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
You can now see the text of DjVu and PDF files in search results on wikis testing the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [1][2]
With the new version of the Wikibase DataModel extension, you can install it outside Wikimedia wikis. [3]
Images are now shown inside VisualEditor as HTML5<nowiki><figure /></nowiki> elements. Comments are welcome. [4]
You can now test a basic version of VisualEditor on mobile devices; see this article as an example.
Problems
On December 23, Wikimedia Labs was broken for 4 hours due to an NFS problem. [5]
Future software changes
CirrusSearch will be added as the second search method for Spanish (es), French (fr), Portuguese (pt) and Russian (ru) wikis on December 30. Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies and Wikinews users will also be able to enable it in their Beta Features options.
Fun Fact: According to Wikidata, this is the year of 2004 (Q2014)
DevelopmentWord from John
To give this section some life, since the development team had their holidays last week meaning nothing really got done (let them have one week off at least), I'll say a few words. 2014 is a new year and thus a new start, over the last year Wikidata celebrated its first birthday which brought reflection over what Wikidata had accomplish. Therefore I want to use the start of 2014 to reflect what Wikidata can do. For my personal over view see this page. For the summary, while it is meant to be a weekly simple update, I feel this can be used a lot more effective to put across not only what happened on Wikidata but things about Wikidata on other wikis, I am hoping to start a section over this within the next few weeks. If you have any suggestions for the summary, feel free to drop me a message at meta or Wikidata. Thanks.
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 (1.23wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 2. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on January 7 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 9 (calendar).
On January 2, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage projects were broken for 2 hours due to language cache update issues.
On the same day, it was not possible to edit most wikis for about 30 minutes, due to a database replication problem.
Future software changes
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the default search method for Italian Wikipedia, French Wikisource, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage sites, and as a second search method for the German Wikipedia and all Wikibooks sites on January 6. [13]
Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian Wikipedia users will also be able to enable CirrusSearch in their Beta Features options. [14]
Plural form rules for some languages will be changed. Many translations of the user interface for Belarusian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian and other languages will need to be changed. [15][16][17]
You will see a warning when you try to delete a page linked to from other pages. [18][19]
You will be able to use keyboard shortcuts in the Translate tool, by pressing Alt+1 and similar key groups. [22][23]
E-mails sent by MediaWiki will include the name of the site in their From: line. You will be able to change this name on your wiki by editing the MediaWiki:Emailsender page. [24][25]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can read a recent blog post about how Tech News is put together, translated and sent to you across wikis each week.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 9. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 14, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 16 (calendar).
Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons may be slow due to a search engine issue. [28]
VisualEditor news
VisualEditor will be added for all users on several Wikipedias on January 13. [29]
You can now add and remove <nowiki></nowiki>, <nowiki></nowiki> and <nowiki></nowiki> in the page metadata menu. [30][31][32]
Problems
For a few hours on January 6, it was not possible to edit pages using the Translate tool on Wikimedia Commons and the Wikimania 2013 wiki, due to a settings error. [33][34]
For about 20 minutes on January 9, there were problems with CSS and JavaScript due to high server load.
Future software changes
Wikidata will be added to all Wikisource wikis on January 14. [35]
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the second search method for the English Wikipedia on January 13. On Wikibooks and the German Wikipedia, you will also be able to test it by adding it in your Beta Features options.
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 (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).
As of January 16, you can make and use guided tours on the Asturian, Farsi and Russian Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [41][42]
You can give comments on an idea to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [43]
You can watch a video to learn how to report problems in Bugzilla. [44]
VisualEditor news
In the toolbar, the menu to edit the styles (like bold, italic, etc.) now has a down arrow (). The order of the Insert menu has also changed a little.
You can now edit <nowiki><gallery /></nowiki> tags with a very basic tool. [45]
You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu. [46]
When you change categories, you will now see them when you save the page. [47]
When you edit templates, you will now see the parameters in the right order. The ones that you must add have a star (*). [48][49]
The page will now be saved faster, thanks to a new way of coding the text that sends 40% less text to the servers. [50]
There was a problem with search on the English and German Wikipedias between January 6 and January 14. You could not see new pages and changes in search results. [52]
There were "pool timeouts" errors on several wikis on January 13; it was caused by a code change that was made to fix another problem. [53]
On January 17, Bugzilla and Wikimedia Labs were broken for about 20 minutes due to network problems. IRC channels with recent changes (irc.wikimedia.org) were broken for about two hours. [54]
Future software changes
Orange bar with new messages
If you have removed JavaScript in your web browser, you will soon be able to see the orange bar saying that you have new messages. If you have changed how the bar looks with a gadget, you may need to change the gadget again. [55][56]
You will soon be able to add a given Flickr user to a blacklist so that their files can't be uploaded using UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons and other wikis. [57]
You will see a warning when you try to delete a page included in at least one other page. [58]
Bugzilla:57754 Die if wbeditentity tries to clear from an old revision id
Bugzilla:55795 Add API option to show snaks in a list rather than grouped by property
Refactor of ChangeOp remove functionality
Continued to move parsing and validating of values from the frontend into the backend to improve performance and make the non-JS user interface more useful
Finished the Wikidata build script (We use it to pull together code from various git repositories into a single one for deployment)
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
Pages from Wikimedia sites now load faster in your browser thanks to "module storage", a way for your browser to save data like JavaScript and CSS on your computer to avoid downloading them again. See video. [61]
The code used to show videos has changed. You should be able to play the video on the page, with the play button on top of the video. If you see the play button on the right of the video, or if clicking on the video leads you to the original file, please file a bug or tell User:Bawolff. [62]
The Special:ActiveUsers page will be removed because it's too slow. [63]
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).
Problems
On January 21, Universal Language Selector was turned off on all Wikimedia sites because it makes pages load slowly. If you want to use web fonts, or write in scripts that aren't on your keyboard, you need to add it as an option in your preferences. It will be turned back on when the issues are resolved. [64]
For about 20 minutes on the same day, there were problems with CSS and JavaScript due to high server load.
Future software changes
You can give comments about the new version of "Winter", a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [65]
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 (1.23wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 30. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 6 (calendar).
You can now link to diffs using <nowiki>Special:Diff/12345</nowiki> and similar links. [70]
There is no longer an option to hide tables of contents on all pages. [71]
Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons is now faster, after a bug was fixed on January 29. [72]
All Wikimedia wikis now have high-resolution favicons. [73]
VisualEditor news
You can now see a list of keyboard shortcuts by pressing Ctrl+/ inside VisualEditor. [74]
Future software changes
Edits and files hidden with the Oversight tool will be moved to the RevisionDelete system. The Oversight tool will then be removed from Wikimedia wikis. [75][76][77]
For languages where not all sister projects exist, you will be able to link to other language projects using double interwikis (:ko:v, :v:ko, etc.). [78]
It will soon be possible to use the GettingStarted tool on other wikis than the English Wikipedia. You can translate it on Translatewiki.net. [79]
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 (1.23wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 13 (calendar).
The Vector search box was changed to fix old display and accessibility issues; for example, you can now use full-text search even if you have disabled JavaScript. Please report any problems you see. The option to disable the "simplified search bar" on Vector will also be removed. [85][86][87][88][89]
You are now notified when someone adds a link to your user page on wikis where it didn't work before (wikis with dates in the year-month-day order, including Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and some variants of Chinese). [90]
VisualEditor news
You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool. [91][92]
The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed. [93][94][95]
Problems
On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue. [96]
On February 6, some wikis were broken for about half an hour in total due to a problem with the Math extension.
Future software changes
Some methods from Scribunto's mw.message library will be removed after February 18. If you use them in your templates or modules, please check to make sure that things will not break. [97][98]
You will soon be able to use GettingStarted on 23 new Wikipedias. It helps new users by listing possible tasks and giving help. The new version was also added to the English Wikipedia on February 7th. [99]
You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [100][101]
The WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster. [102]
bugzilla.wikimedia.org will be updated this week. You won't be able to access it from 22:00 UTC on February 12 until 01:00 UTC on February 13 at the latest. [111]
The <nowiki><poem></nowiki> tag will be renamed to <nowiki><lines></nowiki>. The old tag will still work. [112]
You can now add labels in your language from within Reasonator. Technically oAuth is used. It now takes just one click to add a label in your language.
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 (1.23wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 20 (calendar).
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces. [115]
You can now directly link to files viewed with MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files. [116]
You can read the summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014. [117]
Problems
On February 9, Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an XFS file system problem. [118]
On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue. [119]
On the same day, for about 20 minutes there were issues with page loading due to database problems.
There were issues with page loading between 21:00 UTC on February 13 and 11:00 UTC on February 14 for users in Europe. It was due to a cache server problem.
On February 14, all sites were broken for about 15 minutes for users in Southeast Asia, Oceania and the western part of North America. It was due to problems with cache servers.
VisualEditor news
The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. [120]
You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor. [121]
Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing. [122]
You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor. [123][124][125]
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 (1.23wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 27 (calendar).
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) was added to the Italian Wikiquote and all Wikiversity projects. Users can now enable it in their Beta options. [126][127]
You will soon be able to add and edit __<nowiki/>STATICREDIRECT__, __<nowiki/>[NO]INDEX__ and __<nowiki/>[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__ in the page settings menu. [128][129][130]
You will soon be able to use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘+Opt+S shortcuts to open the save window in VisualEditor. [131][132]
You will soon be able to preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window. [133][134]
Future software changes
You will soon be able to use the <nowiki><categorytree></nowiki> tag again. [135]
You will soon be able to post messages with the MassMessage tool in all talk namespaces. [136][137]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
<section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/>
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 6 (calendar).
When users enable web fonts by default, Universal Language Selector will now log if they don't have fonts to display pages correctly. This information will be used by developers to improve font support in the future. Read more about missing fonts. [141]
Article Feedback Tool will be removed from the English and French Wikipedias on March 3. It will also no longer be possible to add this tool to any Wikimedia wiki. [158][159]
Wikis using the new search tool will come back to the old tool for a few hours starting at 00:00 UTC on March 6. [160]
Added more details to the diffs of time and geocoordinate values (will show which globe the coordinate is on and so on now as well)
More work on badges by Bene* - most work left is now in the GUI part of it
Removed unneeded and unused permissions/rights
Fixed a bug concerning spaces in quantities (bugzilla:61911)
Started work on taking ranks into account for queries, the property parser function and Lua. (By default only preferred values should be used if available. If not available then it should use values with rank normal.)
test2.wikipedia.org and test.wikipedia.org now use test.wikidata.org as their data repository, instead of wikidata.org
Started work on WikibaseInternalSerialization component
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. [[m:Special:MyLanguage/{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>PAGENAME}}|Translations]] are available.
<section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/>
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf17) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 13 (calendar).
It is now easier to edit templates. Complex tools are now in the "advanced" mode. [164][165]
It is also easier to edit images. You now have more options and they are explained better. [166]
VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. They are now smaller and animated to be different from actual blank lines. [167]
We have improved the tool to add special characters. The buttons are now larger. More changes are coming. [168]
You can now use new keyboard shortcuts to undo the last action, clear formatting, and show the shortcut help window. [169][170][171]
Future software changes
You will soon be able to use a Beta option to show a shorter list of language links. That way, Universal Language Selector will only show languages that are relevant to you. You will still be able to search for other languages. [172]
An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Language Engineering team will take place on March 12 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [176]
Changed the <nowiki>{{property}}</nowiki> parser function and Lua’s mw.wikibase.entity.formatPropertyValues to only return the statements ranked as preferred or if none are available the ones ranked as normal (This will probably go live on April 25th.)
Worked on improving page load time further by reducing the number of reloads during page loading
Made diffs for time and geocoordinates more complete and prettier
Continued research for user interface redesign
Tpt worked on optionally showing links to other sister projects in the client’s sidebar (bugzilla:54374)
Wrote a fix for Wikidata changes not showing up in the client’s watchlist (bugzilla:62149)
Updated a major chunk of our inline code documentation
Continued discussing technical details about how coordinates should be stored in Wikibase
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
<section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/>
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf18) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 20 (calendar).
You can now view smaller versions of PNG images bigger than 20 megapixels. [177]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
<section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/>
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf19) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 27 (calendar).
VisualEditor news
You can now double-click or press the ↲ Enter key on an image or template to change its settings. [189][190]
Pages that don't exist will now show as red links in the edit mode. [191]
You will no longer be able to try to use VisualEditor on pages translated using the Translate extension, and you will see a warning if you try to edit pages marked for translation. [192]
You will now see a full warning, including the most recent log entry, when you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor. [193]
Future software changes
Typography Refresh will be enabled for test wiki and MediaWiki.org users who use the Vector skin on March 27. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3. If you don't use Vector as your skin, you will not be affected.
You will be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature on all wikis from March 26.
Reduced page load time significantly once again. Page load time was cut to roughly 2/3. For now we’re happy with the resulting page load times. We’ll start concentrating on other areas of the user interface now.
Fixed faulty selection handling when adding a property using the keyboard (bugzilla:62868)
Worked on fixing issues with handling of spaces in quantities (bugzilla:62567)
Fixed miscount of Wikidata changes on the client watchlist (bugzilla:45812)
Wrote new browser tests for special pages using the Cucumber and Selenium frameworks
Improved error formatting, localisation and handling. We will work on error message wording next to make them more understandable.
Worked on the code which propagates page moves from the clients into Wikidata as a preparation for allowing page deletions to appear on Wikidata
Made the Wikibase extension work with the new “Compact language links” Beta feature and a bit more independent from the UniversalLanguageSelector in general
The student team working on the entity suggester has finished the first version of it. The code is being reviewed now and is hopefully ready for deployment soon. Once it is deployed it will show you what new properties you could add to an item.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
<section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/>
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf20) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and all Wikipedia wikis on April 3 (calendar).
Typography Refresh was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3.
CirrusSearch, the new search tool, was enabled as a beta feature on over 30 new wikis on March 27. [196][197]
VisualEditor news
Blocked users now see the same messages in VisualEditor as in the wikitext editor. [198][199]
The search box for re-using a reference in VisualEditor is now cleared after each use. [200]
New links on sub-pages no longer point to the wrong location in VisualEditor. [201]
VisualEditor's media dialog no longer breaks when opening some types of images. [202]
Future software changes
You will not be able to use the Wikitech wiki for a short period around 16:00 UTC on April 1 due to a server change. [203]
CirrusSearch will become the main search engine for all non-Wikipedia wikis except Commons, Meta and Incubator on April 2.
You will soon be able to use a new special page listing duplicate files. [204]
Deleting a version of a file or a version of its description page will soon be shown differently in the logs. [205]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
<section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/>
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf21) was scheduled to be deployed to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 3, however it was temporarily put on hold due to localization issues. (calendar).
Typography Refresh was enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and on all Wikipedias on April 3. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin.
CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on over 400 non-Wikipedia wikis on April 2. [206]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
<section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/>
We are looking for contributors to help write new issues every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf22) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and all Wikipedias on April 17 (calendar).
