" button; the page updates automatically when a page is positively identified via autocompletion.

Content translation [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Further enhancement are made for list (Suggestions/In-progress/Published) items on mobile screens. Long titles no longer overflow or overlap with other interface elements. [790]
• Various changes to the "New translation" dialog and the selected page for translation have been made: [791]
  • Longer titles of selected pages are displayed in smaller. Some space has been added around to increase readability.
  • Language codes are not truncated by ellipsis anymore. Only full, autonym language names are subject to truncation.
  • Minimal screen sizes and selected suggestion dialog have been revisited. They are more consistent in responding to screen size changes.
  • Discard button is no longer shown on small screen sizes.
• Language filters no longer render wrong or non-existent language codes. [792]
• The "New translation" dialog now shows a loading indicator and doesn't display an error when you change the source language after an unsuccessful research. [793]

Structured discussions [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• <figure-inline></figure-inline> Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This works with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. [794][795]
  • <figure-inline></figure-inline> The documentation has been updated and needs translations updates.
• Prométhée, from French Wikipedia, has created some gadgets to customise Structured discussions interface.
  • <figure-inline></figure-inline> The documentation is ready to be translated.

Future changes

• Structured discussions does not always follow wiki's configurations concerning talk pages indexation. This will be fixed. [796]
• Hidden topics will not be indexed by search engines anymore. [797]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Bug fixes

• User rights change notifications were displaying a broken link. This is now fixed. [798]
• "Mark as read" buttons had a bad appearance for users who don't have JavaScript activated. [799]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Global Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

00:56, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:56, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-02

Latest news from the Wikimedia Global Collaboration team, about Map improvements 2018, Notifications, Structured discussions and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

• Collaboration and Language are now going their way separately. Updates about Content Translation are not included in this newsletter anymore. Please refer to the Language report.
• Collaboration has a new project: Map improvements 2018.
  • The team’s engagement with maps is based on 2017 Community Wishlist proposal Kartographer Improvements, though the work won’t be restricted to items named there.
  • The project is currently in its very early research and planning stages.
  • It has a limited term that’s scheduled to conclude at the end of June 2018.

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• es.wikipedia, es.wikibooks, sv.wikipedia, and simple.wikipedia get ORES predictions on Recent Changes (and on Watchlist through "⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽" Beta feature). [800][801][802][803]

Problems

• The explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed. [804][805]
• On Related changes it was not possible to use Saved filters for several articles. It has been fixed. [806]
• Transclude special:relatedchanges on a subpage removed #contentSub. This is now fixed. [807]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• The wording when you send a thanks message has changed. Instead of Yes or No it says Thank and Cancel. It is also now easier to understand that all thanks are public. [808]
• A notification is now sent to account owner on multiple unsuccessful login attempts. [809]

Problems

• Between week 7 and 20 February, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed. [810]
• Long page titles on Special:Notifications were not truncated. This is now fixed. [811]

Structured discussions [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• You can now press CTRL + ENTER to post a new message. [812]
• It wasn't possible to create a description of a Structured discussions board. This has been fixed. [813]

Problems

• On wikis using the Beta feature, it is not possible to enable or disable Structured discussion from the Beta page. However, admins can create and move the pages.

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

11:29, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:29, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Collaboration products newsletter: 2018-03

Latest news from the Wikimedia Collaboration team, about Map improvements 2018, Notifications, Structured discussions and Edit Review Improvements. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.

What's new?

The Collaboration team has announced the start of a new project: In-Context Help and Onboarding. The idea is to improve retention of new wiki editors by giving them short tutorials and other training experiences related to, and triggered by, their current activities on the wikis (that’s the “in context” part). The project follows from the conclusions of the New Editor Experiences research. The work is in its very early stages, but we’d like to hear from people with ideas on the subject—particularly if you have experience supporting or training new contributors.

Map improvements 2018 [More information]

• Maps using Maplink and Mapframe functions now include an extra zoom level (level 19). This is part of the Kartographer Improvements, the number one request of the 2017 Community Wishlist survey. [814]

Edit Review Improvements [More information • Help pages]

• Number of edit to show in recent changes information text was incorrect in Special:Preferences. It has been rephrased. [815]

Notifications [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. That new feature has been documented. [816]
• Preferences panel on Special:Notifications was overlapping other elements. This has been fixed. [817]

Future changes

• An important work is under progress to allow thanks of log entry. This is done by the Community Tech team. [818]

Structured discussions [More information • Help pages]

Recent changes

• Structured Discussions extension has been uninstalled from wikis not using it. However, it is still possible for a community to request a trial of Structured discussions. [819]

Problems

• It was not possible to opt-in and opt-out Structured discussions on wikis using it as a Beta feature. It is now fixed. [820]

Future changes

• The visual editor and 2017 wikitext editor interface is going to change for consistency. The toolbar, dialogs and menus will appear slightly bigger; some icons will look different. Content or functionality will not change. That change will apply to Structured Discussions as well. [821]

Collaboration team's newsletter prepared by the Global Collaboration team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

12:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Support Low-Budget Wikis

Hi

Hope you're the right person to contact. Found your info through these pages, suggested by somebody on phabricator.

