Toniher

Dear Toniher, Welcome to MediaWiki.org!

Yes, Welcome! This site is dedicated to the documentation of the MediaWiki software, the software behind many wikis, including that of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation projects.
Please, take a look at the following pages. They might prove useful to you as a newcomer here:

• Project:About
• How does MediaWiki work?
• Help:Editing pages
• Help:Navigation
• Manual:FAQ

If you have any questions, please ask me on my talk page. Once again, welcome, and I hope you quickly feel comfortable here, and find this site a beneficial documentation of the MediaWiki software.

Thanks, and regards, Diego Grez ^¡hablemos! 18:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Tech news: 2013-22

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.

Recent software changes

(Not all changes will affect you.)

• The Translate extension and Universal Language Selector were enabled on Wikimedia Commons on May 20. Commons users can now easily change languages, and translate pages with a friendly interface.
• The Notifications feature, active on the English Wikipedia, now supports local blacklists and whitelists. It is possible to hide users (for example certain bots) from all notifications on the wiki. Also, e-mail notifications are now grouped.
• The first stable release of MediaWiki 1.21 for sites outside Wikimedia was published on May 25.
• The tool storing information about languages (CLDR) was updated to the latest version (23.1).
• Due to a software issue, users couldn't enable or disable Gadgets. The issue is now fixed.

Future software changes

• MediaWiki will stop supporting XHTML 1.0 and HTML versions lower than version 5. HTML5 will now be the default language for pages created by the software.
• The software will check if all uploaded files are secure and match their type.
• The Wikimedia Commons Android app will come out of the beta phase on its next release.
• Account creation by manual log-in will now be recorded in the account creation log (bug 42434).
• Links to file description pages will again be accessible directly from within videos (bug 43747).
• The software behind recent changes patrolling was re-written; the change fixes issues related to patrolling new pages, among other things.
• During a meeting, developers agreed on rules about making big changes to the software.
• There is now a category to list pages with invalid music code.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Unsubscribe.

Tech news: 2013-23

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.

Recent software changes

(Not all changes will affect you.)

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf5) was added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 29. It will be enabled on the English Wikipedia on June 3, and on all other Wikipedias on June 5.
• The Tamil Wikipedia shared a Lua module they created to automate their Main Page.
• There is now a test wiki to test new features in right-to-left languages.
• The Thanks feature was added to the English Wikipedia; users can now thank others for individual edits.
• The new interface for account creation and log-in is now the default on 30 wikis, including the English Wikipedia, Commons, Meta, and Wikidata. The feature will be added to all wikis after June 5. Users can return to the old look by adding ?useNew=0 to the web address.
• Videos are now played in pop-up windows if their size on the page is smaller than 200 pixels (800 pixels on the English Wikipedia).
• Opening your talk page now marks notifications as read, for wikis using the Notifications feature. (bug 47912) .
• All autoconfirmed users can now reset transcoding of video files; previously only administrators could do this.
• The Nearby feature allows people who use mobile devices to see Wikipedia articles about objects and places around them.

Future software changes

• The PostEdit feature is now part of MediaWiki, and will work on all wikis. (bug 48726)
• The Narayam and WebFonts extensions will be replaced by the Universal Language Selector extension.
• MediaWiki will now be updated every week, starting on June 6. Thanks to this, bugs will be fixed and features will be added faster than they are now.

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

Tech news: 2013-24

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.

Recent software changes

(Not all changes will affect you.)

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf6) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 6, and to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 10. It will be enabled on all Wikipedias on June 13.
• An alpha version of the VisualEditor was enabled on all Wikipedias on June 6. Please test it and report problems.
• Several VisualEditor bugs have been fixed; users can now add, edit and remove categories using the editor's "Page settings" menu.
• Wikimedia error messages will no longer link to the #wikipedia [[<tvar|meta-irc-chans>:m:IRC/Channels</>|IRC channel]] on Freenode.
• The logo of 16 Wikipedias was changed to version 2.0 in a fourth group of updates.
• A test instance of Wikidata is now available at test.wikidata.org.
• Users can now patrol the first version of a newly created page if they visit it from Special:NewPages or Special:RecentChanges.
• Translation pages will no longer include edit section links (bug #40713).

