Release notes/1.33

MediaWiki 1.33.4
This is a security and maintenance release of the MediaWiki 1.33 branch.

Changes since MediaWiki 1.33.3

 * (T247017) PasswordReset performance improvements.
 * The MultiHttpClient code will fallover to non-curl if curl_multi* is blocked.
 * (T250568) Work around change in SimpleXMLElement behavior introduced in PHP 7.3.17.
 * Remove some rotten and out of date documentation.
 * (T252311) Improvements to some older SQLite update patches.
 * (T240307) Minor fixes to extension.schema.v2.json and extension.schema.v1.json.
 * rdbms: Add callback for atomic section cancellation.
 * (T191668) NameTableStoreTest::getCallCheckingDb simplification.
 * Make NameTableStore use LoadBalancer::getConnectionRef.
 * (T224949) NameTableStore: ensure consistency upon rollback.
 * (T199474) Set rc_patrolled to 2 for autopatrolled changes in rebuildrecentchanges.php.
 * (T229461) Update the change_tag table in rebuildrecentchanges.php.
 * (T234450) Per-user concurrency in SpecialContributions can now be limited by setting $wgPoolCounterConf['SpecialContributions'] appropriately.
 * (T248947) SECURITY: img_auth.php may leak private extension images into the public cache.

MediaWiki 1.33.3
This is a security and maintenance release of the MediaWiki 1.33 branch.

Changes since MediaWiki 1.33.2

 * (T245072) mediawiki.language: Rename languageData back to languageNames.
 * Use proper SemVer comparison in CheckComposerLockUpToDate.
 * (T212738) Add the MW_VERSION constant, global $wgVersion is soft deprecated.
 * Update comment about PHP versions supported by The PHP Group.
 * (T247215) Fix output of RecountCategories::doWork.
 * Add check for page existence to view.php maintenance script.
 * (T236509) SECURITY: Fix HTML escaping in UserGroupMembership::getLink.
 * (T246602) SECURITY: jquery.makeCollapsible allows applying event handler to any CSS selector.

MediaWiki 1.33.2
This is a security and maintenance release of the MediaWiki 1.33 branch.

Changes since MediaWiki 1.33.1

 * (T217831) (T200653) PopulateContentTables: compute sha1 and length if needed.
 * Fix extra newlines in the installer.
 * (T236628) Fix for ArticleRevisionViewCustom hook in DifferenceEngine.php.
 * (T181658) Do not insert page titles into querycache.qc_value.
 * (T206013) Suppress errors when reading invalid XML file properties.
 * (T237931) Remove references to pg_attrdef.adsrc in Postgres code.
 * Use correct value for 'sslmode' in DatabasePostgres.
 * (T232866) Fix support for HTTP/2 in MultiHttpClient.
 * (T227461) Stop calling deprecated Redis delete functions.
 * (T239561) Mark options as requiring parameters in addSite.php.
 * (T219440) Skip flaky rollback test.
 * (T232866) Mimic CURLOPT_POST in GuzzleHttpRequest.
 * (T239734) Replace deprecated lSize with lLen in Redis code.
 * (T192134) SECURITY: Do not allow user scripts on Special:PasswordReset.
 * (T239428) ApiEditPage: Test for bad redirect targets.
 * (T233342) rdbms: Log debug message traces as 'exception.trace' instead of 'trace'.
 * (T226751) media: Log and fail gracefully on invalid EXIF coordinates.
 * (T212067) SECURITY: Work around PHP bug in parse_url.

MediaWiki 1.33.1
This is a security and maintenance release of the MediaWiki 1.33 branch.

