The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team is discussing new blocking tools and improvements to existing blocking tools in December 2017. Tool development work will commence in early 2018.
New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience
Possible backlinks[1] (source) by User: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.
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 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]
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 Chrome on Android, 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]
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]
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