Wiktionary:Simple talk

Simple talk
	Welcome to the Help desk (or Village pump, Simple talk). This is the place to ask any questions you have about the Simple English Wiktionary. You may reply to any section below by clicking the "change" link, or add a new discussion section to this page. Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~). Please add new topics to the bottom of this page. If you want live help, click here.

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Do you use Wikidata in Wikimedia sibling projects? Tell us about your experiences

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English.

Hello, the Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects team at Wikimedia Deutschland would like to hear about your experiences using Wikidata in the sibling projects. If you are interested in sharing your opinion and insights, please consider signing up for an interview with us in this Registration form.
Currently, we are only able to conduct interviews in English.

The front page of the form has more details about what the conversation will be like, including how we would compensate you for your time.

For more information, visit our project issue page where you can also share your experiences in written form, without an interview.
We look forward to speaking with you, Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 08:53, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-02

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

• mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
• The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing. [1]

Changes later this week

• 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). [2][3]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Suggestion to archive 2023 closed simple talk threads

If there are no further comments to closed simple talk threads in 2023 (such as tech news), I think these sections can be archived, what do others think about this? MathXplore (talk) 07:29, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I think this can be done without consensus since we're not removing anything, just archiving. Minorax (talk) 06:22, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback, I was just asking because there is one section that I'm not sure if it should be counted as closed (special:PermaLink/516282#Move_requests). MathXplore (talk) 06:33, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Y Done, closed threads are archived to Wiktionary:Simple talk/Archive 33. MathXplore (talk) 05:25, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Reusing references: Can we look over your shoulder?

Apologies for writing in English.

The Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Deutschland is planning to make reusing references easier. For our research, we are looking for wiki contributors willing to show us how they are interacting with references.

• The format will be a 1-hour video call, where you would share your screen. More information here.
• Interviews can be conducted in English, German or Dutch.
• Compensation is available.
• Sessions will be held in January and February.
• Sign up here if you are interested.
• Please note that we probably won’t be able to have sessions with everyone who is interested. Our UX researcher will try to create a good balance of wiki contributors, e.g. in terms of wiki experience, tech experience, editing preferences, gender, disability and more. If you’re a fit, she will reach out to you to schedule an appointment.

We’re looking forward to seeing you, Thereza Mengs (WMDE)

Tech News: 2024-03

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

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. [4]
• Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the requiresES6 option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future. [5]
• Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [6]
• You can now thank edits made by bots. [7]
• An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.

Changes later this week

• 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). [8][9]
• Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately. [10]
• The jquery.cookie module was deprecated and replaced with the mediawiki.cookie module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed. [11]

Future changes

• Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:13, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Vote on the Charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

I am reaching out to you today to announce that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter is now open. Community members may cast their vote and provide comments about the charter via SecurePoll now through 2 February 2024. Those of you who voiced your opinions during the development of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines will find this process familiar.

The current version of the U4C Charter is on Meta-wiki with translations available.

Read the charter, go vote and share this note with others in your community. I can confidently say the U4C Building Committee looks forward to your participation.

On behalf of the UCoC Project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 18:09, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-04

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

Problems

• A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed. [12]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 January. It will be on all wikis from 25 January (calendar). [13][14]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05

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

• Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [15]
• There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 January. It will be on all wikis from 1 February (calendar). [16][17]
• On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new Special:QrKodu page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [18]
• Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the targets option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the skins option instead. [19]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Last days to vote on the Charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

I am reaching out to you today to remind you that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) charter will close on 2 February 2024. Community members may cast their vote and provide comments about the charter via SecurePoll. Those of you who voiced your opinions during the development of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines will find this process familiar.

The current version of the U4C charter is on Meta-wiki with translations available.

Read the charter, go vote and share this note with others in your community. I can confidently say the U4C Building Committee looks forward to your participation.

