Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2017

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New template to replace magic words[edit]

Template:ISBN I have ported over w:Template:ISBN and w:Module:Check isxn from en.wp. Magic words as links are being phased out and although we don't have to replace all instances of them now, they will all be removed from MediaWiki in 2017. See mw:Requests_for_comment/Future_of_magic_links. We currently have no entries in Category:Pages using ISBN magic links. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:13, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pages to import[edit]

See here Evidently, incubator:Category:Wq/or/wikisource is hosting a work in Oriya which should probably be brought here. We currently have no Oriya texts. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:46, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oriya language has been already granted with a wikisource workplace 2.5 years ago: Oriya Wikisource; may we ping their village pump --C.R. (talk) 10:12, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@C.R.: Somehow, I had forgotten/overlooked that. How embarrassing. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:15, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: don't worry, hehe ^^.. but if you can, please ping them, I am sure they will be very happy about arranging their old stuff--C.R. (talk) 14:38, 7 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@C.R.: They were notified on their Scriptorium and I posted to the talk page of the only person with advanced user rights there. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:28, 7 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OCR in Hindi[edit]

I want to do OCR in Hindi wikisource which I am doing in Bengali wikisource using python based GoogleOCR tool in Linux past 1 year.Pls help me to upload in Hindi same way. What wil be language code in config.ini? Is it 'mul' If not then pls help me.By any chance is it due to abuse filter(limitation of file upload for low contribution user)? I am new to Hindi wikisource pls help me. Its not uploading after doing OCR. Sumita Roy Dutta (talk) 04:35, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

moved to a separate section - -jkb- (talk) 09:09, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This abusefilter entry concerns file uploads only. djvu/pdf are excluded from this limit. I do not know which settings you should use. Ankry (talk) 18:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-02[edit]

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

Problems

  • Editors who use Firefox 50 might get logged out or fail to save their edits. This is because of a browser bug. Until this is fixed you can enter about:config in the address bar and set network.cookie.maxPerHost to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. [5]

Changes this week

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19:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

global rename for me on meta[edit]

fyi, on meta I have requested for the right of global renamer, which could be of good use for this project a s well. Regards -jkb- (talk) 19:50, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have withdrawn my request, see here. Cheers -jkb- (talk) 00:40, 28 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-03[edit]

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

Problems

  • video2commons was down for two weeks. This was because of a problem with Commons video transcoders. It is now back up. [7]

Changes this week

  • There is a new magic word called {{PAGELANGUAGE}}. It returns the language of the page you are at. This can be used on wikis with more than one language to make it easier for translators. [8]
  • When an admin blocks a user or deletes or protects a page they give a reason why. They can now get suggestions when they write. The suggestions will be based on the messages in the dropdown menu. [9]
  • You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas. Before you could use <ce>. <ce> should be replaced by <chem>. [10]
  • You now can add exceptions for categories which shouldn't be shown on Special:UncategorizedCategories. The list is at MediaWiki:Uncategorized-categories-exceptionlist. [11]
  • The "Columns" and "Rows" settings will be removed from the Editing tab in Preferences. If you wish to keep what the "Rows" setting did you can add this code to your personal CSS: #wpTextbox1 { height: 50em; } You can change the number 50 to make it look like you want to. [12]
  • Sometimes edits in MediaWiki by mistake are shown coming from private IP addresses such as 127.0.0.1. Edits and other contributions logged to these IP addresses will be blocked and shown the reason from MediaWiki:Softblockrangesreason. This should not affect most users. Bots and other tools running on Wikimedia Labs, including Tool Labs will receive a "blocked" error if they try to edit without being logged in. [13]
  • When you edit with the visual editor categories will be on the top of the page options menu. [14]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on January 17 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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23:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Bot edits without a bot flag (problem and suggestion)[edit]

In last time there emerge more and more users who work (most probably) with a bot script (or bots without a flag), sometimes there are less then 100 Edits a day, but sometimes there are some more hundreds of edits a day, and on some days some two or three user are working this same way parallel. It is nice and good that we have such a edit amount and such good users, but I have more and more problems wirt it: when I have a look after this project so the recent changes are sometimes fully useless, and it possible to controll vandalism and other negative edits at all.
Time ago I spoke about this with User Satdeep Gill and I proposed that he requests a bot flag for his bot. He did - see Wikisource:Administrators#User:Satdeepbot (but: up to now there are no other votes or ideas from other users). My policy is since a very long time to grant as few wikisource bot flags as possible, but here we have a problem: the bot edits without a flag are disturbing the normal work here, if we prohibit it (or even block the accounts - omg no!), we disturb the work of good users.
Thus my proposal:

  • all users editing with bots or scripts limit their edits and do not more then approx 100 a day until we have a solution
  • all such user apply for a temporary bot flag at Wikisource:Administrators#Requests for other rights specifying for which sort of work and how long
  • when no objections within some 7 or 10 days, the bureaucrats will grant this bot flag for a time needed (if too short so it can be renewed) under the condition, that the flag will be used for the specified task. Bot edits without a flag will not be permited.

@Satdeep Gill, Nitesh Gill, Sumita Roy Dutta: - I hope I have all (if not so ping them pls) - for your information. OK? -jkb- (talk) 17:19, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I support. Ankry (talk) 12:39, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced vandalized(?) pages[edit]

Any hints what can we do with such texts? Unsourced, no author information, no copyright information, recently vandalised (?, or maybe it was an attempt to remove inappropriate text/copyright violation?), the uploader is inactive for few years.

Personally I refuse to revert last edit until I ensure the text is really free. Ankry (talk) 12:37, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. Additionally the Main Page/Oromo is problematic as well; the probably per original research created icon hys been uploaded to commons by a bot, the user 3247 renamed to User:Cfaerber SUL stopped editing mostly in 2010: in the Category:Oromo there is another page - Edipas mooticha, the same problem. The author Chabi1 SUL seems to stop his edits in 2014.
Just according to the policy pof the WMF we should avoid any copyvio here (and we have ten thousand!), and this seems to be one (no source, no licence ietc.). Thus I would vote for a deletion (the page, however, can be restored). Some more userful votes? -jkb- (talk) 14:58, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I agree we need to (at least) check the source and the licenses of every piece of literature here in wikisource, and to put some note on why every material is on the public domain or either published as CC-BY-SA. For the case of Oromoo:

Both are two (almost) different cases:

  • Mammaaksa Oromoo is a collection of proverbs in Oromoo, unless we find a book/web with the same configuration of the proverbs, being older than this, it will be difficult to claim copyright. (Probably one or two speakers can easily reproduce the list by heart)
  • Edipas mooticha is a different case, since it is the full translation of Oedipus Rex; You can find an older translation, here in Oromoo; It may be subject to the sole property of the blogger, or maybe it is a copyvio from a book, who knows. But at least, that's the case where we have an older reference than the wikisource itself -potential copyvio, unless it comes from an expired copyright author, or a release under CC-BY-SA license, may we contact the blogger? or will it be better to delete it?--C.R. (talk) 20:37, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I found out that in the Oromoo wikipedia, a colleague there was arranging proverbs in this page: w:om:Tarree Mammaaksa Oromoo, two days ago, coincidence. I will ask if we can delete the proverbs here in wikisource (since the om.wikipedia will store an article dedicated to them) and maybe we can let some parkplace for a future wikisource on he Oromoo main page :D [I will ask also about the theater play Oedipus Rex]--C.R. (talk) 11:19, 23 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-04[edit]

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 see a list of the templates on a page you edit with the visual editor. [15]

Changes this week

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

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

20:14, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-05[edit]

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 OAuth management interfaces now look slightly different. [16]

Changes this week

  • ElectronPdfService will be enabled by default on Meta and German Wikipedia. This is a new way to get articles as PDF files you can download. It will come to more wikis later. [17]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 31. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from February 1. It will be on all wikis from February 2 (calendar).

