വിക്കിഗ്രന്ഥശാല:വിക്കി പഞ്ചായത്ത് (സാങ്കേതികം)/പത്തായം 5

Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021

Please consider translating the message.

This event does not have a logo yet, you may help to create one.

Hello,

Hope this email finds you well. We want to inform you about Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021, an online wiki-event to be conducted from 19 – 21 February 2021 during the occasion of International Mother Language Day. Please see the event page here. also Please subscribe to the event-specific newsletter to get regular news and updates.

Get involved

1. Please help in creating a logo for the event.
2. This event has a "Request for Comments" portal, where we are seeking your opinion on different topics. Please consider sharing your comment and expertise.
3. We need help to translate a few messages to different Indian languages. Could you help?

Happy Diwali. On behalf of Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021, with regards, using MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം), sent at 19:37, 13 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your participation and support

Sorry for writing this message in English - feel free to help us translating it

Dear all,
Greetings!
It has been 15 days since Indic Wikisource Proofreadthon 2020 online proofreading contest has started and your communities have been performing extremely well.
However, the 15 days contest comes to end on today, 15 November 2020 at 11.59 PM IST. We thank you for your contribution tirelessly for the last 15 days and we wish you continue the same in future events!

• See more stats at https://indic-wscontest.toolforge.org/contest/

Apart from this contest end date, we will declare the final result on 20th November 2020. We are requesting you, please re-check your contribution once again. This extra-time will be for re-checking the whole contest for admin/reviewer. The contest admin/reviewer has a right revert any proofread/validation as per your language community standard. We accept and respect different language community and their different community proofreading standards. Each Indic Wikisource language community user (including admins or sysops) have the responsibility to maintain their quality of proofreading what you have set.

Thanks for your attention
Jayanta (CIS-A2K)
Wikisource Program officer, CIS-A2K

Tech News: 2020-47

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

• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [1][2]

Changes later this week

• If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed. [3]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 November. It will be on all wikis from 19 November (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.

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

15:37, 16 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021

The 2021 Community Wishlist Survey is now open! This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on 30 നവംബർ, or comment on other proposals to help make them better. The communities will vote on the proposals between 8 ഡിസംബർ and 21 ഡിസംബർ.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals!

SGrabarczuk (WMF)

18:09, 20 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48

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

• Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page. [4]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January. [5]

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

17:19, 23 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Global bot policy proposal: invitation to a Meta discussion

Hello!

I apologize for sending a message in English. Please help translate to your language. According to the list, your wiki project currently is opted in to the global bot policy. Under this policy, bots that fix double redirects or maintain interwiki links are allowed to operate under a global bot flag that is assigned directly by the stewards.

As the Wikimedia projects developed, the need for the current global bot policy decreased, and in the past years, no bots were appointed via that policy. That is mainly given Wikidata were estabilished in 2013, and it is no longer necessary to have dozens of bots that maintain interwiki links.

A proposal was made at Meta-Wiki, which proposes that the stewards will be authorized to determine whether an uncontroversial task may be assigned a global bot flag. The stewards already assign permissions that are more impactful on many wikis, namely, global sysops and global renamers, and I do not think that trust should be an issue. The stewards will assign the permission only to time-proven bots that are already approved at a number of projects, like ListeriaBot.

By this message, I would like to invite you to comment in the global RFC, to voice your opinion about this matter.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,
Martin Urbanec (സംവാദം) 11:49, 24 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Contribution of User:Shashanka Chandra Das

Dear All, @Balasankarc, @Manojk, @Manuspanicker, @Vssun, @Surekha Kamath, @991joseph:, please check the contribution of @Shashanka Chandra Das: of proofreading quality and approved the same for Indic Wikisource Proofreadthon 2020. With Assume good faith, probably he/she may know the Malayalam language to proofread. Kindly give your feedback and comments within 10 days. Jayantanth (സംവാദം) 20:09, 29 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

@Jayantanth: I just checked some of his contributions. He simply saved the pages proofread after adding some formatting. He didn't make any text correction. Also, pages he created using OCR were saved the same way. Adding to that, I can clearly say he didn't even read the text on page or source. Here is one best example. Text on page and source isn't the same. Yet he saved it proofread!--ജോസഫ് 05:25, 30 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Festive Season 2020 edit-a-thon on 5-6 December 2020

Festive Season 2020 edit-a-thon is on 5 – 6 December 2020

Namaskara/Hello,

Hope you are doing well. On 5–6 December, A2K will conduct a mini edit-a-thon on the theme Festivals of India. This edit-a-thon is not restricted to a particular project and editors can contribute to any Wikimedia project on the theme. Please have a look at the event page, and please participate. Some tasks have been suggested, please feel free to expand the list.

Regards. Sent using MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 09:04, 30 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata descriptions changes to be included more often in Recent Changes and Watchlist

Sorry for sending this message in English. Translations are available on this page. Feel free to translate it in more languages!

As you may know, you can include changes coming from Wikidata in your Watchlist and Recent Changes (in your preferences). Until now, this feature didn’t always include changes made on Wikidata descriptions due to the way Wikidata tracks the data used in a given article.

Starting on December 3rd, the Watchlist and Recent Changes will include changes on the descriptions of Wikidata Items that are used in the pages that you watch. This will only include descriptions in the language of your wiki to make sure that you’re only seeing changes that are relevant to your wiki.

This improvement was requested by many users from different projects. We hope that it can help you monitor the changes on Wikidata descriptions that affect your wiki and participate in the effort of improving the data quality on Wikidata for all Wikimedia wikis and beyond.

Note: if you didn’t use the Wikidata watchlist integration feature for a long time, feel free to give it another chance! The feature has been improved since the beginning and the content it displays is more precise and useful than at the beginning of the feature in 2015.

If you encounter any issue or want to provide feedback, feel free to use this Phabricator ticket. Thanks!

Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 14:39, 30 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 December. It will be on all wikis from 3 December (calendar).

Future changes

• The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test. [6][7]
• The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. [8]

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

17:45, 30 നവംബർ 2020 (UTC)

WMWM 2021 Newsletter #1

Namaskar,

You are receiving this notification as you are one of the subscriber of Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 Newsletter. We are sharing with you the first newsletter featuring news, updates and plans related to the event. You can find our first issue here. If you do not want to receive this kind of notification further, you can remove yourself from here.

Sent through MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 17:57, 1 ഡിസംബർ 2020 (UTC)

2020 Coolest Tool Award Ceremony on December 11th

Hello all,

The ceremony of the 2020 Wikimedia Coolest Tool Award will take place virtually on Friday, December 11th, at 17:00 GMT. This award is highlighting tools that have been nominated by contributors to the Wikimedia projects, and the ceremony will be a nice moment to show appreciation to the tools developers and maybe discover new tools!

You will find more information here about the livestream and the discussions channels. Thanks for your attention, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) 10:55, 7 ഡിസംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-50

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

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function. [9][10]

Changes later this week

• Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki. [11][12]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all wikis from 10 December (calendar).

Future changes

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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

16:15, 7 ഡിസംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-51

വിക്കിമീഡിയയുടെ സാങ്കേതിക സമുഹത്തിൽ നിന്നുള്ള ഏറ്റവും പുതിയ ടെക് വാർത്തകൾ ആണിത്. ഈ മാറ്റങ്ങളെക്കുറിച്ച് മറ്റ് ഉപയോക്താക്കളേയും അറിയിക്കുക. എല്ലാ മാറ്റങ്ങളും നിങ്ങളെ ബാധിക്കില്ല. ഇവിടെ വിവർത്തനങ്ങൾ ലഭ്യമാണ്.

