Ńkàtá ojiarụ:UOzurumba (WMF)/sandbox

Tech/Server switch

MediaWiki message delivery 00:03, 21 Eprel 2023 (UTC)

Temporary accounts for unregistered editors

Read this in your language • Please help translate to your language • Please tell other users about these changes

Next year, unregistered editors will start using temporary accounts.

In 2024, editors who have not registered an account will automatically begin using temporary accounts. These editors are sometimes called "IP editors" because the IP address is displayed in the page history.

The Trust and Safety Product team gave a presentation at Wikimania about this change. You can watch it on YouTube.

There is more information at m:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (ṅkátá) 01:56, 30 Septemba 2023 (UTC)

The Vector 2022 skin as the default in two weeks?

Read this in your language • Please help translate to your language • Please tell other users about these changes

Hello. I'm writing on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team. In two weeks, we would like to make the Vector 2022 skin the default on this wiki.

Global preferences

If you prefer keeping the current skin select "Vector legacy (2010)" on the appearance tab of the global preferences and save the change. We encourage you to give the new skin a try, though.

Since I last came to you with this question, many things have changed. The skin is now the default on most Wikipedias, and all logos are done! We have also made some tweaks in the skin itself. Below is the text I've sent to you once, but I'm sending it again, just slightly edited, for those who haven't seen it.

If you know what this is about, jump straight to the section "Our plan":

It would become the default for all logged-out users, and also all logged-in users who currently use Vector legacy as a local (but not global) preference. Logged-in users can at any time switch to any other skin. No changes are expected for these skins.

• Top of an article
• 
  Vector legacy (current default)
• 
  Vector 2022

• A section of an article
• 
  Vector legacy (current default)
• 
  Vector 2022

About the skin

Slides to our Wikimania 2022 presentation. You may also listen to the recording on YouTube (in English).

[Why is a change necessary] When the current default skin was created, it reflected the needs of the readers and editors as these were 14 years ago. Since then, new users have begun using the Internet and Wikimedia projects in different ways. The old Vector does not meet their needs.

[Objective] The objective for the Vector 2022 skin is to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. It introduces a series of changes that aim to improve problems new and existing readers and editors were having with the old skin. It draws inspiration from previous user requests, the Community Wishlist Surveys, and gadgets and scripts. The work helped our code follow the standards and improve all other skins. The PHP code in the other available skins has been reduced by 75%. The project has also focused on making it easier to support gadgets and use APIs.

[Changes in a nutshell] The skin introduces changes that improve readability and usability. The new skin does not remove any functionality currently available on the Vector skin.

• The limited width and pin-able menus allow to adjust the interface to the screen size, and focus on editing or reading. Logged-in and logged-out users may use a toggle button to keep the full width, though.
• The sticky header makes it easier to find tools that editors use often. It decreases scrolling to the top of the page by 16%.
• The new table of contents makes it easier to navigate to different sections. Readers and editors jump to different sections of the page 50% more than with the old table of contents. It also looks a bit different on talk pages.
• The new search bar is easier to find and makes it easier to find the correct search result from the list. This increased the amount of searches started by 30% on the tested wikis.
• The skin does not negatively affect pageviews, edit rates, or account creation. There is evidence of increases in pageviews and account creation across partner communities.

[Customize this skin] It's possible to configure and personalize our changes. We support volunteers who create new gadgets and user scripts. Check out the repository for a list of currently available customizations and changes, or add your own.

Our plan

If no large concerns are raised, we plan on deploying on 31 October. If you'd like to ask our team anything, if you have questions, concerns, or additional thoughts, please comment in any language. If this is the first comment to my message, make sure to ping me. We will gladly answer! Also, check out our FAQ. Thank you!

The Vector 2022 skin as the default in three weeks?

Read this in your language • Please help translate to your language • Please tell other users about these changes

Hello. I'm writing on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team. In two weeks, we would like to make the Vector 2022 skin the default on this wiki.

Global preferences

If you prefer keeping the current skin select "Vector legacy (2010)" on the appearance tab of the global preferences and save the change. We encourage you to give the new skin a try, though.

Since I last came to you with this question, many things have changed. The skin is now the default on most Wikipedias, and all logos are done! We have also made some tweaks in the skin itself. Below is the text I've sent to you once, but I'm sending it again, just slightly edited, for those who haven't seen it.

