Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [1]
For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [2]
The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.
In depth
The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [3]
Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [4]
Updates for editors
Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [5]
It is now possible for <syntaxhighlight> code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if the copy=1 attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [6]
Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [7]
Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [13][14]
WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [15]
View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.
Updates for technical contributors
Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [16]
Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [18]
In depth
The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.
Hi! There is a draft for "Love, Money, Fame" that is now ready to move to the mainspace as it's starting to land on some international music charts. There is a redirect in the main space currently, are you able to help review the draft and move it over to the mainspace? Thank you! orangesclub🍊21:39, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Hi @Paper9oll, I don't quite understand what it means in the linked documentation for the use of the duration template "if additional lengths are entered". Like what examples or scenarios would that be used for a song? And just curious, why would it only be used "for the second and subsequent lengths"?
My bad, I thought the template was to be used after seeing a few older singles that used the template. I'll clean those up when I can. Thank you in advance! — Chyx1095 (🗣️ • 📜)13:29, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
@Chyx1095 Meaning if the song was released initially in multiple different lengths however in the articles that you changed, those song are only released in a single length. {{Duration}} are also not needed because by default, the |length= parameter is already coded in the source code to use that template hence adding the template would result in rendered code being |length={{Duration|{{Duration|1:23}}}} instead which produces syntax error.—Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)13:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-43
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app's navigation, and it is now available in the latest App store version. The team added a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view, and brings the "Donate" button into a more accessible place for users who are reading an article. This is the first phase of a larger planned navigation refresh to help the iOS app transition from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports reading and editing. The Wikimedia Foundation has added more editing features and support for on-wiki communication based on volunteer requests in recent years.
iOS Wikipedia App's profile menu and contents
Updates for editors
Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.
Updates for technical contributors
Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new {{#timef:…}} parser function. For example, {{#timef:now|date|en}} will show as "24 May 2025". Previously, {{#time:…}} could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation. #timef (or #timefl for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [24][25]
Commons and Meta users can now efficiently retrieve the user's language using {{USERLANGUAGE}} instead of using {{int:lang}}. [26]
The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [27]
In depth
The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: an upcoming Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module, new Community Configuration options, and details on new projects.
The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official partner of the CVE program, which is an international effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This partnership will allow the Security Team to instantly publish common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) records that are affecting MediaWiki core, extensions, and skins, along with any other code the Foundation is a steward of.
The Community Wishlist is now testing machine translations for Wishlist content. Volunteers can now read machine-translated versions of wishes and dive into discussions even before translators arrive to translate content.
20–22 December 2024 - Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Bhubaneswar 2024 in Odisha, India. A hackathon for community members, including developers, designers and content editors, to build technical solutions that improve contributors' experiences.
The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.
You do not have to be an Administrator to participate.
The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement .
Please find our contact on the project Meta page if you have any questions or concerns.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
User Paper9oll, I am kindly asking you the reason why you aren’t letting anyone change any articles related to the drama ‘The Judge from Hell’, and the leads ‘Park Shin-Hye’ & ‘Kim Jae-Young’. Please give everyone the freedom to change what they want, you’re stealing out rights at this point which is too offensive. 79.117.245.131 (talk) 18:03, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
I am not sure what you mean by saying ‘multiple accounts’ because i only have one and only used one to edit the articles about the leads of ‘The Judge from Hell’. I cannot bother myself to learn a lot about Wikipedia’s policy, because I already know I did nothing wrong. You can definitely block my account, feel free to do so, but I do know that I did nothing wrong. Changing the picture of an actor and actress, and also changing or adding some words; how is such a small editing, which isn’t a ‘disruptive editing’, considered a form of disruption? As far as I know, there are many pictures of Kim Jae-Young and Park Shin-Hye, so how come I can’t change the pictures? Are you planning on not changing those pics anymore? Will you keep stopping whoever changes them? Isn’t that literally considered stealing rights? I’d like you to tell me; be honest, and change my mind instead of putting policy links on here. Respectfully, thank you. Hope you understand what I’m trying to say. 2A0C:5A86:F404:B100:B5DD:29D:90EC:8AA5 (talk) 13:09, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Positions
Do have a happen to have a link handy to where a past discussion of including "positions" in the "Members" section of groups occurred? I was pretty sure it was decided to avoid including positions in that section but I'm not sure when or where RachelTensions (talk) 00:51, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
@RachelTensions It should be at WT:KO archives. As per consensus, inclusion is permitted if it's verifiable. However, inclusion also shouldn't includes main/lead/sub, maknae, visual, face, etc. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)02:45, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-44
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Later in November, the Charts extension will be deployed to the test wikis in order to help identify and fix any issue. A security review is underway to then enable deployment to pilot wikis for broader testing. You can read the October project update and see the latest documentation and examples on Beta Wikipedia.
