Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2022/October

Tech News: 2022-40

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

• Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [1] [2]
• The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
• Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [3] [4]
• The scribunto-console API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5]
• The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:23, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-41

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
• On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [5][6]

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

14:08, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-42

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 recently implemented feature of article thumbnails in Special:Search will be limited to Wikipedia projects only. Further details are in T320510. [7]
• A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
• Lua module authors can use mw.loadJsonData() to load data from JSON pages. [8]
• Lua module authors can enable require( "strict" ) to add errors for some possible code problems. This replaces "Module:No globals" on most wikis. [9]

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated at most wikis. The "reply" button will look different after this change. [10]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:46, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-43

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 have been some minor visual fixes in Special:Search, regarding audio player alignment and image placeholder height. Further details are in T319230.
• On Wikipedias, a new preference has been added to hide article thumbnails in Special:Search. Full details are in T320337.

Problems

• Last week, three wikis (French Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia) had read-only access for 25 minutes. This was caused by a hardware problem. [11]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 October. It will be on all wikis from 27 October (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 October at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 27 October at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Assamese Wikipedia, Bashkir Wikipedia, Balinese Wikipedia, Bavarian Wikipedia, Samogitian Wikipedia, Bikol Central Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Bhojpuri Wikipedia, Bislama Wikipedia, Banjar Wikipedia, Bambara Wikipedia, Bishnupriya Wikipedia, Breton Wikipedia, Bosnian Wikipedia, Buginese Wikipedia, Buryat Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [12]
• Starting on Wednesday October 26, 2022, the list of mentors will be upgraded at wikis where Growth mentorship is available. The mentorship system will continue to work as it does now. The signup process will be replaced, and a new management option will be provided. Also, this change simplifies the creation of mentorship systems at Wikipedias. [13][14][15]
• Pages with titles that start with a lower-case letter according to Unicode 11 will be renamed or deleted. There is a list of affected pages at m:Unicode 11 case map migration. More information can be found at T292552.
• The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikipedias. Learn more.

Future changes

• The Reply tool and New Topic tool will soon get a special characters menu. [16]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:22, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-44

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

• When using keyboard navigation on a Kartographer map, the focus will become more visible. [17]
• In Special:RecentChanges, you can now hide the log entries for new user creations with the filter for "⧼rcfilters-filter-newuserlogactions-label⧽". [18]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 November. It will be on all wikis from 3 November (calendar).
• The maps dialog in VisualEditor now has some help texts. [19]
• It is now possible to select the language of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor via a dropdown menu. [20]
• It is now possible to add a caption to a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [21]
• It is now possible to hide the frame of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [22]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:15, 31 October 2022 (UTC)