If you know what this is about, jump straight to the section "Our plan":

It would become the default for all logged-out users, and also all logged-in users who currently use Vector legacy as a local (but not global) preference. Logged-in users can at any time switch to any other skin. No changes are expected for these skins.

• Top of an article
• 
  Vector legacy (current default)
• 
  Vector 2022

• A section of an article
• 
  Vector legacy (current default)
• 
  Vector 2022

About the skin

Slides to our Wikimania 2022 presentation. You may also listen to the recording on YouTube (in English).

[Why is a change necessary] When the current default skin was created, it reflected the needs of the readers and editors as these were 14 years ago. Since then, new users have begun using the Internet and Wikimedia projects in different ways. The old Vector does not meet their needs.

[Objective] The objective for the Vector 2022 skin is to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. It introduces a series of changes that aim to improve problems new and existing readers and editors were having with the old skin. It draws inspiration from previous user requests, the Community Wishlist Surveys, and gadgets and scripts. The work helped our code follow the standards and improve all other skins. The PHP code in the other available skins has been reduced by 75%. The project has also focused on making it easier to support gadgets and use APIs.

[Changes in a nutshell] The skin introduces changes that improve readability and usability. The new skin does not remove any functionality currently available on the Vector skin.

• The limited width and pin-able menus allow to adjust the interface to the screen size, and focus on editing or reading. Logged-in and logged-out users may use a toggle button to keep the full width, though.
• The sticky header makes it easier to find tools that editors use often. It decreases scrolling to the top of the page by 16%.
• The new table of contents makes it easier to navigate to different sections. Readers and editors jump to different sections of the page 50% more than with the old table of contents. It also looks a bit different on talk pages.
• The new search bar is easier to find and makes it easier to find the correct search result from the list. This increased the amount of searches started by 30% on the tested wikis.
• The skin does not negatively affect pageviews, edit rates, or account creation. There is evidence of increases in pageviews and account creation across partner communities.

[Customize this skin] It's possible to configure and personalize our changes. We support volunteers who create new gadgets and user scripts. Check out the repository for a list of currently available customizations and changes, or add your own.

Our plan

If no large concerns are raised, we plan on deploying on 14 November. If you'd like to ask our team anything, if you have questions, concerns, or additional thoughts, please comment in any language. If this is the first comment to my message, make sure to ping me. We will gladly answer! Also, check out our FAQ. Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (ṅkátá) 01:07, 26 Ọktoba 2023 (UTC)

Приглашение к участию в исследовании

Здравствуйте!

Фонд Викимедиа проводит опрос википедистов, чтобы лучше понять, что привлекает администраторов к участию в работе над Википедией и что влияет на удержание администраторов. Мы будем использовать это исследование для улучшения возможностей википедистов, решения распространенных проблем и удовлетворения потребностей. Мы определили Вас как подходящего кандидата для этого исследования и будем очень признательны за участие в этом анонимном опросе.

Для участия Вам не нужно быть администратором.

Прохождение опроса должно занять около 10–15 минут. Вы можете прочитать больше об исследовании на его странице Мета-вики и просмотреть его заявление о конфиденциальности.

Если у Вас есть вопросы или сомнения, обращайтесь к нам с использованием контактов на странице Мета-вики проекта.

С уважением,

Исследовательская группа Фонда Викимедиа

BGerdemann (WMF) (ṅkátá) 16:44, 8 Novemba 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-46

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. [1]
• View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the submitted task to use the SecurePoll extension for English Wikipedia's special administrator election was resolved on time. [2]

Updates for technical contributors

• 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. [3]
• 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. [4]

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.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:55, 11 Novemba 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-47

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. [5]
• 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. [6]

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. [7][8]

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.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:44, 19 Novemba 2024 (UTC)

Enabling Dark mode for logged-out users in this Wikipedia

Hello Wikipedians,

Apologies as this message is not written in your native language, Please help translate to your language.

The Wikimedia Foundation Web team will be enabling dark mode here on your Wikipedia now that pages on your wiki have passed our checks for accessibility and other quality checks. Congratulations!

The plan to enable is made possible by the diligent work of editors and other technical contributors in your community who ensured that templates, gadgets, and other parts of pages can be accessible in dark mode. Thank you all for making dark mode available for everybody!

For context, the Web team has concluded work on dark mode. If, on some wikis, the option is not yet available for logged-out users, this is likely because many pages do not yet display well in dark mode. As communities make progress on this work, we enable this feature on additional wikis once per month.

