Since March, 39 new pages have been added to Spaceflight. There is 1 less GA-class, with 3 more files, 4 more B-class, 6 more C-class, 7 more start-class and 5 new stub-class articles.
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
Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.
Problems
The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug.
Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes.
Changes later this week
Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).
Future changes
The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead.
hi, I was recently trying to convert Marburg virus disease using video wiki, however in the 'conversion' phase it would not go forward (I saw your name at the video wiki wikiproject thats how I though Id contact you), thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:32, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
Ozzie10aaaa I've only ever done one video for that project, and that was years ago. I suggest contacting one of the more active project members. - ZLEAT\C 20:17, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.
Arbitration
The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.
In the article "Soft Landing", I had changed "significant damage or destruction" to just "significant damage". I felt that "without causing significant damage" included "without causing the destruction".
Why do you feel it is important to include the phrase "or destruction"?
Jmichael ll "Significant damage" and "destruction" are two distinct terms. "Significant damage" generally means heavy but repairable damage, while "destruction" means heavy, non-repairable damage. A soft landing results in neither significant damage nor destruction. - ZLEAT\C 18:17, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't think anyone would say "it was destroyed, but it did not suffer significant damage".
Jmichael ll One also would not say "It crashed, but did not land", though "crash" and "land" have two distict meanings. - ZLEAT\C 14:39, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).
Future changes
You can see what participants plan to work on at the online Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.
Nimbus227 I wasn't actually the one to change the scope of the navbox. I only noticed the following text in the template, "Only aircraft, aero engines, and missiles are linked here," so I added "aircraft engines" to the header. I just went through the template and found that only one aircraft engine, the Northrop-Hendy XT37, is actually linked (N-10 and N-19 in the company designations). - ZLEAT\C 14:45, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
I just added an engines section to the template. - ZLEAT\C 14:47, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoidAPI would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first.
Changes later this week
MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).
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 Wikimedia movement has been using IRC on a network called Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have decided to move to the new Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia discussions about this.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).
The English Wikipedia, has just passed 6,300,000 articles!
Tip of the Month
This tip is one of the many ways to combat spam on Wikipedia:
On Wikipedia, articles either meet the General Notability Guideline or not. When you come across a new article, it is extremely important to determine if it is a real article, or just a spam article. Start with a search on Google, for reliable sources, if you get none in return, then look at the article for non-NPOV content, also scan the references section in the article to see what sources it uses, and check the 'other languages' section and Wikidata to see if it is on other Wikipedias. If other Wikipedias have the same content and/or a CSD or AfD tag (WP:AFD) it is likely spam or not notable, so you can then nominate it for deletion to get input, remember that CSD criterion does not always apply to these articles depending on the content/contex. Also remember to check for copyright violations via earwig's
Memorials
SlimVirgin has sadly passed away this month, you can read more about SlimVirgin's passing here
Moroboshi also sadly passed away earlier this month.
Our condolences go out to the editors and their families, thank you for your work on Wikimedia projects.
Humour
This section was made by CanadianOtaku, please note it contains some emojis, so you might just see a box if your browser doesn't support them. -つがるTalk to つがる:)🍁
Dear ZLEA:
If you remember, you undid my last change. I added it because in the Spanish version of this wiki there was this phrase, which says:
A pesar de que ésta es la última página de Wikipedia, existe el rumor de que hay una página después de ésta, aunque se mantiene sin contenido. ¿La encontraste?
I just literally translated and put on the English version of this webpage, so no vandalism was intended.
If you understand, please revert your reversion of my edit.
Carel3DS The translated text you added does not fit with the English version of the page and it doesn't make much sense. Thank you for trying to help, though. - ZLEAT\C 13:48, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
You welcome:,)
Just to note that A1 to 8, 11, 13 and 15 were not used as part of change to the A (Amphibian) designation so it is wrong to list them in your new A template. MilborneOne (talk) 17:58, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
Having another look at this we either need to put the OAs back where they were or create a new OA template and remove (or add a note) the not used ones from your new template. MilborneOne (talk) 18:10, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
Sorry another thought is you could add the OA sequence to your new Amphibian template. MilborneOne (talk) 18:12, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
Noted on the aircraft project page so others know we have an issue with the missing OAs. MilborneOne (talk) 18:23, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday.
The Crew of SpaceX Crew-1 had a successful splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on 2nd May at 06:56:33 UTC. After they launched in November 2020 and had spent 167 days in space.
A LongMarch 5B rocket had an uncontrolled re-entery into the atmosphere on 4th May. With any debris being reported to have landed in the Indian Ocean.
One of Rocket Labs Electron rockets expierienced a launch malfunction 2:30 into launch causing the mission to result in failure.
Images have been released after the landing of Zhurong rover on Mars on 14th May.
Creola Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".
Image of the month.
Astronaut Clayton Anderson wis shown as a water bubble floats in the middeck of space shuttle Discovery during the STS-131 mission.
