Hi,

The latest technical newsletter is now available at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2019/49%3E. Below is the English version.

You can help write the next newsletter: whenever you see information about Wikimedia technology that you think should be distributed more broadly, you can add it to the next newsletter at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Next%3E.

More information on how to contribute is available at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News#contribute%3E. You can also contact me directly.

As always, feedback (on- or off-list) is appreciated and encouraged.

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Latest *tech news https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News* from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2019/49 are available.

*Recent changes*

- Mix'n'match https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Mix%27n%27match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.

*Changes later this week*

- The new version https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.35/wmf.8 of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (calendar https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.35/Roadmap).

*Meetings*

- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 December at 16:00 (UTC) https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20191204T16. See how to join https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_Advice_IRC_Meeting.

*Future changes*

- There will be a new schema for XML dumps https://dumps.wikimedia.org/. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work. [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238972 - The {{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns "" (empty string). When you read a page it returns "-" (dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces. [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T235957

*Tech news https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News prepared by Tech News writers https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Writers and posted by bot https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/User:MediaWiki_message_delivery • Contribute https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News#contribute • Translate https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2019/49 • Get help https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech • Give feedback https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tech/News • Subscribe or unsubscribe https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassadors.*

//Johan Jönsson