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A place to talk about tech related to a Wikimedia wiki.

Have a technical wiki question? Ask here. This can include for example:

• requests for new tools, scripts, and bots;
• help with CSS or JavaScript;
• API help;
• and data collection help (including database queries).

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Developer Wishlist Survey: propose your ideas

At the Wikimedia Developer Summit, we decided to organize a Developer Wishlist Survey, and here we go:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_Wishlist

The Wikimedia technical community seeks input from developers for developers, to create a high-profile list of desired improvements. The scope of the survey includes the MediaWiki platform (core software, APIs, developer environment, enablers for extensions, gadgets, templates, bots, dumps), the Wikimedia server infrastructure, the contribution process, and documentation.

The best part: we want to have the results published by Wednesday, February 15. Yes, in a month, to have a higher chance to influence the Wikimedia Foundation annual plan FY 2017-18.

There's no time to lose. Propose your ideas before the end of January, either by pushing existing tasks in Phabricator or by creating new ones. You can find instructions on the wiki page. Questions and feedback are welcome especially on the related Talk page.

The voting phase is expected to start on February 6 (tentative). Watch this space (or even better, the wiki page) - SSethi_(WMF) January 21st, 2017 3:07 AM (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --George Ho (talk) 18:55, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Mediawiki 1.24 Skins/extension

Hey guys,

I am creating my own wiki for the first time. At the moment I have already installed Mediawiki, also got some Articles in

My Problem: I wanted to add the skin "apex". As I saw my Version of Mediawiki isnt supported anymore. And Apex needs V 1.25+. Does anyone know where i could get a working skin for Mediawiki 1.24?

I already searched the Web, but did not find anything helpfull.

Thanks for you help,

best regards Jens

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --George Ho (talk) 18:55, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Improved search in deleted pages archive

During Wikimedia Hackathon 2016, the Discovery team worked on one of the items on the 2015 community wishlist, namely enabling searching the archive of deleted pages. This feature is now ready for production deployment, and will be enabled on all wikis, except Wikidata.

Right now, the feature is behind a feature flag - to use it on your wiki, please go to the Special:Undelete page, and add &fuzzy=1 to the URL, like this: https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AUndelete&fuzzy=1. Then search for the pages you're interested in. There should be more results than before, due to using ElasticSearch indexing (via the CirrusSearch extension).

We plan to enable this improved search by default on all wikis soon (around August 1, 2017). If you have any objections to this - please raise them with the Discovery team via email or on this announcement's discussion page. Like most Mediawiki configuration parameters, the functionality can be configured per wiki. Once the improved search becomes the default, you can still access the old mode using &fuzzy=0 in the URL, like this: https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AUndelete&fuzzy=0

Please note that since Special:Undelete is an admin-only feature, this search capability is also only accessible to wiki admins.

Thank you! CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Read-only mode

When can I edit the German wikipedia again? ("The database master is running in read-only mode.") --Trustable (talk) 06:36, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

 Done --Trustable (talk) 07:11, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Increased control size and text of the Wikisource editing page

I laud your implementation of larger buttons and captions, and perhaps it is also possible to increase the size of the radio buttons which are used to set the page status. Just a thought.Ineuw (talk) 22:43, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@Ineuw: Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you like the more accessible buttons. The radio buttons on Wikisource are the ProofreadPage "quality" buttons, and I agree that we need to modernise them too. The task for this work is T164753 on Phabricator, to which you can subscribe if you're interested. I'll encourage colleagues and volunteers to work on that soon. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 23:00, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the message. Ineuw (talk) 23:07, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

"Search for contributions" date range

Most of the "Search for contributions" user interface still works. However, I clicked the current month, i.e. "August" and tried to select one of the other months, but then the date is not selected or something. I tried clicking a different year, but the date is not selected. The Phabricator tasks are still ongoing (T170502 and T91148), but I want to discuss the issue here first. Not only it is happening at en.wp, but I also tried es.wp and Commons. Same issue. Anything wrong with the date range calendars or something? --George Ho (talk) 23:21, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: There was a specific bug with that, phab:T172041. It's patched and was merged yesterday, so it should be live after the deployment train reaches each wiki (so Thursday for most of the Wikipedias, or mediawiki and testwikis today). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:10, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

