Commons:Village pump/Technical

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This page is used for technical questions relating to the tools, gadgets, or other technical issues about Commons; it is distinguished from the main Village pump, which handles community-wide discussion of all kinds. The page may also be used to advertise significant discussions taking place elsewhere, such as on the talk page of a Commons policy. Recent sections with no replies for 30 days and sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=--~~~~}} may be archived; for old discussions, see the archives; recent archives: /Archive/2024/05 /Archive/2024/06.

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New tool for cropping and rotating images (proposal)

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MediaWiki or at least Commons should have a function that allows to crop images and save them as separate ones directly, including the original description.

Why would we need it when most phones can crop or even rotate images?

  • preserve image resolution
  • preserve metadata
  • ensure derivation is annotated on original file

We currently have a bot and a user tool that have some of the functionality, but this lags behind a reasonable functionality. Maybe WMF development can be facilitated by adopting some of their code. Enhancing999 (talk) 08:13, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Enhancing999, CropTool has no lag for me. You ask to crop an image, you crop it and it is immediately uploaded. I use it regularly and I do not have any complains about it. Rotatebot also seems to work fine. You tag a file for rotating and within 24 hours it is rotated. I guess we could have a tool to rotate immediately, but the current approach is not bad. --Jarekt (talk) 00:42, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are two years of open bug reports and feature requests on the tools talk page.
I agree it works on files of 500 KB, but larger ones fail now, especially when attempt to fix rotation by a few degrees. Rotatebot can't handle that. Also the automated border detection fails. Enhancing999 (talk) 08:15, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of miscellaneous failures over the last few years, and no one committed to maintaining it.
I'd be glad to see a group of three or more volunteers take it on, or WMF, but finding one more individual to do it just postpones collapse, because the environment keeps changing. - Jmabel ! talk 12:46, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't development of key features meant to be done by paid WMF staff? It's not a content/editorial issue. Enhancing999 (talk) 07:41, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Enhancing999:
Why would we need it when most phones can crop or even rotate images?
That assumes that users use phones. The section ‘Mobile versions of user talk pages are useless’ did point out that some users exclusively use phones, shunning other devices such as laptops and desktop computers.
But not all users are like that. There are good reasons for using other devices, including (but not limited to) the criticisms of Wikimedia's mobile versions given in that same section. Brianjd (talk) 08:30, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This section is actually about two distinct actions:
  1. Edit an image (by cropping or rotating), while otherwise preserving image quality and metadata.
  2. Upload the edited image with an appropriate filename and description and ensure that the original image’s description is updated accordingly.
But this section proposes to bundle these actions into one tool.
The problem is that there are other important types of edits besides crops and rotations. Even if Commons can’t help with the edits themselves, it should still help with filenames and descriptions, the same way as it does for crops and rotations. Brianjd (talk) 08:46, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, in the past, bundling these actions have been proven fairly helpful. If you think other tools are needed at Commons, please discuss this elsewhere. Enhancing999 (talk) 14:35, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Enhancing999: I agree that bundling these actions into one tool is helpful. But that one tool should be implemented as a wrapper around more specific tools (one for cropping and one for handling filenames and descriptions), which should also be accessible separately. Brianjd (talk) 08:21, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As user, I'm mainly interested in a stable, working tool. For the rest, WMF pays IT staff. Enhancing999 (talk) 08:40, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There has been some code written to include cropping into mediawiki. Just needs someone to take it over the line. Bawolff (talk) 21:48, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This talk page reports several problems with the current version of CropTool. As a user, I am indifferent about whether it is repaired or replaced. But something must be done, urgently. Pommée (talk) 08:17, 19 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-20

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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [1]
  • If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template" will now also work without reloading the page. [2]
  • Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [3]
  • The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [4]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [5][6]
  • The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [7]

Future changes

  • In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [8]
  • Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
    1. Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
    2. Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:55, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

HotCat

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I've found my HotCat not really working today, it doesn't highlight any images after I select All. No Swan So Fine (talk) 10:43, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure you mean HotCat and not Cat-a-Lot ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:23, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct, sorry. I meant Cat-a-Lot! I've replied at [11] No Swan So Fine (talk) 11:53, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to upload by URL

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As of 1330 UTC today, there have been some backend changes to how uploading files by URL works. In order to address historical issues where larger files time out during upload (and to hopefully enable us to increase upload limits in future), URL uploads are now performed in the background after submission. This has been successfully tested in a few environments, but if you notice any issues with Special:Upload when using URLs, please post in the relevant Phabricator task. HNowlan (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-21

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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [12]
  • New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [13][14]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [15][16]
  • The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:01, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Javascript issue

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Hi, I got a JS problem. Help:Gadget-DelReqHandler doesn't load or work. Broken with Monobook and Timeless on Chrome and Firefox on Windows 10. Works with other skins. Yann (talk) 10:45, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Info -> Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard#Problem_with_DelReqHandler.--Wdwd (talk) 12:36, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible to search EXIF tags?

