User talk:Trialpears/Archive 2

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.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Tech News: 2020-03

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 no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser use very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It can lead to downgrade attacks. Since 9 December you just see a warning. Soon the browser will not connect to the wikis at all. Most are users on Android systems older than 4.4. You can read the browser recommendations. [1]
Special:LinkSearch has been moved from the "Redirecting special pages" section on Special:SpecialPages to the "Lists of pages" section. [2]

Changes later this week

Wikis can protect pages so that only some users can edit them. The standard protection levels are Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access and Require administrator access. If your wiki use more protection levels the technical name might be renamed for standardisation. This doesn't affect what users see. [3]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 January. It will be on all wikis from 16 January (calendar).

Future changes

Deepcat and Catgraph will stop working. This will happen at the end of January. This is because you can now use the normal search function instead. [4]
You can use <ref follow="…"> to merge footnotes that follow each other. It is meant to be used for digitised books on Wikisource. If the order of the footnotes is wrong no error was shown but the bad <ref> was shown outside the <references /> list. This will change and you will see an error message instead. [5]

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Cfs full

You're aware that your edits to {[tl|Cfs full}} are throwing some funnies - see Category:Categories for for examples? Le Deluge (talk) 12:34, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Le Deluge Sorry, some module changes are needed. I reverted and will fix the module when I get home. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 12:52, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Didn't have time yesterday, but now it's

Done. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 23:34, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-04

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 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 January. It will be on all wikis from 23 January (calendar).

Future changes

There is a new suggestion for what to show when someone edits without registering an account. This is to give unregistered editors better privacy and make some anti-vandalism work go faster. You can give feedback.
Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will no longer support Python 2. Use the python2 tag if you need to continue running Python 2 scripts. The Pywikibot team strongly recommends to migrate to Python 3. You can get help to do so. [6]
The weekly MediaWiki branch cut will soon become automated. The timing for this cut may change. You can discuss in Phabricator if this affects you. [7]
You can read about coming technical events and mentoring interns.

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19:42, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Msangjunboon2018's Book:wikipediaorg01 Updated (#1)?

Msangjunboon2018's Book:wikipediaorg01 Updated #1: Updating Next On After 31 January 2020, Friday, ~23:59HR SST. (1 week's time) Msangjunboon2018 (talk) 02:24, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Msangjunboon2018, sorry but I'm not sure what you're trying to say or want me to do. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 06:35, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Trialpears TO Msangjunboon2018: as i trying say, i will really update on that day. thanks. Msangjunboon2018 (talk) 12:58, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
Msangjunboon2018, oh I forgot I PRODed that book. If you want it back you could ask at WP:REFUND and they will help you out, or if you want to recreate it feel free to do so. I was just looking at books with only one article since they almost always are unnecessary since you can print single articles using the Download as PDF feature in the side bar. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 13:11, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-05

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 mobile diffs have problems. A couple of buttons are not shown. Structured data diffs on Commons are confusing. The developers are working on fixing it. [8][9]
Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions can't move discussion pages. This is a bug. The developers are working on fixing it. [10]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

There is JavaScript code on Special:Undelete for administrators that makes it possible to automatically select multiple checkboxes by holding the "Shift" key and clicking. This code is also loaded by accident on other special pages and on articles. This makes pages slower to load. This will be fixed. If you know of other special pages where this is useful please tell the developers at phab:T232688.

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18:53, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

DYK for Gasklockan, Gothenburg

On 2 February 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Gasklockan, Gothenburg, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that The Coca-Cola Company proposed painting a gasometer in Gothenburg, Sweden, to resemble a Coke can? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Gasklockan, Gothenburg. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Gasklockan, Gothenburg), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

— Amakuru (talk) 12:03, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-06

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 4 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 February. It will be on all wikis from 6 February (calendar).

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20:05, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-07

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 version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem. [11]

Problems

There was a problem with the new MediaWiki version last week. It deleted some messages by accident. The new version was late because it was stopped to fix things. [12]

Changes later this week

The MediaWiki action API is used by various tools like bots and gadgets. Some error codes will change. Some parameter values that do not follow the standard will no longer work. [13]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 February. It will be on all wikis from 13 February (calendar).