MediaViewer was enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be enabled for all users on the Catalan (ca), Hungarian (hu) and Korean (ko) Wikipedias and English Wikivoyage on April 17. Comments are welcome. [214][215][216]
You will now see only three options when you try to add a template parameter in VisualEditor; you will see other options after a click. [219]
The size changing controls in VisualEditor media editing dialog were simplified further.
The wikitext editor tab will now fold into a drop-down menu in the Vector skin if there is not enough space on your screen. [220][221]
Future software changes
The font used for body text on Wikimedia wikis will change to your system default sans-serif font. This temporary change will be enabled on all non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and on all Wikipedias on April 17. [222][223]
Files from Commons seen on another wiki will soon have a tab saying "View on Wikimedia Commons". The create tab will change to "Add local description" (see screenshot). [224]
An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Multimedia team will take place on April 16 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [234]
Wikimedia Foundation servers were updated after a security bug called Heartbleed was discovered last week. You should change your password as an extra precaution. [235]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
<section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/>
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 (1.24wmf1) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 22, and all Wikipedias on April 24 (calendar).
Problems with various fonts in SVG files were fixed last week. Files that use DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif Condensed, DejaVu Sans Light, Kochi Gothic and Kochi Mincho fonts now show correctly. [239][240][241][242]
You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for March 2014. [244]
VisualEditor news
If you try to add a category which redirects to another category, VisualEditor will now suggest adding the target category directly. [245][246]
VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear on Education Program pages. [247][248]
You can now use VisualEditor on Meta-Wiki and the French Wikinews by enabling it in your preferences. [249][250][251]
Future software changes
MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Czech (cs), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), Hebrew (he), Polish (pl), Romanian (ro), Slovak (sk), Thai (th) and Vietnamese (vi) Wikipedias on April 24. Feedback is welcome. [252]
Edits by anonymous users will now be marked with a new CSS class (mw-anonuserlink). This way, you can easily make those edits use a different color, font or background. [253][254]
For about 40 minutes on April 17, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
There is a problem with the rendering of formulas with MathJax. If you enabled MathJax in your preferences, you might need to turn it off and on again. [265]
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. [266]
VisualEditor news
You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [267]
VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [268]
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. [269]
The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [270]
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. [278]
External links in VisualEditor are now in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. [280]
The template tool now tells you if a parameter is obsolete. [281]
You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData; VisualEditor will add them like required ones. [282]
There is a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name for file names. [283][284]
Editing formulae in VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all users. [285][286]
You will soon be able to try a new beta feature to edit text in another language. [287][288]
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. [289]
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. [290][291]
Problems
For about 40 minutes around 00:20 UTC on April 29, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
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. [292]
Templates that were previously broken in VisualEditor should now appear correctly. [293]
Future software changes
It will soon be possible to move category description pages. Pages in changed categories will still have to be moved independently. [294][295]
An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on May 14 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [306]
Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets [{{fullurl:Special:Search|profile=advanced&search=toolserver&fulltext=Search&ns8=1&profile=advanced}} that link to the Toolserver] to point to Tool Labs instead. [307]
Problems
There were problems with generating file thumbnails for all wikis between May 3 and May 6 due to a configuration error. [308][309]
Looking for a cool university project with impact? We have some of them around Wikidata - not just for computer science students. Get in touch with Lydia.
Had a lot to think about and recap from the Zürich Hackathon, e.g. things regarding search, suggestions as well as the user interface redesign
Started doing mockups of the new user interface (Nothing to show yet, sorry!)
Setup an autogenerating code documentation instance on labs at wbdoc.wmflabs.org. Hint: Submitting patches that make the inline code documentation even better is a good starting point to get involved in coding
Worked on new datatype monolingual text (basically a string with an associated language)
Reworked a hell lot of “change operations” code that’s responsible for each and every edit as well as validating user input and API requests, for example denying empty descriptions and finding and blocking unnecessary duplications
Checked all the new Beta features that the teams in San Francisco are developing and made sure they work with Wikidata
Our efforts to make Wikidata faster broke some gadgets so we helped fixing them. Sorry for the breakage!
Dug into odd display bugs with the MonoBook skin and attempted to fix them (bugzilla:64741)
More testing on simple queries
Tpt worked on making inter-project links in the sidebar a beta-feature
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. [310][311][312]
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. [313][314]
VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences. [315][316]
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. [317][318]
VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like <nowiki>{{cite_web}}</nowiki> and not just <nowiki>{{Cite web}}</nowiki>. [319][320]
VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it. [321][322]
VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit. [323]
The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. [324][325]
Editors may now include their ORCID identifiers (and others, such as VIAF) on their user pages, using the Authority control template. You can register for an ORCID at http://orcid.org
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. [329][330][331][332]
A bug that caused files not to appear after saving edits in the File: namespace was fixed last week. [333][334]
VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear in namespaces where VisualEditor is disabled. [335][336]
It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor; many minor bugs related to images have also been fixed. [337]
VisualEditor will no longer convert spaces to underscores inside links to pages in namespaces that include spaces in their names. [338]
Future software changes
Wikimedia Labs will stop working for about 10 minutes around 18:00 UTC on May 30 due to a server upgrade. [339]
It will soon no longer be possible to upload different files under the same name at the same time using the UploadWizard tool. [340][341]
Links to TIFF, DjVu or PDF files created with the syntax <nowiki>Сурет:Name.extpage 15 is my favourite</nowiki> will now show an image caption if there is any text after page number; previously they caused the given page to appear. [342][343][344]
You will soon see information about global blocks for IP addresses on their contributions page on your local wiki. [345][346]
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. [347]
VisualEditor news
Templates that redirect to other templates now get the TemplateData of their target. [348]
The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible after you save an edit with VisualEditor. [349][350]
VisualEditor now checks if your browser supports SVG files to avoid displaying broken icons. [351]
There is now a new type for TemplateData parameters: date for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format. [352]
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. [353][354]
The search tab will soon be removed from user preferences. You will be able to set your search preferences on [{{fullurl:Special:Search|profile=advanced}} Special:Search]. [355][356]
You will soon see a label next to the little triangle arrow for the Actions menu in the Vector skin (screenshot). [357][358]
Problems
For about 20 minutes on May 29, all wikis were broken due to a configuration error. [359]
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. [360][361]
VisualEditor news
You should no longer be able to add empty references with VisualEditor. [362][363]
The "use an existing reference" button in the reference tool is now shown as disabled, rather than hidden, when the reference has content. [364][365][366]
You will now see category contents again after saving an edit to a category page with VisualEditor. [367][368]
You will be able to use information from Wikidata directly in Wikiquote pages starting on June 10. [370]
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. [371][372]
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. [373][374]
Templates containing <nowiki><ref></nowiki> or <nowiki><references></nowiki> tags will no longer need dummy parameters to prevent caching. [375][376][377]
You will no longer be able to use Special:Thanks directly. The page will soon show an error message when you visit it. [378][379]
More cleanup for the coming switch to WikibaseDataModel 1.0.
Icinga Dispatch Lag monitoring scripts, including IRC notifier bot, have been tested and are ready for Ops implementation. This should give us quicker notifications in case the notifications to Wikipedia and co about changes on Wikidata are slow again.
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. [381]
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. [382][383]
You can now add and edit <nowiki>{{DISPLAYTITLE}}</nowiki> and <nowiki></nowiki> in the page settings menu. [384][385][386][387]
The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler; the order of mathematical symbols is now correct. [388][389][390]
You will no longer see image thumbnails on search results pages on Wikibooks and Wikisource wikis. [393][394]
It will soon be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. [395][396]
Tablet users will be redirected to the mobile view of Wikimedia wikis starting on June 17. [397]
The special page that lists most linked-to templates will soon include pages from all namespaces; it will also be renamed to <nowiki>Special:MostTranscludedPages</nowiki>. [398]
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. [399]
GenderCounter uses Wikidata to provide an accurate service with distinguishing male and female names
ca.wikipedia found a nice way to use Wikidata. They're comparing their living people to Wikidata to see if any of them have a date of death there. They're then put into a category for review: ca:Categoria:Persones vives a revisar
Continued working on full redirect support for items. It touches a surprising big chunk of the code base.
Continued working on the QueryEngine code base and it’s data type support.
Fixed and updated the most recent implementation of the property and item selector widget, e.g. a MonoBook specific bug.
Pushed along reviews and deployment of the entity suggester code that will make suggestions for new properties to be added to items. Our hope is to have it through performance review for the next deployment.
Hey everyone, it's rare these small sections come along but there is a bit of interesting news to get across which one line under 'noteworthy stuff' won't be the best for. For the next 6 summaries, they will be translatable at Wikidata. This is an interesting idea which was first proposed on the delivery page and on Wikidata-l by Base. This is purely a trial and if you all want the summaries to remain translatable, please participate! You can view the first translated summary (hopefully) here! Also sorry for this one being late :)
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. [400][401]
When dragging an item, you will now see a line that helps you to drop it. [402][403]
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. [404][405]
You will now be warned if you add wikitext to file captions and references. [406][407]
Future software changes
You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [408][409]
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. [411]
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). [414]
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. [415]
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. [416][417]
A bug that prevented relocating items due to cache was fixed last week. [418][419]
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. [420][421][422][423]
Links to category pages or file pages added with VisualEditor will now work correctly. [424][425]
Future software changes
You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [426][427]
Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets [{{fullurl:Special:Search|profile=advanced&search=toolserver&fulltext=Search&ns8=1&profile=advanced}} 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. [428]
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. [429][430]
Starting on July 1, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. [431]
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. [432][433]
You will soon be able to use <nowiki>{{!}}</nowiki> as a magic word to produce the pipe character, for instance for use in tables. [434]
As part of the Outreach Program for Women d:User:User:Thepwnco is continuing improving all help pages to help new users understand Wikidata better. At the same time w:User:Discoveranjali is helping with social media outreach and creating presentations workshops about Wikidata.
More work on redirects. They are taking shape. Done with much of the groundwork. We've seen the first one! :D
Continued work on user interface redesign mockups
Monolingual text datatype is also taking shape but needs more user interface love to make it intuitive.
Investigated making Wikidata.org its own client so you can for example get access to better Lua functions for access to an item's label on a discussion page. Outcome: Should be possible but needs some more work.
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. [435]
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. [436][437]
Saving an edit with VisualEditor will now be much faster. [440][441]
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. [442][443][444]
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. [445][446][447]
The reference tool that adds empty <nowiki><ref></ref></nowiki> tags is now at the bottom of the Cite menu, below references that use templates like <nowiki>{{Cite web}}</nowiki>. [448]
Context menus will no longer be shown over items that you can edit directly, for example formulæ. [449][450][451]
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. [452]
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 <nowiki><references /></nowiki> tag (or a template). [453][454]
Black-and-white XCF images will soon display correctly. [455][456]
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. [457][458]
Problems
Between July 2-3, there were problems with loading pages on multiple wikis due to a configuration issue. [459][460]
For a few hours on July 1, there were problems with uploading new files on Wikimedia Commons due to a configuration error. [461][462]
Mexico report: Edit-a-thon of Museo Soumaya; simulthaneous edit-a-thon in Argentina, Mexico and Spain about Spanish Exile; new cultural partner of Wikimedia México
Netherlands report: Music edit-a-thon; Library workshops; Videos, maps and Japanese art donations; Wiki Loves Earth
Sweden report: Wiki Loves Monuments is being prepared for Sweden
Two new GuidedTours (aka interactive tutorials) have been released—we now have one on editing items and one on editing statements! Both tours are available from the Wikidata:Tours portal and feedback can be left on the talk page at Wikidata_talk:Tours. The work was a combined effort of User:Bene* and Outreach Program for Women intern User:Thepwnco.
We passed another milestone \o/ 10 million items now have an "instance of" or "subclass of" statement making it easy to tell what the item is about.
Bene* worked with the dev team this week. He pushed forward support for storing badges (eg featured article) on Wikidata and implemented the first two guided tours.
CTRL+ click and middle click on a search result in the entity selector now opens the result in a new tab.
Further progress on redirects
Fixed a number of annoyances with the entity selector
Continued work on mockups for new user interface
Investigated what issues come up if we make wikidata.org its own client. Things look good so we will probably enable it soonish. This will mean you can link Wikidata pages in items and access the data in them on other pages on Wikidata.
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).
The tool to add templates and citations will now work for templates that include HTML comments or templates in their titles. [465][466]
The button to make images full size should now work correctly. [467][468][469]
References will now be shown in the default font size again. [470]
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. [471]
The Special:Version page will soon show the exact version of MediaWiki and all extensions installed on your wiki (example). [472][473]
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. [474]
Pages that use <nowiki>{{DISPLAYTITLE:title}}</nowiki> more than once will soon show a warning. You can use <nowiki>{{DISPLAYTITLE:title|noerror}}</nowiki> to hide it. [475][476]
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. [482][483][484]
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. [485]
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. [489]
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. [490]
You can now easily open links inside the link editor, for example to see their target. [491]
Several bugs related to the positioning of the cursor around some items (like images and references) were fixed last week. [492][493][494][495][496][497]
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. [498]
You can give comments about the new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [499]
An IRC meeting to organize Pywikibot bugs will take place from July 24 to July 27 on the channel #pywikibot on freenode. [500]
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 (1.24wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 29, and to all Wikipedias on July 31 (calendar).
You can now download the latest version of the anti-vandalism tool Huggle.
The cancel button in VisualEditor toolbar has been removed. You can still use the Read tab and the Back button in your browser to cancel your edit. [504]
If you try to use a template which has no suggested or required parameters in TemplateData, you will now be asked to add the parameters. [505][506]
You will no longer be able to edit a page if you can't create it, for example on pages protected against recreation. [507][508]
Wikidata will soon be able to store data about article status, for example "good article" or "featured article". If your wiki has highlighted content, please make sure it is on Wikidata's list. [511]
It will soon be possible to directly create empty pages, for example in the user namespace. [512][513]
Wikidata's new Main page is almost ready to go live, but is still in need of a visually-appealing banner! Got an idea for an eye-catching design that represents what Wikidata's all about? Submit proposals before August 11 at d:Wikidata:Portal Redesign/Banner
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 will be presented at the Wikimania 2014 conference in London! If you will be attending the conference, please join us in Auditorium 2 at 14:30 local time on Sunday, August 10.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 31. Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, it will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar). [514]
You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files. [515][516][517]
You can now download an update to the archive of Wikimedia Commons files (uploaded up to December 31, 2013). If you have free space on your computer, please help preserve the files. [518]
New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file. [519][520]
VisualEditor news
You will no longer see an edit confirmation message after making a null edit with VisualEditor. [521][522]
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
Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, there were no MediaWiki changes this week. The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar). [538]
Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to merge two accounts into one. [539]
VisualEditor news
Tablet users visiting the mobile version of non-Wikipedia wikis will be able to use VisualEditor starting on August 12. The feature will also be enabled on all Wikipedias on August 14. [540]
Future software changes
Internet Explorer 6 users will soon see a JavaScript-free version of Wikimedia wikis; JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work on that browser. If you use Internet Explorer 6, make sure to update to a newer browser! [541][542][543]
If you visit a special page that requires you to be logged-in, you will soon be automatically redirected to the log-in page instead of seeing a warning. [544][545]
You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the Translate extension. [546][547]
An IRC meeting to discuss VisualEditor will take place on August 14 at 09:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [548]
Finished a large number of new features and got them ready for roll-out. More in this email.
