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

Announcing the confirmed candidates for the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election

 * See also: Requested article about subject

The 2021 Board of Trustees election opens 4 August 2021. Candidates from the community were asked to submit their candidacy. After a three week long call for candidates, there are 20 candidates for the 2021 election.

The Wikimedia movement has the opportunity to vote for the selection of community-and-affiliate trustees. The Board is expected to select the four most voted candidates to serve as trustees. Voting closes 17 August 2021.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's operations. The Board wants to improve their competences and diversity as a team. They have shared the areas of expertise that they are currently missing and hope to cover with new trustees.

How can you get involved? Learn more about candidates. Organize campaign activities. Vote.

Read the full announcement.

Best,

The Elections Committee

Announcement posted by User:Xeno (WMF) at 10:28, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-27
 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
 * The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.

Recent changes
 * AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON.  has moved to   and  .   has moved to  . The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes.

Problems
 * InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from  to.

Changes later this week
 * The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year.
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes
 * Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful.

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

17:33, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-29
 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 tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year.
 * Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word  on pages that should not be listed on the special page.

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).

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.

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

15:31, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-30
 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 version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.

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).

Future changes
 * If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If  is unticked you need to also untick the new preference  . Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.

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

21:11, 26 July 2021 (UTC)