Tech News 2026, week 08

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/2026/08> are
available.

*Weekly highlight*

   - The SRE Team
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Site_Reliability_Engineering>
will
   be performing a cleanup of Wikimedia's Etherpad
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Etherpad> instance,
   the web-based editor for real-time collaborative document editing. All pads
   will be permanently deleted after 30 April, 2026 – if there are still
   migration projects in progress at that point the team can revisit the date
   on a case by case basis. Please create local backups of any content you
   wish to keep, as deleted data cannot be recovered. This cleanup helps
   reduce database size and minimize infrastructure footprint. Etherpad will
   continue to support real-time collaboration, but long-term storage should
   not be expected. Additional cleanups may occur in the future without prior
   notice. [1] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T415237>

*Updates for editors*

   - The Information Retrieval team will be launching an Android mobile app
   experiment
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Readers/Information_Retrieval/Phase_1>
that
   tests hybrid search capabilities which can handle both semantic and keyword
   queries. The improvement of on-platform search will enable readers to find
   what they’re looking for directly on Wikipedia more easily. The experiment
   will first be launched on Greek Wikipedia in late February, followed by
   English, French, and Portuguese in March. Read more
   <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/01/08/semantic-search-making-it-easier-to-find-the-information-readers-want/>
on
   Diff blog. [2]
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Readers/Information_Retrieval>
   - The Reader Growth team will run an experiment
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Readers/Reader_Growth/WE3.10.2_Mobile_Table_of_Contents>
for
   mobile web users, that adds a table of contents and automatically expands
   all article sections, to learn more about navigation issues they face. The
   test will be available on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and
   Vietnamese Wikipedias.
   - Previously, site notices (MediaWiki:Sitenotice
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice> and
   MediaWiki:Anonnotice
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Anonnotice>) would only
   render on the desktop site. Now, they will render on all platforms. Users
   on mobile web will now see these notices and be informed. Site
   administrators should be prepared to test and fix notices on mobile devices
   to avoid interference with articles. To opt out, interface admins
can add #siteNotice
   { display: none; } to MediaWiki:Minerva.css
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Minerva.css>. [3]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T138572>[4]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T416644>
   - View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Recently_resolved_community_tasks>.
   For example, an issue on Special:RecentChanges
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges> has been fixed.
   Previously, clicking hide in the active filters caused the "view new
   changes since…" button to disappear, though it should have remained
   visible. The button now behaves as expected. [5]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T406339>

*Updates for technical contributors*

   - New documentation is now available to help editors debug on-site
   search features. It supports troubleshooting when pages do not appear in
   results, when ranking seems unexpected, and when you need to inspect what
   content is being indexed, helping make search behavior easier to understand
   and analyze. Learn more
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:CirrusSearch/Debug>. [6]
   <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T411169>
   - Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.46/wmf.16>

*Tech news
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News> prepared
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<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Writers> and
posted by bot
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/User:MediaWiki_message_delivery>
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