The bug is fixed, Quiddity. Nevertheless, Wikimedia projects didn't exist prior to 2000 or 2001. However, the calendar includes the years before 2000. What to do about it? --George Ho (talk) 06:50, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: I would suggest that it isn't worth worrying about. (A) it was possible to add years prior to 2000 in the old system. (B) Whilst it's technically feasible to prevent going earlier, that would require adding so much more complexity to the code (getting it to check the relevant database's start time, for any context the widget it used in) that it would probably cause actual problems in the long-run. -- The more complex the code is, the more trouble it can create, and more effort is needed to maintain it. (See related notes at mw:Just make it a user preference, an overview/essay I threw together that gives cons/pros of preference complexity (I love preference complexity, but must acknowledge the drawbacks)). However, if I've overlooked an aspect and you want to discus it, then the place to bring it up is either a new phabricator task, or the talkpage of mw:Manual:DateInputWidget. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

.... I guess you're right. We'll see what happens then. --George Ho (talk) 21:55, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Subject heading function not allowing my browser's Autocorrect functions?

Seems that the updated subject heading function doesn't allow my browser's (IE11) Autocorrect function to work in the heading function. I tested the subject heading out in Google Chrome and realized that the Autocorrect function works there especially by seeing red scribbles under misspelled or nonexistent words. At IE11, however, I don't see red scribbles anywhere in the subject heading, but I can still see them in the body message function. I can type this as a test: aodginaoibjr. I can see the red scribbles in the body message function but not in the "Subject" on IE11. On Google Chrome, I can see red scribbles when I click on the "Subject". I don't know whether to describe the issue in the Phabricator, so I'm describing the problem here first instead. --George Ho (talk) 19:58, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Puces

Bonjour,

Lorsqu'il y a une image à gauche les puces viennent se mettre sur l'image (un exemple est visible sur fr:Sidolówka). Pourriez vous résoudre ce problème en décalant les puces vers la droite ?

Nota: J'utilise Internet explorer Skiff (talk) 09:36, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Renan Feitosa

Olá boa tarde, gostaria que me tirasse uma dúvida... Qual o modo estrutural que existe para atualizações na Wikipédia, além de atualizações feitas por pessoas que tem o cadastro para os conteúdos disponíveis, fundamentando minha dúvida que seria ter conhecimento se existe algum tipo de sistema que recebe ou busca atualizações dos conteúdos expostos aos internautas? Grato desde já por sua atenção, aguardo seu contato!

JS not always working

The handy User:Erwin/stewardlinks.js does not appear in all projects for me. I mean, it appears in most of the projects I visit but on some, such as en.wikibooks and others it does not appear. What could be the reason? Also, is there any outdated stuff that might use some updates? Regards.

When the gadget does not appear, do you see any console errors? Ruslik (talk) 20:02, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Do you see it now in Wikibooks? Ruslik (talk) 20:36, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Ruslik0: yes, I see the gadget now in Wikibooks. Thank you. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 20:43, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Editing window layout in classic toobar version vs. enhanced toolbar version

I have switched from the enhanced/WikiEditor toolbar to classic toolbar, i.e. enhanced toolbar currently disabled. Then I realized that the editing window in the "classic" version is also different from the "enhanced" one. The text and spaces are smaller especially to read in the "classic" version than the "enhanced" one. What can be done about the difference in the editing window? --George Ho (talk) 22:42, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: Here's a screenshot of what I see, which is only a difference in the leading (aka line-spacing). I can make them look the same by adding this to my Special:MyPage/global.css: #wpTextbox1 {line-height: 1.1em;}

If you see further differences, it would help if you could provide either screenshots or precise typographical terminology (I think you're referring to the w:en:leading and font-size). Thanks. Quiddity (talk) 17:32, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh... I didn't realize the description refers to "(line) leading". (Well, a jargon (no offense); thanks for letting me know, Quiddity.) Yeah, that's exactly what I was referring to by looking at the screenshots. No need to explain any other differences, though I noticed that, by switching to "classic" mode, there are more buttons in enWP than at Meta-wiki. Personally, I don't need a personal script for special treatment, but thanks. If filing a Phabricator task is too soon, maybe I'll wait for the upcoming Community Wishlist Survey. Fair? --George Ho (talk) 20:01, 20 August 2017 (UTC)