Future changes

  • The Community Tech team will develop more tools to handle harassment of Wikimedia editors. The goal is to give the communities better tools to find, report and evaluate harassment. They will also work on more effective blocking tools. [18][19]
  • The Wikimedia technical community is doing a Developer Wishlist survey. Developers can propose ideas before 31 January 23:59 UTC. This is soon.

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18:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

inactivity[edit]

We have two admins who are inactive for over a year. I intend to start the desysopping procedure due to inactivity. Any objections? Ankry (talk) 17:54, 31 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ankry: I certainly don't. If the community needs replacements, please ping me. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:14, 31 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
after one year is OK, I just regret that user:Dovi doesn't participate any more here as he belonged to the first users on wikisource I met. OK -jkb- (talk) 21:31, 31 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-06[edit]

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

Problems

  • The block log sometimes showed blocks as being much longer than they were. This has now been fixed. [20]

Changes this week

  • Wikimedia pages will now be better at showing pictures when you share them on social media. The descriptions will be different too. You can see an example of before and after. [21]
  • There are some changes to the OOjs UI. Some old functions will not work anymore or not work as they used to. This could be a breaking change. [22]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Tidy will be replaced later this year. Instead, the HTML 5 parsing algorithm will be used to clean up bad HTML in wikitext. This will cause problems on a number of wikis. They need to be fixed first. You can see if your wiki still has something to fix here for one of the HTML problems. This list does not cover all problems. You can read about more problems. [23][24]

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19:45, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

ia-upload tool update[edit]

The IA Upload tool can now create DjVu files for Internet Archive items that don't have them, before uploading to Commons. Sam Wilson 03:46, 9 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An outpost for Wikilivres[edit]

Assistance requested As some of you may know, Wikilivres(.ca) is a complementary site to Wikisource and Commons. It has a history with Wikimedia Canada but there is no formal relationship between the WMF or WM-CA and Wikilivres, just some overlap in userbase and scope. The project was originally handled by User:Yann and then User:Eclecticology. The latter died last year and the fate of Wikilivres is uncertain. While that community tries to transition past the loss of someone who was very important in the WikiSphere and figures out the logistics of what we do next, we have experienced some downtime in our hosting. If the site goes dark again, do you think it would be possible for us to have a noticeboard hosted here for the purposes of communication and coordination? Possibly at Wikisource:Wikilivres? I figured I would ask mul.ws since Wikilivres more-or-less grew out of this project and there is less activity here than at en.ws (plus Wikilivres is multi-lingual as well). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:59, 10 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

ping - ing here, since the wikilivres site isn't loading tonight. i'm a contributor there, & this was our designated "meet up" place, if there's a problem/if the site is down. any news? Lx 121 (talk) 04:05, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Lx 121: I can confirm that it's down. I'm checking with the hosting company now. It's not an issue of an unpaid bill. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:27, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
ty, good to know, even if it's not good xD we should set up a permanent community page someplace in the userspace here. Lx 121 (talk) 05:16, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Lx 121: Wikisource talk:Wikilivres. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:30, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-07[edit]

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

  • EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. For now it works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. [25]

Problems

  • The Firefox add-on Firefogg can cause problems with the Upload Wizard. This will not be fixed, because Firefox will not support Firefogg in the future. The Upload Wizard will no longer work with Firefogg. [26]
  • Tool Labs and Wikimedia Labs databases will be under maintenance on 15 February. This will start at 17:00 (UTC) and last for about six hours. Some tools could have problems during or after this. [27]

Changes this week

  • The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It will come to Meta and German Wikipedia this week. It is already available on MediaWiki.org. It will come to more wikis later. [28]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on the Catalan, Greek, Russian, and Italian Wikipedias in the middle of February. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. It will come to more wikis later this spring. [29]
  • The Developer Wishlist is a list where developers prioritize tools they need. The voting closes at 14 February 23:59 (UTC). This process is only for developers.

Review

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18:06, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Review of initial updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process[edit]

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

The Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. For 15 years, Wikimedians have worked together to build the largest free knowledge resource in human history. During this time, we've grown from a small group of editors to a diverse network of editors, developers, affiliates, readers, donors, and partners. Today, we are more than a group of websites. We are a movement rooted in values and a powerful vision: all knowledge for all people. As a movement, we have an opportunity to decide where we go from here.

This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve. We hope to design an inclusive process that makes space for everyone: editors, community leaders, affiliates, developers, readers, donors, technology platforms, institutional partners, and people we have yet to reach. There will be multiple ways to participate including on-wiki, in private spaces, and in-person meetings. You are warmly invited to join and make your voice heard.

The immediate goal is to have a strategic direction by Wikimania 2017 to help frame a discussion on how we work together toward that strategic direction.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Beginning with this message, monthly reviews of these updates will be sent to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a review of the updates that have been sent so far:

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 20:31, 15 February 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

Wikilivres export[edit]

FYI:

--Nemo 14:02, 20 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-08[edit]

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

Changes this week

  • Page Previews will be updated on 23 February. This fixes many bugs. Page Previews can be turned on as the Beta Feature called Hovercards. [31]
  • There has been a problem where the CSS of gadgets has been loading twice. The Gadgets extension has two new options: type and peers. The type option solves this problem. You can use peers to create gadgets with more than one style module. Read more about type and peers. [32]
  • OAuth will handle blocked users in a more consistent way. [33]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:25, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-09[edit]

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

  • On 22 February the wikipedia.org portal did not work for an hour. This was because of a problem with a JavaScript file. [34]

Changes this week

  • You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas in the visual editor. Previously this only worked in the wikitext editor. [35]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You can soon upload 3D files to Commons. The file formats are AMF and STL. The plan is for this to work later this week but it could be later. [36]
  • The name "Wikipedia" will be more obvious at the top of the page when you read Wikipedia in the mobile view. This is because many readers don't realize they are on Wikipedia. [37][38]

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

19:55, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Sheet music[edit]

I'd like to have some scores transcribed with the score extention. Would like to begin with File:Sérénade Français.pdf and File:Olympic Anthem Score.pdf by Spyros Samaras. I had originaly uploaded the Olympic Anthem at Greek wikisource since it has greek lyrics, but deleted it as the first version of the score had pages missing. (a part of the transcription is here: el:User:Ah3kal/Πρόχειρο) But I think multilingual wikisource would be a better place.

