Talk:Tech/News/Archives/2016

Major issue not reported

I would like to know why phab:T117332 has not made it to a Tech news post yet (correct me if I'm wrong). This is a major issue as many pages that have been tagged for speedy deletion (e.g. on enwiki) do not show up in the speedy category, and hence may never get deleted. This may or may not include BLP attack pages and copyright violations. — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't see the related Tech News tag in that task. You may want to see Tech/News#contribute to learn how to help in the future (notice the next issue is due in January). Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, MusikAnimal. Some things that ought to turn up in Tech News don't simply because the editors of the newsletter have not been made aware of what's happening – we keep track of as much as we can, but since we have so many other things we need to do in addition to watching Phabricator, we're dependent on other people pointing it out to us if we don't stumble upon it ourselves. This can be done in several ways: adding it to the next Tech News issue or adding user-notice in Phabricator are the best ways, but e.g. writing on this talk page usually works fine as well. :) /Johan (WMF) (talk) 13:18, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

This has now been included in the current Tech News draft. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 13:31, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Some detailed information?

I was directed to this page by the latest tech news and it told me that I can write in my language (Chinese) on this page.

我的建议是，对于关键性的功能更新，给出简单的功能描述。比如flow功能，最早的tech news只有“此功能已上线，各wiki和用户可决定是否使用它”，然而我要是不点击链接看详细情况的话，并不知道flow是什么功能。况且Media wiki目前英文居多，读起来总有些不便。--Tigerzeng (talk) 23:20, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

顺便，能有更多关于维基百科网站的访问情况就更好了。对于中国大陆的编辑者，非常需要知道服务器的运转情况。这样可以把服务器导致的访问问题和GFW导致的问题区分开。--Tigerzeng (talk) 23:24, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. It's very true that by keeping the newsletter as short as it is, we keep everyone who doesn't speak English out of the conversation, since what's just linked usually don't get translated. Thanks for the reminder. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Automatically congratulate

How "unsibscribe" - future "automatically congratulate users for reaching certain edit count milestones"? Internet make many spam and I know how can see total edit count. — Jackie 18:51, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jdforrester (WMF): ^. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 13:53, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jackie: The point is to thank new users for their volunteering, not to tell experienced users like yourself that you can go to find a tool to tell you. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for T7984 from eswiki

One of the editors in eswiki made this comment with thanks to the developers for T7984, that was included in Tech/News/2016/04. Could you thank the developers on her behalf? --Lsanabria (talk) 13:47, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Sure. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 13:52, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News as a template?

Suggestion: Instead of posting tech news as text on all talk pages, wouldn't it be better if it was posted as a template on every Wiki and then linked to talk pages. In that way, changes in the Tech News letter can be done to all readers pages by changing the template. I've seen som minor translation errors, and if a template was used, I could correct the translation and the change would be visible to all readers. -/abbedabb^talk 12:06, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll look into it. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 10:41, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Saludos

No conocía esta página y el compañero User:Lsanabria me dio el enlace. Quiero agradecer otra cosa que facilita cuando se usa la previsualización y es el enlace que dice <<volver al área de edición>>. Ya sé que está hace mucho pero hasta ahora no sabía cómo hacer llegar este tipo de mensajes. Lourdes Cardenal (talk) 15:13, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Code freeze and server migration postponed until mid-April

The schedule for the server migration has changed: wikitech:Switch Datacenter#Schedule for Q3 FY2015-2016 rollout. It may change again soon (from Monday/Wednesday to Tuesday/Thursday, but still the week of 18 April 2016). The updated information should run in the next Tech/News. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Schedule

Here are my thoughts:

• Tech/News/2016/15 (11 April publication date) should mention the code freeze during the week of 18 April 2016.
• Tech/News/2016/15 (11 April publication date) should probably warn users about the Tech/Server switch 2016 on 19 and 21 April at 14:00 UTC.
• Tech/News/2016/16 (18 April publication date) should definitely warn users about the Tech/Server switch 2016 on 19 and 21 April at 14:00 UTC.
• Should Tech/News/2016/17 (25 April publication date) mention the outages due to the server migration (e.g., under "Problems")?

