User blog:Jpearson/Technical Updates: June 16, 2023

Hey everyone! Check out the latest Technical Updates since June 2nd. We’ll continue to update the editor community on bug fixes and product development updates on a bi-weekly basis!

Notable Changes

 * We fixed a bug, on wikis with anonymous editing disabled, where logged-out users on mobile could see the edit button and open the editor despite not being able to edit. The edit button has now been removed.We fixed a bug, on wikis with anonymous editing disabled, where logged-out users on mobile could see the edit button and open the editor despite not being able to edit. The edit button has now been removed.


 * We’re excited to share that we’ve fixed the issue, which primarily impacted Wowpedia, with tags. In the last update we mentioned inserting an article into without #data resulted in an error. Also, tags on the same page it is pulling from will not display the information correctly. Now, information will bbe displayed correctly.


 * When editing on mobile, users experienced a few challenges: text that is on the page was lost when saving in the editor, or text that was deleted from the page was restored after saving. We resolved this issue.


 * We’ve fixed the bug where the number of comments on a blog didn’t appear in the bubble at the top of the page.


 * Attempting to use EmbedVideo to include a Nico Nico video resulted in a fatal error for users. We have resolved this issue.

Known Issues

 * As users switch from Visual mode to Source mode in the mobile editor, all pending changes are lost. We are working to resolve this issue and will provide an update soon.


 * The Visual Editor deals poorly with pages that have multiple tables. Pages with multiple tables include a lot of padding, which causes errors as editors click to edit tables. Our team is currently working on fixing this issue.

User-Generated Content (UGC) team

 * The Thanks extension is in testing. We’re continuing to test the results of the Thanks extension, which we’ve launched on 1200 wikis, to analyze how it’s performing on the platform.  We expect to continue testing for the next several weeks before moving into the full release. In the meantime, if you’re interested in having your wiki be part of the Thanks testing, feel free to reach out to your Wiki Representative (if applicable) or Fandom Support so we can review your request!


 * Edit button text for logged-out users. We changed the edit button label from "view source" to "sign in to edit" for logged-out users on wikis that don't allow anonymous editing, resulting in a lift of registrations and subsequent edits. That same change also added section header edit buttons for anons on those same wikis.


 * Additional experiments are running. We have several other experiments currently in progress or in development. We just completed one to make things a bit easier for newer users in the editor, and we’re analyzing the results of that. If it looks good and we decide to productize it, we’ll let you know in a future Technical Update!

User Experience (UX) team

 * Fan Feed refresh. On desktop, we’ve updated the Fan Feed at the bottom of wiki pages to only include wiki content from the wiki you’re currently viewing. Removing mixed content contributed to a meaningful lift in the number of people who use the Fan Feed for recommendations, so we’re excited to have this update live! We may still experiment with adding other content types, but we’d only officially release that as a feature if it was providing value for readers. Note that this change is so far mobile-only; the experiment to show only wiki content was inconclusive on mobile, so we’ll need to re-think and then re-run that experiment to know for sure if it’s successful on mobile devices.

Platform team
If there’s anything you still think needs to be fixed that hasn’t yet, please be sure to either contact your Wiki Representative or, if your wiki doesn’t have one, send us a bug report!
 * MediaWiki 1.39 upgrade. We recently migrated the esports wikis, another milestone that we have accomplished! We are migrating the final 20k wikis, and the upgrade will be complete!