View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pediapress.com, an external service that creates books from Wikipedia, can now use Wikimedia Maps to include existing pre-rendered infobox map images in their printed books on Wikipedia. [28]
Updates for technical contributors
Wikis can use the Guided Tour extension to help newcomers understand how to edit. The Guided Tours extension now works with dark mode. Guided Tour maintainers can check their tours to see that nothing looks odd. They can also set emitTransitionOnStep to true to fix an old bug. They can use the new flag allowAutomaticBack to avoid back-buttons they don't want. [29]
Administrators in the Wikimedia projects who use the Nuke Extension will notice that mass deletions done with this tool have the "Nuke" tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. [30]
@RachelTensions Hi, the upright value would be big or small depending on the value that you set in your Wikipedia's settings. Before the introduction of |image_upright=, the predecessor is |image_size= in which the observed practice across various article is to have the value at 250px, provided the image is in portrait. Back to the value in |image_upright=, 1.15 is the equivalent of 250px by taking 250/220 and round up to the nearest half number. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)07:20, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
I thought infobox image size would've been standardized at the template level but if that's what we're doing then great.Anyway, this made me laugh: "In particular, Paper9oll You left Nayeon's malicious picture of teeth for more than half a year" apparently that editor isn't a fan of the veneers RachelTensions (talk) 07:24, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
@RachelTensions You think if we should restore that long-standing infobox picture instead? I have no preferences on which as both quality are equal and not a step back. I can see that another editor that step in to handle the vandalism has removed the "controversial" (is it?) image due to what is seemingly due to veneers which isn't even obvious to tell apart from. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)07:34, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
@RachelTensions Nvrmind I see that you have BOLD ahead to restore the long-standing infobox picture already. I have proceeded to revert that vandal editor with their ridiculous claim which was already communicated to them at their talk page on why their upload is unacceptable but sadly they refused to WP:LISTEN nor read through the WP:Image use policy hence their absurd editing summary blaming this and that. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)07:39, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
tbh it's a better picture anyway, I'm so tired of seeing perfectly good photos being replaced with crunchy potato quality screenshots or AI-upscaled images that barely even look human anymore just because they're "newer" RachelTensions (talk) 07:39, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
On that subject have you seen the absolute state of Jeongyeon's photo? It's so AI'd it looks like a painting.The only situation where an AI'd photo is marginally acceptable to use, IMO, is when there are no alternatives available, such as what Riize was stuck with for a long time because there were no other free photos available to show all 7 members in the infobox... and even that's debatable. It's almost better to have a blurry, bad photo versus an AI'd version of the same photo that doesn't even look like them anymore. RachelTensions (talk) 10:17, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
@RachelTensions Ya, this is definitely AI-enhanced and if you look at the File history, the uploader magically "improved resolution" hence I think we can just proceed to replace with this 2024 image which better defined her current image or the previous 2023 long-standing image which I believed has AI-enhancement performed to it as the uploader has history of doing so and been warned by me various times already. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)10:23, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the 2023 image, if it's been AI'd it was very subtle (a lot more subtle than that uploader's usual history).For what it's worth the 2024 image is AI'd too (it's captured from 25 seconds into the source video, which is nowhere near as clear) but I guess if you can't tell it doesn't really matter RachelTensions (talk) 10:32, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
Hey, if you're interested, can you have a look at Draft:Seunghan and make adjustments as you see fit? I know it's probably got POV issues and I've been debating on how the sections should be structured. Thanks! RachelTensions (talk) 02:13, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
I was worried about POV issues regarding reactions within South Korea versus internationally. Coverage from South Korean sources is lacking nuance, they mostly stick to the official SM Entertainment line and don't mention much regarding fan reaction, protests, etc. so I worry it has a bit of a slant towards an international POV.Regarding structure I was going back and forth on whether to structure the hiatus + withdrawal in one section, or include the hiatus under the Riize section (as it is now). RachelTensions (talk) 04:58, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
IMO the draft already has a balanced WP:WEIGHT covering both side of the spectrum hence I don't see POV issues in terms of content. As for sourcing, there might be censorship with South Korean news coverage but that's of course just assumption however given that the citations used to sourced the contents are from reputable news media, IMO it wouldn't an issue. IMO, the current structuring is good enough since the preceding section is talking about his hiatus and combining both together would make the section very long. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)05:36, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [31]
Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [32]
View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.