What do you think? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News typically mention code freezes on the week they're happening – the main argument for this is that it's not a tool for MediaWiki developers, but for editors, bot owners etc to keep track of what's happening, and that developers follow the channels where this is mentioned in beforehand anyway. So I'd move that to the issue that'll be distributed on 18 April. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 13:26, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

MediaWiki/wmf.18 deployment dates

The deployment dates for MediaWiki 1.27/wmf.18 mentioned in Tech News: 2016-12 are a day early compared to the linked schedule. --Pipetricker (talk) 16:49, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF), Julle. --Pipetricker (talk) 18:52, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Gah. Yes. The schedule is right and the newsletter is wrong. Sorry for the mistake, it's entirely my fault. There was a planned code freeze this week and somehow the wrong dates got stuck in my head. I'll see what I can do about it. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I corrected the dates at wikipedia:WP:Village pump (technical)#Tech News: 2016-12. --Pipetricker (talk) 21:02, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I have now updated all subscribed community pages, with a few exceptions where I for one reason or another couldn't post. There's a correction in the next issue as well. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 08:50, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Flagged revisions deployment

@Johan (WMF): Should this RFC be included in the newsletter?

Regards, Lsanabria (talk) 19:26, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

I'll have a look at it before I send out the final version of the issue tomorrow. Thanks for notifying me. :) /Johan (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

A lot of basic information is still being added as of writing. If we include it in the newsletter, I think it might be helpful to the large number of Wikimedians who aren't familiar with FR at all if we wait a week or so. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 15:00, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech/News/Archives

Hi. I just updated Tech/News/Archives to not use {{Special:PrefixIndex/Tech/News/2013}} and friends. Special:PrefixIndex transclusions are limited to 345 results, so many issues were missing from the archives. The output is also now a bit cleaner, as I could pipe the links to show only the issue/week number or the language code. I'm pasting the script I used below; it's not perfect, but it works well enough. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:50, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

#! /usr/bin/env python

import sys

try:
    year = int(sys.argv[1])
except (IndexError, ValueError):
    print("Provide a year!")
    sys.exit(1)

import oursql

page_title = 'Tech/News/{0}%'.format(year)

conn = oursql.connect(
    host='metawiki.labsdb',
    db='metawiki_p',
    read_default_file='~/.my.cnf'
)
cursor = conn.cursor()

cursor.execute(
'''
SELECT
  page_title
FROM page
WHERE page_title LIKE ?
AND page_namespace = 0
ORDER BY page_title ASC;
''' , (page_title,))

results = cursor.fetchall()
cursor.close()
conn.close()

for result in results:
    title = result[0]
    if title.count('/') == 3:
        print('}}}}\n* [[{0}|{1}]] {{{{flatlist|1='.format(title, title.split('/')[-1]))
    else:
        print('** [[{0}|{1}]]'.format(title, title.split('/')[-1]))

Thanks, MZMcBride. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Sure, it was easy enough to fix up. I figured a manual and complete index was better than an automatic and truncated index. Plus prettier links. I wasn't really hoping to add more code to the world today, but doing this in a text editor proved too tedious. I also filed phabricator:T136059 about the general issue; it's probably a duplicate. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:04, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

target of a redirect page from a Lua module

Reporting in Tech News: 2016-22 that "There is now a standard way to get the target of a redirect page from a Lua module" and linking to a page which doesn't tell you how seems singularly unhelpful. For (;;) (talk) 19:20, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

True. My apologies. Will remember that. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 03:41, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Mobile

Hi! Is it possible for you to add viewing of article's categories in mobile version? It would be very helpful --Олег.Н (talk) 06:02, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

It would be very helpful indeed. This feature is currently in beta. To activate beta version, go to the hamburger menu (the three lines on the upper left corner, click settings and check beta). The ticket here elaborates on the future of the feature. Thanks :) --Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Leading [ missing

Oh dear! Looks like the latest issue went out as "[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2016/29|Tech News: 2016-29]]" :( -- samtar ^{talk or stalk} 12:04, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes samtar, and that's entirely my fault. I didn't checked what I4ve typed on the Global delivery field, and I've seen nothing on the preview. I'm really sorry about that. :( Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:56, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Consider yourself trouted! Could've been worse, no harm no foul :) -- samtar ^{talk or stalk} 12:58, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Missing delivery to community pages

(Split out from section above)

It also didn't get sent to en:WP:VPT, which is probably the most important recipient. I've manually posted it there now. --Redrose64 (talk; at English Wikipedia) 19:56, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Gah, it looks like someone's error/spam earlier, caused it to not be delivered to any of the first section. I'll send it out to those separately, in a moment. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Done. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Mentioning global rename outage

To bring it to the attention of the writers, global renames will be disabled from 00:00 9 December 2016 (UTC) to around 16 December 2016. This is due to phab:T148242, which I hear is supposed to make global watchlists possible. Global rename was actually disabled from November 20 to an originally scheduled date of November 27, but some technical issues postponed that date. The Phabricator task is not yet finalized, so the script will be run again for another week. Please put this in next week's publication. Thanks, —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 00:08, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Of course. Thanks for reminding me. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 05:07, 9 December 2016 (UTC)