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Tech News: 2026-13
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Wikimedia site users can now log in without a password using passkeys. This is a secure method supported by fingerprint, facial recognition, or PIN. With this change, all users who opt for passwordless login will find it easier, faster, and more secure to log in to their accounts using any device. The new passkey login option currently appears as an autofill suggestion in the username field. An additional "Log in with passkey" button will soon be available for users who have already registered a passkey. This update will improve security and user experience. The screen recording demonstrates the passwordless login process step by step.
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday, 25 March 2026 at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests, which happen twice a year. During the switchover, all Wikimedia website traffic is shifted from one primary data center to the backup data center to test availability and prevent service disruption even in emergencies.
Updates for editors
- Wikimedia site users can now export their notifications older than 5 years using a new Toolforge tool. This will ensure that users retain their important notifications and avoid them being lost based on the planned change to delete notifications older than 5 years, as previously announced. [1]
- Wikipedia editors in Indonesian, Thai, Turkish, and Simple English now have access to Special:PersonalDashboard. This is an early version of an experience that introduces newer editors to patrolling workflows, making it easier for them to move from making edits to participating in more advanced moderation work on their project. [2]
- The Special:Block now has two minor interface changes. Administrators can now easily perform indefinite blocks through a dedicated radio button in the expiry section. Also, choosing an indefinite expiry provides a different set of common reasons to select from, which can be changed at: MediaWiki:Ipbreason-indef-dropdown. [3]
- Mobile editors at several wikis can now see an improved logged-out edit warning, thanks to the recent updates from the Growth team. These changes released last week are part of ongoing efforts and tests to enhance account creation experience on mobile and then increase participation. [4]
View all 36 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug that prevented mobile web users from seeing the block information when affected by multiple blocks has been fixed. They can now see messages of all the blocks currently affecting them when they access Wikipedia.
Updates for technical contributors
- Images built using Toolforge will soon get the upgraded buildpacks version, bringing support for newer language versions and other upstream improvements and fixes. If you use Toolforge Build Service, review the recent cloud-announce email and update your build configuration as necessary to ensure your tools are compatible. [5][6]
- The API Portal documentation wiki will shut down in June 2026. API keys created on the API Portal will continue to work normally. api.wikimedia.org endpoints will be deprecated gradually starting in July 2026. Documentation on the API Portal is moving to mediawiki.org. Learn more on the project page.
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- WMDE Technical Wishes is considering improvements to automatically generated reference names in VisualEditor. Please check out the proposed solutions and participate in the request for comment.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:51, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-14
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- The Beta version of Abstract Wikipedia a new Wikimedia project which is language-independent, was launched last week. The project allows communities to build Wikipedia articles in their native language, which can be readily accessed by other users in their own languages. The wiki is powered by instructions from Wikifunctions and also based on structured content from Wikidata. Read more.
Updates for editors
- The Growth team is running an A/B test to evaluate a clearer, more user-friendly message that promotes account creation on wikis. Currently when logged-out mobile users begin editing, they see a jarring warning message that can feel abrupt and discouraging. This also presents temporary account editing as the default rather than encouraging account creation. The test is running on ten Wikipedias, including Arabic, French, Spanish and German. Read more.
- The Wikimedia Apps team is inviting feedback on how editing should work on the Wikipedia mobile apps. The discussion focuses on improving how users access editing tools when they tap "Edit". This is part of a broader effort to convert readers who develop an interest in editing, to access a more user-friendly pathway to start contributing.
View all 45 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where citation fetching from the large newspaper archive Newspapers.com was no longer working, due to a block in Citoid requests, has now been fixed. [7]
Updates for technical contributors
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:26, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 6
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Highlights
- Supporting the mobile experience: The Foundation is starting conversations with communities to explore how editing should work on the Wikipedia mobile apps. The goal is to understand how to better support both new and experienced editors, and how the app can guide users to the right editing tools. Your input is welcome. Join the discussion!
- Wikimania 2026: Registration for Wikimania 2026 is opening soon from the end of March to May 1. Like other Wikimedia events this year, we are introducing a "request for invitation" process, with trust and safety checks conducted prior to confirming in-person attendance. Our priority is to create a safe environment for connection, collaboration, and shared learning.
