User talk:SMcCandlish
Add topicI will respond here to messages you leave, unless you request otherwise. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 05:18, 29 December 2012 (UTC) |
Mini-toolbox[edit]
- The Phabricator Workboard for Tech News
- MW Editing team e-meetings, via Google Hangouts (Tuesdays, noon–12:30pm PDT = 20:00 UTC during DST, 19:00 otherwise, but often half an hour earlier).
- MW Tech Advice e-meetings, via IRC at #wikimedia-techconnect (Wednesdays, 1–2pm PDT = 16:00–17:00 UTC).
Wrong balance at Community Wishlist Survey[edit]
Under one item of our wishlist you write “Community Wishlist Survey is rather broken, in accepting only what has the most votes this year, which is never, ever going to be stuff template editors need.” That is a valid point that deserves wider attention. How would you suggest this to be fixed? One fix I can see would be to put effort and effect in proportion. A wishlist without any regard for cost will tend to favor the most expensive items, regardless of how many useful items can be had at the same price. ◅ SebastianHelm (talk) 13:45, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
- @SebastianHelm: Yes, there's definitely that effect.
- That one's challenging to address, since assumptions about difficulty of implementing something are often – maybe even usually? – wrong (just ask any software engineer, especially one tasked with changing existing features or adding new ones to an existing product mostly written by other people). I'm reminded of the voter guide I get in the mail; there's a dedicated legislative analysis office that comes up with estimated costs and complications of implementing various ballot measures. WMF having someone[s] on staff doing this for CWS proposals and Phab requests in general might help, but it might be easy to be wrong and get fired/sacked. >;-)
- The no. 1 thing to me is true prioritization. Mission-critical things, e.g., accessibility solutions, HTML (and other) standards-compliance fixes, security improvements, and other key proposals which meet with support should take precedence over all attempts to add new features or "polish the chrome" on things that already are properly functional. Secondarily, improvements to existing features people definitely use (wishlist, search, editing tools) should generally have higher priority (among accepted proposals) than requests for all-new features.
- This, to me, is where the process (not just CWS, but WMF's MW development in general) has failed the worst. It's also deeply entwined in why I resigned as a WMF Tech Ambassador to en.WP; the short version of my statement on my user page about this is: WMF is acting like a software company with a customer base and a marketing plan (what it wants customers to go for), instead of behaving as a globally important NGO with a constituency and a mission to serve the actual needs of that constituency. Some of the standards compliance things have been open tickets for 15+ years, across multiple bug-tracker systems, and some attempts to "fix" them have simply introduced more compliance problems, cutting off our nose to spite our face. There's a competence problem of some kind happening somewhere, even if most of the devs are amazing. But whoever thought it was good idea to have
:
equate to<dd>
and render visually as an indent, and do this in absence of a proper<dl>
list structure was foolish. Of course it would get abused for purely visual indentation not d-list construction, especially if no alternative was provided to do indentation properly. But it was an even worse idea (one I just now learned about, in the mobile skin) to replace that abuse of<dd>
with abuse of<blockquote>
, which is strictly reserved for actual quotations. The<div>
generic element exists for a reason, and is super-mega-obviously the one to use here (though on talk pages the HTML 5 element<article>
might be a better choice, especially with smartid
stuff for thread building; this can probably just be ripped wholesale from any good blog, forum, or other CMS that is open-source. - No one who is unwilling to totally absorb the HTML and CSS specs has any business working on HTML and CSS code (including code that generates that code) at a professional level. I don't mean fire/sack anyone, just move them to something they're actually competent at, and put experts on the tasks the non-experts have been screwing up. Seriously, the kind of screwups involved are things that would not have been tolerated at a regular meritocracy-driven open source project; they would have been fixed years ago, and a bad mistake, like moving from abuse of one element to abuse of another instead of use of the proper one, would likely never have happened.
- A conceptually similar issue (which I raised with a WMF person at w:en:WP:VPTECH, I think, within the last month) is WMF's internal hostility to VPNs, and inability to distinguish them from other kinds of services, nor to recognize the value they provide for security in an increasingly mobile but increasingly vulnerable computing and communications environment. The current practice of just blacklisting almost every block of IP addresses that happen to resolve to machines that provide VPN out-node services (generally blacklisted because of other services they provide) is downright stupid. It betrays a sort of "stuck in 2004" ignorance about how the technology works. Not just the necessity of VPNs these days, but the simple fact that any given IP address is apt to resolve to multiple [virtual] servers, even by multiple entities, and any given "server" is apt to have multiple sometimes unrelated IP addresses, all due to cloud computing, and software/servers-as-a-service models. It's rather like trying to block travel from Massachusetts because you heard about a bank robber who was born in Massachusetts, and also block entry to banks while you're at it, because anyone going into one might be a robber. This is not how to address sockpuppetry and other abuse problems, anymore than just massacring the entire populations of Nigeria and India is how to address the problem of online scams often coming from or passing through Nigeria and India.