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19:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

American actress, perhaps

You have asked for feedback about your bot's edits. Most of the new short descriptions are spot on, of course, but this one needed correction. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:12, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

John of Reading Thanks! That slipped through my testing. Turns out there are a few others suffering from the same problem which I fixed as well. I would implement a quick fix if I was at home with access to toolforge, but I'm away skiing with an unstable internet connection. I'll keep monitoring the search to look for new bad ones and fix them, but won't fix it until I get home at the end of the week. Since it only affects less than 0.05% of descriptions it shouldn't be a big problem. The alternative would be shutting down the bot until I get home which I could do if you or anyone else want me to, but I would prefer to just get it done. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 17:34, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

PearBOT 5 problem

You should investigate what went wrong here at Alexandra Flood. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:55, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Michael Bednarek, thanks! I found 3 other descriptions that included behavior switches and fixed them. As I said above I'm currently on vacation without access to toolforge where I host the bot and can't modify the code currently. Since this issue only seems to affect roughly 0.01% of descriptions I think it would be acceptable to continue running the bot as is and fix the issues manually as they come up until I get back home at the end of the week when I can patch it. Again, thanks for the report! ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 12:06, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Away?

Still on holiday? Maybe on vacation?--Dthomsen8 (talk) 22:56, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Dthomsen8, yep and will be until Sunday. I still participate in discussions and such, but can't do any major template, module or bot things. As you've discovered my ENGVAR is horribly inconsistent with me using all the variations regularly without any consistency, guess that's what happens when you see/hear both versions about as much when learning. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 12:14, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

PearBOT 5

Just some positive feedback; Kate Fagan (poet), something rather random on my watchlist, was edited by your bot, adding the short description. An accurate and readable summary was generated. Great! Klbrain (talk) 23:09, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Klbrain Glad you liked it! Now that I have your attention I guess it's as good a time as any to tell you about a potential bot concept to assist with mergers that I've had for a while. One of the biggest problems with the merge backlog is that people don't start a discussion when they tag the article, mostly because they don't know they're supposed to. How about a bot that posts a friendly note to users who add merge tags but don't start a discussion similar to how DPL bot 2 notify users who link to dab pages. Do you think it's a good idea that's worth pursuing? ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 12:31, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

That might help; I used to do quite a lot of disambiguation, so did sometimes see (and respond to) DPL Bot messages from my talk page. It might be difficult to implement if people don't give an explicit discussion link in their templates, or label the sections for discussion in non-standard ways (there isn't one convention, so identifying these sections might be difficult). So, the number of false positives might be high; so too might be the comeback that but the case is obvious ... which is sometimes true. Klbrain (talk) 14:02, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Klbrain If I were to do this I would probably use a very lenient criteria for not having started a discussion, perhaps no edits to either talk articles talk page within the last day or 3 hours after placing the tag, no discuss or reason parameters and neither talk page including the word "merge" in case they are just tagging for an ongoing discussion. While such a criteria would generate a lot of false negatives false positives shouldn't be a big issue if the message includes text accounting for discussions located elsewhere or obvious cases by encouraging people to be bold if they expect it to be uncontroversial or start a discussion anyway to encourage feedback. Anyway don't expect anything to materialize out of this soon; I have plenty of ongoing projects both on and off wiki, but if you expect it to useful I will definitively look into it. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 17:11, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

A bigger problem is perhaps tagging then forgetting ... can you send a (say) one-month notification if the tag is still in place to the talk page of the account which place it? Klbrain (talk) 18:47, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Klbrain, you mean something like you tagged Article X for merging a month ago and there does not seem to be any opposition to the proposal. This would indicate that there is a silent consensus for the merger so feel free to go ahead with it? That could be done as well, but I think that would be more controversial then reminding people to give a reason. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 19:02, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

That's the idea, although I also agree that it would be more controversial; perhaps insurmountably so. Klbrain (talk) 22:15, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Undo of revert

Not sure whether it's doable to act on this but it seems the bot added a description again after a revert: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Loai_Deeb&action=history . - Simeon (talk) 18:23, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Simeon, the problem here is with me trying to run the bot remotely without access to toolforge or my computer while on vacation. The bot crashed this Thursday and I tried to restart it. The problem then was that it started looking at pages it already had added descriptions to, a very small portion of which had been reverted (all of them by me or seemingly by accident). I have now come back home and re-reverted and fixed all the known bugs. Thanks for the report though! ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 19:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Trialpears Ok, no problem, thanks for the efforts here! - Simeon (talk) 19:58, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-08

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 on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance. [14][15]

Changes later this week

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

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16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Request

You recently said, "My guess would be between a week and a month, I'll tell you when it happens." I suggest I do it the first Sunday of March. Even if its a bit early thats OK. Thoughts? ―Buster7 ☎ 22:10, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Buster7, no problem with me, just do what you think is best. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 22:35, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-09

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 25 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 February. It will be on all wikis from 27 February (calendar).