Changes since MediaWiki 1.33.0

 * A change that kept people with a database table prefix that didn't end with an underscore from updating was reverted.
 * (T207100) Updated LanguageTr for dotted and dotless I in PHP 7.3.
 * The ImgAuthModifyHeaders hook was added to img_auth.php to allow modification of headers in private wikis.
 * (T230317) Allow upgrading from MediaWiki before 1.15 where the valid_tag table doesn't yet exist.
 * (T208897) MessageCache: Restore 'loadedLanguages' tracking for load.
 * (T228555) MessageCache: Fix isMainCacheable logic for non-content languages.
 * (T200088) Remove title protection correctly for undeletions and imports.
 * (T230402) SECURITY: Add permission check for suppressed account to Special:Redirect.
 * Add helper for HTTPFileStreamer header syntax.
 * (T227461) ObjectCache: avoid using deprecated phpredis::delete alias.
 * (T231386) SpecialRedirect::dispatchUser should use a 302 http status code.
 * (T118799) Fix XMP parser errors due to trailing nullchar.
 * (T230618) Fix GROUP BY in ActiveUsersPager and RecentChangesUpdateJob for PostgreSQL.
 * (T230487) Handle changed defaults in Argon2PasswordTest::testPartialConfig.
 * (T233119) Improve documentation for the MinimumPasswordLengthToLogin policy.
 * (T227662) Split down patch-comment-table.sql and patch-actor-table.sql into separate files to help allieviate potential migration problems.

Upgrading notes for 1.33
1.33 has several database changes since 1.32, and will not work without schema updates. Note that due to changes to some very large tables like the table, the schema update may take quite long (minutes on a medium sized site, many hours on a large site).

Don't forget to always back up your database before upgrading!

See the file UPGRADE for more detailed upgrade instructions, including important information when upgrading from versions prior to 1.11.

Some specific notes for MediaWiki 1.33 upgrades are below:


 * Some external link searches will not work correctly until update.php (or refreshExternallinksIndex.php) is run. These include searches for links using IP addresses, internationalized domain names, and possibly mailto links.
 * If you ran migrateActors.php using an older version of MediaWiki and want to run your wiki with , note that  rows needed to find revision deletions by target user were incorrectly deleted. See  for details.
 * If revision deletions were performed when the wiki was configured with   and without migrateActors.php having been run, the  table may contain rows with empty values for "target_author_actor" which will prevent log searches for revision deletions by target user from finding those log entries. These rows may be corrected by (re-)running migrateActors.php.

For notes on 1.32.x and older releases, see.

Changes since MediaWiki 1.33.0-rc.0

 * Update installer link to PHP intl.
 * Only attempt to deduplicate if there is data in and  tables.
 * Fetch tag ID before calling.
 * Detect APC for MainCacheType in CLI installer.
 * Call with correct parameters in MimeAnalyzer.php for PHP 7.0 support.
 * Style change tags correctly on Special:NewPages.
 * Fix SQLite patch-(page|template)links-fix-pk.sql column order.

New configuration

 * – This enables the Partial Blocks feature, which gives accounts with block permissions the ability to block users, IPs, and IP ranges from editing specific pages, while allowing them to edit the rest of the wiki. It is a temporary setting for gradual enablement, current default to `false`, and will be set to `true` and then removed once initial development completes.

Changed configuration

 * — This temporary setting, added in MediaWiki 1.32, now defaults to MIGRATION_NEW instead of MIGRATION_WRITE_BOTH.
 * – There is a new password policy to check that the account's password is not in the large blacklist. This is enabled by default for the built-in user groups bureaucrat, sysop, interface-admin, and bot. To configure this for other user groups, set the `PasswordNotInLargeBlacklist` flag `true`.
 * – There is a new password type configuration using Argon2 password hashing (which requires PHP 7.2 and above). It's designed to resist timing attacks, and (on systems with PHP 7.3+) GPU hacking; if you configure argon2 to be used, by default, it will automatically choose the best available algorithm depending on which version of PHP you have available. To use this, you can set.
 * now defaults to reading the new schema. update.php will back-populate the new database fields due to the changed setting, which may take some time on large wikis. You can avoid downtime by following a process like that described in.

Removed configuration

 * — This temporary setting, added in MediaWiki 1.32, has now been removed. When loading Special:Tags, MediaWiki will now always use the instead of the  table.
 * ,, , , , and – These options, all deprecated since 1.26, have now all been removed, as MediaWiki now always tidies user output. The  setting remains only for experimental features and debugging, and should not be used.
 * – This setting has been deprecated since 1.26, has now been removed. If you still desire to disable the parser cache, instead you can set.
 * – This temporary migration setting has now been removed. Code finding it unset should treat it as being MIGRATION_NEW.
 * – This old setting, deprecated in 1.27, has been removed as part of the removal of AuthPlugin.
 * – This configuration was introduced in 1.25 with the intent to allow sites to configure a file in which to cache the SiteStore database table, but it was never used. SiteStore already caches its information by default using BagOStuff (e.g. Memcached or APC).
 * – This setting was used by User.php to let sites adjust by how much MediaWiki would fudge when trying to minimize the chances of a database update to the "current" timestamp being before the value already there (e.g. due to clock skew between different servers). This is no longer a problem, because the code now ensures the timestamp is always higher than the previous one. The writes are guarded with CAS logic (check and set), which prevents updates that would overlap.
 * - This experimental setting, deprecated in 1.31, has been removed.

