Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2024/March

Tech News: 2024-10
 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
 * The  page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension.
 * Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
 * Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The  and  namespaces and  user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made.
 * A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header.

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
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
 * The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add  to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:47, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Report of the U4C Charter ratification and U4C Call for Candidates now available

 *  You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. 

Hello all,

I am writing to you today with two important pieces of information. First, the report of the comments from the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter ratification is now available. Secondly, the call for candidates for the U4C is open now through April 1, 2024.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members are invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Per the charter, there are 16 seats on the U4C: eight community-at-large seats and eight regional seats to ensure the U4C represents the diversity of the movement.

Read more and submit your application on Meta-wiki.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 16:25, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Canada survey
Hi! Wikimedia Canada invites contributors living in Canada to take part in our 2024 Community Survey. The survey takes approximately five minutes to complete and closes on March 31, 2024. It is available in both French and English. To learn more, please visit the survey project page on Meta. Chelsea Chiovelli (WMCA) (talk) 00:12, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-11
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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).
 * After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed.
 * The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices.
 * Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost.

Future changes
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and 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. 

MediaWiki message delivery 23:04, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2024 Selection

 *  You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.
 *  m:Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Announcement/Selection announcement • 

Dear all,

This year, the term of 4 (four) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will come to an end [1]. The Board invites the whole movement to participate in this year’s selection process and vote to fill those seats.

The Elections Committee will oversee this process with support from Foundation staff [2]. The Board Governance Committee created a Board Selection Working Group from Trustees who cannot be candidates in the 2024 community- and affiliate-selected trustee selection process composed of Dariusz Jemielniak, Nataliia Tymkiv, Esra'a Al Shafei, Kathy Collins, and Shani Evenstein Sigalov [3]. The group is tasked with providing Board oversight for the 2024 trustee selection process, and for keeping the Board informed. More details on the roles of the Elections Committee, Board, and staff are here [4].

Here are the key planned dates:


 * May 2024: Call for candidates and call for questions
 * June 2024: Affiliates vote to shortlist 12 candidates (no shortlisting if 15 or less candidates apply) [5]
 * June-August 2024: Campaign period
 * End of August / beginning of September 2024: Two-week community voting period
 * October–November 2024: Background check of selected candidates
 * Board's Meeting in December 2024: New trustees seated

Learn more about the 2024 selection process - including the detailed timeline, the candidacy process, the campaign rules, and the voter eligibility criteria - on this Meta-wiki page, and make your plan.

Election Volunteers

Another way to be involved with the 2024 selection process is to be an Election Volunteer. Election Volunteers are a bridge between the Elections Committee and their respective community. They help ensure their community is represented and mobilize them to vote. Learn more about the program and how to join on this Meta-wiki page.

Best regards,

Dariusz Jemielniak (Governance Committee Chair, Board Selection Working Group)

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Results#Elected

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Committee:Elections_Committee_Charter

[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes:2023-08-15#Governance_Committee

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/Roles

[5] Even though the ideal number is 12 candidates for 4 open seats, the shortlisting process will be triggered if there are more than 15 candidates because the 1-3 candidates that are removed might feel ostracized and it would be a lot of work for affiliates to carry out the shortlisting process to only eliminate 1-3 candidates from the candidate list.

MPossoupe_(WMF)19:56, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Global ban proposal for Slowking4
Hello. This is to notify the community that there is an ongoing global ban proposal for User:Slowking4 who has been active on this wiki. You are invited to participate at Requests for comment/Global ban for Slowking4 (2). Thank you. Seawolf35 (talk) 19:41, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-12
 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
 * The notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher.
 * Octicons-tools.svg IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes.
 * Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown.

Problems
 * RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now.

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).
 * All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-13
 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.

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. <section end="technews-2024-W13"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 18:56, 25 March 2024 (UTC)