User talk:MacFan4000

MyWikis Hosting Service
Dear LegoFan4000,

I am reluctant to contact you, but need to ask you about the MyWikis hosting services. I have signed up for their services and have not had any response from them. Do you know if they are still in business?

If this message is inappropriate for you and your role in helping with MediaWiki, please forgive my ignorance.

HarryDearing (talk) 16:43, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I am not the person to ask. LegoFan4000 (talk) 19:48, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Translate tags for hub pages
Hi MacFan4000, maybe you can help me. I'm going to redesign some hub pages (user, admin, developer ...) to make them look a bit nicer and more modern with MediaWiki colors. I have a draft here: User:RichardHeigl/Draft. But this page has many translations and I don't know how rebuild this page without crashing the translation system. You're an expert for translation tags. Can you give me some hints how I can help myself? I've studied the help pages, but still didn't get it. :-( RichardHeigl (talk) 13:29, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Basically just wrap anything that should be translatable (except templates), in Translate tags. Just be sure you leave any <!-T:x-> markers where they are and don’t try to add any yourself, they are managed by the translate system. For templates that are translatable, use .  MacFan4000 (talk) 14:15, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your quick answer. I'll try this way from bottom up. The problem is, that this portals will get a complete template for the page. That makes it tricky :-) RichardHeigl (talk) 14:27, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * At the draft page it works perfectly, if I try to copy it to the user hub page, I got one error message after another. I also can't do a rollback. Maybe you have more rights and you don't get these error messages which stopp me? RichardHeigl (talk) 08:25, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I fixed it. MacFan4000 (talk) 11:22, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Hero!! Great! RichardHeigl (talk) 11:24, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Hey! User:Elitre (WMF)/test doesn't need to be translated, do I need to do something about that? Thanks. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:01, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I removed it from translation. I was trying to clean up the list of pages that are,t marked for translation. MacFan4000 (talk) 17:03, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-37
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. You can choose to get these notifications in your preferences. Some wikis already had this option. It is now available on all wikis.
 * The Newsletter extension is now on mediawiki.org. The newsletter extension is for newsletters where you can subscribe by getting a notification when a new issue has been published. It will come to more wikis later.
 * The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. There is now a new high-priority category: . This usually affects templates with horizontal lists. You can read more about using Linter and the Tidy whitespace bug.

Problems
 * Tech News 2017/36 reported about new filters for edit review coming to watchlists. This was planned to happen last week. It will happen next week instead.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg OOjs UI will be updated. This could affect some icons. You can read more about the changes.

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can use Electron instead. Most PDFs are already created with Electron. Electron will get missing features before 1 October. You can create books but they will not have all planned features until November or December. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
 * New filters for edit review are available now on recent changes as a beta feature. Some of those filters and other features will be deployed as default features in the coming weeks. Users will be able to opt out in their preferences.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:15, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-38
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now see contributions from an IP range at Special:Contributions. Before you could only see contributions from single IP addresses. Some older contributions from IP ranges could be missing at first because it will take some time to add them.
 * Flow has been re-scoped to become Structured Discussions and the development has restarted. Phabricator projects and repositories have been renamed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 September at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * We are replacing Tidy on Wikimedia wikis. Editors need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors. Some wikis have already switched. If your wiki would like to switch to the new format now, you can file a task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:31, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-39
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Wikitext syntax highlighting is a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. You can now search through the entire article with +  or  +  when you edit. Before it just searched through a part of the article. The developers are also fixing a couple of other bugs.
 * Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions as a beta feature or by default can now create and move Structured Discussions boards. Structured Discussions was previously called Flow.

Changes later this week
 * You now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. For security reasons you will soon get an email by default when someone tries to log in to your account and when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. This can be turned off in your preferences.
 * Users with extremely old browsers (for example Netscape 2–4, released from 1995–1997) which do not support Unicode will no longer be able to edit. They should try to install a new browser.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September. (calendar).

Meetings Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.


 * The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department has proposed changing the mobile website. You can read more on mediawiki.org. This would be a big change.
 * You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can still create PDFs. Tech News 2017/37 said the function to create PDFs from books would still work. It is now clear it will not work for the next few months. The developers are working on fixing this. You can read more on mediawiki.org.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:59, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Page moves and Structured Discussion
Hi. Please discuss page-moves before making them, if there's any chance that someone might object. In this case, the extension is in CamelCase because it's easier for developers if software names avoid spaces. The documentation and user-facing name of the feature are not CamelCase.