- Around the Puzzle Globe in the CEE region: On March 23 almost 60 Wikimedians took part in the CEE-Catch up- a meeting for Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. As a part of continuous conversations we have with the communities around the Foundation's annual plan, participants discussed the global trends related to Readers and Contributors in their regional context. The meeting was also an opportunity to connect with the new Foundation CEO, Bernadette Meehan, who is meeting communities around the puzzle globe to listen, learn and engage with the communities.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Crawlers: The Foundation is now detecting and blocking billions of bot requests that don’t follow our robot policy, such as aggressive scrapers, to make sure our resources go towards serving human readers. In the coming months we’ll be working on better detection of rapidly changing bot behavior and better API infrastructure.
- Moderator tools for newer editors: Wikipedia editors in Indonesian, Thai, Turkish, and Simple English now have access to an early version of Special:PersonalDashboard. It introduces newer editors to patrolling workflows, making it easier for them to move from making edits to participating in more advanced moderation work on their project.
- Account creation on mobile: Mobile editors at several wikis are now presented with a simplified logged-out warning message, which encourages them to create an account or log in. This test is part of our ongoing effort to enhance the account creation experience on mobile and increase participation.
- Verification email redesign: The verification email sent to new accounts that add an email address during signup has been redesigned. When tested on English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata, the same-week email verification rate increased from 41.6% to 45.9%.
- Retaining notification history: Wikimedia site users can export their notifications older than 5 years using a new Toolforge tool. This will ensure that users retain important notifications and avoid losing them based on the planned change to delete notifications older than 5 years, as previously announced.
- Tech News: Latest highlights from Tech News weeks 12 and 13 include the update that Wikimedia site users can now log in without a password using passkeys as a secure method supported by fingerprint, facial recognition, or PIN. See also the 64 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
- Experiments: Check out the list of experiments in Product and Technology to see all upcoming, live, in-analysis, and completed experiments. One new experiment that just went live is the "Improve the logged-out warning message on mobile web," which aims to reduce the sense of friction or alarm when users encounter the logged-out warning upon editing.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events

- Digital rights and free knowledge: Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimedians from across the movement will contribute to important conversations on AI governance, information integrity, and equitable access to knowledge at RightsCon 2026 from May 5–8. Join the conversation virtually.
- Microtask Generator: Learn more about the Microtask Generator, a tool which identifies content quality gaps in Wikipedia articles and suggests tasks for editors to address within a dashboard. Users can input lists of articles for analysis, or get recommendations based on article categories. Ideal for edit-a-thons and other article improvement drives.
- WikiLearn: Discover the latest edition of WikiLearn News where you can find the latest online learning opportunities to take your editing skills to new heights.
- Diff Event calendar: The event calendar on Diff is now redirected to the list of events on Meta-wiki. This list pulls in all events that are open to all wikis.
- Grantmaking Strategy: The GRDC has identified the key challenges that will inform the design of the new Grantmaking Strategy.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Audit report: Highlights from the Wikimedia Endowment’s fiscal year 2024-2025 audit report.
- Enterprise partnerships: Wikimedia Enterprise announced new partnerships. Together with Firecrawl to reform how AI agents access the world’s largest online repository of human knowledge and with Aligned AI to develop Ethical AI products for families by providing Wikimedia Enterprise Snapshot API.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Endowment Board: Welcoming Nataliia Tymkiv to the Wikimedia Endowment Board of Directors.
- Affiliate recognition: Affiliations Committee extended the pause on new affiliate recognition to September 1, 2026.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let foundationbulletin
wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
MediaWiki message delivery 22:04, 31 March 2026 (UTC)
Wikimedia Apps Newsletter – First Quarter of 2026
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Hello, and welcome to the first newsletter of 2026!
In this edition, we’ll walk you through the main updates, experiments, and improvements in the Wikipedia mobile apps during January, February, and early March.
iOS
[edit]This quarter focused on scaling and improving the Activity Tab experience.
We released the Activity Tab to all users and continued refining it with:
- New editing insights, including all-time impact, recent activity, and views.
- Monthly highlights such as most viewed edits and contributions.
- Improved onboarding and empty states for different user types.
- Better navigation within reading history and timelines.
- Continued survey collection (extended through April).
We also fixed several issues related to saved article syncing, timeline, and deleting items.
Results from scaling
[edit]Our goal was to increase account creation by 5%. The results significantly exceeded expectations:
- Account creation increased by 91% after scaling.
- 25% of all new accounts were created through the Activity Tab.
- 18.5% of new users saved an article, and 2.9% made an edit.
We also observed stronger retention among Activity Tab users:
- 93.8% of logged-in users returned to the app.