Wikibase made a big step forward to finally switch to DataModel 1.0.
Improved support for entity IDs bigger than 2 billion (32 bit integer).
We had to adapt Wikibase to some major changes (more major than usual, partly caused by discussions at Wikimania) in MediaWiki core: The default Vector skin became it’s own component and the ResourceLoader got some small but important updates.
Continued work on refactoring code of the user interface to make it ready for new design
Wrote a script to get number of users having wikidata in their recent changes/watchlist from the database
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 (1.24wmf17) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 21 (calendar).
There is a new protection level called superprotection. At the moment, only some Wikimedia Foundation employees have access to it. Administrators can't edit "superprotected" pages. [549][550][551]
You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page. [552][553]
You can watch the first videos from Wikimania 2014. Some of them are about technical topics. More videos will come later.
Wikidata
After August 19, you can use Wikidata for inter language links on Wikinews. [555]
After August 19, you can use Wikidata for badges like "good" or "featured" articles. Next week, you will be able to show the badges in the article sidebar on Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiquote. [556]
Problems
There was an issue with ProofreadPage and WikiEditor on Wikisource wikis. It is now fixed. [557][558]
The new Main page will go live early next week! {{ll|Wikidata:Project_chat#The_new_Main_page_is_coming.21|See the announcement at Project chat}} for more details and to leave any last comments
It will be possible to show the badges like "Featured Article" stored on Wikidata in the sidebar of the clients (Wikipedia, Wikisource, ...) starting Tuesday. Wikipedia will follow on Thursday.
Starting Tuesday we will deploy a new beta feature on the clients. It will allow you to show links to other sister projects in the sidebar based on the links in Wikidata.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
VisualEditor news
There was a error when you put your cursor directly after a reference list. It is now fixed. [559]
You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages. [560]
If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor. [561][562][563]
Future software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf18) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 28 (calendar).
After August 26, you will have a central JavaScript and CSS page. They will be on Meta-Wiki and will work on all wikis. Read more on the help page. [564]
Badges support via Wikidata has been rolled out to Wikipedia and other sister projects. If the icons shown are not the ones your project would like please request a change here.
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
You can now test a new Beta Feature to see links to other wikis in the sidebar. The links come from Wikidata. [565][566]
You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the linksto: keyword in your search. [567][568]
A redirect to a section now changes the URL in the address bar of your browser. If "Dog" redirects to "Animals#Dog", you now see "Animals#Dog" instead of "Dog#Dog". [569][570]
If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages". [571]
VisualEditor news
You can no longer delete required fields in templates. [572]
We fixed many Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 11, you will get VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next. [573][574][575]
We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X). [577]
You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category. [578]
Future software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf19) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 2, and on all Wikipedias on September 4 (calendar).
There is a proposal to build a database on Commons for file data. It will make it easier to see the author, license and topics. You can give feedback on this idea. You can also come to the IRC chat on September 3 at 18:00 (UTC) in #wikimedia-office at freenode. [579]
You can give feedback on Media Viewer until September 7. You can say what needs to be improved and ask other people to give feedback too. [580]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
VisualEditor news
From Thursday, Internet Explorer 11 users will get VisualEditor. Support for earlier versions is coming next. [582][583][584]
Future software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf20) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 9, and on all Wikipedias on September 11 (calendar).
You will soon confirm a "Thanks" inline instead of in a dialog. [585]
You can read more about the plan to move to Phabricator, a tool that will help people develop the MediaWiki software and report bugs. [586]
Problems
There were problems with JavaScript and CSS on Friday, September 5 because of a code error.
Performance improvements for "in other projects sidebar" beta feature and bug fixes in the feature on wikis with sidebar cache enabled (e.g. zhwiki, commons)
Worked on performance improvements to badges feature
Fixing bug with xml format in the API, and added tests for it so hopefully this does not break again!
Worked more on enabling statements on properties
Further work on new user interface design groundwork - mostly refactoring and enabling editing of multiple sitelinks and label/alias/description at once
First pokes at usage tracking
Drafted an RfC to improve recent changes so we can show Wikidata changes also when enhanced recent changes is enabled
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 software changes
You can now change the style of links to disambiguation pages. This is done with the mw-disambigCSS class. [587][588]
There was a problem on right-to-left wikis with Wikidata log entries. The text was messy in watchlists and recent changes. The problem is now fixed. The same problem will be fixed soon for user names. [589][590][591]
New users are randomly chosen for a test on 12 Wikipedias. They get messages with ideas of articles to edit. The ideas come from what they have already edited. [592]
Problems
There was a problem with loading images on September 10. [593]
VisualEditor news
If you don't select text when you add a link, the link now shows a number. [594]
The citation tool no longer offers to reuse a citation if there are none on the page yet. [595][596]
You can now use help buttons in the "{{int:visualeditor-settings-tool}}" menu to see what the options are for. [597]
Future software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf21) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 16, and on all Wikipedias on September 18 (calendar).
These changes are coming with the new version:
If you use Internet Explorer 7, JavaScript will no longer work. JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work in that browser. You should update to a newer browser. [598][599][600]
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 software changes
You can test a new Beta Feature called HHVM. It should make editing faster. Please report bugs if you see them. [601]
Problems
There was a problem on the English Wikipedia on September 19. It was due to edits on a template used on many pages.
Sites were down for users in the Pacific area around 7:00 UTC on September 20. It was due to a problem in the San Francisco data center.
There were two bad bugs messing up articles in some browsers in VisualEditor. We fixed the bugs and updated the sites. [602][603]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf22) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 23, and on all Wikipedias on September 25 (calendar).
If you have more than 2000 notifications, the oldest ones will be removed.[604][605]
In the "Vector" skin, the icon used for users will show a neutral gender. [606][607]
The VisualEditor template tool now tells you if a required field is missing. [608]
The "Cancel" button of the VisualEditor save window is now called "Resume editing". This shows that you can still edit and you won't lose your changes. [609]
There are new keyboard shortcuts in VisualEditor. Use Ctrl+Shift+6 for code and Ctrl+Shift+5 for strikethrough. [610][611]
In VisualEditor, you can now see that you are switching to the source editing mode. Before, it was not clear it was happening. [612]
Future site changes
You can see a plan for the move to Phabricator. It's the new tool to track bugs. A guided tour will be done via video on September 24. [613]<nowiki/>
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
There are now many more translations for language names. [616]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf1) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 30, and on all Wikipedias on October 2 (calendar).
Errors from Scribunto (Lua) are now shown on the page. Before, you had to click on "Script error" to see them. [617][618]
You can add an "autovalue" for a field in TemplateData. When users add the template to a page, the value will be added automatically. An example is when a clean-up template shows the date it was added. [619]
If you change a user preference but don't save it, it now asks if you want to save it. [620][621]
The PDF export tool has changed. The new one has better language support but it doesn't offer ZIM and EPUB formats. [622]
JavaScript authors: Many old methods will be removed soon. Please check your scripts and gadgets and replace the old methods by the new ones if needed. [623]
With the deployment next Tuesday you will be able to edit all sitelinks at once as well as all fields of the "in other languages" box. This is an intermediate step towards the new user interface and will evolve further over the next weeks. You can see what is coming on Tuesday now already on test.wikidata.org.
WikiProject Names aims to improve name related data on Wikidata. Initial focus is on first names (given names). Half of items for first names still need cleaning up, but 15% of items for persons already have a given name defined.
Worked on supporting statements on properties in WikibaseDataModelSerialization (bugzilla:66425)
Fixed broken xml api output (bugzilla:70531), as well as some inconsistencies in the xml format and added tests that should help avoid future breakage in the xml format
Finished performance improvements for badges
Worked on entity usage tracking
Pietro from the EAGLE project came to visit us, one of the first 3rd party users of Wikibase. See http://www.eagle-network.eu
Added a hook point to allow 3rd party users (like the EAGLE project) of Wikibase to control what goes into the search index
Started work on a widget that lets you edit badges right in the item instead of going to the special 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.
Some wikis have a template to track bugs in Bugzilla. You should update it to work with Phabricator. You can look at the one on mediawiki.org to see how. [626][627]
A new tool can now create thumbnails of large TIFF images. This concerns files larger than 50 megapixels. These thumbnails are also sharpened. You can comment on Commons. [629]
The Media Viewer tool has a clearer link to the file page. It also has buttons to download, share and embed the file. You can enlarge images by clicking on them. [630]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf2) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 7 October, and on all Wikipedias from 9 October (calendar).
If you make a code mistake when editing a Lua script, you won't be able to save your edit. [631][632]
We fixed some more Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 10, you will be able to use VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next. [633]
On Thursday, the tool to edit TemplateData will come to 30 more wikis. [634][635]
You can help sort bugs in the Book and PDF export tool on October 8. [636]
1% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [637]
Future changes
You can look at the plan of the Mobile team for their future work. [638]
More changes to Media Viewer are coming. It will be easier to disable it, and you will see the caption below the image. [639][640]
Want to be kept up-to-date on structured data on Commons? There is now a new newsletter you can subscribe to.
Interested in some statistics about the data on Wikidata? Check Wikidata Stats every now and then. (Thanks Magnus for moving it to the new dump format.)
Spent the week with the WMF multimedia team and volunteers to get more clarity about structured data on Commons. We'll be asking for feedback on a lot of stuff over the next weeks. The main info hub is taking shape at Commons:Structured data.
More fixes for the switch to HHVM
Looked into possible performance improvements. Some of them will be taken into the next sprint.
Battled a handful of nasty issues on the live-site
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf3) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since 9 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 14 October, and on all Wikipedias from 16 October (calendar).
5% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. You can also test it as a Beta Feature. [645]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. You can read translations.
Recent changes
You can test a new system to see math using MathML. Go to your display options and choose "{{int:mw math mathml}}".
You can add badges in Wikidata for quality articles and featured lists. [649][650]
File information cleanup
You can join a wiki project to help tools read file information. It will help people reuse files.
See how to fix metadata. You can fix it by adding markers to templates and adding templates to files.
You can see a list of files missing machine-readable information on your wiki.
The files missing readable data are also in these categories: [[:Category:{{int:commonsmetadata-trackingcategory-no-license}}|no license]], [[:Category:{{int:commonsmetadata-trackingcategory-no-description}}|no description]], [[:Category:{{int:commonsmetadata-trackingcategory-no-author}}|no author]] or [[:Category:{{int:commonsmetadata-trackingcategory-no-source}}|no source]]. [651]
Problems
Developers fixed a security problem. If you use Internet Explorer 6, you won't be able to log in any more. You should use a newer browser. [652]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf4) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 16. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 21, and on all Wikipedias from October 23 (calendar).
10% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. You can also test it as a Beta Feature. [653]
If you add the same parameter twice in a template, it now puts the page in a tracking category. [654][655]
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 an issue with files from Commons on October 21. You could only see those with names between 140 and 159 characters by visiting Commons itself. [656]
There was a problem with cut and paste in VisualEditor in Firefox. It was fixed quickly. [657]
There was a problem with editing math in VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [658]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will now come to Wikipedia sites every Wednesday, instead of every Thursday. [659]
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28, and on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).
VisualEditor's menu items now show their shortcuts beside them. [663]
VisualEditor now opens faster when you click "edit". [664]
The rules for plurals in translations changed in some languages. Interface translations are currently not being updated from translatewiki.net; this process will start again on November 6. [665]<nowiki/>
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Events/Blogs/Press
Wikidata turned 2 on Wednesday! Have a look at the notes from the community and development team and add your note. Also don't forget to check out all the cool presents (a painting, speed improvements, a huge load of unconnected articles that you can help connect via the Wikidata Game, WikidataLDF, a recent changes visualisation)!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
There was a bug in VisualEditor with Internet Explorer. It hid tools like the link editor when you opened them. The bug was fixed on Monday. [669]
Issues with the new search tool caused geo data code to show up on pages on Monday and Friday. The mobile "nearby" tool was also broken. The problem is now fixed. [670][671][672]
HHVM caused server issues on Thursday. They are now fixed.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4, and on all Wikipedias from November 5 (calendar).
Some wikis have icons at the top of a page to show if it is protected or featured. Icons show up using CSS. You can now use the <indicator> tag in these templates instead to add the icons. [673][674]
VisualEditor now tells you if you're editing a re-used reference. This helps you avoid changing it if you just want to add a new one. [675]
The icons in VisualEditor's template editor tool for adding more fields are back, along with other fixes. [676][677][678][679][680]
Continued work on LabelLookup and related code to further improve performance
Made it possible to show references in statements on property pages. (Remaining bugs before roll-out are issues with adding/editing/removing statements on property pages.)
Further improvements to sitelink editing (The edit toolbar now floats so it doesn't scroll out of the page on a long list of sitelinks. An empty row for adding a new sitelink is shown by default when editing to make this faster and take less scrolling.)
Further adapting of simple query code so we can get it to review at the Foundation again.
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 software changes
You may see a new tool on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [685][686]
You can join two IRC chats this week to learn more about the file cleanup project. One will be on Wednesday at 18:00 (UTC) and the other on Thursday at 04:00 (UTC). You can ask questions during the chat if you need help to fix files on your wiki.
You can see a list of files to fix on the Labs tool. You can report bugs and ask questions on the talk page.
Problems
Wikimedia Labs was broken for a few hours on Thursday. It was due to a hardware problem. [688]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf7) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11, and on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).
You can now use more editing tools for tables in VisualEditor. You can add rows and columns, merge cells, and edit table captions. [689][690]
The style and insert menus in the toolbar of VisualEditor now show fewer tools. This helps you see the most common tasks. You can see all items by clicking "More". [691]
The way windows inside VisualEditor work has changed. VisualEditor should be faster and have fewer bugs. [692]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf8) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 12. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18, and on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
The new search tool ("CirrusSearch") will be on the English Wikipedia from November 19. [693]
Move from Bugzilla to Phabricator
The tool to track bugs will change on November 21.
You won't be able to add or edit bugs between November 21 and November 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
The move from Bugzilla to Phabricator is done. You can now report bugs in Phabricator. [695]
Problems
There was a problem when editing tables in VisualEditor. VisualEditor was trying to fix bad values for the colspan or rowspan option. VisualEditor now leaves the bad values to avoid making things worse. This was fixed on November 17. [696]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf9) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 19. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 25, and on all Wikipedias from November 26 (calendar).
You will be able to try VisualEditor on many new wikis for the first time. After November 26, VisualEditor will become available on Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews wikis. You can find it in your Beta options. [697]
VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved. [698]
You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window. [699]
VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages. [700][701]
Work is ongoing for a bot job to tag thousands of objects in OpenStreetMap with the equivalent Wikidata ID
Resolver finds Wikidata items for a given identifier (VIAF, GND, IMDB, ...)