Updates for technical contributors
XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [33]
In depth
Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.
Meetings and events
MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.
Hey, I wanted to reach out regarding the inclusion of Hanja in the infoboxes of BLPs in Korea-related articles. Specifically, I’m a bit unsure about whether we should consider removing unsourced Hanja from these articles. I wanted to reach out to you as you seem to have more experience in this area. RDWolfgang (talk) 15:57, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Hi RDWolfgang, it's unclear what clarification that you needed from my personal thoughts since MOS:HANJA is already pretty clear, quote "In contemporary North and South Korea, Hanja is rarely used ... For concepts mostly significant after the division [of Korea in 1945] ... Hanja tends to be less important after that time". In fact, the values found in hanja= on the majority of Korea-related BLP article are basically Chinese characters which MOS:HANJAHANZI forbids against, and if sourced are using Chinese-language (regardless of Traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese) sources which basically still going against MOS:HANJAHANZI even though it's probably to ensure it meets WP:VERIFY however it's literally VERIFYing Chinese characters. Back to your question on removal, IMO I would do so on the basis that it's hard to VERIFY the authenticity and also not much significancy as stated by HANJA. As for mass removal, you may want to discuss at WT:KO#Unsourced hanja epidemic even though on the surface, there seem to be consensus towards such direction. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)16:15, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
I didn't realize that this had already been discussed at WT:KO#Unsourced hanja epidemic. I just wanted to reach out to clear up my confusion after your reply on Hyunjin's talk page (I did not notice that you've already mention it there). I also wanted to make sure I fully understand before adding any further Hanja to this or any other articles, as the majority of articles have uncited Hanja, which made me more confused. RDWolfgang (talk) 16:49, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
@RDWolfgang I would say not to add any further Hanja to any articles where the BLP subject are born in 1945 and onwards as I don't see what's the value, it would actually adds to the article. As for "majority of articles have uncited Hanja" is why that discussion was started as clueless editors have currently and/or previously been adding so-called Hanja characters i.e. Chinese characters and/or doing vague translation word-by-word by matching each Hangul word to Hanja word using {{linktext}} despite being clueless that each Hangul word may have various Hanja counterpart hence I don't expect it to be accurate to even being with. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)17:01, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, users will notice that the FuzzyBot will now automatically create translated versions of categories used on translated pages. [34]
In 1.44.0-wmf-2, the logic of Wikibase function getAllStatements changed to behave like getBestStatements. Invoking the function now returns a copy of values which are immutable. [36]
Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. The API will be rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The impacted endpoints include getting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content. These changes will be available on testwiki later this week, with other projects to follow. This change should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints should verify behavior on testwiki, and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket.
In depth
Admins and users of the Wikimedia projects where Automoderator is enabled can now monitor and evaluate important metrics related to Automoderator's actions. This Superset dashboard calculates and aggregates metrics about Automoderator's behaviour on the projects in which it is deployed. Thanks to the Moderator Tools team for this Dashboard; you can visit the documentation page for more information about this work. [37]
Meetings and events
21 November 2024 (8:00 UTC & 16:00 UTC) - Community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. The theme of this call is how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons.
