Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2018

Tech News: 2018-02[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

On Wikidata, the "save" button when you edit is now called "publish". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "Save page" to "Publish changes". This is to help new editors understand what it does. [1][2]
Some edits will get an automatic tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways. [3]
Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki. [4]
Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation has been updated. [5][6]

Problems

Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem. [7]
With the new filters in the recent changes, "Exclude selected" in "Namespaces" did not work for "Saved filters" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again. [8]
The latest version of Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see #R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9 instead of #Résumé even if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March). [9]
Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed. [10]

Changes later this week

Wikidata will be moved to its own database servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis. [11]
The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems. [12][13]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).
WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one: ext.wikiEditor. All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed. [14]

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 9 January 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 10 January 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.

16:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-3[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 on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed. [15]
There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development. [16]

Problems

Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited. [17][18]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar).

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 16 January 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 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. 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. [19][20]

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18:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Restore link[edit]

The link in De Tobackschmöker has to be restored. I had to remove it as else I couldn't save a correction. -91.6.195.105 19:01, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Transwiki some texts from oc-wiki?[edit]

I have a question about some medieval text that is currently in article namespace on Occitan Wikipedia, and whether transwikifying it to Wikisource would be a better idea. I was under the impression that most wikipedias prefer references or short excerpts from primary sources, and not whole texts, plus, placing it here seems like the right venue.

I'm improving the article Querimonia on en-wiki, and among the Wikidata language links is one in Occitan. At oc:w:Querimònia, section #Tèxt dera Querimònia has nine links to what appear to be complete source texts written in Occitan, that are all located in oc-wiki article namespace. Follow footnote 2 on that page to see where the article copied the text from. (Tried to add it here, but was not able to.)

I'd prefer to see these texts transwikified here, instead; and then I could refer to them more easily from en-wiki (and the other wikis I work on), as well as using the en-wiki templates that provide a linked Wikisource box with a logo, and so on.

Can someone advise? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:19, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: This is the perfect spot for this. Wikipedias are encyclopedias, so they aren't made to host original source documents but Wikisource is. Additionally, we have the Index namespace and the proper plugins for transcribing scans. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:13, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Koavf, that's pretty much what I figured. I guess my real question, is, now what? Do you (or someone else here) want to take this on? Or, do you want me to do something?

As far as contact with them is concerned, I don't know anybody at oc-wiki. There are some native speakers of Occitan, but all of them speak something else, usually French or Catalan, and maybe speak some English or Spanish as well, and if any translation is needed between us and them, I can manage it. Please ping me if you need anything further. Mathglot (talk) 08:15, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: A local importer here should import the page(s) but I am not one. Our importers @Jusjih, Ooswesthoesbes: can you help? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:19, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done. The pages can be found through Querimònia. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 09:42, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that was fast! Thanks, all. Mathglot (talk) 10:17, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: That's the wiki way. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:02, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-04[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

Filters on Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features. [21][22]

Problems

With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed. [23]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

irc.wikimedia.org will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically. [24]

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23:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Getting User Help[edit]

The means to get help in Wikisource or Wikimedia seems very byzantine. In other words, not very helpful as the admins are not readily accessible.

The admins at Wikipedia butchered a page that was in place for a long time, removing much of the text while stating that it should be located in Wikisource. I tried to create a new page here but was denied:

"This action has been automatically identified as harmful, and therefore disallowed. If you believe your action was constructive, please inform an administrator of what you were trying to do. A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is: Antispam"

The problem is that there is no easy way to "inform and administrator". Perhaps the message should contain a link to a form or email to make the admins aware of problems. —unsigned comment by Awc2008 (talk) .

@Awc2008: I agree that the process can be very arcane and frustrating. How can I help? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:05, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@koavf: I created the page "The Morals of Chess" which is an essay Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1786. Can you remove the 'spam' designation so that I can actually put some content in it? Thanks! —unsigned comment by Awc2008 (talk) .

@Awc2008: It looks like you created it here at the Multilingual Wikisource (a.k.a. Old Wikisource): The Morals of Chess. Since the English language has its own Wikisource, it should be posted there: s:en:The Morals of Chess. Note that this Wikisource is only for 1.) texts which are themselves multilingual and 2.) texts for languages which are so small that they will probably never have their own Wikisource (or that could someday graduate from here but have small bodies of texts for now). I am making a request there to have it imported. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:46, 28 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-05[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.

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikimedia Foundation is working on how to get less unmaintained code on Wikimedia wikis. This could be by finding maintainers or removing unmaintained features. They are now looking for feedback on what do do with AbuseFilter, the IRC RecentChanges feed, the RelatedSites extension and TimedMediaHandler. You can leave feedback on the linked talk pages. [25]

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17:06, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment[edit]

I would like to draw attention to this incident: User talk:Billinghurst#Re:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. Maplestrip (talk) 08:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for keyboard shortcuts[edit]

I prefer to edit with the keyboard, so shortcuts like "Alt+Shift+E" to edit are valuable. In the Page: namespace, we don't have shortcuts for navigating pages. I'd like to propose that we 1.) add these and 2.) that they should be "Alf+Shift+→", "Alf+Shift+←", and "Alf+Shift+↑", for navigating forwards one page, backwards one page, and to the index. I want to get community feedback and consensus before going to phab:. Thoughts? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:09, 4 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: great idea! I 1000% agree with you. @Tpt: what do you think? Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 06:39, 5 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@VIGNERON: Related: phab:T186478. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:47, 5 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-06[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.

Recent changes

Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to. [26]
The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language. [27]
Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded. [28]

Problems

Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this. [29]

Changes later this week

When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users. [30]
When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like gallery widths="150px". You could use em or % instead of px but it would make no difference. You can now only use 150px or nothing (150). If you write something else, instead of treating it like px, it will not work. [31]
The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of Yes or No it will say Thank and Cancel. It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public. [32]
Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it. [33]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar).

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 6 February 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 7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Education Program extension will be removed on 30 June. It is replaced by the Programs and Events Dashboard. [34][35]

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

20:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-07[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

TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please submit a task on Phabricator. [36][37][38]
Registration pages now collect keyboard/mouse usage information for research on identifying spambots.

Changes later this week

You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use visual diffs on history pages. [39]
The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like {{reflist}}, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates. [40]
The abuse filter extension has a new feature contains_all that you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string. [41]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar).

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 February 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 14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The settings page and beta options for the mobile website are being improved. [42]

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

21:59, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-08[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

The explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed. [43][44]
You can now see statistics for pageviews per wiki per country. You can see this on maps or in a table. [45]

Problems

Linter is reporting estimated counts instead of actual counts for some wikis. This is because of performance problems. You might notice a false higher number in linter counts for some categories. This will be fixed as soon as the performance problem has been fixed. [46]
Last week the way that Visual Editor displays references lists was changed. As a result, the references generated by specific templates like {{sfn}} are not visible in the references list whilst editing. [47][48]

Changes later this week

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

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 February 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 21 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The way edit summaries and log comments are stored in the database is being changed. In the future this will make longer comments possible. [49]
Edit conflicts could be solved in a different way in the future. You can test a new prototype.

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

22:55, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-09[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.

Recent changes

Checkusers and stewards can now view private data such as the IP address in the abuse log. This data is removed regularly. [50]

Problems

Last week's MediaWiki version was rolled back because of a bug. [51][52]
Since the deployment train last week until late evening on 20 February UTC, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed. [53]
Special:Statistics did not take newly created pages into account since 13 February 2018. Because of this the statistics are recreated. [54][55][56]

Changes later this week

Users with version 10 of the Internet Explorer browser will no longer get JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis. If you use this browser on your computer, you can try upgrading to a newer version. [57]
The Wikinews wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 27 February. 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. [58][59]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 1 March (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 27 February 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 28 February 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.

19:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-10[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 make longer edit summaries. [60]

Changes later this week

You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. [61]
On Special:AbuseLog you can now choose to list only actions that actually made an edit. Other actions are when the filter warned the editor or blocked the edit from being made. There are also more search options. [62][63]
Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but it is complex. The tool will now warn in the JavaScript console if the configuration isn't correct. Soon Citoid will disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [64]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 March. It will be on all wikis from 8 March (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 6 March 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 7 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

In the future you will be able to use global preferences. This means you could change a preference for all wikis instead of having to change it every time for each wiki. You can now test global preferences and give feedback.
You can now read about planned works on maps during 2018. This will be done by June. You can give feedback on the planned maps work.

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17:12, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Public Domain 2018 Russia[edit]

EN: Dear colleagues, please comment on CentralNotice banner proposal for Public Domain 2018 Russia uploads & article contest. (18 March - 30 June, all IPs from Russia, Wp/Ws/Commons, 1 banner impression per two weeks). Thank you.
RU: Уважаемые коллеги, пожалуйста выскажите своё мнение по поводу баннерной кампании CentralNotice для объявления о российском викимарафоне Общественное достояние 2018 (18 марта - 30 июня, все IP из России, Википедии/Викитеки/Викисклад, 1 показ в две недели). Спасибо.--Frhdkazan (talk) 17:57, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-11[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.

Recent changes

3D models can now be uploaded to Commons. [65]
Page Previews has been updated to use HTML for previews. This has fixed many issues. An A/B test was done on English and German Wikipedia to measure how it is used. Other changes were also made. [66]
Some edits have to be checked against too many conditions before they can trigger an abuse filter. If that is the reason no filter is triggered the edit will be tagged for review. [67]
Auto-saving has been added to the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. Right now it is meant to help if your browser crashes or if you accidentally close a tab. [68]

Problems

The abuse filter did not tag all edits that should have been tagged after last week's MediaWiki version had come to the wikis. It was fixed on 9 March (UTC). [69]

Changes later this week

You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. This was originally planned to happen last week. [70]
It is now possible to specify the block parameters for each filter in Special:AbuseFilter. The parameters include block duration and if the user should be blocked from editing their own talk page. The block duration is separate for anonymous and registered users. [71][72]
A hundred Wikimedia wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 13 and 14 March. 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. [73][74][75]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 March. It will be on all wikis from 15 March (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 March 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 14 March 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.

