User blog:Jpearson/Technical Updates: July 28, 2023

Hey everyone! Check out the latest Technical Updates since July 14th. We’ll continue to update the editor community on bug fixes and product development updates on a bi-weekly basis!

Notable Changes

 * Some wikis experienced issues as the “Special:BrowseData” Page no longer functioned and only returned a white screen after going to the page. We’re happy to share that this issue has been resolved!


 * There was an issue with the Light Theme background not appearing properly for some users after uploading a new version through the Theme Designer. The Light Theme background now appears in the Theme Designer.


 * When infobox CodeEditor is enabled, editors can now access the TemplateData! Before, editors opened the GUI and saved changes, and nothing changed on the edit surface.


 * Poll Text is being filtered properly through the Discussions Abuse Filter!


 * LinkSuggestions no longer leaves a blank box behind after selecting a suggestion when scrolling outside the editor.


 * Toolbar buttons in the mobile editor’s source mode were unresponsive. We have fixed this issue as well.

Known Issues

 * When editing in mobile, two related issues occur for users: some text that is on the page is lost when saving, and some text that was deleted from the page is restored after saving. A fix is in progress and we’ll report in the next update.


 * Users are experiencing issues when they open the mobile editor on pages where tabber is present. The same problem occurs using source editor mode and trying to switch between VisualEditor and SourceEditor pages results in users being stuck on a loading state on the page.


 * When editors create an infobox and set row labels, it fails to update the source variable name.

User-Generated Content (UGC) team

 * Thanks extension is in testing. We enabled Thanks on 10% of all wikis across Gampedia and Fandom. We’ll provide more updates about Thanks in the coming Technical Updates.


 * Reported Notifications. As previously announced, moderators are currently not notified in any way when social content on their wikis get reported. The UGC team is working on notifications alerting moderators of content that needs their attention which will decrease the average time it takes for reported content to be actioned. As we continue to prepare for a wider release, we'll be sure to update the progress in future technical updates!

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!
 * Local Nav Changes. We removed the local nav from inside the 2017 Visual Editor. after we'd already removed the global nav several weeks back. An experiment showed this increases the editor success rate (i.e. the rate at which users who open the editor manage to publish a change) by 2%! This is mainly targeted at new editors who find the editor interface overwhelming and confusing and who can benefit from every bit of clutter reduction in there, while more experienced editors may prefer to have the local nav there. For experienced editors, there’s an added button in the top right corner that can be used to unhide the local nav. Once retrieved, it will stay visible until you use the same button to hide it again.