Hi! Can I ask why you reverted my edits at the "Up" article? I've looked through WP:CHARTMATH and it's pretty clear that the article doesn't need to list every single component chart the song appeared on, nor does it make sense to write out every single national chart the song appeared on when there's a table below. At this point the "commercial performance" section is just rehashing the charts section with less notable information. orangesclub🍊03:47, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
Consistency. And also, I don't see why CHARTMATH applies here nor writing in prose form, in addition to table form (which is mandatory), being unnecessary. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)05:13, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Users of Wikimedia sites will now be warned when they create a redirect to a page that doesn't exist. This will reduce the number of broken redirects to red links in our projects. [39]
View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pywikibot, which automates work on MediaWiki sites, was upgraded to 9.5.0 on Toolforge. [40]
Updates for technical contributors
On wikis that use the FlaggedRevs extension, pages created or moved by users with the appropriate permissions are marked as flagged automatically. This feature has not been working recently, and changes fixing it should be deployed this week. Thanks to Daniel and Wargo for working on this. [41][42]
In depth
There is a new Diff post about Temporary Accounts, available in more than 15 languages. Read it to learn about what Temporary Accounts are, their impact on different groups of users, and the plan to introduce the change on all wikis.
Meetings and events
Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10 2024. The registration for the event will close in mid-April 2025. The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual gathering that unites the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects and explore new ideas.
Join the Wikimedia Commons community calls this week to help prioritize support for Commons which will be planned for 2025–2026. The theme will be how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. This is an opportunity for volunteers who work on different things to come together and talk about what matters for the future of the project. The calls will take place November 21, 2024, 8:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC.
A Language community meeting will take place November 29, 16:00 UTC to discuss updates and technical problem-solving.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
A new version of the standard wikitext editor-mode syntax highlighter will be available as a beta feature later this week. This brings many new features and bug fixes, including right-to-left support, template folding, autocompletion, and an improved search panel. You can learn more on the help page.
The 2010 wikitext editor now supports common keyboard shortcuts such Ctrl+B for bold and Ctrl+I for italics. A full list of all six shortcuts is available. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. [43]
Starting November 28, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: bswiki, elwiki, euwiki, fawiki, fiwiki, frwikiquote, frwikisource, frwikiversity, frwikivoyage, idwiki, lvwiki, plwiki, ptwiki, urwiki, viwikisource, zhwikisource. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF).
The CodeEditor, which can be used in JavaScript, CSS, JSON, and Lua pages, now offers live autocompletion. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. The feature can be temporarily disabled on a page by pressing Ctrl+, and un-selecting "Live Autocompletion".
Tool-maintainers who use the Graphite system for tracking metrics, need to migrate to the newer Prometheus system. They can check this dashboard and the list in the Description of the task T350592 to see if their tools are listed, and they should claim metrics and dashboards connected to their tools. They can then disable or migrate all existing metrics by following the instructions in the task. The Graphite service will become read-only in April. [44]
The New PreProcessor parser performance report has been fixed to give an accurate count for the number of Wikibase entities accessed. It had previously been resetting after 400 entities. [45]
Meetings and events
A Language community meeting will take place November 29 at 16:00 UTC. There will be presentations on topics like developing language keyboards, the creation of the Mooré Wikipedia, the language support track at Wiki Indaba, and a report from the Wayuunaiki community on their experiences with the Incubator and as a new community over the last 3 years. This meeting will be in English and will also have Spanish interpretation.
Hello Paper9oll, for the rollback of songwriting credits added 12 hours ago on TWICE Dahyun’s page - the sourcing for the entire songwriting credits section as stated was from Korea Music Copyright Association's page on Dahyun https://www.komca.or.kr/srch2/srch_01_popup_mem_right.jsp?S_MB_CD=10023081# but also specifically for what I added for their new EP Strategy you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wdR7_YaxDg but as it might take some time to be added to the KOMCA page I understand if we would need to wait to add it.
I am new to editing on Wikipedia, and would like to know why the reference link on the Awards and Nominations was changed so I can source better references in the future! Thank you 104.32.145.168 (talk) 23:40, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-49
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Starting this week, Wikimedia wikis no longer support connections using old RSA-based HTTPS certificates, specifically rsa-2048. This change is to improve security for all users. Some older, unsupported browser or smartphone devices will be unable to connect; Instead, they will display a connectivity error. See the HTTPS Browser Recommendations page for more-detailed information. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [46]
Starting December 16, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: arwiki, cawiki, frwiki, mediawikiwiki, orwiki, wawiki, wawiktionary, wikidatawiki, zhwiki. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF). [47]
This month the Chart extension was deployed to production and is now available on Commons and Testwiki. With the security review complete, pilot wiki deployment is expected to start in the first week of December. You can see a working version on Testwiki and read the November project update for more details.