If you notice any issues after enabling dark mode, please create a page: Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Reporting/xx.wikipedia.org in MediaWiki (like these pages), and report the issue in the created page.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team.

UOzurumba (WMF) 22:02, 21 Jenụwarị 2025 (UTC)

An improved dashboard for the Content Translation tool

Hello Wikipedians,

Apologies as this message is not in your language, Please help translate to your language.

The Language and Product Localization team has improved the Content Translation dashboard to create a consistent experience for all contributors using mobile and desktop devices. The improved translation dashboard allows all logged-in users of the tool to enjoy a consistent experience regardless of their type of device.

With a harmonized experience, logged-in desktop users now have access to the capabilities shown in the image below.

Notice that in this screenshot, the new dashboard allows: Users to adjust suggestions with the "For you" and "...More" buttons to select general topics or community-created collections (like the example of Climate topic).  Also, users can use translation to create new articles (as before) and expand existing articles section by section. You can see how suggestions are provided in the new dashboard  in two groups ("Create new pages" and "Expand with new sections")-one for each activity.

In the current dashboard, you will notice that you can't adjust suggestions to select topics or community-created collections. Also, you can't expand on existing articles by translating new sections.

We will implement this improvement on your wiki on Monday, March 17th, 2025 and remove the current dashboard by May 2025.

Please reach out with any questions concerning the dashboard in this thread. Thank you!

On behalf of the Language and Product Localization team.

UOzurumba (WMF) 02:33, 13 Maachị 2025 (UTC)

An improved dashboard for the Content Translation tool

Hello Wikipedians,

Apologies as this message is not in your language, Please help translate to your language.

The Language and Product Localization team has improved the Content Translation dashboard to create a consistent experience for all contributors using mobile and desktop devices. The improved translation dashboard allows all logged-in users of the tool to enjoy a consistent experience regardless of their type of device.

With a harmonized experience, logged-in desktop users now have access to the capabilities shown in the image below.

Notice that in this screenshot, the new dashboard allows: Users to adjust suggestions with the "For you" and "...More" buttons to select general topics or community-created collections (like the example of Climate topic).  Also, users can use translation to create new articles (as before) and expand existing articles section by section. You can see how suggestions are provided in the new dashboard  in two groups ("Create new pages" and "Expand with new sections")-one for each activity.

In the current dashboard, you will notice that you can't adjust suggestions to select topics or community-created collections. Also, you can't expand on existing articles by translating new sections.

We will implement this improvement on your wiki on Monday, March 17th, 2025 and remove the current dashboard by May 2025. Please reach out with any questions concerning the dashboard in this thread.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Language and Product Localization team.

UOzurumba (WMF) 02:47, 13 Maachị 2025 (UTC)

An improved dashboard for the Content Translation tool

Hello Wikipedians,

Apologies as this message is not in your language, Please help translate to your language.

The Language and Product Localization team has improved the Content Translation dashboard to create a consistent experience for all contributors using mobile and desktop devices. Below is a breakdown of important information about the improvement.

What are the improvements?
The improved translation dashboard allows all logged-in users of the tool to enjoy a consistent experience regardless of their type of device. With a harmonized experience, logged-in desktop users can now access the capabilities shown in the image below.

Notice that in this screenshot, the new dashboard allows: Users to adjust suggestions with the "For you" and "...More" buttons to select general topics or community-created collections (like the example of Climate topic). Also, users can use translation to create new articles (as before) and expand existing articles section by section. You can see how suggestions are provided in the new dashboard in two groups ("Create new pages" and "Expand with new sections")-one for each activity.

In the current dashboard, you will notice that you can't adjust suggestions to select topics or community-created collections. Also, you can't expand on existing articles by translating new sections.

Does this improvement change the current accessibility of this tool in this Wikipedia?
The Content translation tool will still be in beta; therefore, only logged-in users who activated the tool from the beta features will continue to have access to the content translation tool. Also, if the tool is only available to a specific user group, it will remain that way.

When do we plan to implement this improvement?
We will implement it on your Wikipedia and others by 24th, March 2025.

What happens to the former dashboard after we implement the improvement?
You can still access it in the tool for some time. We will remove it from all Wikipedias by May 2025, as maintaining it will no longer be productive.

Where can I test this improvement and report any issues before it is implemented in this Wiki?
You can try the improved capabilities in the test wiki using this link: https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ContentTranslation&campaign=contributionsmenu&to=es&filter-type=automatic&filter-id=previous-edits&active-list=suggestions&from=en#/ . If you notice an issue related to the improved dashboard in the test wiki, please let us know in this thread and ping me, or report it in Phabricator, adding these tags: BUG REPORT and ContentTranslation.

