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

Tech News: 2021-09
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 using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
 * A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.

Problems
 * There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits.
 * Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari.

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.

19:08, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikifunctions logo contest
. Please help to choose a design concept for the logo of the new Wikifunctions wiki. Voting starts today and will be open for 2 weeks. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-Wiki. --Quiddity (WMF) 01:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-10
 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
 * Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
 * Flagged revisions now give admins the review right.
 * When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article.

Problems
 * Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing.

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).
 * The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions.

Future changes
 * There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
 * Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown.
 * New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:51, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-11
 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 that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more.

Problems
 * Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.

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
 * You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems.
 * You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database  will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  23:22, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Call for review, comment and discuss my PhD thesis on Wikimedia movement
Hello,

Just a short message to call people interested to review, comment and discuss my PhD thesis on Wikimedia movement. All the best, Lionel Scheepmans (talk) 19:36, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-12
 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 is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
 * The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.

Problems
 * You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.

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).
 * Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis.

Future changes
 * Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from  to  .   will soon no longer work.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:53, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Why so few stories about Wikipedia?
I noticed very few stories at wikinews about wikipedia itself. The last one was dated 2017. I believe wn should do more diligence in this area. Check for example this story on the French wn in 2020 Prizes of € 200 to users for most contributions to WMF Francophone projects. Check Wikidata for more ideas. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 15:55, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
 * FWIW, that frwn article is about Wikimedia FR, not wikipedia. If you want,, you can write an article about Wikipedia. Noone is stopping you from.  You will find article about something if someone is willing to write about it.  But be aware of WN:WMFNEWS. •–•  18:16, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-13
 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
 * Some very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers.
 * Octicons-tools.svg IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to  and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams.

Problems
 * When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem.
 * Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this.

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. 

17:30, 29 March 2021 (UTC)