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 wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [1]

Changes later this week

• The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [2]
• Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [3]
•  The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (calendar).

Meetings

•   You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 28 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

•  The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warning Use of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead. [4]

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//Johan Jönsson