Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2021/December

Tech News: 2021-49
 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
 * MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at  . It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), , will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module.
 * Octicons-tools.svg An old ResourceLoader module, , which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to  instead.

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

21:59, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

On closing local newspapers
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/interactive/2021/local-news-deserts-expanding/ —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-50
 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 are now default short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis,  will go to the local language default for the  namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via the usual process.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

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

22:27, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-51
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.

Recent changes
 * Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension ( ) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes
 * The developers of the Wikipedia iOS app are looking for testers who edit in multiple languages. You can read more and let them know if you are interested.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February.

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

22:05, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Upcoming Call for Feedback about the Board of Trustees elections

 * You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.
 *  m:Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees/Call for feedback:2022 Board of Trustees election/Upcoming Call for Feedback about the Board of Trustees elections • 

The Board of Trustees is preparing a call for feedback about the upcoming Board Elections, from January 7 - February 10, 2022.

While details will be finalized the week before the call, we have confirmed at least two questions that will be asked during this call for feedback:


 * What is the best way to ensure fair representation of emerging communities among the Board?


 * What involvement should candidates have during the election?

While additional questions may be added, the Movement Strategy and Governance team wants to provide time for community members and affiliates to consider and prepare ideas on the confirmed questions before the call opens. We apologize for not having a complete list of questions at this time. The list of questions should only grow by one or two questions. The intention is to not overwhelm the community with requests, but provide notice and welcome feedback on these important questions.

Do you want to help organize local conversation during this Call?

Contact the Movement Strategy and Governance team on Meta, on Telegram, or via email at msgwikimedia.org.

Reach out if you have any questions or concerns. The Movement Strategy and Governance team will be minimally staffed until January 3. Please excuse any delayed response during this time. We also recognize some community members and affiliates are offline during the December holidays. We apologize if our message has reached you while you are on holiday. Thank you!--SOyeyele (WMF) (talk) 14:41, 29 December 2021 (UTC)