സമീപകാല മാറ്റങ്ങൾ

• KaiOS ഫോണുകൾക്കായി ഒരു വിക്കിപീഡിയ ആപ്ലിക്കേഷൻ ഉണ്ട്. സെപ്റ്റംബറിൽ ഇത് ഇന്ത്യയിൽ പുറത്തിറങ്ങി. ഇത് ഇപ്പോൾ മറ്റ് രാജ്യങ്ങളിലും ഡൗൺലോഡ് ചെയ്യാൻ കഴിയും. [13]

ഈ ആഴ്ചയിലെ മാറ്റങ്ങൾ

• മീഡിയവിക്കിയുടെ പുതിയ പതിപ്പ് 15 ഡിസംബർ മുതൽ ടെസ്റ്റ് വിക്കികളിലും MediaWiki.org ലും ലഭിക്കുന്നതായിരിക്കും. 16 ഡിസംബർ മുതൽ വിക്കിപീഡിയ ഇതര വിക്കികളിലും ചില വിക്കിപീഡിയകളിലും ഇത് ലഭിക്കും. 17 ഡിസംബർ ഓടെ എല്ലാ വിക്കികളിലും ഇത് ലഭിക്കുന്നതായിരിക്കും (കലണ്ടർ).

ടെക് വാർത്തകൾ തയാറാക്കിയത്-ടെക് ന്യൂസ് എഴുത്തുകാർ, പോസ്റ്റുചെയ്തത് bot • സംഭാവന ചെയ്യുക • വിവർത്തനം ചെയ്യുക • സഹായം തേടു • അഭിപ്രായങ്ങൾ രേഖപ്പെടുത്തുക • സബ്‌സ്‌ക്രൈബുചെയ്യുക/അൺസബ്‌സ്‌ക്രൈബുചെയ്യുക.

21:34, 14 ഡിസംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021

We invite all registered users to vote on the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. You can vote from now until 21 December for as many different wishes as you want.

In the Survey, wishes for new and improved tools for experienced editors are collected. After the voting, we will do our best to grant your wishes. We will start with the most popular ones.

We, the Community Tech, are one of the Wikimedia Foundation teams. We create and improve editing and wiki moderation tools. What we work on is decided based on results of the Community Wishlist Survey. Once a year, you can submit wishes. After two weeks, you can vote on the ones that you're most interested in. Next, we choose wishes from the survey to work on. Some of the wishes may be granted by volunteer developers or other teams.

You can view and vote all proposals here.

We are waiting for your votes. Thank you!

SGrabarczuk (WMF)

00:52, 15 ഡിസംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 Newsletter #2

Hello,
The second edition of Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 newsletter has been published. We have started a logistics assessment. The objective of the survey is to collect relevant information about the logistics of the Indian Wikimedia community members who are willing to participate in the event. Please spend a few minutes to fill this form.

There are other stories. Please read the full newsletter here.

To subscribe or unsubscribe the newsletter, please visit this page. --MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 01:40, 17 ഡിസംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-52

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.

Recent changes

• The {{citation needed}} template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [14]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

• You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
• Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a <langconvert> tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [15]
• Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [16]

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

20:54, 21 ഡിസംബർ 2020 (UTC)

Submission Open for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021

Sorry for writing this message in English - feel free to help us translating it

Hello,

We are excited to announce that submission for session proposals has been opened for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021, the upcoming online wiki-event which is to be conducted from 19 – 21 February 2021 during the occasion of International Mother Language Day. The submission will remain open until 24 January 2021.

You can submit your session proposals here -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Wikimeet_India_2021/Submissions
Click here to Submit Your session proposals

A program team has been formed recently from highly experienced Wikimedia volunteers within and outside India. It is currently under the process of expansion to include more diversity in the team. The team will evaluate the submissions, accept, modify or reject them, design and finalise the program schedule by the end of January 2021. Details about the team will come soon.

We are sure that you will share some of your most inspiring stories and conduct some really exciting sessions during the event. Best of luck for your submissions!

Regards,
Jayanta
On behalf of WMWM India 2021

Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 Newsletter #3

Hello,
Happy New Year! The third edition of Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 newsletter has been published. We have opened proposals for session submissions. If you want to conduct a session during the event, you can propose it here before 24 Jamuary 2021.

There are other stories. Please read the full newsletter here.

To subscribe or unsubscribe the newsletter, please visit this page. -- MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 08:56, 1 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02

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

• You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [17]
• You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [18]
• Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
  • The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [19]
  • Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [20]
  • When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
• There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [21]
• Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the watchlist to watch will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [22]
• Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [23]
• CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [24]
• There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 January. It will be on all wikis from 14 January (calendar).

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

15:42, 11 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 Newsletter #4

Hello,
Happy New Year! The fourth edition of Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 newsletter has been published. We have opened the registration for participation for this event. If you want to participate in the event, you can register yourself here before 16 February 2021.

There are other stories. Please read the full newsletter here.

To subscribe or unsubscribe the newsletter, please visit this page.MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 16:12, 17 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-03

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).

Future changes

• The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [25]
• MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.

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

16:10, 18 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

[Small wiki toolkits] Understanding the technical challenges

Greetings, hope this message finds you all in the best of your health, and you are staying safe amid the ongoing crisis.

Firstly, to give you context, Small wiki toolkits (SWT) is an initiative to support small wiki communities, to learn and share technical and semi-technical skills to support, maintain, and grow. In India, a series of workshops were conducted last year, and they received good response. They are being continued this year, and the first session is: Understanding the technical challenges of wikis (by Birgit): Brainstorming about technical challenges faced by contributors contributing to language projects related to South Asia. The session is on 24 January 2021, at 18:00 to 19:30 (India time), 18:15 to 19:45 (Nepal time), and 18:30 to 20:00 pm (Bangladesh time).

You can register yourself by visiting this page! This discussion will be crucial to decide topics for future workshops. Community members are also welcome to suggest topics for future workshops anytime at https://w.wiki/t8Q. If you have any questions, please contact us on the talk page here. MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 16:39, 19 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

അഭിപ്രായങ്ങൾക്കുള്ള അപേക്ഷ-Proofreadthon

പ്രിയ സുഹൃത്തുക്കളേ,
ഞാൻ ഇവിടെ ഒരു ചർച്ചയും അഭിപ്രായങ്ങൾക്ക് ഉള്ള അപേക്ഷയും തുടങ്ങിവച്ചിട്ടുണ്ട്. കഴിഞ്ഞ വർഷം നമ്മൾ രണ്ട് Proofread-Edithon മത്സങ്ങൾ നടത്തിയിരുന്നു. ഇൻഡിക് ഭാഷകളിലെ ഗ്രന്ഥശാലകളുടെ ഭാവി തീരുമാനിക്കാൻ താങ്കളുടെ അഭിപ്രായങ്ങളും നിർദ്ദേശങ്ങളും വളരെയധികം ആവശ്യമുണ്ട്. ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് ആണ് എല്ലാവർക്കും മനസ്സിലാകുന്ന ഭാഷ എങ്കിലും താങ്കളുടെ
മാതൃഭാഷയിൽ സംസാരിക്കാൻ മടിക്കേണ്ടതില്ല. 11:58, 23 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-04

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

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). You will not be able to read or edit Wikitech for a short time on 28 January at 09:00 (UTC). [26][27]

Changes later this week

• Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January. [28]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

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

18:31, 25 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Moving Wikimania 2021 to a Virtual Event

Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to your language. നന്ദി!

Wikimania will be a virtual event this year, and hosted by a wide group of community members. Whenever the next in-person large gathering is possible again, the ESEAP Core Organizing Team will be in charge of it. Stay tuned for more information about how you can get involved in the planning process and other aspects of the event. Please read the longer version of this announcement on wikimedia-l.

ESEAP Core Organizing Team, Wikimania Steering Committee, Wikimedia Foundation Events Team, 15:16, 27 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Project Grant Open Call

This is the announcement for the Project Grants program open call that started on January 11, with the submission deadline of February 10, 2021.
This first open call will be focussed on Community Organizing proposals. A second open call focused on research and software proposals is scheduled from February 15 with a submission deadline of March 16, 2021.

For the Round 1 open call, we invite you to propose grant applications that fall under community development and organizing (offline and online) categories. Project Grant funds are available to support individuals, groups, and organizations to implement new experiments and proven ideas, from organizing a better process on your wiki, coordinating a campaign or editathon series to providing other support for community building. We offer the following resources to help you plan your project and complete a grant proposal:

• Weekly proposals clinics via Zoom during the Open Call. Join us for #Upcoming_Proposal_Clinics|real-time discussions with Program Officers and select thematic experts and get live feedback about your Project Grants proposal. We’ll answer questions and help you make your proposal better. We also offer these support pages to help you build your proposal:
• Video tutorials for writing a strong application
  
• General planning page for Project Grants
  
• Program guidelines and criteria
  

Program officers are also available to offer individualized proposal support upon request. Contact us if you would like feedback or more information.