On behalf of the UCoC Project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 17:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-06

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 mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to the phabricator task.
• On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity. Learn more about "action blocks". [20][21]

Changes later this week

• 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). [22][23]
• Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [24]

Future changes

• 24 Wikipedias with Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For 46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February, unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings. [25][26]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Announcing the results of the UCoC Coordinating Committee Charter ratification vote

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Dear all,

Thank you everyone for following the progress of the Universal Code of Conduct. I am writing to you today to announce the outcome of the ratification vote on the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Charter. 1746 contributors voted in this ratification vote with 1249 voters supporting the Charter and 420 voters not. The ratification vote process allowed for voters to provide comments about the Charter.

A report of voting statistics and a summary of voter comments will be published on Meta-wiki in the coming weeks.

Please look forward to hearing about the next steps soon.

On behalf of the UCoC Project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 18:24, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-07

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 WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. [27][28][29] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [30][31]

Problems

• There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.

Changes later this week

• 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). [32][33]
• As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[34] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped. [35]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 05:48, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-08

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 have the "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [36]
• There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
• Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
• The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB. [37]

Changes later this week

• 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). [38][39]

• Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
• The CSS filter property can now be used in HTML style attributes in wikitext. [40]

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:36, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News and other MediaWiki and Meta stuff

While these items are of some interest, I suggest we create a separate page for them because they are literally taking over Simple Talk and they are neither simple nor questions and answers between users, etc., of this wiki, which is what this page is for. --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 02:34, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Adding to my own comment, it looks like ENWT has the Grease Pit for technical stuff (including MediaWiki) and maybe the Beer Parlor is where the "can we look over your shoulder" stuff might go? I'm not saying we need those two places or even an equivalent, just looking for inspiration. I think for now a single place for anything that doesn't go here should be enough. Maybe something with "Misc" in the title? Or how about "Other talk"? --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 02:52, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I estimate the MediaWiki message delivery is being directed per simplewiki settings. The simplewiki Simple Talk is actively used by the local editors, so Tech News etc. don't take over the place. The situation is clearly different as mentioned above. Having a page like Wiktionary:Newsletters can be an option. MathXplore (talk) 02:53, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

@MathXplore It's true that simplewiki Simple Talk has more discussions, but it's also getting fewer newsletters. For example, Tech News isn't sent there anymore. Compare Special:Contributions/MediaWiki message delivery with w:simple:Special:Contributions/MediaWiki message delivery. Kk.urban (talk) 04:40, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree. It's hard to see when there's real discussions, because they're overwhelmed by newsletters. It would be better to have the newsletters go to a newsletters page. I think titles like "Grease Pit" and "Beer Parlor" are too confusing. Kk.urban (talk) 04:34, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

If there are no further movements here, I will ask an uninvolved admin to see if there is any consensus or conclusion to this suggestion (as well as other ST threads). MathXplore (talk) 03:06, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion closure is requested at WT:AN. MathXplore (talk) 12:43, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I've edited the target page for the lists at m:Special:Diff/26989446, m:Special:Diff/26989424, m:Special:Diff/26989444. let me know if I missed out anything. Additionally, I think archival of Tech News only is not needed as it is done by a bot, if that section is too old, just remove it entirely. --Min☠︎rax^«¦talk¦» 22:18, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, please move to a seperate page or something. Too clogged. Me Da Wikipedian (talk) 14:33, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-09

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 mobile visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well. [41]
• The mw.config value wgGlobalGroups now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is: if (/globalgroupname/.test(mw.config.get("wgGlobalGroups"))). [42]

Changes later this week

• 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 29 February (calendar). [43][44]

Future changes

• The right to change edit tags (changetags) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:23, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-10

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 Special:Book page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension. [45]
• Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
• Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
• Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The Gadget and Gadget_definition namespaces and gadgets-definition-edit user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made. [46]
• A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [47]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar). [48][49]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [50]
• The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add ?useparsoid=1 to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:47, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Report of the U4C Charter ratification and U4C Call for Candidates now available

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

I am writing to you today with two important pieces of information. First, the report of the comments from the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter ratification is now available. Secondly, the call for candidates for the U4C is open now through April 1, 2024.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members are invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Per the charter, there are 16 seats on the U4C: eight community-at-large seats and eight regional seats to ensure the U4C represents the diversity of the movement.