19:43, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Approval of Wikisource Basque[edit]

Wikisource Basque was approved for its own subdomain on 12 March. Congratulations!

Please continue to contribute to the Basque resources here until the project is exported.
The phabricator task is phabricator:T189465. Please note that some data are still needed to complete the task; project contributors should check there.

For LangCom: StevenJ81 (talk) 15:27, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That is great news! :) --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 09:43, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

StevenJ81: it's indeed a great thing that the LangCom is finally approving some new projects. If you guys are willing to examine some long-standing request, I would like to remind you about m:Requests for new languages/Wikisource Neapolitan, which has a HUGE corpus of texts. --Candalua (talk) 14:31, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Candalua: I'll take a look at it shortly. (I've had to be away for a few days, so I'll need a few more just to catch up.) I will mention to all WS communities that you can ping me if you think you are ready to have your project approved. But be sure you have the translation and activity requirements met, too. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

StevenJ81, since you were kind enough to immediately reply, I will add a few clarifications. Nap.source is an effort lead primarily by User:C.R., with the participation of other Italian users including me, which has been going on for the last 3-4 years. Recently the project slowed down, primarily because users felt that the LangCom was not interested in approving the request, so they got discouraged. However, if the LangCom has now resumed its activities and is willing to examine our work, I'm sure that we can also resume activity on the project. I would like anyway to point out, that a Wikisource does not necessarily need a continuous activity to be of some value (once a book is transcribed and proofread, work is finished: it doesn't required to be kept up-to-date like a Wikipedia article). Thank you. Candalua (talk) 18:21, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Candalua: I'm responsible for keeping LangCom on track now, so I assure you we will be looking at things. Frankly, it's harder for me to parse what might or might not be ready in WS than in the other projects, because (a) I'm a sysop at Incubator, so keep track of what happens there, and (b) there's one page at Beta WV where the 50-odd tests are summarized. But I am always glad to have someone contact me to tell me they are ready.

In your case, I'll have a look at your project in the next few days. If the only thing missing is activity, but there was a long period where activity was fine, I'll take it to LangCom anyway, provided that some activity resumes.

It is true that continuous activity is perhaps somewhat less important on a WS project than on a WP project. But it's still the case that once a project is out there and independent, it's important to continue to have experienced people on hand watching things. So while I can probably get LangCom to understand a gap in activity (for the reasons you said), I'd still far prefer to be able to say that "the test community is committed to staying active through and after the approval." StevenJ81 (talk) 18:34, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the same goes for the Georgian Wikisource. @Steven: If you want, I can try to keep track of test activity here, as I watch this wiki for vandalism and deletions anyway. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 09:10, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ooswesthoesbes, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

Candalua, I haven't really had a chance to sit down and look yet. But the Meta request page brought my attention to eleven pages in Neapolitan on Italian Wikisource. What should happen with those? StevenJ81 (talk) 14:21, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Judging from the category name (testi), I think it would be best to move them to the subdomain once created. Of course, it should be discussed at the Italian Wikisource. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 14:34, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

StevenJ81: the it.source community has already decided to transfer those pages to nap.source once it's approved. Candalua (talk) 17:06, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-12[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.

Problems

On March 12 early morning UTC, the number of 503 error messages increased due to an issue on esams datacenter. It has been fixed. [76]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

There is no Editing team meeting this week.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

From April 4, the autopatrol status of edits will only be accessible in the Recent Changes database table, so only for 30 days. [77][78]
In-Context Help and Onboarding is a new project, aiming to improve retention of new wiki editors. The goal is to give them short tutorials and other training experiences based on their activity. Collaboration team is expecting feedback and comments on the project talk page, especially from people working with newcomers.

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

15:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-13[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.

Changes later this week

Some of the interface icons and text sizes will change slightly, as part of the updates for improved accessibility and consistency. These icons are used in many features, including Notifications, Recent Changes, Beta Features, Visual Editor, 2017 Wikitext Editor, Code Editor, and others. While editor toolbars, dialogs, and menus will appear slightly bigger; elements on special pages will be slightly smaller. Functionality will not change. [79] [80]
The deprecated #toc and #toctitle CSS ids have been removed. If your wiki was still using these for fake Tables of Content (ToC) then these might lose their styling. They can be replaced with .toc and .toctitle classes where appropriate. [81]
TemplateStyles will be deployed to the Wikivoyages on 28 March 2018. [82]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 March. It will be on all wikis from 29 March (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 27 March 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 one hour earlier than usual on 28 March at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

From 9 April, the sort order of categories will be distorted for a short time. We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a maintenance script to update existing database entries. This will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on wiki size. Read more details. [83]
Changes are coming to search for Serbian projects. Cyrillic and Latin variants of a word and different grammatical forms of a word will be able to find each other. Read more on MediaWiki in Serbian or English.

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

20:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-14[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

Template Wizard script available for testing. It will show up as a puzzle-piece icon in the 2010 WikiEditor. You can click on the icon to insert a template.
The Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey is to be sent to participants around the world this week. If you are volunteer developer, and have contributed code to any pieces of MediaWiki, gadgets, or tools, please take 20 to 40 minutes to complete the survey.

Problems

MediaWiki deployment train has been rolled back to version 1.31.0-wmf.26 on week 13, due to a multiplication of lost connections during MySQL queries. Some of the recent changes may have not been applied. They will be deployed next week. [84][85][86]
The Notifications badge icons were overlapping other links. This has been fixed. [87]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 April. It will be on all wikis from 5 April (calendar).
User subpages ending in .json will now be protected from other people editing them, like .js and .css pages already are. If you have a tool that stores static configuration, you can now use a subpage like User:Example/mygadget.json to do this without concerns. [88]
Tidy will be replaced by RemexHtml on the next set of wikis. On April 4, we plan to turn off Tidy on all Wikiquotes (except frwikiquote) and Wikimedia chapters and user groups wikis. 23 wikis will have Tidy replaced this time. [89][90][91]
AbuseFilter will transition to use OOUI starting April 4, and the rule editor will also be changed to a CodeEditor (ACE) similar to what is found on user JavaScript pages. The move to OOUI will continue over the next few weeks. [92] [93]
In Special:Preferences, the preference "Reload the watchlist automatically whenever a filter is changed (JavaScript required)" is now only visible for users who have opt-out the New Filters for the Watchlist. [94]
You can see names of individual abuse filters in Special:AbuseLog. Now if the name of an abuse filter contains some wikisyntax like links, it will not change to a link when displayed. [95]
You can now search through filter patterns at Special:AbuseFilter. You may specify either a plain string or a regular expression and the matching filters will show a snippet of their pattern with the match highlighted. [96]

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 April 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 4 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

If you're using, creating or improving Lua modules, you can give your feedback to help harmonizing the modules across wikis and add more useful functions.
On April 11th, we plan to turn off Tidy on all wikis with less than 50 entries in all high priority linter categories. About 60 wikis will have Tidy replaced. Currently about 600 wikis have had Tidy replaced and we have another 300 wikis to go. We plan to finish this transition from Tidy to RemexHtml by end of June 2018. Please follow T175706 to monitor progress of Tidy replacement. [97][98]

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

19:28, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Delete Index:H.M. Diana.djvu[edit]

@‎KäthesBücher:, Die Göttinnen oder die drei Romane der Herzogin von Assy is a German book and should be kept in German Wikisource, instead of here. @Ankry, VIGNERON:, please move this index page and all its pages to German Wikisource and delete them here. Thanks. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 05:51, 5 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Bodhisattwa: strangely no. Heinrich Mann died in 1950 so it's not PD in Germany and can't be on de.ws (the book was published in 1903 so it's PD-US and kind of ok for the multilingual wikisource, see the warning on File:H.M. Diana.djvu). Meanwhile we should have some kind of system to tell when the transfer will be possible, maybe a category to transfer on de.ws on 2021. VIGNERON (talk) 06:33, 5 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oh! Ok. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 06:58, 5 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The category idea sounds very good to me! :) Alternatively, we could just make one project page. That will be easier to maintain and require us to create less categories, which will eventually become deprecated anyway. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 09:46, 5 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support And I think we can implement structure similar to structure of this Commons category. We have also a similar tree in plwikisource. Ankry (talk) 12:36, 5 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have created a tree starting from Category:To be moved to own language subdomain according to year. Feel free to add files/categories to it. Ankry (talk) 22:57, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-15[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

Some pages have templates that describe problems with that article. There is now more information for mobile readers and what is wrong with the article and how they could help fix it. [99]
You can now thank users for many more actions than edits to a page. This was one of the top ten requests in the Wishlist Survey last year. [100]
The sort order of categories will have errors for a short time starting Monday 9 April (UTC). We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a script to update the database. This will take between a few hours and a few days depending on wiki size. You can read more details. [101]
Tag filter titles will now work better on wikis where the tag filter title is in a language that is written in another direction than the language of that wiki. This could for example be an English title (written from left to right) on a Hebrew or an Arabic wiki (written from right to left). [102]

Problems

The bookmark icon for saved filters on the recent changes page disappeared because of new icon changes. This has now been fixed. [103]
For a week in March rollbacks got both the rollback and the undo tag on the recent changes page and other pages where you see tags. This has now been fixed. [104]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 April. It will be on all wikis from 12 April (calendar).
Patrolled edits now have three states instead of two. Recent changes filters are updated to show unpatrolled, autopatrolled and manually patrolled edits. [105]

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 April 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 11 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The iOS and Android apps will get synced reading lists later in April.

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

18:09, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-16[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.

Changes later this week

Profiling statistics for an abuse filter tell how often edits match the filter. The statistics for the abuse filters were reset after 10000 actions. Wikis can now decide to reset it more or less often. They can file a phabricator task to do so. [106]
Abuse filters will now treat integers and floats more precisely. For example, 5/2 was rounded down to 2 but will now be 2.5 and 2*4 will be the integer 8 and not the floating-point number 8.0. Division values are the only ones changed. For the rest only strict comparisons (=== and !==) will be affected leaving the values unchanged. [107][108]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 April. It will be on all wikis from 19 April (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 April 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 18 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The new PDF renderer could not create PDFs from books. Books are in this case collections of pages on a Wikimedia wiki. PediaPress will take over development of the books-to-PDF function. [109]
Pywikibot will no longer support Python 2.7.2 and 2.7.3. [110]
Volunteer developers can fill out the Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey. The last day is April 22 (UTC). This is a third-party service survey. See the privacy statement.