We are excited to see your grant ideas that will support our community and make an impact on the future of Wikimedia projects. Put your idea into motion, and submit your proposal by February 10, 2021!

Please feel free to get in touch with questions about getting started with your grant application, or about serving on the Project Grants Committee. Contact us at projectgrantsഫലകം:Atwikimedia.org. Please help us translate this message to your local language. MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 08:01, 28 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

[Small wiki toolkits] Upcoming bots workshops: Understanding community needs

Greetings, as you may be aware that as part of Small wiki toolkits - South Asia, we conduct a workshop every month on technical topics to help small wikis. In February, we are planning on organizing a workshop on the topic of bots. Bots are automated tools that carry out repetitive, tedious and mundane tasks. To help us structure the workshop, we would like understand the needs of the community in this regard. Please let us know any of

• a) repetitive/mundane tasks that you generally do, especially for maintenance
• b) tasks you think can be automated on your wiki.

Please let us your inputs on workshops talk page, before 7 February 2021. You can also let me know your inputs by emailing me or pinging me here in this section. Please note that you do not need to have any programming knowledge for this workshop or to give input. Regards, KCVelaga 13:45, 28 ജനുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Call for feedback: WMF Community Board seats & Office hours tomorrow

(sorry for posting in English)

Dear Wikimedians,

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is organizing a call for feedback about community selection processes between February 1 and March 14. Below you will find the problem statement and various ideas from the Board to address it. We are offering multiple channels for questions and feedback. With the help of a team of community facilitators, we are organizing multiple conversations with multiple groups in multiple languages.

During this call for feedback we publish weekly reports and we draft the final report that will be delivered to the Board. With the help of this report, the Board will approve the next steps to organize the selection of six community seats in the upcoming months. Three of these seats are due for renewal and three are new, recently approved.

Participate in this call for feedback and help us form a more diverse and better performing Board of Trustees!

Problems: While the Wikimedia Foundation and the movement have grown about five times in the past ten years, the Board’s structure and processes have remained basically the same. As the Board is designed today, we have a problem of capacity, performance, and lack of representation of the movement’s diversity. This problem was identified in the Board’s 2019 governance review, along with recommendations for how to address it.

To solve the problem of capacity, we have agreed to increase the Board size to a maximum of 16 trustees (it was 10). Regarding performance and diversity, we have approved criteria to evaluate new Board candidates. What is missing is a process to promote community candidates that represent the diversity of our movement and have the skills and experience to perform well on the Board of a complex global organization.

Our current processes to select individual volunteer and affiliate seats have some limitations. Direct elections tend to favor candidates from the leading language communities, regardless of how relevant their skills and experience might be in serving as a Board member, or contributing to the ability of the Board to perform its specific responsibilities. It is also a fact that the current processes have favored volunteers from North America and Western Europe. Meanwhile, our movement has grown larger and more complex, our technical and strategic needs have increased, and we have new and more difficult policy challenges around the globe. As well, our Movement Strategy recommendations urge us to increase our diversity and promote perspectives from other regions and other social backgrounds.

In the upcoming months, we need to renew three community seats and appoint three more community members in the new seats. What process can we all design to promote and choose candidates that represent our movement and are prepared with the experience, skills, and insight to perform as trustees?

Ideas: The Board has discussed several ideas to overcome the problems mentioned above. Some of these ideas could be taken and combined, and some discarded. Other ideas coming from the call for feedback could be considered as well. The ideas are:

• Ranked voting system. Complete the move to a single transferable vote system, already used to appoint affiliate-selected seats, which is designed to best capture voters’ preferences.
• Quotas. Explore the possibility of introducing quotas to ensure certain types of diversity in the Board (details about these quotas to be discussed in this call for feedback).
• Call for types of skills and experiences. When the Board makes a new call for candidates, they would specify types of skills and experiences especially sought.
• Vetting of candidates. Potential candidates would be assessed using the Trustee Evaluation Form and would be confirmed or not as eligible candidates.
• Board-delegated selection committee. The community would nominate candidates that this committee would assess and rank using the Trustee Evaluation Form. This committee would have community elected members and Board appointed members.
• Community-elected selection committee. The community would directly elect the committee members. The committee would assess and rank candidates using the Trustee Evaluation Form.
• Election of confirmed candidates. The community would vote for community nominated candidates that have been assessed and ranked using the Trustee Evaluation Form. The Board would appoint the most voted candidates.
• Direct appointment of confirmed candidates. After the selection committee produces a ranked list of community nominated candidates, the Board would appoint the top-ranked candidates directly.

Call for feedback: The call for feedback runs from February 1 until the end of March 14. We are looking for a broad representation of opinions. We are interested in the reasoning and the feelings behind your opinions. In a conversation like this one, details are important. We want to support good conversations where everyone can share and learn from others. We want to hear from those who understand Wikimedia governance well and are already active in movement conversations. We also want to hear from people who do not usually contribute to discussions. Especially those who are active in their own roles, topics, languages or regions, but usually not in, say, a call for feedback on Meta.

You can participate by joining the Telegram chat group, and giving feedback on any of the talk pages on Meta-Wiki. We are welcoming the organisation of conversations in any language and in any channel. If you want us to organize a conversation or a meeting for your wiki project or your affiliate, please write to me. I will also reach out to communities and affiliates to soon have focused group discussions.

An office hour is also happening tomorrow at 12 pm (UTC) to discuss this topic. Access link will be available 15 minutes before the scheduled time (please watch the office hour page for the link, and I will also share on mailing lists). In case you are not able to make it, please don't worry, there will be more discussions and meetings in the next few weeks.

Regards, KCVelaga (WMF) 16:30, 1 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-05

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

• IPv6 addresses were written in lowercase letters in diffs. This caused dead links since Special:Contributions only accepted uppercase letters for the IPs. This has been fixed. [29]

Changes later this week

• You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [30]
• Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background. [31][32]
• Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like 1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55 as well as the 1.2.3.4/27 syntax for IP ranges. [33]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).

Future changes

• Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more. [34][35]
• Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be 185.15.56.1. This will happen on February 8. You can read more.

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

22:38, 1 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Research Needs Assessment for Indian Language Wikimedia (ILW) Projects

Dear All,

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) team at CIS has been engaged with work on research on Indian language Wikimedia projects as part of the APG since 2019. This year, following up on our learnings from work so far, we are undertaking a needs assessment exercise to understand a) the awareness about research within Indian language Wikimedia communities, and identify existing projects if any, and b) to gather community inputs on knowledge gaps and priority areas of focus, and the role of research in addressing the same.

We would therefore request interested community members to respond to the needs assessment questionnaire here:
Click here to respond

Please respond in any Indian language as suitable. The deadline for this exercise is February 20, 2021. For any queries do write to us on the CIS-A2K research talk page here MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 17:08, 3 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

• Hello, thanks to those who have submitted responses to this needs assessment. We want to inform you that the deadline to share your response has been extended till 5 March 2021. Click here to respond.Thanks. BhuvanaMeenakshi(CIS-A2K) (സംവാദം) 07:04, 24 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 Newsletter #5

Hello,
Greetings!! The fifth edition of Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 newsletter has been published. We have opened the registration for participation for this event. If you want to participate in the event, you can register yourself here before 16 February 2021.

There are other stories. Please read the full newsletter here.

To subscribe or unsubscribe the newsletter, please visit this page.
MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 17:49, 3 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 Newsletter #5

Hello,
Greetings!! The fifth edition of Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021 newsletter has been published. We have opened the registration for participation for this event. If you want to participate in the event, you can register yourself here before 16 February 2021.

There are other stories. Please read the full newsletter here.

To subscribe or unsubscribe the newsletter, please visit this page.
MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 17:53, 3 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore 2021 is back!

Please help translate to your language

You are humbly invited to participate in the Wiki Loves Folklore 2021 an international photography contest organized on Wikimedia Commons to document folklore and intangible cultural heritage from different regions, including, folk creative activities and many more. It is held every year from the 1st till the 28th of February.