Read more and submit your application on Meta-wiki.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 16:26, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-11

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 new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar). [51][52]
• After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed. [53]
• The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [54]
• Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost. [55]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [56][57]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:04, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2024 Selection

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Dear all,

This year, the term of 4 (four) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will come to an end [1]. The Board invites the whole movement to participate in this year’s selection process and vote to fill those seats.

The Elections Committee will oversee this process with support from Foundation staff [2]. The Board Governance Committee created a Board Selection Working Group from Trustees who cannot be candidates in the 2024 community- and affiliate-selected trustee selection process composed of Dariusz Jemielniak, Nataliia Tymkiv, Esra'a Al Shafei, Kathy Collins, and Shani Evenstein Sigalov [3]. The group is tasked with providing Board oversight for the 2024 trustee selection process, and for keeping the Board informed. More details on the roles of the Elections Committee, Board, and staff are here [4].

Here are the key planned dates:

• May 2024: Call for candidates and call for questions
• June 2024: Affiliates vote to shortlist 12 candidates (no shortlisting if 15 or less candidates apply) [5]
• June-August 2024: Campaign period
• End of August / beginning of September 2024: Two-week community voting period
• October–November 2024: Background check of selected candidates
• Board's Meeting in December 2024: New trustees seated

Learn more about the 2024 selection process - including the detailed timeline, the candidacy process, the campaign rules, and the voter eligibility criteria - on this Meta-wiki page, and make your plan.

Election Volunteers

Another way to be involved with the 2024 selection process is to be an Election Volunteer. Election Volunteers are a bridge between the Elections Committee and their respective community. They help ensure their community is represented and mobilize them to vote. Learn more about the program and how to join on this Meta-wiki page.

Best regards,

Dariusz Jemielniak (Governance Committee Chair, Board Selection Working Group)

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Results#Elected

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Committee:Elections_Committee_Charter

[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes:2023-08-15#Governance_Committee

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/Roles

[5] Even though the ideal number is 12 candidates for 4 open seats, the shortlisting process will be triggered if there are more than 15 candidates because the 1-3 candidates that are removed might feel ostracized and it would be a lot of work for affiliates to carry out the shortlisting process to only eliminate 1-3 candidates from the candidate list.

MPossoupe_(WMF)19:58, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Your wiki will be in read-only soon

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation will switch the traffic between its data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster.

All traffic will switch on 20 March. The test will start at 14:00 UTC.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday 20 March 2024.
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.
• GitLab will be unavailable for about 90 minutes.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

Trizek (WMF), 00:01, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-12

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 notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher. [58]
• IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers. [59]
• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [60][61][62]
• Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [63]

Problems

• RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now. [64]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar). [65][66]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [67][68]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-13

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

• An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar). [69][70]

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MediaWiki message delivery 18:56, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-14

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

• Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [71]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [72][73]

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.

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MediaWiki message delivery 03:36, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-15

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

• Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
• A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check. [74][75]
• Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [76]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [77][78]
• New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [79]

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:37, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-16

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

Problems

• Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed. [80][81]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar). [82][83]
• Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked). [84]
• A new variable page_last_edit_age will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made. [85]

Future changes

• Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
• Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the abuse_filter and abuse_filter_history tables. Some queries might need to be updated. [86]

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-17

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

• Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention. [87]
• You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [88][89]

Future changes

• This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia. [90]

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:28, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Vote now to select members of the first U4C

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Dear all,

I am writing to you to let you know the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now through May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 20:21, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-18

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

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

• The appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks. [91]
• Seven new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Betawi (w:bew:) [92]
  • a Wikipedia in Kusaal (w:kus:) [93]
  • a Wikipedia in Igala (w:igl:) [94]
  • a Wiktionary in Karakalpak (wikt:kaa:) [95]
  • a Wikisource in Burmese (s:my:) [96]
  • a Wikisource in Malay (s:ms:) [97]
  • a Wikisource in Georgian (s:ka:) [98]
• You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups. [99]
• Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.