Future software changes

• A report on mobile upload errors was published, and software changes to reduce their number will come soon.
• A request for comments on updating MediaWiki to use RDFa version 1.1 was started on MediaWiki.org (Gerrit change #67608).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Unsubscribe.

20:15, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-25

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

(Not all changes will affect you.)

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 13. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on June 17, and on all Wikipedias on June 20.
• The Narayam and WebFonts extensions were successfully replaced by Universal Language Selector on June 11.
• VisualEditor news:
  • VisualEditor was temporarily disabled on Wikipedia sites on June 14 due to an issue that inserted a lot of HTML code. The issue is now fixed and VisualEditor works as before.
  • Users can now use VisualEditor to add images and other media items from their local wikis and Wikimedia Commons. .
  • VisualEditor also allows editing references.
• The new Disambiguator extension, which was previously part of MediaWiki itself, was enabled on test wikis. It adds the magic word __DISAMBIG__ to mark disambiguation pages.
• The newly enabled Campaigns extension allows Wikimedia Foundation data analysts to track account creations that result from a specific outreach campaign.

Future software changes

• Universal Language Selector will be added to the Catalan (ca), Cebuano (ceb), Persian (fa), Finnish (fi), Norwegian Bokmål (no), Portuguese (pt), Ukrainian (uk), Vietnamese (vi), Waray-Waray (war) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias on June 18.
• Starting on June 18, VisualEditor will be randomly enabled by default for half of newly created accounts on the English Wikipedia to test stability, performance and features.
• Two new webfonts (UnifrakturMaguntia and Linux Libertine) will be added to wikis that use Universal Language Selector.
• It will now be possible to hide the sidebar while using the Translate extension to reduce distractions (bug #45836).
• A patrolling link will now be visible for un-patrolled pages, even if users don't visit it from Special:NewPages or Special:RecentChanges (bug #49123).
• A request for comments on enabling a new search engine for MediaWiki was started.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Unsubscribe.

EdwardsBot (talk) 22:39, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Tech news: 2013-26

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

(Not all changes will affect you.)

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 20. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on June 24, and on all Wikipedias on June 27.
• Universal Language Selector was successfully enabled on the Catalan (ca), Cebuano (ceb), Persian (fa), Finnish (fi), Norwegian Bokmål (no), Portuguese (pt), Ukrainian (uk), Vietnamese (vi), Waray-Waray (war) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias.
• The new interface for account creation and log–in is now the default on all Wikimedia wikis. The old look is no longer available (bug #46333).
• The TimedMediaHandler extension now supports native FLAC files. A discussion to allow this file type is taking place on Commons (bug #49505).
• After a test period, the Disambiguator extension was enabled on the English Wikipedia on June 18.
• VisualEditor news:
  • A VisualEditor bug temporarily made all new accounts unusable. The issue is now fixed and account creation works as before (bug #49727).
  • A high importance file insertion bug has been fixed, but the feature does not work perfectly yet.
• It is now possible to synchronise local CSS and JavaScript files with the beta cluster. This should make it easier to test software features before they are enabled on live wikis.

Future software changes

• The default link to a help page on editing, visible below the editing window, will change on almost 600 Wikimedia wikis and will now link to MediaWiki.org (bug #45977).
• Universal Language Selector will be enabled on wikis without language versions (such as Wikisource and Wikispecies) on June 25.
• The AbuseFilter extension will allow filtering links and HTML code for page creations.
• The related changes special page will now include upload log entries.
• It will soon be possible to choose the language of SVG files that contain translations.
• MediaWiki will now allow converting audio files from one format to another.
• The Wikidata technical team has started a discussion about how Wikidata can support Wiktionary.
• The search feature on Wikimedia sites is planned to be modified to use Solr on all wikis by the end of 2013.

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

18:18, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Tech news: 2013-27

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

(Not all changes will affect you.)

