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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 ( calendar).
• You can now use interwiki prefix c: to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons. [31]

VisualEditor news

• You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [32]
• VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [33]
• VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.

Future software changes

• CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
• MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome. [34]
• The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [35]
• CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings. [36] [37]
• You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome. [38]

Problems

• For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load. [39] [40]
• On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move. [41] [42]

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf3) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and all Wikipedias on May 8 ( calendar).
• The Compact Personal Bar was added as a beta feature to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added as a beta feature to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and to all Wikipedias on May 8. To test it, you can enable it now in your preferences on MediaWiki.org. [43]
• It is now easier to disable the CodeEditor tool. [44]

VisualEditor news

• External links in VisualEditor are now in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. [45]
• The template tool now tells you if a parameter is obsolete. [46]
• You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData; VisualEditor will add them like required ones. [47]
• There is a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name for file names. [48] [49]
• Editing formulae in VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all users. [50] [51]
• You will soon be able to try a new beta feature to edit text in another language. [52] [53]

Future software changes

• MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Japanese (ja), Portuguese (pt), Spanish (es), Swedish (sv) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 8. Feedback is welcome. [54]
• You can help translate about 100 new language names that have been added to our data source. They are used, for example, as hover text for interwiki links. Send an e-mail to Nemo if you want to help.
• If you click on a redirect page in your watchlist, you will soon access the redirect itself. [55] [56]

Problems

• For about 40 minutes around 00:20 UTC on April 29, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf4) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 8. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and all Wikipedias on May 15 ( calendar).

VisualEditor news

• A new citation system in VisualEditor was enabled on the English Wikipedia. It will soon be enabled on more wikis. [57]
• Templates that were previously broken in VisualEditor should now appear correctly. [58]

Future software changes

• It will soon be possible to move category description pages. Pages in changed categories will still have to be moved independently. [59] [60]
• You will soon be able to clear your watchlist with one click or through the API. [61] [62] [63] [64]
• You will soon be able to link to Flow posts and workflows with Special:Flow. [65] [66]
• The jQuery JavaScript library will soon be updated. Please check that your gadgets and scripts will still work. [67]
• The Vector skin will work faster, as the sidebar will no longer collapse partly after being loaded. [68] [69] [70]
• MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on Wikimedia Commons on May 15. Feedback is welcome.
• An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on May 14 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode ( time conversion). [71]
• Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead. [72]

Problems

• There were problems with generating file thumbnails for all wikis between May 3 and May 6 due to a configuration error. [73] [74]

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

Tech News updates

• Tech News is one year old this week; thank you for being with us!

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf5) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 15. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 20, and all Wikipedias on May 22 ( calendar).
• The jQuery JavaScript library was updated on May 16. Please check that your gadgets and scripts still work. [75] [76] [77]
• MediaViewer was enabled for all users on the Kannada (kn) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 13. It will be enabled on the German (de), English (en), Italian (it) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias and on all Wikisource wikis on May 22. Feedback is welcome. [78] [79]
• VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences. [80] [81]
• You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for April 2014.

VisualEditor news

• VisualEditor's buttons and icons can now be accessed using keyboard keys. [82] [83]
• VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like {{cite_web}} and not just {{Cite web}}. [84] [85]
• VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it. [86] [87]
• VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit. [88]
• The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. [89] [90]

Future software changes

• User ID number will no longer be visible in preferences. [91] [92]

Problems

• For several hours on May 16, there were problems with loading gadgets on some wikis due to a server problem. [93]

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf6) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 22. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 27, and all Wikipedias on May 29 ( calendar).
• MediaViewer will be enabled on all Wikisource wikis on May 29, and on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.

VisualEditor news

• VisualEditor's welcome message and wikitext warning now say that you can switch to source mode editing and keep your edits without saving them. [94] [95] [96] [97]
• A bug that caused files not to appear after saving edits in the File: namespace was fixed last week. [98] [99]
• VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear in namespaces where VisualEditor is disabled. [100] [101]
• It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor; many minor bugs related to images have also been fixed. [102]
• VisualEditor will no longer convert spaces to underscores inside links to pages in namespaces that include spaces in their names. [103]

Future software changes

• Wikimedia Labs will stop working for about 10 minutes around 18:00 UTC on May 30 due to a server upgrade. [104]
• It will soon no longer be possible to upload different files under the same name at the same time using the UploadWizard tool. [105] [106]
• Links to TIFF, DjVu or PDF files created with the syntax [[File:Name.ext|thumb|page 15 is my favourite]] will now show an image caption if there is any text after page number; previously they caused the given page to appear. [107] [108] [109]
• You will soon see information about global blocks for IP addresses on their contributions page on your local wiki. [110] [111]

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 29. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 3, and to all Wikipedias on June 5 ( calendar).
• CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on all Wikipedias with less than 100,000 pages on May 30. [112]

VisualEditor news

• Templates that redirect to other templates now get the TemplateData of their target. [113]
• The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible after you save an edit with VisualEditor. [114] [115]
• VisualEditor now checks if your browser supports SVG files to avoid displaying broken icons. [116]
• There is now a new type for TemplateData parameters: date for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format. [117]

