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
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).
Problems
A change in RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed. [1][2]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.
The open source geocoder w:en:Nominatim used by the OpenStreetMap project is participating in the Google Summer of Code with an internship working on integrating Wikidata as a ranking metric for its search results. Check the development blog.
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
Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [3]
Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [4]
Changes later this week
Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [5]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.
Current: Wikimania in Stockholm and hackathon, August 14 to 18. Check out the list of all Wikidata-related events. Each session page should include notes, slides and streaming if available.
NameGuzzler allows you to automatically add an identical label or alias into many languages (for example, the name of a person or a place). You can define your own custom list of languages that you want to add.
New Wikidata-related projects developed during the Wikimania hackathon:
Documentation translation sprint: several people translated Wikidata help pages in their own language. Feel free to continue the efforts to make Wikidata more accessible!
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
There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.
Problems
Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [6]
Changes later this week
Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [7]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [8]
Integraality generates tables to assess the completeness of properties on sets of items, such as properties on railway stations for instance. Tables are automatically updated and highly configurable.
Starting from July 2019, Wikimedia Sverige and the Wikimedia Foundation's GLAM team work together to create a more sustainable technical infrastructure for global heritage and content partnerships. Read more about this initiative on meta.wikimedia.org.
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
You can use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [9]
The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [10]
The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [11]
The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [12]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 9월. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 9월. It will be on all wikis from 5 9월 (calendar).
When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [13]
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 9월 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
moveClaim allows you to move or copy claims from one item to another. This is especially useful when splitting items, or creating lots of similar items.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Seventh birthday of Wikidata: you can start thinking about organizing a meetup in your area to celebrate the birthday, or about a present for the community!
The first draft of the program of the WikidataCon is now available. The content of the three main session rooms will be live-streamed and recorded for people who cannot participate in the conference.
Because of a database switch, Wikidata will be in read-only more on September 10th at 05:00 UTC, for max. 30min (phab:T230762)
Recent tool: @Wikidatabot, a Telegram bot that allows you to search for something on Wikidata from Telegram
New game: Wikidata Mall, a Telegram management simulation game where content is generated from Wikidata
New monolingual code languages are added, thanks to Jon Harald Søby: TLI (Tlingit), clc (Tsilhqotʹin), alc (Kawésqar), kld (Gamilaraay), peo (Old Persian)
Fixed a bug in constraint violations indicator that was not showing up sometimes (phab:T227866)
Make Lua's function mw.wikibase.entityExists return true for redirects (phab:T192462)
Reviewed and followed up on highlighting statements when using "#P" in URL (phab:T178745)
Wikidata Bridge: saving the Wikidata edit when submitting (phab:T226999)
Showing the label for the Property instead of the id (phab:T227759)
Overcoming a conceptional oversight between mediawiki and standard language codes (phab:T231833)
Upcoming: Wikidata Zurich Training in Zurich on the weekend of November 2-3. There will be presentations and hands-on sessions on editing, querying and coding for Wikidata.
Namescript fills in labels, descriptions and aliases of items about names, making it easier to create such items (you only need to provide a few statements).
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.