Hi,

The latest technical newsletter is now available at <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2015/37>. 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>.

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

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

—————————————————————————————

Other languages:
čeština • ‎English • ‎español • ‎suomi • ‎français • ‎עברית • ‎italiano • ‎Ripoarisch • ‎português • ‎português do Brasil • ‎română • ‎svenska • ‎українська • ‎Tiếng Việt • ‎中文

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

Recent changes

  • You can now mention up to 50 users in a post and they will get a notification. Previously you could notify up to 20 users. [1]
  • A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support. [2]
  • You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version. [3]

Problems

  • There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed. [4]
  • The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed. [5][6]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 10 (calendar).
  • The maximum character length when you search for something on the Wikimedia wikis is now 300 characters. [7]
  • The notifications list has been split into two lists. As a first step, notifications about messages on your user talk page will be placed in the second list. Feedback is requested at the Echo talk page. [8][9]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 8 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the Wikitech ambassadors mailing list. The list is for Wikimedians interested in spreading information about Wikimedia technology news. See how to join.

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia mailing lists will be moved to a new server and the software will be upgraded. This will happen on September 9 at 14:00 (UTC). The mailing lists will not be working during the move. It can take up to four hours. [10]
  • Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places. [11][12]

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


//Johan Jönsson

--