Future software changes

• MediaViewer will be enabled on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.
• You will soon see a warning if you visit a contributions page for a user that does not exist. [118] [119]
• The search tab will soon be removed from user preferences. You will be able to set your search preferences on Special:Search. [120] [121]
• You will soon see a label next to the little triangle arrow for the Actions menu in the Vector skin ( screenshot). [122] [123]

Problems

• For about 20 minutes on May 29, all wikis were broken due to a configuration error. [124]

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

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 5. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 10, and to all Wikipedias on June 12 ( calendar).
• You can now use guided tours on the Arabic (ar), Bengali (bn) and Norwegian (no) Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [125] [126]

VisualEditor news

• You should no longer be able to add empty references with VisualEditor. [127] [128]
• The "use an existing reference" button in the reference tool is now shown as disabled, rather than hidden, when the reference has content. [129] [130] [131]
• You will now see category contents again after saving an edit to a category page with VisualEditor. [132] [133]

Future software changes

• MediaViewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 12. Feedback is welcome. [134]
• You will be able to use information from Wikidata directly in Wikiquote pages starting on June 10. [135]
• On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, translation administrators will soon be able to use the page migration tool to import existing translations to the new system. [136] [137]
• You will soon see metadata on file description pages for Ogg files ( example video, example audio). Some metadata with non-English characters may need to be purged or transcoded to UTF-8 before they show correctly. [138] [139]
• Templates containing <ref> or <references> tags will no longer need dummy parameters to prevent caching. [140] [141] [142]
• You will no longer be able to use Special:Thanks directly. The page will soon show an error message when you visit it. [143] [144]
• Hovercards will no longer flicker. [145]

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

Reminder

• You can subscribe to the wikitech-ambassadors mailing list to get news more quickly and to send feedback or report problems.

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 17, and to all Wikipedias on June 19 ( calendar).
• You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for May 2014.

VisualEditor news

• You can now easily see the target of a link or other information using the context menu. [146]
• When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to switch it to re-use another reference. [147] [148]
• You can now add and edit {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and __DISAMBIG__ in the page settings menu. [149] [150] [151] [152]
• The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler; the order of mathematical symbols is now correct. [153] [154] [155]

Future software changes

• Media Viewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 19. Feedback is welcome. [156]
• You will no longer be able to use navigation popups and Hovercards at the same time. [157]
• You will no longer see image thumbnails on search results pages on Wikibooks and Wikisource wikis. [158] [159]
• It will soon be possible to globally rename global ( SUL) users. [160] [161]
• Tablet users will be redirected to the mobile view of Wikimedia wikis starting on June 17. [162]
• The special page that lists most linked-to templates will soon include pages from all namespaces; it will also be renamed to Special:MostTranscludedPages. [163]
• An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on June 17 at 17:30 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode ( time conversion). You can also read a blog post about the upcoming switch to Phabricator.
• You can now comment on the draft 2014-15 goals of the Wikimedia Foundation engineering department. [164]

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

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 19. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 24, and to all Wikipedias on June 26 ( calendar).

VisualEditor news

• You can now drag-and-drop selections of content, not just files and templates. [165] [166]
• When dragging an item, you will now see a line that helps you to drop it. [167] [168]
• You can now only move an image to the start of a paragraph, not to the middle of it, so you don't accidentally split it. [169] [170]
• You will now be warned if you add wikitext to file captions and references. [171] [172]

Future software changes

• You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [173] [174]
• CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on additional 70 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia Incubator, during the next week. [175]
• CirrusSearch results will soon take into account categories, the first paragraph and the wikitext of a page. You will also be able to use regular expressions to search the wikitext. It will take a few days for the changes to be enabled on all wikis. [176]
• You will soon be able to watch translations for e-mail notifications without receiving an e-mail when they are reviewed by another translator. [177] [178]
• An IRC meeting to organize old high priority MediaWiki bug reports will take place on June 24 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode ( time conversion). [179]

Problems

• On June 19, all wikis were broken for about 15 minutes due to a high server load.
• Between June 13 and June 15 there were problems with the scaling of video files due to a configuration error. [180]

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

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 26. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 1, and to all Wikipedias on July 3 ( calendar).

VisualEditor news

• Context menus in VisualEditor will no longer flicker and disappear when you insert a new reference, formula, image, etc. [181] [182]
• A bug that prevented relocating items due to cache was fixed last week. [183] [184]
• VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the bottom of the page when you try to edit section 0. When you try to add a formula, VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the top of the page. [185] [186] [187] [188]
• Links to category pages or file pages added with VisualEditor will now work correctly. [189] [190]

Future software changes

• You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [191] [192]
• Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead.
• CirrusSearch will be enabled on June 30 as the primary search method on 34 new wikis, including the Czech (cs), Danish (da), Finnish (fi) and Hebrew (he) Wikipedias. [193]
• All Wikimedia wikis will be using a security method called perfect forward secrecy starting on July 1. If you see a problem, please report it. [194] [195]
• Starting on July 1, it will be possible to globally rename global ( SUL) users. [196]
• You will soon see block information when you visit the contributions page or try to edit the user page or user talk page of a user who is affected by an IP range block. [197] [198]
• You will soon be able to use {{!}} as a magic word to produce the pipe character, for instance for use in tables. [199]