Since April, 45 pages have been added to Spaceflight. 1 article reached FA-Class and 1 image reached FM-Class. There is 1 more GA class article, with 2 more B-class, 8 more C-class, 1 less start-class and 5 new stub-class articles.
FoldArchives collapses archived talk page threads in order to reduce screen space
GoToTitle converts the page title into an input field for navigating to other pages
UserHighlighter adds highlighting to links to the userpages, talk pages, and contributions of administrators and other user groups as well as tooltips to indicate which groups a user is in
filterDiff: Adds a "Show changes" button to the filter editor.
filterNotes: Parses filter notes as wikitext (so links are clickable), and signs and dates new comments for you.
filterTest: Adds a "Test changes" button. Opens Special:AbuseFilter/test with what's currently in the edit form, not with what's saved in the database, so you don't have to copy-paste your changes.
Twinkle has a number of improvements, including that most watchlist defaults now make use of the new temporary watchlist feature. Other changes include rollbacks treating consecutive IPv6 editors in the same /64 range as the same user, adding a preview for shared IP tagging, a preference for watching users after CSD notification, and for sysops, the ability to block the /64 and link to a WP:RfPP request, and new copyright blocks default to indefinite.
Wikipedia:Shortdesc helper now v3.4.17, changes include minor fixes and preventing edits that don't change the description.
Joeytje50's JWB now version 4.1.0, includes the ability to generate page lists from the search tool, major updates to the handling of regular expressions, the storing of user settings, the addition of upload protection, and an option to skip pages that belong to a specific category, among other changes. See User:Joeytje50/JWB/Changelog for a full list of recent changes.
Wikipedia:User scripts/List has been revamped to make it easier to find scripts suited for your needs. If you know of a cool script that is missing on the list, or a script on the list that is no longer working, please edit the list or let us know on the talk page.
My apologies for this long-overdue issue, and if I missed any scripts. Hopefully going forward we can go back to monthly releases - any help would be appreciated. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 13:04, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (calendar).
Future changes
The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future.
Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages.
The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters.
Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.
For bold and effective action in having Template:American F aircrafts deleted, including the defense of English grammar . - Ahunt (talk) 17:43, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Ahunt, just doing my sworn duty to protect our great grammer. - ZLEAT\C 18:18, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
Well keep up the grate work! - Ahunt (talk) 18:29, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
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
Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile.
German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC.
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.
The key results were:
Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.
These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.
Looking ahead
The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
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 otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters.
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).
Hello. Thanks for subscribing to TheWikiWizard, as you may know, the next issue of TheWikiWizard, was supposed to be ready and delivered to your talkpage (or the page you subscribed to receive the newsletter) on the 20th. However, due to Tsugaru (User:つがる) being busy with exams, and having some problems logging into his Wikipedia account, the next Issue of TWW has been delayed. The next issue should be ready in around one weeks time. Thanks for your patience and understanding, and we hope you will enjoy the next issue! -- つがるTalk to つがる:)🍁 02:45, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page.
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).
Future changes
Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users.
Hello, ZLEA! Here is the June 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard.
Wikipedia News
The IRC channels used for Wikipedia have changed, you can read more on it here. While TWW was aware of this in the last issue, we decided to wait and publish this in this issue, when the issue is not as new any more, and more information has been developed.
There was quick interruption in editing on Wikipedia, that was to test server switching should an emergency happen, more details can be found here.
Hello, ZLEA! Here is the June 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard.
The IRC channels used for Wikipedia have changed, you can read more on it here. While TWW was aware of this in the last issue, we decided to wait and publish this in this issue, when the issue is not as new any more, and more information has been developed.
There was quick interruption in editing on Wikipedia, that was to test server switching should an emergency happen, more details can be found here.
Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.
Technical news
IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.
Arbitration
The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.
Number of active members: 118.
Total number of members: 331.
Monthly Changes
Since May 28 pages ahve been added to Spaceflight. 1 article reached FA-Class, 1 list reached FL-class & 2 images reached FM-Class. There is 1 more GA class article, as well as 1 more file page. There are 4 more B class articles, 20 more C class articles, 10 less start class articles & 1 less stub article.
BOOKS are no longer supported by the WikiProject and are in the process of being deleted! See WP:BOOKSDEP & here for more.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list.
Newsletter contributor: Terasail
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.
Recent changes
AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes.
Problems
InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org.
Changes later this week
The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year.
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful.
WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to eliminate the backlog of unreviewed articles. The drive is running until 31 July 2021.
Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.
