Talk:Tech/News/Archives/2025

TRANSLATIONLANGUAGE for new wiki entries

Hi, @Quiddity (WMF). I just thought about this: Should we use {{TRANSLATIONLANGUAGE}} for the int message in the new wiki entries?

Like this: {{int:project-localized-name-group-wikipedia/{{TRANSLATIONLANGUAGE}}}} Cookai🍪 _(💬talk) 06:44, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Done - Aha! Thank you, done in the issue, and in the docs. Cheers, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:13, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

GeoHack

I've submitted a patch which is necessary to support Danish oblique aerial photography. How do I get it reviewed? --ysangkok (talk) 20:55, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi. I cannot see the contents of that link (without creating an account), so I'm not sure when you submitted it.

If it was very recently (in the last few days), and because it's not urgent, then I suggest waiting for a week. He's a very busy volunteer dev, with hundreds of tools!

If it has been more than a week, then you might try asking on his usertalkpage (User talk:Magnus Manske).

For future questions that are not related to Tech News, please ask at the Tech discussion page. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:08, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I submitted it on January 3rd. I think people can't access it because it is quarantined. I'll try the user talk page. Thanks. --ysangkok (talk) 22:37, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Old editions

Tech/News/Old issues - Now you can find here not only on user pages. Rodrigo (talk) 22:11, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Rodrigo. Thanks for the idea. We do already have a very similar page at Tech/News/Archives. Do you think we could merge (or redirect) your new pages into that page, or is there some other way to avoid duplicate structures? Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I looked for the archive but haven't found before. I am not sure if the yearly collection has sense when the Search function works properly in the other one. But do what you whant, I am actually cleaning up the longest user talk page ever User talk:Chitetskoy what filled up with these tech news over the years. Rodrigo (talk) 22:35, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

The question: How to find this Archive from the main page? If no link, can we add? Rodrigo (talk) 22:38, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

It's currently the 2nd link within the section "Read or advertise Tech News". If that's not clear enough, I guess we potentially could add another link to it, into the list of 5 styled-links near the top? Or maybe the existing link is sufficient, now that you see it! :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:55, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

MediaWiki releases, again

Hi, thank you for your hard work creating tech news. Looking through the archives, it seems like this was previously mentioned so I'm a little late, but I would like to request that a link to the new MediaWiki release is added to the newsletter (maybe I'm missing it? If it already exists, it needs to be made more obvious).

I had found a change to the rights log interface in my editing (phab:T369466) and could not find it in tech news, so had to find an old issue of tech news with a link to the then-new MediaWiki release and worked from there to find the Phabricator link. I would argue that that is incredibly inefficient and lacks transparency. Thanks, Sdrqaz (talk) 11:51, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. It's always good to know that a requested change has more support.

I've mostly been stuck on where & how exactly to add this in. (I want to get it 'right' immediately, to avoid wasting the time of translators with multiple iterations)

There's also a related request to add in recurring mentions of the new Codex releases (but that's every-other-week, which is harder to automate, thus adding to my inertia!).

Do you (or anyone) have specific ideas on where to place the link, and how exactly to write it?

I.e. It's potentially semi-complicated to write as prose, because Tech News is usually sent on late Mondays (UTC) and the deployment train is from Tuesday-Thursday. So perhaps a plain link without any prose-context is both best, as well as simplest? Or does it need some prose-context, to help make sense of why it points to a page that is empty until the train starts rolling out?

I'd prefer not to re-use the old full-sentence version, unless those details are needed for a lot of readers, as it was the most widely specified "not useful" part in the last survey (overview, and specific question).

Also, do you (or anyone) have any other recurring-update links that would be helpful to add into Tech News, aside from MediaWiki and Codex?

E.g. We could have a new recurring point in the section "Updates for technical contributors", that simply says something like:

• Detailed code updates this week: MediaWiki, Codex.

Or something else? E.g. a new link in the Footer section? Thoughts welcome. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:32, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply. The recurring point format and wording works for me, or you could put it in the "in depth" section (as for a bit more context, it says why it's blank when you click on it, so that should be OK). I suspect that people just ignore the footer, so that is probably not the best place, in my opinion.