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

Tech News updates

• We are looking for contributors to help write a new issue every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 3. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 8, and to all Wikipedias on July 10 ( calendar).
• CirrusSearch was enabled on July 1 as the primary search method on 36 new wikis, including the Norwegian (no), Portuguese (pt) and Ukrainian (uk) Wikipedias. [200]
• It is now possible to create Atom or RSS feeds for Word of the Day, Word of the Week and similar entries on Wiktionary wikis. [201] [202]
• You can now use a graphical interface to edit TemplateData information on the English (en), French (fr) and Italian (it) Wikipedias. [203] [204]

VisualEditor news

• Saving an edit with VisualEditor will now be much faster. [205] [206]
• You can now add a caption when you add a file to a page with VisualEditor. You can also change the file to a different one and keep the existing caption. [207] [208] [209]
• When you switch to the Edit source tab, you are now asked to keep your changes. You no longer need to find the option in the menus. [210] [211] [212]
• The reference tool that adds empty <ref></ref> tags is now at the bottom of the Cite menu, below references that use templates like {{Cite web}}. [213]
• Context menus will no longer be shown over items that you can edit directly, for example formulæ. [214] [215] [216]

Future software changes

• Starting on July 9, it will be possible to globally rename global ( SUL) users. The feature was first scheduled for July 1, but was delayed due to bugs.
• A plan to enable CirrusSearch as the primary search method on the 11 largest Wikimedia wikis has now been prepared. [217]
• If you use references on a page, you will soon always see them at the bottom of the page, even if you forget to add the <references /> tag (or a template). [218] [219]
• Black-and-white XCF images will soon display correctly. [220] [221]
• Description pages of SVG files will soon always show download links for multiple resolutions ( example). The links were previously shown only for SVG files in large original resolutions. [222] [223]

Problems

• Between July 2-3, there were problems with loading pages on multiple wikis due to a configuration issue. [224] [225]
• For a few hours on July 1, there were problems with uploading new files on Wikimedia Commons due to a configuration error. [226] [227]

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

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 15, and to all Wikipedias on July 17 ( calendar).
• It is now possible to globally rename global ( SUL) users. Please go to the username changes page on Meta if you want to rename your account on all wikis. [228] [229]
• You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for June 2014.
• You can now read the latest issue of the Wikidata newsletter and translate it into your language.

VisualEditor news

• The tool to add templates and citations will now work for templates that include HTML comments or templates in their titles. [230] [231]
• The button to make images full size should now work correctly. [232] [233] [234]
• References will now be shown in the default font size again. [235]

Future software changes

• CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on the Dutch (nl) and Japanese (ja) Wikipedias on July 14, and on the Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias on July 16. [236]
• The Special:Version page will soon show the exact version of MediaWiki and all extensions installed on your wiki ( example). [237] [238]
• It will soon no longer be possible to order printed books of wiki articles via PediaPress. You will still be able to create PDF files. [239]
• Pages that use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''}} more than once will soon show a warning. You can use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''|noerror}} to hide it. [240] [241]
• Pages that have the list of references added automatically will soon be added to a tracking category. Administrators will be able to configure the name of the category on their wikis. [242] [243]
• Administrators will soon be able to easily merge histories of two pages using Special:MergeHistory. [244] [245]
• Administrators will soon see links to delete files on Special:ListFiles. [246]

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

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

Recent software changes

• The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 22, and to all Wikipedias on July 24 ( calendar).
• CirrusSearch was removed as the primary search method from Wikimedia Commons and the Spanish (es) Wikipedia due to a high server load. The plan to enable it on the Dutch (nl), Japanese (ja), Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias was also postponed to a later date. [247] [248] [249]
• The tool that stores information about languages ( CLDR) was updated to its latest version. You can still help translate language names into your own language so they can be used in the sidebar and other places. [250]
• Translation memory for newly translatable pages should now offer more suggestions. [251] [252]
• A tool to convert MediaWiki pages to LaTeX is now available on Tool Labs. [253]

VisualEditor news

• Tablet users visiting the mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will be able to use a special version of VisualEditor starting on July 31. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu. Feedback is welcome. [254]
• All windows in VisualEditor have now a new design. Main action buttons will always be located in the top bar and will use simple words rather than icons. [255]
• You can now easily open links inside the link editor, for example to see their target. [256]
• Several bugs related to the positioning of the cursor around some items (like images and references) were fixed last week. [257] [258] [259] [260] [261] [262]

Future software changes

• It will soon be possible to watch individual discussions in the Topic namespace rather than whole pages for talk pages using Flow. [263]
• You can give comments about the new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [264]
• An IRC meeting to organize Pywikibot bugs will take place from July 24 to July 27 on the channel #pywikibot on freenode. [265]
• A request for comments on how to improve MediaWiki API was re-started on MediaWiki.org. Your feedback is welcome.

Problems

• Mailing lists were broken for about 16 hours between July 14 and July 15 due to a server problem. [266]

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