This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Changes in how authentication in MediaWiki is handled are being rolled out (and more coming). [1] Ordinary users and gadgets / user scripts should not be affected but bots may need to be adjusted. pywikibot already supports [2] OAuth authentication, though bot operators need to set that up for their bot.
Investigated language support in MediaWiki and Wikibase to allow more languages in monolingual text and disallow some non-sense for label/descriptions/aliases (phabricator:T78006)
Fixed missing license info and broken links for Wikibase libraries on Special:Version
Working on improving scoring of search results on Wikidata, on Special:Search
Preparing to take the "in other projects" sidebar out of beta features, with the Wikimedia Commons link going to the Commons category (phabricator:T103102, phabricator:T94989)
Amir and Aaron are turning ORES into an extension to make it easier for you to spot bad edits \o/
Final touches on putting identifiers into their own section (phabricator:T117421)
Switching the in other languages box to be expanded by default for new people (phabricator:T92387)
More experimenting with adding an image to the header area (phabricator:T119493)
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
Sites with a wikimedia.org address were by mistake redirected to the Wikimedia Foundation wiki on 26 January. This included Meta and Wikimedia Commons. The mistake was fixed after an hour. [3]
Some users had problems logging in and out around 22 January. Bots also had problems and edit previews did not work properly. This was because of problems related to the new component SessionManager. It was undone on 23 January. [4][5]
Because of new problems with SessionManager the latest version of MediaWiki was removed from the Wikimedia wikis again on 31 January. The new version this week will be without SessionManager. [6]
Changes this week
The page history will get a help link. This will go to Help:Page history on Meta. Wikis can exchange it for a link to their local pages. [7]
Notifications will only show part of a page name if it is very long. You will also have another way to mark notifications as read. [8][9]
The Universal Language Selector input methods are now available with the visual editor. This means many who write in non-Latin scripts can now use the visual editor. [10]
The visual editor will now give you more tools to edit tables. You can move rows and columns in a table and copy parts of tables to make new ones. You can also copy and paste more than one cell at the same time. [11][12][13]
The visual editor has a new warning message when you leave a page you are editing without saving. Non-English wikis might need to translate it. [14][15]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
The rest.wikimedia.org domain will be shut down. This is planned to happen in March. You should use /api/rest_v1/ at each individual project domain instead. [16]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
When you get a notification that an edit has been reverted, the notification now quotes part of the edit summary. [18]
RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [19]
Changes this week
Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [20][21]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Other sites will be able to tell when visitors come from links on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. They used to be able to do this until we started using forced HTTPS in June 2015. This is planned to happen on 15 February. [22][23]
Wikidata will have a new data type called "external-id". It will be used for references to external resources. It will be enabled on February 16. Some properties will be changed to the new data type. [24][25][26]
Last call for comments on the new process for showcase items at d:User:Harmonia Amanda/Showcase items. Please review and comment on the associated talk page.
Groundwork for adding new entity types to move us forward with support for structured data on Commons. (Other entity types are Item and Property. We'll need Mediainfo for Commons.)
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 edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [27]
A few editors might have been logged in as someone else because of a bug. For security reasons everyone was logged out on 9 February. If you have seen this bug, you can report it. [29][30]
Changes this week
There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. The plan was to have it leave beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. It will happen on 16 February instead. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [31][32]
Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [33]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The search function on Wikimedia wikis will get a completion suggester that tries to find the right pages as the user is typing. It will also recognize some typos. This will probably happen in March. It is currently in beta. [34]
Work on first prototype for Commons support - specifically by making it possible to have more entity types than just Item and Property (phabricator:T125822)
Work on first prototype for Commons support - specifically by making it possible to have more entity types than just Item and Property (phabricator:T125822)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
There was no new MediaWiki version last week. Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week instead. This is because of a bug that made saving pages take longer time. [37][38]
Changes this week
After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [39]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 23 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
In order to deploy the ORES extension on Wikidata we need a few more people to help with a labeling campaign. ORES will help us a lot with anti-vandalism fighting.
The in other projects sidebar has graduated from beta features and is now turned on on all projects except Dutch Wikipedia. (They have their own hack.) This closes a wish that has been around since 2004 \o/ (phabricator:T2708)
Added a new identifiers section in items. Everything with datatype external identifier goes there now. Once we have all identifiers converted items should be easier to scan and understand because of the clearer structure.
We have a patch upcoming that should reduce loading time of items with a lot of sitelinks by 25%
Fixed a bug where you could not add statements with external identifier or mathematical expression datatype (phabricator:T127095)
More groundwork for Commons (making it possible to have more entities than just items and properties)
Changes at Agnona and Zegna (Italian fashion houses)
I have changed the name of new Agnona's designer who is Simon Holloway as you can red on this page (linked below) on the section dedicated to Agnona fashion house, plus I have deleted the name of Stefano Pilati because he is no longer director at Ermenegildo Zegna fashion house
Among experienced editors, the visual editor's table editing is one of the most popular features. If you select the top of a column or the end of a row, you can quickly insert and remove columns and rows.
Now, you can also rearrange columns and rows. Click "Move before" or "Move after" to swap the column or row with its neighbor.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Indic, and Han scripts, and improving the single edit tab interface.
