MediaWiki 1.22

MediaWiki 1.22 was developed between March and October 2013. Consult the file for the full list of changes. It is currently deployed on Wikimedia Foundation wikis through incremental "wmf"-branches starting April 2013. The 1.22.0 stable release is expected to come out late in 2013. Download the or checkout the   branch in Git to follow this release.

What's new?
MediaWiki 1.22 will include all changes released in the smaller "1.22wmfX" software deployments to Wikimedia sites.

Anti-spam and countervandalism improvements
Like MediaWiki 1.21, we're improving countervandalism features and bundling anti-spam extensions:
 * The patrolling system has been improved to make the "mark as patrolled" link available on any page or revision that is patrollable, without having to follow a link from Special:RecentChanges or Special:NewPages (the pages from which the formerly necessary "rcid" URI parameter could be obtained).
 * SimpleAntiSpam has been merged into core (it's a small but harmless shield against the simplest forms of spambots).

Editing improvements

 * When comparing revisions in the history or when previewing changes while editing, "(No difference)" is now shown in place of a diff when the revisions are identical.
 * A confirmation message ("Your edit was saved.") is now shown after a successful edit. Formerly a separate extension (PostEdit), this feature is now part of the core software.

Vector extension merged
The functionality of the old Vector extension has been included in core MediaWiki and the extension has been discontinued. It includes several improvements to both the Vector skin and cross-skin features. 


 * All skins:
 * Section edit links are now displayed next to headings rather than along the opposite side of the page. More information and customization notes: Change to section edit links.
 * Lists of templates and categories used on the page, displayed below the edit form, are now collapsible. The area with license information, edit summary and related functionality below the edit field has received a minor graphical lifting.
 * MediaWiki now warns the user when leaving edit page with unsaved changes (so-called "edit warning"), on browsers supporting this feature.
 * Vector skin only:
 * Navigation menu subsections are now collapsible.
 * Page tabs can dynamically fold into a dropdown menu when browser window is not wide enough to fit them.

If you were using the Vector extension (not the Vector skin) in the past, you must uninstall it before upgrading to 1.22.

Bundled extensions
Current plans, based on Suggestions for extensions to be integrated, are to include the following extensions in the tarball:
 * Disambiguator

Support for Composer
Extensions can now be installed via Composer.

PHP JSON extension now required
Though the minimum PHP version is still 5.3.2, MediaWiki now requires either the native JSON extension or the pecl-json-c fork. Most servers already have this PHP extension installed and enabled. However, if you administer your own server, and the MediaWiki installer says you don't have this extension:
 * If you compiled PHP yourself with the  configure option, you may have to recompile with.
 * On Red Hat or CentOS, check for the line  in    or.
 * Ubuntu 13.10, Fedora 19, and other recent Linux distributions package pecl-json-c separately, under names such as  (Ubuntu universe) and   (Fedora). They no longer include the original JSON extension because of licensing concerns.

Several ancient skins removed


On 2013-04-01, several ancient skins were removed from core (not an April Fools' joke): Chick, Classic, MySkin, Nostalgia and Simple. More information: Turning off outdated skins.

Nostalgia was the phase I/UseModWiki-like skin, and Classic was the main skin before the introduction of the default MonoBook in MediaWiki 1.3 (2004-05-22). Dating back to February 2002, both skins existed over a year before MediaWiki got its name.

Blank system messages must be deleted
Blanking a system message (editing it on wiki to remove all content) will no longer restore the default value for the message, but instead make it show as an empty string in the interface (fixing, "Add ability to disable MediaWiki messages"). If you have blank messages on your wiki (check Special:AllMessages), you must delete them unless you want them to display as empty.

Protection rights usage has changed
A new setting was added for enabling cascading protection for protection levels other than "Allow only administrators". Shortly afterward, the way the "editprotected" and "autoconfirmed" rights work was changed. In particular, the "autoconfirmed" right is now only used for rate limiting, not page protection. If your wiki has custom user groups with the "autoconfirmed" right, you may need to grant those groups the new "editsemiprotected" right when you upgrade.

Special:Disambiguations has been removed
Special:Disambiguations, a page that listed "Pages linking to disambiguation pages", has been removed. If your wiki used this feature, consider using Extension:Disambiguator, which provides similar functionality and will be bundled in the tarball. Switching to the new extension is easy and generally only requires a small change to a single template.