New user-facing features in 1.33

 * on a category page causes the category to be hidden on Special:UnusedCategories.
 * SVGs are now by default displayed in wiki language on image pages.
 * Special:CreateAccount now warns the user if their chosen username has to be normalized.
 * Multilingual images are now be displayed in the current parse language where available.
 * Special:ActiveUsers will no longer filter out users who became inactive since the last time the active users query cache was updated.
 * RecentChange and ManualLogEntry implement new Taggable interface.
 * Added a hook,, to allow extensions to modify (example: add tags) log entries.

New developer features in 1.33

 * The hook has a new parameter for additional information about the authentication event.
 * was introduced as a replacement for for text-based content models.
 * and were introduced.
 * Added hook
 * The hook has a new parameter for the tags associated with this entry in the patrol log.
 * Extensions can now specify platform abilities they require to work, limited to shell access for now.

New external libraries

 * Added 0.1.4.
 * Added 6.3.3.

Changed external libraries

 * Updated OOUI from v0.29.2 to v0.31.3.
 * Updated OOjs Router from pre-release to v0.2.0.
 * Updated moment from v2.19.3 to v2.24.0.
 * Updated from 0.6.0 to 0.6.2.
 * Updated from 2.0.0 to 3.0.0.
 * Updated jquery-client from 2.0.1 to 2.0.2.
 * Updated _smtp from 1.8.0 to 1.8.1.
 * Updated from 1.2.0 to 1.3.0.
 * Updated from 1.0.6 to 1.0.7.

Removed external libraries

 * jquery.ui.spinner, deprecated since 1.31, was removed.

New developer libraries

 * Added 0.3.2 explicitly (dev-only).
 * Added 0.5.0 (dev-only).

Changed developer libraries

 * Updated from 1.3.0 to 2.0.1.
 * The deprecated IPSet\IPSet alias was removed, Wikimedia\IPSet must be used instead.
 * Updated from 0.9.6 to 0.9.9 (dev-only).
 * Updated from 3.1.3 to 3.1.5 (dev-only).
 * Updated from 22.0.0 to 25.0.0 (dev-only).
 * Updated qunitjs from 2.6.2 to 2.9.1.

Removed developer libraries

 * The jetbrains/phpstorm-stubs repository was removed in favour of the minimal stubs we need, which are kept in the new `.phan/internal_stubs` directory (dev-only).

Bug fixes in 1.33

 * Special:UserRights could sometimes fail with a "conflict detected" error when there weren't any conflicts.
 * Chrome redirects to Special:BadTitle after editing a section with a non-Latin name on a page with non-Latin characters in title.
 * resourceloader: Use AND instead of OR for upsert conds in.

Action API changes in 1.33

 * Added hook.
 * The JSON formatversion=2 is no longer experimental.
 * Internal API errors (those with code beginning "internal_api_error") will include the exception class name in a data field named "errorclass".
 * Class names are not guaranteed to remain stable, and in particular database exceptions will now include the "Wikimedia\Rdbms\" prefix in the class name.
 * The code including an exception class name is deprecated. In the future, all internal errors will use code "internal_api_error".
 * When using action=delete on pages with many revisions, the module may return a boolean-true 'scheduled' and no 'logid'. This signifies that the deletion will be processed via the job queue.
 * action=setnotificationtimestamp will now update the watchlist asynchronously if entirewatchlist is set, so updates may not be visible immediately
 * Block info will be added to "blocked" errors from more modules.
 * Autoblocks will now be spread by action=edit and action=move.
 * action=query&meta=userinfo has a new uiprop, 'latestcontrib', that returns the date of user's latest contribution.
 * action=logout now requires to be posted and have a csrf token.

