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Tech News: 2024-20

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

• On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [1]
• If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [2]
• Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [3]
• The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [4]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [5][6]
• The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [7]

Future changes

• In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [8]
• Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
  1. Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
  2. Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
  • See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [9][10]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 May 2024

• News and notes: Democracy in action: multiple elections

• Special report: Will the new RfA reform come to the rescue of administrators?

• Arbitration report: Ruined temples for posterity to ponder over – arbitration from '22 to '24

• In the media: Deadnames on the French Wikipedia, and a duel between Russian wikis

• Op-Ed: Wikidata to split as sheer volume of information overloads infrastructure

• Comix: Generations

• Traffic report: Crawl out through the fallout, baby

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-21

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 Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [11]
• New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [12][13]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [14][15]
• The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 20 May 2024 (UTC)