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. [1]
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. [2][3]
The first stable release of MediaWiki 1.21 for sites outside Wikimedia was published on May 25. [4]
The tool storing information about languages (CLDR) was updated to the latest version (23.1). [5]
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. [6][7]
The software will check if all uploaded files are secure and match their type. [8]
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. [15]
The Tamil Wikipedia shared a Lua module they created to automate their Main Page. [16]
There is now a test wiki to test new features in right-to-left languages. [17]
The Thanks feature was added to the English Wikipedia; users can now thank others for individual edits. [18]
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. [19]
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). [20]
Opening your talk page now marks notifications as read, for wikis using the Notifications feature. (bug 47912) [21].
All autoconfirmed users can now reset transcoding of video files; previously only administrators could do this. [22]
The Nearby feature allows people who use mobile devices to see Wikipedia articles about objects and places around them. [23]
Future software changes
The PostEdit feature is now part of MediaWiki, and will work on all wikis. (bug 48726) [24]
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. [26]
Support request with team editing experiment project[edit]
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.
Attending Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City right now, meeting awesome people that already use or want to know everything about Wikidata.
After the next deployment, redirects will be automatically created when merging items.
Special:UnconnectedPages can now be queried via the query API, thanks to Ladsgroup.
Migrating away from an older serializer to the DataModel Serialization component.
Worked on a new time parser that can parse formats like M/D/Y, Y M D and so on.
Fixed a bug where a value could not be edited when save failed.
Made the snak type, badge and rank selectors position themselves after resizing the browser window and introduced a possibility to collapse the sitelinks sections.
Worked on a change in editing to be able to edit a statement and it’s references in one step.
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 will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 22. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 23 (calendar).
You now see more warnings in the image viewer. They tell you to be careful when using the image, for example if it shows a person. [27]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 21 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Soon you won't be able to use MathJax to display math. [28]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now use redirects to link to JavaScript pages. [29]
There was a problem with some Lua modules on July 22 and 23. Some pages using them did not list them in "what links here". You can fix those pages with a null edit: edit and save the page without making any change.
There was a problem with the abuse filter page on big wikis on July 23. It was due to a code error. [34]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 29. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 30 (calendar).
JavaScript authors: You cannot use wgNoticeUserData to get edit counts anymore. [35]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 28 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Hi Lydia!
Because nobody answered here it seems that we dont have someone that develops our tool yet. Do you think it would be a good idea to contact a programmer to develop such tool for us (there would be also a lot of other tools to programm for the wiktionary-community). Greetings, Impériale (talk) 21:35, 30 July 2015 (UTC)Wäre es ok, wenn wir hier auf Deutsch schreiben?[reply]
Nein, bis jetzt leider noch nicht, wenn du aber die Chancen für gut hältst, dass der Antrag angenommen wird, dann werde ich auf jeden Fall Ausschau halten (und viele andere wahrscheinlich auch, nachdem ich den Antrag veröffentlicht habe) :) --Impériale (talk) 18:35, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ich habe nochmal darüber nachgedacht und finde, dass wir es zuerst mit einer Massennachricht in den Technikwerkstätten versuchen sollten. Sollte sich dort danach niemand melden, können wir es immer noch hier versuchen. Stellen würde ich ihn am Liebsten schon möglichst bald. Kann es kaum erwarten alle Wiktionarys zu verknüpfen :) --Impériale (talk) 23:10, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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 ContentTranslation extension has been updated:
You can now type in list paragraphs on wikis with right-to-left scripts. [36]
Some user interface updates changed how details in the ContentTranslation extension look. [37][38][39][40]
The error page you see when the sites are not working is now simpler and easier to read. It also shows the Wikimedia logo. [41]
MediaWiki now supports redirects for CSS pages. [42]
Bots can't guess captchas unlimited times anymore. [43]
Problems
There was a problem with thumbnails on wikis with local images on July 24 and 25. It was due to a code error. [44]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 6 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 4 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Made some small changes to the style of the edit warning and sitelinks so they are easier to notice and understand
Added error messages for Special:GoToLinkedPage and Special:ItemByTitle so you get a useful message in case no result is found
The Entity Selector now displays alias in brackets behind label
The number of entities loaded via the {{#property:…}} parser function and via Lua will be reported in the “Parser profiling data” (which can be found below a page preview or within the Html of a page)
Prepared for next rounds of arbitrary access rollout
Investigated growing lag of dispatching of changes to Wikipedia and co. We'll need to investigate further and change things so the lag between an edit on Wikidata and it being send to the Wikipedias and other projects is not too high.
Added the property ID to Special:ListProperties
Moved two extensions (Wikidata.org and WikimediaBadges) from Github to Gerrit. More will follow.
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
MediaWiki can now hide the signature button when you edit a content page. [46]
The "Your preferences have been saved" message has changed. You can now see more easily what was saved when you change preferences several times. [47]
You can now play Ogg video files in some browsers that don't support this format. This solution uses JavaScript and works on desktop browsers only for now. It will work on mobile later. [48]
You can now use the same tools to edit style in VisualEditor on mobile as in desktop browsers. [49]
It is now easier to see if there is a JavaScript error in a user or site script. [50]
JavaScript authors:
You can no longer use the Sajax library. You can see a list of pages to fix. [51][52]
You can no longer use document.write on Wikimedia wikis. You can see a list of pages to fix. [53][54]
The content translation tool now works better. It is easier to use math, and useless tags are no longer added. [55]
Problems
More edits have been rejected due to loss of session data lately. This is now fixed. [56]
Importing a Lua module sometimes didn't work. This is now fixed. [57]
Text was sometimes lost in the content translation tool. One part of the problem is now fixed. [58]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 13 (calendar).
UploadWizard is getting a new look. The look of buttons and checkboxes has already changed. This week, UploadWizard gets a new date picker. The other text fields will change soon. [59]
You can now test VisualEditor on mobile devices of all sizes. [60]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Some things in the watchlist will get a new look. [61]