Additionally, there are problems with moving pages that have "translated subpages" - Those need to be done very carefully, one at a time, starting with subpages first - otherwise all the translations get left behind. I will attempt to repair the damage, but please ask for input and/or advice, before doing things like this in the future. Thank you. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:45, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-40
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now use preload features in the visual editor. This means you can create links to create new pages and some text will already be in the edit window when someone clicks on it.

Changes later this week
 * If you have turned on "" you will now get the 2017 wikitext editor. Before this you had to turn it on manually even though it is a beta feature.
 * Special:Block and Special:Unblock will get the OOUI look.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 on all Wiktionary wikis from 2 October. It will be on all non-Wikipedia wikis from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * A new feature called Reading Lists are coming to the Wikipedia mobile apps. First it will be in the Android version. Reading Lists are a private user preference where you can see lists of articles on multiple devices. You can give feedback on this feature.
 * The search function has used fallback languages for language analysis. This means a language could be analysed with the grammar of a completely unrelated language to find related words. This will be removed from most wikis the week starting with 9 October. You can read more and give feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  23:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-41
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The number of active users listed by  and on Special:Statistics will now only include Wikidata edits as activity on Wikidata and not on other wikis too.
 * Previously you could create wiki links starting with two colons. Now you need to use one colon. :File:X.jpg now has to be File:X.jpg . There is now a new Linter category. You can see a list on Special:Linterrors/multi-colon-escape. The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. You can read more about using Linter.

Problems
 * You will not be able to edit or upload files to Commons for around 30 minutes on 11 October. This will start at 06:00 UTC. This is because of work to let Commons show 3D models.

Changes later this week
 * The font in the edit window is monospace by default. Today you can change preferences to another font family or use "the browser default" instead of monospace. Switching to the browser default has only changed the font on Macs. The option to use browser default will be removed this week.
 * If you want to print a page or make a PDF of a page you can do so in the side menu. The way the pages look when you do this will change. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  14:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-42
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * When you edit a template with the visual editor it follows the template's  configuration on how to save it. You can now change the format in more powerful ways if your wiki wants it.
 * The TwoColConflict extension is a new way to solve edit conflicts. It makes it easier to copy and paste the relevant text to the text field. It has been a beta feature for the last five months. You can now try out the new interface on a page where you will actually get simulated edit conflicts. You can give feedback to the developers.

Problems
 * There is a problem with recent changes pages and your watchlist that show a large number of pages. Until it is fixed, Wikidata edits will not be shown on recent changes or in your watchlist on Commons or Russian Wikipedia. If necessary, Wikidata edits will be removed from all wikis.
 * Notifications are not working for some actions. For example some users don't get a notification when they are mentioned. The developers are working on fixing this.
 * Users on some wikis could not change their preferences. This has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Editors and readers who still use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP will not be able to use Wikipedia from 17 October. Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP can't connect securely to the wikis. When we allow them to do so it means that we get less security for everyone else. If you use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP you can install Firefox 52 ESR instead. Around 0.1% of the traffic to the Wikimedia wikis comes from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:31, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-43
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes Changes later this week
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can use  when you create an abuse filter. This can be used to look for multiple words or phrases within a string. It will find words where some characters have been replaced. You can read more in the documentation.
 * When you search in some languages the search function could use specific other languages if the first language didn't work. This is called a fallback language. This didn't work properly and created bad searches. The search index is being fixed to work better.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * There is a Structured Commons community focus group for Commons and Wikidata contributors who want to give input on structured data on Wikimedia Commons. You can sign up to join it.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-44
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent changes
 * You can now block users from emailing you through the Wikimedia wikis.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 October at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  00:20, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-45
<section begin="technews-2017-W45"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You will no longer see the patrol log on Special:Log unless you specifically select it.

Changes later this week
 * The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 6 November. You can post proposals from 19:00 UTC and until November 19.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * URLs that link to sections on Wikimedia wikis with non-Latin scripts have looked like this:  instead of  . This will soon be fixed. Old links will still work.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W45"/> 18:45, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-46
<section begin="technews-2017-W46"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * The diff you see when you compare two different versions of a page has changed on MediaWiki.org and the test wiki. This is to make it easier to find a text change in a moved paragraph. It will hopefully soon come to more wikis. You can report bugs in Phabricator.
 * A new user group on Commons will be able to upload MP3 files. The plan is to have this user group from 17 November.
 * Wikis using Flagged Revisions will get the New filters for Edit Review by default on the recent changes pages. It will be possible to opt-out in user preferences.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 November. It will be on all wikis from 16 November (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Support for uploading and viewing 3D models is coming soon to Wikimedia Commons. The feature will support the .STL file format. You can see an example on the test wiki.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W46"/> 19:19, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-47
<section begin="technews-2017-W47"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent changes
 * If you use the Chrome web browser on Android you can see a download icon on the mobile website. You can download a formatted PDF. It will work in other mobile browsers in the future.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The abuse filter now has a function called . You can use it to store matches from regular expressions – one of each capturing group. You can read more in Phabricator.

