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Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2020/June

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This is an archive of past discussions from Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2020. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current page.


Tech News: 2020-23

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

  • There is a new beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [1]

Problems

  • There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [2][3][4]
  • The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [5]

Changes later this week

  • You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [6]
  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:30, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Good news everyone!

GIF reaction If you haven't checked the scoop, or noticed the RC, BRS is back! It is so good to have such a valuable contributor back. (I am so glad they are safe during this pandemic.)
•–• 14:49, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2020-24

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

  • Some articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [7]
  • Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them. <b/> is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work. area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect <references /> or <ref />. [8]
  • There is a banner called WikidataPageBanner. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions on MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [9][10]

Changes later this week

  •   You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [11]
  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).

Future changes

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21:11, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25

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

  •   Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

Problems

  • There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [13]
  • Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [14]

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 June. It will be on all wikis from 18 June (calendar).

Future changes

  •   Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [15]
  • The selectors .menu and .vectorMenu will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts. .menu should be replaced by ul. .vectorMenu should be replaced by .vector-menu. [16]

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21:37, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

re The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

--Pi zero (talk) 15:04, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:33, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent take down of propaganda by The Intercept

Step-by-step guide to dismantle lies. Excellent for media literacy and critical thinking: https://theintercept.com/2020/06/16/trumps-new-favorite-channel-oan-keeps-lying-buffalo-protester-assaulted-police/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:33, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

moving unpublished articles to user space?

I recently wrote a few articles that unfortunately didn't make the cut due to time limitations:

Is there a policy against userfying such articles? If not, could they please be restored and moved to my user space? I would like them to be accessible somewhere for posterity's sake, not to mention they can still be published at a later date in the event of a significant update. If it's not possible, then I understand.

Thanks! --Ixfd64 (talk) 01:57, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is a policy against it, in general (with very limited exceptions that don't apply here); it would undermine the focus of the project on publication. Conceptually it falls under the heading of "not a web host". --Pi zero (talk) 03:37, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Pi zero: Thanks for the response. However, I'm curious: do the "very limited exceptions" include updates? If there are new developments that are newsworthy enough, then can we expand on the original unpublished article? Or do we have to write a new one from scratch? --Ixfd64 (talk) 19:05, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Any noteworthy development in a story should merit its own article. Otherwise, Wikinews would just become Wikipedia. This does put a time pressure on publishing a new development, but that's how news goes. --SVTCobra 19:17, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The limited exceptions observed historically have been to do with original reporting. --Pi zero (talk) 19:42, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Thanks for the clarification! --Ixfd64 (talk) 21:17, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2020-26

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

  • There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [17]
  •   Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [18]

Changes later this week

  • The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [19]
  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

  • Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [21]
  • Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [22]

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

  •   The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

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