Future changes

There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.

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21:00, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Hello again

Thanks for nice message

I've just noticed and reported another mistake here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Indonesia#Wrong_GDP_PPP_per_capita

GDP PPP per capita for Indonesia

This time I am not changing anything, as you noticed I corrected few times before and someone accused me of vandalism, which was ridiculous, cause I am here for correcting actual mistakes not trolling. At least you noticed my good intentions. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.45.54.46 (talk) 01:12, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for bothering you, but...

New Page Patrol needs experienced volunteers

New Page Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles. We could use a few extra hands on deck if you think you can help.
Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; Wikipedia needs experienced users to perform this task and there are precious few with the appropriate skills. Even a couple reviews a day can make a huge difference.
If you would like to join the project and help out, please see the granting conditions and review our instructions page. You can apply for the user-right HERE. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 20:08, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-10

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

Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [16]

Changes later this week

If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You will now be able to choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This will be a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. [17]
When you asked for a new password you could see if the username didn't exist on Special:PasswordReset. Now the page will show the username you entered and tell you an email has been sent if the username exists. This is for better security. [18]
On Special:WhatLinksHere you can see what other pages link to a page. You can see if the link is from a redirect. You can now see which section the redirect links to. [19]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 March. It will be on all wikis from 5 March (calendar).

Future changes

The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback. [20]
There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
wgMFSpecialCaseMainPage was used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [21]

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00:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Editor of the Week

The editor you nominated has received their Award. Thanks again. ―Buster7 ☎ 15:14, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-11

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 search word called articletopic. You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon. [22][23][24]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 March. It will be on all wikis from 12 March (calendar).

Future changes

There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
The Wikipedia Android app will do push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will come later this year. [25]

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17:15, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Pages using link language with cat-lang

A tag has been placed on Category:Pages using link language with cat-lang requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Gonnym (talk) 22:05, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

BAGBot: Your bot request PearBOT 7

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/PearBOT 7 as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT ⚡ 20:07, 15 March 2020 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

Tech News: 2020-12

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 API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use action=changecontentmodel to specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [26]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 March. It will be on all wikis from 19 March (calendar).

Future changes

If you edit a page at the same time as someone else you can get an edit conflict. There is a new two-column interface to make it easier to solve this. It will soon be active by default on the German, Arabic, and Farsi Wikipedias. It will be on by default on more wikis within the next months. You will be able to opt out of the new interface. [27][28]
You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.

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21:14, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-13

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 development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed. [29][30]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.

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17:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-14

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 beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts. [31]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed. [32]
There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on the project page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback. [33]

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17:26, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Template:The Mandalorian

@Brojam: I request it be restored it has considerable additions. Valoem ^talk ^contrib 23:57, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, saw that it was restored and it seems to be substantially different from the deleted version. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 15:08, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-15

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

There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. It will soon be fixed. [34]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

MediaWiki will use a newer version of Unicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seen on Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the user Maintenance script. This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to. [35]

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19:03, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Missing merge templates bot

I wonder whether you think it might be possible to have a bot that will add missing merge proposal templates; or is this possible with Twinkle (I haven't found it, despite trying to look for it)? At the moment, I'm finding quite a few pages where we have merge to or merge templates on one page, but they're not present on the other page. Formally notifying in both spots might help to drive discussion, but also to ensure that interested parties are informed that a merge is proposed. Klbrain (talk) 10:13, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Klbrain I am currently the least active I've been in a long time due to just how messy the last few weeks have been. I can't start working on it right now, but I think it's a good idea and some discussion should probably be started to gain consensus for such a bot. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 23:49, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

It is a difficult time; hope that the world can come through this soon. I'll look to start a discussion. Klbrain (talk) 07:27, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-16

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

Recent changes

You can now use the articletopic search word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic. [36]
You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery. [37]
You can see edits from the Wikimedia Cloud Services in a new dashboard.
When you use filters on a history page you sometimes don't see any edits. There is a text explaining this now. Before it was just empty. [38]
There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog. [39]

Problems

There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest. [40][41][42]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 15. It will be on all wikis from April 16 (calendar).