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

15:20, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Basque Wikisource created[edit]

Hello. eu: was created and I imported all pages from Category:Euskara and subcategories to there. These pages can now be deleted here, cf. User:MF-Warburg#Basque. Note that there are also still pages from other exported languages listed on my userpage which need to be deleted here. --MF-Warburg (talk) 20:18, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Great news! Seems very inspirating! Congratulations to all the users of Basque Wikisource, and especially to those who worked hard on setting and developing it! --Nigmont (talk) 22:07, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Great news! I'll dive into the deletions soon. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 11:28, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ooswesthoesbes, Ankry, VIGNERON, Zyephyrus:: I made a gadget called FastDelete, which can be used by admins to speedily delete many pages. If you activate it from your preferences, in every category there will be a red [X] next to every page which deletes it without confirmation, and a "DELETE ALL PAGES!" link which deletes all pages marked with [X]. Obviously, it's to be used with caution! :D Candalua (talk) 15:44, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously! Thanks, Candalua :) --Zyephyrus (talk) 18:58, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That would be very helpful for pages. Thank you! However, use them with caution for main namespace articles, as talk pages are usually forgotten with import. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 08:41, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I just tried it out for the remaining Basque and Oriya pages. It works great! :) --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 08:51, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Also, because it tends to clutter up Recent Changes, I propose that when it is necessary for test deletion, we temporarily upgrade the admin account to bot status, so RC remains easy to check. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 08:54, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ooswesthoesbes, Ankry, VIGNERON, Zyephyrus: That would be useful. On it.source we have activated the "flood flag", so sysops can assign themselves a kind of bot flag and remove it when they're done. However I don't see this option here, so we probably have to ask for it on phabricator to get it (example of the request). Otherwise I think only bureaucrats can assign the bot flag, but they cannot remove it, you need to request it on meta every time. If you guys support it, I can post the request. Candalua (talk) 10:16, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No objections from me. Ankry (talk) 10:18, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good to know that. I didn't know one can't remove a bot flag. In that case, the flood flag would be a very good option. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 10:19, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support obviously (I thought we already had it) VIGNERON (talk) 10:23, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Requested: phab:T193350. Candalua (talk) 18:07, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Very good! :) I kept track of it while I get phabricator mails. The way it will be deployed makes perfect sense to me. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 11:59, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It seems the config change is already applied. ~~Unsure, however, if the flag should not be also self-revokable? But, maybe assigning this right as temporary is enough. We should just remember of that and use with care.~~ Ankry (talk) 13:49, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's live! To use it, go to https://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AUserRights&user=your_username and check "pseudobot". You can specifiy an expiration period (defined by MediaWiki:Userrights-expiry-options, change it if you want more options). --Candalua (talk) 13:56, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ankry: the pages states "A * indicates that you cannot remove the group once you have added it, or vice versa." and shows a * on pseudobot. However this is plainly wrong, as I just assigned myself the flag and removed it successfully. :D --Candalua (talk) 14:00, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed the fallback language for Limburgish interface, which is Dutch, uses "bot" for both "bot" and "pseudobot". Got to fix that first on translatewiki before I use the function. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 14:03, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Candalua: Yes, just noticed that a user that already has the peudobot right has also the right to drop it. BTW, bureaucrats can revoke the bot flag. Ankry (talk) 14:05, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Meta confirms that too. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 14:48, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of things. (1) I recommend changing "pseudobot" to "flood" if you can, even if that means editing a local MediaWiki-space page. Nobody really knows what a "pseudobot" is. (2) I suspect if you look at [[Special:UserRights/yourusername]] while you have the flag, that "*" will disappear. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:33, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if we should change the name, given the multilingual nature of this site: many people use different interface languages, so to be consistent we should change it in each language. Anyway, just the five sysops need to know its meaning, and now they do :D. (For reference, the related messages are MediaWiki:Grouppage-flood, MediaWiki:Group-flood, MediaWiki:Group-flood-member). About the *, I suspect that probably they missed something in the configuration, because on it.source I do not see the *. Doesn't matter, as long as it works. --Candalua (talk) 17:08, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-17[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

All Wikipedias now have Page Previews.
The iOS and Android apps now have synced reading lists. This means you can save articles to a private list that can be seen on your other devices if you use the apps.
The icons in the 2010 wikitext editor have changed. [111]
The visual editor and the 2017 wikitext ask you to write an edit summary after you press Publish. This button now also shows an ellipsis. This is to show that pressing Publish is not the last step. [112]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 April. It will be on all wikis from 26 April (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 April 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 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

<mapframe> will come to most Wikipedias in May. This means that you can put interactive maps in the articles. Nine Wikipedias that use a strict version of flagged revisions will not get this feature in May. [113]
The rollback function could change. This was a German community request. All editors with rollback rights can leave feedback on the proposed solution. The last day to leave feedback is 4 May (UTC).

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

18:16, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-18[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

The parameter for unpatrolled edits in recent changes filters changed name. You might need to update saved filters and links. [114]

Problems

We are migrating wikis from Tidy to Remex. Because of a bug the 250 wikis which do not yet use Remex were switched on 23 April. This is two months early. This meant that pages with broken wikitext showed wrongly to readers. The bug was undone the next day. You can help fix broken wikitext to avoid this problem when your wiki switches. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. You can follow the process on Phabricator. [115]

Changes later this week

You will be able use CodeMirror in the 2017 wikitext editor on all wikis. CodeMirror helps with syntax highlighting. It has previously been a beta feature and only available on wikis with scripts that are written from left to right. [116]
When an administrator blocks someone they will have a calendar they can use to choose when the block ends. This is to make it easier to pick a specific date. [117]
You can soon turn on the Performance Inspector in the Editing section in your preferences. It shows information about the performance of pages. This could be the size of modules in the page, how many CSS selectors are defined on the page and how many are used, or the size of the images on the page. This tool is intended to help editors fix pages that load slowly. [118]
There is a new abuse filter function called equals_to_any. You can use it to check if its first argument is equal (===) to any of the following ones. For example you can use it to check if the page's namespace is amongst a given set of values in a more compact way than you could earlier. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 May. It will be on all wikis from 3 May (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 May 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 2 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikimedia Cloud Services team is working on a new project called Toolhub. The goal is to make it easier for Wikimedians to discover software tools they can use. You can leave feedback on the talk page or email jhareError in replyto template: Username not given. See Template:Ping for usage.wikimedia.org to leave private feedback.
All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in all namespaces will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 2 May. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Wikibooks wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch on 9 May. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. [119][120][121]

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

16:18, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Approval of Piedmontese Wikisource[edit]

Piedmontese Wikisource has been proposed for approval. See m:Talk:Language committee#Notification about proposed approval of Piedmontese Wikisource. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:48, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Great news, thank you StevenJ81. Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 07:31, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This project is approved. We will put in a phabricator task shortly. Keep working here until you hear that the new wiki has been created. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:50, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

phabricator:T194879. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:06, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

AdvancedSearch[edit]

From May 8, AdvancedSearch will be available as a beta feature in your wiki. The feature enhances the search page through an advanced parameters form and aims to make existing search options more visible and accessible for everyone. AdvancedSearch is a project by WMDE Technical Wishes. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well in your work!

Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:53, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-19[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.

Recent changes

The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. It is now easier to find nearby places that need pictures. It helps you with direct uploads and title and category suggestions. The app only works on Android phones. [122]

Problems

The abuse filters had a problem with blocks where you had changed how long they last. It used the default length everywhere. This was in late April. Abuse filter users should make sure the right block length is used and change them if needed. This is only for filters where how long blocks last had been changed. [123]

Changes later this week

The advanced search function beta feature will be on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. [124]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 May. It will be on all wikis from 10 May (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 8 May 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 9 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 16 May. Other wikis will switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. [125][126]

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

16:27, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-20[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

Dynamic maps are now available on most Wikipedias. Labels on maps can also be in different languages.
The new Advanced Search interface is now available as a Beta Feature on all wikis. This makes it easier to learn about and to use many of the powerful options in our search. Feedback is appreciated. [127]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 May. It will be on all wikis from 17 May (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 16 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

In the mobile view, warnings for when something is wrong with a page are not as clear as they should be. The developers are working on this. You can give feedback and suggestions.
The developers are working on making the Wikipedia Android app available in more languages. You can give feedback, suggestions and help test it. Read more on mediawiki.org [128]

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

22:22, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-21[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 later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 May. It will be on all wikis from 24 May (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 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

It could become easier to reference different pages of a book in an article. You can give feedback. The last day for feedback is 27 May.

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

17:33, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-22[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.

Recent changes

You can now use global preferences on most wikis. This means you can set preferences for all wikis at the same time. Before this you had to change them on each individual wiki. Global preferences will come to the Wikipedias later this week. [129][130]
It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked. [131]
Wikidata now supports lexicographical data. This helps describe words.
There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups. [132]
Some rare invisible Unicode characters have recently been banned from page titles. This includes soft hyphens (U+00AD) and left-to-right (U+2066) and right-to-left (U+2067) isolate markers. Existing pages with these characters will soon be moved by a script. [133]
There's a new Wikimedia Foundation team to support the Wikimedia technical communities. It's called the Technical Engagement team. Most of the team members did similar work in other teams before this. [134]

Problems

Some translatable pages are showing old translations instead of latest ones. The cause of this issue has been fixed. We will update all pages automatically to show the latest translations. [135]

Changes later this week

There will be a new special page named PasswordPolicies. This page gives information about the password rules for each user group on that wiki. [136]
A new way to see moved paragraphs in diffs is coming to most wikis. This is to make it easier to find the moved paragraphs and the changes in them. [137]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 May. It will be on all wikis from 31 May (calendar).
Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. This is complex. The tool will now disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. It has warned about this in the JavaScript console since February. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [138]

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 29 May 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 30 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Content Translation drafts which have not been updated in over a year will be removed. This allows other users to translate those articles. [139]
A survey is collecting information on what users think about how Wikimedia wiki pages are loaded. This information could be used in future development. [140]
Some wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 30 May and 13 June. Wikis with fewer than 100 linter issues in the main namespace in all high-priority linter categories will switch. This includes Wikidata. Tidy will probably be removed on all wikis in the first week of July. [141][142]

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

12:40, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Introducing Toolhub[edit]

I apologize if this message is not in your preferred language. Please help us translate this message.