Problems
 * Last week's MediaWiki version didn't come to all Wikipedias because of a database crash. It will be on all wikis on 20 November.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 21 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Language converter syntax will no longer work inside external links. Wikitext like  must be replaced. You will have to write   instead. This only affects languages with Language Converter enabled. Examples of such languages are Chinese and Serbian. This will happen next week.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W47"/> 19:18, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-48
<section begin="technews-2017-W48"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now test the new advanced search function beta feature on mediawiki.org. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It will come to German and Arabic Wikipedia this week. It will come to more wikis later.
 * You can now upload large files with the Internet Archive upload tool. Previously you could not upload files larger than 100 MB.
 * You can now use the Timeless skin on all wikis. You can choose skins in Special:Preferences#Appearance.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 November at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W48"/> 20:30, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-49
<section begin="technews-2017-W49"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent changes
 * It is now possible to upload MP3 files to Commons. Only users with MP3 file upload rights can upload MP3 files.
 * You can now use live updates for recent changes if you use the new filters. This feature updates the filtered recent changes every three seconds when you activate it.
 * There is an experimental onion service for Wikimedia projects.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 December. It will be on all wikis from 7 December (calendar).
 * Very old versions of the Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 5 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey will decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year. You can vote for wishes on the survey page until 10 December. You can see what has happened to last year's wishes on the 2016 results page.
 * The Community Liaisons team at the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for active tech ambassadors. This is to make sure the Wikimedia communities get all the information they need about new features and can be involved in the technical development.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W49"/> 17:50, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-50
<section begin="technews-2017-W50"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * URLs that link to sections on Wikimedia wikis with non-Latin scripts have looked like this:  instead of  . This has now been fixed on all wikis. Old links will still work.
 * A new tag marks edits where a redirect was created or removed. This still works when the editor writes something else in the edit summary. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist.
 * If you use Chrome on Android, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article.
 * Filter by number of edits or filter by time range have been grouped on a same menu on the recent changes page if you use the new filters. The "" link is now more prominent.
 * Some of the web fonts that were provided by the Universal Language Selector extension are being removed. This is to reduce the load time on pages. The web fonts were added many years ago to help users read text in scripts which did not have fonts or had broken fonts. This is not the case any more. You can check the status page for a list of all web fonts and whether they are currently being used and especially for special requirements.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You can discuss new or improved blocking tools with the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-Harassment Tools team. They will work on building better blocking tools. Leave comments on the talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W50"/> 17:58, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-51
<section begin="technews-2017-W51"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2018.

Problems
 * When you import a page from another wiki the usernames of the users who edited the article on the wiki you imported it from are shown in the article history. This should link to the users on the original wiki. A script to fix this caused problems for Wikidata and German Wikipedia. It also created a large number of SUL accounts on wikis where editors had never edited.
 * Some bot owners got email about their bots logging in from a new computer. If this is from one or a couple of wikis, you can turn these messages off in your preferences on those wikis until the problem has been solved. If not, you can report more about the problem in Phabricator.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Files on Commons will have structured metadata in the future. The developers are now looking for examples of different kinds of metadata to make sure they are aware of them when they build prototypes for structured data on Commons. You can read more and help by giving examples of interesting media files.
 * The Structured Commons team are making sure Commons work with structured data. If you regularly contribute to Commons and Wikidata you can answer a survey that helps the team prioritise the tools that are important for the Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey ends on 22 December. You can read more on Commons. You can also help the team decide on better names for "captions" and "descriptions". This ends on 3 January 2018.
 * The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey has now ended. You can see the results. They decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2017-W51"/> 15:26, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-02
<section begin="technews-2018-W02"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * On Wikidata, the "" button when you edit is now called "". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "" to "". This is to help new editors understand what it does.
 * Some edits will get an automatic tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways.
 * Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki.
 * Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation has been updated.

Problems
 * Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem.
 * With the new filters in the recent changes, "" in "" did not work for "" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again.
 * The latest version of Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see  instead of   even if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March).
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Wikidata will be moved to its own database servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis.
 * The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one: . All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W02"/> 16:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-3
<section begin="technews-2018-W03"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent changes
 * Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed.
 * Octicons-tools.svg There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development.