  1. I suppose this the right place, given this past RFC (meta:Requests for comment/Musical score transcription project proposal)
  2. What language code am I supposed to add (if any) to the index?
  3. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Thank you. Ah3kal (talk) 06:37, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The language code should be probably "zxx". At least according to ISO 639-2, Ankry (talk) 21:02, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
As above, yes, zxx is explicitly for non-linguistic information. If we have documents that don't have a human language in them, then that is the appropriate code. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:45, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-10[edit]

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 search on English, French, Hebrew and Greek wikis and find words even if you forget the diacritics. It also works if you use diacritics in your search but the wiki doesn't. [39]
  • When you use the mobile view and click on a link to an article in another language you will see that article in the mobile view. Previously it changed to the desktop view. [40]

Problems

  • Some watchlist gadgets didn't work for a period of time last week. This has now been fixed. [41]
  • Admins who click on "mass delete" on a user's Special:Contributions will be taken directly to a list pages created by that user. It has worked like this before, but not lately. [42]

Changes this week

  • The way you switch between wikitext and the visual editors in the desktop view has changed. It is now a drop-down menu. This is the same as in the mobile view. [43]
  • The "flag the edit in the abuse log" checkbox will be removed from the abuse filter interface. This is because the edits are always flagged in the abuse log. [44]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Clarification

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23:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikisource vision development[edit]

Why are its subpages in the main namespace? How about renaming to "Wikisource:Vision development"?--Jusjih (talk) 21:07, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Jusjih: Agreed. This is not a source document... Actually, it may even be better suited to the thematic group on Meta but for now, I will move its namespace. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:46, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Meta has three importers. Asking them may move the relevant pages there.--Jusjih (talk) 01:53, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process[edit]

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

As we mentioned last month, the Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Each month, we are sending overviews of these updates to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:43, 9 March 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

Tech News: 2017-11[edit]

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

  • You will be able to show references from <references /> tags in more than one column on your wiki. This is the list of footnotes for the sources in the article. How many columns you see will depend on how big your screen is. On some wikis, some templates already do this. Templates that use <references /> tags will need to be updated, and then later the change can happen for all reference lists. [45][46]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Some old web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis in the future. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [47]
  • CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. [48][49]

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

15:25, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)[edit]

This message, "We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)", was sent through multiple channels by Gregory Varnum on 15 and 16 of March 2017 to village pumps, affiliate talk pages, movement mailing lists, and MassMessage groups. A similar message was sent by Nicole Ebber to organized groups and their mailing lists on 15 of March 2017. This version of the message is available for translation and documentation purposes

Dear Wikimedians/Wikipedians:

Today we are starting a broad discussion to define Wikimedia's future role in the world and develop a collaborative strategy to fulfill that role. You are warmly invited to join the conversation.

There are many ways to participate, by joining an existing conversation or starting your own:

Track A (organized groups): Discussions with your affiliate, committee or other organized group (these are groups that support the Wikimedia movement).

Track B (individual contributors): On Meta or your local language or project wiki.

This is the first of three conversations, and it will run between now and April 15. The purpose of cycle 1 is to discuss the future of the movement and generate major themes around potential directions. What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?

We welcome you, as we create this conversation together, and look forward to broad and diverse participation from all parts of our movement.

Sincerely,

Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams

05:10, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-12[edit]

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 Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on the Wikimedia wikis except for Wikipedias and Wikinewses. This change will come to Wikipedias later. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [50]
  • DMOZ no longer works. Templates that use DMOZ can be redirected to archive.org or another mirror. DMOZ has been removed from the RelatedSites extension on Wikivoyage. [51]
  • You can see monthly page views when you click on Page information in the sidebar. Developers can also get monthly page views through the API. [52]
  • The Linter extension is now on smaller Wikimedia wikis. It helps editors find some wikitext errors so they can be fixed. It will come to other Wikimedia wikis later. The extension will be able to find more errors later. [53]
  • The MediaWiki-Vagrant portable development environment has been updated to use Debian Jessie. This means local development and testing will be more like on the majority of Wikimedia production servers. [54]

Problems

  • On 15 March some interwiki links to other languages were not correctly sorted. This has been fixed. If you still see pages where the interwiki links are not sorted as they should be, they should be fixed automatically with time or you can edit the page and save it without changing anything. If this doesn't work, please report it. [55]

Changes this week

  • When you edit with the visual editor, you will be able to switch the direction you write in from right-to-left to left-to-right as you are editing. This is especially important for editors who edit in languages that write from right to left. You can do this with a tool in the editing menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+X on PCs or Cmd+Shift+X on Macs. [56]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

22:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-13[edit]

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

Recent changes

  • When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [57]

Problems

  • Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [58][59]

Changes this week

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

14:46, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

fr:Livre:Reboux-Müller - À la manière de, sér1-2, 1921.djvu[edit]

fr:Wikisource:Pages à supprimer has a request to move the index here, so I just imported it and Page:Reboux-Müller - À la manière de, sér1-2, 1921.djvu/1. Is there a way to massively import rather to manually import each page?--Jusjih (talk) 03:29, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Jusjih: As you have import rights, you can use XML export to file and XML import from a file here. But the exported file needs to be adjusted before import: The frwiki namespace definitions (names, numbers) should be replaced by sourceswiki's ones, as well as namespace names in pagenames may need to be fixed (Livre -> Index, Page is the same, so no problem). My previous experience shows that importing too many pages fails sometimes (only first N is imported then). But I don't have import rights already. Ankry (talk) 14:26, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the hint. I have successfully imported the rest. Please check. If concerned of failed mass import, I would limit to 100 pages at a time in XML export. Considering Wikisource:Subdomain coordination about whether to allow pre-1923 works still copyrighted at home at language subdomains, perhaps French Wikisource is considering tightening its policy.--Jusjih (talk) 18:30, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-14[edit]

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 Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [60]
  • The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [61]
  • English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [62]

Problems

  • Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [63]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on 5 April at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections[edit]

Please accept our apologies for cross-posting this message. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections.

The Board of Trustees (Board) is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long-term sustainability of the Wikimedia Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. More information about this role can be found on Meta-Wiki. Please read the letter from the Board of Trustees calling for candidates.

The candidacy submission phase will last from April 7 (00:00 UTC) to April 20 (23:59 UTC).

We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates from April 7 to April 20. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki.

Once the questions submission period has ended on April 20, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to beginning on April 21.

The goal of this process is to fill the three community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The election results will be used by the Board itself to select its new members.

The full schedule for the Board elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.

  • April 7 (00:00 UTC) – April 20 (23:59 UTC) – Board nominations
  • April 7 – April 20 – Board candidates questions submission period
  • April 21 – April 30 – Board candidates answer questions
  • May 1 – May 14 – Board voting period
  • May 15–19 – Board vote checking
  • May 20 – Board result announcement goal

In addition to the Board elections, we will also soon be holding elections for the following roles:

  • Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
    • There are five positions being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.
  • Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson (Ombuds)
    • One position is being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.

Please note that this year the Board of Trustees elections will be held before the FDC and Ombuds elections. Candidates who are not elected to the Board are explicitly permitted and encouraged to submit themselves as candidates to the FDC or Ombuds positions after the results of the Board elections are announced.

More information on this year's elections can be found on Meta-Wiki. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the election talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections(at)wikimedia.org.

On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, 03:36, 7 April 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

Tech News: 2017-15[edit]

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

Changes this week

  • Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [66]
  • New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [67]
  • The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [68]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
  • RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.

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

18:34, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Read-only mode for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May[edit]

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data center in Dallas. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 19 April 2017. On Wednesday, 3 May 2017, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

  • You will not be able to edit for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 20 April and Thursday 4 May).
  • If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

  • Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
  • There will be code freezes for the weeks of 17 April 2017 and 1 May 2017. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:34, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of most translated works[edit]

Hi,

There is an ongoing discussion on wikisource-l where we talked about a « list of works that every Wikisource should have » (« should » maybe it seems to pushy). It could include the Bible (one of the most translated work of the World) and it can point to online text (or even better scans) and clear copyright problems.

What do you think of the idea? Anyone interested in helping write a Wikisource:List of works that every Wikisource should have?

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 17:45, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

PS: For information, a Wikidata querry says that the text present on the greatest number of Wikisources is d:Q23393 (Pater noster, 39 Wikisources) followed by d:Q7813 (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 34 wikisources, but here there is maybe copyright issues).
Hello VIGNERON, I have started such a list on my subpage s:fr:Utilisateur:Consulnico/Textes vitaux just a month or two ago. The goal of this list is to have two texts by language and maximum 20 texts for the big languages, for an almost total of 1000 texts. But it is very long to enumerate everything, especially fot the small languages. I wanted to improve it a little before asking for help, but we can discuss about it, in french on my talk page if we are the only two people interested for the moment ^^. I have lots of ideas about that. --Consulnico (talk) 15:37, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
A list has been created here too :-) --Zyephyrus (talk) 16:08, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-16[edit]

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 add ?safemode=1 to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature?safemode=1. This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them. [69]
  • You can now see a list of all autoblocks on Special:AutoblockList. [70]
  • The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from [[File:Wiki.png]]. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. [71]

Problems

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.

Changes this week

  • There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • stats.wikimedia.org will be replaced. You can see the new prototype. You can leave feedback on this change.
  • Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. [72]
  • From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. [73][74]

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

19:31, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Copyright policy, non US works published before 1923 and before 1909[edit]

Hello, in Wikisource:Copyright policy#Works that are in the public domain in the US only, is stated that works published before 1923 can be uploaded here even if they are not yet public domain in their home country. Is this still valid, even after Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA)? Is there a difference between works publoshed before 1923 and before 1909. My current practice in el.wikisource, where I transcribe journals, is to censor any text from authors that died after 1946, wich are not yet PD in Greece. (e.g. el:Βιβλίο:Εστία Αριθμός 520.djvu: censored page: el:Σελίδα:Εστία Αριθμός 520.djvu/1, author died in 1951, the journal was published in 1885). Thank you for your time.--Ah3kal (talk) 04:56, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Heavily used http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm#Footnote_12 suggests that works published before 1923 are in the public domain in the USA through copyright expiration even if still copyright-restricted at home, but those published since 1 July 1909 outside the USA may sometimes be considered "unpublished" in the 9th Circuit.--Jusjih (talk) 02:26, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Jusjih Thank you very much for your answer. So for pre 1909 published works, there is no restriction, uploading them here. But may I upload works published between 1909 and 1923, and under what conditions? Ah3kal (talk) 06:32, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Ah3kal: California (where WMF is located) is not in the 9th Circuit. So, unless a contrary US court decission appears, we consider pre-1923 published works to be PD in US and not falling under URAA. Ankry (talk) 20:23, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Publication in 1885 and death in 1951 would equal to s:template:PD-old-60-1923, relaxed to PD-old-70-1923 in 2022. Those in the 9th Circuit may have to check some works published between 1909 and 1923 if the authors are known not to have died for at least 70 years.--Jusjih (talk) 04:12, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Ankry: I am confused! You say California is not in the 9th Circuit, but in the link provided above (copyright.cornell.edu) I read in Special Cases of Works Published Abroad section "In Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands ONLY. Published in a language other than English, and without subsequent republication with a copyright notice".Ah3kal (talk) 07:36, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If seems I have misread. I am also confused. Ankry (talk) 08:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know anyone who pays attention to the 9th Circuit rules. It's a widely mocked decision, and it's possible the WMF would take it to the Supreme Court to get them to overrule it. Neither Commons nor the English Wikisource worries about it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:32, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If I am correct, Wikimedia used to be in Florida, USA with its server, but relocating the office to San Francisco, California, USA has not also moved the server, so the server is not subject to the 9th Circuit.--Jusjih (talk) 04:03, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Local language namespaces on Norwegian Wikisource not working[edit]

Hi. On the Norwegian Wikisource, we have translated the Index and Page namespaces into Indeks and Side respectively (see no:MediaWiki:Proofreadpage namespace). Since the last few days or weeks this translation doesn't seem to work anymore, as all Proofreadpage pages show up as English Page in the recent edits. And when trying to create a new index, I have to write Index:Something instead of Indeks:Something. Could anyone help us find out what is wrong here? The last time we had problems with the Proofreadpage extension on the Norwegian Wikisource, it had something to do with the nb versus no language codes (see Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/Jan 2016 - Dec 2016#Proofreadpage on the Norwegian Wikisource) Kåre-Olav (talk) 13:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I got some help from a user on Norwegian Wikipedia who reported the bug to Phabricator: phab:T163647. Hopefully it will be fixed soon. Kåre-Olav (talk) 21:34, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-17[edit]

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

Problems

Changes this week

  • The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. [78]
  • Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this. [79]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Deletion of Eastern Punjabi pages[edit]

Hello admins, after the creation of pa:, I have now imported there all the pages which are listed on User:MF-Warburg/pa. They can now be deleted here. --MF-Warburg (talk) 15:09, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Satdeep Gill: can you tell us which pages should be deleted? If there are too many, so we can ask @DerHexer: who has a script for it. Thanks, -jkb- (talk) 07:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Some pages have not be imported yet. Let me check that with MF-Warburg. --Satdeep Gill (talk) 07:46, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK. FYI: Main pages will not be deleted, they stay. -jkb- (talk) 16:23, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have imported more pages now, which I also listed on the page. User:Satdeep Gill: Is it complete now? --MF-Warburg (talk) 19:32, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, everything is okay now. Let's delete these pages. --Satdeep Gill (talk) 19:07, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK, here the ping for @DerHexer:, do you think you can help here again with your script? In this case I would propose to use a bot flag; is it possible to delete the all pages in a category (I've just forgotten it); @Satdeep Gill: pls see here in next days as you probably would have to coordinate it a bit (where the pages are to be found etc.). Best regards -jkb- (talk) 22:54, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-18[edit]

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

Problems

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.

Changes this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • All Wikimedia wikis will have cookie blocks from May 8. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [83]
  • The Publish changes, Show preview and Show changes buttons will look slightly different. This is to fit with the OOUI look. Users can test scripts, gadgets and so on to see if they work with the new interface by adding &ooui=1 to the URL. [84]

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

19:49, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Voting has begun in 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections[edit]

This is a message from the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.

Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2017 elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 1 to 23:59 UTC May 14. Click here to vote. More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2017 Board of Trustees election page on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Elections Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery • Translate • Get help

19:14, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Beta Feature Two Column Edit Conflict View[edit]

From May 9, the Two Column Edit Conflict View will be available as a beta feature on all wikis. The Two Column Edit Conflict View is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page. It highlights differences between the editor's and the conflicting changes to make it easy to copy and paste pieces of the text and resolve the conflict. The feature fulfils a request for a more user-friendly edit conflict resolution from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well!

Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:41, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-19[edit]

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

Problems

  • Some users have a problem with the watchlist. Some changes in categories make the watchlist a blank page. The developers are working on this. Until this is fixed you can try some things that have helped other editors if you have this problem. You can turn on Hide categorization of pages in your watchlist preferences. You can turn off Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw. [85]
  • There was a problem with the visual editor for several days. You could not save edits that triggered a CAPTCHA. This would for example be when a new user added external links in references. This was fixed on 2 May. [86]

Changes this week

  • When you edit you can switch between the visual editor and the wikitext editor. This works if the wiki you edit has the visual editor. The menu will now say Visual editing and Source editing instead of Switch to visual editing and Switch to code editing. This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using. [87]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You will be able to get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. This will come to Wikivoyage on 9 May. If there are no problems it will come to most Wikipedias on 30 May. It will come to other projects and English, French and German Wikipedia later in the summer. It will be opt-in for existing users and opt-out for new users. [88][89]
  • Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. A transclusion could for example be when you use -{ in a template: {{1x| sad :-{ face }}. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. [90][91]

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

02:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-20[edit]

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

Problems

  • The mediawiki.util library does not load automatically any more. Your Special:MyPage/common.js may use it. If you have technical problems that started a couple of weeks ago you can try adding mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ).done(function(){ as the first line in the file and }); as a last one. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/18 issue. [94]

Changes this week

  • The RevisionSlider extension will be a default feature on all wikis. RevisionSlider is an easier way to move between changes in the page history. It has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia and a beta feature on all wikis. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences. [95]
  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

Older unreported changes

  • Your Meta user page is shown on all wikis where you don't have a local user page. You can now add the magic word __NOGLOBAL__ to your Meta user page to stop this. [100][101]

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

21:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

RevisionSlider[edit]

RevisionSlider will be available as a default feature for all users on all wikis from May 17. The RevisionSlider adds a slider view to the diff page so that you can easily move between revisions. The slider view is collapsed by default, and will load by clicking on it. It can also be turned off entirely in the user preferences. RevisionSlider has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia for 6 months and a beta feature on all wikis for 8 months. The feature fulfills a wish from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Thanks to everyone who tested RevisionSlider and gave valuable feedback to improve the feature! We hope that RevisionSlider will continue to serve you well in your work.

Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Join the next cycle of Wikimedia movement strategy discussions (underway until June 12)[edit]

Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki

The Wikimedia movement strategy core team and working groups have completed reviewing the more than 1800 thematic statements we received from the first discussion. They have identified 5 themes that were consistent across all the conversations - each with their own set of sub-themes. These are not the final themes, just an initial working draft of the core concepts.

You are invited to join the online and offline discussions taking place on these 5 themes. This round of discussions will take place between now and June 12th. You can discuss as many as you like; we ask you to participate in the ones that are most (or least) important to you.

Here are the five themes, each has a page on Meta-Wiki with more information about the theme and how to participate in that theme's discussion:

On the movement strategy portal on Meta-Wiki, you can find more information about each of these themes, their discussions, and how to participate.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation • Please help translate to your language • Get help

21:09, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-21[edit]

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 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).
  • There will be a <div> tag around HTML from the MediaWiki wikitext parser. Gadgets with code that does not follow recommendations could have problems with this. You can report new problems you think are related to this. [102]

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

22:02, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee elections[edit]

Translations of this message are available on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, we are pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson elections. Please read the letter from the Wikimedia Foundation calling for candidates at on the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.

Funds Dissemination Committee
The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five positions being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC elections page.

Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson
The Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled. More information about this role can be found at the FDC Ombudsperson elections page.

The candidacy submission phase will last until May 28 (23:59 UTC).

We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates until May 28. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki. Once the questions submission period has ended on May 28, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to.

The goal of this process is to fill the five community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee and the community-selected ombudsperson. The election results will be used by the Board itself to make the appointments.

The full schedule for the FDC elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.

  • May 15 (00:00 UTC) – May 28 (23:59 UTC) – Nominations
  • May 15 – May 28 – Candidates questions submission period
  • May 29 – June 2 – Candidates answer questions
  • June 3 – June 11 – Voting period
  • June 12–14 – Vote checking
  • June 15 – Goal date for announcing election results

More information on this year's elections can be found at the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation elections portal.

Please feel free to post a note about the election on your project's village pump. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-elections(at)wikimedia.org.

On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery • Translate • Get help

21:06, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Piemontèis[edit]

I just imported the Piemontèis Bible from the incubator. Currently, none of the pages are categorized. I don't whether it's possible, but if someone got a script (bot) which can automatically add Category:Piemontèis to all pages prefixed "Intrada/La Bibia piemontèisa/" that would be very helpful :) --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 11:53, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As there has been a communicative error concerning the exact page names, I am required to fix all pages individually, so I might as well add the category manually. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 14:31, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-22[edit]

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

  • Last week’s MediaWiki version was rolled back from some wikis because of a problem. This means planned changes did not happen. [103]

Meetings

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

Future changes

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

12:18, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-23[edit]

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 see new files on Special:NewFiles. You can now pick which dates you want to see files from. [105]
  • When you read Wikipedia on a mobile device the first paragraph now comes before the infobox. [106]
  • You can now remove navigation elements from your results when you search. This could for example be part of an infobox that is only there to help you find the previous or next article. [107]
  • New users on Wikivoyages and Wikipedias (except French, English and German) now get a notification when a page they created is connected to Wikidata. Other wikis will get it 13 June. [108]

Problems

  • The MediaWiki version from two weeks ago was rolled back. It was fixed late last week. Changes that were planned to go out last week did not happen. [109]

Changes this week

  • Wikimedia wikis can show fewer links to articles in other languages. This is to make it easier to find the languages likely to be useful to the reader or editor. Everyone can still click to see the full list. Logged-in users who use the compact language links will see languages they have in their Babel box on their user page in the first, shorter list. You can turn the compact language list off or on in your preferences. [110]
  • You can choose what dates to look at when you look at a user's contributions. [111]
  • When you click on your watchlist in the mobile view you get a list of all pages in the watchlist instead of the latest changes to them. Logged-in users with at least ten edits will now get the latest changes instead. [112]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
  • String comparisons in Scribunto modules are now always done case-insensitively by byte order. Before they were sometimes in a case-sensitive US-English collation order. This could break some modules. [113]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The 2006 wikitext editor will be removed the week of 27 June. This is the old toolbar with small square blue buttons. You can see a picture of it. 0.03% of active Wikimedia editors use this old tool. They will not see a toolbar at all. [114][115]
  • Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron already works on German Wikipedia. It will be on English Wikipedia later this week so you can test it there too. [116]
  • The Architecture Committee will change and get a new name. You can read and comment on the draft that describes the new committee.

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

19:04, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-24[edit]

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

Recent changes

  • Some wikis have the larger and brighter OOjs UI edit page buttons. When you write an edit summary there you can now see how many bytes you have left before the summary is too long. [117]
  • When you search on Wikipedia you can now find pages on other Wikimedia projects that could be relevant. You see them next to the search results. [118]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You will soon be able to get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account. You can test this on the test wiki. This will only work if they fail to log in to your account. [119]
  • Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron now works on all Wikimedia projects. [120]
  • Administrators can soon search for deleted page titles and find results that are similar to what they searched for. Today the search only finds pages that are exactly the same as what you search for. This is to make it easier to find pages when you don't know the exact title. Administrators on Arabic, Catalan, English, Persian, German, Italian, Polish, and Russian Wikipedia and on mediawiki.org can test this by adding &fuzzy=1 to the end of the web address when looking at Special:Undelete. [121][122]

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

15:29, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-25[edit]

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

  • ORES had some problems on 13 June between 16:00 and 19:40 UTC. It has now been fixed. [123]

Changes this week

  • irc.wikimedia.org has to be rebooted. This will probably happen on 21 June. It may be postponed. Some tools use this to get the recent changes feed. They will not work when it is down. [124]
  • Special:PageData will be an entry point for machine-readable page data. [125]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 June. It will be on all wikis from 22 June (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

15:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Template:PD-EdictGov[edit]

In addition to using it for languages without subdomains, I would like to request comments on using it for edicts that are still copyright-restricted in their source countries, in case hosting them on specific language subdomains is undesirable when considering wmf:Resolution:Licensing_policy. For example, hosting copyrighted-restricted Hong Kong court papers on Chinese Wikisource is being disputed, so in addition to Template:PD-US-1923-abroad used by some Chinese works, I would like to ask. Taiwan disallows Hong Kong governmental copyright, but other Chinese-speaking areas like Maniland China and Macao are not so clear.--Jusjih (talk) 01:41, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As this section of our copyright policy suggests we should allow texts that are in scope, PD in the US and that cannot be moved to language subdomains because of copyright related reason. I think that another policy would be discriminating for languages with their own subdomains over languages without their own subdomains. If nobody opposes, I would also suggest to add to the copyright policy a statement that the rule is general and the pre-1923 case is just an example. Ankry (talk) 14:36, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The policy needs improvement.--Jusjih (talk) 22:48, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have added a paragraph to our copyright policy with no objection so far.[126]--Jusjih (talk) 03:02, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-26[edit]

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 <inputbox> has a new searchfilter parameter. You can add values like searchfilter=insource:foo. It will add that to the user's search query. [127]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
  • Users will be able to choose whether they want to see Wikidata changes in enhanced watchlist/recent changes. Previously, this was disabled for everyone. [128]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the next WMF Language team office hour, an open session to talk about Wikimedia Language projects. The meeting will be on 27 June at 13:00 UTC. [129]

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

15:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-27[edit]

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 a problem with maps on Wikimedia wikis that used <mapframe> when you clicked on the link to another map service. Open Street Map or Google Maps are examples of other map services. If you had marked a place on the map the marker would not be in the same place on the other map service. It was in the middle of the map. This has now been fixed. [130]

Changes this week

  • Very old and inactive unpublished translations in the Content Translation database will be removed. This is because of technical maintenance. If you have not worked on a translation after 1 January 2016 you will lose it after 6 July. If you want to keep the unfinished translation you need to open it before 6 July with the Content Translation tool. You can continue working on it later. Translations that were started or have been worked on after 1 January 2016 will not be affected.
  • There is no new Mediawiki version this week.
  • EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. It works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/07 issue. [131]

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

15:31, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-28[edit]

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 are sometimes links to pages about the same thing on other Wikimedia projects. A Wikipedia article about Berlin can link to the Wikivoyage guide or Wiktionary entry about Berlin. You can now see when that page has a badge. A badge could be the star that shows that an article is a featured article. [132]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Mobile users will be able to edit Wikipedia without JavaScript. This will make it possible to edit the wikis from older mobile phones. This will probably happen on 18 July for most wikis. [133]
  • We will not use Tidy on Wikimedia wikis in the future. It will be replaced by June 2018. It could be earlier. Editors will need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors.

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

15:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-29[edit]

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

  • "Wikimedia Labs" is now called "Cloud VPS". "Wikimedia Tool Labs" is now called "Wikimedia Toolforge". This is to help clarify the purpose of these services. [134]

Problems

  • On some pages, the Table of Contents is not being shown. It will normally appear if you edit the page again. Investigation is currently ongoing. [135]

Changes this week

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

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is: Migrate to HTML5 section ids. [136] The meeting will be on 19 July at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Page Previews, currently a Beta Feature, will be enabled for logged-out users for all remaining Wikipedias (with the exception of English and German) the week of 24 July. An A/B test will be run on English Wikipedia to collect data before approaching the community for further discussion. [137]

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

22:58, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-30[edit]

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

Recent changes

  • CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. This will make it easier to make templates look good on mobile devices. This now works on mediawiki.org and Wikitech. It will come to more wikis later. [138][139][140]
  • .mw-ui-constructive modifier class is deprecated and has been removed. [141]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 July. It will be on all wikis from 27 July (calendar).
  • 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. Please see the documentation. [142]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the Wikimedia Foundation July 2017 Metrics & Activities Meeting. The meeting is about how Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement are perceived and understood by the world. The meeting will be on 27 July at 19:00 (UTC). See the agenda and how to join.

Future changes

  • New Filters for Edit Review, at the moment available as a Beta feature, will be released by default for the Recent Changes in September.

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

15:57, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Accessible editing buttons[edit]

The MediaWiki developers have been slowly improving the accessibility of the user interface. The next step in this transition will change the appearance of some buttons and may break some outdated (non-updated or unmaintained) user scripts and gadgets.

You can see and use the old and new versions now. Most editors will only notice that some buttons are slightly larger and have different colors.

  • Comparison of old and new styles
  • Buttons before the change
    Buttons before the change
  • Buttons after the change
    Buttons after the change

However, this change also affects some user scripts and gadgets. Unfortunately, some of them may not work well in the new system. If you maintain any user scripts or gadgets that are used for editing, please see mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons for information on how to test and fix your scripts. Outdated scripts can be tested and fixed now.

This change will probably reach this wiki on Tuesday, 1 August 2017. Please leave a note at mw:Talk:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons if you need help.

--Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 27 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-31[edit]

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

Problems

  • Some pages show the error Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject. This problem happens on pages with a Lua module that uses Wikidata. The developers are working on fixing the problem. You can fix a page by opening it for editing and then saving without changing anything. [143]
  • Wikidata and German Wikipedia could not be edited for an hour on 28 July. You can read why and how we could avoid it in the future in the incident report.

Changes later this week

  • Some wikis already have the larger and brighter OOjs UI edit page buttons. All remaining wikis except Commons will have these from 1 August. [144]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 August. It will be on all wikis from 3 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The default font in the edit window will soon change for some users. Instead of using the browser default it will be monospace. Users can change this in their preferences. This should only change this for some users on Macs and iOS devices. [145]

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

21:45, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-32[edit]

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

Problems

  • You can get an email when a page on your watchlist was edited. You can choose not to get emails for minor edits. There is a bug that means that you then don't get an email when someone does a normal edit after a minor edit. The developers are working on fixing this. Until it has been fixed you can activate "Email me also for minor edits of pages and files" at the bottom of "User profile" in your preferences if you want to. [148]
  • The thanks button sometimes didn't work for mobile users. This was because of a new bug and has now been fixed. [149]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP. [150]
  • Links to sections on Wikipedia don't work well in languages that don't use the Latin script. The URL in the address bar in your browser shows Latin characters like .D0.A1.D1.81.D1.8B.D0.BB.D0.BA.D0.B8 instead of the section heading in the wiki's language. Links to sections in non-Latin scripts will be in the script of that wiki in the future. This will happen in the next few months. [151][152]
  • Wiki pages printed by the web browser "Print" function will have an updated style. This new style will be similar to the when you download a page as PDF. It will be better at showing tables, infoboxes and headings. [153][154]

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

21:45, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-33[edit]

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

  • Bureaucrats can now set users as confirmed. Previously only stewards could do this on most wikis. Nothing will change for wikis that have previously decided to let administrators set users as confirmed. [155]

Problems

  • The symbols in the language list that show that an article is good or featured in that language doesn't work. Links to the Commons category in the sidebar doesn't work either. The developers are working on fixing it. [156][157]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 August. It will be on all wikis from 17 August (calendar).