Please ask us any questions regarding this improvement in this thread. Thank you!

On behalf of the Language and Product Localization team.

UOzurumba (WMF) 03:55, 14 Maachị 2025 (UTC)

An improved dashboard for the Content Translation tool

Hello Wikipedians,

Apologies as this message is not in your language, Please help translate to your language.

The Language and Product Localization team has improved the Content Translation dashboard to create a consistent experience for all contributors using mobile and desktop devices. Below is a breakdown of important information about the improvement.

What are the improvements?
The improved translation dashboard allows all logged-in users of the tool to enjoy a consistent experience regardless of their type of device. With a harmonized experience, logged-in desktop users can now access the capabilities shown in the image below.

Notice that in this screenshot, the new dashboard allows: Users to adjust suggestions with the "For you" and "...More" buttons to select general topics or community-created collections (like the example of Climate topic). Also, users can use translation to create new articles (as before) and expand existing articles section by section. You can see how suggestions are provided in the new dashboard in two groups ("Create new pages" and "Expand with new sections")-one for each activity.

In the current dashboard, you will notice that you can't adjust suggestions to select topics or community-created collections. Also, you can't expand on existing articles by translating new sections.

Does this improvement change the current accessibility of this tool in this Wikipedia?
The Content translation tool will still be in beta; therefore, only logged-in users who activated the tool from the beta features will continue to have access to the content translation tool. Also, if the tool is only available to a specific user group, it will remain that way.

When do we plan to implement this improvement?
We will implement it on your Wikipedia and others by 24th, March 2025.

What happens to the former dashboard after we implement the improvement?
You can still access it in the tool for some time. We will remove it from all Wikipedias by May 2025, as maintaining it will no longer be productive.

Where can I test this improvement and report any issues before it is implemented in this Wiki?
You can try the improved capabilities in the test wiki using this link: https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ContentTranslation&campaign=contributionsmenu&to=es&filter-type=automatic&filter-id=previous-edits&active-list=suggestions&from=en#/ . If you notice an issue related to the improved dashboard in the test wiki, please let us know in this thread and ping me, or report it in Phabricator, adding these tags: BUG REPORT and ContentTranslation.

Please ask us any questions regarding this improvement in this thread. Thank you!

On behalf of the Language and Product Localization team.

UOzurumba (WMF) 04:15, 14 Maachị 2025 (UTC)

Enabling Dark mode for logged-out users in this Wikipedia

Hello Wikipedians,

Apologies, as this message is not written in your native language. Please help translate to your language.

The Wikimedia Foundation Web team will be enabling dark mode here on your Wikipedia by 15th May 2025 now that pages on your wiki have passed our checks for accessibility and other quality checks. Congratulations!

The plan to enable is made possible by the diligent work of editors and other technical contributors in your community who ensured that templates, gadgets, and other parts of pages can be accessible in dark mode. Thank you all for making dark mode available for everybody!

For context, the Web team has concluded work on dark mode. If, on some wikis, the option is not yet available for logged-out users, this is likely because many pages do not yet display well in dark mode. As communities make progress on this work, we enable this feature on additional wikis once per month.

If you notice any issues after enabling dark mode, please create a page: Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Reporting/xx.wikipedia.org in MediaWiki (like these pages), and report the issue in the created page.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team.

UOzurumba (WMF) 23:49, 6 Mee 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-29

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

• Featured templates, a new feature related to Template Recall and Discovery will be deployed this week to all Wikimedia projects: With this feature, editors will be able to quickly access a list of templates that are likely to be useful. These templates will be displayed in a list, under the "featured" tab of the template discovery interface. Administrators can define the list via the Community Configuration interface. The feature fulfills a request by the community through the Community Wishlist. [9][10]
• View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the request to add Malayalam fonts in the Wikisource Book Export Tool was resolved and now, the rendering of Malayalam letters in exported Wikisource books are accurate. [11]

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Developers, designers, and all Wikimedians are invited to submit a project idea for the Wikimania Hackathon 2025. Read this Diff blog post for more details.

Meetings and events

• WikiIndaba 2025 scholarship application and program submission is open until 23:59 GMT on July 20. WikiIndaba is a regional conference for African Wikimedians both on the continent and in the diaspora to unite and grow together. Submit your scholarship application and program proposal now!
• WikiCon Brasil 2025 will take place on July 19-20 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The Brazilian community members are encouraged to register and attend!