- 91.8% of logged-out users returned.
- Compared to overall app return rates of 81.9% and 72.1%.
Learnings
[edit]- Personalization continues to drive account creation.
- Users are more likely to engage in reading than editing.
- Navigation changes need clearer communication.
Next steps
[edit]- Improve clarity around the History location in Search.
- Add clearer messaging and guidance, especially for logged-out users.
The team also focused on preparations for migrating the app to Liquid Glass, planned for April. We completed a gap analysis and audit, and then triaged and prioritized tasks.
- Adding “close all tabs” functionality.
- Highlighting the active tab.
- Introducing long-press previews.
- iOS designs for the “Which came first?” game were completed.
As part of ongoing improvements:
- History was moved into the Search tab.
- Adjustments are being made to better support logged-out users and reduce confusion.
Other iOS Updates
[edit]- Integrated hCaptcha into account creation for test wiki.
- Conducted Explore Feed audit and design groundwork.
- Fixed multiple bugs, including issues with search, saved articles, and donation flows.
Android
[edit]We began testing a new hybrid search experience that combines keyword-based and natural language search.
- The experiment is now available in beta for Greek, English and Portuguese Wikipedia.
- Users can opt in or out of the experience.
- This is part of Phase 1 of the Information Retrieval project.
Other Android Updates
[edit]- Continued work on hCaptcha integration for account creation on test wiki.
- Improved donation clarity by adding ISO currency codes.
- Updated image handling to match MediaWiki standards.
- Ran an A/B test for the Google Play product page (Japanese users).
We also fixed several issues, including:
- Background re-login issues.
- Incorrect article titles in Year in Review.
- Reading list syncing problems.
- Translation and UI inconsistencies.
Cross-Platform
[edit]Across both apps, we continued design and research work to rethink the Explore experience, with the design principles of:
- Retention before depth: reasons to come back matter more than any single deep read.
- Discovery through remixing: snippets and previews lead into articles, never replace them.
- Transparent personalization: "Because you follow..." not a black box.
- Calm, trustworthy browsing: productive and credible.
Design work continued on improving the Explore feed:
- Two visual directions were developed and wireframed.
- Different onboarding approaches were explored.
- User testing is being prepared.
Our current hypothesis is that a more personalized and structured feed will help users better understand its value and increase daily usage. User testing will help determine the direction to move forward.
The Apps team has started conversations with communities to explore how editing should work on the mobile apps.
The goal is to better support both new and experienced editors, and to guide users toward the right editing tools.
Community input is welcome, and discussions are ongoing.
Looking Ahead
[edit]This quarter focused on scaling successful features, especially the Activity Tab, and continuing foundational work on Search and Explore feed.
We’re seeing strong signals around personalization, engagement, and new ways to guide users through reading and editing.
Thank you for following along, and stay tuned for the next updates later this year.
~~ARamadan-WMF11:46, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-15
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- The CampaignEvents extension now includes a new group goal-setting feature, enabling organizers to set and track event goals such as the number of articles created and participating contributors in real time. Similarly, participants can work toward shared targets and see their collective impact as the event unfolds. The feature is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. Learn more in the documentation.
The new watchlist labels feature (announced in Tech News 2026-07) is now available via VisualEditor, the source editor, and the 'watchstar' (or watch link, for skins that don't have a star icon). Previously it was only possible to assign labels via EditWatchlist. In all three places it is a new field following the expiry field.
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where talk pages on mobile with Parsoid are unusable after empty section headers, has now been fixed. [8]
Updates for technical contributors
- The sub-referencing feature, which lets editors add details to an existing reference without duplicating it, will be gradually rolled out to more wikis later this year. Wikis using the Reference Tooltips gadget are encouraged to update their version (typically at MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js as shown here) to ensure compatibility. Other reference-related gadgets may also be affected. [9]
- All Wikinews editions will be closed and switched to read-only mode on 4 May 2026. Content will remain accessible, but no new edits or articles can be added. This closure was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation following extended discussions. Read more.
- The Action API has had several formats for requested output. One of them,
format=php, is being removed soon. Please ensure your scripts or bots use the JSON format. This removal should affect very few scripts and bots. [10] - The Special:NamespaceInfo page now includes namespace aliases. For example "WP" for the "Project" ("Wikipedia") namespace on the German Wikipedia. [11]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:19, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-16
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Experienced editors are invited to test the Article guidance feature, designed to help less-experienced editors create well-structured, policy-compliant Wikipedia articles. Testing instructions are available. Also, after reviewing the outlines, please provide feedback on the project talk page. Based on your input, the feature will be refined and transferred to the pilot Wikipedias to translate and adapt. Check out the video explaining the feature.