- This, to me, is where the process (not just CWS, but WMF's MW development in general) has failed the worst. It's also deeply entwined in why I resigned as a WMF Tech Ambassador to en.WP; the short version of my statement on my user page about this is: WMF is acting like a software company with a customer base and a marketing plan (what it wants customers to go for), instead of behaving as a globally important NGO with a constituency and a mission to serve the actual needs of that constituency. Some of the standards compliance things have been open tickets for 15+ years, across multiple bug-tracker systems, and some attempts to "fix" them have simply introduced more compliance problems, cutting off our nose to spite our face. There's a competence problem of some kind happening somewhere, even if most of the devs are amazing. But whoever thought it was good idea to have
- CWS proposals that pertain primarily to WMF projects should get pretty much all priority; stuff that's extraneous to that (e.g. features for bending MW into a blogging platform) should be left to third-party development, other than any necessary hooks for that development. And even then only if both WMF and the overall community think spending any time at all on that hook is worthwhile. Just because someone can conceive of a way to torque MW into being something it was not supposed to be doesn't make it a good idea.
- But there also need to be more CWS categories, or subcategories, that independently rank proposals within them. The current ones are mostly too sweeping, and net together many unrelated things (plus they become so long they are difficult to get through).
- E.g., almost all requests for template/module tools are stuffed under "Editing", which is not at all what most people are thinking about for that category (they're thinking of public-facing content, the form we used for creating it, and the tools that operate on the content in that form, like add markup with a button press, etc.).
- It even needs to split between source-mode editing and VisualEditor. Some of the proposals this year are VE-only, but are not labeled as such, and end up being confusing.
- Then there's the issue of the same proposals being made for 5 or 10 years in a row and always being supported but never implemented. Support assessment needs to be cumulative (within reason; some of the proposals mutate a little over time, but the entire WMF community is good at assessing shifting consensus over time, so this is not much of a challenge).
- Not-quite-relatedly, there are often also essentially duplicate proposals (I saw at least three this year: one pair already identified as such by someone; one pair flagged as such by me, though I only did that one way; and one pair unmarked because I was exhausted by the end and couldn't be bothered). Just as en.Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (and several other processes, have clerks), someone should be tasked with clerking this stuff and merging proposals that are too similar (just present the options as variants, and if the proposal in general passes, the exact version to implement can be another discussion for another time, if that's not already clear from the CWS comments). I think there actually is some clerking going on already, since I have seen translation and other work get done. Maybe whoever's doing it needs an assistant.
- One other thing: this survey is so daunting it is very difficult to actually get through it all. It might be more practical to stagger it, e.g. put out the Editing section one month and the Search section another month, and so on, so one does not have to spend literally an entire waking day to wade through it all.
- We're getting too little input from too few editors. In part this is because of the issue in the bullet above this, but in part it's due to lack of local-project awareness and engagement. One radical change in approach could be for projects to host their own wishlists, or have RfCs for items to add, and then forward this on the bigger, cross-project process. There are numerous ways this could be reshaped, and each would present its own strengths and weaknesses.
- Some of it could also be more top-down. The devs will have ideas about what really needs to get done, what is nearing completion and pretty easy to do, what is virtually impossible, and some other matters, like what WMF's executive team and/or board are hoping for (which the community often doesn't know anything about in detail until too late) and solicit feedback more directly.
- Frankly, WMF needs to be willing to spend more money on getting stuff done. It has a lot of money, and isn't really spending enough of it on mission-critical things. I come from a "tech nonprofit" background (EFF and CRF), so I know very well what that problem looks like. A common version is over-spending on executive salaries and perqs (also for the board), like luxury furniture and first-class travel, at the expense of sufficient program staff (the average tech, communications, and other program staffer at such organizations is in dire need of at least one assistant, often a department, and the organization will not realize this until that over-worked and under-paid person burns out and leaves, and the org finds that person has to be replaced with 2 or 4 or 8 to get the same work done).
- I could probably come up with more ideas and observations (see, e.g., w:en:User:SMcCandlish/Discretionary sanctions 2013–2018 review for an example of the kind of policy analysis I can do when I devote enough time to it, and even that's two years out of date and would cover several more more things than it does if I revised it significantly).