Problems
 * Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W03"/> 18:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-04
<section begin="technews-2018-W04"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Filters on Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features.

Problems
 * With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W04"/> 23:55, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-05
<section begin="technews-2018-W05"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikimedia Foundation is working on how to get less unmaintained code on Wikimedia wikis. This could be by finding maintainers or removing unmaintained features. They are now looking for feedback on what do do with AbuseFilter, the IRC RecentChanges feed, the RelatedSites extension and TimedMediaHandler. You can leave feedback on the linked talk pages.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W05"/> 17:06, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-06
<section begin="technews-2018-W06"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to.
 * The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language.
 * Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded.

Problems
 * Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this.

Changes later this week
 * When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users.
 * When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like . You could use   or   instead of   but it would make no difference. You can now only use   or nothing . If you write something else, instead of treating it like , it will not work.
 * The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of  or   it will say   and  . It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public.
 * Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Education Program extension will be removed on 30 June. It is replaced by the Programs and Events Dashboard.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W06"/> 20:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-07
<section begin="technews-2018-W07"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please submit a task on Phabricator.
 * Registration pages now collect keyboard/mouse usage information for research on identifying spambots.

Changes later this week
 * You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use visual diffs on history pages.
 * The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates.
 * The abuse filter extension has a new feature  that you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 February at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The settings page and beta options for the mobile website are being improved.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W07"/> 21:59, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-08
<section begin="technews-2018-W08"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed.
 * You can now see statistics for pageviews per wiki per country. You can see this on maps or in a table.

Problems
 * Linter is reporting estimated counts instead of actual counts for some wikis. This is because of performance problems. You might notice a false higher number in linter counts for some categories. This will be fixed as soon as the performance problem has been fixed.
 * Last week the way that Visual Editor displays references lists was changed. As a result, the references generated by specific templates like   are not visible in the references list whilst editing.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The way edit summaries and log comments are stored in the database is being changed. In the future this will make longer comments possible.
 * Edit conflicts could be solved in a different way in the future. You can test a new prototype.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W08"/> 22:54, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-09
<section begin="technews-2018-W09"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. Recent changes
 * Checkusers and stewards can now view private data such as the IP address in the abuse log. This data is removed regularly.

Problems
 * Last week's MediaWiki version was rolled back because of a bug.
 * Since the deployment train last week until late evening on 20 February UTC, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed.
 * Special:Statistics did not take newly created pages into account since 13 February 2018. Because of this the statistics are recreated.

Changes later this week
 * Users with version 10 of the Internet Explorer browser will no longer get JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis. If you use this browser on your computer, you can try upgrading to a newer version.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikinews wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 27 February. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 1 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 28 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W09"/> 19:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-10
<section begin="technews-2018-W10"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * You can now make longer edit summaries.

Changes later this week
 * You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page.
 * On Special:AbuseLog you can now choose to list only actions that actually made an edit. Other actions are when the filter warned the editor or blocked the edit from being made. There are also more search options.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but it is complex. The tool will now warn in the JavaScript console if the configuration isn't correct. Soon Citoid will disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 March. It will be on all wikis from 8 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * In the future you will be able to use global preferences. This means you could change a preference for all wikis instead of having to change it every time for each wiki. You can now test global preferences and give feedback.
 * You can now read about planned works on maps during 2018. This will be done by June. You can give feedback on the planned maps work.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W10"/> 17:12, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-11
<section begin="technews-2018-W11"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * 3D models can now be uploaded to Commons.
 * Page Previews has been updated to use HTML for previews. This has fixed many issues. An A/B test was done on English and German Wikipedia to measure how it is used. Other changes were also made.
 * Some edits have to be checked against too many conditions before they can trigger an abuse filter. If that is the reason no filter is triggered the edit will be [ tagged] for review.
 * Auto-saving has been added to the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. Right now it is meant to help if your browser crashes or if you accidentally close a tab.

Problems
 * The abuse filter did not tag all edits that should have been tagged after last week's MediaWiki version had come to the wikis. It was fixed on 9 March (UTC).

Changes later this week
 * You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. This was originally planned to happen last week.
 * It is now possible to specify the block parameters for each filter in Special:AbuseFilter. The parameters include block duration and if the user should be blocked from editing their own talk page. The block duration is separate for anonymous and registered users.
 * Octicons-tools.svg A hundred Wikimedia wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 13 and 14 March. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 March. It will be on all wikis from 15 March (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W11"/> 19:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)