English-Wikipedia now has a template, RedQ, which puts a Wikidata link next to red links for subjects which have no Wikipedia article in any language, This should prevent duplicate Wikidata items from being created when an article is written, and assist Wikipedia editors to find relevant facts and sources. Please copy it to other-language Wikipedias.
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 software changes
All users are now getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [702]
You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues. [703]
Problems
There was a problem with Phabricator on November 29. It was due to a network issue. [704]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf11) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 10 (calendar). [705]
You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key. [706]
It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better. [707][708]
The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs. [709][710][711]
Belgium report: Workshops for collection holders across Europe; Founding event of Wikimedia Belgium; Wiki Loves Monuments in Belgium & Luxembourg; Plantin-Moretus Museum; Edit-a-thon at faculty library in Ghent University; Image donation UGentMemorie; Upcoming activities
France report: Wiki Loves Monuments; mass upload; Musée de Bretagne
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 software changes
You may see a new tool tested on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [715]
You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects. [716]
You can test a new version of the Content Translation tool.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf12) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 17 (calendar). [717]
You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu, Ctrl+F or Cmd+F. [718]
VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold. [719]
The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change. [720]
Future changes
The star image of the watchlist may change soon. [721][722]
Closed/checked even more ‘testme’ bugs on Phabricator
Wikidata Query has gotten a number of stability fixes. To increase availability and performance we now have multiple instances of it with a load balancer in front of it.
The data for the entity suggester has been updated. Suggestions when adding new statements should be even better now.
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 software changes
The Technical Operations team is now using Phabricator to track their tasks. The Operations team manages the Wikimedia servers. In the future you will be able to see the tasks that are not private. [725]
Software changes this week
There will be no software changes this week and next week. This is because of the end-of-year holidays. The next update of MediaWiki will be on January 6. [726]
Future changes
The system that displays citations will change in the future. The new system will not change the style of citations. [727]
A new design for VisualEditor will come in January. You can try it now on test wikis. [728]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes
There are no technical changes this week.
Feedback about Tech News in 2014
The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2014? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us at m:Talk:Tech/News. You can write in your language. Thank you!
The Wikidata BEACON generator was updated by Magnus. It now uses all properties with “formatter URL”, so always up-to-date with target URLs. It is faster, too.
Happy new year! :) It'll be a great one for Wikidata!
Have you filed bugs in the past? Awesome! It'd be super helpful if you have a look at your old bugs and see if they are still relevant. You can find them at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/authored/ (make sure you're logged in on Phabricator)
The sitelink section has been reworked. This will go live on Wikidata on Tuesday. The sitelinks will then be slimmer and they will appear in a sidebar on the right side if there is enough space.
More performance improvements when parsing an item page, ~%15 faster for some pages :)
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 software changes
Rotated PDF files in landscape format used to show too small. They will now display correctly. You may need to purge older files. [729]
You can now use the <nowiki>{{!}}</nowiki>magic word instead of Template:!. Many wikis used the template to create a pipe (<nowiki>|</nowiki>) in tables and templates. You can delete the template. [730]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf14) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from January 13. It will be on all Wikipedias from January 14 (calendar).
A bug in VisualEditor sometimes added a ☀ (Sun) character. This is now fixed. [731]
The search and replace tool in VisualEditor is now much faster in long pages. [732]
The TemplateData editor now uses the same design as VisualEditor. [733][734][735]
The thumb option is now shown in your language in the help of the classic editor toolbar. [736]
Future changes
You can sign up to answer questions from designers. It will help them make editing easier. [737]
Usage tracking will likely be deployed on February 2 on Wikidata. This will not be user-visible. It just means that pages using data from arbitrary items get updated/purged when the data changes. Arbitrary access is being tested at Test Wikidata and testwiki:Test Wiki. An example is at testwiki:Kitten on arbitrary page.
Assigning items on Mix'n'match will now make that change on Wikidata for you automatically
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 download the new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. The new version shows lead images, better galleries and content from Wikidata. It also has many other new features.[738][739]
Programs and bots still can't read information about images on many wikis. You can see the list of wikis with the most files to fix. Wikipedia in Italian, Indonesian and Japanese language have the most files to fix. On the biggest wikis you should use bots. Bots can add information templates to groups of files. You can ask other tech users to help you.
Problems
All JavaScript on Commons was broken for a few minutes on Tuesday. It was because of old code in the HotCat tool. The same problem happened on some Wikipedias on Wednesday. It is now fixed. [740]
Software changes this week
There are no software changes this week and next week due to annual meetings. [741]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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 security issue on Wikimedia Labs. Many Labs tools were down after the issue was fixed. [746]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 4 (calendar).
The "Save page" button in the VisualEditor toolbar is now blue rather than green. This is the same as on the mobile site. [747]
You can now edit pages on the draft namespace with VisualEditor on the Russian Wikipedia and Hebrew Wikipedia. You can ask to get VisualEditor for a namespace on your wiki. When your community agrees, ask in Phabricator. [748][749]
Wikibooks will get access to language links via Wikidata on February 24th. Coordination is happening at d:Wikidata:Wikibooks.
Roughly 17000 of the candidate articles that Google identified as potentially being about the same topic but lacking a language link have been merged. About 17500 are remaining and waiting for you to go through them via https://tools.wmflabs.org/yichengtry/
Did more work on Capiunto to get it into a state where it can be deployed to Wikimedia sites.
Mourned Titan (phabricator:T88550) as its developers were bought up. Began evaluation for which graph database to use instead for a Wikidata query service (mw:Wikibase/Indexing)
Further work on header section redesign
Tweaks to the sitelink section
Worked on making monolingual text datatype accept more languages
Finished showing the language when a language fallback is used
Started looking into fixing the existing Guided Tours after Guided Tours extension API changes
Worked on implementing Lua convenience functions for rendering arbitrary Snaks. This is useful for displaying references or qualifiers. (phabricator:T76213)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
MediaWiki was reverted to the previous version on February 4. It was because of a performance issue. It was restored later. [751]
UploadWizard was broken on February 4 because of the revert of MediaWiki. [752]
All sites were broken for 30 minutes on February 5. It was due to a network problem. [753]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 11 (calendar).
You can have one user page for all wikis. Your Meta user page will show if you don't have a user page on a wiki. You can test this tool on test wikis. [754][755][756]
You can search for media files in VisualEditor more easily. Images are bigger and you see the size and license. [757][758]
It is easier to review your changes when you save the page in VisualEditor. The window is wider. [759]
You can read the latest news about VisualEditor. You can now join weekly meetings with developers. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The first meeting is on February 11 at 20:00 (UTC).
Future changes
Administrators will soon be able to delete change tags used fewer than 5,000 times. [760]
In the future you will be able to have personal lists of articles on the mobile site. [761]
The templates for adding badges (good article, featured article, etc) to articles on Wikipedia in the sidebar are getting removed from articles rapidly in favor of getting that information from Wikidata \o/ German Wikipedia even deleted those templates already. English Wikipedia seems to be getting close.
We are hiring! Passionate about Wikidata and know your way around Java Script and co? Apply!
We'll spend the next week working with Nik and Stas from WMF to move queries forward in Berlin
Worked on implementing a Lua interface for arbitrary Snak rendering. This can be used to render eg. qualifiers or references in Wikipedia infoboxes.
Did groundwork for Lua convenience functions that render data in the user’s interface language, rather than the content language (for multilingual wikis, like Commons or Wikidata only)
Did further work on making the Lua interface code nicer and share code with the parser functions
Removed input method selector in the sitelink input as it was hiding the actual input and not very useful there
Fixed some issues in diff views showing new data instead of old data
Created a few scripts to make it easier for 3rd parties to install Wikibase
Fixed icinga notification that tests if dispatch lag gets high
Investigated several issues regarding storage of time values and started fixing them
Fixed editing of qualifiers
Fixed most browser tests after introduction of new header design
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 18 (calendar).
You can now change the order of categories in VisualEditor using drag-and-drop. [765]
In VisualEditor, you now need to make a change before you can "Apply Changes" to citations and templates. [766]
The way the cursor moves in VisualEditor is changing. Your browser now handles the cursor directly. Most of you will see no change. In right-to-left text, the cursor now moves in a 'visible' rather than 'logical' way. This is like other sites but you may be surprised at first. [767]
Meetings
The VisualEditor Team had their first public bug triage meeting on February 11. They will post the results on the meeting page. [768]
You can join the second weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 18 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join. [769]
<section end="technews-2015-W08"/> 23:57, 2015 ж. ақпанның 16 (ALMT)
Wikimedia Highlights from January 2015
Here are the highlights from the Wikimedia blog in January 2015, covering selected activities of the Wikimedia Foundation and other important events from the Wikimedia movement.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 25. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 26 (calendar).
It is now easier to see template fields in VisualEditor. The fields are bigger. [775]
It is now easier to see when a button is disabled in VisualEditor. [776]
Sometimes when you copy-pasted a template in VisualEditor, it was replaced by HTML. This problem is now fixed. [777]
Tools in Labs will stop working for a few hours on February 24. [778]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 26 at 00:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
At the moment you need to log in to edit Wikimedia wikis on mobile devices. You can say if anyone should be allowed to edit on the mobile sites. The discussion ends on March 15.
Images in the interface will soon work better in Opera 12. [779]
Chaged a number of Lua modules (from deprecated function mw.wikibase.getEntity to mw.wikibase.getEntityObject)
Updated the json documentation
Always link to Wikidata on client pages that don’t have any langlinks. This affects users without JavaScript and logged out users, logged in users will still see the link item dialog. gerrit:168632
Fixes for the Wikibase qunit Jenkins job
Made Vagrant git-update also properly update Wikibase and dependencies
Fix for phabricator:T88254 (malformatted Wikidata entries appearing in Watchlist RSS feed in clients)
Final touches on new header design
Investigated how we can provide language fallback also in suggestions when search or adding new statements
More work on allowing additional languages in monolingual text datatype
Added missing backend piece for quantities with units. Now the remaining piece is the user interface.
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 software changes
A Lua function to use Wikidata has changed. You need to update the pages that use it. [780]
You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Uzbek and Minangkabau. You need to enable it in your Beta options.
You can now hide banners if you don't have an account. [781][782]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 4 (calendar).
You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Punjabi and Kyrgyz. You can ask for the tool in other languages.
Editing the fake blank line in VisualEditor is now simpler. This change also fixed a few bugs. [783][784][785][786]
The TemplateData editor now warns you if a related page already has TemplateData. [787]
The TemplateData table now tells you if a template doesn't take any parameters. [788]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 4 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join technical meetings in France and Mexico this year. You will be able to ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [789]
Future changes
You will be able to get a direct link for a section of a page. [790]
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 create books on almost all wikis. It doesn't work yet on wikis using the language converter. [791][792]
VisualEditor had problems with categories in Safari. It sometimes moved or removed the categories. The issue is now fixed. [793][794][795]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 11 (calendar).
In VisualEditor the "Edit beta" button is now called "Edit" on the English Wikipedia. [796][797]
The feedback tool in VisualEditor now looks like the other tools. It also asks for information about your browser to help fix bugs. [798][799]
You now see the VisualEditor toolbar even if the rest of the page is still loading. [800][801]
You now see more information when you edit a link, a reference or other items in VisualEditor. You also see a clearer edit button in those tools. [802][803]
If you use the ContentTranslation tool you now see red links in the list of articles in other languages. The link is red if the article doesn't exist in the language of your options or of your browser. You can translate the article by clicking on the red link.
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join a technical meeting in France in May. You can ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [804]
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 servers that resize images are using new software. You should report new problems that you notice with images. [807]
It is now easier to add special characters in VisualEditor. You can edit the list of characters for your wiki. [809][810]
Problems
Wikis were broken for a few minutes on Thursday due to a code error.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 18 (calendar).
A puzzle piece icon () now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [811][812]
You can now add examples, and details about old parameters, in TemplateData. [813][814]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 18 at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The list of bad user names on your wiki will no longer work. The global list will replace it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [815][816]
You can comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [817]
Lots of improvements around MixNMatch. It has a new catalog overview page. ~340K IDs have been matched so far with it and it now has an FAQ for institutions wanting to get their identifiers linked in Wikidata
First screenshot of the primary sources tool that'll help with migrating data from Freebase and enriching it with references has been leaked ;-): 1 and 2
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 this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 25 (calendar).
The text of a reference is now more visible when you click on it. It has a blue background. Many wikis already have the blue color. Those wikis can now remove it from their CSS page. [819]
VisualEditor is now much faster. For many users it is now at least as fast as the wikitext editor. [820][821][822]
When you add a list of references in VisualEditor, you now see it right away. You can still change its group by editing it. [823]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Talk pages using "LiquidThreads" on mediawiki.org will soon use the new system. [824]
Here are the highlights from the Wikimedia blog in February 2015, covering selected activities of the Wikimedia Foundation and other important events from the Wikimedia movement.
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 hide site banners even if you don't have an account. [825]
You can now add citations more easily with VisualEditor on the French and Italian Wikipedia. The tool adds the information when you add some types of links. In the future you will be able to add this tool to your wiki. [826][827][828]
All sites should now be faster if you have a recent browser. [829]
You could see a serious bug when editing some templates with VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [830]
VisualEditor could break when you edited an image. The issue was fixed quickly. [831]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 31. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 1 (calendar).
VisualEditor is now the main editing tool on 53 more Wikipedias. [832]
You can now edit the mobile site of all wikis without an account. [833]
You can test a new tool on the beta mobile site on the English Wikipedia. With the new tool, you can create lists of articles. [834]
You can now see that VisualEditor is opening even if you're not looking at the top of the page. [835]
VisualEditor doesn't leave empty titles with just nowiki tags any more. [836][837][838][839]
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 1 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
WikiArabia takes place in Monastir, Tunisia, 3-5 April
The GLAM-WIKI 2015 conference in The Hague (10-12 April) features several presentations and tutorials about Wikidata for/with cultural institutions.
The Library world will use Wikidata to link its information to any and all Wikipedias. No longer English only, but every Wikipedia will be exposed in this way.
Went through all the feedback we got for improving watchlist integration on Wikipedia and co and posted our assesment
Put the infrastructure for creating Turtle-Beta dumps in place. All new Wikidata dumps will be in https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/ from Monday on (the old * directory will be kept around and receive new json dumps for backwards compatibility).
Reduced size of entities pages by removing no longer needed data (to make the UI faster).
Fixed bug that sometimes caused dates and other types of values to be cut short when quickly saving. (phabricator:T92831)
Fixed issues with setting focus after clicking edit.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [841]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).