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< , 02:21, 17 December 2020 (UTC)- Wow, I had no idea there was so much behind it – and you're hiding it in the comment to one wish! How best to tackle all of this? Does it even make sense to try and find a solution for one problem that only addresses a small shard of the whole?
- Good point about the clerical tasks. I would see those as part of project management; why aren't WMF's PMs doing that?
- You're right that the sheer amount of wishes is daunting. It may be a good idea to stagger it, but ultimately the workload stays the same. Not sure how to actually reduce the workload. Maybe similar to what we wrote in the wish for preferences: Mark everything for which a wish exists with a “🎁” symbol – in the UI and the manual – which links to the wish under discussion. So users will see wishes at the right moment and the right place, and only for those functionalities that they use or are interested enough to RTFM. I think this may also address the issue of getting input from too few editors. ◅ SebastianHelm (talk) 22:58, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
This thread would probably have more impact at Talk:Community Wishlist Survey, so I've copied it over there. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 04:14, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
Democratic authoritarianism[edit]
Hello.
Your formulation of the concept at en:Wikipedia talk:There is no justice made you one of the most respected en.Wikipedians by me. BTW I am astonished that such criticism of the regime has been possible in mainstream essays as late as in 2016. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:17, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
- @Incnis Mrsi: Thanks, and I'm glad you liked it. :-) I worked most of that material into w:en:Wikipedia:Advice for hotheads, which covers several other things, including explosive behavior, false civility, and attempts to "argue Wikipedia into capitulation". I'll take the liberty of engaging in some coffee-fueled morning rambling:
As for essays, there's long been a lot of tolerance for conflicting viewpoints between various of them. We even have pairs of directly contradictory ones (or seemingly so, until you see that they address different kind of issues/incidents/questions). But ones that just do not at all align with the community's norms tend to get userspaced (or deleted at MfD if they're so off-kilter they have a NOTHERE vibe).
On the more philosophical "democratic authoritarianism" thing (not exactly the term I would use, but I see what you mean), and how it relates to an entity like WMF and a project like Wikipedia, I'm reminded of Twitter and Facebook kicking Trump and friends off their platforms (way later than they should have). They are privately owned companies with terms of use/service and a public to answer to. Various people in Trump's camp are claiming they are being "censored". They're making legally incorrect First Amendment arguments (the 1A only applies against censorship by the state, and doesn't let someone force their expression to be carried by private-sector third parties). WMF is in a similar boat. It isn't in a position to allow PoV pushers and other disruptive parties free reign, to allow defamatory material in articles on living people, and so on. WP is more like a newspaper or magazine publisher. PeTA and Greenpeace do not have a legal or "moral" right to force The Wall Street Journal to print their advocacy material, and the Family Research Council and the Eagle Forum can't require Huffington Post to given them equal "air time".
There are some grey areas, the common carriers. The gist is that various private or somewhat privatized entities have quasi-monopoly privileges, in exchange for infrastructure rollout, and liability shields for content they did not create, in exchange for not being permitted to monitor and censor. Some are arguing that social networking sites should be like this, should operate like package delivery services and telephone companies, as passive conduits for anything people want to send through them. I think this would be disastrous, since even with such sites trying to enforce ToU/ToS against against racist rabblerousing, black-market trading, insurrection and terrorism planning, etc., etc., the effect on our society of social media's propensity for creating borderless "reality bubbles" that inculcate us-vs.-them thinking, radicalization, and the spread and belief in patent falsehoods has just about ripped society apart over the last decade, and it's not looking to get better immediately if at all. If anything, non-state actors in the online information and communication space need to be more rather than less restrictive about what they'll permit on their systems, And that goes for far-left stuff too; the trans right activists making death threats against TERFs, or supposed antifa people agitating to burn down courthouses and cops' homes, should have their accounts nuked right along with anti-abortionists doxxing clinic workers in hopes they'll be tracked down and murdered, or white-nationalist "militia" nuts planning racist hate crimes.
The fundamental difference between a common carrier and a social networking site (in the broad sense, including webboards, collaborative content projects, etc.) is the public, memetic component. You can't recruit 10,000 people to join your telephone call or share in the goods inside a package you ordered from Amazon. There is no broad threat to society from having privacy and freedom of expression in one's phone calls and postal mail (even if certain crimes can be organized that way). There's obviously a big one inherent in using technology to create "permeably-walled-garden" propaganda and indoctrination farms, abusing private-sector services that were intended to make people's lives better and happier.
