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

Tech News: 2021-23
 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
 * 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
 * The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future.
 * Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for  doesn't find   on German Wikipedia. The character   isn't used in German so many would write   instead. This will work better in the future in some languages.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters.

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

20:02, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-24
 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
 * Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile.
 * Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource.

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

Future changes
 * In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
 * German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC.
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.

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

20:26, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

== Please provide input here or on Meta and during an upcoming Global Conversation on 26-27 June 2021 about the Movement Charter drafting committee ==

Hello, I'm one of the Movement Strategy and Governance facilitators working on community engagement for the Movement Charter initiative.

We're inviting input widely from users of many projects about the upcoming formation of the Movement Charter drafting committee. You can provide feedback here, at the central discussion on Meta, at other ongoing local conversations, and during a Global Conversation upcoming on 26 and 27 June 2021.

The Movement Charter drafting committee is expected to work as a diverse and skilled team of about 15 members for several months. They should receive regular support from experts, regular community reviews, and opportunities for training and an allowance to offset costs. When the draft is completed, the committee will oversee a wide community ratification process.

Further details and context about these questions is on Meta along with a recently-updated overview of the Movement Charter initiative. Feel free to ask questions, and add additional sub-sections as needed for other areas of interest about this topic.

If contributors are interested in participating in a call about these topics ahead of the Global Conversation on 26 and 27 June, please let me know. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 16:25, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

The three questions are:
 * 1) What composition should the committee have in terms of movement roles, gender, regions, affiliations and other diversity factors?
 * 2) What is the best process to select the committee members to form a competent and diverse team?
 * 3) How much dedication is it reasonable to expect from committee members, in terms of hours per week and months of work?
 * 1) How much dedication is it reasonable to expect from committee members, in terms of hours per week and months of work?
 * 1) How much dedication is it reasonable to expect from committee members, in terms of hours per week and months of work?

Tech News: 2021-25
 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg The  group name is now  . This could affect abuse filters.

Problems
 * You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC.

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. 

15:49, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Server switch
Read this message in another language •

The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.


 * You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, 29 June 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday 30 June).
 * If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it.  If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal.  Then you should be able to save your edit.  But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:


 * Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
 * There will be code freezes for the week of June 28. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community. SGrabarczuk (WMF) 01:19, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-26
 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
 * Wikis with the Growth features now can configure Growth features directly on their wiki. This uses the new special page.
 * Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add  to your common.css page.

Problems
 * You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.

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
 * ,  and   can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
 * A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users.

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

16:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 1
Universal Code of Conduct News Issue 1, June 2021 Read the full newsletter

Welcome to the first issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code, and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

Please note, this is the first issue of UCoC Newsletter which is delivered to all subscribers and projects as an announcement of the initiative. If you want the future issues delivered to your talk page, village pumps, or any specific pages you find appropriate, you need to subscribe here.

You can help us by translating the newsletter issues in your languages to spread the news and create awareness of the new conduct to keep our beloved community safe for all of us. Please add your name here if you want to be informed of the draft issue to translate beforehand. Your participation is valued and appreciated. 
 * Affiliate consultations – Wikimedia affiliates of all sizes and types were invited to participate in the UCoC affiliate consultation throughout March and April 2021. (continue reading)
 * 2021 key consultations – The Wikimedia Foundation held enforcement key questions consultations in April and May 2021 to request input about UCoC enforcement from the broader Wikimedia community. (continue reading)
 * Roundtable discussions – The UCoC facilitation team hosted two 90-minute-long public roundtable discussions in May 2021 to discuss UCoC key enforcement questions. More conversations are scheduled. (continue reading)
 * Phase 2 drafting committee – The drafting committee for the phase 2 of the UCoC started their work on 12 May 2021. Read more about their work. (continue reading)
 * Diff blogs – The UCoC facilitators wrote several blog posts based on interesting findings and insights from each community during local project consultation that took place in the 1st quarter of 2021. (continue reading)

22:07, 10 June 2021‎