Action API internal changes in 1.33

 * A number of deprecated methods for API documentation, intended for overriding by extensions, are no longer called by MediaWiki, and will emit deprecation notices if your extension attempts to use them:
 * Additionally, the  and  hooks have been removed, as their only use was to let extensions override values returned by  and, respectively.
 * API error codes may only contain ASCII letters, numbers, underscore, and hyphen. Methods such as and  will throw an InvalidArgumentException if passed a bad code.
 * now takes an options array as its third parameter. Passing a User object or null is deprecated.
 * The api-feature-usage log channel now has log context. The text message is deprecated and will be removed in the future.
 * Additionally, the  and  hooks have been removed, as their only use was to let extensions override values returned by  and, respectively.
 * API error codes may only contain ASCII letters, numbers, underscore, and hyphen. Methods such as and  will throw an InvalidArgumentException if passed a bad code.
 * now takes an options array as its third parameter. Passing a User object or null is deprecated.
 * The api-feature-usage log channel now has log context. The text message is deprecated and will be removed in the future.

Languages updated in 1.33
MediaWiki supports over 350 languages. Many localisations are updated regularly. Below only new and removed languages are listed, as well as changes to languages because of Phabricator reports.


 * Added language support for Eastern Pwo (kjp).
 * Fixed a translation error on Goan Konkani (gom-deva) translations for NS_TEMPLATE.
 * Added $digitTransformTable for Santali (sat).
 * Added language support for Saisiyat (xsy).
 * Added support for new Japanese era name "Reiwa"