I have a lot of concerns about people system-gaming WP's "assume good faith" position through crafty "civil PoV-pushing" techniques to essentially bend WP articles to propagandistic purposes. It's already happening in a lot of topics, and it's hard to do much about it. All the pushers have to do is bait neutrality-minded editors into doing something explicitly uncivil, then get them banned from the topic area so the PoV pushers can just own it. This POVRAILROAD technique is precisely what was happening in the recent Flyer22 ArbCom case. The "AGF is not a suicide pact" maxim is going to have to be taken more seriously. WP is not longer a project eagerly accepting thousands of new editors per month from SlashDot and other nerdy forums to attempt the wacky idea of building a free encyclopedia. Eventualism essentially expired in the late 2000s at the latest. WP is a free encyclopedia, one of the most-read information sources in the world by the general public, and is under constant pressure to say non-neutral things on thousands of topics. We can still assume good faith, at first and for a while, but that has to stop with regard to a particular party when we see clear evidence to the contrary in their behavior. I should stop here or this will just get longer and longer. >;-)
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 14:00, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-50[edit]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- On Wikimedia Commons, there are some minor user-interface improvements for the "choosing own vs not own work" step in the UploadWizard. This is part of the Structured Content team's project of improving UploadWizard on Commons. [1][2]
Problems
- There was a problem showing the Newcomer homepage feature with the "impact module" and their page-view graphs, for a few days in early December. This has now been fixed. [3][4]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (calendar). [5][6]
Future changes
- The 2023 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 5 January 2024, and has an associated privacy statement.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 02:12, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-51[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
- The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2024 because of the holidays.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 December. It will be on all wikis from 21 December (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [7][8]
- Starting December 18, it won't be possible to activate Structured Discussions on a user's own talk page using the Beta feature. The Beta feature option remains available for users who want to deactivate Structured Discussions. This is part of Structured Discussions' deprecation work. [9]
- There will be full support for redirects in the Module namespace. The "Move Page" feature will leave an appropriate redirect behind, and such redirects will be appropriately recognized by the software (e.g. hidden from Special:UnconnectedPages). There will also be support for manual redirects. [10]
Future changes
- The MediaWiki JavaScript documentation is moving to a new format. During the move, you can read the old docs using version 1.41. Feedback about the new site is welcome on the project talk page.
- The Wishathon is a new initiative that encourages collaboration across the Wikimedia community to develop solutions for wishes collected through the Community Wishlist Survey. The first community Wishathon will take place from 15–17 March. If you are interested in a project proposal as a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you can register for the event and read more.
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MediaWiki message delivery 16:18, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-02[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
- mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
- The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing. [11]
Changes later this week
- 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). [12][13]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-03[edit]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. [14]
- Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the
requiresES6
option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future. [15] - Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [16]
- You can now thank edits made by bots. [17]
- An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.
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). [18][19]
- Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately. [20]
- The
jquery.cookie
module was deprecated and replaced with themediawiki.cookie
module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed. [21]
Future changes
- Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:13, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-04[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.
Problems
- A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed. [22]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 January. It will be on all wikis from 25 January (calendar). [23][24]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:04, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-05[edit]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [25]
- There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 January. It will be on all wikis from 1 February (calendar). [26][27]
- On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new Special:QrCode page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [28]
- Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the
targets
option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use theskins
option instead. [29]
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MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-06[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
- The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to the phabricator task.
- On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity. Learn more about "action blocks". [30][31]
Changes later this week
- 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). [32][33]
- Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [34]
Future changes
- 24 Wikipedias with Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For 46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February, unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings. [35][36]
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MediaWiki message delivery 19:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
SE[edit]
Hi SMcCandlish, thanks for your feedback at the SE election [37]. I thought I've stated clearly where I intend to work if elected as steward, but apparently didn't manage to convey this properly?
I want to help reducing the SRG backlog which has been terribly long last year (multiple times passing way beyond 300+ open requests) and still is too long in my opinion with 100+ open requests right now. This of course means I want to process other users requests and not just „bypass the SRG step“ for myself, which is what I stated in Stewards/Elections 2024/Questions#Areas of intent and Stewards/Elections 2024/Questions#Uniqueness as well. Additionally I want to help at SRP, SRGP and SRM (pages I'm already quite active at) as mentioned in my statement.
I take this as a learning to explain my intentions in more detail when again in a similar situation to this election. Have a nice day! Johannnes89 (talk) 11:07, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
- Also commenting here, as I just happened to see you in RC and another voter mentioned you yesterday. I also want to apologize if my statement was partially difficult to understand. My intent is not to "collect hats" (that would rather burn me out, which I replied to you on the voting page but I will do it here too) and excuses if you have misinterpreted my statement that way.
