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

Tech News: 2014-36
 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.
 * You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the  keyword in your search.
 * 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".
 * If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages". [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications)/status#2014-08-monthly]

VisualEditor news
 * You can no longer delete required fields in templates.
 * 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.
 * VisualEditor now looks better in Monobook.
 * We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X).
 * You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category.

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  at freenode.
 * 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.
 * You can test a new version of the tool to show math. It uses MathML. Report bugs in bugzilla.
 * You will no longer be able to upload images from the mobile site.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  07:48, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-37
 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.

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.
 * You can read more about the plan to move to Phabricator, a tool that will help people develop the MediaWiki software and report bugs.

Problems
 * There were problems with JavaScript and CSS on Friday, September 5 because of a code error.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  09:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-38
 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  CSS class.
 * 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.
 * 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.

Problems
 * There was a problem with loading images on September 10.

VisualEditor news
 * If you don't select text when you add a link, the link now shows a number.
 * The citation tool no longer offers to reuse a citation if there are none on the page yet.
 * You can now use help buttons in the "" menu to see what the options are for.

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. [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compatibility#Grade_C]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  08:34, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

ORCID
I've created a userbox, User ORCID for users who have an ORCID identifier. You can see it in use on my user page. ORCID identifiers disambiguate contributors with similar names, and unify the works of people who have published under different names. Anyone may sign up for one, free, and I encourage you to do so, and to display it using this template. More information on the use of ORCID identifiers by Wikimedia project editors may be found at w:en:WP:ORCID. Andy Mabbett (talk) 18:22, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Andy, I traced through the documentation page you've created here; then, on to the Wikipedia article. Some head-scratching then ensued. I'd assumed would, at some point, become useful for journalists data-mining; that's not how you're presenting it here. The people on Wikinews I'd canvas on this are  and some of these folks; Let's just put that into a use case, how do journalists use ORCID? --Brian McNeil / talk 21:06, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Suppose you write for Wikinews and the Daily Planet, but another Brian McNeil writes for The Chicago Record and the New York Gazette. Using ORCIDs on your respective profiles makes clear which if you is which. But ORCID is not just for journalists; it's for anyone who contributes to research, academic literature, or other publications. Andy Mabbett (talk) 21:19, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-39
 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.

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.

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.
 * In the "Vector" skin, the icon used for users will show a neutral gender.
 * The VisualEditor template tool now tells you if a required field is missing.
 * 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.
 * There are new keyboard shortcuts in VisualEditor. Use Ctrl+Shift+6 for  and Ctrl+Shift+5 for strikethrough.
 * In VisualEditor, you can now see that you are switching to the source editing mode. Before, it was not clear it was happening.

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.  

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  09:04, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

ATTN: wikinewsie.org account-holders
Having experienced mail rejection where the 'spamcannibal' list is being used, this notice is to highlight action required to ensure all issued wikinewsie.org email accounts are secure. The matter has been raised with hosting support, but requires additional measures from all users.


 * Please ensure any machine you read email with is secure; that anti-virus software is up-to-date, and you have run whatever checks you can to ensure no keyloggers or other malicious software is present.
 * ALL Passwords will be regenerated on, or by, the 26th of this month - unless notice is received that you have logged into webmail and reset your password.
 * Should notice not be received that you have changed your password, one will be generated for you and held until you contact me.
 * All forwarding rules which terminate at yahoo, or google/gmail, will (again) be deleted. Where these are recreated, such accounts will be removed from all distribution lists.

All accounts where passwords are generated and held will have quota caps imposed, and be removed from distribution lists when quota is reached.

A copy of this notice will be posted on the miscellaneous section of English Wikinews, and highlighted in the #wikinews IRC channel topic. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:58, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I have, immediately after sending this message, been forced to delete one "forward to gmail.com" rule due to this resulting in a spam rejection message. The same would be the case for fanhistory.com which uses gmail as its back-end. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:04, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-40
 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 software changes
 * On Commons, you can now see what files are most used across all wikis. You can also see the same list for deleted or uncreated files.
 * There are now many more translations for language names.

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.
 * 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.
 * If you change a user preference but don't save it, it now asks if you want to save it.
 * The PDF export tool has changed. The new one has better language support but it doesn't offer ZIM and EPUB formats.

Future changes
 * You can watch a video showing Phabricator, the new tool to track bugs. You can also read more about the move from Bugzilla.
 * 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.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  09:44, 29 September 2014 (UTC)