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

23:28, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikisource:News[edit]

I have updated it for the first time in several years. Do we want to maintain this page or archive it? If we decide to not update it, it should be removed from the sidebar. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:02, 17 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-34[edit]

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 test the new Timeless skin on the test wiki and mediawiki.org. You can turn it on in your preferences. You can report bugs in Phabricator. It will come to more wikis soon. [158][159]
  • Your watchlist can now have the option to unwatch pages. You have to turn this on in your preferences. [160]
  • If a table has several columns you can often choose which column you want to use to sort the table. This has not worked for some columns for readers who have used Firefox or Safari. This has now been fixed. [161]
  • The RelatedArticles extension has shown related pages on Wikivoyages. You will now see the related pages at the end of the article together with an image. Previously the links were in the sidebar. Wikis that want this extension can request it on Phabricator.

Changes later this week

  • Videos will now be played in the WebM format in all browsers. Previously some browsers used Ogg Theora (.ogv). If you use Safari, Internet Explorer or Edge you may see slower playback speed at high resolutions. Instead we will get better quality and smaller file size. You can still upload video as Ogg files. They are automatically converted to WebM. This doesn't affect Ogg audio files. [162]
  • The default font in the edit window will change for some users this week. Instead of using the browser default, it will be monospace. Users can change this in their preferences. This should only change this for some users on Macs and iOS devices. [163]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 August. It will be on all wikis from 24 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 August at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:00, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-35[edit]

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

  • Syntax highlighting is now a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It will come to right-to-left wikis later. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. [164][165]
  • You will now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. You can turn this off or choose to get an email notification in your preferences. You can also turn on to get an email when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. [166]

Problems

  • Some pages show the error Lua error in mw.wikibase.entity.lua at line 34: The entity data must be a table obtained via mw.wikibase.getEntityObject. This problem happens on pages with a Lua module that use Wikidata. This has now been fixed and no new pages will get this problem. You still need to fix pages that were broken before and still show the error message. You can see how on this page. [167]

Changes later this week

  • You can block users from sending you notifications. [168]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • In the future you will have global preferences. This means you could set something in your preferences to work in the same way on all wikis. You will not be forced to use global preferences. The developers are now asking if editors need exceptions. This is where you want to use global settings on almost all wikis, but have some wikis where you want it to work in a different way. If you want this you need to tell the developers now. You can do so on the talk page. [169]
  • New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [170]
  • The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 in September 2017. Wikis can ask on Phabricator to get it early, so they can help find and solve problems now.

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

22:09, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-36[edit]

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

Tech News

Recent changes

  • The RevisionSlider user interface has changed. You can now select revisions by clicking on the bars. You can move the blue knob past the yellow one and the yellow one will move along, and the other way around. [171][172]

Problems

  • Some users have problems loading very large watchlists. It is working better than earlier but the problem has not been solved. The developers are working on fixing it. Until it has been fixed you can turn on "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" in your preferences and see if it helps. [173]

Changes later this week

  • New filters for edit review is a beta feature to improve recent changes pages. It will work on watchlists from 5 September. [174]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).

Meetings

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

22:14, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Setting page content language[edit]

Since December, we are allowed to tell MediaWiki in what language each page content is, see m:Special:Log/pagelang for some examples. It would be nice to allow all users here on the multilingual Wikisource to set the real language of the pages. I would for instance mark Category:Napulitano pages as being in "nap", not English, to hopefully improve their indexing in language-aware search engines. --Nemo 06:18, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Nemo bis: Do you know how someone marks a page's language? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:49, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Special:PageLanguage, for instance; it's also linked from the action=info of every page (surprisingly, it's a red link here; maybe the wiki was forgotten in the first round of enabling, but that's easy to fix). --Nemo 16:23, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Nemo bis: Very helpful. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:24, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See phab:T175622. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:26, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-37[edit]

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 get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. You can choose to get these notifications in your preferences. Some wikis already had this option. It is now available on all wikis. [176]
  • The Newsletter extension is now on mediawiki.org. The newsletter extension is for newsletters where you can subscribe by getting a notification when a new issue has been published. It will come to more wikis later. [177]
  • The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. There is now a new high-priority category: tidy-whitespace-bug. This usually affects templates with horizontal lists. You can read more about using Linter and the Tidy whitespace bug. [178]

Problems

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
  • OOjs UI will be updated. This could affect some icons. You can read more about the changes.

Meetings

  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can use Electron instead. Most PDFs are already created with Electron. Electron will get missing features before 1 October. You can create books but they will not have all planned features until November or December. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
  • New filters for edit review are available now on recent changes as a beta feature. Some of those filters and other features will be deployed as default features in the coming weeks. Users will be able to opt out in their preferences. [180]

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

19:15, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Indexing journal[edit]

https://www.theindexer.org/ All issues older than three years are available freely. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:48, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-38[edit]

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

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 September at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

15:31, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-39[edit]

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

Changes later this week

  • You now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. For security reasons you will soon get an email by default when someone tries to log in to your account and when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. This can be turned off in your preferences. [187]
  • Users with extremely old browsers (for example Netscape 2–4, released from 1995–1997) which do not support Unicode will no longer be able to edit. They should try to install a new browser. [188]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September. (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department has proposed changing the mobile website. You can read more on mediawiki.org. This would be a big change.
  • You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can still create PDFs. Tech News 2017/37 said the function to create PDFs from books would still work. It is now clear it will not work for the next few months. The developers are working on fixing this. You can read more on mediawiki.org.

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

15:59, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

File rename[edit]

Few days ago I uploaded a file under a wrong name. As regular users do not seem to be allowed to rename a file, I asked an active admin for help. Unfortunately, I get no response for about a week.

Any hint, where should I put a request that is directed to admins only? I found no specific page for that in this wiki.

I doubt, spamming all admins' talk pages is the right way.

Maybe I should just reupload the file under the correct name?

The current name is wrong as one day the file should be moved to Commons and Commons require more descriptive filenames. Renaming a file transcribed using ProofreadPage may be a real pain in future.

Blossfeldia liliputańa (talk) 07:53, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done Yann (talk) 08:14, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Blossfeldia liliputańa (talk) 11:34, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-40[edit]

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 preload features in the visual editor. This means you can create links to create new pages and some text will already be in the edit window when someone clicks on it. [189]

Changes later this week

  • If you have turned on "Automatically enable most beta features" you will now get the 2017 wikitext editor. Before this you had to turn it on manually even though it is a beta feature. [190]
  • Special:Block and Special:Unblock will get the OOUI look. [191]
  • The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 on all Wiktionary wikis from 2 October. It will be on all non-Wikipedia wikis from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October. [192]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • A new feature called Reading Lists are coming to the Wikipedia mobile apps. First it will be in the Android version. Reading Lists are a private user preference where you can see lists of articles on multiple devices. You can give feedback on this feature. [193]
  • The search function has used fallback languages for language analysis. This means a language could be analysed with the grammar of a completely unrelated language to find related words. This will be removed from most wikis the week starting with 9 October. You can read more and give feedback.

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

23:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Comparison of template uses between Wikisources[edit]

Hi,

Is there a tool to see if equivalent templates are used on two pages linked on two Wikisources?

For instance, all pages on frwiki using fr:Modèle:Éditions should be linked to page on enwiki who used en:Template:Versions. How can I have a list of pair of pages where only one of the two templates is used ?