- Like Johannnes I don't want to volunteer "just for my own good" or to "bypass SRG", or to "gain more permissions", but rather to benefit the community. As mentioned, both in my statement and on our questions page, I plan to help out mostly at IRC (with locks/OS requests when quick assistance is needed) as well as the steward requests pages, especially SRG, and also at SRP and SRGP. I don't want to be "selfish", especially considering stewards serve the community.
- So, I will also take your feedback into account in the future, and hopefully, be more clear next time. Cheers! EPIC (talk) 08:08, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-07[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
- The WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. [38][39][40] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [41][42]
Problems
- There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.
Changes later this week
- 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). [43][44]
- As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[45] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped. [46]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 05:49, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-08[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
- If you have the "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [47]
- There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
- Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
- The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB. [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). [49][50]
- Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
- The CSS
filter
property can now be used in HTMLstyle
attributes in wikitext. [51]
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MediaWiki message delivery 15:37, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-09[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
- The mobile visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well. [52]
- The mw.config value
wgGlobalGroups
now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is:if (/globalgroupname/.test(mw.config.get("wgGlobalGroups")))
. [53]
Changes later this week
- 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 29 February (calendar). [54][55]
Future changes
- The right to change edit tags (
changetags
) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.
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MediaWiki message delivery 19:23, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-10[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
- The
Special:Book
page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension. [56] - Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
- Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
- Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The
Gadget
andGadget_definition
namespaces andgadgets-definition-edit
user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made. [57] - A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [58]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar). [59][60]
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [61]
- The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add
?useparsoid=1
to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).
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MediaWiki message delivery 19:47, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-11[edit]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar). [62][63]
- After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed. [64]
- The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [65]
- Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost. [66]
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [67][68]
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MediaWiki message delivery 23:04, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-12[edit]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher. [69]
- IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers. [70]
- The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [71][72][73]
- Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [74]
Problems
- RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now. [75]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar). [76][77]
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [78][79]
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MediaWiki message delivery 17:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-13[edit]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar). [80][81]
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MediaWiki message delivery 18:56, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-14[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
- Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [82]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [83][84]
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.
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MediaWiki message delivery 03:36, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-15[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
- Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
- A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
- Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check. [85][86]
- Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [87]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [88][89]
- New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [90]
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MediaWiki message delivery 23:37, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-16[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.
Problems
- Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed. [91][92]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar). [93][94]
- Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked). [95]
- A new variable
page_last_edit_age
will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made. [96]
Future changes
- Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
- Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the
abuse_filter
andabuse_filter_history
tables. Some queries might need to be updated. [97]
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MediaWiki message delivery 23:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-17[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
- Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention. [98]
- You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [99][100]
Future changes
- This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia. [101]
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MediaWiki message delivery 20:28, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-18[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 appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks. [102]
- Seven new wikis have been created:
- You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups. [110]
- Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.
Problems
- Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using
mapstyle="osm"
. This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed. [111]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar). [112][113]
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MediaWiki message delivery 03:33, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-19[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 appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [114][115]
- Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the
SiteAdminHelper
. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [116] - Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services. [117]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [118][119]
- When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs". [120]
Future changes
- A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the latest update regarding this extension.
- Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally. [121]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:44, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-20[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
- On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word
__EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__
to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [122] - If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template" will now also work without reloading the page. [123]
- Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the
alt=
attribute. This is identical in usage to thealt=
attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [124] - The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [125]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [126][127]
- The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [128]
Future changes
- In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [129]
- Two columns of the
pagelinks
database table (pl_namespace
andpl_title
) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the newlinktarget
table instead (lt_namespace
andlt_title
). In your existing SQL queries:- Replace
JOIN pagelinks
withJOIN linktarget
andpl_
withlt_
in theON
statement - Below that add
JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
- See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [130][131]
- Replace
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:58, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-21[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.
Recent changes
- The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [132]
- New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [133][134]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [135][136]
- The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:04, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-22[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
- Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
- In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
- Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes:
.collapsible
,.multicol
,.reflist
,.coordinates
,.topicon
. Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar). [137][138]
- When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules. [139]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:15, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-23[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
- It is now possible for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript. Documentation is available. [140]
- The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "
MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category
" to "MediaWiki:Wikihiero-usage-tracking-category
". [141] - One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Kadazandusun (
w:dtp:
) [142]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 June. It will be on all wikis from 6 June (calendar). [143][144]
Future changes
- Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:35, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-24[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
- The software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [145]
- The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
- The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the
mw-reference-text
class, Parsoid now also adds thereference-text
class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available. [146]
Problems
- There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed. [147]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (calendar). [148][149]
- The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a
<span class="mw-cite-backlink">
wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available. [150] - On multilingual wikis that use the
<translate>
system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it. [151]
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