User blog:Antonio R. Castro/Technical Updates: December 1, 2023

Hello hello!

Check out the latest Technical Updates since November 17th. We’ve been publishing these tech updates on a bi-weekly basis, so the next one will be on December 15th. However, that one will be the last update of 2023, as we go into a code-freeze at the end of the year, meaning that we will not be releasing anything major. You can expect these to resume in January as usual.

Notable changes

 * Highlight menu redesign: After a successful recent experiment, we are adding an edit entry point onto the highlight to search menu for logged-in users. The experiment saw more logged-in users opening the editor as well as an increase in searches, which we considered a success so we are fully releasing it to all logged-in users.
 * View image link: With this change we’ve added a View Image link to access gallery for anon users in mobile and desktop. It’s the result of an experiment where we saw 5.6% increase in image views on desktop with the addition of this link.

Recent Fixes

 * Thanks link was missing the heart icon in Special:Watchlist.
 * Infoboxes were taking more than 2 minutes to update after editing them via infobox builder. The changes are shown immediately now.
 * Special:Analytics was showing the returning users graph incorrectly. It won’t say again that 100% of the users are returning to the wiki if this is not true.
 * On sizes from 320px to 370px, some texts were cut off at the end of the lines in the infoboxes. The fix will give more space to the text to be shown.
 * Some users reported the 2017 Editor freezing when saving an edit. The issue was identified and fixed in less than 24 hours. Thanks for quickly reporting it!
 * Some of the subscribers to the Staff Blog at Community Central received multiple emails about the most recent Technical Update. We’ve fixed the bug that caused this to help prevent it from happening again.

Fixes in Development

 * Some users receive invisible notifications, not allowing them to dismiss them. This issue was fixed previously, but it is returning again. Our team is identifying the origin and working on a permanent solution.
 * We are going to extend the min-height of the VisualEditor’s text area in User Talk Pages, which will prevent problems with editing on shorter screens.

User-Generated Content (UGC) team

 * Thanks extension: It is finally released! The Thanks extension is available to all communities in the Admin Dashboard. Feel free to test it and join us for our next AMA on Discord on December 12.
 * [New Experiment] Simplified Visual Editor: We believe that providing first-time editors with a far simpler, more familiar editor interface will enable more of them to successfully publish their first edit. This experiment will be tested on 50% of the editors opening the Visual Editor.
 * [Ending Experiment] Reduce load time for 2017 Visual Editor: This experiment has to be repeated due to some tech issues. The original idea is to load the editor in the background when our users hover over the edit entry points, which will save time if they click on the link and make it faster to edit.

User Experience

 * [Ending Experiment] Referenced Links: Readers would be more likely to read more wiki content if presented with pictures of the pages referenced in a section of a wiki article, highlighting the directly relevant content. This experiment ran over a week and we are currently analyzing the results to determine our next steps.

Traffic team

 * Quick Answers: We are continuing to spend time making sure that Quick Answers is even more valuable to the community in a way that addresses the original missteps. Some communities are testing the editing tools for Quick Answers, and our Traffic and UGC teams work closely with them to fix the bugs and add some improvements requested by our users. We are also looking into adding a review period for unreviewed QAs, giving admins a period of time to look over questions and answers before they go live. We love to see this collaboration between Fandom and the communities! Thanks for your support!

We want to thank all of you for your support and help to report and identify bugs, it is vital for keeping this platform clean of bugs. If there is anything you think should be fixed, please contact your Wiki Representative or, if your wiki doesn’t have one, send us a bug report!