Updates for editors
- On most wikis, all autoconfirmed users can now use Special:ChangeContentModel page to create new pages with custom content models, such as mass message lists, making custom page formats more accessible. Check Special:ListGroupRights for the status of your wiki. [12]
- The Growth team has launched an account creation experiment to evaluate whether adding an account creation button to the mobile web header increases new account registrations and encourages more mobile users to contribute to the wikis. The experiment is currently live on Hindi, Indonesian, Bengali, Thai, and Hebrew Wikipedia, and targets 10% of logged-out mobile web users.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where VisualEditor could get stuck loading on Windows devices with animations turned off, has now been fixed. [13]
Updates for technical contributors
- Starting later this week, Abuse filter editors who have the Improved Syntax Highlighting beta feature enabled will have CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor as the editor at Special:AbuseFilter. This is part of the broader effort to make the user experience more consistent across all editors. [14][15]
- Tools and bots that access the Notifications API (
action=query&meta=notifications) will need to update their OAuth or BotPassword grants to also include access to private notifications. [16] - Due to a library upgrade, listings on category pages may be displayed out of order starting on Monday, 20th April. A migration script will be run to correct this, and will take hours to days depending on the size of the wiki (up to a week for English Wikipedia). [17]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 15:19, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 7
[edit]

Highlights
- Community Wishlist update: This monthly update covers how 44 wishes were fulfilled, 17 are in progress, and 15 more will start work soon. It includes completion of work on Watchlist labels, which allow users to add labels to items in their watchlist to help with managing and filtering; fixing a bug with preview page feature; indexing of Commons on Google & DuckDuckGo search; and a wish simplifying the insertion of maths formulas in articles. You can submit, vote on, and subscribe to wishes here.
- Goal setting for edit-a-thons: The CampaignEvents extension now includes a new group goal-setting feature, enabling organizers to set and track event goals such as the number of articles created and participating contributors in real time. This feature is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. Join the Connection Learning Session on April 14 at 16:00 UTC to learn more about this feature and new ways to promote events and campaigns to editors.
- Collaboration with the United Nations: Learn how the Foundation engages with the United Nations to secure our collective voice and protect free knowledge.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

- Navigating articles on mobile: The Foundation is launching an experiment to test how to make it easier and more intuitive for readers to navigate through articles on mobile. To do this, we want to test Mobile Page Previews. This experiment will go live the week of April 20 and will run for four weeks.
- Editing tools for new editors: Tone Check was deployed on French, Japanese, and Portuguese Wikipedia as a default-on feature for editors who have published 100 or fewer edits locally. When promotional or subjective language is added, users are prompted to consider "neutralizing" the tone of the edit.
- Managing watchlist labels: The new watchlist labels feature is now available via VisualEditor, the source editor, and the "watchstar" (or watch link, for skins that don’t have a star icon). Previously it was only possible to assign labels via EditWatchlist.
- Latest experiments: See all upcoming, live, in-analysis, and completed experiments in Product & Technology. A new experiment that just went live is one which aims to establish a baseline retention rate for logged-in readers.
- Latest Wikifunctions: Check out the partial list of the 102 new functions created last week – likely the first week we have exceeded 100.
- Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 14 and 15 include an ongoing A/B test running on 10 Wikipedias to evaluate a clearer, more user-friendly message that promotes account creation on wikis. See also the 68 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
- Community discussions on Semantic Search: The Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with the CEE Hub, hosted a discussion session on Semantic Search for members of the CEE Youth Group.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- Don't Blink!: This month's highlights from the Global Advocacy team include how the Wikimedia Foundation co-presented alongside the Internet Archive at the State of the Net conference.
- Digital rights and inclusion: Take a look at the sessions that Wikimedians and allied partners will lead during Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF) 2026.
- Manuscript preservation: The Wikimedia Foundation supported volunteer-lead workshops to write Balinese Wikipedia articles about palm-leaf manuscripts (lontar) from the Leiden University Library collection.
- Youth content creators: Wikimedia Indonesia, together with the Wikimedia Foundation, delivered an introductory session on Wikipedia for young content creators representing all 11 ASEAN member states.
