Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2014/August

Tech News: 2014-32
 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).
 * You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files.
 * 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.
 * New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file.

VisualEditor news
 * You will no longer see an edit confirmation message after making a null edit with VisualEditor.
 * VisualEditor will no longer change underscores to spaces in category sort keys.
 * Many bugs that resulted in inserting the pawn and snowman symbols were fixed last week.
 * Several bugs related to the use of references were also fixed.

Future software changes
 * You will soon have a user option to watch pages where you revert edits.
 * All Toolserver data will be deleted in September. If you want to back up your data, [mailto:ts-admins@toolserver.org contact Toolserver administrators] before August 31.
 * Pages in the  namespace on wikis using the Translate extension will no longer be indexed by search engines.

Problems
 * Wikivoyage wikis were broken for about 45 minutes on July 29 due to a configuration problem.
 * Some users were not able to log in on test wikis and MediaWiki.org between July 31 and August 1. The problem is now fixed.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  07:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Citizen Journalists invited to London: Stop the War event
Please see the link here: http://stopwar.org.uk/events/london-stop-the-war-special-volunteers-meeting#.U-Ip1HxwbMK -- Regards --Computron (talk) 13:15, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-33
 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 VisualEditor news
 * 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).
 * Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to merge two accounts into one.
 * 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.

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!
 * 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.
 * You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the Translate extension.
 * 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).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  07:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-34
 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. [//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Superprotect_rights]
 * You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page.
 * You can search for Wikimedia tools using a new list of tools.
 * 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.
 * 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.

Problems
 * There was an issue with ProofreadPage and WikiEditor on Wikisource wikis. It is now fixed.

Tech news written by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  07:16, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-35
 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.
 * You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages.
 * If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor.

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.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  09:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)