Hello hello! We're starting to near the end of 2024, which means there are only a few tech blogs left to share with you all. If you're new to this bi-weekly series, hi, hello, welcome, we love to have you! This is the place-to-be to check in on the technical updates of this platform. We'll cover a selection of user-facing bug releases that happened the past two weeks, as well as an overview of relevant experiments and changes to the platform. As always, if there's something you're encountering, do not hesitate to report on it in the comments. Alright, let's go over what happened these last two weeks.
Brand and user internet safety standards are constantly changing. Ensuring that the Fandom platform is safe for all audiences is a vital part of building and maintaining a platform where the community can express themselves freely while fostering a space that's respectful, inclusive, and secure. While we know that none of these measures will stop vandalism, they're intended to throw up some roadblocks to make it more manageable to communities. To that end, Fandom has been making several changes the past months. Read more on the latest changes to anon editing and emailconfirmation requirements
Anonymous editing is disabled by default on newly created wikis. The change went into effect on October 28th and only counts for wikis created since then. The option to enable anon editing on the Admin Dashboard will remain unavailable until the wiki passes a platform safety review.
Starting next week, anon editing is disabled on wikis where the admins/content mods have not edited for at least 7 days. This measure is taken to limit higher-risk edits to moderated wikis. When an admin returns to the wiki, they can re-enable anonymous editing via a toggle on the Admin Dashboard. Right now, only a little over 10,000 wiki (or 4% of all wikis) have anonymous editing turned on, most of our biggest wikis not being among them.
Starting next week, email confirmation will be required to use your account on all wikis where anonymous editing is disabled. This will bring all wikis in line with what has already been the norm on wikis aimed at children since July. You can emailconfirm your account via Special:Preferences, tab User profile", section Email options". Those whose account hasn't been confirmed will see a notice about confirming their email in the bottom left corner as well as next to Feeds-entry posts, and as long as they haven't taken the necessary action, they won't be able to edit or comment on the platform. If you have trouble confirming your email address, please contact Fandom Staff.
Recent Fixes[]
Special:CuratedContent suggestions incorrectly used EN content on non-EN wikis.
Translations for "Others Like You Also Viewed" are no longer truncated but rather wrapped into two lines.
A vertical scrollbar is no longer triggered at the bottom of the content area on FandomDesktop. One of the known causes of this were videos embedded at the bottom of a page.
Discussions failed to load on multiple wikis on October 28th.
Fixes in Development[]
We recently fixed a html code issue in the StructuredQuote as well as added template documentation to English wiki communities. However, the example quote used contains links that don't exist on all but one wiki, thus creating 3 red links on those communities. We will be rerunning the script to fix that by changing the local links to interwiki links, as well as add translations of the template documentation to the relevant language wikis.
[Tweak] "New Visitors vs. Returning Visitors" chart clarification on Special:Analytics: Admins have access to some wiki-specific data charts via Special:Analytics. However, where all charts showed the data from the last 30 days, the "New Visitors vs. Returning Visitors" chart showed the data on a daily basis (from the day before to be precise), which created confusion when read with the others. To rectify this, the chart will now also show data from the last 30 days, and this will be clearly indicated underneath the chart itself. Also know that for this chart, "New Visitors" are the users who have logged in in the last 30 days and "Returning Visitors" are those who logged in in the period between the last 30 to 90 days.
[Rollout expanded] Reston datacenter enabled on several wikis: As we announced last month, we're testing an improvement to our service by serving part of the traffic from the Reston datacenter. After a successful test on smaller wikis, we're now rerunning it on eight bigger communities.
[Experiment End] Left Content Panel: From October 24th until October 31st, an experiment ran for wide-screen desktop users of English wikis. The experiment aimed to find that golden spot where widgets, such as "Others Like You Also Viewed" and "Popular Pages", can be shown to logged-out users to entice them to continue their exploration of Fandom pages without being too intrusive to those not needing the help. The data and user feedback we received will now be analyzed in order to determine the next steps. If you're curious and still want to give your opinion on this experiment, you can read more on the experimentation announcement: left content panel.
That's it for the past weeks! Per usual, if you encounter something that feels off about the platform, please report it by sending in a bug report, reach out to your Community Manager, contact the Product Support Owner on their Wall/talk page, or just simply sound off in the comments here. Remember to include a link to where you're experiencing the issue, a screenshot if it is something visible, as well as steps to reproduce your issue. As always, thank you for helping us by continuing to communicate. Happy editing, everyone!
Lostris is a Senior Product Support Manager. When not online, she lives to travel, play roller derby, and escape the world by watching anything that has a good plot, good acting, and preferably a ton of sassy one-liners.