You can help in enriching the folklore documentation on Commons from your region by taking photos, audios, videos, and submitting them in this commons contest.

Please support us in translating the project page and a banner message to help us spread the word in your native language.

Kind regards,

Wiki loves Folklore International Team

MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 13:25, 6 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

IMPORTANT: Admin activity review

Hello. A policy regarding the removal of "advanced rights" (administrator, bureaucrat, interface administrator, etc.) was adopted by global community consensus in 2013. According to this policy, the stewards are reviewing administrators' activity on all Wikimedia Foundation wikis with no inactivity policy. To the best of our knowledge, your wiki does not have a formal process for removing "advanced rights" from inactive accounts. This means that the stewards will take care of this according to the admin activity review.

We have determined that the following users meet the inactivity criteria (no edits and no logged actions for more than 2 years):

1. Vssun (administrator)

These users will receive a notification soon, asking them to start a community discussion if they want to retain some or all of their rights. If the users do not respond, then their advanced rights will be removed by the stewards.

However, if you as a community would like to create your own activity review process superseding the global one, want to make another decision about these inactive rights holders, or already have a policy that we missed, then please notify the stewards on Meta-Wiki so that we know not to proceed with the rights review on your wiki. Thanks, --علاء (സംവാദം) 18:20, 7 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-06

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

• The Wikipedia app for Android now has watchlists and talk pages in the app. [36]

Changes later this week

• You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like. The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis. [37]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).

Future changes

• When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones. [38][39]
• Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [40]
• Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead. [41]

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

17:42, 8 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-07

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 were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned. [42][43]
• Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [44]

Changes later this week

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

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

17:56, 15 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

[Small wiki toolkits] Bot workshop: 27 February

As part of the Small wiki toolkits (South Asia) initiative, we are happy to announce the second workshop of this year. The workshop will be on "bots", and we will be learning how to perform tasks on wiki by running automated scripts, about Pywikibot and how it can be used to help with repetitive processes and editing, and the Pywikibot community, learning resources and community venues. Please note that you do not need any technical experience to attend the workshop, only some experience contributing to Wikimedia projects is enough.

Details of the workshop are as follows:

• Date: 27 February
• Timings: 15:30 to 17:00 (IST), 15:45 to 17:15 (NPT), 16:00 to 17:30 (BDT)
• Meeting link: https://meet.google.com/vri-zvfv-rci | click to add your Google Calendar.
• Trainer: Joaquin Oltra Hernandez

Please sign-up on the registration page at https://w.wiki/yYg.

Note: We are providing modest internet stipends to attend the workshops, for those who need and wouldn't otherwise be able to attend. More information on this can be found on the registration page.

Regards, Small wiki toolkits - South Asia organizers, 10:11, 18 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-08

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

• The visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images. [45]
• The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [46]

Problems

• Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly. [47]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 February. It will be on all wikis from 25 February (calendar).

Future changes

• There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.

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

---

00:17, 23 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-09

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

• Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
• A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.

Problems

• There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [48]
• Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [49]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 March. It will be on all wikis from 4 March (calendar).

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

---

19:08, 1 മാർച്ച് 2021 (UTC)

Wikifunctions logo contest

Hello. Please help to choose a design concept for the logo of the new Wikifunctions wiki. Voting starts today and will be open for 2 weeks. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-Wiki. നന്ദി! --Quiddity (WMF)

01:50, 2 മാർച്ച് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-10

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

• Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
• Flagged revisions now give admins the review right. [50]
• When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article. [51]

Problems

• Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing. [52]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (calendar).
• The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions. [53]

Future changes

• There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
• Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown. [54][55]
• New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.

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

17:51, 8 മാർച്ച് 2021 (UTC)

WMF Community Board seats: Upcoming panel discussions

As a result of the first three weeks of the call for feedback on WMF Community Board seats, three topics turned out to be the focus of the discussion. Additionally, a new idea has been introduced by a community member recently: Candidates resources. We would like to pursue these focus topics and the new idea appropriately, discussing them in depth and collecting new ideas and fresh approaches by running four panels in the next week. Every panel includes four members from the movement covering many regions, backgrounds and experiences, along with a trustee of the Board. Every panel will last 45 minutes, followed by a 45-minute open mic discussion, where everyone’s free to ask questions or to contribute to the further development of the panel's topics.

• Skills for Board work - Friday, March 12, 18:00 UTC
• Support for candidates - Saturday, March 13, 13:30 UTC
• Board - Global Council - Hubs - Saturday, March 13, 16:00 UTC
• Regional diversity - Sunday, March 14, 13:00 UTC

To counter spamming, the meeting link will be updated on the Meta-Wiki pages and also on the Telegram announcements channel, 15 minutes before the official start.

Let me know if you have any questions, KCVelaga (WMF), 08:36, 10 മാർച്ച് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-11

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

• Wikis that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
• Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more. [56]

Problems

• Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [57][58]
• You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
• You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [59]

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

23:22, 15 മാർച്ച് 2021 (UTC)

[Small wiki toolkits] Workshop on "Debugging/fixing template errors" - 27 March

As part of the Small wiki toolkits (South Asia) initiative, we are happy to announce the third workshop of this year. The workshop will be on "Debugging/fixing template errors", and we will learn how to address the common template errors on wikis (related but not limited to importing templates, translating them, Lua, etc.).

Details of the workshop are as follows:

• Date: 27 March
• Timings: 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm (IST), 15:45 to 17:15 (NPT), 16:00 to 17:30 (BST)
• Meeting link: https://meet.google.com/cyo-mnrd-ryj | click here to add this to your Google Calendar.
• Trainer: Jay Prakash

Please sign-up on the registration page at https://w.wiki/36Sg.

prepare for the workshop in advance, we would like to gather all kinds of template errors (related but not limited to importing templates, translating them, Lua, etc.) that you face while working with templates on your wiki. If you plan to attend the workshop and would like your common issues related to dealing with templates addressed, share your issues using this Google Form, or under this section on the workshop's talk page. You can see examples of such errors at this category.

Note: We are providing modest internet stipends to attend the workshops, for those who need and wouldn't otherwise be able to attend. More information on this can be found on the registration page.

Regards, Small wiki toolkits - South Asia organizers, 07:01, 16 മാർച്ച് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-12

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 Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
• The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "ചർച്ചാ ഉപകരണങ്ങൾ" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 മാർച്ച് at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
• Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [60]

Future changes

• Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [61][62]
• Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from wg* to mw.config. wg* will soon no longer work. [63]

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

16:53, 22 മാർച്ച് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-13

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 very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [64]
• IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to irc.wikimedia.org and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [65]

Problems

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [66]
• Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [67][68]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).

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

17:30, 29 മാർച്ച് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-14

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

• Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [69]

Changes later this week

• The citoid API will use for example 2010-12-XX instead of 2010-12 for dates with a month but no days. This is because 2010-12 could be confused with 2010-2012 instead of December 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [70]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).

Future changes

• PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.

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

19:41, 5 ഏപ്രിൽ 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct – 2021 consultations

Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2

Please help translate to your language

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a universal baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire Wikimedia movement and all its projects. The project is currently in Phase 2, outlining clear enforcement pathways. You can read more about the whole project on its project page.

Drafting Committee: Call for applications

The Wikimedia Foundation is recruiting volunteers to join a committee to draft how to make the code enforceable. Volunteers on the committee will commit between 2 and 6 hours per week from late April through July and again in October and November. It is important that the committee be diverse and inclusive, and have a range of experiences, including both experienced users and newcomers, and those who have received or responded to, as well as those who have been falsely accused of harassment.

To apply and learn more about the process, see Universal Code of Conduct/Drafting committee.

2021 community consultations: Notice and call for volunteers / translators

From 5 April – 5 May 2021 there will be conversations on many Wikimedia projects about how to enforce the UCoC. We are looking for volunteers to translate key material, as well as to help host consultations on their own languages or projects using suggested key questions. If you are interested in volunteering for either of these roles, please contact us in whatever language you are most comfortable.

To learn more about this work and other conversations taking place, see Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultations.

-- Xeno (WMF) (talk) 22:19, 5 ഏപ്രിൽ 2021 (UTC)

Global bot policy changes

Hello!