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:59, 14 Julaị 2025 (UTC)

Get started with the Lua interface to simplify preparation of modules for translation of modules in MetaWiki

Greetings!

The Language and Product Localization team has developed a Lua interface to simplify the preparation of Lua modules for translation in the MetaWiki platform. This means that module developers can now use the new Lua interface to load translatable strings, and the translators can translate them in the same translation interface that is used for templates and wiki pages.

This improvement makes it easier for translators to find and edit module strings without dealing with raw Lua code. It helps prevent mistakes that could break the module during translation.

We invite you to watch our demo video and read more about translatable modules to understand how it works. Please give us your feedback on this talk page on how well the Lua interface addresses the challenges in your workflow and how useful it is in module localization tasks. You can also look at Module:User Wikimedia project. which was recently converted to utilize these messages, for example usage.

Your feedback is important as it will help us evaluate and decide how to continue developing and improving this interface, extend it to other wikis, or change our approach.

Thank you, and we anticipate your honest feedback.

UOzurumba (WMF) 06:13, 28 Julaị 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-36

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 Editing team wants to compile a list of templates, jargon terms, and policies used in edit summaries when a copyright violation is removed. This will help them identify the number of edits reverted due to copyright issues. We invite community members from the following Wikis to list these terms in T402601, or to share their list with Trizek_(WMF): Arabic Wikipedia, Czech Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. This project is open until September 9th 2025.

Updates for editors

• The CampaignEvents extension has been enabled for all Wikisources. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. The extension has three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. To request the extension for your wiki, visit the Deployment information page. [12]
• The lists in the footer of the editing interface, such as "Templates used on this page," will now be organized into columns when there is enough space. This enhancement minimizes scrolling when editing lengthy articles on Wikipedia. [13]
• On September 3rd, 2025 we will increase the sampling percentages of our group by toggle experiment of the Special:RecentChanges, Special:Watchlist, and Special:RelatedChanges pages on the Chinese, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias to 100 percent, allowing more editors to be part of this experiment. This adjustment is intended to ensure we have sufficient data to make informed decisions when evaluating the experiment results. [14][15]
• Upon clicking an empty search bar, logged-out users will see suggestions of articles for further reading on English Wikipedia beginning the week of September 22. The feature will be available on both desktop and mobile. All non-English wikis received this change in June and July. The goal is to make it easier for users to find articles. Learn more.
• View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Wikifunctions now has a new capability called "lightweight enumeration types", an enumeration type is simply a fixed set of values that's in the type's definition. This capability makes it quick and easy to define such a type, and allows for the reuse of values that are already present in Wikidata. Here is a newsletter to learn more.
• The latest Readers Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: the formation of two new teams — Reader Growth and Reader Experience; insights into declining pageviews and account creations; highlights from the Wikimania Nairobi panel on improving the reading experience; upcoming experiments to engage new and existing readers; and more.

Meetings and events

• Spotlight on some Wikimania 2025 Sessions:
  • Identifying AI-generated text by searching for ISBNs whose checksums fail: Mathias Schindler of WMDE shared tools to help communities search for these.
  • La durabilité du mouvement Wikimedia face aux défis actuels et futurs: This session explored how Wikimedia can stay a trusted source of knowledge in the age of generative AI, information overload, and disinformation.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:29, 1 Septemba 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-36

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 Editing team wants to compile a list of templates, jargon terms, and policies used in edit summaries when a copyright violation is removed. This will help them identify the number of edits reverted due to copyright issues. We invite community members from the following Wikis to list these terms in T402601, or to share their list with Trizek_(WMF): Arabic Wikipedia, Czech Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. This project is open until September 9th 2025.