- Legal and Safety Contacts: The Wikimedia Foundation has created a single "Legal and Safety Contacts" page, to be linked in the footer of each wiki page. This will ensure that everyone has access to accurate and up to date Legal contact information. Insertion of the new links on different wikis will be done in stages, based on assessment of legal risk and necessity.
- Building shared principals for the internet as a public good: The Global Advocacy team published a blog with the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (CELE) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) summarizing a workshop that brought together digital rights advocates from Latin America to dream of a "digital utopia."
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Wikidata API: Wikidata’s structured knowledge is now available through Wikimedia Enterprise.
- Annual Planning and global trends: Join the America APP call on April 21 at 18:00 UTC. This meeting is an opportunity for the Latin American community to ensure that the region's voice helps shape the Wikimedia Foundation's work and priorities for the next fiscal year. The call will be in Spanish with interpretation into Portuguese and English. The last meeting between Wikimedia EDs and Foundation staff was dedicated to discuss global trends too. More discussions are happening on-wiki and in community spaces around different regions and projects.
- Futures Lab: The world is changing around us. As the Wikimedia movement navigates this moment over a hundred Wikimedians from different Wikimedia projects came together to deepen our understanding of how these trends are impacting our people and projects at the Wikimedia Futures Lab.
- Fundraising Hub: The Wikimedia Foundation has launched Fundraising Hub on English Wikipedia. The first discussion you can participate in is about distributing fundraising banner on English Wikipedia throughout the year.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Ombuds Commission: Announcement of the 2026 Ombuds Commission, the small group of volunteers who investigate complaints about violations of the Privacy Policy, the Access to Nonpublic Personal Data Policy, the CheckUser Policy and the Oversight Policy.
- Wikinews closure: All Wikinews editions will be closed and switched to read-only mode on May 4. Content will remain accessible, but no new edits or articles will be able to be added. This closure was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation following extended discussions.
Other Movement-curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let foundationbulletin
wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
MediaWiki message delivery 22:10, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-17
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- After two years of development, Improved Syntax Highlighting, also known as CodeMirror 6, is to be promoted out of beta on Tuesday, April 21. It brings better code and wikitext readability, reduction in typing errors, and other benefits to all users of the standard syntax highlighter. A huge thank you to volunteer Bhsd who developed many of the new features, including code folding, autocompletion, and linting. [18]
- A major update to the Wikipedia app for iOS is now rolling out, redesigning the interface to align with Apple's latest "Liquid Glass" visual design. Download the latest version and explore the update.
Updates for editors
- Reading lists is a feature which allows readers to save articles to a list for reading later. This feature is now in beta on Arabic, French, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Chinese Wikipedias and by default for all new accounts on all Wikipedias.
- An experiment which explores extending Page Previews to mobile web will be launched in the week of April 20 on Arabic, English, French, Italian, Polish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Page Previews are pop-ups that display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and a link to open the full article of a blue link, thereby improving content discovery. The feature is already available on desktop and in the apps. Read more about this experiment and others.
- On several wikis, logged-in editors who haven't confirmed their email addresses can now see a banner encouraging them to do so. Having the email address confirmed allows a user to restore access to the account if they lose it. Learn more. [19]
View all 15 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where editing very large wiki pages in the 2017 wikitext editor caused slow loading, preview and scrolling lag, and performance issues when selecting, cutting, or pasting content, has now been fixed. [20]
Updates for technical contributors
- As part of the promotion of CodeMirror from a beta feature, all users will use CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor for syntax highlighting when editing JavaScript, CSS, JSON, Vue and Lua content pages. [21]
- The
mirrors.wikimedia.orgservice for Debian and Ubuntu users will sunset and stop working on May 15. The resources for the service will be replaced with new and better options. Some users may need to switch to a different server which should take about a minute. You can read more. [22] - The
imageandoldimagetable will be removed from wikireplicas. If your tools or queries accessimageoroldimagedirectly, please update them to use thefileandfilerevisiontable before 28 May. [23] - Following the recent implementation of global API rate limits on unidentified traffic, the Wikimedia Foundation will continue efforts to ensure fair use of infrastructure by applying global limits to identified API traffic beginning the last week of April. These limits are intentionally set as high as possible to minimise impact on the community. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
- The Attribution API is now available as a beta. The API fetches information for crediting Wikimedia articles and media files wherever they are used. Reference documentation is available through the REST Sandbox special page available on all Wikimedia wikis (such as the REST sandbox on English Wikipedia). Share your feedback on the project talk page.
- 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.