Problems

• Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using mapstyle="osm". This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed. [100]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar). [101][102]

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MediaWiki message delivery 03:33, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

>3 million views per month

Congratulations, everyone! April was the first month in which we topped 3 million total page views. For most of the last five years, we've been at around half of that, but there has been a consistent increase in use over the last year and a half. The data shows that most of our users appear to be from The US, India, Philippines, and Singapore.

I've been editing the site for over 18 years (@Cromwellt: predates me). When I started, there were fewer than 1,000 entries and we regularly had to fight off attempts to close the project. Since inception, there have been thousands of editors, but at any given time, there have typically been about from 5 to 15 active editors.

With 3 million views per month, this may be the most impactful project I've ever worked on, at least in terms of the number of people affected. I wanted to thank all of you for helping the project achieve this benchmark. Brett (talk) 11:05, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Any idea why the increase in views? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:26, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't have any insight into what's driving it. Brett (talk) 14:02, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-19

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

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

• The appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [103][104]
• Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the SiteAdminHelper. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [105]
• Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services. [106]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [107][108]
• When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs". [109]

Future changes

• A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the latest update regarding this extension.
• Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally. [110]

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MediaWiki message delivery 16:44, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-20

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 Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [111]
• If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template" will now also work without reloading the page. [112]
• Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [113]
• The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [114]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [115][116]
• The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [117]

Future changes

• In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [118]
• Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
  1. Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
  2. Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
  • See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [119][120]

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:58, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Sign up for the language community meeting on May 31st, 16:00 UTC

Hello all,

The next language community meeting is scheduled in a few weeks - May 31st at 16:00 UTC. If you're interested, you can sign up on this wiki page.

This is a participant-driven meeting, where we share language-specific updates related to various projects, collectively discuss technical issues related to language wikis, and work together to find possible solutions. For example, in the last meeting, the topics included the machine translation service (MinT) and the languages and models it currently supports, localization efforts from the Kiwix team, and technical challenges with numerical sorting in files used on Bengali Wikisource.

Do you have any ideas for topics to share technical updates related to your project? Any problems that you would like to bring for discussion during the meeting? Do you need interpretation support from English to another language? Please reach out to me at ssethi(__AT__)wikimedia.org and add agenda items to the document here.

We look forward to your participation!

MediaWiki message delivery 21:23, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-21

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 Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [121]
• New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [122][123]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [124][125]
• The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:04, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Feedback invited on Procedure for Sibling Project Lifecycle

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Dear community members,

The Community Affairs Committee (CAC) of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees invites you to give feedback on a draft Procedure for Sibling Project Lifecycle. This draft Procedure outlines proposed steps and requirements for opening and closing Wikimedia Sibling Projects, and aims to ensure any newly approved projects are set up for success. This is separate from the procedures for opening or closing language versions of projects, which is handled by the Language Committee or closing projects policy.

You can find the details on this page, as well as the ways to give your feedback from today until the end of the day on June 23, 2024, anywhere on Earth.

You can also share information about this with the interested project communities you work with or support, and you can also help us translate the procedure into more languages, so people can join the discussions in their own language.

On behalf of the CAC,

RamzyM (WMF) 02:26, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-22

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

• Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
• In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
• Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes: .collapsible, .multicol, .reflist, .coordinates, .topicon. Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar). [126][127]
• When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules. [128]

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:15, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Announcing the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello,

The scrutineers have finished reviewing the vote results. We are following up with the results of the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election.