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 10:13, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-41[edit]

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

Problems

  • You will not be able to edit or upload files to Commons for around 30 minutes on 11 October. This will start at 06:00 UTC. This is because of work to let Commons show 3D models. [196]

Changes later this week

  • The font in the edit window is monospace by default. Today you can change preferences to another font family or use "the browser default" instead of monospace. Switching to the browser default has only changed the font on Macs. The option to use browser default will be removed this week. [197]
  • If you want to print a page or make a PDF of a page you can do so in the side menu. The way the pages look when you do this will change. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

14:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-42[edit]

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

Recent changes

  • When you edit a template with the visual editor it follows the template's format configuration on how to save it. You can now change the format in more powerful ways if your wiki wants it. [198][199]
  • The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It has been a beta feature for the last five months. You can now try out the new interface on a page where you will actually get simulated edit conflicts. You can give feedback to the developers.

Problems

  • There is a problem with recent changes pages and your watchlist that show a large number of pages. Until it is fixed, Wikidata edits will not be shown on recent changes or in your watchlist on Commons or Russian Wikipedia. If necessary, Wikidata edits will be removed from all wikis. [200]
  • Notifications are not working for some actions. For example some users don't get a notification when they are mentioned. The developers are working on fixing this. [201]
  • Users on some wikis could not change their preferences. This has now been fixed. [202]

Changes later this week

  • Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia from 17 October. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP. [203]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:31, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-43[edit]

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

Recent changes

  • You can use ccnorm_contains_any when you create an abuse filter. This can be used to look for multiple words or phrases within a string. It will find words where some characters have been replaced. You can read more in the documentation. [204]

Changes later this week

  • When you search in some languages the search function could use specific other languages if the first language didn't work. This is called a fallback language. This didn't work properly and created bad searches. The search index is being fixed to work better. [205]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

18:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Policy on contents in a language without an ISO 639-3 code[edit]

What's the policy on this here? On Incubator we wouldn't allow a test to stay open (unless there is an RFL open at Meta). See Main Page/Bolak. The code shown there is in the ISO reserved/local group, not a "real" code. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:51, 26 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@StevenJ81: We even have a language here which may not exist: Main Page/Chono. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:06, 26 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: The only known "attestation", if you will, is probably the piece of text on the single content page in that language. The question is, of course, whether it is actually a language or not. But that piece of text, at least, is probably a legitimate effort. And the language is coded as mis, which is probably ok for Wikisource. I'm going to edit that other page so that it, too, reads mis. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:19, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@StevenJ81: Good call. It's legit to have mis or und languages, just like how we have individual mul texts. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:39, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-44[edit]

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 block users from emailing you through the Wikimedia wikis. [207]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

00:20, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-45[edit]

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 will no longer see the patrol log on Special:Log unless you specifically select it. [208]

Changes later this week

  • The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 6 November. You can post proposals from 19:00 UTC and until November 19.
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

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

18:45, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-46[edit]

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 diff you see when you compare two different versions of a page has changed on MediaWiki.org and the test wiki. This is to make it easier to find a text change in a moved paragraph. It will hopefully soon come to more wikis. You can report bugs in Phabricator. [211]
  • A new user group on Commons will be able to upload MP3 files. The plan is to have this user group from 17 November. [212]
  • Wikis using Flagged Revisions will get the New filters for Edit Review by default on the recent changes pages. It will be possible to opt-out in user preferences. [213]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 November. It will be on all wikis from 16 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

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

19:19, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-47[edit]

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 use the Chrome web browser on Android you can see a download icon on the mobile website. You can download a formatted PDF. It will work in other mobile browsers in the future. [215]
  • The abuse filter now has a function called get_matches. You can use it to store matches from regular expressions – one of each capturing group. You can read more in Phabricator.

Problems

  • Last week's MediaWiki version didn't come to all Wikipedias because of a database crash. It will be on all wikis on 20 November. [216][217][218]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Language converter syntax will no longer work inside external links. Wikitext like http://-{zh-cn:foo.com; zh-hk:bar.com; zh-tw:baz.com}- must be replaced. You will have to write -{zh-cn: http://foo.com ; zh-hk: http://bar.com ; zh-tw:http://baz.com }- instead. This only affects languages with Language Converter enabled. Examples of such languages are Chinese and Serbian. This will happen next week. [219][220]

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

19:18, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers[edit]

New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers

The Readers web team will be deploying a new feature this week to make it easier to download PDF versions of articles on the mobile website.

Providing better offline functionality was one of the highlighted areas from the research done by the New Readers team in Mexico, Nigeria, and India. The teams created a prototype for mobile PDFs which was evaluated by user research and community feedback. The prototype evaluation received positive feedback and results, so development continued.

For the initial deployment, the feature will be available to Google Chrome browsers on Android. Support for other mobile browsers to come in the future. For Chrome, the feature will use the native Android print functionality. Users can choose to download a webpage as a PDF. Mobile print styles will be used for these PDFs to ensure optimal readability for smaller screens.

The feature is available starting Wednesday, Nov 15. For more information, see the project page on MediaWiki.org.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to the global ban policy[edit]

The following was copied in manually from Ladino Wikipedia's version of this page because evidently delivery failed here. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:14, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. Some changes to the community global ban policy have been proposed. Your comments are welcome at m:Requests for comment/Improvement of global ban policy. Please translate this message to your language, if needed. Cordially. Matiia (Matiia) 00:34 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-48[edit]

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:30, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot[edit]

Hello! Is it possible to install cat-a-lot here? I want to reorder a category with lots of pages and it's quite time-consuming to do it by hand. -Theklan (talk) 13:04, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Theklan: Of course. You can add it to User:Theklan/common.js. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:18, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: Did it, but can't find the cat-a-lot button in the bottom! -Theklan (talk) 21:25, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Theklan: On a category or another namespace? It may take refreshing and purging some pages for it to show. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:37, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf:: Ona category, but cant find how to make it work! -Theklan (talk) 15:26, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Theklan: Is it not displaying or is it displaying and you can't make sense of it? Have you looked at the page for the gadget on Commons? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:39, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: is not displaying, there's no "Cat-a-lot" link in the bottom right of the page! -Theklan (talk) 19:37, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Theklan: Hm, nor for me as well. I wish I knew how to fix this. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:50, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-49[edit]

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 December. It will be on all wikis from 7 December (calendar).
  • Very old versions of the Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems. [227]
  • Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [228][229]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

17:50, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to Blocking tools consultation[edit]

Hello all,

The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team invites all Wikimedians to discuss new blocking tools and improvements to existing blocking tools in December 2017 for development work in early 2018.

How can you help?

  1. Share your ideas on the discussion page or send an email to the Anti-Harassment Tools team.
  2. Spread the word that the consultation is happening; this is an important discussion for making decisions about improving the blocking tools.
  3. Help with translation.
  4. If you know of previous discussions about blocking tools that happened on your wiki, share the links.

We are looking forward to learning your ideas.

For the Anti-Harassment Tools team SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 23:23, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2017-50[edit]

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

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

17:58, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-51[edit]

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

Tech News

  • Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2018.

Problems

  • When you import a page from another wiki the usernames of the users who edited the article on the wiki you imported it from are shown in the article history. This should link to the users on the original wiki. A script to fix this caused problems for Wikidata and German Wikipedia. It also created a large number of SUL accounts on wikis where editors had never edited. [236]
  • Some bot owners got email about their bots logging in from a new computer. If this is from one or a couple of wikis, you can turn these messages off in your preferences on those wikis until the problem has been solved. If not, you can report more about the problem in Phabricator.

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.

Meetings

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

Future changes

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

15:26, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

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