Updates for editors

• The CampaignEvents extension has been enabled for all Wikisources. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. The extension has three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. To request the extension for your wiki, visit the Deployment information page. [16]
• The lists in the footer of the editing interface, such as "Templates used on this page," will now be organized into columns when there is enough space. This enhancement minimizes scrolling when editing lengthy articles on Wikipedia. [17]
• On September 3rd, 2025 we will increase the sampling percentages of our group by toggle experiment of the Special:RecentChanges, Special:Watchlist, and Special:RelatedChanges pages on the Chinese, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias to 100 percent, allowing more editors to be part of this experiment. This adjustment is intended to ensure we have sufficient data to make informed decisions when evaluating the experiment results. [18][19]
• Upon clicking an empty search bar, logged-out users will see suggestions of articles for further reading on English Wikipedia beginning the week of September 22. The feature will be available on both desktop and mobile. All non-English wikis received this change in June and July. The goal is to make it easier for users to find articles. Learn more.
• View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Wikifunctions now has a new capability called "lightweight enumeration types", an enumeration type is simply a fixed set of values that's in the type's definition. This capability makes it quick and easy to define such a type, and allows for the reuse of values that are already present in Wikidata. Here is a newsletter to learn more.
• The latest Readers Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: the formation of two new teams — Reader Growth and Reader Experience; insights into declining pageviews and account creations; highlights from the Wikimania Nairobi panel on improving the reading experience; upcoming experiments to engage new and existing readers; and more.

Meetings and events

• Spotlight on some Wikimania 2025 Sessions:
  • Identifying AI-generated text by searching for ISBNs whose checksums fail: Mathias Schindler of WMDE shared tools to help communities search for these.
  • La durabilité du mouvement Wikimedia face aux défis actuels et futurs: This session explored how Wikimedia can stay a trusted source of knowledge in the age of generative AI, information overload, and disinformation.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:38, 1 Septemba 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-39

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

• On September 24th at 15:00 UTC, all Wikimedia sites users will experience a brief read-only period due to a scheduled datacenter server switchover. The Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team will redirect all traffic from one primary server to its backup. You can listen to the switchover using the "Listen to Wikipedia" tool, where you will hear edits stop for a few minutes during the read-only phase, then resume. This twice-yearly datacenter server switchover ensures reliability by testing the backup datacenter, so that our sites can stay online even if the primary datacenter fails. You can read more about the process on the Diff blog.

Updates for editors

• Editors of 60 more Wiktionaries will soon be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them into their pages. A function takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, like adding numbers, converting miles to meters, calculating elapsed time, or declining a word into a case. They will join the other 65 Wiktionary language editions, which already have access to embedded Wikifunctions calls. Later this year, plans are in place to expand to more Wiktionaries and the Incubator.
• A new parser function has been added: {{#contentmodel}}. Template editors and admins can use it to get the localized or canonical name of the content model of a specific page. The function makes it easier to create and edit system messages, such as MediaWiki:editinginterface, even when you switch types of pages, like wiki, JavaScript, CSS or JSON page. [20]
• Adding or editing a DISPLAYTITLE for an article using VisualEditor will no longer be broken. Editors who use VisualEditor mode to modify the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} would no longer have the literal text "DISPLAYTITLE" or its localized variant added to their articles. A list of pages that may have been affected and might need cleanup is documented in this ticket.
• Beta users of the Wikipedia Android app can now try the redesigned Activity tab, which replaces the Edits tab. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.
• View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Wikifunctions users can now import many essential facts involving geo-coordinates, quantities and time values from Wikidata. This is made possible by the creation of Wikifunctions types for these values, which makes them available for use by functions in Wikifunctions. Learn more about how this works in this video and Wikifunctions' August 1 newsletter (for quantities) and August 22 newsletter (for geo-coordinates).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:39, 22 Septemba 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-40

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

• A major software upgrade has been made to Phabricator. The update introduces performance improvements, a refreshed search interface, enhancements to Maniphest task search, updates to user profile pages and project workboards, new Herald automation features, as well as general text input, mobile experience improvements and more. [21]