Recent changes
You can switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor after you start editing. This function is available to nearly all editors at most wikis except the Wiktionaries and Wikisources.
Many local feedback pages for the visual editor have been redirected to mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
You can now re-arrange columns and rows in tables, as well as copying a row, column or any other selection of cells and pasting it in a new location.
The formula editor has two options: you can choose "Quick edit" to see and change only the LaTeX code, or "Edit" to use the full tool. The full tool offers immediate preview and an extensive list of symbols.
Future changes
The single edit tab project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. This is similar to the system already used on the mobile website. (T102398) Initially, the "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time. Your last editing choice will be stored as an account preference for logged-in editors, and as a cookie for logged-out users. Logged-in editors will have these options in the Editing tab of Special:Preferences:
Remember my last editor,
Always give me the visual editor if possible,
Always give me the source editor, and
Show me both editor tabs. (This is the state for people using the visual editor now.)
The visual editor uses the same search engine as Special:Search to find links and files. This search will get better at detecting typos and spelling mistakes soon. These improvements to search will appear in the visual editor as well.
Please try out the newest version of the single edit tab on test2.wikipedia.org. You may need to restore the default preferences (at the bottom of test2wiki:Special:Preferences) to see the initial prompt for options. Were you able to find a preference setting that will work for your own editing? Did you see the large preferences dialog box when you started editing an article there?
Can you read and type in Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Indic, or Han scripts? Language engineer David Chan needs help from people who often type in these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help. Report your results on wiki (Korean – Japanese – all languages).
If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thanks!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The Capiunto extension is installed on test wiki. Capiunto provides flexible infobox functionality for Scribunto and generates HTML for infobox features such as headers and rows. It is designed for clean and modern infoboxes that are driven by data from Wikidata, easily usable across different language versions, and easily extensible.
The visual editor now follows the TemplateData format setting announced in November. When you edit or add a use of a template, the wikitext will be laid out in one of the two ways. [40][41]
The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [42][43]
Changes this week
On wikis where the visual editor is available in single edit tab mode, red links may open the visual editor instead of the wikitext editor, depending on user preferences. [44]
Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [45]
Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [46]
Meetings
Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [47]
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Wikiversity is now supported by Wikidata as well. Language links can be maintained on Wikidata now. Access to the data will follow. Welcome, sister!
Wikidata now has cross-wiki notifications as a beta feature. You can enable it in your preferences. Once enabled you will see notifications you received on the other Wikimedia wikis.
Property:P1367 ("BBC Your Paintings artist-ID") has become "Art UK artist identifier". Identifier values were replaced.
The number of claims on each item is to be included in the "page property" database table. For some items where it had been missing, it was recently added. This leads to improved coverage by database reports: without claims by site.
Mix'n'match has new catalogs: Artists of the Nationalmuseum in Sweden and Encyclopædia Britannica
Wikidata Query Service now allows to view images linked from Commons and display image galley if the query result has images. Example: Paintings by Gustav Klimt
Fixed a bug in Special:NewItem which prevented submission of the form (phabricator:T128075)
More performance work
In diffs for mathematical expressions we're now also showing the TeX source to make it possible to see changes that do not affect the rendering of the formula (phabricator:T125712)
More work on cleaning up languages for multilingual text values and labels/descriptions/aliases
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
Files on Wikimedia Commons can now be 2 GB big. The old limit was 1 GB. [48]
Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [49]
The Wikimedia memory cache servers in the Eqiad cluster have now been upgraded to Debian 8 (Jessie). Some users might have had to log in again because of this. [50]
It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [51]
Bare attributes in tags now parse according to the HTML5 specifications. <pages from= to= section=1> will parse as <pages from="to=" section="1"> instead of <pages from="" to="" section="1"> as it used to. Please use <pages from="" to="" section=1> or <pages section=1> instead. This is mostly likely to affect pages on Wikisource projects. [52]
Problems
Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [53]
The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [54]
The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [55]
You may see falsely formatted edit links on both mobile and desktop devices. Mobile devices can also show incorrect formatted table of contents. This should be fixed soon. [56]
Templates using TemplateData that were edited with the visual editor might have some problems in wikitext mode. This can be fixed by editing and saving the page by using the visual editor without making any changes. [57]
Changes this week
Cross-wiki notifications will be enabled as a beta feature on all wikis on 10 March. You will be able to get notifications when something happens on another Wikimedia wiki. [58]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
Wikivoyages will get the Kartographer extension. Kartographer will allow <mapframe> and <maplink> tags in an article to insert an interactive map and overlay it with different markers. You can add ideas and suggestions to the Maps talk page. If you find any bugs, you can report them in Phabricator. [59]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [60]
The Wikimedia technical operations team plans to do some server work on 22 March. This could cause some problems, for example make it possible to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a short period of time. The date for this might change. [61]
Lucie and Charlie handed in their Bachelor theses on the Article Placeholder and Editing Wikidata from Wikipedia. Work on both topics will continue. We'll publish both theses soon. A big congrats to both of them!
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is expiring watch list entries. The meeting will be on 3 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.