Breaking changes in 1.33

 * The parameter $lang in must be of type Language. Other types are deprecated since 1.32.
 * requires type Language for the parameter $lang. The parameters $tooltip and $lang are mandatory. Omitting the parameters is deprecated since 1.32.
 * , deprecated in 1.31, has been removed.
 * UtfNormal, deprecated in 1.25, was removed. Use UtfNormal\Validator directly instead.
 * In OOUI HTMLForm fields, the parameters 'notice', 'notice-messages', and 'notice-message', which were deprecated in 1.32, were removed. Instead, use 'help', 'help-message', and 'help-messages'.
 * , deprecated in 1.32, was removed.
 * The "Parsoid v1" compatibility mappings in ParsoidVirtualRESTService and RestbaseVirtualRESTService, deprecated since 1.26, have been removed. Use the RESTBase v1 or Parsoid v3 API instead.
 * ParserOptions defaults 'tidy' to true now, since the untidy modes of the parser are being deprecated and has always been true at any rate.
 * Support for disabling tidy and external tidy implementations has been removed. This was deprecated in 1.32. The pure PHP Remex tidy implementation is now used and no configuration is necessary.
 * A number of deprecated methods for API documentation, intended for overriding by extensions, are no longer called by MediaWiki, and will emit deprecation notices if your extension attempts to use them:
 * Additionally, the  and  hooks have been removed, as their only use was to let extensions override values returned by  and, respectively.
 * The authentication hooks, , , , , and , all deprecated by the creation of AuthManager in 1.27, have been removed. This also means that the FakeAuthTemplate and LoginForm classes are removed, that FakeAuthTemplate is no longer passed into , and that is removed.
 * The 'jquery.localize' module, deprecated in 1.32, has been removed. Instead, use 'jquery.i18n'.
 * The hooks and, deprecated since 1.16, have now been removed. Instead, use $specialPageAliases or $magicWords respectively in a  file.
 * The following methods of the Preferences class, deprecated in 1.31, have been removed:
 * getSaveBlacklist
 * loadPreferenceValues
 * getOptionFromUser
 * profilePreferences
 * skinPreferences
 * filesPreferences
 * datetimePreferences
 * renderingPreferences
 * editingPreferences
 * rcPreferences
 * watchlistPreferences
 * searchPreferences
 * miscPreferences
 * generateSkinOptions
 * getDateOptions
 * getImageSizes
 * getThumbSizes
 * validateSignature
 * cleanSignature
 * getTimezoneOptions
 * filterIntval
 * filterTimezoneInput
 * getTimeZoneList
 * mw.util.jsMessage, deprecated in 1.20, was removed. Use mw.notify instead.
 * was removed. It was deprecated since 1.27.
 * The 'mediawiki.api' module aliases, deprecated in 1.32, have been removed. Specifically: mediawiki.api.category, mediawiki.api.edit, mediawiki.api.login, mediawiki.api.options, mediawiki.api.parse, mediawiki.api.upload, mediawiki.api.user, mediawiki.api.watch, mediawiki.api.messages, and mediawiki.api.rollback.
 * The 'jquery.byteLimit' module alias for 'jquery.lengthLimit', deprecated in 1.31, was removed.
 * , deprecated in 1.28, was removed.
 * Class SquidUpdate, deprecated in 1.27, was removed.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, was removed. Instead, use.
 * , deprecated in 1.30, was removed. Use or escapeIdForExternalInterwiki instead.
 * , deprecated in 1.30, was removed. Instead, use.
 * Title's methods for site and user page related to CSS and JS, deprecated in 1.31, were removed:
 * — Use
 * – Use
 * – Use
 * – Use
 * – Use
 * SiteSQLStore, deprecated in 1.27 and whose only method,, would return the global SiteStore instance, has been removed. You can get to this via directly.
 * , deprecated in 1.28, has been removed (with DummyLinker's). Instead, use with the relevant Language object.
 * , deprecated in 1.28, has been removed (along with the version in DummyLinker). You can use TemplatesOnThisPageFormatter directly.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, has been removed. You can use directly.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, has been removed. It is thought to be unused, and is distinct from OutputPage->addLink, which remains.
 * , deprecated in 1.25, has been removed. Instead, use.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, has been removed, as the exception ID is the same as the request ID, from.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, has been removed. You can use SearchEngine::getNearMatcher instead.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, has been removed. Instead, use directly.
 * and, both deprecated in 1.29, have been removed. Instead, please use and.
 * Backwards compatibility for setting wgSessionsInObjectCache to false or using wgSessionHandler, both of which were deprecated in 1.27 with the introduction of SessionManager, has been removed.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, has been removed. Use instead.
 * The mw.libs.jpegmeta property, deprecated in 1.31, was removed. Use require( 'mediawiki.libs.jpegmeta' ) instead.
 * The mw.user.stickyRandomId method, deprecated in 1.32, was removed. Use mw.user.getPageviewToken instead.
 * Removed deprecated class property.
 * now requires its $context parameter.
 * The method, that was deprecated in 1.27, has been removed.
 * now requires its $rl parameter.
 * Second parameter to (deprecated in 1.31) has been removed.
 * The 'jquery.xmldom' module has been removed.
 * The 'jquery.mockjax' module has been removed.
 * The 'jquery.hidpi' module, deprecated in 1.32, has been removed.
 * AuthPlugin and related code, deprecated in 1.27, has been removed. Extensions should instead use AuthManager. The following no longer exist:
 * The AuthPlugin class itself and the related AuthPluginUser class and i18n
 * The and  hooks
 * The transitional wrapper classes AuthPluginPrimaryAuthenticationProvider, AuthManagerAuthPlugin, and AuthManagerAuthPluginUser.
 * The configuration setting and its use in Setup.php and unit tests
 * The 'wgAvailableSkins' mw.config key in JavaScript, was removed.
 * , deprecated in 1.32, has been removed. Use instead.
 * method has been removed.
 * , deprecated in 1.30, has been removed. Use instead.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, has been removed. Use instead.
 * Handling of multiple arguments by the Block constructor, deprecated in 1.26, has been removed.
 * The translation of main page in Sardinian (sc) was changed from "Pàgina Base" to "Pàgina printzipale". Existing wikis using this content language need to move the main page or change the name through MediaWiki:Mainpage page.
 * , deprecated in 1.32, has been removed.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, has been removed. Use instead.
 * The .background-size LESS mixin, deprecated in 1.27, has been removed.
 * and have been removed. Use  instead.
 * , deprecated in 1.32, has been removed.
 * , deprecated in 1.27, has been removed. Use instead.
 * The .background-size LESS mixin, deprecated in 1.27, has been removed.
 * and have been removed. Use  instead.

