Technical Updates: March 8, 2024

Hello hello! It’s time for a new Technical Update. You can read our previous blog post here. And as always, we remind you this is just a snapshot of the work done during the last weeks. We don’t include all the minor fixes and tweaks because it would transform this blog post into something longer than the list of saved lives by Son Goku during his life –thank you, Mr Toriyama–

Recent Fixes[]

• Several FandomMobile fixes these weeks:
  • When viewing images in the lightbox on FandomMobile, the part of the caption that’s also a link would not show up. Upon first release, this caused Wikipedia Interwiki links in the image caption to break the layout. Both those issues are fixed now.
  • Section links on images were missing the page name. The link in [[File:Image.png|link=#Test]] will no longer incorrectly point to wiki/#Test but now properly links to wiki/PAGENAME#Test.
  • Not live yet, but should be next week: the image caption was set to 50% by default, which often caused readability issues. We’ve remedied that.
• Internationalization issues
  • It wasn’t easy to identify the language of the wiki for a non-native speaker in the drop-down menu included in the create new wiki process. We have added the language code for every language name.
  • Users logging out on non-English Gamepedia wikis were redirected to the English wiki, it has been fixed.
  • Buttons included in the modal for confirming deleting article comments weren’t translated in the respective languages. They are using the user language now.
  • The global user groups are internationalized now in Special:UserRights.
• The use of <bloglist> tags outside the blog: namespace resulted in a faulty rendering of some otherwise hidden code. This has been removed and the "Create blog post" button will once again only be visible in the user namespace, which is for example /User_blog:{username} or /User_blig:{username}/{BlogPageName}. It can be that the page requires a purge to have the fix show up.
  • We are aware that when you use the <bloglist> tags in your userspace, the “Create blog post” button will only be visible to you without being interactive.
• More than 20 upvotes to a reply on Discussions no longer causes the number indicator of the number of likes to become stacked rather than have a horizontal display.
• Invalid and closed wiki pages will now also show the global navigation.
• No more “action invalid” error messages after trying to change images for some achievement badges.

Changes in Development[]

• CodeMirror upgrade will be tested on some wikis before being released globally. Thank you to all the volunteers helping us out. Our team took special note of the reported issues during our first update attempt, but we are grateful to be working side by side now with some communities to ensure a smooth release!
• Restrict editing on wikis aimed at children: this extra protection will be added soon, and only emailconfirmed accounts will be able to edit in those wikis. We will notify the wikis affected by this change before the release.
• Trying to edit a section of a page using the Visual Editor source mode (2017 source editor) will load the entire page instead of just the intended section editor. The team is looking into a fix for this.

Development Updates[]

Platform[]

• We continue with the upgrade of the Fandom Authentication process. In addition to the other upgrades, we are adding clearer warning messages and more validation errors for the passwords. You will be notified during the registration process if your password is listed in a database of breached passwords. Remember not to share your passwords and use unique ones per account!

User-Generated Content (UGC) team[]

• [Tweak] Visual Editor performance improvement: Following a successful experiment, we increased the loading speed of the VisualEditor in an update last Wednesday. More details are here.
• [Experiment] Progress in Interactive Maps: Last Monday we started the experiment on a group of gaming wikis to allow users to mark their in-game progress on our interactive maps by showing checkboxes to mark or unmark locations. In addition, they can also use a filter to show only the checked or unchecked markers.
• [New Experiment] Welcome messages on Message Wall for first-time editors: New editors on wikis will receive an automated message from Fandom staff, thanking them for their contribution and encouraging them to visit Special:Community. While for the duration of the experiment local moderators cannot change the wording of the welcome message, they can edit the content on Special:Community to make sure the wiki’s to-do list is up to date and give newcomers all the relevant info they’d need to thrive on your wiki.

Traffic team[]

• Quick Answers: We released the “faucet” system to our testing communities and alerted them of the possibility of adjusting the number of QAs to vet per period by reaching out to staff. Requesting a change to the default takes effect from the next batch of QAs that gets released for review on the wiki.

Thank you for all your support, and as always, if there is anything you think should be fixed, please contact us on our Walls/talk pages or send us a bug report!

Antonio R. Castro

Fandom Staff

Antonio R. Castro is part of Fandom since May 2007. He was helper for 3 years focused on ES community and since 2011 he is a member of the Fandom staff. He is working currently like Product Support Lead. Fan of wikis, videogames, Star Wars, Song of Ice and Fire and any TV series pre or post Breaking Bad.

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