What does your participation on the Wikimedia projects look like? Do you edit articles? Upload files? Patrol vandalism? Translate articles? Translate interface messages? Do you organize people, online or offline? Do you train new editors, or new trainers? Do you write code?

There are many different ways to contribute to Wikimedia – more than you would expect just from reading Wikipedia articles. Over the past several years, volunteers have developed technical tools that help Wikimedians improve content, patrol vandalism, and perform many other tasks. They make it possible to do what the wiki software alone cannot accomplish. Without these tools, many of our projects would slow down to a crawl.

I am very happy to announce a new project called Toolhub which seeks to create a searchable index of these tools in all languages. We are building this tool catalog based on what our communities need. If you would like to help, please take a look at m:Toolhub and review the question at the top of the page. You can also leave feedback in any language on the talkpage. You can also email me private feedback. Harej (WMF) (talk) 01:16, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-23[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

The MonoBook skin has been optimised for mobile devices. It now looks different. [143]
Planet Wikimedia collects blogs about Wikimedia. It will now use the Rawdog feed aggregator to do this instead of Planet. [144][145]
Redirect links in Special:WhatLinksHere now link to the original page and not the target page. This was done earlier and changed the used messages on some pages. This was a problem for wikis that customized the message. A new change fixed this by using the old messages with one more parameter for customization. Wikis that already changed their customized messages will have to move the customization back again. [146]

Problems

You will not be able to edit some wikis between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 13 June. You can see if your wiki is one of them.
MassMessage did not work 24–28 May. This is also why last week's Tech News was late. [147]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 June. It will be on all wikis from 7 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 5 June 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 6 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This is planned to happen in June or early July. [148][149]

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

21:54, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-24[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

In the Wikipedia app for Android or iOS users can create reading lists. The reading lists can be seen on different devices if you are logged in to your account. There is now a browser extension so you can add pages to your reading list from a web browser. At the moment it works with Firefox and Chrome. [150]
There is a new version of Pywikibot. Pywikibot is a tool to automate tasks on MediaWiki wikis. [151]

Problems

The MonoBook skin was changed to make it work better for mobile users. This caused some problems. The change was rolled back to fix them. The new version is now back on the wikis. MonoBook users can opt out from the new responsive design. [152]

Changes later this week

The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. For most wikis this will happen on 18 June. For the rest it will happen on 25 June. [153][154]

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

Meetings

You can join the Readers Web team IRC office hour. There you can discuss tools to contribute on the mobile web for the existing MediaWiki skins. The meeting will be on 18 June at 16:00 (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 June 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 13 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You will be able to move local wiki files to Commons and keep their original data intact. This is planned to come to the first wikis in June.

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

21:55, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-25[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.

Recent changes

Syntax highlighting has been a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It is now a normal feature. It is based on CodeMirror. [155]

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 19 June 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 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Some old web browsers will not be able to read the Wikimedia wikis. This is because they use an insecure way to connect to them. This means that we get less security for everyone else too. This affects about 0.08% of all traffic to the Wikimedia wikis. This affects for example those who read Wikipedia on a PlayStation 3. [156][157]
The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. Because there is no new MediaWiki version this week it will happen on 25 June for most wikis. For the rest it will happen in early July. [158][159]
All wikis that have not already done so will switch to use the Remex parsing library on 5 July. This is to replace Tidy. You can help fix remaining errors. [160]

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

21:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

File transfer feature[edit]

This announcement seems interesting to me: file transfers commons <--> sourceswiki are pain sometimes and they are not rare (however, it seems to me that only transfer to Commons is supperte now). Files from Commons are transferred here when they are found to be not PD in the source country, and after files become PD in source country they transferred in the opposite direction. To enable this feature for testing a community decission is required. So I'm pinging admins and recently active users for comments (it you have an opinion about this). Ankry (talk) 20:28, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@BRUTE, Candalua, Doug, -jkb-, Jusjih:@LadyInGrey, Mahagaja, Ooswesthoesbes, Satdeep Gill, Tpt:@VIGNERON, Yann, Zyephyrus: @Nigmont, Giakosh, Ninjastrikers, Kumincir, Salicyna:@Lionslayer, Phyoekyaw, Rosacentifolia, Mahagaja, Shypoetess:@Reptilien.19831209BE1, Jimregan, Juan renombrado:

Support I actually have a potential candidate for a commons->sourceswiki move, so I'd be willing to try it out. -- Jimregan (talk) 20:49, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Jimregan: I am afraid (looking and the tool documentation) that it supports only transfers to Commons at the moment :( However, this is not clearly stated. Ankry (talk) 06:41, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ankry: I support it either way. They usually limit the scope when they launch new things, so hopefully the other direction will come along sooner or later. -- Jimregan (talk) 10:40, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support, it seems to be a very useful and helpful feature for Wikisource, so I also wish it to be implemented and tested here. --Nigmont (talk) 21:04, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have at present no specially idea where to use it but I think it will be worthy to test this feature. so I will support implementing it here. -jkb- (talk) 21:59, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sure, could be useful. Yann (talk) 22:06, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support and many thanks! --Zyephyrus (talk) 07:59, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tpt (talk) 08:05, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 08:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Candalua (talk) 08:31, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support ပီကေ (PK) (talk) 09:57, 26 June 2018 (UTC)Phyoekyaw[reply]
Support Lionslayer (talk) 11:36, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Useful. Ninjastrikers (talk) 13:07, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Salicyna (talk) 15:06, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The feature should be active tomorrow, see phab:T198594. Ankry (talk) 17:17, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-26[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

PAWS, our JupyterHub system, got an upgrade and a logo. Several bugs should be fixed.

Problems

When a link text was in italics or had other formatting you could sometimes not edit it in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [161][162]

Changes later this week

Content translation users who translate between any two of Arabic, English, French, Japanese and Russian will be asked to be part of a research project. This is to create better tools for translating articles. [163]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 June. It will be on all wikis from 28 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 26 June 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 27 June 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.

23:10, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Page colouring in index not working for some pages[edit]

As it was noticed yesterday on some wikisources, some pages are no longer coloured in index. Eg. Page:'E Lluce-luce.djvu/165 in Index:'E Lluce-luce.djvu. This problem affects mainly older pages (not edited since 2015), bot also some newer ones and according to phab:T198470 it is a delayed effect of last year changes in proofreadpage. Billinghurst and I think that the best way to get rid of this problem is to null-edit ALL pages in the Page: namespace (purging them is not enough).

If you agree and wish me to perform this task, please (@Zyephyrus, Ooswesthoesbes, -jkb-:) set the bot flag for User:AkBot as the required null-edits change the page internal structure and are non-null actually. Without the flag this job would flood RecentChanges. (pywikibot's touch.py does not set the flag automatically, but I am aware of this.)

Touching all pages will update their structure to the newest one and, potentially, will allow us to avoid similar page structure-related problems in future.

As there is not many pages here, the job would take few hours at the highest speed. -- Ankry (talk) 07:31, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done, see https://wikisource.org/wiki/Special:UserRights/AkBot, for the first time without any expiration, this can be done later. Thank you, -jkb- (talk) 08:32, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Very good :) --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 14:08, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tidy to RemexHtml[edit]

The Parsing team will be replacing Tidy with RemexHtml at this wiki on 5 July 2018.

Some pages at this wiki use outdated HTML. This change may change the appearance of those pages. Special:LintErrors has a complete list of affected pages.

Read this e-mail message for more information. Read the instructions at mw:Help:Extension:Linter. You can ask questions at mw:Talk:Parsing/Replacing Tidy. Thank you for helping fix these problems.

m:User:Elitre (WMF) 14:38, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-27[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

The database for tags will be changed. This will happen on 2 July on French Wikipedia and 9 July on all other wikis. Please report if recent changes get slower or you can't save edits. This could especially affect editors who use the database on ToolForge. [164]

Problems

Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a database problem. [165]

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 3 July 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 4 July 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.

00:46, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Requesting bot flag for User:Revibot[edit]

Revibot is a global bot for fixing double redirects. Since no bots seems to be fixing them, I would like to help automatically fix them - except I would like a bot flag to hide them from RecentChanges, and I can run it at a faster rate. If you want it running without flag, that's fine for me as well.

Without bot flag, I will be running them at 1 edit per minute, and with the bot flag, I will be running at 6 edits per minute. (Usual practice per global bot policy.) Thanks for the consideration!