Future changes

Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed. [43]
The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated <source> tag, as well as the use of the deprecated enclose parameter, will add tracking categories.

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15:31, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-17

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 4 May 2020.

Recent changes

The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills. [44]
Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed. div#content is now .mw-body. div.portal is now .portal. div#footer is now #footer. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. [45]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in Internet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011. [46]
The font in the diffs will change. [47]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).

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18:45, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-20

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

Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [48]

Problems

Commons will be on read-only for a few minutes on 12 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [49]
Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [50][51]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via mw.config.exists() or mw.user.tokens.exists(). You can use exists() or get() to check one at a time instead. [52]

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

20:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-21

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 forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. [53][54]

Problems

There is a bug that creates problems for iPhone users with iOS 13 and Safari. If you use an iPhone to read or edit Wikipedia and see bugs on the mobile site you can report them. [55]
Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [56][57]

Changes later this week

The Wikipedia app for Android can let users add depicts on Commons. The beta version used computer-aided tagging. This was removed to get more specific depicts. [58]
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

Graphs will be rendered in the reader's browser. This will use Javascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files. [59]
Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects div#p-personal, div#p-navigation, div#p-interaction, div#p-tb, div#p-lang, div#p-namespaces, div#p-variants and div#footer. They will have to remove div. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [60]
Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects #p-variants, #p-namespaces, #p-personal, #p-views and #p-cactions. They can no longer use > ul. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.

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17:19, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-22

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 visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [61]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).

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14:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23

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 beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [62]

Problems

There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [63][64][65]
The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [66]

Changes later this week

You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [67]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).

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22:32, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-24

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 articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [68]
Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them. <b/> is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work. area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect <references /> or <ref />. [69]
There is a banner called WikidataPageBanner. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions on MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [70][71]

Changes later this week

You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [72]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).

Future changes

A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 118 wikis need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [73]

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21:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25

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

Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

Problems

There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [74]
Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [75]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [76]
The selectors .menu and .vectorMenu will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts. .menu should be replaced by ul. .vectorMenu should be replaced by .vector-menu. [77]

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21:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Wrong information

Stop editing wrong information about actors.They are humans too. Brishti21 (talk) 11:04, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Brishti21 I'm unsure what you're talking about. I see that my bot made an edit to Anangsha Biswas describing her as an "Indian film actress" which seems to be accurate. I don't think we have edited any of the same pages otherwise. I also think it would be a good idea to assume good faith with regards to the people reverting your edits there. They just want to make sure nothing false come in there by making sure everything has a proper source. Imagine if we didn't do this and someone pretending to know her came along and said that her birthday was 15 July 1985 instead. That would be a lot worse then her not having a dob in the article at all. I have also added a template stating that you are connected to her since you are claiming to be her sister, feek free to read our conflict of interest guidelines if you want to know more. If you want help to improve the article feel free to ask me! Trialpears (talk) 11:40, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26

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

There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [78]
Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [79]

Changes later this week

The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [80]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes

A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [81]

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18:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Aircraft specs template swap

Admire the effort put in but you may find it useful to use the |endurance= and |time to altitude= parameters in the conversions. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:36, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

GraemeLeggett, yeah I should probably put more effort into cleaning up custom parameters. I do it occasionally but most of the time I have just been looking to conserve all the information. Some regular expressions have now been added for endurance, time to altitude and fuel capacity parameters and I will make sure they are converted in the future. Thanks for calling me out on this! It will make the conversion better. --Trialpears (talk) 21:44, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

If it makes your editing easier that's good. Fortunately several parameters (eg the |[parameter] note= and the armament parameters were 'inherited' from the older aircraft specifications templateGraemeLeggett (talk) 11:34, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27

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

Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [82]
Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [83]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

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16:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28

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

Problems

The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed. [84]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more. [85]
The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.