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Is it possible to search by EXIF tag, i.e., file metadata? The full text search allows a variety of operators, but I don't see anything for this, and it would be useful for some of the work I'm doing. grendel|khan 12:34, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

https://quarry.wmcloud.org/ has some limited support for searching through metadata, but it is far from ideal. Bawolff (talk) 23:13, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Replicating s:Module:Copyright-until here

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I am hoping that someone can do some work with s:Template:Copyright-until and the module by user:CalendulaAsteraceae at Wikisource to help reduce some of the problematic error generation that comes from just pasting links to files on a category page. Those cat pages are constantly generating errors for the red links, and it would be good if we could migrated to something a little less problematic. Thanks.  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-22

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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
  • In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
  • Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes: .collapsible, .multicol, .reflist, .coordinates, .topicon. Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar). [17][18]
  • When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules. [19]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:12, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:Dispenser/Double extension

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Can someone perhaps remove all the deleted and renamed files from User:Dispenser/Double extension so that only the ones that still need to be fixed are left? Jonteemil (talk) 20:46, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone can do so by forking the Quarry query mentioned in the SQL snippet (look for Fork in the upper right corner of the Quarry page), but I’m not comfortable editing a random other user’s subpage without seeing an explicit permission for doing so. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 17:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Searching with 'haswbstatement' doesn't seem to filter properly.

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See here for an example. I'm searching in the File namespace for incategory:"Photos by Grendelkhan" -haswbstatement:P170, which brings up files which do have creator (P170) defined on them. If I switch to incategory:"Photos by Grendelkhan" haswbstatement:P170, I get zero results. I'm confused. According to mw:Help:Extension:WikibaseCirrusSearch, this should be filtering on the presence of a structured data field, but if anything it's doing the opposite? grendel|khan 15:18, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

as i'm writing:
  1. Media in category "Photos by Grendelkhan" The following 200 files are in this category, out of 725 total.
  2. incategory:"Photos by Grendelkhan" -haswbstatement:P170 -> Results 1 – 30 of 725
  3. 725-725=0 = incategory:"Photos by Grendelkhan" haswbstatement:P170
RZuo (talk) 21:26, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly; all of those photos have creator (P170) statements on them, but the filtering isn't doing the right thing. grendel|khan 16:44, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-23

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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • It is now possible for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript. Documentation is available. [20]
  • The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category" to "MediaWiki:Wikihiero-usage-tracking-category". [21]
  • One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Kadazandusun (w:dtp:) [22]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 June. It will be on all wikis from 6 June (calendar). [23][24]

Future changes

  • Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read. Learn more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 22:32, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-return-to-page vs MediaWiki:Returnto

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You are invited to join the discussion about localization of the Cat-a-lot gadget at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-return-to-page vs MediaWiki:Returnto. —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:59, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Enable numeric sorting for Commons categories

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English Wikipedia has numeric sorting for its categoesolveries, e.g. en:Category:Companies by year of establishment and country see that "0–9" that is created to as MediaWiki understands these are numbers and should be sorted using numeric sorting rather than character by character but Wikimedia Commons doesn't do that sorting and e.g. there is no "0-9" on Category:Photographs_in_the_Golestan_Palace_Library so 1039 is put before 108 I've proposed that on phab:T366703 but I'm told to discuss that with Commons community also. English Wikipedia uses the same config and the change from going from uppercase sorting to uca-default is discussed at phab:T136150. −ebrahimtalk 13:29, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Obsolete, previously agreed to have, Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2024/04#h-Numerical_sorting_in_categories-20240401232200 −ebrahimtalk 17:24, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Subcategory sorting broken