You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [851]
Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [852][853]
You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [854]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [855]
We are going to change the way value suggestions are ranked when entering a new statement. This will help with "male" and "female" not showing up among the top suggestions. Previously we ranked by number of sitelinks. We will change this to the maximum of sitelinks and labels. So if an item has labels in many languages but no sitelinks like "male" and "female" it will still show up high in the suggestions. (phabricator:T94404)
Discussed how to move forward with identifiers. Outcome: They should get their own datatype. (phabricator:T95287)
Implemented arbitrary access for the <nowiki>{{#property:…}}</nowiki> parser function. This can be invoked on the wikis that have arbitrary access enabled by using <nowiki>{{#property:P123|from=Q42}}</nowiki>. So far this is only Wikidata itself.
Did further performance work on the client (Wikipedia and co) in preparation for arbitrary access
Improved the performance of wbgetentities significantly when loading a large number of entities
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [861][862]
All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [863]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Wikimedia's monthly GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) newsletter now includes a Wikidata report. The draft for the first edition, covering April, may be edited and your contributions will be welcome.
Made label, description and aliases special pages easier to use
Bene* created a new Special:ListProperties special page to list properties by data type
Expanded our set of automated browser tests
Made language fallbacks work in more situations and more consistently. In particular, the entity selector now uses language fallback. This should benefit especially people who want to use Wikidata in a variant such as en-gb.
Continued work on the planned DataModel 3.0 release
Continued discussing and documenting future calendar model support
Continued work on our RDF generator
Continued work on usage tracking for labels on multilingual sites
Addshore worked on various issues regarding redirects
Addshore worked on a special page to turn an item into a redirect
Work on showing entity labels in edit summaries on history pages
Implemented change dispatching based on the new usage tracking mechanism
Fixed issue with page deletions on some Wikipedias not being reported to Wikidata
More work on straightening out date formatting and parsing
Fixed handling of scientific notation for quantity values
Term box: fixed bug causing stale info to be show, and another bug causing babel languages to be ignored sometimes.
Implemented access to other arbitrary items via the #property parser function
Bene* implemented check to make sure two properties can not have the same alias only differing in capitalization
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 was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [864]
VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [865]
You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [866]
If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [867]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [869][870][871]
If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [872]
You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [873]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You will soon be able to add and remove tags on edits. [874][875]
There are a number of user boxes you can add to your user page to indicate interests and which wiki projects you belong to.
Development
On Tuesday, we are deploying usage tracking (no arbitrary access yet) to Dutch Wikipedia and French Wikisource, and subscription tracking on Wikidata. There should be no noticeable changes for users. These are necessary steps towards enabling arbitrary access in clients.
Worked on making language fallback work in the suggester (when adding a new statement or searching for an item)
More work on RDF output and the query service
Added Special:RedirectEntity for redirecting items
Investigated and working to fix JS bug on items with “invalid” values (phabricator:92975)
Did work towards having entity ids in revision histories and in diffs linked with their label (like on watchlists or in the recentchanges)
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
All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [876][877]
You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [878]
There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [879]
You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [880]
Problems
Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [881]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 29 (calendar).
It is now clearer that you can delete several rows and columns when you edit tables in VisualEditor. [882]
You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [883]
You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [884]
You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [885]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 29 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
We rolled out usage tracking on the first two wikis (French Wikisource and Dutch Wikipedia). Users should not notice anything. More wikis will follow in the next weeks. This is the remaining step for enabling arbitrary access on wikis other than Commons.
The students team is working hard to get a first release of the improved constraint reports and checks against 3rd party databases out.
Ricordisamoa fixed the issue with long descriptions being cut off.
We fixed the focus flow in the property selector.
We improved the messages on Special:EntityData to make it more understandable.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
There was a rare problem with VisualEditor. The text of another wiki could be added to your edit. The issue is now fixed. [887][888]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 6 (calendar).
It is now easier to add a link in VisualEditor. You can see an image and a description about the page. [889]
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 6 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join an event in France on May 22−25. You need to sign up before May 8. [891]
A study has been published about how Wikidata can help significantly improve the quality of medical content on Wikipedia. This is why we do Wikidata! \o/
The Wikidata Menu Challenge has started and goes on to May 27. Add labels, images and pronunciation audio to a list of around 290 items to help show off the power of Wikidata at a food festival.
Hovercards also show the target's label and ID now. (Try them by turning them on in the beta features section of your preferences.)
Continued working on RDF export
More work on making it possible to add a reference right away when adding a statement (and allowing the full statement incl references to be edited at the same time)
Did more work to make usage tracking possible on multilingual wikis (namely Commons)
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 make charts and maps on your wiki with the new "graph" tool. If you have an old browser, you will see images instead. It uses a tool called Vega; you can learn how to use it and write help pages for your wiki. You can use the Vega edit tool to make charts and copy the code to your wiki. Charts and maps use complex code and you should put them into templates. In the future, you will be able to create charts with VisualEditor. [892][893][894]
You can apply for technical jobs to develop tools for the community. [895]
The logos of all wikis are now in a new place. It will make pages load faster. You can still ask to change the logo. You can also use local CSS for brief changes. [896][897]
Problems
There was a problem that caused slow editing. [898]
Pages were sometimes removed from your watchlist in VisualEditor. This problem is now fixed. [899]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 13 (calendar).
You can now use data from Wikidata on more pages. The page doesn't need to be linked to the Wikidata item. It works on a few wikis and more wikis will be added soon. [900][901]
You should get fewer errors when you add files to Commons. [902]
When you use an external link to link to a wiki page, VisualEditor now converts it to a wiki link. [903]
When you add a link in VisualEditor, you see pages that match what you type. It is now easier to see where they match. [904]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 13 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Past: Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing) spoke about authority control in Wikidata (and sister projects) at the World Digital Library's Arab Peninsula Regional Group Symposium, organised in conjunction with the Qatar National Library, in Doha on 13 May. His slides, with an Arabic translation, will be online soon.
Past: Wikidata editing workshop at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin
Past: Wikidata workshop for archivists of Catalan City of Justice
Upcoming: MediaWiki hackathon in Lyon
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Elections for the board of the Wikimedia Foundation are ongoing. Wikidata should be well represented among the voters. Go and vote!
Dutch Wikipedia and French Wikisource now have the arbitrary access feature. Persian Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikipedia are following today. Italian Wikipedia and all remaining Wikisource projects are following on June 1st.
English Wikipedia is running a bot to add authority control templates to many articles that are filled completely from Wikidata. Italian Wikipedia is doing so as well.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 20 (calendar).
References are now always in the right order. Also, the reference list now only shows references used on the page. [905]
You can no longer create an account with a colon ':' in it. If you already have one, it still works. [906]
The toolbar in VisualEditor now looks different. It is easier to see the icons. [907]
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 21 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.
Problems
VisualEditor was broken for 30 minutes on Tuesday. The problem was due to a tool it uses. [912]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 20. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 27 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 28 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Wikidata descriptions can be soon be edited in the Wikipedia iOS app.
A early preview of the official SPARQL endpoint for Wikidata has been created to query Wikidata. Remember that it is not stable and still beta. A short introduction to SPARQL can be found in Lucie's slides.
If you are not familiar with SPARQL yet, a tool has been created by Tpt and Bene* to generate SPARQL queries from natural language questions.
To do SPARQL queries from the command line, a command line tool was crafted by Marius.
The special page to query for badges is within reach.
A feedback session on the architecture of Wikibase was held.
We got a cool presentation by Maxime about inventaire.io.
We figured out the next steps to make Wikidata more mobile friendly.
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
Many wikis were slow for a few hours on Wednesday due to a code error. Sometimes the pages did not load at all and showed an error. [916]
Some tools in Labs were broken on Wednesday and Thursday. [917]
Edit tags added by the software were broken on all wikis from May 23 to May 28. [918][919]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 3 (calendar).
You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [920]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 3 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Wikidata has passed German Wikipedia in number of items with images (743850 dewp articles vs. 804885 items) - now only second to English-language Wikipedia.
Catalan Wikipedia is moving Taxon IDs to Wikidata.
Zolo did a comparison of English/French/German/Chinese and Cebuano Wikipedias in terms of main types of articles. Biographies were compared by period, nationality and occupation.
Italian Wikipedia and all remaining Wikisource projects now have arbitrary access. The rollout will continue. The schedule for the next projects is at d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access.
The Content Translation tool now automatically connects translated articles to Wikidata. (Thanks Content Translation developers!) Previously translated but unconnected articles have been connected by a bot. (Thanks Amir!)
Code review of the extensions written by a team of students to improve the constraint reports and make it possible to automatically check our data against other databases. A first version will go live soon pending further codereview and fixes.
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 this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 9. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 11 (calendar). [921][922]
If you use the Monobook skin, the buttons and other controls now look more the same in VisualEditor and other tools. [923]
When you edit links and other items in VisualEditor, you now need to apply your change before closing the tool. [924]
The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons. [925]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 9 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
UK report: Progress on an image release from the Bodleian; National Library of Scotland residency comes to an end; and Glasgow Museums develop a Wiki Working Group
USA report: Wikipedian at the Centers for Disease Control - NIOSH
Open Access report: New Topic Page; Open Access and the humanities; Wikimania & Wikidata
A challenge was raised to calculate the degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon. Already one routine has been produced, the next step is to use live data so that we can work on reducing the number of intermediary steps.
Deployed arbitrary access on all Wikivoyage and Wikiquote projects and announced the next ones. See d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access for more.
More fine tuning on entity usage tracking (relevant for arbitrary access)
Fixed bug that sometimes allowed multiple properties to have the same label in a given language (phabricator:T102148)
More work on automatically creating redirects when merging items
More code review of the Wikidata Quality extensions (improved constraint reports and checks against 3rd party databases). Starting to look good for a first deployment.
The sitelinks heading hierarchy changed and includes a “Site links” heading now that is only shown on mobile. This is a DOM change needed to make Wikidata work better on mobile.
Started working on having PHPCS coverage for the major Wikibase.git code base to find small code issues more easily
Prepared Wikibase.git for the DataModel 3.0 switch
Released Wikibase DataModel Serialization 1.4
Released Wikibase Internal Serialization 1.4
New releases of several DataValue components, including DataValues Number 0.5, DataValues JavaScript 0.7 and ValueView 0.14.5
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 have created more than 5000 articles with the new translation tool. [928]
Editing a page is now faster. This is because some statistics about edit filters were removed. [929]
Changes 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 from 17 June. It will be on all Wikipedias from 18 June (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 16 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
German language Wikipedia closed its RfC on usage of Wikidata data. As a result Wikidata data can be used on the project as long as it happens through a template and it has a non-Wikimedia reference.
Events/Blogs/Press
Past: Office hour on IRC. We talked about cool things that happened around Wikidata over the past 3 months got an update on upcoming developments and Freebase and more. You can read the log.
Fixed an issue where you'd sometimes select the wrong value when entering a statement unintentionally (phabricator:T98471)
Switched the whole code base to make use of DataModel 3.0
The concept of “claims” no longer exists in Wikibase, as all places in the software work with statements. We are making this more and more explicit in the code.
More work on getting the Wikibase Quality extensions ready for deployment. They'll improve constraint checking and provide checks against 3rd party databases.
Special:UnconnectedPages had to be reworked (thanks Amir!) because of huge performance issues. Because of this it loses some functionality (being able to specify where the list starts and limiting the list to pages that have local interwiki links). We're working on bringing functionality back without the performance penalty.
Enabled arbitrary access on arwiki, cawiki, eswiki, huwiki, kowiki, rowiki, ukwiki, viwiki, and usage tracking on dewiki, ruwiki, cswiki and all s3 wikis. (ruwiki and cswiki get arbitrary access on June 23)
Finishing work on improved handling “invalid” values and statements with deleted properties.
Small breaking DOM change: Wikibase no longer adds its own h1 tag but uses MediaWiki's default .firstHeading element. (phabricator:T93534)
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 wikis can now be used only with HTTPS. This includes the English, Russian and Chinese Wikipedias, among others. Soon all wikis will use only HTTPS for all users. [935][936]
You can't use HTTPS wikis with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. You need to use another browser. [937]
Problems
On June 15, search was broken on all wikis for several hours. [938][939][940]
Many Labs tools were broken for several days. Almost all of them are back now. They may be missing some data for the last 10 days. [944][945][946]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 25 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 23 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Upcoming: Wikimania. There will be several talks and workshops related to Wikidata. Say hi at the "Ask Us Anything" session for Wikidata if you're there.
Machine readable versions (in various formats) of Wikibase entities will be advertised in their page heads as alternate link. (phabricator:T96298)
Fixed property label on item pages not scrolling anymore (phabricator:T94588)
More work on getting the Wikibase Quality extensions ready for release. The part doing constraint violation checks should go to test.wikidata.org next week. The part doing checks against 3rd party databases will still take a bit longer but is also shaping up nicely.
Made it possible to create items even when another user is mass-creating items (phabricator:T103796)
Bene* worked more on making Wikidata work nicely on mobile
Fixed weird issue with cursor jumping around in sitelink input field (phabricator:T103489)
Fixed an issue where it was not possible to edit a statement after you removed its only reference (phabricator:T103603)
Lydia will be traveling for much of July. Expect her to be a bit less responsive during that time.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [949]
The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [950][951][952]
You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [953]
Problems
JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [954]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [955]
When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [956]
If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [957]
Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [958]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future
When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [959]
Upcoming: Wikimania. There will be several talks and workshops related to Wikidata. Say hi at the "Ask Us Anything" session for Wikidata if you're there.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
A new database report lists people categorized as dead in Wikipedia, but lacking Property:P570 (date of death). It's updated several times during the day. There are about 20 to 30 new entries each day. There is currently some backlog from the Arabic, Marathi, and Thai Wikipedias. Items updated first in Wikidata wont appear in the report. They are listed directly in Wikidata's recent deaths report.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
On the mobile site, you now see more information when you search for a page. It now shows the description from Wikidata. [960]
Problems
The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [961]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 8. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 9 (calendar).
The "Page information" tool shows how many users watch the page. You can now see how many are active. [962][963]
You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [964]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 7 at 19:00 (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.
Recent changes
You can now see a [[:Category:{{MediaWiki:syntaxhighlight-error-category}}|list of pages]] with errors in code coloring. [965]
Problems
There was a problem with editing on Thursday. Some tools like bots and VisualEditor were broken on all wikis for 10 minutes. [966]
There was a problem with images on Thursday. They were broken on all wikis for 15 minutes. [967]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 15. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 16 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join a technical meeting at Wikimania in Mexico City this week. [968]
Attending Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City right now, meeting awesome people that already use or want to know everything about Wikidata.
After the next deployment, redirects will be automatically created when merging items.
Special:UnconnectedPages can now be queried via the query API, thanks to Ladsgroup.
Migrating away from an older serializer to the DataModel Serialization component.
Worked on a new time parser that can parse formats like M/D/Y, Y M D and so on.
Fixed a bug where a value could not be edited when save failed.
Made the snak type, badge and rank selectors position themselves after resizing the browser window and introduced a possibility to collapse the sitelinks sections.
Worked on a change in editing to be able to edit a statement and it’s references in one step.
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 this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 22. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 23 (calendar).
