The latest technical newsletter is now available at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2021/38%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.
—————————————————————————————
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/2021/38 are available.
*Recent changes*
- Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T290582, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Growth/FAQ#enable and configure them https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Growth/FAQ#config. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021. - MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T284917 - A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_(WMF) on wiki or in phabricator https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T290888 if any problems are reported.
*Problems*
- There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [2] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/2021-09-13_cirrussearch_restart
*Changes later this week*
- [image: Recurrent item] The new version https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.38/wmf.1 of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.38/Roadmap). - [image: Advanced item] The meta=proofreadpage API https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:ApiHelp/query%2Bproofreadinfo has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T290585
*Future changes*
- The Reply tool https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:DiscussionTools#Replying will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion . [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T262331 - [image: Advanced item] The previously announced https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.37/Deprecation_of_legacy_API_token_parameters change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.
*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/2021/38 • 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.*
wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org