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf9) was added to test wikis on June 27. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 8, and on all Wikipedias on July 11.
• On Wikisource, the canonical names of the "Index" and "Page" namespaces in the Proofread Page extension are no longer localized (bug #47596). Please check scripts that depend on $wgCanonicalNamespace.
• A JavaScript problem caused the "View history" and "Add topic" tabs in the Vector skin to be moved into the drop-down menu on right-to-left wikis. The issue is now fixed and links are visible as before (bug #50196).
• There was a short site outage on June 28.
• The automated Category:Pages with broken file links now includes broken file links inserted inside the <gallery /> tag (bug #50119).
• The Nearby feature is now enabled on Commons and shows images in a user's area.
• There is now a special page listing disambiguation pages for wikis that use the Disambiguator extension (bug #44040).
• The old version of the Article feedback tool (version 4) was removed from wikis that still used it.
• VisualEditor news:
  • Many bugs that caused text to be removed or damaged have been fixed, including one related to copy-paste (bug #49816).
  • VisualEditor now offers a visual interface to edit references.
  • In preparation for enabling the VisualEditor on a wider scale, new documentation has been created, including a list of frequently-asked questions and a user guide with many images. Please help with translations.
  • Several problems related to overlapping of elements with the VisualEditor toolbar have been fixed (bug #50096, #50159, #50324).
  • TemplateData information is now displayed for templates that are added to a page (bug #49778).
  • Section edit links now show links to both VisualEditor and the old (source) editor (bug #49666).
  • Images are now loaded securely when using HTTPS (bug #43015).

Future software changes

• VisualEditor will be enabled for all logged-in English Wikipedia users on July 1, and for all users on July 8.
• From July 8, it will be possible to upload WAV and native FLAC files to Commons, and use them directly on wiki pages ([[<tvar|bug-49505>bugzilla:49505</>|bug #49505]]).
• The Universal Language Selector will be added to the English Wikipedia on July 2, and to remaining wikis on July 9.

Erratum

• Tech news #26 incorrectly reported that audio transcoding was added to TimedMediaHandler; it was actually statistics about audio transcoding that were added.

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

14:33, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech news: 2013-28

Latest [[<tvar|technews>m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News</>|tech news]] from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. [[<tvar|more-transl>m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2013/28</>|Translations]] are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)

• VisualEditor news:
  • VisualEditor deployment has been delayed by a week. It is now planned to enable the editor for logged–in editors on chosen Wikipedias on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 29.
  • A bug that made it impossible to save VisualEditor edits that triggered a CAPTCHA has been fixed.
  • Several bugs that occurred on right–to–left wikis have been fixed last week (bug #49416, bug #49613, bug #50543).
• Uploading files has been restricted on Meta Wiki to administrators and the newly created uploader group. An exemption doctrine policy is being developed (bug #50287).
• Emergency priority CentralNotice banners will always be shown unless users have hidden them, ignoring cookies set for lower priority banners.

Future software changes

• MediaWiki will allow choosing a specific page of a PDF document or a thumbnail of a video file to show up inside the
  tag (bug #8480).
• It will now be possible to create empty MediaWiki: messages, for instance in order to disable them (bug #50124).
• The Nearby feature will soon be enabled on Wikivoyage wikis again.
• The Notifications extension messages will now include a direct link to diffs on wiki as well as in notification e-mails (bug #48183).
• Table of contents will now use the HTML
  element instead of , fixing a nine–year–old bug #658.
• First mock–ups of a mobile Wikidata application have been published by Pragun Bhutani as part of his Google Summer of Code project.
• A discussion on minimum documentation practices in MediaWiki code has been started and awaits comments from the community.

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

18:45, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-29

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf10) was added to test wikis on July 11. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 15, and on all Wikipedias on July 18.
• The Disambiguator extension was enabled on all Wikimedia wikis on July 9 (bug #50174). To use it, add the __DISAMBIG__ code to disambiguation templates (see example).
• The Universal Language Selector was added to all remaining wikis on July 9, finishing the process of replacing the Narayam and WebFonts extensions.
• The CommonsDelinker bot is now on-line and operating again, after a password problem was fixed (bug #51016).
• VisualEditor news:
  • According to the schedule, VisualEditor will be available to all users on the English Wikipedia on July 15.
  • Users should add TemplateData to templates to prepare for VisualEditor. A tutorial is available.
  • Parameters marked as "required" in TemplateData are now auto-added when you add a template (bug #50747).
  • Warnings are now displayed in VisualEditor when users edit pages that are protected or have edit notices (bug #50415).
  • Many other bugs have been fixed in VisualEditor during the past two weeks.
• The Wikimedia technical report for June has been published, with a summary that can be translated.