You now see more warnings in the image viewer. They tell you to be careful when using the image, for example if it shows a person. [969]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 21 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Soon you won't be able to use MathJax to display math. [970]
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 redirects to link to JavaScript pages. [971]
There was a problem with some Lua modules on July 22 and 23. Some pages using them did not list them in "what links here". You can fix those pages with a null edit: edit and save the page without making any change.
There was a problem with the abuse filter page on big wikis on July 23. It was due to a code error. [976]
Changes 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 from July 29. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 30 (calendar).
JavaScript authors: You cannot use wgNoticeUserData to get edit counts anymore. [977]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 28 at 19:00 (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.
Recent changes
The ContentTranslation extension has been updated:
You can now type in list paragraphs on wikis with right-to-left scripts. [978]
Some user interface updates changed how details in the ContentTranslation extension look. [979][980][981][982]
The error page you see when the sites are not working is now simpler and easier to read. It also shows the Wikimedia logo. [983]
MediaWiki now supports redirects for CSS pages. [984]
Bots can't guess captchas unlimited times anymore. [985]
Problems
There was a problem with thumbnails on wikis with local images on July 24 and 25. It was due to a code error. [986]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 6 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 4 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Made some small changes to the style of the edit warning and sitelinks so they are easier to notice and understand
Added error messages for Special:GoToLinkedPage and Special:ItemByTitle so you get a useful message in case no result is found
The Entity Selector now displays alias in brackets behind label
The number of entities loaded via the <nowiki>{{#property:…}}</nowiki> parser function and via Lua will be reported in the “Parser profiling data” (which can be found below a page preview or within the Html of a page)
Prepared for next rounds of arbitrary access rollout
Investigated growing lag of dispatching of changes to Wikipedia and co. We'll need to investigate further and change things so the lag between an edit on Wikidata and it being send to the Wikipedias and other projects is not too high.
Added the property ID to Special:ListProperties
Moved two extensions (Wikidata.org and WikimediaBadges) from Github to Gerrit. More will follow.
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
MediaWiki can now hide the signature button when you edit a content page. [988]
The "Your preferences have been saved" message has changed. You can now see more easily what was saved when you change preferences several times. [989]
You can now play Ogg video files in some browsers that don't support this format. This solution uses JavaScript and works on desktop browsers only for now. It will work on mobile later. [990]
You can now use the same tools to edit style in VisualEditor on mobile as in desktop browsers. [991]
It is now easier to see if there is a JavaScript error in a user or site script. [992]
JavaScript authors:
You can no longer use the Sajax library. You can see a list of pages to fix. [993][994]
You can no longer use document.write on Wikimedia wikis. You can see a list of pages to fix. [995][996]
The content translation tool now works better. It is easier to use math, and useless tags are no longer added. [997]
Problems
More edits have been rejected due to loss of session data lately. This is now fixed. [998]
Importing a Lua module sometimes didn't work. This is now fixed. [999]
Text was sometimes lost in the content translation tool. One part of the problem is now fixed. [1000]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 13 (calendar).
UploadWizard is getting a new look. The look of buttons and checkboxes has already changed. This week, UploadWizard gets a new date picker. The other text fields will change soon. [1001]
You can now test VisualEditor on mobile devices of all sizes. [1002]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Some things in the watchlist will get a new look. [1003]
You have a bunch of names etc. and want to find Wikidata items with those labels/aliases? Try relabel!
SourcererBot is adding lots of references to existing statements on several thousand items.
Mix-n-Match has new catalogs including the National Library of Australia.
Deaths at Wikipedia are a series of reports comparing items at Wikidata with death-by-year-categories of Wikipedia. For the years since 2000, only about 15% of items at Wikidata lack d:Property:P570 (date of death).
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
Many Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Before they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article. [1004][1005][1006]
Some auto-saving problems and other issues in the Content Translation tool are now fixed. Please report to the Content Translation feedback page if you still have problems. [1007]
Problems
Older gadgets that are not using ResourceLoader are not loading anymore. They need to be updated. [1008][1009]
On August 12 the machine translation servers and the Content Translation tool didn't work. This was fixed on the same day. [1010]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 20 (calendar).
You can soon watch when something is added to or removed from a category. [1011]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 18 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Soon the edit summary for edits through the API will also contain the automatic edit summary that you are used to for edits done through the website. The summary given by the API user will be appended to the automatic summary. (phabricator:T97247)
Addressed performance issues in usage tracking updates and had to delay the latest round of rollouts because of it
Fixed a bug where suggestions would show up twice in item and property selectors (phabricator:T109697)
Improved performance of the mw.wikibase.sitelink Lua method
Made final changes so we can redirect mobile users to the mobile version by default
Evaluated the remaining steps to get the extension deployed that lets you do checks against 3rd party databases. Not much left it seems and we'll tackle that in one of the next sprints. Getting the new features deployed for the constraints checks will still take a bit longer.
More work on making the edit summaries in the watchlist on Wikipedia and co more meaningful
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
Disambiguation pages are now excluded from the random page function. [1012]
Problems
There was a problem with CAPTCHAs in VisualEditor. This has now been fixed. [1013]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 27 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Optimized Wikidata for viewing on mobile devices. You will be redirected to m.wikidata.org automatically when using a mobile device soon the same way it already happens on Wikipedia. (Editing will only be possible via the special pages!)
API custom summary will no longer override the autocomment (phabricator:T97247)
Paging and sorting has been added to Special:ListProperties and it now also shows the IDs of the properties
Worked more on making the edit summaries on the client more meaningful and readable
Introduced a limit of 250 different entities that can be used on a page in the client via arbitrary access. The limit does not apply to convenience functions in lua, such as mw.wikibase.label which use a TermLookup instead of loading a full entity to get labels. (phabricator:T93885)
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
VisualEditor will now automatically create a link when you type in or paste an ISBN, PMID, or RFC. [1014][1015]
The link editor in VisualEditor is now a bit wider. It's now the same width as the automatic citation tool. [1016]
VisualEditor gadget authors can no longer use the backwards-compatibility module ext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.init. Use ext.visualEditor.desktopArticleTarget.init instead. [1017]
Gadget writers can now use mediawiki.ForeignApi to communicate between different Wikimedia wikis. [1018]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 3 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 1 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The Wikidata API will be updated with breaking changes. This will probably happen on September 9. [1019]
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 mention up to 50 users in a post and they will get a notification. Previously you could notify up to 20 users. [1020]
A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support. [1021]
You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version. [1022]
Problems
There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed. [1023]
The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed. [1024][1025]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 10 (calendar).
The maximum character length when you search for something on the Wikimedia wikis is now 300 characters. [1026]
The notifications list has been split into two lists. As a first step, notifications about messages on your user talk page will be placed in the second list. Feedback is requested at the Echo talk page. [1027][1028]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 8 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the Wikitech ambassadors mailing list. The list is for Wikimedians interested in spreading information about Wikimedia technology news. See how to join.
Future changes
The Wikimedia mailing lists will be moved to a new server and the software will be upgraded. This will happen on September 9 at 14:00 (UTC). The mailing lists will not be working during the move. It can take up to four hours. [1029]
Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places. [1030][1031]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Belarusian-Taraškievica Wikipedia was moved from be-x-old.wikipedia.org to be-tarask.wikipedia.org. This caused some issues, but most of them were resolved. [1033]
Language preferences might not be changed immediately when you adjust them. Language selection might work slower. Please report any problems. [1034][1035]
The Wikimedia mailing lists should have been upgraded on September 9. It didn't work as planned and will now happen later. [1037]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 17 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 15 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
ContentTranslation will show more data on the Special:ContentTranslationStats page. For example, it will show translation trends and information about deleted translations. [1038]
The first version of the translation suggestions feature will be deployed soon. [1039]
Stalagmites and stalactites visualizes items without statements, items with statements, and deleted/redirected items by batches of 100,000 QIDs
Mix n Match is now available for mobile, has an improved automatic matching algorithm, got speed improvements and new catalogs were added like the National Gallery of Victoria, World Heritage Sites and CulturaItalia
Matched birth and death days seeks to investigate all pairs of humans (in various subsets) that appear to have the same birth dates and death dates. De-duplication underway!
You can now use the new special page Special:PagesWithBadges to see which articles on that project have a badge like "featured article".
Release of the query service and unit support (see above)
Made quantities not show URIs when editing a value but instead show the label
Worked on new datatype for identifiers to be able to split them from the other statements in the user interface, link them without the need for the authority control gadget and be able to link them in JSON/RDF
Worked more on making the edit summaries in the watchlist on Wikipedia and co more meaningful
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Last week a few issues with UploadWizard were fixed. Before this was done, UploadWizard would stop you from uploading your files if something went wrong. [1042][1043][1044][1045]
More Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Previously they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article. [1046]
The VisualEditor welcome dialogue has been changed. The intention is to make it more helpful for new users. [1047]
Problems
Wikimedia Labs' HTTPS certificate expired for most of Tuesday 15 September. To reach Wikimedia Labs and Tool Labs securely you had to ignore your browser's security error message. There was no risk to data security during this time. [1048]
Last week the notification system was split into two parts. This was temporarily undone because of a bug and performance concerns. It will return to two parts this week. [1049][1050]
UploadWizard couldn't upload files larger than 5 MB when using chunked uploads. This has now been fixed. [1051]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 23. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 24 (calendar).
The page move tool has been switched over to the new standard look for forms. [1052]
You can now choose whether to extend a link or not when editing one in VisualEditor. This means it is easier to choose how much of what you type before and after the link is part of it. [1053]
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can register to the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016 in San Francisco 4–6 January 2016. Gadget, template, bot, and tool developers are welcome as well. Call for participation and travel sponsorship requests are open until 2 October.
A follow-up to the Wikidata for research proposal has begun to be drafted by the University of Haifa and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
Community page for the new SPARQL query service, including a subpage for interesting or illustrative queries, and a board for suggestions and discussions.
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
In UploadWizard, the dialog to see an image preview has been removed. You already see the images in the thumbnails when you upload them. [1055]
UploadWizard dialogs look a bit different now. They have been updated to the new OOUI look. [1056]
You can now edit music scores in VisualEditor. You can add new sheet music scores and get live updates when you edit one. [1057]
When you send an e-mail to another editor using Special:EmailUser, that user will now get a notification on the wiki as well. [1058]
You can now see 500 images when you upload images from Flickr with UploadWizard. Before this change the limit was 50. [1059]
The Wikimedia mailing lists have been upgraded. [1060]
MediaWiki developers spent a day looking at proposed code changes in Gerrit. The goal was to clean up the backlog and give feedback to volunteer developers. [1061]
Problems
Some visitors had problems reaching the Wikimedia sites for an hour on September 24. [1062][1063]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 30. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 1 (calendar).
There will be a new beta feature that allows editors to use Flow on their user talkpage if they want to. Each wiki can decide if they want to enable it. [1064]
The Content Translation tool can give translation suggestions. This feature will now be available in more languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, Italian, and Catalan. [1065]
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The Wikimedia Foundation developers want the community to decide who can use OAuth in the future. You can discuss it on Meta.
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 link editor in the visual editor now shows results below the search box. This improves the usability on desktop and mobile. [1067]
The description at Special:ChangeEmail now clearly explains that the page can also be used to remove your email. [1068]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 8 (calendar).
UploadWizard will remind users to add a category. [1069]
UploadWizard's category selectors will be easier to use. [1070]
A new Cite error will be shown if a named reference is defined more than once in the same article. [1071]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 October at 19:00 (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.
Recent changes
The database size lists have been updated. These control special page update frequency and which wikis use global abuse filters. [1072]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 15 (calendar).
You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons using the visual editor. When the image is uploaded it will be added to the article you're editing. [1073]
Pages that show citation error messages will automatically be placed in a hidden category. [1074]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Discussion has started on English WikiProject Football about using Wikidata for player squad templates (example) and player club history (example). Needs more input on best practices and commitment to update data.
You'll now get redirected to the mobile view automatically on mobile devices (example)
Made it possible to use more entities on a page via Lua without running into Lua's memory limit
Added the Article Placeholder extension’s results to the search result page (this is one of a few remaining blockers before we can put it on a testsystem for you to try out and give feedback)
Added option to create a new article from Article Placeholder
More work on the new datatype for properties
More work on making meaningful edit summaries on the client. Found a few remaining bugs during testing.
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
Tech News is trying to make reading the newsletter easier. The icon means the item is in the newsletter every week, but with new dates. The icon means the item is mainly relevant for readers with technical knowledge. You can leave feedback on this change.
Timestamps in the protection log will now be in the user's timezone. Previously they would show Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). [1077]
Problems
A problem with MediaWiki made some pages show no content on October 14. This has now been fixed. [1078]
Some templates were misplaced in the Flow description bar. This could make it impossible to click on links. This will be fixed this week. [1079]
The deployment of the new MediaWiki version was stopped on October 14. No new code was deployed for the rest of week. This meant planned changes did not happen. [1080]
Changes this week
Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week. [1081]
Wikispecies, Meta and MediaWiki.org will be able to use Wikidata for sitelinks. [1082][1083][1084][1085]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 October at 19:00 (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 this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).
The first time you use the visual editor, pop-ups will explain why and when you should use the citation and link tools. [1086]
You will be able to upload images to Wikimedia Commons from inside the wikitext editor by clicking "Upload" in the "{{int:wikieditor-toolbar-tool-file-title}}" dialog. You will also be able to drag and drop them into an article when using the visual editor. [1087][1088]
When you edit a code block in visual editor, you will have the syntax highlighted. [1089][1090]
Index and Page namespaces on Wikisource will be defined as content namespaces in <nowiki>$wgContentNamespaces</nowiki>. [1091]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
If you are using the mobile version of Wikipedia, you can now see Wikidata descriptions under article titles in search results. [1093]
Editing conflicts are now detected when you edit on a mobile device. Before, this did not work properly on mobile. [1094]
Problems
On October 26 the Wikimedia sites went down for ten minutes. [1095]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 5 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join. You can also read the latest VisualEditor newsletter.
Finished the create article button for the ArticlePlaceholder page
From Monday on a bzip2 compressed version of the beta Wikidata TTL dumps will be published along the gzip one
Getting close to make it possible to add the main value of a statement and its reference at the same time
Worked on adding a new section to item and property pages for identifiers
Did backend work for making identifiers useful in our machine-readable outputs (by actually linking them instead of just giving the identifier string) - more work needed
Fixed a bug where dates would have English months on non-English wikis (phabricator:T116503)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can now switch between the wikitext editor and the visual editor without saving. You will not lose the changes you have made. [1099]
JSON dumps of the production search indexes are now available. They can be imported to Elasticsearch. [1100]
Problems
Some translations for the Thanks and Echo extensions were missing. Translators have been asked to help and this should be solved soon. [1101]
Changes this week
Thumbnails of 16-bit TIFF files will be displayed properly. Before, this didn't work. [1102]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 November at 19:00 (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 this week
You can use TemplateData to indicate how you want a template to be displayed in wikitext. Tools like VisualEditor that edit templates will soon use this information. [1105]
Echo notification icons in MonoBook will look more like other icons in the theme. [1106]
Wikis can make the welcome notification link to a specific page. [1107]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18. It will be on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Internet Explorer 8 will no longer have JavaScript support. You will still be able to browse and edit Wikipedia, but will not be able to use some features. This can be solved by upgrading to a newer version or switching to a different browser. The change will happen in January 2016. [1108][1109]
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 new Pageview API has been announced. Feedback is requested to help decide which data to add to it next.