I apologize for sending a message in English. Please help translate to your language. According to the list, your wiki project is currently opted in to the global bot policy. As such, I want to let you know about some changes that were made after the global RfC was closed.

• Global bots are now subject to a 2 week discussion, and it'll be publicized via a MassMessage list, available at Bot policy/New global bot discussion on Meta. Please subscribe yourself or your wiki if you are interested in new global bots proposals.
• For a bot to be considered for approval, it must demonstrate it is welcomed in multiple projects, and a good way to do that is to have the bot flag on at least 5 wikis for a single task.
• The bot operator should make sure to adhere to the wiki's preference as related to the use of the bot flag (i.e., if a wiki doesn't want a bot to use the flag as it edits, that should be followed).

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,
—Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 18:48, 6 ഏപ്രിൽ 2021 (UTC)

[Small wiki toolkits] Workshop on "Designing responsive main pages" - 30 April (Friday)

As part of the Small wiki toolkits (South Asia) initiative, we would like to announce the third workshop of this year on “Designing responsive main pages”. The workshop will take place on 30 April (Friday). During this workshop, we will learn to design main pages of a wiki to be responsive. This will allow the pages to be mobile-friendly, by adjusting the width and the height according to various screen sizes. Participants are expected to have a good understanding of Wikitext/markup and optionally basic CSS.

Details of the workshop are as follows:

• Date: 30 April (Friday)
• Timings: 18:00 to 19:30 (India / Sri Lanka), 18:15 to 19:45 (Nepal), 18:30 to 20:00 (Bangladesh)
• Meeting link: https://meet.google.com/zfs-qfvj-hts | to add this to your Google Calendar, please use click here.

If you are interested, please sign-up on the registration page at https://w.wiki/3CGv.

Note: We are providing modest internet stipends to attend the workshops, for those who need and wouldn't otherwise be able to attend. More information on this can be found on the registration page.

Regards, Small wiki toolkits - South Asia organizers, 15:51, 19 ഏപ്രിൽ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-16

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

• Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [71][72]
• If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [73][74][75]
• Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before. [76]
• The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.

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

16:48, 19 ഏപ്രിൽ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-17

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

• Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [77][78][79]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (calendar).

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

21:24, 26 ഏപ്രിൽ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-18

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

• Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.

Problems

• The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [80]
• Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [81]

Changes later this week

• Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [82][83]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Future changes

• The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [84]

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

15:43, 3 മേയ് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-19

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).

Future changes

• You can see what participants plan to work on at the online Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.

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

15:10, 10 മേയ് 2021 (UTC)

Call for Election Volunteers: 2021 WMF Board elections

Hello all,

Based on an extensive call for feedback earlier this year, the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees announced the plan for the 2021 Board elections. Apart from improving the technicalities of the process, the Board is also keen on improving active participation from communities in the election process. During the last elections, Voter turnout in prior elections was about 10% globally. It was better in communities with volunteer election support. Some of those communities reached over 20% voter turnout. We know we can get more voters to help assess and promote the best candidates, but to do that, we need your help.

We are looking for volunteers to serve as Election Volunteers. Election Volunteers should have a good understanding of their communities. The facilitation team sees Election Volunteers as doing the following:

• Promote the election and related calls to action in community channels.
• With the support from facilitators, organize discussions about the election in their communities.
• Translate “a few” messages for their communities

Check out more details about Election Volunteers and add your name next to the community you will support in this table. We aim to have at least one Election Volunteer, even better if there are two or more sharing the work. If you have any queries, please ping me under this message or email me. Regards, KCVelaga (WMF) 05:21, 12 മേയ് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-20

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 toolbar in the Reply tool. It works in the wikitext source mode. You can enable it in your preferences. [85] [86] [87]
• Wikimedia mailing lists are being moved to Mailman 3. This is a newer version. For the character encoding to work it will change from UTF-8 to utf8mb3. [88][89]
• An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoid API would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first. [90]

Changes later this week

• MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [91]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).

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

13:49, 17 മേയ് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-21

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

• The Wikimedia movement has been using IRC on a network called Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have decided to move to the new Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia discussions about this.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).

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

17:07, 24 മേയ് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-22

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 was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday. [92]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

17:05, 31 മേയ് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-23

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (calendar).

Future changes

• The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future. [93][94][95]
• Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages. [96]
• The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters. [97][98]

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

20:02, 7 ജൂൺ 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 1

Universal Code of Conduct News
Issue 1, June 2021Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the first issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code, and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

Please note, this is the first issue of UCoC Newsletter which is delivered to all subscribers and projects as an announcement of the initiative. If you want the future issues delivered to your talk page, village pumps, or any specific pages you find appropriate, you need to subscribe here.

You can help us by translating the newsletter issues in your languages to spread the news and create awareness of the new conduct to keep our beloved community safe for all of us. Please add your name here if you want to be informed of the draft issue to translate beforehand. Your participation is valued and appreciated.

• Affiliate consultations – Wikimedia affiliates of all sizes and types were invited to participate in the UCoC affiliate consultation throughout March and April 2021. (continue reading)
• 2021 key consultations – The Wikimedia Foundation held enforcement key questions consultations in April and May 2021 to request input about UCoC enforcement from the broader Wikimedia community. (continue reading)
• Roundtable discussions – The UCoC facilitation team hosted two 90-minute-long public roundtable discussions in May 2021 to discuss UCoC key enforcement questions. More conversations are scheduled. (continue reading)
• Phase 2 drafting committee – The drafting committee for the phase 2 of the UCoC started their work on 12 May 2021. Read more about their work. (continue reading)
• Diff blogs – The UCoC facilitators wrote several blog posts based on interesting findings and insights from each community during local project consultation that took place in the 1st quarter of 2021. (continue reading)

--MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 23:06, 11 ജൂൺ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-24

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

• Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [99]
• Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [100]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
• German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [101]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [102][103]

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

20:26, 14 ജൂൺ 2021 (UTC)

Wikimania 2021: Individual Program Submissions

Dear all,

Wikimania 2021 will be hosted virtually for the first time in the event's 15-year history. Since there is no in-person host, the event is being organized by a diverse group of Wikimedia volunteers that form the Core Organizing Team (COT) for Wikimania 2021.

Event Program - Individuals or a group of individuals can submit their session proposals to be a part of the program. There will be translation support for sessions provided in a number of languages. See more information here.

Below are some links to guide you through;

• Program Submissions
• Session Submission Guidelines
• FAQ

Please note that the deadline for submission is 18th June 2021.

Announcements- To keep up to date with the developments around Wikimania, the COT sends out weekly updates. You can view them in the Announcement section here.

Office Hour - If you are left with questions, the COT will be hosting some office hours (in multiple languages), in multiple time-zones, to answer any programming questions that you might have. Details can be found here.

Best regards,

MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 04:19, 16 ജൂൺ 2021 (UTC)

On behalf of Wikimania 2021 Core Organizing Team

Candidates from South Asia for 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board Elections

Dear Wikimedians,

As you may be aware, the Wikimedia Foundation has started elections for community seats on the Board of Trustees. While previously there were three community seats on the Board, with the expansion of the Board to sixteen seats last year, community seats have been increased to eight, four of which are up for election this year.

In the last fifteen years of the Board's history, there were only a few candidates from the South Asian region who participated in the elections, and hardly anyone from the community had a chance to serve on the Board. While there are several reasons for this, this time, the Board and WMF are very keen on encouraging and providing support to potential candidates from historically underrepresented regions. This is a good chance to change the historical problem of representation from the South Asian region in high-level governance structures.

Ten days after the call for candidates began, there aren't any candidates from South Asia yet, there are still 10 days left! I would like to ask community members to encourage other community members, whom you think would be potential candidates for the Board. While the final decision is completely up to the person, it can be helpful to make sure that they are aware of the election and the call for candidates.

Let me know if you need any information or support.

Thank you, KCVelaga (WMF) 10:03, 19 ജൂൺ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-25

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

• The otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters. [104]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [105]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).