Updates for editors

• The Community Tech team will release the new Community Wishlist extension on October 1, that will improve the way wishes will be submitted. The new extension will allow users to add tags to their wishes to better categorise them, and (in a future iteration) to filter them by status, tags and focus areas. It will also be possible to support individual wishes again, as requested by the community in many instances. The old system will be retired. There will be a brief period of downtime while the extension is deployed and wishes are migrated to the new system. You can read more about this in the latest update or you can consult the current documentation on MediaWiki.
• As announced on Diff blog, the production trial of the hCaptcha service for bot detection has begun. The trial is currently using hCaptcha to protect account creation on Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Turkish Wikipedias, where it will replace our existing CAPTCHA (FancyCaptcha). The goal with the trial is to better block bots while also improving usability and accessibility for users who encounter CAPTCHA challenges.
• The CampaignEvents extension has been deployed to Wikimedia Commons. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. On Commons, anyone who is a registered user can use it as an event participant. To use it as an organizer, someone needs to have the event organizer right.
• Sub-referencing, a new feature to re-use references with different details has been released to German Wikipedia. You can test the feature on testwiki or on betawiki as well. Please share your thoughts on using templates in sub-references or volunteer to become a pilot wiki.
• On wikis using the Mentorship system, communities can now opt experienced editors out of Mentorship through Ọpụrụiche:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship. Within this setting, communities may define thresholds, based on edit count and account age, to decide when an editor is considered experienced enough to no longer receive Mentorship. [22]
• The Editing Team and the Machine Learning Team are working on a new check for newcomers: Tone check. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits, using artificial intelligence. We invite volunteers to review the first version of the Tone language model for the following languages: Arabic, Czech, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Farsi, Italian, Norwegian, Romanian and Latvian. Users from these wikis interested in reviewing this model are invited to sign up at MediaWiki.org. The deadline to sign up is on October 3, which will be the start date of the test.
• The rollout of multiblocks had the side effect that non-active block logs may have been shown on Ọpụrụiche:Contributions and on blocked users' user and user_talk pages. This issue will be fully resolved in a few days. As part of the fix, messages prefixed with sp-contributions-blocked-notice will be removed and replaced with those prefixed with blocked-notice-logextract in a few weeks. Please help translate the new messages and update any local overrides if needed.
• There was a bug with links added using visual editor if they included characters such as [ ] | after the fragment identifier (#). They were not encoded properly creating an incorrect link. This has been fixed. [23]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote in Malay (q:ms:) [24]
• View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the User Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks. [25]

Updates for technical contributors

• Later this week, editors using Lua modules will be able to use the mw.title.newBatch function to look up the existence of up to 25 pages at once, in a way that only increases the expensive function count once.
• A new Unsupported Tools Working Group has been formed as part of ongoing efforts to collectively determine technical work priorities, similar to the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). The working group will help prioritize and review requests for support of unmaintained extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. For the first cycle, the group will be prioritizing an unsupported Wikimedia Commons tool.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:35, 29 Septemba 2025 (UTC)

Upcoming Dark Mode user interface rollout for anonymous Wikimedia sites users

Hello Wikimedians,

Apologies if this message is not in your language. Please help translate to your language.

The Reader Experience team will launch the Dark mode feature for anonymous users on all Wikimedia sites, including yours, on October 29, 2025.

Dark mode is an option that allows users to view pages in light-coloured text, and icons on a dark background. Once it is available for anonymous users, they can enable it when using various devices. More information on ways to enable it can be found on this page. Given many pages are still not compatible with dark mode this will be an opt-in feature and not automatically apply to pages.

Dark mode requires modifications to content pages and templates, and since our initial launch July 2024, we have been working with communities and helping them prepare for dark mode. Before the rollout, it is essential that template authors and technical contributors test dark mode and read this page to learn how to make pages Dark mode-ready and address any compatibility issues found in templates.

We will fix most color compatibility issues only on the most-viewed pages on projects with over 5 million monthly page views. Technical contributors with an account should opt into dark mode currently using preferences or settings and test pages and seek help before the release to ensure everything complies before the enablement.

If you have any questions or need help, please contact the Reader Experience team for support.

Thank you!

UOzurumba (WMF) 01:24, 30 Septemba 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Third quarter of 2025

In this edition, we’ll walk you through the major updates, experiments, and improvements that took place in the Wikipedia mobile apps during July, August, and September.

iOS

Tabbed Browsing

• In July, we released the first iteration of Tabbed Browsing to all users.
• Our 30-day A/B test showed mixed but promising results: while logged-out user retention gains were modest compared to Android, survey feedback was overwhelmingly positive (93% rated the feature “Neutral to Very Satisfactory”).
• We continued improvements throughout August and September, including a design review for “More Dynamic Tabs,” a new tab controller, and bug fixes such as inconsistent tab sizing on iPad mini and tooltip issues.

Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review

• Work continued on Year in Review upgrades, with spikes exploring features such as sharing entire reviews, custom app icons, and showing which geographies users read about the most.
• We also began preparing overall app data to share richer collective insights.

Navigation Refresh

• We improved code behind the History tab and recent searches to prepare for future navigational changes.