Changes this week
There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Language Engineering team. The topic is: Content Translation updates and Questions & Answers. The meeting will be on 25 November at 13:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 November at 19:00 (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.
The symbol for advanced news items has been changed. This is because the symbols were too similar. If a news item is for more technical readers it now looks like this: . You can give feedback on this change.
Problems
On September 29 users' skin preferences were removed by mistake on small and medium-sized wikis. This changed preferences back to Vector. Restoring all data would cause even more problems. Affected users who want to have their preference changed back globally can ask for it as a comment on Phabricator task T119206 until December 21 2015. [1111]
Some scheduled tasks were not working properly from September to recently. This meant some pages in the special pages namespace were not updated. It has now been fixed. [1112]
Changes this week
Wikinews, Wikispecies, MediaWiki.org and Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [1113][1114]
There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 December at 19:00 (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.
Recent changes
Revision scoring will help to automatically identify bad-faith and good-faith edits. The point is to make it easier to block vandals and welcome newcomers. It currently supports Wikidata and 14 Wikipedias. [1117]
Problems
Meta was not given access to information from Wikidata last week. This will happen later. [1118]
Changes this week
You will be able to use wikilinks in Flow topic titles. [1119]
IP users will have a toolbar with links to the user talk page and user contributions. Some Wikipedias already have this feature. [1120]
You will be able to edit the graph size in the visual editor. You can either specify the size in the graph dialog or drag it to be the size you want it to be. [1121]
It will be easier to write math in the visual editor if you don't know LaTeX. You can use symbol buttons instead. [1122]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all Wikipedias from 10 December. (calendar).
New MediaWiki versions will now be on Catalan and Hebrew Wikipedia on Wednesdays. Other Wikipedias get the new MediaWiki version on Thursdays. [1125]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
query.wikidata.org now more prominently shows example queries in case you missed them before, lets you filter and gives you a preview for them. Additionally you can click a little magnifying glass next to an item ID in a query result and explore it further.
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 this week
Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [1127]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all Wikipedias from 17 December. (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 15 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
<3 Thanks for being awesome. Enjoy the holidays :)
We will take the "in other projects"-sidebar out of beta features in January (phabricator:T103102)
Making ranking information like label and statement counts available to the CirrusSearch index in order to improve ranking in search results (phabricator:T110648)
Continued work on the identifier data type for identifiers like VIAF and ISBN so we can easily put them into a separate section in the items and properly link them in the exports (phabricator:T95682, phabricator:T121274)
Continued work on making external identifiers clickable links without the help of the authority control gadget (phabricator:T95684)
Fixed a mistake in the set reference API documentation (gerrit:259171)
Students worked on new datatype to capture mathematical expressions (phabricator:T67397)
Updated property suggester data to give you more up-to-date suggestions when adding new statements
Pages in the module namespace now also get interwiki links (phabricator:T123234)
Reduced number of resource loader modules to improve performance (phabricator:T123233)
Started experimenting with showing an image in the header area (phabricator:T119493)
Fixed a bug where the query text would be moved off the screen on the query service website (phabricator:T120196)
Worked on the remaining blocker for taking the in other projects sidebar out of beta. We need to link to the Commons category and not gallery for articles without frying the servers (phabricator:T94989)
Changes in how authentication in MediaWiki is handled are being rolled out (and more coming). [1130] Ordinary users and gadgets / user scripts should not be affected but bots may need to be adjusted. pywikibot already supports [1131] OAuth authentication, though bot operators need to set that up for their bot.
Investigated language support in MediaWiki and Wikibase to allow more languages in monolingual text and disallow some non-sense for label/descriptions/aliases (phabricator:T78006)
Fixed missing license info and broken links for Wikibase libraries on Special:Version
Working on improving scoring of search results on Wikidata, on Special:Search
Preparing to take the "in other projects" sidebar out of beta features, with the Wikimedia Commons link going to the Commons category (phabricator:T103102, phabricator:T94989)
Amir and Aaron are turning ORES into an extension to make it easier for you to spot bad edits \o/
Final touches on putting identifiers into their own section (phabricator:T117421)
Switching the in other languages box to be expanded by default for new people (phabricator:T92387)
More experimenting with adding an image to the header area (phabricator:T119493)
Last call for comments on the new process for showcase items at d:User:Harmonia Amanda/Showcase items. Please review and comment on the associated talk page.
Groundwork for adding new entity types to move us forward with support for structured data on Commons. (Other entity types are Item and Property. We'll need Mediainfo for Commons.)
Belgium report: Heroines Wikipedia workshop addressing the Gender Bias; Public Domain Day Celebration; Wikidata meeting & workshop; FOSDEM: MediaWiki, Wikidata and more
Work on first prototype for Commons support - specifically by making it possible to have more entity types than just Item and Property (phabricator:T125822)
Work on first prototype for Commons support - specifically by making it possible to have more entity types than just Item and Property (phabricator:T125822)
In order to deploy the ORES extension on Wikidata we need a few more people to help with a labeling campaign. ORES will help us a lot with anti-vandalism fighting.
The in other projects sidebar has graduated from beta features and is now turned on on all projects except Dutch Wikipedia. (They have their own hack.) This closes a wish that has been around since 2004 \o/ (phabricator:T2708)
Added a new identifiers section in items. Everything with datatype external identifier goes there now. Once we have all identifiers converted items should be easier to scan and understand because of the clearer structure.
We have a patch upcoming that should reduce loading time of items with a lot of sitelinks by 25%
Fixed a bug where you could not add statements with external identifier or mathematical expression datatype (phabricator:T127095)
More groundwork for Commons (making it possible to have more entities than just items and properties)
Wikiversity is now supported by Wikidata as well. Language links can be maintained on Wikidata now. Access to the data will follow. Welcome, sister!
Wikidata now has cross-wiki notifications as a beta feature. You can enable it in your preferences. Once enabled you will see notifications you received on the other Wikimedia wikis.
Property:P1367 ("BBC Your Paintings artist-ID") has become "Art UK artist identifier". Identifier values were replaced.
The number of claims on each item is to be included in the "page property" database table. For some items where it had been missing, it was recently added. This leads to improved coverage by database reports: without claims by site.
Mix'n'match has new catalogs: Artists of the Nationalmuseum in Sweden and Encyclopædia Britannica
Wikidata Query Service now allows to view images linked from Commons and display image galley if the query result has images. Example: Paintings by Gustav Klimt
Fixed a bug in Special:NewItem which prevented submission of the form (phabricator:T128075)
More performance work
In diffs for mathematical expressions we're now also showing the TeX source to make it possible to see changes that do not affect the rendering of the formula (phabricator:T125712)
More work on cleaning up languages for multilingual text values and labels/descriptions/aliases
Lucie and Charlie handed in their Bachelor theses on the Article Placeholder and Editing Wikidata from Wikipedia. Work on both topics will continue. We'll publish both theses soon. A big congrats to both of them!
This article from Russian Wikipedia is generated only with Lua Module and Listeria, based on its Wikidata item.
If you're into Wikidata, GLAM and Facebook there is now a Facebook group for you.
There are 4 new games to help with the migration of the Persondata template on English Wikipedia.
There was a huge increase in the number of qualifiers over the last 2 weeks. It went from 2.6 to 3.7 Million due to additions of qualifiers for evidence codes on human and mouse proteins.
Interested in seeing Wikidata training sessions at Wikimania? Add yourself to interested attendees for the sessions.
Substantially reduced server load for item and property displaying (phab:T132662)
There are currently some issues with the order of latitude/longitude inn coordinates in the query service map visualization. It will be fixed tonight.
Removed unsupported sort and dir parameters from the wikibase.api.RepoApi JavaScript module. This may break user JavaScript calling getEntitiesByPage (phab:T119856).
Worked on new flyers for institutions that want to cooperate with Wikidata and developers wanting to use our data (will be published on Commons once they're done)
Moved forward with internationalization of the query service interface (not on translatewiki.net yet but being worked on)
Worked on making it possible to extend SPARQL queries in simplified natural language version. It will also no longer add query prefixes when editing the query. Those are not live yet.
Fixed a bug where admins got a blank page when trying to view deleted revisions (phabricator:T132645)
Investigating issues with bad suggestions for properties when adding new statements (phabricator:T132839)
Our Main Page now has a section for popular items to show you what is trending on Wikidata based on several people editing an item over the last few days
Worked on creating mediainfo entities on demand when a file is viewed that doesn't have an associated mediainfo entity yet. This is needed for structured data support for Commons.
Worked on making it possible to embed query results in other websites. You can get a preview at https://jonaskress.github.io
Added timeline as a possible visualization for the query service.
Investigated issues with downloading query result sets in Safari.
Got ArticlePlaceholder ready for the second round of Wikipedias.
Fixed bug where map wasn't enabled as a possible visualization for queries with cooridnates.
You can soon specify the color of the bubbles in a bubble chart visualization. (phabricator:T137061)
Fixed a bug with terms sometimes not showing up, language fallback not working correctly in Lua modules and connection to master database
Fixed a bug with URL encoding in the query service.
ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 100 can avoid timeouts on Wikidata Query Service (source)
Development
Worked on making it easier to add new query examples right from the query service by just clicking a button. There are some technical issues with it still though. Will take a while to sort through.
More work on creating new Media-Info entities (the equivalent of item for media file data) on the fly (phabricator:T134259)
EasyQuery is now a gadget that you can enable in your preferences. It gives you an icon next to each statement value. That gives you a list of other items with the same statement.
Stats have been updated and show a significant jump in references.
There is now a 100wikidatadays challenge based on the 100wikidays challenge for Wikipedia. The goal: convert 100 templates to make use of Wikidata over the course of 100 days.
Thiemo wrote a user script to pre-fill "date retrieved" in a reference with the current date. Please test and let us know what you think ont he linked page. If you like it it can become a gadget.
More groundwork for Commons. We can now save a statement in the new MediaInfo entity type \o/ (Some minor issues still with the demo system but should be solved next week.)
Fixed a display issue with description tooltips in recent changes. Thanks Matěj Suchánek! (phabricator:T89663)
Refactored quite some of the sitelinks-related JavaScript code (phabricator:T127056 and gerrit:294687. This may break some existing gadgets and user scripts temporarily.
Updated the graphic representing the data model in Wikidata: long, medium, short
Fixed problem with editing statements on Wikidata, after last week's deployment (phabricator:T138974)
Started interviews to find user needs and workflows for automated list generation (phabricator:T139284)
Working on an infographic to represent the flow of data in Wikidata
Work on multi-content revisions in order to be able to store an entity (item, property, mediainfo) and wiki text in the same page (This is needed for Commons) (phabricator:T107595)
Did more interviews with editors as preparation for the work on automated list generation for Wikipedia and co based on Wikidata data
Fixed a bug with data parsing in Korean and a few other languages (phabricator:T139509)
Added "non" as a language code for monolingual text values (phabricator:T137115)
Removed display of calendar model for dates with precision of 10 years or larger (phabricator:T133973)
Fixed issues in some of the forms on special pages on mobile (phabricator:T138413)
Numbers on Wikidata:Database reports/without claims by site for some projects decreased (e.g. dewiki), remained consistently low (e.g. nlwiki), or recently increased to new highs (e.g. enwiki).
Development
Finished first rough prototype for structured data on Commons. Wanted to sent out announcement on Friday but one configuration issue is still unsolved. Should be solved in the next 1 or 2 days.
We are adding a "no match found" message to the suggester that you get when selecting an item or property while adding a new statement for example (phabricator:T140085)
When a query result contains a mathematical expression it will soon be rendered correctly (phabricator:T137784)
Added support for Haida (hai) for monolingual text values (phabricator:T138131)
You can now translate all sister project pages to your language, like Wikidata:Wikipedia. Please, link to them from your projects to give your fellow users chance to learn Wikidata basics.
You can now enable the CoordinateDiffMap Gadget in your preferences to get a map for coordinate changes.
Added a message to the suggester that pops up when you search for items or properties. When no matching property or item is found it will now tell you. (phabricator:T140085)
Considerably improved our browser tests to find more issues before You ever see them.
Added Haida as a language available for monolingual text properties (phabricator:T138131)
Worked on layout improvements to have a better visual separation of qualifiers and references (phabricator:T141862)
Added a line to the suggester to indicate when no matching item or property was found (phabricator:T142034)
Fixed and issue with scroll bars in the logo section of the ArticlePlaceholder (phabricator:T139977)
Worked more on making it possible to translate an article in the ArticlePlaceholder (phabricator:T124036)
Worked on fixing link in in other languages section for ArticlePlaceholder (phabricator:T137933)
Worked more on groundwork for multi content revisions which we need for structured data support for Commons in order to have structured and unstructured data on the file page at the same time (phabricator:T141878)
Worked on automatically creating a mediainfo entity when adding a statement - so far it is only possible by adding a label or description (phabricator:T140760)
WikiShootMe has a lot of new updates: OAuth-based image upload button, uploads to Commons and adds to Wikidata item with one click, right-click on the map to add a missing item, build-in Wikidata search, free images search (example for Central Cambridge)
A famous Italian song, Tanti Auguri by Raffaella Carrà, states "Com'è bello far l'amore da Trieste in giù" (literally, in English: "How great it is to make love from Trieste to below"). This is a query to find out where you shouldn't make love.
Planet to Earth: this tool uses data from Wikidata to visualise the links between places on an astronomical body named after a place on planet Earth.
WikiDataScape is a Cytoscape app for interactive browsing of Wikidata.
The property "KML file" was created last week (see list below) and has already a full list of values, sample LUA module and property documentation page available (Property talk:P3096)
Welsh Wikipedia includes Wikidata-based article placeholders, like this one
Wiki Loves Monuments started! You can help by improving the items about heritage buildings or use Wikishootme to find unpictured monuments
English Wikipedia now has a WikiProject Wikidata to coordinate integration with Wikidata. Why not start one for your local Wikipedia? Add it to Q20855878 if you do.
Upcoming: Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing) & Liam Wyatt (User:Wittylama) speaking about GLAM-Wiki (including Wikidata) in Warsaw, 19 October. Details tbc.
Upcoming: Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing) speaking & running workshop about Wikidata at SFK 16 ("Software Freedom Kosova Conference") in Pristina, 21-23 October.
#SundayQuery on Twitter: every Sunday, you can ask for help or advice about SPARQL queries, how to build or fix it, some SPARQL-ninjas will be there to answer you!
Researcher? You can participate in the WSDM Cup 2017 challenge and improve Wikidata vandalism detection
New templates: {{Denmark properties}}, {{Greece properties}}. Please add labels in your own languages, and consider making a similar template for your country or region.