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

15:49, 21 ജൂൺ 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #2

ഇത് മറ്റൊരു ഭാഷയിൽ വായിക്കുക. • ഈ ബഹുഭാഷാവാർത്താക്കുറിപ്പിൻറെ സബ്‌സ്ക്രിപ്ഷൻ പട്ടിക

മറുപടി ടൂളുകളുള്ള പുതുമുഖങ്ങളുടെ അഭിപ്രായങ്ങൾ ടോക് പേജുകളിൽ വിജയകരമായി കാണപ്പെടുന്നു.

Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.

പ്രധാന ഫലങ്ങൾ:

• മറുപടി ടൂളുകളുള്ള, ഡീഫോൾട്ടായി പ്രവേശനാനുവാദമുള്ള പുതിയ എഡിറ്റർമാർ ഒരു ടോക് പേജിൽ അഭിപ്രായങ്ങൾ രേഖപ്പെടുത്തേണ്ടതായിട്ടുണ്ട്.
• The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.

ഈ ടൂളുകൾ സഹായകമാണെന്നുള്ള ആത്മവിശ്വാസം എഡിറ്റിംഗ് ടീമിനുണ്ടാക്കാൻ ഈ ഫലങ്ങൾ സഹായിക്കും.

പ്രതീക്ഷകളോടെ

The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.

The next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.

You can turn on "ചർച്ചാ ഉപകരണങ്ങൾ" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (സംവാദം)

14:15, 24 ജൂൺ 2021 (UTC)

Server switch

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, 29 June 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday 30 June).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the week of June 28. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) 01:19, 27 ജൂൺ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-26

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

Recent changes

• Wikis with the Growth features now can configure Growth features directly on their wiki. This uses the new special page Special:EditGrowthConfig. [106]
• Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page. [107]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [108][109]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
• A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [110][111]

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

16:32, 28 ജൂൺ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-27

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

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.

Recent changes

• AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [112]

Problems

• InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org. [113]

Changes later this week

• The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [114][115]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [116]

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

17:33, 5 ജൂലൈ 2021 (UTC)

Wikisource Satisfaction Survey 2021

Hello!

Apologies for writing in English. Please help translate to your language

In the past year, there has been a lot of changes to Wikisource features and tools. This was done by the Community Tech team at the Wikimedia Foundation, grantees funded by the Foundation or through projects like Google Summer of Code. We would like to understand what you feel about the changes. Tell us what you think about such tools as the Wikisource Pagelist Widget or the new Ebook Export tool.

Take the survey in English, French, Spanish, Polish, Hindi or Punjabi. The deadline is 25th July 2021.

This survey will be conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement (English, Spanish, French, Polish, Hindi and Punjabi).

If you prefer to send your answers via email, copy the text of the survey and send to sgill@wikimedia.org.

If you have any questions or feedback about the survey, write to me at sgill@wikimedia.org.

നന്ദി! SGill (WMF) 22:30, 16 ജൂലൈ 2021 (UTC)

[Wikimedia Foundation elections 2021] Candidates meet with South Asia + ESEAP communities

Dear Wikimedians,

As you may already know, the 2021 Board of Trustees elections are from 4 August 2021 to 17 August 2021. Members of the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to elect four candidates to a three-year term.

After a three-week-long Call for Candidates, there are 20 candidates for the 2021 election. This event is for community members of South Asian and ESEAP communities to know the candidates and interact with them.

• The event will be on 31 July 2021 (Saturday), and the timings are:

• India & Sri Lanka: 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm
• Bangladesh: 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm
• Nepal: 6:15 pm to 8:45 pm
• Afghanistan: 5:00 pm to 7:30 pm
• Pakistan & Maldives: 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm

• For registration and other details, please visit the event page at m: Wikimedia Foundation elections/2021/Meetings/South Asia + ESEAP

KCVelaga (WMF), 10:00, 19 ജൂലൈ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-29

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

• The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [117][118]
• Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [119]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.

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

15:31, 19 ജൂലൈ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-30

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

• A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).

Future changes

• If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preference Enable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.

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

21:11, 26 ജൂലൈ 2021 (UTC)

ഇൻഡിക് വിക്കിഗ്രന്ഥശാല തെറ്റുതിരുത്തൽ യജ്ഞം ആഗസ്ത് 2021

കഴിഞ്ഞ വർഷത്തെ പരിപാടികൾക്ക് താങ്കൾ നൽകിയ പിന്തുണയ്ക്കും പങ്കാളിത്തത്തിനും നന്ദി അറിയിക്കട്ടേ. നമ്മുടെ ഇന്ത്യൻ ക്ലാസിക് സാഹിത്യത്തെ ഡിജിറ്റൽ ഫോർമാറ്റിൽ സമ്പുഷ്ടമാക്കുന്നതിൻറെ ഭാഗമായി സിഐഎസ്-എ 2 കെയുടെ ആഭിമുഖ്യത്തിൽ ഈ വർഷവും ഓൺലൈൻ ഇൻഡിക് വിക്കിഗ്രന്ഥശാല തെറ്റുതിരുത്തൽ യജ്ഞം 2021 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് മാസത്തിൽ നടത്തുന്നു.

ഇതിനെന്തൊക്കെ വേണം

• ബുക്ക്‌ലിസ്റ്റ്: പ്രൂഫ് റീഡ് ചെയ്യേണ്ട പുസ്തകങ്ങളുടെ ഒരു ശേഖരം. നിങ്ങളുടെ ഭാഷയിൽ നിന്ന് കുറച്ച് പുസ്തകം കണ്ടെത്താൻ ദയവായി ഞങ്ങളെ സഹായിക്കുക. യൂണിക്കോഡ് ഫോർമാറ്റ് ചെയ്ത വാചകം ഉള്ള ഏതെങ്കിലും മൂന്നാം കക്ഷി വെബ്‌സൈറ്റിലെ പുസ്തകമാവരുത്.. ദയവായി പുസ്തകങ്ങൾ ശേഖരിച്ച് ഞങ്ങളുടെ ഇവന്റ് പേജിൽ പുസ്തക പട്ടിക ചേർക്കുമല്ലോ. ഇവിടെ വിവരിച്ചിരിക്കുന്ന പകർപ്പവകാശ മാർഗ്ഗനിർദ്ദേശം പാലിക്കാൻ പ്രത്യേകം ശ്രദ്ധിക്കുമല്ലോ. പുസ്തകം കണ്ടെത്തിയ ശേഷം, പുസ്തകത്തിന്റെ പേജുകൾ <pagelist/> എന്ന രീതിയിൽ പരിശോധിച്ച് സൃഷ്ടിക്കേണ്ടതാണ്.

• പങ്കെടുക്കുന്നവർ: ഈ പരിപാടിയിൽ പങ്കെടുക്കാൻ പങ്കെടുക്കുന്നവരുടെ വിഭാഗത്തിൽ ദയവായി നിങ്ങളുടെ പേര് Participants ചേർക്കുക.
• നിരൂപകൻ: ദയവായി ഈ തെറ്റ്തിരുത്തൽ യജ്ഞത്തിൻറെ അഡ്മിനിസ്ട്രേറ്റർ/റിവ്യൂവർ എന്ന നിലയിൽ സ്വയം ഉത്തരവാദിത്തമേറ്റെടുത്ത് നിങ്ങളുടെ നിർദ്ദേശം ഇവിടെ ചേർക്കുക. അഡ്മിനിസ്ട്രേറ്റർ / അവലോകകർ എന്നിവർക്കും ഈ തെറ്റ്തിരുത്ത യജ്ഞത്തിൽ പങ്കെടുക്കാം.
• സമൂഹ മാധ്യമങ്ങളിലെ പ്രചാരണം: ദയവായി എല്ലാ സോഷ്യൽ മീഡിയ ചാനലുകളിലേക്കും ഈ പരിപാടിയെ സംബന്ധിച്ച വാർത്തകൾ പ്രചരിപ്പിക്കാൻ എല്ലാ ഇന്ത്യൻ വിക്കിഗ്രന്ഥശാല കമ്മ്യൂണിറ്റി അംഗങ്ങളോടും ഞാൻ വിനീതമായി അഭ്യർത്ഥിക്കുന്നു, കൂടാതെ നിങ്ങളുടെ സ്വന്തം ഗ്രന്ഥശാല സൈറ്റ് അറിയിപ്പും ഉപയോഗിക്കുമല്ലോ.

