The latest technical newsletter is now available at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2021/31%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.

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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 • Translate https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2021/31 • 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.*