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20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Template talk:Uw-npa1

Looking at your deletion request at Template talk:Uw-npa1 and your closure of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 July 1#Template:Uw-attack1-default is faulty. I see a consensus to delete Template:Uw-attack1-default as it replicates {{Uw-npa1}} which should be kept. Cabayi (talk) 11:32, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Cabayi I assessed the consensus to be for deleting {{Uw-attack1-default}}. There was definitely not a consensus for deleting the frequently used {{Uw-npa1}}. The reason this was tagged for speedy deletion was due to me forgetting to tell XfD closer to only tag {{Uw-attack1-default}} which I'm very sorry about. I maintain that my consensus determination was a good one however with three people being in general agreement about what to do with the template. I know this is a weaker consensus than is expected at most other venues but this is perfectly regular for TfD with our lower participation numbers. Thank you for removing the speedy tag, I will make sure not to make this mistake again. --Trialpears (talk) 11:53, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-29

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 can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks. [86]

Problems

Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week. [87][88]

Changes later this week

Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background. Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using <translate nowrap></translate> on the source page. [89]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).

Future changes

Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. [90][91][92][93]

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16:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Uw-archive

Template:Uw-archive has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. CapnZapp (talk) 08:41, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Template help

Hey. Hoping you might be able to take a look at this. Basically, I'm changing Template:Blockchain notification to be a wrapper around Template:Gs/alert. But when I try to pass the sig param, it kinda messes up (see Template:Blockchain notification/sandbox). That's the same subst trick you used I think, but for some reason when I do {{subst:Blockchain notification/sandbox|sig=yes}} it just turns into a mess. I've tried removing the very first safesubst to see what it's outputting, and it does output the correct syntax ({{Gs/alert|cry|sig=yes}}), so if I were to subst this again manually it'd work fine, but somehow turns into a complete mess when doing recursive substitution. What am I missing here? Thank you! ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:04, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, not really familiar with the Gs templates, but I'll take a look! --Trialpears (talk) 22:10, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

I can't for the life of me figure out why this is happening. It seems like it's somehow treating "cry|sig=yes" as the first parameter even though it contains a pipe. I've tried everything that I could come up with and read quite a lot of documentation but still can't figure it out. I suggest asking at WP:VPT. --Trialpears (talk) 23:02, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Trialpears, seems like it's a weird, pesky little issue. Thanks so much for taking the time to look into it :) -- will post on VPT. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:09, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-30

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

A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. The mobile main page special casing stopped working 14 July. 60 wikis now have main pages that don't work well on mobile. You can see which ones, how to fix it and how to get help in Phabricator. This is the same problem that was reported in Tech News 2020/24 and 2020/26.

Problems

There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution. [94]
Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [95]
Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably a browser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the details on Phabricator. [96]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 July. It will be on all wikis from 23 July (calendar).

Future changes

There is a Printable version link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway. [97]

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

19:05, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-31

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 Starter kit is now available for wiki communities. This page lists technical resources, tools, and recommendations. These are essential to operate a wiki project. This is mostly useful for smaller wikis where the community has limited experience with this. [98]
The first features of the Desktop Improvements project are available for logged-in users on all wikis. In order to use them, uncheck Use Legacy Vector in your local or global preferences in section Skin preferences. More improvements are planned. Feedback is welcome.
On multiple wikis, a UTCLiveClock gadget is available. For wikis that import the gadget directly from mediawiki.org, end users can now choose a different timezone to show instead of UTC.

Problems

The deployment train for MediaWiki has been blocked this week. [99][100]
Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed. [101]
Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed. [102]

Changes later this week

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

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13:53, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Wikiwings

		Wikiwings
		For all all your work in converting aircraft type specifications to the newest template. - Ahunt (talk) 18:28, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Wow, thanks! Hopefully I'll be done with {{Aerospecs}} today or tomorrow. {{Aircraft specifications}} is more complex, but has fewer transclusions. Perhaps in a week.... Your help converting them and your aircraft expertise has been very helpful and you should know that you can ask me if you want help with any template work in the future! --Trialpears (talk) 18:43, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

"Credit where credit is due" - you have done a ton of work there! - Ahunt (talk) 19:04, 27 July 2020 (UTC)