• അവാർഡുകൾ: ഈ പരിപാടിയുടെ ഭാഗമായി ചില സമ്മാനങ്ങൾ നൽകാനും CIS-A2K ആലോചിക്കുന്നു.
• സാധൂകരിച്ചതും തെറ്റുതിരുത്തിയ പേജുകളും എണ്ണാനുള്ള ഒരു മാർഗ്ഗം: ഇൻഡിക് വിക്കിസോഴ്‌സ് മത്സര ഉപകരണങ്ങൾ Indic Wikisource Contest Tools
• സമയം: 2021ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 15 മുതൽ 2021 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 31 വരെ 23.59 (IST)
• നിയമങ്ങളും മാർ‌ഗ്ഗനിർ‌ദ്ദേശങ്ങളും: അടിസ്ഥാന നിയമങ്ങളും മാർ‌ഗ്ഗരേഖകളും ഇവിടെ വിവരിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നു.
• സ്കോറിംഗ്: വിശദാംശങ്ങൾ സ്കോറിംഗ് രീതി ഇവിടെ വിവരിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നു.

ഈ വർഷം നിരവധി ഇൻഡിക് വിക്കിസ്രോതസ്സുകൾ വീട്ടിൽ ലോക്ക്ഡൗൺ ആയിരിക്കുമെന്ന് ഞാൻ ശരിക്കും പ്രതീക്ഷിക്കുന്നു.

ഈ വർഷം വിക്കിഗ്രന്ഥശാല ഉള്ളടക്കം കൂടുതൽ സമ്പുഷ്ടമാകുമെന്ന പ്രതീക്ഷയോടെ,
Jayanta (CIS-A2K)
വിക്കിഗ്രന്ഥശാല പ്രോഗ്രാം ഓഫീസർ, CIS-A2K

Tech News: 2021-31

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

• 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. 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.
• Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network, 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. [120][121]

Changes later this week

• When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [122]
• The new version 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).

Future changes

• The team of the Wikipedia app for 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. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
• The Beta Feature for ചർച്ചാ ഉപകരണങ്ങൾ will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections 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).

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

20:47, 2 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

2021 WMF Board election postponed until August 18th

Hello all,

We are reaching out to you today regarding the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election. This election was due to open on August 4th. Due to some technical issues with SecurePoll, the election must be delayed by two weeks. This means we plan to launch the election on August 18th, which is the day after Wikimania concludes. For information on the technical issues, you can see the Phabricator ticket.

We are truly sorry for this delay and hope that we will get back on schedule on August 18th. We are in touch with the Elections Committee and the candidates to coordinate the next steps. We will update the Board election Talk page and Telegram channel as we know more.

Thanks for your patience, KCVelaga (WMF), 03:49, 3 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-32

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

• You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [123]

Changes later this week

• The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
• The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [124]
• Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [125]

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

16:21, 9 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-33

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

• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [126]

Problems

• There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [127][128][129]

Changes later this week

• A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [130]
• Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
• In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [131]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

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

19:27, 16 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct - Enforcement draft guidelines review

The Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee would like comments about the enforcement draft guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). This review period is planned for 17 August 2021 through 17 October 2021.

These guidelines are not final but you can help move the progress forward. The committee will revise the guidelines based upon community input.

Comments can be shared in any language on the draft review talk page and multiple other venues. Community members are encouraged to organize conversations in their communities.

There are planned live discussions about the UCoC enforcement draft guidelines:

Wikimania 2021 session (recorded 16 August)

Conversation hours - 24 August, 31 August, 7 September @ 03:00 UTC & 14:00 UTC

Roundtable calls - 18 September @ 03:00 UTC & 15:00 UTC

Summaries of discussions will be posted every two weeks here.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Xeno (WMF) 22:46, 17 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Election is open: 18 - 31 August 2021

Voting for the 2021 Board of Trustees election is now open. Candidates from the community were asked to submit their candidacy. After a three-week-long Call for Candidates, there are 19 candidates for the 2021 election.

The Wikimedia movement has the opportunity to vote for the selection of community and affiliate trustees. By voting, you will help to identify those people who have the qualities to best serve the needs of the movement for the next several years. The Board is expected to select the four most voted candidates to serve as trustees. Voting closes 31 August 2021.

• Learn more about candidates.
• Learn about the Board of Trustees.
• Vote

Read the full announcement and see translations on Meta-Wiki.

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding voting. KCVelaga (WMF), 06:11, 18 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct - Enforcement draft guidelines review

The Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee would like comments about the enforcement draft guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). This review period is planned for 17 August 2021 through 17 October 2021.

These guidelines are not final but you can help move the progress forward. The committee will revise the guidelines based upon community input.

Comments can be shared in any language on the draft review talk page and multiple other venues. Community members are encouraged to organize conversations in their communities.

There are planned live discussions about the UCoC enforcement draft guidelines:

• Wikimania 2021 session (recorded 16 August)
• Conversation hours - 24 August, 31 August, 7 September @ 03:00 UTC & 14:00 UTC
• Roundtable calls - 18 September @ 03:00 UTC & 15:00 UTC

Summaries of discussions will be posted every two weeks here.

Please let me know if you have any questions. KCVelaga (WMF), 06:24, 18 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

Update on the OCR Improvements

Hello! Sorry for writing in English. Please help translate to your language.

The OCR Improvements are complete. We, the Community Tech team, are grateful for your feedback from the beginning to the last stage when we were finalizing the interface.

Engine improvements

OCR menu in toolbar

Reliability

Prior to our work, the OCR tools were separate gadgets. We have added "Wikimedia OCR." It is available under one icon inside the toolbar on all Wikisource wikis. This tool supports two other OCR tools, Tesseract and Google OCR. We expect these tools to be more stable. We will maintain Wikimedia OCR.

The gadgets will remain available. The communities will have sovereignty over when to enable or disable these.

Speed

Prior to this work, transcription would take upwards of 40 seconds. Our improvements average a transcription time under 4 seconds.

Advanced Tools improvements

Multiple-language support

Documents with multiple languages can be transcribed in a new way.

1. Open the Advanced Options
2. Select the Languages (optional) field
3. Search for and enter the languages in order of prevalence in the document.

Cropping tool / Multi-column support

We have included a Cropper tool. It allows to select regions to transcribe on pages with complicated layouts.

Discoverability and accessibility of OCR

We have added an interface for new users. It is pulsating blue dots over the new icon in the toolbar. The new interface explains what OCR means and what transcription means in Wikisource.

We believe that you will do even more great things because of these changes. We also hope to see you at the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. Thanks you again for all your opinions and support.

Please share your opinions on the project talk page!

NRodriguez (WMF) and SGrabarczuk (WMF) 01:57, 19 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-34

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

• The Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).

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

21:58, 23 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

Read-only reminder

A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday August 25 06:00 UTC. It should only last for a few minutes.

This will affect your wiki as well as 11 other wikis. During this time, publishing edits will not be possible.

Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).

For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. നന്ദി!

20:35, 24 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

[Reminder] Wikimedia Foundation elections 2021: 3 days left to vote

Dear Wikimedians,

As you may already know, Wikimedia Foundation elections started on 18 August and will continue until 31 August, 23:59 UTC i.e. ~ 3 days left.

Members of the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to elect four candidates to a three-year term.

Here are the links that might be useful for voting.

• Elections main page
• Candidates for the election
• Q&A from candidates
• 👉 Voting 👈

We have also published stats regarding voter turnout so far, you can check how many eligible voters from your wiki has voted on this page.

Please let me know if you have any questions. KCVelaga (WMF), 05:40, 29 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-35

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 musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.

Problems

• Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [132]

Changes later this week

• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [133]

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

16:01, 30 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election has come to an end

Thank you for participating in the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election! Voting closed August 31 at 23:59. The official data, including the four most voted candidates, will be announced as soon as the Elections Committee completes their review of the ballots. The official announcement of the new trustees appointed will happen later, once the selected candidates have been confirmed by the Board.

6,946 community members from 216 wiki projects have voted. This makes 10.2% global participation, 1.1% higher than in the last Board elections. In 2017, 5167 people from 202 wiki projects cast their vote. A full analysis is planned to be published in a few days when the confirmed results are announced. In the meantime, you can check the data produced during the election.