Future software changes

• A new version of the Single User Login system for global accounts will be enabled on July 17. Users will now automatically go back to the previous page instead of seeing the "Login success" page with logos.
• The software that resizes images on all wikis will change on July 18. Resizing of big images will be faster and more reliable, and the resolution limit for GIF, PNG and TIFF files (currently set at 50 megapixels) will be removed.
• Edit tags (mostly used by AbuseFilter) will now also be on diff pages. They include a link to Special:Tags before the edit summary. Wikis that use links in tag messages should remove them.
• Global edit filters are currently in testing and will be added to wikis later.
• Wikivoyage wikis will start to use Wikidata for interwiki links on July 22.
• A new image gallery design has been proposed by Brian Wolff; comments and feedback are welcome.
• An IRC discussion about Bugzilla is planned for July 16, at 16:00 (UTC) on the IRC channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion).

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

17:46, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-30

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 18. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 25.
• A new version of the Flow Prototype can be tested on Wikimedia Labs.
• VisualEditor news:
  • The schedule to add VisualEditor to non-English Wikipedias has been changed: the new editor will be available for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias on July 24, and for all users on those wikis on July 29.
  • A warning is now displayed if an edit made with VisualEditor matches an edit filter (bug #50472).
  • SpamBlacklist messages are also supported (bug #50826).
  • Users can now edit <nowiki>...</nowiki> blocks (bug #47678).
  • When a user types text at the end of a link, the link now expands to that text.
• Freely-licensed fonts for the Cree, Inuktitut and Urdu languages were added to Universal Language Selector, fixing bug #42421 and bug #46693.
• A Wikidata search plugin for the Firefox web browser was released by Jeroen De Dauw and can be downloaded from the Mozilla add-ons website.

Future software changes

• The change of the Wikimedia image scaling system from ImageMagick to VipsScaler (announced in the previous issue) has been postponed until bug #51370 is fixed.
• Administrators will no longer see an unblock link for autoblocked IP addresses on the contributions page (bug #46457).
• A request for comments on site-wide CSS was started on MediaWiki.org.

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

21:17, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-31

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

• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 25. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 29, and on all Wikipedias on August 1.
• Wikivoyage was offline for around 40 minutes on July 24.
• Pywikipediabot moved their code from SVN to git; bot owners need to update their tools.
• The Notifications and Thanks extensions were added to Meta-Wiki on July 26; other wikis will get them soon.
• It is now possible to add edit summaries on Wikidata using the API; the feature will be added to user interface soon.
• The software that resizes large PNG images on all wikis was changed on July 25. Resizing of PNG files bigger than 35 megapixels should be faster and more reliable now.
• Three new webfonts (Gentium, Old Persian and Shapour) will be added to Universal Language Selector. , ,
• Special:MIMESearch, which gives a list of files by type, will be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis with MediaWiki version 1.22/wmf12 (bug #13438).
• A mailing list to discuss multimedia features was started; users are encouraged to sign up.
• VisualEditor news:
  • On July 24, VisualEditor was added for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias; it will be added for all users on those wikis on July 29.
  • A preference to completely disable VisualEditor while it is in beta phase was added on July 24.
  • Many bugs were fixed in right-to-left languages.
  • It is possible again to scroll down in the template editing window (bug #51739).
  • VisualEditor now works with the FlaggedRevisions extension. (bug #49699)
  • If the user opens VisualEditor using a section edit link, the title of the section is added to the edit summary (bug #50872).
  • Invisible templates now can't be deleted by accident or on purpose (bug #51322).

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

20:59, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-34;

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

New features

• The previous version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 15. It was enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 22.
• The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 22. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 29.
• You can now use new styles of galleries. Please give feedback to User:Bawolff.
• You can now visit a random page in a category, for example Special:RandomInCategory/Science. (25931)
• You can now use the <wbr> HTML5 tag to say where a word can be cut. (52468)
• Gadget authors: you can now use the wikipage.content hook, so that your scripts are re-run when a page is changed after the document-ready event (for example using Ajax). (30713)

Problems fixed

• There was a bug where file redirects didn't work when a file was renamed; it is now fixed. There is still an issue with purging, but it should be fixed soon. (52200)
• Maintenance reports provided by special pages will now all be updated on each wiki every six months. This will for example give you recent information on uncategorized pages, unused templates and most wanted pages (see details).
• There was a bug that caused false positives for anti-blanking edit filters; it is now fixed. (52077)