We are pleased to announce the following individuals as regional members of the U4C, who will fulfill a two-year term:

• North America (USA and Canada)
  • –
• Northern and Western Europe
  • Ghilt
• Latin America and Caribbean
  • –
• Central and East Europe (CEE)
  • —
• Sub-Saharan Africa
  • –
• Middle East and North Africa
  • Ibrahim.ID
• East, South East Asia and Pacific (ESEAP)
  • 0xDeadbeef
• South Asia
  • –

The following individuals are elected to be community-at-large members of the U4C, fulfilling a one-year term:

• Barkeep49
• Superpes15
• Civvì
• Luke081515
• –
• –
• –
• –

Thank you again to everyone who participated in this process and much appreciation to the candidates for your leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement and community.

Over the next few weeks, the U4C will begin meeting and planning the 2024-25 year in supporting the implementation and review of the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines. Follow their work on Meta-wiki.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 08:15, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-23

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 for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript. Documentation is available. [129]
• The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category" to "MediaWiki:Wikihiero-usage-tracking-category". [130]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Kadazandusun (w:dtp:) [131]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 June. It will be on all wikis from 6 June (calendar). [132][133]

Future changes

• Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read. Learn more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:35, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Reporting accounts

I was wondering how reporting accounts here works in cases like vandal accounts.FusionSub (talk) 10:35, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Unlike simplewiki, we don't have a VIP page, so you can use WT:AN. For serious emergencies, you can also use m:GSR. MathXplore (talk) 13:31, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

OK thank you.-FusionSub (talk) 13:06, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-24

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 software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [134]
• The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
• The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the mw-reference-text class, Parsoid now also adds the reference-text class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available. [135]

Problems

• There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed. [136]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (calendar). [137][138]
• The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a <span class="mw-cite-backlink"> wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available. [139]
• On multilingual wikis that use the <translate> system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it. [140]

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:20, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The final text of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now on Meta

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hi everyone,

The final text of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now up on Meta in more than 20 languages for your reading.

What is the Wikimedia Movement Charter?

The Wikimedia Movement Charter is a proposed document to define roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia movement, including the creation of a new body – the Global Council – for movement governance.

Join the Wikimedia Movement Charter “Launch Party”

Join the “Launch Party” on June 20, 2024 at 14.00-15.00 UTC (your local time). During this call, we will celebrate the release of the final Charter and present the content of the Charter. Join and learn about the Charter before casting your vote.

Movement Charter ratification vote

Voting will commence on SecurePoll on June 25, 2024 at 00:01 UTC and will conclude on July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC. You can read more about the voting process, eligibility criteria, and other details on Meta.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment on the Meta talk page or email the MCDC at mcdc@wikimedia.org.

On behalf of the MCDC,

RamzyM (WMF) 08:45, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Templates

I notice that the part-of-speech templates like verb are not always correct. For example, at posture, the verb template spells the past tense as "postureed". How does one correct this? AP295 (talk) 20:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Y Done Please see special:diff/527418. MathXplore (talk) 00:51, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you AP295 (talk) 07:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Composing "simple" entries

I've seen many entries like dogmatic, whose definition reads "A dogmatic person is someone who adheres only to unproved principles rather than truths based on evidence." A couple of problems strike the eye: The adjective "dogmatic" is not limited just to individual people. An organization can be dogmatic. Law can be dogmatic. Additionally, I wrote the below paragraph in a discussion with Minorax on my talk page. He was helpful but left this question unanswered.

It doesn't seem like the style guide requires definitions to include the word itself, though it does state that they should be "conversational", so to speak. Even so, it seems rather unnecessary for an entry entitled X to state that "X means ...". If one looks up a word X in some dictionary, the conversational equivalent is a question to the effect of "What does X mean?" Anyone would still understand your spoken reply if you were to define the word itself without first saying "X means ..." or "Something is X if it is ..." or "You are X if you ..." The latter two aren't even grammatical in E-prime, which the style guide seems to recommend.