— regards, Revi 17:35, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Ankry (talk) 17:15, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support --Candalua (talk) 10:05, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Zyephyrus, -jkb-, Ooswesthoesbes: any objections? Ankry (talk) 06:48, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not at all. -revi is a trusted user and the bot doesn't seem to be malfunctioning. As the request is nearly one month old, I granted the bot flag. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 07:51, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Zyephyrus (talk) 09:35, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

too late for me :-) but OK, regards -jkb- (talk) 10:18, 26 July 2018 (UTC) [reply]

Need assistance in importing content[edit]

Hello, I hope this is the right place to ask for help. Recently I've uploaded this at Commons, which is a constitution of one of the states in Malaysia, written in Bahasa Melayu(ms). I am actually clueless how to import this to wikisource since ms does not have its own page. Please help? Many thanks in return. Froswo (talk) 08:33, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What would be the reason to import it to here? --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 09:04, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-28[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

WebM video files have smaller file size but still be of the same quality. Creating WebM files will take longer time. [166]
The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This was supposed to already have happened but was delayed. For most wikis this will happen on 9 July. For the rest it will happen on 16 July. [167]
All wikis now use the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy. This could cause errors. You can help fix the errors. [168]

Problems

When you rolled back an edit it could get both the Rollback and Undo tags. This has been fixed. [169]
Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed. [170]

Changes later this week

When you edit a link in the visual editor there will be two separate buttons to change which page the link goes to (target) or its text (label). [171][172]
On the mobile version you can find a link to an editor's contributions from their user page. Now this will work even if they haven't created a user page. [173]
When you edit a discussion on the mobile version you sometimes get your signature automatically added. This will now not happen if you have already added a signature manually. This is to avoid double signatures. [174]
Structured discussions toolbars will have more style options. [175]
When you look at Wikimedia code in Gerrit there will be a new interface. It is on by default for new users. This is also true for developers. This is to make it easier to understand what is happening. [176]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 July. It will be on all wikis from 12 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 10 July 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 11 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Today all administrators can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. There will be a new user group for editing CSS and JavaScript. Administrators will no longer automatically be able to do this. This is because it is a security risk when all administrator accounts can edit JavaScript even if they never plan to or do not know how it works. You can read more. [177]
Page previews will be on by default for new accounts. [178]

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

23:10, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Global preferences are available[edit]

Global preferences are now available, you can set them by visiting your new global preferences page. Visit mediawiki.org for information on how to use them and leave feedback. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

19:20, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

File rename[edit]

@Ankry, ‎Zyephyrus, ‎Ooswesthoesbes: Please, rename File:Gesammelteromane09mann.djvu to File:H.M.-Novellen 1.djvu (for consistency with File:H.M.-Novellen 2.djvu). KäthesBücher (talk) 20:16, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done Ankry (talk) 21:46, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-29[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

You can now use global preferences on Wikimedia wikis. You can set them on the global preferences page. [179]
You can now see a new log of pages being created at Special:Log/create. It includes pages which are later deleted. It is now available on all Wikimedia wikis except Commons and Wikidata. [180]
You can see how many pageviews a wiki had from specific countries. The Wikistats2 maps have now been updated. [181]

Changes later this week

Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change. [182]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (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 July 17 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 July 18 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can read more and leave feedback.
You can use <inputbox> to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead of prefix:Page name you will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

16:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-30[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

When you log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [183]
Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [184]
Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [185]

Changes later this week

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

09:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

new gadget[edit]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T199288

Maybe some of you noticed that after an edit in the Page namespace, page colouring in the corresponding index tend to disappear (index purge fixes this}. The problem is tracked in phab:T199288. However, if somebody is especially troubled by it, User:Zdzislaw and me created a gadget that is workaround for the problem. You can enable this gadget in yuor preferences (Preferences -> Gadgets -> Interface tools -> Automatically purge an index page when page proofread status colors are missing). This workaround should be removed once T199288 is fixed. Ankry (talk) 06:58, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-31[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.

Recent changes

The design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems. [186]

Problems

Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [187][188]
Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [189][190]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 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 31 July 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 August at 15:00 (UTC) as well as at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

After a community discussion, a new group for users will be created. "Interface administrators" will be the only users allowed to edit interface pages like MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Common.js. This is done to avoid technical issues and improve security. That change will be effective by the end of August 2018.

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

14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

New user group for editing sitewide CSS / JS[edit]

(Please help translate to your language)

Hi all!

To improve the security of our readers and editors, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which contain code that is executed in the browsers of users of the site.) A new user group, interface-admin, has been created. Starting four weeks from now, only members of this group will be able edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage).

You can learn more about the motivation behind the change here.

Please add users who need to edit CSS/JS to the new group (this can be done the same way new administrators are added, by stewards or local bureaucrats). This is a dangerous permission; a malicious user or a hacker taking over the account of a careless interface-admin can abuse it in far worse ways than admin permissions could be abused. Please only assign it to users who need it, who are trusted by the community, and who follow common basic password and computer security practices (use strong passwords, do not reuse passwords, use two-factor authentication if possible, do not install software of questionable origin on your machine, use antivirus software if that's a standard thing in your environment).

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 17:45, 30 July 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)[reply]

My idea is that we need one or two admins / non admins at least in this group here, which starts now. Any suggestions? (As far as I know the admin rights are not nessesary for it; just users who know what it is.) -jkb- (talk) 20:31, 14 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think this flag may be assigned to admins by 'crats just on request, when they need it per 'crats discretion (like in many other wikis). Do you wish to suggest some non-admin candidates? Or do you think we should assign it to some users in advance for the case when no `crat is active? Ankry (talk) 08:01, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, as this was something any admin could do prior to this - in my opinion - superfluous user group. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 08:30, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ooswesthoesbes: I don't agree with that… The point of separating these rights into another group is so that there are fewer people able to edit JS and CSS files. By editing those, people could insert malicious scripts, off-site tools (which could violate user privacy), and so on. The entire idea is to make it so that fewer people have those rights, so if a hacker is able to take over an admin account, they can't do as much damage as they could if they were able to edit those JS/CSS pages. Also, out of the current 14 admins, only 5 have edited pages in the MediaWiki namespace within the last year, so the majority of admins have shown no need for the ability to edit those. If they should get the need to do it regularly, they can request interface admin rights, if they only need it for one-off things, they can request an edit by an interface administrator just like any other user. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 11:00, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I'm concerned, any admin who has edited MediaWiki pages regularly in the past should just be given this flag once requested. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 12:00, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Enable translate extension?[edit]

Hi folks, I would like to suggest enabling the translate extension here on oldwikisource. It would make it much easier to translate pages in the Wikisource namespace, like policies and guidelines. It is already in use on many major Wikimedia projects, like Wikidata, Meta and Wikimedia Commons, and is a well-tested and stable piece of software that I think would have the potential to improve this project. What do you think? Jon Harald Søby (talk) 22:58, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support I think it may be a good idea. However, two problems: (1) we may have not many users able to manage translations and (2) some languages used here may be not supported by wiki software (eg. gbm on this page). Ankry (talk) 05:46, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ankry: (1) It's not very difficult after a bit of practice, and for a small project like this the workload wouldn't be unbearable for even one or two people. (2) That should be adressed, but it is quite an easy fix. Do you know if there is a comprehensive list of languages used here somewhere? Jon Harald Søby (talk) 12:23, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Jon Harald Søby: I am afraid most users here edit accidentally only, so no chance for practice :( And I think most languages used here are languages without subdomain (eh. Khmer, Hindi, Mingrelian, Urdu). I am afraid it will be hard to find translators. I also think of possibility tu use this extension to translate some common templates ({{header}}.{{Author}}, {{disambig}}) as I encoutered needs for multilingual pages that use them. And also documentation for basic templates like eg. {{rh}} or {{gesperrt}}. Ankry (talk) 13:16, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ankry: I was thinking more of the "translation admin" side, that's what can be a bit confusing at first. Translation itself is easy-peasy, anyone can do it with minimal prerequisites (the only thing being that you need to know basic wiki syntax, but that goes for pretty much anything around here). When there is a call for translation on page, it's very easy to get started – I myself have translated many pages that I wouldn't have thought to do otherwise just because it was possible (and easy!). And yes, the extension can indeed be used for those cases you mention! Jon Harald Søby (talk) 13:32, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral. I have no valid reason to oppose this, but I also believe it isn't going to be used that much. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 09:52, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ooswesthoesbes: Aye, but that's not necessarily a problem. I'm thinking it would be useful for meta pages, the ones that tell users how to get started. And since this is sort of the Incubator for languages that don't have Wikisources yet, I believe it would be useful to have that information in more languages than just English. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 12:23, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support Altho I agree that in fact, there will be very little translating actually done, this is an ideal wiki for the extension. Good thinking, Jon. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support --Zyephyrus (talk) 07:59, 8 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support though I don't know whether it is needed right now, but in future seems to be useful. --Nigmont (talk) 00:16, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks folks! Since it has been a week since the suggestion and no objections, I've created a task and a patch to add the Translate extension here. :-) Jon Harald Søby (talk) 09:46, 13 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Very good! :) --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 11:24, 13 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And now it has been deployed. :-) For it to be used though, we need some translation administrators who can mark pages for translation (bureaucrats can assign that right). I'll fill out a request for it for myself on Wikisource:Administrators. :-) Jon Harald Søby (talk) 12:19, 13 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-32[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

Special:NewPages now has the OOUI look. [191]

Problems

The MediaWiki version that was released two weeks ago was late to some Wikimedia wikis. This was because of bugs. It was on all wikis 30 July. [192][193]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 August. It will be on all wikis from 9 August.

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 7 August 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 8 August 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.

19:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-33[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

CSS in templates can now be stored in a separate page on all wikis. This is called TemplateStyles. This is to make it easier to edit how templates look. [194]

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 14 August 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 15 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can read more. You can leave feedback on the talk page. [195]

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

17:53, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-34[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.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 August. It will be on all wikis from 23 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 22 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The 2018 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
Legacy JavaScript global variables have been deprecated for seven years. They will soon be removed from all wikis. Gadgets and scripts that use them will stop working. You can test your community's gadgets on "group0" wikis. For example Test Wikipedia or mediawiki.org. The legacy JavaScript global variables are already disabled there. You can read the migration guide to fix old scripts. [196]

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

16:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Enable arbitrary Wikidata access for oldwikisource[edit]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T202543
Resolved

Hi again, folks! I think it would be a good idea to enable what's called arbitrary Wikidata access for this wiki. This means that one can build modules that pull information from Wikidata to be used here. I am working on Module:Interwiki, which would let you put {{Interwiki|qid=Q16503}} on this very page to get the interlanguage list on the left. However, since arbitrary access isn't enabled here yet, the module doesn't work. I think this could also be useful for many other uses as well (for example infoboxes on author pages), so therefore I would like to ask you to support this proposal. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 14:28, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support Absolutely! Candalua (talk) 14:48, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 18:43, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support If mul.ws links can't be included in d: yet, at the very least we can include them locally thru the module. Good thinking again, Jon. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:06, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support, looks very good for me too. --Nigmont (talk) 21:02, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support Ankry (talk) 15:41, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support--Jusjih (talk) 00:14, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This change has now been put in place (thanks, Amir!), and I got the Interwiki module working and have put it on this page. This change also enables us to create automatic infoboxes for authors, for instance, using data from Wikidata. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 12:50, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

New Phab task for mul.ws subdomain[edit]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T202595

Please see and comment there. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:13, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T202794

And this, too. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:32, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Editing of sitewide CSS/JS is only possible for interface administrators from now[edit]

(Please help translate to your language)

Hi all,

as announced previously, permission handling for CSS/JS pages has changed: only members of the interface-admin (Interface administrators) group, and a few highly privileged global groups such as stewards, can edit CSS/JS pages that they do not own (that is, any page ending with .css or .js that is either in the MediaWiki: namespace or is another user's user subpage). This is done to improve the security of readers and editors of Wikimedia projects. More information is available at Creation of separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS. If you encounter any unexpected problems, please contact me or file a bug.