VisualEditor news

• The "edit" and "edit source" tabs and section edit links can now be changed more easily; for example, some wikis are using "edit source" for wikitext editing, and "edit ^beta" for VisualEditor. You can ask for the same change in bugzilla.
• You can now edit references that are added inside a <references> block. (51741)
• You can now test on mediawiki.org new basic tools to add and edit struck text (with the button for the <s> tag), lower text ( for <sub>), upper text ( for <sup>), underlined text ( for <u>), computer code ( for <code> and <tt>), math text ( for <math>), Egyptian hieroglyphs ( for <hiero>), and to say that text is in another language ( for lang="ar" dir="rtl"). (51609, 51612, 51611, 51590, 51610, 52352)
• You can now use VisualEditor with the Opera browser.

Future

• Starting on August 26, you will be able to use data from Wikidata on Wikivoyage sites.
• Starting on August 27, you will also get notifications on the mobile site if you're logged in to a wiki using notifications.
• Starting on August 28, all users with an account will be using HTTPS to access Wikimedia sites. HTTPS brings better security and improves your privacy. Some countries (like China) will not use HTTPS. If HTTPS causes problems for you, tell us on meta.
• Starting on August 29, you will get the code editor interface to edit JavaScript and CSS pages on all wikis.
• The plan to use Solr for search in MediaWiki was changed; instead, Elasticsearch is now planned.

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

20:15, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-40

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

New features

• Special:Listfiles can now display old versions of files a user has uploaded. A new link was also added (Special:AllMyFiles) that gives a list of all files the current user has ever uploaded (that haven't been deleted).
• There is now an Android application to contribute to translatewiki.net from mobile devices.

VisualEditor news

• VisualEditor now has a new toolbar with drop-down menus for advanced tools.
• Many bugs were fixed, some related to copy-and-paste.
• You can now move references, list of references, templates and other elements with the mouse ("drag-and-drop").
• You are invited to comment on designs for the interface to add references in VisualEditor.

Future

• Developers are looking for ideas of small technical projects that new developers could work on. Please add your ideas.
• Developers are looking for wikis who would accept to try using secure links (HTTPS) for all users.
• You can join an IRC discussion about "Beta features", a tool to try new features, on October 3.
• You can join an IRC discussion about Flow, the new wiki discussion tool, on October 17.

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

20:18, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-42

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

New features

• You can now choose which language to show for SVG files that contain several languages, using the "lang" option, like [[File:Gerrit_patchset_25838_test.svg|lang=de]] for the German layer of File:Gerrit patchset 25838 test.svg.
• Developers are looking for wiki communities to try the new search system.

VisualEditor news

• You can now create and edit references inside media captions.
• You now need to press the "delete" key twice to delete a template, reference or image; the first time, they only become selected, to avoid accidental deletion of infoboxes and similar content.
• When you resize images, you will now still see them, and their size will also be seen in the center.

Future

• The new notifications system ("Echo") will be added to almost all wikis that don't already have it on October 22. It will notify you of changes and events that affect you.
• MediaWiki 1.22wmf22 was added to test wikis on October 17. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 21 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 24 (calendar).
• The interface to reset your password will soon be changed.

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

09:37, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-43

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

New features

• The "Toolbox" section in the site sidebar is now called "Tools" in English. You can do the same in your language by editing the interface text on translatewiki.net. Someone else may have already done it.

VisualEditor news

• On wikis with VisualEditor, you can now use it on pages in the File, Help and Category spaces.

Problems

• On October 22 (UTC), an error in the site settings caused *.wikimedia.org sites (like Meta-Wiki and Commons) to redirect to wikimediafoundation.org for a few hours.

Future

• MediaWiki 1.23wmf1 was added to test wikis on October 24. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 28 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 31 (calendar).
• In the next days, servers in San Francisco will start providing (cached) content to users located in Oceania. If you are in that area and notice problems, please tell us.
• You will soon be able to test new features easily using the "Beta Features" view. VisualEditor will be in the list on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. Another example is a set of changes in the article text style.

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

10:05, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-44

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

New features

• The style and colors for warning boxes, error messages, and success messages in all skins of MediaWiki has been changed.