I don't endeavor to change their entries, as it were, if they don't want me to. Yet at least for the entries I make or work on, I'd like to write definitions without phrases to the effect of "A person is X if". It tends to make them simpler still and it doesn't seem to go against the style guide but I wanted a second opinion first. AP295 (talk) 07:47, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Where possible, our definitions are explanations: full sentences that use the word. Simply mentioning the word, as in "X means..." is of little value, but using the word in its most usual manner adds subtle clues. This can be the difference between an adjective that is predominantly attributive (where you might write "A [adjective] event is one that...") and one that is predominantly predicative ("An event that is [adjective] is one that..."). Ideally, a word will appear with its most commonly collocations.

Of course, these ideals may not always be achieved, and they can lead to awkward results. In such cases, I would try to improve the explanation, rather than to abandon the ideal. Brett (talk) 11:35, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

How would you fix dogmatic, for instance? If I had to rewrite it (without changing the general meaning), I'd probably state the definition as "Adhering only to unproven principles rather than truths based on evidence". Otherwise the scope is incorrectly constrained, which is misleading. I completely see the value of incorporating cues to help the reader understand, but conflating example and definition is another thing and should probably be avoided. AP295 (talk) 21:10, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Two main strategies, each of which may work better in some situations and worse in others:

1. Multiple entries, each covering a relevant semantic group. A good example of this is happy, where (1) is people and (2) is situations or events.
2. A single entry with a list of highly likely agents/topics/subjects. (2) of sugar is an example of this strategy.

In fact, both strategies can be seen in the sugary entry. And I'm not claiming that sugary covers all the bases, just that with these strategies and others, the bases can be covered. Brett (talk) 00:44, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

1. seems to go against the common convention where each distinct entry covers a different word sense. This also wouldn't apply to dogmatic. I suppose 2. is preferable but I strongly question whether or not it makes an article any simpler or clearer. In some cases it's just easier and clearer not to have a definition in the form of a full sentence that uses the word, which is probably why most dictionaries do exactly that. I'll do my best, but I wanted to know whether this was simply a style guideline or a rule so that I don't get in trouble. AP295 (talk) 08:57, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, there's wikipedia:Adam Kilgarriff's observation that word-sense disambiguation exists only relative to a purpose or task and wikipedia:John Rupert Firth's dictum that "You shall know a word by the company it keeps". If you think that the distinction between dogmatic applying to people versus other subjects like organizations or laws is important for the purpose of Simple English Wiktionary, then Firth's perspective would suggest treating them as separate senses.

But, Kilgarriff's view prompts us to ask: What is the practical value of distinguishing these senses for our readers? If the core meaning of dogmatic remains the same across these different applications, and if a single, unified definition can be understood clearly in all these contexts, then splitting them into multiple senses may not serve our audience's needs effectively.

As you say, dogmatic could be applied to law, but as an empirical matter, it almost never is. I find only two instances in the COCA, and they both come from the same movie. So, one might argue that dogma really does apply only to people and that any use relative to law is a metaphorical extension.

The key question is whether the proposed distinction genuinely aids comprehension and usage for our readers, or whether it introduces unnecessary complexity. If a concise, carefully worded definition can encompass the essential meaning of dogmatic across its various applications, while still being easy to understand and apply, that may be the most helpful approach.

Ultimately, the guiding principle should be to create definitions that are as clear, simple, and practically useful as possible for our intended audience. Whether that means using a single sense or multiple senses for a given word depends on how well each approach supports that goal in each particular case.

Finally, I don't see good faith editor "getting in trouble", here, so I hope you can set that worry aside. Brett (talk) 10:22, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Also consider your entry intellect. Rarely if ever should an entry need to use the second person, outside of examples. Intellect is a somewhat more general/abstract concept than this definition leads one to believe. AP295 (talk) 09:36, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

"Rarely if ever should an entry need to use the second person" seems like a rather dogmatic assertion :-) Why not? Brett (talk) 10:23, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

You got me. Thanks for your thoughtful answers. "Finally, I don't see good faith editor "getting in trouble" " Well, they threw me off the regular Wiktionary.[141],[142] AP295 (talk) 10:29, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