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 12:40, 27 August 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-35[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

You can now see moved paragraphs in diffs in the mobile view. It also works on all languages in the desktop view. [197]
Bureaucrats on all Wikimedia wikis can now remove the interface admin user right. [198]

Problems

Some diffs show lines in the wrong order. The developers are working on fixing it. [199]

Changes later this week

The message you see when you thank a user will change. This is to make it easier to understand. [200]
AWB will stop adding using AWB in the edit summary. Instead it will add a tag that says AWB. [201]
Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title. [202]
Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age. [203]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 August. It will be on all wikis from 30 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 28 August 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 29 August at 15:00 (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 up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

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

16:16, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Setting languages of pages[edit]

Since we now have mw:Extension:Translate, I've changed the page information for several pages to correspond to the correct language. On my talk, another user suggested that setting author pages to a particular language may not be a good idea. In retrospect, I think maybe setting them to mul may be best since the interface on an author page should be multilingual. What do others think? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:18, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support the idea.--Jusjih (talk) 04:37, 9 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-36[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.

Recent changes

There is a new user right for users who can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. Before this all admins could edit CSS and JavaScript. This was a security risk. This group is called interface administrators. Administrators can delete user CSS and JavaScript pages. [204][205]
There will be an A/B test on the Wikipedia mobile website. It starts this week. It tests how we show templates that show information about an article. The test will last two weeks. [206][207]
You can now use different CSS rules for different skins when you edit templates. This is because of TemplateStyles. [208]
wp10 in ORES is now called articlequality. [209]
When you get a new message on your talk page you get a yellow message in the toolbar. The preference to show or not show this has been removed. [210]

Problems

UploadWizard had problems with campaigns. Users could not upload files. This has now been fixed. [211]
You can get a notification when a link is made to a page you created. This has not worked since June. It was fixed last week. [212]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 September. It will be on all wikis from 6 September (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 5 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department will work on advanced mobile editing. You can read more about this and other things they plan to work on over the next year. You can also see the presentation.
The RelatedSites extension will be removed from Wikivoyage.
Unused projects on the Wikimedia Cloud virtual private server will be removed. This will happen in October. Projects can be marked if they are being used. [213]

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

16:47, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Read-only mode for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October[edit]

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

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data centre. 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 do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre 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, 12 September 2018. On Wednesday, 10 October 2018, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop when we switch. 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 up to an hour on Wednesday, 12 September and Wednesday, 10 October. 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 13 September and Thursday 11 October).
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 10 September 2018 and 8 October 2018. 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:Johan(WMF) (talk)

13:33, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-37[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

When you added or edited a template with the visual editor the input boxes were very big. This has been fixed. The input boxes will now be smaller until you click on them. Then they will change size to fit the text. [214]

Problems

Some diffs showed lines in the wrong order. This was fixed last week. [215]
Marking a cross-wiki notification as read didn't work every time. The other wiki was not updated. This has now been fixed. [216]
<maplink> did not work for a few days. This was because of a bug. This has now been fixed. [217]
{{subst:REVISIONUSER}} is used by some templates. For a period edits saved with {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} would save the previous user's name and not your username. This is now fixed. Edits made before the bug was fixed will still be wrong and need to be corrected. [218]
When you move a page the title still shows the old page name. The developers are working on fixing this. [219]

Changes later this week

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

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 Septmber 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 12 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The developers work on making the wikis work better on mobile phones. There is a list of common problems when making content easier to read in the mobile view. You can add things to the page and ask others to help.

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

22:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Vandalism[edit]

For admins: please take care and keep watching at least for the main pages of the Wikisource, since in the recent time some vandal: User:185.232.31.100, has vandalized some main pages. I reverted those vandal edits, but the vandal should be prevented from doing the same. --Nigmont (talk) 02:47, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected Main Page/Bahasa Melayu, Main Page/Afrikaans and Wikisource:Armâneascâ. Please go to Wikisource:Protection requests for any follow up.--Jusjih (talk) 02:42, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-38[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

The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. Images uploaded using Nearby are now automatically added to the associated Wikidata item. You can browse other images on Commons. You can see your achievements and your upload statistics. It has also fixed some bugs. [220]
MediaWiki web requests now have a time limit of 60 seconds for GET requests and 200 seconds for POST requests. [221]

Problems

You could not see the menu on the notifications page on the mobile version. This has now been fixed. [222]

Changes later this week

Special:AncientPages can hide disambiguation pages. [223]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 September. It will be on all wikis from 20 September (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 19 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The developers are testing new mobile web navigation. You can use it and give feedback.

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

21:58, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

IP vandal creating bad user and talk pages[edit]

Could an admin deal with 2607:FB90:54A9:200A:A13D:D345:383E:EFB5 and delete all their page creations? Thanks! Graham87 (talk) 07:37, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Graham87: Blocked, nucked, reported to stewards. Thanks for the report and sorry for delay. Ankry (talk) 09:21, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-39[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.

Changes later this week

The preferences form will change to use the standard look. If you see any problems please report them on Phabricator. [224]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 September. It will be on all wikis from 27 September (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 26 September 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.

15:23, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-40[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

Ordinary pages can no longer be loaded as javascript. You could do this using ?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript in the URL. Only fully protected pages in the MediaWiki: namespace or user javascript subpages can be loaded as javascript now. This is for better security. [225][226]

Problems

New and updated translations from will not reach the wikis for a while. You can still translate messages on translatewiki.net. The Wikimedia wikis will be updated with the new translations later. This is because of work on the translation system. [227][228]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 October. It will be on all wikis from 4 October (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 3 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Search Platform team. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 UTC. See how to join if you want to know how the search function works or have questions.

Future changes

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

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

17:35, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Words hyphenated across pages in Wikisource are now joined[edit]

Hi everybody. I forgot to include this site in the mass-message that was sent about this change, so I'm now copy-pasting it here:

The ProofreadPage extension can now join together a word that is split between a page and the next.

In the past, when a page was ending with "concat-" and the next page was beginning with "enation", the resulting transclusion would have been "concat- enation", and a special template like d:Q15630535 had to be used to obtain the word "concatenation".

Now the default behavior has changed: the hyphen at the end of a page is suppressed and in this case no space is inserted, so the result of the transclusion will be: "concatenation", without the need of a template. The "joiner" character is defined by default as "-" (the regular hyphen), but it is possible to change this. A template may still be needed to deal with particular cases when the hyphen needs to be preserved. --Candalua (talk) 08:10, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I would propose to use  as the joiner character instead of a normal hyphen – that is called a "soft hyphen", and is used as a marker for where words should be split in case they are too long to fit on a line. Semantically I think that would be a bit more correct than just the normal hyphen. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 14:36, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think that using  here is unnecessary complication, especially for users entering the text:

The character is finally removed in main namespace, so at this point it is technically irrelevant what character is used
Entering binary version of  (not the &-s-h-y-; 5-character HTML entity) may be a bit complicated
I am not sure whether the  5-character HTML entity can be even used as joiner, technically
Even if the above is possible, I do not think that both versions: binary and the HTML entity  could be used interchangeably here (note: - cannot be used here instead of - now)
This is not a big difference for displaying at the end of page in the Page namespace. However, only at this point the above note concerning correctness is indeed valid. The disappearing-in-the-middle-of-line function of the  will not be used here as the joiner will appear only at the end of last page line.

Summarizing, I think disadvantages predominate here. Ankry (talk) 07:11, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bot status for JhsBot[edit]

Hi, I'd like to request bot status for my bot, JhsBot. It uses the normal Pywikibot framework, and I will use it to fix various things in "my areas". However, I have ben running the bot for more than 10 years, so if there are other bot tasks that need doing, I'm more than willing to help in other areas too (as long as I know how). Jon Harald Søby (talk) 10:57, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 11:04, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Candalua (talk) 11:58, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support--Jusjih (talk) 03:05, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 15:29, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-41[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

The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. You can use the Programs and Events Dashboard or the Fountain instead. [229]

Problems

There was a problem when you copied and pasted from a table with the visual editor. It could add href where it shouldn't be. This has now been fixed. [230]

Changes later this week

Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 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.

23:38, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-42[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.

Problems

Some pages, edits and users disappeared for a short while after the server switch. Missing content and users was fixed within a day. Some preferences and other things might take a few more days to fix. [231]
Wikis are updated with new and updated translations from translatewiki.net again. This will happen once a week. The developers are working on fixing the problem so we can have translation updates more often again. [232]

Changes later this week

When you create an abuse filter that prevents edits you can now write a specific error message for it. Before this all abuse filters that prevented edits had the same error message. [233]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 October. It will be on all wikis from 18 October (calendar).

Meetings

There will be no more meetings with the Editing team. This is because not enough Wikimedians were interested. To tell developers which bugs you think are the most important you can use Phabricator as normal. [234]
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 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.

22:40, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-43[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.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 October. It will be on all wikis from 25 October (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 24 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.