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Did this get changed today?
Any idea why "M" for subcategories is between "A" and "C" on Category:Goethe streets ?
Also "next" on Category:Non-empty category redirects doesn't work anymore. Enhancing999 (talk) 14:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Enhancing999: Yes, according to phab:T362494 it seems to have been deployed about half an hour ago. I suspect that there may be some transient problems while sort keys get updated for the new ordering. --bjh21 (talk) 14:45, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Weird. Let's given them a week to sort it out. Enhancing999 (talk) 14:51, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems they gave up on it. Phab:T366809. [25] Enhancing999 (talk) 15:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The find from the post-mortem at phab:T362494 seems to be that the script was run with the wrong options leading to change every sortkey, not just numeric ones. That it takes a long time to run shouldn't be that much an issue. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:15, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Enhancing999 That's not entirely correct. The problem is that the category collation script wasn't run at all, and running it would take weeks to months, during which categories would be broken in the ways you noticed. Because of the size of the Commons categorylinks database, this would cause more stress to the database than the database administrators are willing to tolerate. Using pure numeric collation instead of uca-default-u-kn would reduce the broken categories issue, but wouldn't change the database load issue. The size of the Commons database (specifically the tables for categories and templates) is so large that on its own it is causing stability issues (phab:T343131). We will need to take a hard and careful look at how we use categories and templates and reduce unnecessary uses of both, migrating data to SDC (which is stored more efficiently) where reasonable. Unfortunately we won't be able to do this on our own, it will need WMF support. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 00:10, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The two problems I reported here seem to be due entirely due to the wrong options being used. Or am I missing something? Enhancing999 (talk) 08:41, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cat-a-lot still doesn't work well

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Though this section was archived because the problem would supposedly have been resolved, Cat-a-lot still doesn't work for subcategories with at least one subcategory. So can this problem get a high priority and really be solved? It is now almost half a year that it arose. JopkeB (talk) 17:04, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, could it be made to work on Special:MediaSearch? Or fix Special:Search to display the full images? Enhancing999 (talk) 09:12, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

sort

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Any ideas about how to sort files in subcategories of Category:Photographs in the Golestan Palace Library by number? each subcategory might contain more than 100 files in the future. Hanooz 12:46, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Either
  • by setting the album category with sortkey in a template
  • or by adding a sortkey in on the file sample.
Enhancing999 (talk) 13:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm looking for a more proper way as there are more than 3000 files like the one you mentioned. Hanooz 13:40, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It should be fairly straightforward either way. Commons:Bots/Work_requests can help. Enhancing999 (talk) 13:49, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Hanooz: This was requested at Commons:Village pump/Archive/2024/04#h-Numerical sorting in categories-20240401232200 and now is purposed and blocked on phabricator:T362494 and interestingly enough my involvement with the issue is because of the same category also. If this didn't happen we can prepend 0 to subcategories sortkey as a work around. −ebrahimtalk 14:26, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I guess a three-digit sortkey must be added to each file. Hanooz 18:35, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Search and broken thumbnails

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Apparently this was fixed 2 years back, but somehow came back: phab:T320459 "Should not see squared, cropped thumbnails next to search results for files on Special:Search page on Commons".

What has changed since? How can we fix it again? @El Grafo, Matthiasmullie, and Raymond: Enhancing999 (talk) 10:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Might have to do with the recent changes to MediaWiki:Common.css – @Ebrahim: could you check that please? El Grafo (talk) 12:23, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Enhancing999, El Grafo: This isn't related to my change as that was about jQuery UI dialog in RTL and the code is available in several wikis so the change is MediaWiki side as far as I can tell but surely I want to help to fix it but I don't remember what the fixed situation looked like but have made this temporarily link so you can see if this is what you want which if so I can apply to be shown always −ebrahimtalk 14:40, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ebrahim: That would be an improvement. The images are no longer randomly cropped. Ideally, I guess lines for each result would have a similar height and the text would still align even if the images vary in actual width. A bit like the sample above (obviously with a larger text area). Thanks for looking into this. Enhancing999 (talk) 15:20, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Enhancing999: I've applied the change I shown on the temporarily link but I don't know yet how to apply this one you've brought which indeed looks great −ebrahimtalk 15:52, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way to revert or toggle this back to the squares or set a maximum height? The changes have resulted in vertically large images being huge and taking up several screenfuls of screen space. This is making using search to scan many images at once nigh on impossible. It is excruciating. Gnomingstuff (talk) 16:56, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For a specific example of what I mean, search "Unicode Tangut 17000 to 17FFF". If an image with similar proportions shows up in search -- and they frequently do, even in my experience in a short span of time -- image search becomes massively, massively cumbersome. Gnomingstuff (talk) 16:58, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I made some MediaWiki core changes to get rid of the table layout. It might be that it is related to that ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:50, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, this is definitely related. I wasn't aware that Commons had this override, so i couldn't take it into account when I was working on this. I have one small problem, in that I don't remember what sizing this used exactly before. I will test this out with my local MediaWiki install tomorrow and can then give you update CSS code for Commons to fix the problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:11, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-24

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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • The software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [26]
  • The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
  • The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the mw-reference-text class, Parsoid now also adds the reference-text class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available. [27]

Problems

  • There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed. [28]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (calendar). [29][30]
  • The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a <span class="mw-cite-backlink"> wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available. [31]
  • On multilingual wikis that use the <translate> system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it. [32]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 20:17, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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