Development
Lowered relevance threshold for ArticlePlaceholder search results from 3 to 2 sitelinks (T144188)
Added 'otk' as an available language for monolingual text values (T137809)
Working on making it possible to paste partial URLs into the site selector (T144310)
Made progress on showing editors on all Wikimedia projects which articles on their project use data from a given Wikidata item. We will also show in the page information (action=info) which items a given article uses. Also worked on showing which projects use a given item in the page information. (T103091)
Added meta information to the html header of item pages (T88475)
Made progress on making ArticlePlaceholders indexable for search engines (T144590)
The Project Grants program is accepting proposals from September 12 to October 11 to fund new tools, research, offline outreach, online organizing and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers.
The RevisionSlider is now available as a beta feature, try it to have a visual overview of your diffs.
The Wikidata team attended and participated to a lot of conference these past days (WikiCon, ViewSource, DPpedia, SoCraTes, Write the doc) that's why we don't have many tasks to share with you this week :)
TXT Werk is doing automatic entity recognition in text with the help of Wikidata. Previously only German was supported. English is now supported as well.
Proposition for upgrading the default copyright license for Wikimedia projects to CC-by-SA 4.0 (does not affect the structured data part of Wikidata, which uses CC0).
More work on automated sitelinks for Wiktionary (phabricator:T987)
More work on federation for Commons in order to be able to use Wikidata's items and properties there (phabricator:T76007)
Adding entity usage information in action=edit on Wikipedia and co (phabricator:T144921)
Working on making it possible to get formatted values back on the client. With this we will for example link the value to a Wikipedia article where possible. (phabricator:T142940)
Upcoming: Andy Mabbett speaking about Wikidata & running a GLAM-Wiki workshop at SFK 16 ("Software Freedom Kosova Conference") in Pristina, 21-23 October.
New template: d:Template:Poland properties. Please add labels in your own languages, and consider making a similar template for your country or region.
Development
Worked further on automatic linking of pages between Wiktionary language editions
Worked further on making it possible to use Wikidata's items and properties to describe files on Commons
Reviewed error messages and made them easier to understand
Added tooltips in some places in the UI to make them more understandable (e.g. ranks, special values)
Made the loading animation clearer in embedded query results (phabricator:T148042)
Making it possible to paste the full URL of an image on Commons into image properties (phabricator:T147917)
Worked on a small birthday present
Fixed run button not being reenabled after some queries (phabricator:T147114)
More work on better parser function and Lua functions that return formatted values (phabricator:T142940)
Undoing the last edit to an item will now show a undo summary, not a restore one (phabricator:T147631) Thanks Matěj!
Lule Sami and Pite Sami are now supported languages in Wikidata (phabricator:T146707)
Brainstormed about how to make it easier to write queries without knowing SPARQL
A lot of surprises, stories and presents will be shared between October 29th and November 4th. Check the project chat or the mailing-list every day to see what happens!
You can also participate by posting a story (more info here), a tweet with #WikidataBirthday, let a message or a present on the birthday page.
If you're participating to Wikidata's birthday, you can add this template to your user page.
Four new types of charts for the Query Service: line chart, bar chart, scatter chart and area chart (read more and try examples in the documentation) by Jonas
<nowiki>{{#statements:…}}</nowiki>, a new parser function is currently in development with better features that you can try on beta by the Wikidata dev team and volunteers
Search field added in Scholia, a tool to create scholarship profiles, by fnielsen
The birthday party is not finished yet, every day until November 4th you will discover new presents and stories. Follow the project chat or the mailing-list or #Wikidatabirthday to get the news!
Commons media file properties now support pasting full Wikimedia Commons URLs (phabricator:T147917)
Added distinct hover tooltips to rank and snak type selectors, as well as some of the "add" buttons (phabricator:T139356)
Our concept base URI will be exposed as part of the [{{fullurl:d:Special:ApiSandbox}}#action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=general meta=siteinfo] API (phabricator:T143910). Thanks, user Lokal Profil!
Progress on the list=wbsubscribers API module to query entity usage information (phabricator:T145880)
Progress on the new parser function for rich, formatted statements (phabricator:T142940)
Thanks to everyone who celebrated the birthday by organizing or attending to an event, letting a message on Wikidata or on the social networks, writing a story or creating a present!
Here's the list of the birthday presents from the community and development team:
Four new types of charts for the Query Service: line chart, bar chart, scatter chart and area chart! Read more and try examples in the documentation (Jonas)
<nowiki>{{#statements:…}}</nowiki>, a new parser function is currently in development with better features: try it here! (Thiemo, Wikidata dev team and volunteers)
Search field added in Scholia, a tool to create scholarship profiles (fnielsen)
Technical documentation about Wikibase for PHP and JS scripts (Ladsgroup and Jonas)
new feature for the graph view in the Query Service: it can now browse the properties of items. see in the video (Jonas)
graph builder tool for the query service to create and export graphs (demo video) (Jonas, [[d:user:Smalyshev (WMF)|Smalyshev)
More work on federation in order to be able to use Wikidata's items and properties to describe media files on Wikimedia Commons in the future (phabricator:T149580)
A new Wikidata PageRank dataset has been published. The dataset was computed in August 2016 and provides PageRank scores for 10,364,840 Wikidata entities.
Due to a possible hack, please consider resetting your passwords.
Parlement & Politiek ID (P1749) has been completed in Mix'n'match. Over 5000 politicians from the Netherlands (and also Belgium) now have a link to this resource
Unit conversion has been rolled out for the first dimension for a short while now.
Undo diffs now utilize language fallbacks for property and item labels (gerrit:315291). Thanks to Matěj Suchánek!
Reworked database schema for Cognate (the extension that will do automatic interwiki links for Wiktionary). It is still waiting for security review before it can be deployed.
Worked more on basic version of Lexeme entity type
Fixed a bug where the links on action=info where wrong (phabricator:T149598)
Getting close to finishing the groundwork for Federation so that in the future you'll be able to use Wikidata's items and properties to describe files on Commons.
Added Innu-aimun as a language for monolingual text values (phabricator:T151129)
Worked on linking to Wikipedia articles in the statements on an ArticlePlaceholder (phabricator:T113955)
The Fossasia Opentech Submit in Singapore is looking for speakers. If you're in the area and want to introduce attendees to Wikidata, feel free to send your application!
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of User:Coyau. He was a very active editor on Wikidata and the other Wikimedia projects. He will be deeply missed by his friends and family but his great work on open culture will stay. Feel free to browse and share his work. Thanks Guillaume for this message.
Basque language Wikipedia develops a most prominent basque and worlwide person born/death in this day for all the day related articles. For example, eu:Abenduaren 19. It also displays interesting red links for people born and dead that day that are not represented in eu:wp.
This week, most of the developers are at the Dev Summit hacking stuff and doing great things!
Continued working on "federation" – support for multiple Wikibase repositories (phab:T76007)
New dimensions for unit conversion in the query service (phab:T150881)
Fixed a timing issue that can happen when using the property suggester (phab:T115267)
Still investigating an issue in which the "save" button stays disabled, as reported in December
We may remove the sliding animation when using the date, geo, monolingual, and quantity experts (gerrit:330145). The preview popup may now cover parts of the page. Please try it at wikidata.beta.wmflabs.org and tell us what you think on our contact page.
Italy report: Libraries of 1602 and 2016, science museum new home for wikimedians
Netherlands report: Image donation Specilla circularia; Glass negatives by photographer Jan Goedeljee; Pattypan training for GLAMs; 1500 historical images from the Peace Palace Library
Attended the Wikimedia Developer Summit to talk about a lot of things (including editing Wikidata from Wikipedia directly, back-end work for structured data support for Commons - specifically Multi Content Revisions, ideas for improvements to the query service)
Final touches to get ArticlePlaceholder pages ready for search engine indexing
Continued working on "federation" – support for multiple Wikibase repositories (phab:T76007)
Clickable prototype for client editing is finally in the works!
Coordinates on Russian Wikipedia now link to maps generated with the Kartographer extension. The map includes the location outline, if that object exists in OpenStreetMap (OSM) with a corresponding Wikidata ID (ways and relations only, not nodes). Example: w:ru:Зальцбург (click coordinates in the upper right corner, or in the infobox on the side). If you create a Wikidata item about a specific administrative area, building, or other physical individual object which appears on maps, then please add the Wikidata ID to the relevant object in OSM, using key:wikidata= (here's how to contribute to OSM).
QuickStatements V2 can now run your commands in the background, no need to keep the browser tab open anymore
When posting a link to an item to social networks and on messenger apps that show previews the previews will now be nicer and show an image. (phabricator:T51859)
The Cebuano and Swedish wikis have a lot of bot-created content which is unconnected to other wiki articles. A good way to tackle that problem is by checking constraint violations for property GeoNames ID.
Module Wikidata on Wikidata received an update to improve its performance. If your wiki has forked this one, consider updating it and report any problems (already reported one).
Experimental c:Template:Category contains for categories on Commons, including a per-category Wikidata query. See introductory discussion on Commons Village Pump. Presented together with current statistics on Commons category <-> Wikidata links
Doing a trial run of allowing search engines to index a number of ArticlePlaceholder pages on Welsh Wikipedia. If there are no major issues we will enable this for all placeholders.
Improving Federation-related after initial tests,
Getting ready to deploy automated sitelinks for Wiktionary
Making final fixes to initial version of Federation (needed to be able to use Wikidata items and properties to describe media on Commons in the future)
More work on baseline for Lexeme entity type for Wiktionary support
Wikidata Query Service got additional servers, the data has been reloaded to fix a number of issues caused by missed updates and an increase of the time-out of 30s is being looked into.
You can now make your Harvest Templates tasks run automatically. After you have generated a permalink to your task, add &run= to the url. When you open it next time, it will load and then run automatically. Alternatively, you can use &load= which will only prepare the task for running.
Continued to finalize the initial version of Federation (needed to be able to use Wikidata items and properties to describe media on Commons in the future)
More work on baseline for Lexeme entity type for Wiktionary support
Converted undo/restore interface to use OOUI. You can test it here (phab:T134643).
Fixed an other rounding issue on geo coordinates (phab:T158772).
Added thumbnail images to the Wikimedia Commons suggester (phab:T160319).
Continued working on introducing Lexeme entity type.
Finishing federation prototype.
We are going to change all snak, reference, and qualifier hashes with the planned DataModel 7.0 release. If you are a tool developer, make sure you do not persist hashes, and never use them to request edits to entities. Statement IDs are safe (phab:T157965).
A warm welcome to our new intern, Lucas Werkmeister! You may now him for his work on queries as WikidataFacts. He will work in the team for the next months.
There's now also a #100wikidays challenge on Wikidata, aptly named #100wikidatadays! It is a personal challenge in which a person very significantly improves (at least) one Wikidata items per day, for 100 days in a row. There was already a version of the challenge on various Wikipedias, on Commons and on Wikisource - now on Wikidata as well. Participate and make Wikidata shine!
Netherlands report: Netherlands and the World Exchange Platform; photohunt Egmond aan Zee; Iconographia Zoologica
Spain report: Wikipedia course at La Yutera Library
Sweden report: Art+Feminism 2017; Connected Open Heritage; Digikult; Art on Wikipedia; Writing about Gothenburg's history; Updating image description with new research results
UK report: Wicipop project in Wales; Wikimedia UK's impact report
Worked more on support for lexicographical data (specifically support for lexicographic category and statements on forms)
Dealt with issues after the deployment of automatic interwiki links for Wiktionary
Worked on constraint violation user script based on your feedback (improving messages to make it more understandable, layout, etc)
Add support for the following new language codes for monolingual text properties: brx, chn, cop, gez, quc, kjh, nr (will become available in a few days)
Netherlands report: The Netherlands and the World: Photo hunt Chinsurah; Photohunt public library Tilburg; Wikipedian in Residence for UNESCO's Memory of the World programme in the Netherlands; Picture books from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
Spain report: Management and dissemination of cultural heritage
Sweden report: GLAM-EduWiki collaboration awarded Pedagogy Award of the year at Swedish museums; Connected Open Heritage
Past: WikiCite, May 23rd-25th in Vienna. Documentation will be available soon, in the meantime you can check on Twitter and the video streams to see what happened
MySociety (Q10851773) are publishing a "five part series examining how to use Wikidata to answer the question: 'What is the gender breakdown of heads of government across the world?'".
Data donation: following WikiCite, our friends at DBLP (Q1224715) have begun to donate data, with >4,800 values in the first batch, including >1,300 DBLP ID (P2456) plus assorted aliases, and values for VIAF ID (P214), GND ID (P227), ORCID iD (P496), ACM Digital Library author ID (P864), zbMATH author ID (P1556), & Google Scholar ID (P1960).
MySociety (Q10851773) have now completed publishing a "five part series examining how to use Wikidata to answer the question: 'What is the gender breakdown of heads of government across the world?'". Here is the full set:
Due the necessary time for people to get visas (about 3 months), we changed the deadline for the scholarship applications. You can apply for a scholarship before July 16th. We will then make sure that the applicants receive a response on July 25th.
WikidataCon: We reached 100 registrations, the event is complete for now. More tickets will be released in September. You can still register on the waitlist.
Newest gadgets: Units converter converts from 20 currencies to a selected currency. Converts metric units (mass, dimensions, area, temperature, speed) to/from United States units. The currency amounts are inflation adjusted if data is available.
Development
Worked more on support for lexicographical data and Wiktionary. The focus was on creating a necessary new datatype to link to Lexemes as well as making Glosses and statements on Glosses editable.
Getting ready to migrate the constraints definitions from templates on the property talk page to statements on the property.
Citation management tool Zotero can now read data from Wikidata, and can write data from other sources to Wikidata via QuickStatements. See Wikidata:Zotero for details.
Macedonia report: New collaboration of GLAM Macedonia user group with the City Library in Skopje
Netherlands report: Workshop children's books, Sharing is Caring Brussels, short WiR period at Utrecht University Library & Preparations medieval image donation
Russia report: WikiProjects of students of Petrozavodsk State University
The scholarship process is now closed. Recipients will be informed around July 25th.
You can still suggest ideas for the program, or submit a project until July 31st. The program of the conference is made by the attendees, only what you bring will be in there :)
Ma Commune Wikipédia is a website developed by Wikimedia France to give information about the state of the Wikipedia articles for every French municipality and encourage people to edit the Wikimedia projects. It uses Wikidata to identify the communes.
The wbEntity JavaScript variable will not miss elements any more but contain empty arrays instead (gerrit:365604). Please check if this affects your scripts, and have a look at the wikibase.entityPage.entityLoaded hook as a possible replacement.
). The order of the Insert menu has also changed a little.
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) now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [811] [812]
icon means the item is in the newsletter every week, but with new dates. The 
icon means the item is mainly relevant for readers with technical knowledge. You can leave feedback on this change.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 29 (calendar).
. You can give feedback on this change.
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is using the 
