The latest technical newsletter is now available at <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2021/31>gt;.
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>gt;.
More information on how to contribute is available at <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News#contribute>gt;. You can also contact
me directly.
As always, feedback (on- or off-list) is appreciated and encouraged.
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<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2021/31/ja> •
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/2021/31> are
available.
*Recent changes*
- [image: Advanced item] If your wiki uses markup like <div
class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl">
without the
required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There
is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page,
which is explained at T287701 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T287701>.
From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for
example: <div
class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or
<div
class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also
applies to some
other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on
your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T287701>.
- Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/IRC/Migrating_to_Libera_Chat>,
from the old Freenode network. Local documentation should be updated.
*Problems*
- Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes.
There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the
Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3
days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been
disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed
properly. [1] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T287380>[2]
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/2021-07-26_ruwikinews_DynamicPageList>
*Changes later this week*
- When adding links to a page using VisualEditor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor> or the 2017 wikitext editor
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/2017_wikitext_editor>
, disambiguation pages
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:Disambiguator>
will
now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do
not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [3]
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T285510>
- [image: Recurrent item] The new version
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.37/wmf.17> of MediaWiki will
be on test wikis and
MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on
non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all
wikis from 5 August (calendar
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.37/Roadmap>).
*Future changes*
- The team of the Wikipedia app for Android
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Android> is working
on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to
other editors and get notifications. You can read more
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Android/Communication>.
They are looking for users who want to test the plans
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Android/Communication/UsertestingJuly2021>.
Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can
do this.
- The Beta Feature
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures>
for
Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be
able to subscribe
to individual sections
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk_pages_project/Notifications> on a
talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to
the end of the talk page's URL (example
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta_talk:Sandbox?dtenable=1>).
*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>
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<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassadors>.*