Tech News 2025, week 45

Latest *tech news
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News>* from the
Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes.
Not all changes will affect you. Translations
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2025/45> are
available.

*Updates for editors*

   - Administrators will now find that Special:MergeHistory
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MergeHistory> is now
   significantly more flexible about what it can merge. It can now merge
   sections taken from the middle of the history of the source (rather than
   only the start) and insert revisions anywhere in the history of the
   destination page (rather than only the start). [39]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T382958>
   - For users with "Automatically subscribe to topics" enabled in their
   preferences
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing>,
   starting a new topic or adding a reply to an existing topic will now
   subscribe them to replies to that topic. Previously, this would only happen
   if the DiscussionTools "Add topic" or "Reply" widgets were used. When
   DiscussionTools was originally launched existing accounts were not opted in
   to automatic topic subscriptions, so this change should primarily affect
   newer accounts and users who have deliberately changed their preferences
   since that time. [40] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T290778>
   - Scribunto modules can now be used to generate SVG images
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:Scribunto/Lua_reference_manual#SVG_library>.
   This can be used to build charts, graphics and other visualizations
   dynamically through Lua, reducing the need to compose them externally and
   upload them as files. [41] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T405861>
   - Wikimedia sites now provide all anonymous users with the option to
   enable a dark mode color scheme, featuring light-colored text on a dark
   background. This enhancement aims to deliver a more enjoyable reading
   experience, especially in dimly lit environments. [42]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T395628>
   - Users with large watchlists have long faced timeouts when editing
   Special:EditWatchlist
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:EditWatchlist>. The page now
   loads entries in smaller sections instead of all at once due to a paging
   update, allowing everyone to edit their watchlists smoothly. As part of the
   database update, sorting by expiry has been removed because it was over
   100× slower than sorting by title. A community wish
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist/W454> has been
   created to explore alternative ways to restore sort-by-expiry. If this
   feature is important to you, please support the wish! [43]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T41510>
   - View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Recently_resolved_community_tasks>.
   For example, the fixing of the persisting highlighting when using
   VisualEditor find and replace during a query. [44]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T407318>

*Updates for technical contributors*

   - Since 2019 the Wikimedia URL Shortener
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_URL_Shortener>
    at https://w.wiki is available for all Wikimedia wikis to create short
   links to articles, permalinks, diffs, etc. It is available in the sidebar
   as "Get shortened URL". There are 30 wikis that also install an older
   "ShortUrl" extension. The old extension will soon be removed. This means
   /s/ URLs will not be advertised under article titles via HTML
   class="title-shortlink". The /s/ URLs will keep working. [45]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107188>
   - On Thursday, October 30, the MediaWiki Interfaces
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/MediaWiki_Interfaces_Team>
    and SRE Service Operations
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Site_Reliability_Engineering>
teams
   began rerouting Action API traffic through a common API gateway. Individual
   wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total
   traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and
   non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator
   ticket to the Service Ops team
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/serviceops/> board.
   - MediaWiki Train deployments will pause for the final two weeks of
   2025: 22 December and 29 December. Backport windows will also pause between
   Monday, 22 December 2025 and Thursday, 2 January 2026. A backport window is
   a scheduled time to add things like bug fixes and configuration changes.
   There are seven deployment trains remaining for 2025. [46]
   <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/thread/SMWTEAES4SDLDUSK4HMWNBSKNCXZAWYN/>
   - Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.45/wmf.26>

*In depth*

   - In 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation reported that AI systems and search
   engines increasingly use Wikipedia content without driving users to the
   site, contributing to an 8% drop in human pageviews compared to 2024. After
   detecting bots disguised as humans, Wikimedia updated its traffic data to
   reflect this shift. Read more about current user trends on Wikipedia in a
   Diff blog post
   <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/17/new-user-trends-on-wikipedia/>.

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