VisualEditor news

• You will soon be able to switch from editing in VisualEditor to editing wikitext directly without having to save the page. You can't yet switch from wikitext to VisualEditor but developers hope to make it possible in the future.

Problems

• There was a problem on October 31 during the activation of MediaWiki 1.22wmf2 on test wikis. mediawiki.org was also broken, and if you had problems logging in, it was probably because of this as well.

Future

• Because of the problem with MediaWiki 1.22wmf2, the calendar has changed. It will be added to mediawiki.org and non-Wikipedia sites on November 4, and all Wikipedia sites on November 7.

JavaScript / Gadget developers

• Due to a recent change, gadgets and user scripts that use jQuery UI should explicitly load the appropriate modules, as they may not be loaded by default.
• Developers have started to remove long-deprecated methods. You should check the JavaScript console (in debug=true mode) and look for deprecation warnings and their stack trace.

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

10:55, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-45

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

New features

• You can now use the "Autonym" font of the Universal Language Selector (ULS) to display the name of languages (for example in navigation templates) in their correct script. To do this, add the CSS class "autonym" to the elements that include language names. Note that this font only works for the name of languages, not for any other text.

Problems

• There was a problem with Parsoid (the program used by VisualEditor to convert wikitext to annotated HTML) on November 4, between 19:40 and 20:40 (UTC). Encoding issues caused non-ASCII characters (including those with diacritics, like "é") to be broken when converted to wikitext and saved to the page.

Future

• The Beta Features tool is now available on Commons and Meta-Wiki. With it, you can test new features before they're added for everyone. The plan is to add this tool to all wikis on November 21.
• MediaWiki 1.23wmf3 was added to test wikis on November 7. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 12 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 14 (calendar).
• The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis.
• The button of the Search page will soon be changed to be blue and bigger (see the difference).
• You will soon be able to add a page name as parameter for {{REVISIONID}}, {{REVISIONUSER}} and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and similar functions, by writing for example {{REVISIONID:Apple}}.
• In the future, when you hide a CentralNotice banner on a wiki, it will also be hidden on other Wikimedia sites.

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13:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-46

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

Problems

• There was a problem caused by too many requests to the database on November 14.

Future

• MediaWiki 1.23wmf4 was added to test wikis on November 14. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 19 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 21 (calendar).
• The new Search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added to *.wikimedia.org, Wikimania and Wikisource wikis on November 19, and Wiktionary wikis on November 21 (except where it's already available). Once it is added, you can test it by adding &srbackend=CirrusSearch to the address of the search results page. It will become the main search engine on Wikivoyage wikis on November 21.
• The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 19 instead of November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis.

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09:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-47

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

New features

• The Beta Features announced before are now available on all Wikimedia wikis. You can test new features easily by changing your Beta preferences. VisualEditor is one of those features on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. There is also a new media viewer and changes in the article text style.
• Tools developers can now create tools that use the OAuth protocol to connect to accounts on Wikimedia sites. As a user, you can use those tools to make edits and other changes with your account without giving the tool your password.

Problems

• Wikis that are currently testing CirrusSearch had problems with search results on November 18 from 16:00 to 20:00 UTC.

Future

• There will be no major code changes on the week of November 25 because many developers will be on holiday for Thanksgiving.
• The editing interface of Page: pages on Wikisource (working with the Proofread Page extension) will soon also work without JavaScript.

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07:03, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Previous page history was archived for backup purposes at User talk:Toniher/LQT Archive 1 on 2015-07-10.

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

Recent changes

• Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention.
• You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia.

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:25, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

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

Problems

• Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar).
• Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked).
• A new variable page_last_edit_age will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made.

Future changes

• Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
• Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the abuse_filter and abuse_filter_history tables. Some queries might need to be updated.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:26, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

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

Recent changes

• Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
• A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check.
• Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).
• New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:34, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

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

Recent changes

• Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed.

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

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

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MediaWiki message delivery 03:33, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

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

• An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.

Changes later this week

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

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MediaWiki message delivery 18:53, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

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

Recent changes

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

Problems

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.

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MediaWiki message delivery 17:37, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).
• After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed.
• The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices.
• Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost.

Future changes

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

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

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

Recent changes

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
• The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add ?useparsoid=1 to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:44, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

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

Recent changes

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

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

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:20, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

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

Recent changes

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

Changes later this week

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

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

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:34, 19 February 2024 (UTC)