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/2024/42 are available.

*Updates for editors*

- The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Structured_Discussions/Deprecation#Deprecation_timeline are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Structured_Discussions/Deprecation[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T370722 - WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T332342 on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the *hastemplate* and *incategory* keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:TJones_%28WMF%29/Notes/Language_Analyzer_Harmonization_Notes#ASCII-folding/ICU-folding_%28T332342%29 - View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Recently_resolved_community_tasks. For example, EditCheck https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Edit_check was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.

*Updates for technical contributors*

- Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector https://iw.toolforge.org/copyvios will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol/Reviewers#Authentication_is_now_required_for_search_engine_checks_on_Earwig's_Copyvio_Tool - Phabricator https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Phabricator/Help#Using_email has been fixed. [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T356077 - [image: Advanced item] Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Stable_interface_policy/Frontend#What_is_not_stable? and might break at any time. [6] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T375975

*In depth*

- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/MediaWiki_Product_Insights/Reports/September_2024 is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more. - The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_Community_Newsletter/2024/October is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.

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