Other iOS Updates

• Released several app versions (7.8.1 through 7.8.3), with smoke tests completed.
• Resolved numerous bugs including crashes (tooltips, gestures, search), iPad layout issues, and visual problems with captions, Quick Facts, and images in Dark Mode.
• Added a new REST endpoint for remote configuration and upgraded fundraising configurations to support A/B testing.
• Verified continued compatibility with multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Android

Customizable Donation Reminder Experiment

• In August, we launched the Customizable Donation Reminder experiment in Italy. The reminder will allow users to decide if they want to be reminded to donate, and how often.

Activity Tab Experiment

• By September, we finalized core modules, onboarding, instrumentation, and validation tasks needed for the A/B test of the new Activity Tab against the Edit Tab.
• This marks a major step toward testing whether an Activity space can improve multi-day engagement and retention.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Fixed crashes with image gallery long-press, saved article syncing for Chinese, edit previews, and special links.
• Addressed rendering and Dark Mode issues affecting math tags, GIFs, and citation numbers.

Other Android Updates

• We released a new beta and conducted multiple regression tests to ensure stability.
• We added a general-purpose remote configuration REST endpoint, aligned with iOS.
• Continued technical debt cleanup, including removing allowMainThreadQueries and adding suspend to DAO functions.
• Upgraded fundraising configuration to support A/B testing.

Cross-Platform

• Both apps upgraded fundraising A/B test support and created a shared remote configuration REST endpoint.
• We began tracking Account Vanish events on iOS and Android for privacy features.

Looking Ahead

This quarter marked a big step forward on Tabbed Browsing, Activity Tab, and Year in Review — three projects aimed at making Wikipedia more personal, navigable, and engaging. We also advanced donation experiments and backend improvements to support future flexibility.

Make sure you’re subscribed to this newsletter to stay in the loop — and thank you for being part of the journey!

ARamadan-WMF 02:07, 14 Ọktoba 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-46

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

Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.

• Starting November 12, users will see a change in the appearance of talk pages on some Wikipedias. Almost all wikis have received this design change; English Wikipedia will get these changes later. You can read more on Diff. Users can opt out of these changes in their user preferences in "Show discussion activity". [26]
• MediaWiki can now display a page indicator automatically while a page is protected. This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled by community request. [27]
• Using the "Zìwe nkirimaàtụ̀" or "Gosi mgbanwè" buttons in the wikitext editor will now carry over certain URL parameters like 'useskin', 'uselang' and 'section'. This update also fixes an issue where, if the browser crashed while previewing an edit to a single section, saving this edit could overwrite the entire page with just that section’s content. [28][29][30]
• Wikivoyage wikis can use colored map markers in the article text. The text of these markers will now be shown in contrasting black or white color, instead of always being white. Local workarounds for the problem can be removed. [31]
• The Activity tab in the Wikipedia Android app is now available for all users. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging. [32]
• The Reader Growth team is launching an experiment called "Image browsing" to test how to make it easier for readers to browse and discover images on Wikipedia articles. This experiment, a mobile-only A/B test, will go live on English Wikipedia in the week of November 17 and will run for four weeks, affecting 0.05% of users on English wiki. The test launched on November 3 on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese wikis, affecting up to 10% of users on those wikis. [33]
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example the inability to lock accounts on mobile sites has been fixed. [34]

Updates for technical contributors

• Nominations are open on Wikitech for new Toolforge standards committee members. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open through 2025-11-28.
• The JWT issuer field in OAuth 2 access tokens for SUL wikis has been changed to https://meta.wikimedia.org. Old access tokens will still work. [35]
• The JWT subject field in OAuth 2 access tokens will soon change from <user id> to mw:<identity type>:<user id>, where <identity type> is typically CentralAuth: (for SUL wikis) or local:<wiki id> (for other wikis). This is to avoid conflicts between different user ID types, and to make OAuth 2 access tokens and the sessionJwt cookie more similar. Old access tokens will still work. [36]
• MediaWiki's block messages (blockedtext, blockedtext-partial, autoblockedtext, systemblockedtext, blockedtext-tempuser, autoblockedtext-tempuser) now support additional parameters indicating whether the user is blocked from editing their own user talk page $9 or emailing other users $10. [37]
• A REL1_45 branch for MediaWiki core and each of the extensions and skins in Wikimedia git has been created. This is the first step in the release process for MediaWiki 1.45.0, scheduled for late November 2025. If you are working on a critical bug fix or working on a new feature, you may need to take note of this change. [38]
• The process for generating CirrusSearch dumps has been updated due to slowing performance. If you encounter any issues migrating to the replacement dumps, please contact the Search Platform Team for support. [39][40]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:24, 10 Novemba 2025 (UTC)