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

23:11, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-44[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 post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
The wikis now have a content security policy report. This means that you might get a warning in your javascript console when you load external resources in your user scripts. For security reasons it is recommended that you don't do this. It might not be possible to load external resources in your scripts in the future. [235]

Problems

Your watchlist can show which changes you have already seen. This did not work for a few days. It has been fixed. [236]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 October. It will be on all wikis from 1 November (calendar).
The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer available. It will be removed from Special:Preferences. It has not been the standard editor for a long time. It was replaced by the 2010 wikitext editor. [237][238]

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 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.

20:09, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-45[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 can now use TemplateWizard to edit templates. This works only with the 2010 wikitext editor and not in the visual editor or the 2017 wikitext editor. If you click on you can enter the information in a pop-up. You can turn on TemplateWizard in your beta feature preferences. [239]

Changes later this week

You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. The interface for the two-column edit conflict will change. You can read more.
When you edit with the visual editor you can use the "Automatic" citation tab. This helps you generate citations. You will now be able to write plain text citations or the title of a journal article or a book in this tab. This will search the Crossref and WorldCat databases and add the top result. [240]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 November. It will be on all wikis from 8 November (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 7 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.

17:29, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

mul.ws is confusing[edit]

See this thread on the en.ws Scriptorium: "I see, thanks for the explanation very much, now I understand it better. The biggest problem I see with this site is that it was necessary to explain it at all, as the reader does not get this information on the main page and in fact I did not find it even after quite a long time of searching. I was not able to find any page explaining the system of the site, its rules, anything. As a reader I am directed to various single-language sites and do not get the information that multi-lingual works can be found there and how/where I can find them. So I got the impression that adding there some work is like throwing it into a black hole :-( --Jan Kameníček (talk) 07:20, 20 October 2018 (UTC)" We should really fix this via revamping the main page. Thoughts? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:18, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We can't do an awful lot to the main page as it has to be in sync with the portals of www.wikipedia.org, www.wiktionary.org etc.

Instead, we could make sure the help pages are actually helpful. --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 09:48, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please note, that if a multilingual book can be split into separate single-language parts, publishing appropriate parts in various single-language wikisources is an alternative and commonly utilized way to present such books. It is likely that readers do not know that the book is multilingual why searching for the texts and making the content easier to find for readers is a strong argument. Few examples of books that are done this way:

Ankry (talk) 11:08, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-46[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.

Recent changes

Some old mobile browsers can use the watchlist again. This has not worked for a while. These browsers are called grade C browsers. This helps for example Windows Phone 8.1 with Internet Explorer and Lumia 535 with Windows 10. [241]

Problems

You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. Users who use this view saw the edit conflict resolution page when they wanted to see a preview. This has been fixed. [242][243][244]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 November. It will be on all wikis from 15 November (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 14 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You can use the content translation tool to translate articles. The developers are working on a new version. One of the changes will be a maintenance category. Articles where users add a lot of text from machine translation without changing it will be in that category. This is so the community can review it. The users will also have been warned before they publish the article that it has a lot of unchanged text from machine translations. [245]

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

19:22, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web[edit]

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Please help translate to your language

Hello,

In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.

What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.

For template editors we have some recommendations on how to make templates that are mobile-friendly and also further documentation on our work so far.

If you have questions about formatting templates for mobile, please leave a note on the project talk page or file a task in Phabricator and we will help you.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For boldest users...[edit]

While working again a little bit in nap pages, I'm updating a personal "maxi-gadget", that emulates many of itwikisource editing tools. Consider that is a tool designed mainly to help and fasten nsPage edits, and that it is poorly documented, being mainly for personal use; it doesn't manages but latin languages; but if any of you would like to test it.... simply add importScript("User:Alex_brollo/common.js"); into your User:UserName/common.js and (prudently!) go. --Alex brollo (talk) 18:11, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Grazie! —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:56, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some doc about that tool (in Italian) here: User:Alex brollo/BAT man. By now, it implements too "eis", the Edit In Sequence itwikisource environment (briefly quoted into Community Wishlist Survey 2019). Alex brollo (talk) 06:57, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf, Ruthven: Update I'm very frustrated, I found that "add importScript("User:Alex_brollo/common.js");" doen't run for some users (while it runs into my secondary test user User:Alex brollo bis). I'm trying to fix the bug. --Alex brollo (talk) 17:38, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Not sure why that is/isn't working myself. Does copy/paste of the raw code work? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:41, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I logged in with my bot account User:BrolloBot; the trick "add importScript("User:Alex_brollo/common.js");" didn't run; copying the whole page User:Alex brollo/common.js into User:BrolloBot/common.js runs! I don't understand why, but it runs. So, try too to copy the whole User:Alex brollo/common.js into your personal common.js subpage; if it runs, you'll see a long list of small buttons at the bottom of the page. They are edit buttons, but their appearance in view mode too isn't a mistake :-) --BrolloBot (talk) 17:50, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Alex brollo: unsure if this is the case, but maybe related: while testing some gadgets I noticed that user/common.js changes sometimes take effect after many hours. Probably due to some caching issues, probably unrelated to local browser cache. I did not observe such issues with gadgets. Maybe it is worth to convert your code to a gadget, or a set of gadgets? Ankry (talk) 02:23, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Alex brollo: I think that I've solved. In my case, the issue was with the way I'd written my PersonalButtons. I do upload the the javascript with mw.loader.load('/w/index.php?title=User:Alex_brollo/common.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );. Cheers, Ruthven (talk) 10:55, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ankry, Ruthven: First, thanks for your interest and help. I'll try to convert deprecated importScript() into mw.loader.load; presently I haven't admin nor interface admin privileges here, so I can't create or edit gadgets. The recent implementation of User:Alex brollo/eis.js is just a test, and needs to be rethought by scratch. It's a little bit frustrating to document an "alpha tool", things change fastly into it, but I'll try. --Alex brollo (talk) 08:30, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Alex brollo: I am not bureaucrat here, but I think this would not a problem to receive interface-admin rights if you need that. Ankry (talk) 09:41, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

: @Ankry: Thanks but... I feel myself more and more dissatisfied about the quality of my developer skills, so I will not ask for interface-admin rights; I prefer to edit my personal js pages. Alex brollo (talk) 21:33, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Vandal 2001:56a:76ec:e800:e0ae:62c5:d3ce:6c10[edit]

I don't know how to report vandalism. Could an administrator please review possible vandalism by 2001:56a:76ec:e800:e0ae:62c5:d3ce:6c10 Link to contributions

creating nonsense pages [246][247][248][249][250]

editing existing page in bad faith to link to the same creations [251]

deleting I placed on one of the nonsense pages [252]

vandalizing my user page[253][254]

Apt-ark (talk) 04:39, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done Reviewed. Deleted. Blocked. Ankry (talk) 06:30, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-47[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

You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote until 30 November.
There is an A/B test for sameAs data. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks. [255]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated. [256]
The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page. [257]

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

23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Adding Cosmoglotta[edit]

Hello,

I am looking for some feedback before importing a magazine written from the 1920s to around 1950. It's called Cosmoglotta and is written mostly in the planned language Occidental (Interlingue), but includes a number of other languages as well from time to time. The Austrian National Library hosts it here:

http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=e0g

http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=e0m&size=45

Each year is around 100 pages. Cosmoglotta at its height was 12 pages per issue, one issue per month, so many years have exactly 144 images. Also for a number of years it published two versions of the magazine, which is why there are two links.

Image quality varies from very good to fairly blurry such as this one:

http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=e0m&datum=1945&page=26&size=45

Since it's multilingual that should solve where to put it (here on the multilingual WIkisource). I have two questions:

1) Importing the images: is one at a time best? The closest thing the library site has to displaying all pages on one screen is this: http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=e0g&datum=1922&pos=1&size=45 But I don't think that'll be enough. I have no problem with doing them one at a time though.

2) Two orthographies. The orthography and vocabulary changed somewhat between the years 1922 and 1947, the latter date when it took on its current form. Also for a number of years, especially during WWII, it was put together on a pretty shoestring budget with a typewriter and so has a number of typos here and there. I would ideally like to type up two versions: 1) the way it was originally printed, and 2) the cleaned up, modernized version. The difference is not great, but since nobody speaks Occidental as a native language it's important to not confuse anyone wanting to learn it or trying to decipher it (e.g. if the spelling is off it may not show up in a dictionary).

All in all it's about 3000 to 3500 pages. I would start with Cosmoglotta B which goes from 1935 to 1947, as that is when the most work was put into cleaning up the language, and also due to the period's historical importance (Cosmoglotta A did not publish during the war).

Mithridates (talk) 03:34, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Mithridates:, I see that lots of Cosmoglotta fascicles have already been uploaded into archive.org, here the results of a first search: https://archive.org using creator:"Societé Kosmoglott" into search field.

I think that mulwikisource is the best project to upload multilingual works, please try the tool https://tools.wmflabs.org/ia-upload/ that often runs even if IA item haven't a djvu file.