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug with the "Download as PDF" system was fixed. [48]
Updates for technical contributors
In late February, temporary accounts will be rolled out on at least 10 large wikis. This deployment will have a significant effect on the community-maintained code. This is about Toolforge tools, bots, gadgets, and user scripts that use IP address data or that are available for logged-out users. The Trust and Safety Product team wants to identify this code, monitor it, and assist in updating it ahead of the deployment to minimize disruption to workflows. The team asks technical editors and volunteer developers to help identify such tools by adding them to this list. In addition, review the updated documentation to learn how to adjust the tools. Join the discussions on the project talk page or in the dedicated thread on the Wikimedia Community Discord server (in English) for support and to share feedback.
Following an RFC, the policy on restoration of adminship has been updated. All former administrators may now only regain the tools following a request at the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard within 5 years of their most recent admin action. Previously this applied only to administrators deysopped for inactivity.
Following a request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion, T5, has been enacted. This applies to template subpages that are no longer used.
Paper9oll, can you explain to them on their talk page and in edit summaries what the problem with their "girl group" edits is? Thank you. Drmies (talk) 14:20, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
I apologise for the inconvenience. I see that you have removed changes that were made by me based on Soompi or Korea Joongang Daily as sources. I want to inform you that I only used those websites because they have been previously used as sources on the same page. Can you confirm why they are considered unreliable in this case? HitmanSK47 (talk) 16:01, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi @AT for Appian, your "draft" is in the userspace (User:), please use the draftspace (Draft:) instead. You can either move it yourself (if the system allows) using the Move function or request at WP:RMTR for assistance. After which, add {{Draft}} to the top of the page, and submit for review, a AfC reviewer that edits in the area will come by and review it in due course. Thanks and regards, —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)12:51, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-50
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Technical documentation contributors can find updated resources, and new ways to connect with each other and the Wikimedia Technical Documentation Team, at the Documentation hub on MediaWiki.org. This page links to: resources for writing and improving documentation, a new #wikimedia-techdocs IRC channel on libera.chat, a listing of past and upcoming documentation events, and ways to request a documentation consultation or review. If you have any feedback or ideas for improvements to the documentation ecosystem, please contact the Technical Documentation Team.
Updates for editors
Layout change for the Edit Check feature
Later this week, Edit Check will be relocated to a sidebar on desktop. Edit check is the feature for new editors to help them follow policies and guidelines. This layout change creates space to present people with new Checks that appear while they are typing. The initial results show newcomers encountering Edit Check are 2.2 times more likely to publish a new content edit that includes a reference and is not reverted.
The Chart extension, which enables editors to create data visualizations, was successfully made available on MediaWiki.org and three pilot wikis (Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew Wikipedias). You can see a working examples on Testwiki and read the November project update for more details.
Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now discover articles in Wikiproject campaigns of their interest from the "All collection" category in the articles suggestion feature. Wikiproject Campaign organizers can use this feature, to help translators to discover articles of interest, by adding the <page-collection> </page-collection> tag to their campaign article list page on Meta-wiki. This will make those articles discoverable in the Content Translation tool. For more detailed information on how to use the tool and tag, please refer to the step-by-step guide. [49]
The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, now has a multiselect filter for namespace selection. This enables users to select multiple specific namespaces, instead of only one or all, when fetching pages for deletion.