There is currently a backlog of over 2500 articles, so start reviewing articles. We're looking forward to your help!
thank you for your comment on Spirit of Cascia- much appreciated. I responded already with Aviation style headings and improving readability per your desire. Need a little help deleting that red ink because it in references and it in References section and being relative beginner, not sure how to delete it. please help/advise. thank you Mr./Ms.ZLEA! RDBACE1 (talk) 05:29, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
ZLEA: I note you have been working on Draft:Spirit of Cascia to improve it. Right now Spirit of Cascia redirects to Project Schoolflight. There is a large degree of overlap in these two articles. I have been looking at Draft:Spirit of Cascia and am not sure, if you strip out the overlap, that there will be much left. Perhaps it makes more sense to just incorporate what little new there is into Project Schoolflight. What do you think? - Ahunt (talk) 20:23, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Ahunt Thanks for pointing that out, I'll look into it. - ZLEAT\C 20:28, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Thanks guys- Yes alot of overlap since it is plane #1 pf project schoolflight so understandable is the redirect. thank you both for your efforts and the redirect probably is correct in telling its story so you 2 I appreciate both your guidance and assistance. warmest cheers to both! RDBACE1 (talk) 22:00, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
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 tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year.
Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).
Future changes
How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.
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
A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).
Future changes
If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preferenceEnable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.
An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.
Technical news
Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)
On 17th July NASA announced that scientific observations from the Hubble Space Telescope had resumed on a backup computer after being placed in a "safe mode" since June 13.
On 20th July Blue Origin had their first fully crewed mission to the edge of space with Jeff Bezos onboard in a New Shepard capsule.
On 26th July The Pirs module was the first permanent ISS module to be decommissioned. After docking to the ISS on 17th September 2001, just under 20 years ago.
On 29th July The ISS was moved out of its normal orientation after the Nauka module (a new Russian module) was docked and started firing its thrusters.
Shuttle-Centaur was a version of the Centaurupper stage rocket designed to be carried aloft inside the Space Shuttle. Two variants were developed: Centaur G-Prime and Centaur G. The powerful Centaur upper stage allowed for heavier deep space probes, and for them to reach Jupiter sooner. However, neither variant ever flew on a Shuttle.
Image of the month.
This is an Extreme Deep Field image taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, released by NASA on September 25th, 2012. With exposure dates from July 2002 to March 2012.
Since June: 24 pages have been added to spaceflight. There are 4 more files. There is 1 more B class article, 5 more C class articles, 10 more start class articles & 2 more stub class articles. The 2 additional FM class have been FM for a few years, they just registered this month.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list.
Newsletter contributor: Terasail
On 17th July NASA announced that scientific observations from the Hubble Space Telescope had resumed on a backup computer after being placed in a "safe mode" since June 13.
On 20th July Blue Origin had their first fully crewed mission to the edge of space with Jeff Bezos onboard in a New Shepard capsule.
On 26th July The Pirs module was the first permanent ISS module to be decommissioned. After docking to the ISS on 17th September 2001, just under 20 years ago.
On 29th July The ISS was moved out of its normal orientation after the Nauka module (a new Russian module) was docked and started firing its thrusters.
Shuttle-Centaur was a version of the Centaurupper stage rocket designed to be carried aloft inside the Space Shuttle. Two variants were developed: Centaur G-Prime and Centaur G. The powerful Centaur upper stage allowed for heavier deep space probes, and for them to reach Jupiter sooner. However, neither variant ever flew on a Shuttle.
Image of the month.
This is an Extreme Deep Field image taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, released by NASA on September 25th, 2012. With exposure dates from July 2002 to March 2012.
Since June: 24 pages have been added to spaceflight. There are 4 more files. There is 1 more B class article, 5 more C class articles, 10 more start class articles & 2 more stub class articles. The 2 additional FM class have been FM for a few years, they just registered this month.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list.
Newsletter contributor: Terasail
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
If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly.
Changes later this week
When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).
Future changes
The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).
Hi, I noticed your name at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Videowiki, we're having trouble with Article and I was wondering if you might be able/or know someone who could help out (it seems to be stuck) thank you for any assistance--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:08, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Ozzie10aaaa I haven't been active in that project for a while, but it appears to be a technical issue. Try contacting Hassan.m.amin, the developer of Videowiki. - ZLEAT\C 01:16, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database.
Changes later this week
The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.
Future changes
The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later.
Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future.
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
You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet.
Problems
There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed.
Changes later this week
A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden.
Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).
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 Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).
Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).
For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.
A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.
Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!
20:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
Hello, ZLEA! Here is the Summer 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard.
Wikipedia News
There is an election that is taking place, for the Wikikmedia Foundation, to read more about it click here
There are a few new admins who have joined the Admin Team, congrats to them! Remember, if you see a use who you believe meets the criteria for adminship here, or on other projects (Please check that Wikipedia/Wikimedia Project's Adminship Criteria page, as they vary by project), you can give it a try and nominate them for adminship if they are okay with it!
Humour
There is no due date in Wikipedia, so I could take 1000 years to write this issue! ;P
If you are reading this, you are reading this! (makes no sense, but okay!)
I have been really busy with school so I was unable to write this issue for a long time. Thanks for your patience.:)
Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here
To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here.
Enjoy this Issue and have a safe and happy summer! --つがるTalk to つがる:)🍁 02:35, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
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
Some musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.
Problems
Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator.
Changes later this week
The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).
Future changes
You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.