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.
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
You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on
19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem.
[1]
Changes later this week
MIDI files can soon be played without the
Score extension. You can then add them with [[File:Filename.midi]]. Later override_midi and override_audio will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score.
[2]
A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in
your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems.
[3]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old wgEnableAPI and wgEnableWriteAPI values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values.
[4]
Updates: I've been focusing largely on the development side of things, so we are a lot closer now to being ready to actually start discussing deploying it and testing it out here.
There's just a few things left that need to be resolved:
A bunch of language support issues in particular, plus some
other release blockers, such as the fact that currently there's no good way to find any hubs people do create.
We also probably need some proper documentation and examples up to even reference if we want a meaningful discussion. We have
the extension documentation and
some test projects, but we probably need a bit more. Also I need to be able to even find the test projects! How can I possibly write reports about this stuff if I can't find any of it?!
Some other stuff that's happened in the meantime:
Midpoint report is out for this round of the project, if you want to read in too much detail about all the problems I've been running into.
WikiProject Molecular Biology have successfully set up using the
old module system that CollaborationKit is intended to replace (eventually), and it even seems to work, so go them. Based on the issues they ran into, it looks like the members signup thing on that system has some of the same problems as we've been unable to resolve in CK, though, which is... interesting. (Need to
change the content model to the right thing for the formwizard config to take. Ugh, content models.)
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
new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday.
[5]
Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced.
[6]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (
calendar).
Meetings
You can watch or join the next
Wikimedia Language showcase. It will be about the usage of Machine Translation in Wikimedia projects. The showcase will be on
26 June at 13:00 (UTC). A recording will be kept for later viewing
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
26 June at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Having published 6 issues of this newsletter, I decided it was time to move it out from my user space. It is now located at
Wikipedia:Scripts++. Thanks, --
DannyS712 (
talk) 11:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
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 development of
Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia.
[7]
Problems
Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress.
[8]
Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed.
[9]
Changes later this week
You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database.
[10]
There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Des identifiants ouverts pour la science ouverte by the Comité pour la Science ouverte (Open Science Committee), June 2019. Extract: "Since 2012, the Wikidata database has gradually become the global point of convergence for open identifiers." (Depuis 2012, la base Wikidata est devenue progressivement le point de convergence mondial des identifiants ouverts.)
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
For event organizers, if you
request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck.
[11]
Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new
partial blocks feature.
[12]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (
calendar).
The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools.
[13]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch.
[14]
There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July.
[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.
Recent changes
The mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback.
[16]
Changes later this week
The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called Edit filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You
can read more.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The
Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can
read more and
leave feedback.
[17]
Structured Data on Commons: RDF output for MediaInfo is now available (
example)
Edits with the tag #suggestededit-add 1.0 come from the suggested edit feature on Wikipedia's Android app:
see the FAQ for more information
Property number 7000:
DigitalNZ ID is live. This data aggregator has over 30 million records. The proposal was the first from
Ambrosia10, a New Zealand editor.
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
Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check
the conditions and the request process.
The
Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania.
[18]
Problems
The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2.
[19]
Changes later this week
Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected.
[20]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Some items in the visual editor will change later this week. This will make it easier to edit links, citations, and templates on both desktop and mobile.
[21][22]
With
advanced search turned on you will be able to choose the sorting order of the search results when you do a search.
[23][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.
Problems
Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch.
[25]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
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 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (
calendar).
Problems
A change in
RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed.
[26][27]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Today everyone can see
IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can
read more and
comment.
The open source geocoder
w:en:Nominatim used by the OpenStreetMap project is participating in the Google Summer of Code with an internship working on integrating Wikidata as a ranking metric for its search results. Check the
development blog.
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
Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new
advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated.
[28]
Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin.
[29]
Changes later this week
Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week.
[30]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21.
Full announcement,
Phabricator task.
Current: Wikimania in Stockholm and hackathon, August 14 to 18. Check out
the list of all Wikidata-related events. Each session page should include notes, slides and streaming if available.
NameGuzzler allows you to automatically add an identical label or alias into many languages (for example, the name of a person or a place). You can define your own custom list of languages that you want to add.
New Wikidata-related projects developed during the Wikimania hackathon:
Documentation translation sprint: several people translated Wikidata help pages in their own language. Feel free to continue the efforts to make Wikidata more accessible!
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
There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.
Problems
Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can
read more to see how to fix the filters.
Only six accounts can be created from one
IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again.
[31]
Changes later this week
Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one
IP address. An IP address can be
whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show
CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday.
[32]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
There is an
RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit
abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can
read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead.
[33]
Integraality generates tables to assess the completeness of properties on sets of items, such as
properties on railway stations for instance. Tables are automatically updated and highly configurable.
Starting from July 2019, Wikimedia Sverige and the Wikimedia Foundation's GLAM team work together to create a more sustainable technical infrastructure for global heritage and content partnerships.
Read more about this initiative on meta.wikimedia.org.
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.
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
You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on
19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem.
[1]
Changes later this week
MIDI files can soon be played without the
Score extension. You can then add them with [[File:Filename.midi]]. Later override_midi and override_audio will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score.
[2]
A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in
your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems.
[3]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old wgEnableAPI and wgEnableWriteAPI values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values.
[4]
Updates: I've been focusing largely on the development side of things, so we are a lot closer now to being ready to actually start discussing deploying it and testing it out here.
There's just a few things left that need to be resolved:
A bunch of language support issues in particular, plus some
other release blockers, such as the fact that currently there's no good way to find any hubs people do create.
We also probably need some proper documentation and examples up to even reference if we want a meaningful discussion. We have
the extension documentation and
some test projects, but we probably need a bit more. Also I need to be able to even find the test projects! How can I possibly write reports about this stuff if I can't find any of it?!
Some other stuff that's happened in the meantime:
Midpoint report is out for this round of the project, if you want to read in too much detail about all the problems I've been running into.
WikiProject Molecular Biology have successfully set up using the
old module system that CollaborationKit is intended to replace (eventually), and it even seems to work, so go them. Based on the issues they ran into, it looks like the members signup thing on that system has some of the same problems as we've been unable to resolve in CK, though, which is... interesting. (Need to
change the content model to the right thing for the formwizard config to take. Ugh, content models.)
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
new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday.
[5]
Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced.
[6]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (
calendar).
Meetings
You can watch or join the next
Wikimedia Language showcase. It will be about the usage of Machine Translation in Wikimedia projects. The showcase will be on
26 June at 13:00 (UTC). A recording will be kept for later viewing
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
26 June at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Having published 6 issues of this newsletter, I decided it was time to move it out from my user space. It is now located at
Wikipedia:Scripts++. Thanks, --
DannyS712 (
talk) 11:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
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 development of
Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia.
[7]
Problems
Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress.
[8]
Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed.
[9]
Changes later this week
You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database.
[10]
There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Des identifiants ouverts pour la science ouverte by the Comité pour la Science ouverte (Open Science Committee), June 2019. Extract: "Since 2012, the Wikidata database has gradually become the global point of convergence for open identifiers." (Depuis 2012, la base Wikidata est devenue progressivement le point de convergence mondial des identifiants ouverts.)
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
For event organizers, if you
request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck.
[11]
Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new
partial blocks feature.
[12]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (
calendar).
The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools.
[13]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch.
[14]
There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July.
[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.
Recent changes
The mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback.
[16]
Changes later this week
The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called Edit filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You
can read more.
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The
Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can
read more and
leave feedback.
[17]
Structured Data on Commons: RDF output for MediaInfo is now available (
example)
Edits with the tag #suggestededit-add 1.0 come from the suggested edit feature on Wikipedia's Android app:
see the FAQ for more information
Property number 7000:
DigitalNZ ID is live. This data aggregator has over 30 million records. The proposal was the first from
Ambrosia10, a New Zealand editor.
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
Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check
the conditions and the request process.
The
Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania.
[18]
Problems
The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2.
[19]
Changes later this week
Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected.
[20]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Some items in the visual editor will change later this week. This will make it easier to edit links, citations, and templates on both desktop and mobile.
[21][22]
With
advanced search turned on you will be able to choose the sorting order of the search results when you do a search.
[23][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.
Problems
Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch.
[25]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
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 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (
calendar).
Problems
A change in
RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed.
[26][27]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Today everyone can see
IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can
read more and
comment.
The open source geocoder
w:en:Nominatim used by the OpenStreetMap project is participating in the Google Summer of Code with an internship working on integrating Wikidata as a ranking metric for its search results. Check the
development blog.
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
Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new
advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated.
[28]
Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin.
[29]
Changes later this week
Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week.
[30]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21.
Full announcement,
Phabricator task.
Current: Wikimania in Stockholm and hackathon, August 14 to 18. Check out
the list of all Wikidata-related events. Each session page should include notes, slides and streaming if available.
NameGuzzler allows you to automatically add an identical label or alias into many languages (for example, the name of a person or a place). You can define your own custom list of languages that you want to add.
New Wikidata-related projects developed during the Wikimania hackathon:
Documentation translation sprint: several people translated Wikidata help pages in their own language. Feel free to continue the efforts to make Wikidata more accessible!
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
There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.
Problems
Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can
read more to see how to fix the filters.
Only six accounts can be created from one
IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again.
[31]
Changes later this week
Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one
IP address. An IP address can be
whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show
CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday.
[32]
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
There is an
RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit
abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can
read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead.
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Integraality generates tables to assess the completeness of properties on sets of items, such as
properties on railway stations for instance. Tables are automatically updated and highly configurable.
Starting from July 2019, Wikimedia Sverige and the Wikimedia Foundation's GLAM team work together to create a more sustainable technical infrastructure for global heritage and content partnerships.
Read more about this initiative on meta.wikimedia.org.