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Technology report

Technical enhancements and a request to prioritize upcoming work

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By Evad37

Automated bare url expansion

Citation bot now expands select bare url citations. For example, see this diff.

This doesn't work with all bare urls, but it will work with urls to Google Books, arXiv, bibcode, JSTOR, doi, PMID and several other identifiers. If you see such bare urls in an article, you can activate Citation bot here or use the one-click citation expander gadget in your preferences. The Google Books output in particular will need to be reviewed, as sometimes Google Books links to magazine, rather than books proper. It shouldn't give anything egregiously wrong, but the citation might not have the full details, list a publisher for author, or might need to be converted to {{cite magazine}} or something.

Many thanks to User:AManWithNoPlan for this. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

(adapted from village pump post [permanent link])

Automatic mapframe maps in Infoboxes

{{Infobox building}} and {{Infobox shopping mall}} now automatically displays dynamic <mapframe> maps by default, if available. If you are interested in any articles using this infobox, please review how the map displays in those articles: you can adjust the size, frame center point, initial zoom level, and marker icon using various optional parameters; the mapframe map may also be turned off using |mapframe=no.

See Template talk:Infobox building and Template talk:Infobox shopping mall for further information and discussions.

Non-CC0 licenses for the Data namespace

Following previous discussions, legal approval and tech work it is now possible to have tabular and map data in one of the following free licenses:

  • CC0-1.0 (as previously)
  • CC-BY versions: CC-BY-1.0, CC-BY-2.0, CC-BY-2.5, CC-BY-3.0, CC-BY-4.0, CC-BY-4.0+
  • CC-BY-SA versions: CC-BY-SA-1.0, CC-BY-SA-2.0, CC-BY-SA-2.5, CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC-BY-SA-4.0, CC-BY-SA-4.0+
  • ODbL-1.0

The default license is empty string (e.g invalid license) and when user tries to save page with invalid license, he/she will get notified of the allowed licenses. (there is a task to make it slightly more clear: phab:T201758).

You can see an example how to declare such license here (diff).

Whenever you consider to release tabular data with licenses other than CC0 please keep in mind that any templates that pull data from non-CC0 licensed datasets need to comply with the relevant attribution terms, hence it is highly encouraged to prefer CC0 whenever possible.

Thanks, Eran (talk)

(adapted from Commons village pump post [permanent link])

Server switch coming up

The Wikimedia Foundation will once more be performing server switches, to test its secondary data centre. This has been scheduled for Wednesday 12 September and Wednesday 10 October 2018, both rounds starting at 14:00 UTC. During the switches, you will be able to read but not make any edits for up to an hour. Further information is available on Meta-Wiki and on Wikitech.

In brief

  • Advanced item Cloud Services purge – Cloud VPS projects which are not marked as actived will not be migrated to the new cloud region. Instances and projects will be eligible for suspension or shutdown from October 1, and removal from November 1.

New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience

Bot tasks

Recently approved tasks
Current requests for approval

Latest tech news

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community: 2018 #31, #32, #33, #34, and #35. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available on Meta.

Recent changes
Problems
  • Some diffs show lines in the wrong order. The developers are working on fixing it. (source)
Changes later this week
  • The message you see when you thank a user will change. This is to make it easier to understand. (source)
  • AWB will stop adding using AWB in the edit summary. Instead it will add a tag that says AWB. (source)
  • Advanced item Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title. (source)
  • Advanced item Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age. (source)
Future changes
  • The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can read more. You can leave feedback on the talk page. [1]
  • The 2018 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
  • Advanced item Legacy JavaScript global variables have been deprecated for seven years. They will soon be removed from all wikis. Gadgets and scripts that use them will stop working. You can test your community's gadgets on "group0" wikis. For example Test Wikipedia or mediawiki.org. The legacy JavaScript global variables are already disabled there. You can read the migration guide to fix old scripts. (source)
Meetings
  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting takes place every Wednesday from 3:00–4:00 p.m. UTC. See how to join here.

Installation code

Further information: Wikipedia:User scripts § How to install user scripts
  1. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:Danski454/ToggleSmall.js' ); // Backlink: User:Danski454/ToggleSmall.js
  2. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:EnterpriseyBot/reply-link.js' ); // Backlink: User:EnterpriseyBot/reply-link.js
  3. ^ Copy the following code, click here, then paste:
    importScript( 'User:AlexTheWhovian/script-categorypagelinks.js' ); // Backlink: User:AlexTheWhovian/script-categorypagelinks.js
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30 August 2018 (all comments)
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    These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.

    Server switch

    As I remember correctly, this second server will also be in the United States. I know it is an expensive hobby but would it be sensible to build the third one outside the USA. Let me say <conflict of interest alert>west County Clare, Republic of Ireland</conflict of interest alert>? Or another region with a low risk of invasion, terrorist attacks or earthquakes. The Banner talk 17:48, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

    There might be some legal implications with regard to having a server in a different country – for example, hosting copyrighted images based on the fair use provision within U.S. copyright law could be problematic. - Evad37 [talk] 02:38, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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