Deprecations in 1.33

 * The configuration option has been deprecated, and is expected to be removed in a future release.
 * The configuration option has been deprecated, and is expected to be removed in a future release.
 * The configuration options and, introduced in MW 1.17, have been deprecated.  These fixes will always be applied for Arabic and Malayalam in the future.  Please enable these on your local wiki (if you have them explicitly set to false) and run maintenance/cleanupTitles.php to fix any existing page titles.
 * The LegacyHookPreAuthenticationProvider class, deprecated since its creation in 1.27 as part of the AuthManager re-write, now emits deprecation warnings. This will help identify the issue if you added it to.
 * is now deprecated. Cache key generation should have the wiki domain ID as a key component and use.
 * is deprecated; instead, please use, which doesn't vary case.
 * is now deprecated. returns the same information in a more useful format.
 * For and, passing strings or booleans as the $lang parameter was deprecated. The same applies to DummyLinker.
 * The PasswordPolicy 'PasswordCannotBePopular' has been deprecated. To follow best practices, it is reccommended to use 'PasswordNotInLargeBlacklist' instead which blacklists 100,000 commonly used passwords.
 * is now called from and . Previously, the method was only called in . Actions should ensure that their requiresUnblock returns the proper result (the default is `true`).
 * The MediaWiki\Services namespace has been renamed to Wikimedia\Services. The old name is still supported, but deprecated.
 * has been deprecated. Please use model-specific getters, such as.
 * The class WebInstallerOutput is now marked as @private.
 * The jquery.async module has been deprecated. JavaScript code that needs asynchronous behaviour should use Promises.
 * is deprecated, use.
 * and will be removed. Use other means to fetch a properly escaped message string or Message object.
 * The 'ResourceLoaderTestModules' hook, which lets you declare QUnit testing code for your JavaScript modules, is deprecated. Instead, you can now use the new extension registration key 'QUnitTestModule'.
 * The jquery.throttle-debounce module has been deprecated. JavaScript code that needs this behaviour should use OO.ui.debounce/throttle.
 * The mw.language.specialCharacters property from the 'mediawiki.language.specialCharacters' module has been deprecated. Use require( 'mediawiki.language.specialCharacters' ) instead.
 * has been deprecated, and is expected to be removed in a future release.
 * Passing a User object or null as the third parameter to has been deprecated. Pass an array [ 'user' => $user ] instead.
 * is deprecated. Use, and  to get and set block properties; use  and  to check block behaviour.
 * The api-feature-usage log channel now has log context. The text message is deprecated and will be removed in the future.
 * The FileBasedSiteLookup class has been deprecated. For a cacheable SiteLookup implementation, use CachingSiteStore instead.
 * function is deprecated, use instead
 * is deprecated, use instead. The setTags method was overriding the tags, addTags doesn't override, only adds new tags.
 * is deprecated, since it is no longer needed in core.
 * Calling as well as  with no parameter has been deprecated. Please pass the argument number 0.
 * has been deprecated. Use instead.

Other changes in 1.33

 * warns if given an element name with a space in it.
 * The implementation of buildStringCast in Wikimedia\Rdbms\Database has changed to explicitly cast. Subclasses relying on the base-class implementation should check whether they need to override it now.
 * is now abstract and must explicitly be defined in subclasses.
 * LinksDeletionUpdate is now a subclass of LinksUpdate. As a consequence, the following hooks will now be triggered upon page deletion in addition to page updates:, , . is not triggered since deletions do not cause insertions into links tables.
 * will now return $id without any validation, to avoid a mostly unnecessary DB query.
 * On Special:Version, the name for an extension can no longer be arbitrary html when no link is specified.

Compatibility
MediaWiki 1.33 requires PHP 7.0.13 or later. Although HHVM 3.18.5 or later is supported, it is generally advised to use PHP 7.0.13 or later for long term support.

MySQL/MariaDB is the recommended DBMS. PostgreSQL or SQLite can also be used, but support for them is somewhat less mature. There is experimental support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

The supported versions are:


 * MySQL 5.5.8 or later
 * PostgreSQL 9.2 or later
 * SQLite 3.8.0 or later
 * Oracle 9.0.1 or later
 * Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (9.00.1399)

Online documentation
Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is available on MediaWiki.org, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License (except for pages that explicitly state that their contents are in the public domain): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Documentation

Mailing list
A mailing list is available for MediaWiki user support and discussion: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

A low-traffic announcements-only list is also available: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

It's highly recommended that you sign up for one of these lists if you're going to run a public MediaWiki, so you can be notified of security fixes.

IRC help
There's usually someone online in #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net.