The project is a hard one, so my suggestion is to begin with a "diplomatic" (as it has been printed) version; there are possible tricks to write an alternative modernized version into the same nsPage page, but I feel that a simple diplomatic version is the best strategy to begin such a large work. Alex brollo (talk) 09:26, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that tool is exactly what I was looking for. I see on Archive.org they have Cosmoglottas up to 1939, after which only very few changes were made. So I can just type out the 'diplomatic' version as you said and in the end it will be at least 99% the same as the modern version. I'll start with the 1939 issues, and even that one year will take a very long time. The tool seems to have worked well: https://wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Cosmoglotta_A_128_(Sep-Dec_1939).djvu Mithridates (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mithridates: I took the opportunity to import here an itwikisource successful gadget using CropTool. While editing nsPage, it adds a "CropTool" link to Tools list into sidebar, and a button

into Advanced section of toolbox. The former opens CropTool for current page, the latter inserts a draft code for cropped image using the default file name suggested by CropTool. I tested the script into page 1 of your new Index. If you like, the code for that script is into User:Alex brollo/vector.js, you can test it simply copying the code into yours User:Mithridates/common.js. I hope that it will run for you too. :-) Alex brollo (talk) 13:20, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Alex brollo: Ah, took me about five minutes to see what exactly you were referring to but I see it now. Cosmoglotta is full of those hand-drawn images and diagrams so that should help a lot. Thanks again! Mithridates (talk) 14:21, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Alex brollo: So today I noticed somebody has added a few pages and also included a SIC tag to indicate where the spelling has changed. I gave that a try on page 8 and it seems to be a good solution to indicate where the spelling has changed. In a single page I ended up using it five times, which is not too much: Illa-ella, antiqualya-antiquallia, femina-fémina, ley-lege, analysat-analisat. Mithridates (talk) 01:12, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mithridates: Maybe this is a stupid question, but why do you think that the magazines are PD (in US in case of this project)? It is clear that 1922 volumes are PD and 1923 ones will be PD in January. But others? is there a specific exclusion in Swiss copyright law that made them PD in Switzerland in 1996? Being available in a digital library does not automatically mean that they are PD. They may be available under Fair Use or some limited permission (like non-commercial ones). Ankry (talk) 22:19, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ankry: Not a dumb question. I wonder if the tool automatically selected PD? Either that or I did without looking closely when doing the upload. Let's see...anything by Edgar de Wahl (the creator of the language) will definitely be PD as he has been dead for exactly 70 years now (died in Tallinn in 1948), but Cosmoglotta was mostly written by others, some of whom like Berger and Matejka died in the 1980s and 1990s. The Interlingue-Union (previously the Occidental-Union) exists today though I think it might have been dissolved at once point when so many Occidentalists made the exodus to Interlingua...also the magazine often used letters to the editor and translated content from other languages that came from who knows where. The library itself has the standard disclaimer that (paraphrasing) "we are making this content available for historical reasons but that doesn't mean we are asserting them to be PD". So I think we both agree that full PD isn't claimable here. Should I just change it to CC BY-SA 3.0? Mithridates (talk) 00:40, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mithridates:I see no evidence for CC BY-SA 3.0 license (this has to be explicitely declared by copyright owners to be valid). 70 pma may be also irrelevant here, as in US, for pre-1978 published works copytight is based on publication date, and lasts 95 years unless it falls under some special cases. One of the cases may be, that the work was PD in 1996 in the initial publication country (Switzerland, I assume). So the question is, when did Swiss copyright to these publications expire? (50 years after publication? 50/70 pma?) Ankry (talk) 02:10, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ankry: I see. The library itself (should mention this is the Austrian library - Cosmoglotta was based in Vienna, although Cosmoglotta B was published in Switzerland) seems have kind of been winging it on copyright since the project started over 10 years ago: http://anno.onb.ac.at/faq.htm They say they are not asserting that any of the newspapers there are free of copyright, and that they choose to scan works that are in particularly bad condition, so journals that are on the verge of outright disappearing anyway. I remember an Occidentalist back in 2007 or so before they were scanned who had managed to get his hands on a few issues, and that was big news at the time. What sort of copyright applies here when we are in a "some is definitely PD, some may not be, and in the meantime the copyright owners have more or less let their material rot" situation? Some sort of fair use claim for the sake of preservation? Mithridates (talk) 02:31, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mithridates, Ankry: What's a pity, this licence-related issue! It's a very complex and critical one and I can't help you. Our itwikisource policy is, to discuss it into Commons, and to accept Commons's decision. Nevertheless, thanks for opportunity of importing here too the CropTool stuff, I hope it will turn out useful for other users/other works. Alex brollo (talk) 07:19, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mithridates: I think, you can safely upload the 1922 volumes, and in few weeks the 1923 volumes. The rest should wait for subsequent years or till their Swiss copyright status is resolved. As I do not know German/French/Italian/Rumansch I cannot help you in the latter. Their Swiss copyright may be based on publication date (50 yers) and may be not extended by newer copyright law. But we need an explicit clause either from Swiss copyright law or from some legal opinion by Swiss lawyers for that. Also, as the Swiss copyright is unclear, I suggest to upload the volumes here, and not to Commons (Commons require files to be PD in US and in the country of origin; Wikisource accepts works that are PD in US regardless of their copyright status in the country of origin). Everything published more than 95 years ago (before 1.1.1923 now, and before 1.1.1924 in Jan 2019) is PD in US. Ankry (talk) 08:31, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ankry: Just to clarify, this is mostly Austrian copyright law as that's where most of them were published. (Swiss is involved too, but mostly Austria) I just sent an email to the library to get an opinion on this and will let you know if I get a reply. If it's only 1922 and 1923 that would be a shame, as that's when the magazine was a real hodge-podge of languages and the Occidental is a bit dated, so much less value to the community there. I was planning to do those years right at the end. Mithridates (talk) 08:41, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User talk page[edit]

I need someone to indefinitely semi-protect my user talk page on this project, please. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 23:40, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done Ankry (talk) 00:21, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Advanced Search[edit]

Advanced Search will become a default feature on your wiki on November 28. This new interface allows you to perform specialized searches on the search page, even if you don’t know any search syntax. Advanced Search originates from the German Community’s Technical Wishes project. It's already a default feature on German, Arabic, Farsi and Hungarian Wikipedia. Besides, more than 40.000 users across all wikis have tested the beta version. Feedback is welcome on the central feedback page.

Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:03, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-48[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

On wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [258]

Changes later this week

The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [259]
Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [260]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (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 28 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warning Use of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead. [261]

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

22:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Congratulazioni to Napulitano[edit]

Main Page/Napulitano has been approved to graduate to its own domain. See phab:T210752. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:15, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That is great news! :) --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 13:38, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's by far our largest collection here and very active. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:48, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Congrats from me as well! -jkb- (talk) 16:51, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations from me too! (I'm sorry that I saw this topic only recently and hadn't noticed it before, thus I hadn't respond quickly and I am commenting only just now). And I feel some pity that the Neapolitan project hadn't been approved much earlier, since, in my opinion, it for a long time had already deserved that approvement. As well I wish good luck to all the contributors to Napulitano! --Nigmont (talk) 01:28, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2018-49[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

Admins will not be able to unblock themselves if they are blocked by someone other than themselves. This is because it can cause damage if someone else takes over an admin account and other admins can't block them. If this is a problem for your community you can report it on Phabricator. You can also ask questions on Meta. There is a discussion on Phabricator about how to solve this if two admins fight with each other on a small wiki. [262]
Small SVG images are now bigger when you see them in MediaViewer. [263]
You can go to a section from the edit summary by clicking on the section name. Before this you had to click on the arrow. [264]
When you jumped to a footnote that was referenced several times in an article it could be difficult to see where you were in the text. Now there are jump marks and highlights to help you find your way back. [265][266]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 December at 16:00 (UTC) and at 23:00 (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.

16:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Selection of the Wikisource Community User Group representative to the Wikimedia Summit[edit]

Dear all,

Sorry for writing in English and cross-posting this message.

The Wikisource Community User Group could send one representative to the Wikimedia Summit 2019 (formerly "Wikimedia Conference"). The Wikimedia Summit is a yearly conference of all organizations affiliated to the Wikimedia Movement (including our Wikisource Community User Group). It is a great place to talk about Wikisource needs to the chapters and other user groups that compose the Wikimedia movement. For context, there is a short report on what happened last year. The deadline is short and to avoid the confusing vote on the Wikisource-I mailing list of last year, we created a page on meta to decide who will be the representative of the user group to the Wikimedia Summit.

The vote will be in two parts:

until December 7th, people can add their name and a short explanation on who they are and why they want to go to the summit. Nomination of other people is allowed, the nominated person should accept their nomination.
starting December 7th, and for a week, the community vote to designate the representative.

Please feel free to ask any question on the wikisource-I mailing list or on the talk page.

For the Wikisource Community User Group, Tpt (talk) 15:15, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

New Wikimedia password policy and requirements[edit]

Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation security team is implementing a new password policy and requirements. You can learn more about the project on MediaWiki.org.

These new requirements will apply to new accounts and privileged accounts. New accounts will be required to create a password with a minimum length of 8 characters. Privileged accounts will be prompted to update their password to one that is at least 10 characters in length.

These changes are planned to be in effect on December 13th. If you think your work or tools will be affected by this change, please let us know on the talk page.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wikisource Community User Group representative vote[edit]

Dear all,

Sorry for writing in English and cross-posting this message.

Following the previous message, the vote for the representative of the Wikisource Community User Group to the Wikimedia Summit 2019 is now open.

There is two great candidates on page on meta to decide who will be the representative of the user group to the Wikimedia Summit. You can support a candidate now. All active Wikisource users can vote. The vote is ending on December 14, 2018.

Feel free to ask any question on the wikisource-I mailing list or on the talk page.

Thank you!

For the Wikisource Community User Group, Tpt (talk) December 8, 2018 at 18:53 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-50[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.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 December. It will be on all wikis from 13 December (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 12 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts. [267][268]
When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off. [269]

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

17:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-51[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 7 January 2019.

Recent changes

Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [270][271]
Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [272]
The ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy.

Problems

<ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [273]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 December. It will be on all wikis from 20 December (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 19 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikimedia Foundation Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.
tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [274]

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

20:35, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Invitation from Wiki Loves Love 2019[edit]

Please help translate to your language

Love is an important subject for humanity and it is expressed in different cultures and regions in different ways across the world through different gestures, ceremonies, festivals and to document expression of this rich and beautiful emotion, we need your help so we can share and spread the depth of cultures that each region has, the best of how people of that region, celebrate love.

Wiki Loves Love (WLL) is an international photography competition of Wikimedia Commons with the subject love testimonials happening in the month of February.

The primary goal of the competition is to document love testimonials through human cultural diversity such as monuments, ceremonies, snapshot of tender gesture, and miscellaneous objects used as symbol of love; to illustrate articles in the worldwide free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects.

The theme of 2019 iteration is Celebrations, Festivals, Ceremonies and rituals of love.

To know more about the contest, check out our Commons Page and FAQs

There are several prizes to grab. Hope to see you spreading love this February with Wiki Loves Love!

Kind regards,

Wiki Loves Love Team

Imagine... the sum of all love!

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:13, 27 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]