Matthew (WMF)

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Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17: 31 days

Tech news: 2013-22

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.

Recent software changes: (Not all changes will affect you.)

The Translate extension and Universal Language Selector were enabled on Wikimedia Commons on May 20. Commons users can now easily change languages, and translate pages with a friendly interface.
The Notifications feature, active on the English Wikipedia, now supports local blacklists and whitelists. It is possible to hide users (for example certain bots) from all notifications on the wiki. Also, e-mail notifications are now grouped.
The first stable release of MediaWiki 1.21 for sites outside Wikimedia was published on May 25.
The tool storing information about languages (CLDR) was updated to the latest version (23.1).
Due to a software issue, users couldn't enable or disable Gadgets. The issue is now fixed.

Future software changes

MediaWiki will stop supporting XHTML 1.0 and HTML versions lower than version 5. HTML5 will now be the default language for pages created by the software.
The software will check if all uploaded files are secure and match their type.
The Wikimedia Commons Android app will come out of the beta phase on its next release.
Account creation by manual log-in will now be recorded in the account creation log (bug 42434).
Links to file description pages will again be accessible directly from within videos (bug 43747).
The software behind recent changes patrolling was re-written; the change fixes issues related to patrolling new pages, among other things.
During a meeting, developers agreed on rules about making big changes to the software.
There is now a category to list pages with invalid music code.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Unsubscribe.

Tech news: 2013-23

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.

Recent software changes: (Not all changes will affect you.)

The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf5) was added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 29. It will be enabled on the English Wikipedia on June 3, and on all other Wikipedias on June 5.
The Tamil Wikipedia shared a Lua module they created to automate their Main Page.
There is now a test wiki to test new features in right-to-left languages.
The Thanks feature was added to the English Wikipedia; users can now thank others for individual edits.
The new interface for account creation and log-in is now the default on 30 wikis, including the English Wikipedia, Commons, Meta, and Wikidata. The feature will be added to all wikis after June 5. Users can return to the old look by adding ?useNew=0 to the web address.
Videos are now played in pop-up windows if their size on the page is smaller than 200 pixels (800 pixels on the English Wikipedia).
Opening your talk page now marks notifications as read, for wikis using the Notifications feature. (bug 47912) .
All autoconfirmed users can now reset transcoding of video files; previously only administrators could do this.
The Nearby feature allows people who use mobile devices to see Wikipedia articles about objects and places around them.

Future software changes

The PostEdit feature is now part of MediaWiki, and will work on all wikis. (bug 48726)
The Narayam and WebFonts extensions will be replaced by the Universal Language Selector extension.
MediaWiki will now be updated every week, starting on June 6. Thanks to this, bugs will be fixed and features will be added faster than they are now.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

From Susan H., aka User:Invertzoo

Hello, Matthew (WMF). Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Support request with team editing experiment project

Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta.