Tech News 2025, week 50

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/2025/50> are
available.

*Weekly highlight*

   - Anybody who wishes to secure their user account can now use two-factor
   authentication
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Two-factor_authentication>
(2FA).
   This is available to all registered users of all Wikimedia projects. This
   is part of the Account Security
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Product_Safety_and_Integrity/Account_Security>
initiative.
   Later, 2FA will be required for all users who can take security- or
   privacy-sensitive actions.

*Updates for editors*

   - Following last week's deployments, the Add a link
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Growth/Tools/Add_a_link>
feature,
   which allows editors to add suggested links during editing, will be
   available to an additional 33 Wikipedias
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T410469> starting on 9 December. This
   expansion is possible thanks to the new prediction model that now supports
   all languages, including those that were previously not covered. While the
   feature has been available on most Wikipedias for some time, this rollout
   brings us closer to using the improved model everywhere. If you have any
   questions or would like more details please contact Trizek (WMF)
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/user:Trizek_(WMF)>.
   - Last week, the Search Platform team
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Search_Platform>
    added transliterated
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Transliteration> as-you-type
   search suggestions to Georgian wikis. If there are only a few regular
   search suggestions, then queries in Latin or Cyrillic script are now
   rewritten into Georgian script
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T127003> to look for more matches.
   For example, searching for either *bedniereba* or *бедниереба* will now
   suggest the existing article about ბედნიერება ("happiness"). You can
   recommend other languages where transliterated suggestions would be
useful on
   Phabricator <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T375215> for future
   development.
   - Later this week, a controlled experiment will begin for editors on the
   100 largest Wikipedias who are editing a section in the mobile web visual
   editor. 50% of these editors will notice a new "Edit full page" button that
   will enable them to expand their editing session to the whole page. This
   feature is intended to make it easier for people on mobile web to edit any
   article section, regardless of which section-edit icon they tapped to
   begin. The experiment will last ~4 weeks. You can find more details
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T409112> about the project.
   - Later this week, the Reader Growth team
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Readers/Reader_Growth>
will
   launch a mobile web experiment
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Readers/Reader_Growth/WE3.1.14_Expanded_Mobile_Sections>
to
   expand all article sections by default (currently they are collapsed by
   default) and pin the section header the user is currently reading to the
   top of the page. The experiment will affect 10% of users on Arabic,
   Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [1]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T409485>
   - The Wikipedia Year in Review 2025
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Wikipedia_Year_in_Review/2025_Year_in_Review>,
   a feature in the Wikipedia mobile apps (iOS and Android) that provides
   users with a personalised summary of their engagement with Wikipedia over
   the year, is now available on the iOS and Android apps. This edition
   includes expanded personalised insights, improved reading highlights, new
   donor messaging, and updated designs. Open the app to view your Year in
   Review and explore your reading journey from 2025.
   - A recent software bug caused edits made with VisualEditor to make
   unintended changes to wikitext, including removing whitespace and replacing
   spaces with underscores in wikilinks inside citations. This was partially
   fixed last week, and further fixes are in progress. Editors who used
   VisualEditor between November 28 and December 2 should review their edits
   for unexpected modifications. [2]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T411238>
   - View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Recently_resolved_community_tasks>.
   For example, the incorrect handling of URLs copied from the address bar of
   Microsoft Edge users, has been resolved. [3]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T341281>

*Updates for technical contributors*

   - Starting this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta
   feature
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures>
will
   have CodeMirror
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Extension:CodeMirror>
as
   the editor for Lua, JavaScript, CSS, JSON and Vue content models, instead
   of CodeEditor
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Extension:CodeEditor>.
   With this, the linters
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Extension:CodeMirror#Linting>
will
   be upgraded. This is part of a larger effort to eventually replace
   CodeEditor and provide a consistent code editing experience. [4]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T373711>
   - Developers are encouraged to take the 2025 Developer Satisfaction
   Survey <https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/552643>, which
   remains open until 5 January 2026. If you build software for the Wikimedia
   ecosystem and would like to share your experiences or feedback, your
   participation is greatly appreciated. [5]
   <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/thread/W4WBKO6Q55UWWCCSFWQATKEXBEHP3QNR/>
   - There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/User:MediaWiki_message_delivery>
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