To give a bit more context, I don't subscribe to the newsletter (too many messages on my talk page), but find the MediaWiki updates helpful when I notice a change – under the current format, by the time the next newsletter comes out announcing changes that have already occurred, that's too late from my perspective. Sdrqaz (talk) 22:53, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Belated thanks for the change; looks good! Sdrqaz (talk) 04:04, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Octicon image licenses

I see the page here recommends using [[File:Octicons-sync.svg|12px|link=|class=skin-invert]] and [[File:Octicons-tools.svg|15px|link=|class=skin-invert]] as icons, suppressing the links to the file description pages. However, on Commons these images are labelled as being MIT licensed, and the metadata on c:Template:MIT indicates that licensing and attribution are required (presumably because the license states The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software). We normally accomplish this by having the image linked to its file description page (e.g. en:MOS:PDI says It is Wikipedia's policy to link those images for attribution). Is there a reason that it's ok to suppress that link for these uses? Anomie (talk) 15:57, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. That's frustrating that nobody noticed until now. I'll replace the suggested icons with CC-0/PD icons. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Squished delivery

A modest proposal to offer users a modified delivery method as an option to receive the message collapsed, or just a link to it. I am interested in the tech newsletter content, but I don't wish to have the whole message 1) occupying vertical space, or 2) substed onto my page. My preference would be to receive a message with the same header you currently offer, but containing the transcluded (not substed) content, and collapsed by default via {{collapse top}} & bottom, {{hidden}}, or similar. Doable? If not, instead of a collapsed transclusion, just a one-sentence message with a link to the content. I suppose your archiving means the original transclusion or link would no longer work at some point, but that is not a problem for me. If this were available I would opt in. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:16, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Transclusion is not really possible, as the newsletter is delivered on many wikis, and cross-wiki transclusion is not possible. (The titles of the issues remain the same forever from the moment they get drafted, so that wouldn’t be a problem.) A one-sentence message with a link would technically be possible, although it’d mean extra administration for the people who manage the newsletter (they’d need to send the two variants separately), so I don’t want to make promises in their names. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 00:20, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

+1 to Tacsipacsi's explanation (thanks!). Also, on some wikis there is a local page setup that enables transluding the entire latest version into the location of your choice, which might enable what you're after, or something close-enough to it; see w:en:Template:Latest tech news for example. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:38, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

404 link in Tech News 2025-46

The link to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk_pages_project/Feature_summary#Usability_improvements in the first item of Tech News 2025-46 leads to a page that does not exist. You might want to put a redirect there that takes people to the intended destination, and put checking every link in Mass Messages onto your checklist. Jonesey95 (talk) 20:41, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you @Jonesey95 –– STei (WMF) (talk) 21:34, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Using the Phabricator #User-notice tag

Re phab:T58362#11364637, how come the #User-notice tag was removed from that task? In my experience previously, it seems like it's been okay for tasks to just sit in the 'Not ready to announce' column until they're ready (at which point someone usually moves the task on the workboard). One potential benefit of this is that it doesn't then need someone to remember to re-add the tag in the future :)

To confirm, has something changed in how the tag should be used? (I'm asking here rather than on the task itself as I guess my question is slightly broader than that specific action, and also to avoid potentially cluttering up that task's history!) [cc @STei (WMF)] Best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 20:38, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

@A smart kitten, for a task to remain in the “Not Ready to Announce” column on the workboard, it should show signs of active progress. When a task, even with a user-notice tag hasn’t been updated for a while, it automatically stops appearing on the board. Unfortunately, even minor updates such as project changes can cause these inactive tasks to reappear on the workboard, even when no real progress has been made. This adds workload, as we then need to review and verify each recently updated card for actual announcement readiness. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 21:34, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, @STei (WMF)! we then need to review and verify each recently updated card for actual announcement readiness. I guess my next question is probably - how come?_/gen Please forgive me if e.g. there's a reason why this wouldn't work, but how come the devs working on each task in the 'Not ready to announce' column couldn't be relied on to move the task to the 'Announce in next Tech/News' column at the point when it's ready to be announced? Best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 21:41, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

@A smart kitten in my experience so far, the Tech News team mostly handles moving tickets around on the usernotice workboard, fewer external contributors take on this responsibility. However I will put the tags back so devs and community don't have the burden to remember to add it back when work picks up. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 20:54, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

@STei (WMF) Thank you :)

in my experience so far, the Tech News team mostly handles moving tickets around on the usernotice workboard, fewer external contributors take on this responsibility. Thinking out loud -- perhaps it might be worth an email to wikitech-l to ask if folks could do this more often? As I'd probably assume that the people working on each task might hopefully have a good idea of when it'd be ready to be announced (and this would hopefully save the Tech News team some time that might otherwise be spent on trying to assess the announcement readiness of each task, as you referred to). Apologies for the delayed reply! Best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 21:37, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

@A smart kitten, I don't know if this has been tried already as I am quite new to the Tech News team. But it's good food for thought! Thank you.–– STei (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 27 November 2025 (UTC)