Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-12-18/Technology report

Your wish lists and more Wikimedia tech: Including improved blocking tools, new user scripts, and the latest technical news.

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Your wish lists and more Wikimedia tech

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Your wish lists and more Wikimedia tech

• Kartographer improvements (<mapframe> and <maplink> maps)
• Being able to ping users from the edit summary
• Development of the programs and events dashboard
• Blame tool (who wrote a particular piece in an article)
• Infobox wizard
• Deploy Article Alerts to other languages
• Auto-save feature in Visual Editor and WikiText Editor
• Allow 'thanks' notification for a log entry
• SVG translation
• Commons deletion notification bot

Full results are available on Meta.

The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools teamisdiscussing new blocking tools and improvements to existing blocking tools in December 2017. Tool development work will commence in early 2018.

You can help by share your ideas on the discussion pageorsend an email to the Anti-Harassment Tools team. The team also wants to know about any previous discussions related to blocking tools.

New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience

• Possible backlinks^[1] (source)byUser:Lourdes – Adds a link titled "Possible backlinks" to the left-menu toolbar; clicking on the link searches out articles where possible backlinks may be created for the current page.
• Undo-last-edit^[2] (source)byUser:Enterprisey – adds a option to the "More" menu that undoes the last edit made to the page.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2017 #48, #49, & #50. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.

• Recent changes
  • You can now test the new advanced search function beta feature on mediawiki.org. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It will come to German and Arabic Wikipedia this week. It will come to more wikis later. [1]
  • You can now upload large files with the Internet Archive upload tool. Previously you could not upload files larger than 100 MB. [2]
  • You can now use the Timeless skin on all wikis. You can choose skins in Special:Preferences#Appearance. [3]
  • It is now possible to upload MP3 files to Commons. Only users with MP3 file upload rights can upload MP3 files. [4]
  • You can now use live updates for recent changes if you use the new filters. This feature updates the filtered recent changes every three seconds when you activate it. [5]
  • There is an experimental onion service for Wikimedia projects. Only registered users with the IP Block Exempt permission may use the service. [6]
  • Very old versions of the Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems. [7]
  • URLs that link to sections on Wikimedia wikis with non-Latin scripts have looked like this: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#.D0.98.D1.81.D1.82.D0.BE.D1.80.D0.B8.D1.8F instead of https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия#История. This has now been fixed on all wikis. Old links will still work. [8]
  • A new tag marks edits where a redirect was created or removed. This still works when the editor writes something else in the edit summary. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. [9]
  • If you use ChromeonAndroid, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article. [10]
  • Filter by number of edits or filter by time range have been grouped on a same menu on the recent changes page if you use the new filters. The "View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent. [11]
  • Some of the web fonts that were provided by the Universal Language Selector extension are being removed. This is to reduce the load time on pages. The web fonts were added many years ago to help users read text in scripts which did not have fonts or had broken fonts. This is not the case any more. You can check the status page for a list of all web fonts and whether they are currently being used and especially for special requirements. [12]
• Future changes
  • Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [13][14]
  • The Community Liaisons team at the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for active tech ambassadors. This is to make sure the Wikimedia communities get all the information they need about new features and can be involved in the technical development. [15]

In this issue

18 December 2017 (all comments)

Special report

Blog

• There is a backlinks tool developed by Edward Betts. Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ ^{and Merry Christmas} 14:43, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Hello Barbara, how are you doing? Yes. The Betts' tool was an external tool that stopped working and led to a request being put up on the Help Desk for an alternative tool. That's when I wrote the "Possible backlinks" script. I haven't checked since then if the Betts' tool has been repaired. Thanks, Lourdes 02:07, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, back atcha. I used the Betts tool the other day and it seemed to work. I even show it to new users when I am training them in person. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ ^{and Merry Christmas} 12:55, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you're right. The link http://edwardbetts.com/find_link/ is working right now. Lourdes 14:16, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• The Timeless skin is brilliant but doesn't seem to play well with gadgets like Twinkle. WaggersTALK 13:30, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Scripts can be fixed by checking the skin and adjusting the portlet location (where they add their link) accordingly, like I did for my Rater script [16]. Twinkle is a bit of a special case since they want to add a whole menu, not just a single item, but they are aware of the issue [17]. - Evad37 [talk] 01:36, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Should "discussions related blocking tools" be replaced with "discussions related to blocking tools"? Apokrif (talk) 08:50, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  

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