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/2024/40 are available.
*Updates for editors*
- Readers of 42 more wikis https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T375401 can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool https://night-mode-checker.wmcloud.org/ if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Recommendations_for_night_mode_compatibility_on_Wikimedia_wikis provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month. - Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-input-wpvisualeditor-newwikitext. [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T239796 - For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Readers/2024_Reader_and_Donor_Experiences#Donor_Experiences_(Key_Result_WE_3.2_and_the_related_hypotheses) about the changes related to donor experiences. [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T373585 - The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/CampaignEvents/Deployment_status on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/zh:Wikipedia:%E4%BA%92%E5%8A%A9%E5%AE%A2%E6%A0%88/%E5%85%B6%E4%BB%96#引進CampaignEvents擴充功能 to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/es:Wikipedia:Votaciones/2024/Sobre_la_pol%C3%ADtica_de_Organizadores_de_Eventos and on Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#Enabling_the_CampaignEvents_Extention_on_Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/CampaignEvents. - View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Recently_resolved_community_tasks .
*Updates for technical contributors*
- Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitech/SUL-migration for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.
*In depth*
- The server switch https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/Server_switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Switch_Datacenter#Past_Switches. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/66ZW7B2MG63AESQVTXDIFQBDBS766JGW/
*Meetings and events*
- October 4–6: WikiIndaba Conference's Hackathon https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/WikiIndaba_conference_2024 in Johannesburg, South Africa - November 4–6: MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/MediaWiki_Users_and_Developers_Conference_Fall_2024 in Vienna, Austria
*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/2024/40 • 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.*