It's a different culture here, I think. There really aren't many of us, so it's easier to work things out, perhaps? Brett (talk) 11:22, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Frankly that's far too charitable toward the cadre over there. It does seem better here though. AP295 (talk) 11:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-25

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

• People who attempt to add an external link in the visual editor will now receive immediate feedback if they attempt to link to a domain that a project has decided to block. Please see Edit check for more details. [143]
• The new Community Configuration extension is available on Test Wikipedia. This extension allows communities to customize specific features to meet their local needs. Currently only Growth features are configurable, but the extension will support other Community Configuration use cases in the future. [144][145]
• The dark mode beta feature is now available on category and help pages, as well as more special pages. There may be contrast issues. Please report bugs on the project talk page. [146]

Problems

• Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center. [147]
• Last week, styling updates were made to the Vector 2022 skin. This caused unforeseen issues with templates, hatnotes, and images. Changes to templates and hatnotes were reverted. Most issues with images were fixed. If you still see any, report them here. [148]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar). [149][150]
• Starting June 18, the Reference Edit Check will be deployed to a new set of Wikipedias. This feature is intended to help newcomers and to assist edit-patrollers by inviting people who are adding new content to a Wikipedia article to add a citation when they do not do so themselves. During a test at 11 wikis, the number of citations added more than doubled when Reference Check was shown to people. Reference Check is community configurable. [151]
• Mailing lists will be unavailable for roughly two hours on Tuesday 10:00–12:00 UTC. This is to enable migration to a new server and upgrade its software. [152]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Can somebody check this?

Can somebody check the page I've created in my sandbox and see if it ready for moving to mainspace? Considering I don't have any actual experience with any wiktionary I'd rather have somebody else check it rather than using my probably flawed judgement.-FusionSub (talk) 08:03, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I moved the page, added a category, fixed the "related words" section, and made the plural form. MathXplore (talk) 10:26, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks.-FusionSub (talk) 10:27, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Are Simple Wiktionary definitions required to be written as a sentence? Or is that just a common practice? 2607:F140:6000:802A:61A5:9F91:5713:6924 (talk) 22:10, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

It's the defining style. It should be used whenever practical. Brett (talk) 12:40, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Coming soon: A new sub-referencing feature – try it!

Hello. For many years, community members have requested an easy way to re-use references with different details. Now, a MediaWiki solution is coming: The new sub-referencing feature will work for wikitext and Visual Editor and will enhance the existing reference system. You can continue to use different ways of referencing, but you will probably encounter sub-references in articles written by other users. More information on the project page.

We want your feedback to make sure this feature works well for you:

• Please try the current state of development on beta wiki and let us know what you think.
• Sign up here to get updates and/or invites to participate in user research activities.

Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team is planning to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. We will reach out to creators/maintainers of tools and templates related to references beforehand.

Please help us spread the message. --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 10:36, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

'Wikidata item' link is moving. Find out where...

phab:T66315

Hello everyone, a small change will soon be coming to the user-interface of your Wikimedia project. The Wikidata item sitelink currently found under the General section of the Tools sidebar menu will move into the In Other Projects section.

We would like the Wiki communities feedback so please let us know or ask questions on the Discussion page before we enable the change which can take place October 4 2024, circa 15:00 UTC+2. More information can be found on the project page.

We welcome your feedback and questions.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:57, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

'Wikidata item' link is moving, finally.

Hello everyone, I previously wrote on the 27th September to advise that the Wikidata item sitelink will change places in the sidebar menu, moving from the General section into the In Other Projects section. The scheduled rollout date of 04.10.2024 was delayed due to a necessary request for Mobile/MinervaNeue skin. I am happy to inform that the global rollout can now proceed and will occur later today, 22.10.2024 at 15:00 UTC-2. Please let us know if you notice any problems or bugs after this change. There should be no need for null-edits or purging cache for the changes to occur. Kind regards, -Danny Benjafield (WMDE) 11:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)