The Nuke feature also now provides links to the userpage of the user whose pages were deleted, and to the pages which were not selected for deletion, after page deletions are queued. This enables easier follow-up admin-actions. Thanks to Chlod and the Moderator Tools team for both of these improvements. [50]
The Editing Team is working on making it easier to populate citations from archive.org using the Citoid tool, the auto-filled citation generator. They are asking communities to add two parameters preemptively, archiveUrl and archiveDate, within the TemplateData for each citation template using Citoid. You can see an example of a change in a template, and a list of all relevant templates. [51]
Last week, all wikis had problems serving pages to logged-in users and some logged-out users for 30–45 minutes. This was caused by a database problem, and investigation is ongoing. [53]
View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug in the Add Link feature has been fixed. Previously, the list of sections which are excluded from Add Link was partially ignored in certain cases. [54][55]
Updates for technical contributors
Codex, the design system for Wikimedia, now has an early-stage implementation in PHP. It is available for general use in MediaWiki extensions and Toolforge apps through Composer, with use in MediaWiki core coming soon. More information is available in the documentation. Thanks to Doğu for the inspiration and many contributions to the library. [56]
Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. On December 4, the MediaWiki Interfaces team began rerouting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content endpoints on testwiki from RESTbase to comparable MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The team encourages active users of these endpoints to verify their tool's behavior on testwiki and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket before the end of the year, as they intend to roll out the same change across all Wikimedia projects in early January. These changes are part of the work to replace the outdated RESTBase system.
The 2024 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 3 January 2025, and has an associated privacy statement.
You are a remarkable editor in many ways. You would be a good administrator, in my opinion, and appear to be well qualified. You personify an administrator without tools and have gained my support already!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Interested in improving event management on your home wiki? The CampaignEvents extension offers organizers features like event registration management, event/wikiproject promotion, finding potential participants, and more - all directly on-wiki. If you are an organizer or think your community would benefit from this extension, start a discussion to enable it on your wiki today. To learn more about how to enable this extension on your wiki, visit the deployment status page.
Updates for editors
Users of the iOS Wikipedia App in Italy and Mexico on the Italian, Spanish, and English Wikipedias, can see a personalized Year in Review with insights based on their reading and editing history.
Users of the Android Wikipedia App in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia can see the new Rabbit Holes feature. This feature shows a suggested search term in the Search bar based on the current article being viewed, and a suggested reading list generated from the user’s last two visited articles.
The global reminder bot is now active and running on nearly 800 wikis. This service reminds most users holding temporary rights when they are about to expire, so that they can renew should they want to. See the technical details page for more information.
The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 13 January 2025 because of the end of year holidays. Thank you to all of the translators, and people who submitted content or feedback, this year.
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed in the Android Wikipedia App which had caused translatable SVG images to show the wrong language when they were tapped.
Updates for technical contributors
There is no new MediaWiki version next week. The next deployments will start on 14 January. [58]
Hello! I saw someone reverted my edits on Lovely Runner article and you reverted it. To be fair, your restoration was correct with the reason WP:AGF edits, especially regarding Korean characters (Hangul) in certain parameters. Those should be Romanized per WP:EN as this is an English Wikipedia. ⋆｡˚꒰ঌClara A. Djalim໒꒱˚｡⋆11:15, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi Clariniie, for clarification, I restored your changes due to the improvements you made to the citation's template params i.e. using last= and first= from author= and using script-title= from title=. I'm however not concerned on the romanization of the Korean characters of the cast's role name as long as it's the common name usage, regardless if your changes on this area is still reverted on Lovely Runner (if applicable), please discuss it with the involved party on their talk page or on Talk:Lovely Runner instead. Thanks and regards, —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)15:11, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
Per WP:TALKSIZE talk pages shouldn't archive too quickly. Between six and twelve months is a good waiting time for very slow talk pages. There is even the suggestion that topics that are archived too quickly should be put back. Wizmut (talk) 17:34, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@Wizmut For Talk:Loossemble, I've adjusted the period to be a month from a week for some middleground, anything more is simply overkill and stale magnet. Regardless, nothing is clearly missed as per page's history as I had answered the both archived discussion which was subsequently staled. Lastly, this should be treated on a case-by-case rolling basis, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)17:51, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Hello everyone, and welcome to the 26th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 1 August 2024. At press time, over 94% of the world has legally fallen prey to the merry celebrations of "Christmas", and so shall you soon. It's been a quiet 4 months, and we hope to see you with way more new scripts next year. Happy holidays! Aaron Liu (talk) 05:06, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
Very useful for changelist patrollers, DiffUndo, by Nardog, is this edition's featured script. Taking inspiration from WP:AutoWikiBrowser's double-click-to-undo feature, it adds an undo button to every line of every diff from "show changes", optimizing partial reverts with your favorite magic spell and nearly fulfilling m:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Partial revert undo.
