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/2024/30 are available.

*Feature News*

- Stewards can now globally block https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Global_blocks accounts. Before the change https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T17294 only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Global_locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Trust_and_Safety_Product/Temporary_Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public. - Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Codex. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Skin:MinervaNeue was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T191156 - Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T367329 - Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/07/10/%d9%90addressing-vandalism-with-a-tap-the-journey-of-introducing-the-patrolling-feature-in-the-mobile-app/ highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone. - Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics https://doc.wikimedia.org/generated-data-platform/aqs/analytics-api/reference/commons.html analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [3] https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/07/19/commons-impact-metrics-now-available-via-data-dumps-and-api/

*Project Updates*

- Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Community_Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.

*Learn more*

- Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/07/17/building-towards-a-robust-multilingual-knowledge-ecosystem-for-the-wikimedia-movement/ . - How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/07/09/on-the-value-of-experimentation/ by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Future_Audiences#Objectives_and_Key_Results, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Future_Audiences/Experiments:_conversational/generative_AI and Add a Fact https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Future_Audiences/Experiment:Add_a_Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.

*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/2024/30 • 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.* You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Bulletin.