Diversity was an important goal with these elections. Messages about the Board election were translated into 61 languages. This outreach worked well. There were 70 communities with eligible voters voting in this election for the first time. With your help, next year’s Board of Trustees election will be even better.

20:50, 1 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-36

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

• The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features. [134]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break. [135][136]
• Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing.  The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.

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

15:20, 6 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey will happen in January

Hello everyone,

We hope all of you are as well and safe as possible during these trying times! We wanted to share some news about a change to the Community Wishlist Survey 2022. We would like to hear your opinions as well.

Summary:

We will be running the Community Wishlist Survey 2022 in January 2022. We need more time to work on the 2021 wishes. We also need time to prepare some changes to the Wishlist 2022. In the meantime, you can use a dedicated sandbox to leave early ideas for the 2022 wishes.

Proposing and wish-fulfillment will happen during the same year

In the past, the Community Tech team has run the Community Wishlist Survey for the following year in November of the prior year. For example, we ran the Wishlist for 2021 in November 2020. That worked well a few years ago. At that time, we used to start working on the Wishlist soon after the results of the voting were published.

However, in 2021, there was a delay between the voting and the time when we could start working on the new wishes. Until July 2021, we were working on wishes from the Wishlist for 2020.

We hope having the Wishlist 2022 in January 2022 will be more intuitive. This will also give us time to fulfill more wishes from the 2021 Wishlist.

Encouraging wider participation from historically excluded communities

We are thinking how to make the Wishlist easier to participate in. We want to support more translations, and encourage under-resourced communities to be more active. We would like to have some time to make these changes.

A new space to talk to us about priorities and wishes not granted yet

We will have gone 365 days without a Wishlist. We encourage you to approach us. We hope to hear from you in the talk page, but we also hope to see you at our bi-monthly Talk to Us meetings! These will be hosted at two different times friendly to time zones around the globe.

We will begin our first meeting September 15th at 23:00 UTC. More details about the agenda and format coming soon!

Brainstorm and draft proposals before the proposal phase

If you have early ideas for wishes, you can use the new Community Wishlist Survey sandbox. This way, you will not forget about these before January 2022. You will be able to come back and refine your ideas. Remember, edits in the sandbox don't count as wishes!

Feedback

• What should we do to improve the Wishlist pages?
• How would you like to use our new sandbox?
• What, if any, risks do you foresee in our decision to change the date of the Wishlist 2022?
• What will help more people participate in the Wishlist 2022?

Answer on the talk page (in any language you prefer) or at our Talk to Us meetings.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 7 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Results of 2021 Wikimedia Foundation elections

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2021 Board election. The Elections Committee has reviewed the votes of the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, organized to select four new trustees. A record 6,873 people from across 214 projects cast their valid votes. The following four candidates received the most support:

• Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
• Victoria Doronina
• Dariusz Jemielniak
• Lorenzo Losa

While these candidates have been ranked through the community vote, they are not yet appointed to the Board of Trustees. They still need to pass a successful background check and meet the qualifications outlined in the Bylaws. The Board has set a tentative date to appoint new trustees at the end of this month.

Read the full announcement here. MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 02:56, 8 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct EDGR conversation hour for South Asia

Dear Wikimedians,

As you may already know, the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a baseline of behaviour for collaboration on Wikimedia projects worldwide. Communities may add to this to develop policies that take account of local and cultural context while maintaining the criteria listed here as a minimum standard. The Wikimedia Foundation Board has ratified the policy in December 2020.

The current round of conversations is around how the Universal Code of Conduct should be enforced across different Wikimedia platforms and spaces. This will include training of community members to address harassment, development of technical tools to report harassment, and different levels of handling UCoC violations, among other key areas.

The conversation hour is an opportunity for community members from South Asia to discuss and provide their feedback, which will be passed on to the drafting committee. The details of the conversation hour are as follows:

• Date: 16 September
• Time: Bangladesh: 5:30 pm to 7 pm, India & Sri Lanka: 5 pm to 6:30 pm, Nepal: 5:15 pm to 5:45 pm
• Meeting link: https://meet.google.com/dnd-qyuq-vnd | add to your calendar

You can also attend the global round table sessions hosted on 18 September - more details can be found on this page. MediaWiki message delivery (സംവാദം) 10:47, 10 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee ending 14 September 2021

Movement Strategy announces the Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. The Call opens August 2, 2021 and closes September 14, 2021.

The Committee is expected to represent diversity in the Movement. Diversity includes gender, language, geography, and experience. This comprises participation in projects, affiliates, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

English fluency is not required to become a member. If needed, translation and interpretation support is provided. Members will receive an allowance to offset participation costs. It is US$100 every two months.

We are looking for people who have some of the following skills:

• Know how to write collaboratively. (demonstrated experience is a plus)
• Are ready to find compromises.
• Focus on inclusion and diversity.
• Have knowledge of community consultations.
• Have intercultural communication experience.
• Have governance or organization experience in non-profits or communities.
• Have experience negotiating with different parties.

The Committee is expected to start with 15 people. If there are 20 or more candidates, a mixed election and selection process will happen. If there are 19 or fewer candidates, then the process of selection without election takes place.

Will you help move Wikimedia forward in this important role? Submit your candidacy here. Please contact strategy2030wikimedia.org with questions.

Xeno (WMF) 16:50, 10 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Server switch

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic back to the primary data center on Tuesday, 14 September 2021.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, 14 September 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday, 15 September).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (സംവാദം) 00:46, 11 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Talk to the Community Tech

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

Hello!

As we have recently announced, we, the team working on the Community Wishlist Survey, would like to invite you to an online meeting with us. It will take place on September 15th, 23:00 UTC on Zoom, and will last an hour. Click here to join.

Agenda

• How we prioritize the wishes to be granted
• Why we decided to change the date from November 2021 to January 2022
• Update on the disambiguation and the real-time preview wishes
• Questions and answers

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes without attribution will be taken and published on Meta-Wiki. The presentation (first three points in the agenda) will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, and Spanish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the Community Wishlist Survey talk page or send to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

Natalia Rodriguez (the Community Tech manager) will be hosting this meeting.

Invitation link

• Join online
• Meeting ID: 898 2861 5390
• One tap mobile
  • +16465588656,,89828615390# US (New York)
  • +16699006833,,89828615390# US (San Jose)
• Dial by your location

See you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (സംവാദം) 03:04, 11 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-37

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

• 45 new Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. [137]
• A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.

Problems

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 14 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [138]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
• Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [139]
• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [140]
• The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output. [141][142]

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

15:35, 13 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-38

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

• Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. 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. [143]
• 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) on wiki or in phabricator 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. [144]

Changes later this week

• The new version 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).
• The meta=proofreadpage API 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. [145]

Future changes

• The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "ചർച്ചാ ഉപകരണങ്ങൾ" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [146]
• The previously announced 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 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.

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

18:32, 20 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Movement Charter Drafting Committee - Community Elections to take place October 11 - 24

This is a short message with an update from the Movement Charter process. The call for candidates for the Drafting Committee closed September 14, and we got a diverse range of candidates. The committee will consist of 15 members, and those will be (s)elected via three different ways.

The 15 member committee will be selected with a 3-step process:

• Election process for project communities to elect 7 members of the committee.
• Selection process for affiliates to select 6 members of the committee.
• Wikimedia Foundation process to appoint 2 members of the committee.

The community elections will take place between October 11 and October 24. The other process will take place in parallel, so that all processes will be concluded by November 1.

For the full context of the Movement Charter, its role, as well the process for its creation, please have a look at Meta. You can also contact us at any time on Telegram or via email (wikimedia2030@wikimedia.org).

Best, RamzyM (WMF) 02:46, 22 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-39

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

• iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.

Problems

• Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon. [147]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
• The GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October. [148]
• A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can read more.
• You can receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find more information in T282029.

Future changes

• The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "ചർച്ചാ ഉപകരണങ്ങൾ" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. See the list of wikis. [149]

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

22:22, 27 സെപ്റ്റംബർ 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-40

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

• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
• Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [150]
• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.

Future changes

• You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [151]
• The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [152]
• The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [153]

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

16:31, 4 ഒക്ടോബർ 2021 (UTC)