User blog:Jpearson/Technical Update: January 27, 2023

Hey everyone! We have a few updates since January 13, 2023. We’ll continue to update the editor community on bug fixes and product development updates bi-weekly!

In our last update, we told you about how we’d been finalizing our plans for 2023. The good news is that, for the most part, we’re just about done and we now have a 2023 roadmap! We’ll share more over the coming weeks and months about what we have planned, so stay tuned for more information.

Notable Changes

 * Link underline on hover. We recently fixed an issue where links did not consistently darken and get underlined on hover on desktop. This now works again on all wikis, including ones where links are already underlined by default due to the low contrast between their text and link color.

Known Issues

 * Encoding issues when accessing page history on mobile. We are aware that for non-English wikis, mobile article history pages sometimes don’t load and show an error instead. We’re currently testing and will have a fix prepared to announce before the next technical update.


 * Copy/Pasting issues in 2017 source mode. We will continue investigating why copying and pasting text sometimes makes the editor extremely slow, especially when syntax highlighting is enabled.


 * Scrolling issues in the mobile editor on iOS. We know that for mobile users on iOS that scrolling within the editor is not possible, preventing access to most of the page. We’re currently working on a fix for this issue to go live within the next week.


 * Loss of unsaved edits when switching from 2017 visual mode to 2017 source mode. We are aware that when users switch from the 2017 VisualEditor mode to 2017 source mode, any unsaved edits are not carried over. Instead, users see a browser popup warning them that information may be lost. This issue was caused by a temporary experiment we ran that added an extra option to the edit mode dropdown. We are ending this experiment, removing the extra option, which will also resolve this issue.
 * Bookmarks in the Fandom App. After a recent update to the Fandom app on iOS and Android, users were unable to access the content they had bookmarked. This issue is currently being fixed and will go live within the next week.

Discussions/Feeds

 * Post/Reply History. Post history is now live on select communities for performance testing. Thank you to the wikis who volunteered to give us early feedback on improvements to make prior to a wide release!


 * Easier access to moderation tools. We are finishing up the work that will allow admins and moderators to access moderation and other user-related tools (like Special:Block and Special:UserRights) directly from a user’s profile in Discussions. We expect this to be released early next week!


 * On-site notifications for reported posts. We are currently testing the code for providing on-site notifications when posts are reported. We expect this to be released in the next few weeks!


 * Anti-vandalism restriction. After a recent vandalism attack on a number of communities, we have re-added a restriction where your account must be 4 days old before you can post in DIscussions. Given that this type of vandalism is image-based, we are investigating adding in a rate limit to Discussions that will reduce the number of images people can post in a certain amount of time.

Platform

 * Two-Factor Authentication. We’re at the finish line! Work has been completed, and we expect to be able to release 2FA next week. It has already been released to the Fandom app for both iOS and Android, with mobile web and desktop to follow. Learn more about the upcoming release of Two-Factor Authentication and the impact and safety it provides for Fandom users.


 * Extension Review. The Product Team is still reviewing the list to determine what they will have the time to be able to work on, and then we’ll have the community vote from that list of finalists on which one they want to see enabled. Stay tuned for updates on Community Central!

Other

 * Editor Research. One of our themes for 2023 is going to be about finding ways to get more people editing on wikis. While that work won’t kick off for awhile, our User Experience Research (UXR) team has kicked off work to find out how we can help more people join the world of wiki editing.

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!
 * New Registration Button and Sign-in Placement. We recently released a change based on the results of a successful experiment to add a Registration button and a Sign-In button to the upper right-hand side of the page for logged-out users. Note that this change is just for logged-out users, given that logged-in users are already registered and signed in.