Miscellaneous
Doğu/Adiutor, a recent WP:Twinkle/WP:RedWarn-like userscript that follows modern WMF UI design, is now an extension. However, its sole maintainer has left the project, which still awaits WMF mw:code stewardship (among some audits) to be installed on your favorite WMF wikis.
DannyS712, our former chief editor, has ascended to MediaWiki and the greener purpley pastures of PHP with commits creating Special:NamespaceInfo and the __EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__ magic word to exclude a template from Special:UnusedTemplates! I wonder if Wikipedia has a templaters' newsletter...
BilledMammal/Move+ needs updating to order list of pages handle lists of pages to move correctly regardless of the discussion's page, so that we may avoid repeating fiasco history.
Andrybak/Unsigned helper forks Anomie/unsignedhelper to add support for binary search, automatic edit summaries after generating the {{unsigned}} template, support for {{undated}}, and support for generating while syntax highlighting is on.
Polygnotus/Move+ updates BilledMammal's classic Move+ to add automattic watchlisting of all pages—except the target page(s)—changed while processing a move.
Hello Paper9oll, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2025. Happy editing, Btspurplegalaxy💬🖊️20:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
Hello Paper9oll, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2025. Happy editing, NelsonLee20042020 (talk) 12:27, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi Paper9oll, I think my edits were correct. The source provided makes it clear that this is the same Kim Si-eun who starred in the film Next Sohee, for which she won several awards. This is the Kim Si-eun born in 1999, not 2000. Blanco de Paz (talk) 14:44, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
@Blanco de Paz Noted, I think you're right ... even though my research earlier shows couple sourcing pointing to the actress born 2000. Restore back for now, the photo for the actress born 1999 seem similar enough to footage from the show. — 🎄☃️ Paper9oll ☃️🎄 (🔔 • 📝)15:21, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
Nana (entertainer, born 2001)
I noticed that Nana's article was redirected due to not meeting the criteria outlined in WP:BANDMEMBER and WP:ENTERTAINER. However, I believe she does meet the WP:ENTERTAINER criteria, as she has a significant number of acting roles. Could you advise me on the process for restoring the article back to the main space? Btspurplegalaxy💬🖊️23:30, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
@Btspurplegalaxy Based on the article's history, it was redirected due to AfD result. Your available recourse is either to recreate the article (not restore the pre-redirected version) by "overcom[ing] the objections, and show[ing] that your new, improved work meets Wikipedia article policies" per GAFD or filing for deletion review (do read through WP:DRVPURPOSE first) to try an attempt to overturn the AfD result. — 🎄☃️ Paper9oll ☃️🎄 (🔔 • 📝)13:17, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi Paper9oll, I think my edits were correct about the second meaning of the group name that I added. If you rewatch the episode that actually made the group, at exactly 42:36, the MC states the same thing as what I wrote as another meaning of the group name. Please check it out for verification so it can be added back to the draft article. Inazuma2386 (talk) 18:26, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Hello Paper9oll, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness in 2025. Thank you very much for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia.User:Marchrain13 (talk) 00:54, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Guideline and policy news
Arbitration
Miscellaneous
Done — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 17:33, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
Oversighter changes
Technical news
A new version of the standard wikitext editor-mode syntax highlighter will be available as a beta feature later this week. This brings many new features and bug fixes, including right-to-left support, template folding, autocompletion, and an improved search panel. You can learn more on the help page.
Interface administrator changes
View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug in the Add Link feature has been fixed. Previously, the list of sections which are excluded from Add Link was partially ignored in certain cases. [54][55]
The redirect Kind Mr. Seon Ju has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 December 20 § Kind Mr. Seon Ju until a consensus is reached. 𝙹𝚒𝚢𝚊𝚗 忌炎 (𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚔) 00:20, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
Miscellaneous
Improve a script
Requested scripts
Updated scripts
Newly maintained scripts
New scripts
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