I'm building a wiki on a shared webhost, who doesn't support node.js.

gunretort.xyz

Of course i love the new VisualEditor, but without node.js, we cannot use it.

Meantime, WikiEditor is really showing it's age. Other wysiwyg editors, like TinyMCE, CKEditor, etc are buggy or no longer supported (mostly the latter).

I strongly believe MediaWiki's social mission compels you to support low-budget wikis. But if WikiEditor continues to be lame and neglected, while VisualEditor gets all the attention, then you're being elitist, and neglecting MediaWiki's social mission.

Looking forward to your reply.

Thx,

Johny Why Johnywhy (talk) 05:40, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I have been thinking about your question and what comes is my personal answer. I am not "the right person to contact" but maybe I can help you.

When it comes to low-budget projects, I think the question to be asked is not why depending on JavaScript or node.js to offer a good user experience, but why self-hosting. Running your own server is going to be resource intensive always (where resource includes not only money, also time). Meanwhile, MediaWiki's strength is to be run in a wiki farm (because Wikimedia is at the end a huge wiki farm).

There are wiki farms out there offering free wikis, also with VisualEditor and/or decent editors. Would this be an option for you? Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:55, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

If it's configurable as I need, and going to exist for years, then yes.

I tried the following for a while, and it wasn't bad.

https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Miraheze

But self-hosting offers more of the options I need, and I know it's not going anywhere.

Note, running a private server is resource intensive, as you mentioned. But shared hosting is less so.

Thx Johnywhy (talk) 11:56, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

With JavaScript spreading all over and with virtual hosting prices falling, I wonder whether using JavaScript is equivalent to "being elitist", and whether low-cost really is really equivalent to no JavaScript.

When it comes to the Wikimedia Foundation, the priority is to improve the user experience of editors, including those without the luxury of a desktop or high bandwidth. Plans go in the direction of offering a better mobile editing experience, because for millions of people low-cost really means regular access to mobile but less so to a desktop.

I guess this explains why the Foundation is investing in VisualEditor and mobile editing via web and native apps, and why there are no plans to develop the legacy editors further.

But anyway, as said all these are just my personal opinions. My talk page and myself are in fact not the best to provide the best informed answer. If you want to discuss this further, I recommend you to do it directly with the developers at the wikitech-l mailing list. Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:05, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Alterar Página Principal

Olá amigos,

Preciso alterar a página principal utilizada pelo sistema, ao abrir preciso que chame uma página especifica e não a página principal.

Também gostaria de saber se há a possibilidade de alteração do nome de uma página já criada. Caio martins2011 (talk) 19:50, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi, see

• Manual:Main Page
• Help:Moving_a_page/pt-br Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:10, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I solved the problem with your tip. Thank you very much. Caio martins2011 (talk) 13:37, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Extensão para relatório de acessos

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Bom dia amigos.

Preciso saber quantos acessos foram realizados por página. Existem alguma extensão que faça isso? Caio martins2011 (talk) 13:38, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi, this is just my personal Talk page. If you have more questions, please ask in Project:Support desk, where others will be able to help as well. Thank you. Qgil-WMF (talk) 13:45, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Latest message for Collaboration team newsletter; Growth team's newsletter invite

Hello

Sorry to use English if that's not your favorite language.

You are receiving this message because you were reading the Collaboration team newsletter.

The Collaboration team doesn't longer exists. That team was working on building features that encourage collaboration. This is the latest message for that newsletter.

The Growth Team, formed in July 2018, supports some former Collaboration projects. The Growth Team's main objective is to ease new editors' first steps on wikis, through software changes. You can discover all objectives and missions of the Growth team on its page.

If you wish to be informed about Growth team's updates about easing new users first steps, you can subscribe to the new list to get updates. The first message from Growth –with a call for feedback on a new project– will be posted in a few days!

If you have questions or you want to share experiences made on your wiki about new users' first steps, please post them on the team talk page, in any language.

On behalf of the Growth team, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 22 August 2018 (UTC) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:29, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)