Technical Update: May 20, 2014

Here are the latest technical updates at Wikia. Keep in mind that our system updates happen every Wednesday, so we're posting this on a Tuesday to give you advance notice. Also note that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.

New Features

• Over the past few weeks, we have been switching the default editor for anonymous users on smaller wikias from the old visual editor (CK) to the new VisualEditor. Our tracking shows that it is already more successful than the older editor at turning anonymous users into editors, and we anticipate that improving further as we add more features and enhancements, such as the big update a few weeks ago.
  • The rollout is now beginning to reach the larger wikias, but it will not affect logged in users. It is worth reiterating that source mode is not going away (and even the older visual editor remains accessible from the Edit button dropdown). However, if you feel your wikia is uniquely unsuitable for visual editing (such as most articles being made from a single template), we are happy to hear from you and we'll take a look.
• We're releasing self-service account closure. For users who wish to close their account, rather than having to send a request through Special:Contact, you can navigate to the close my account page (link will not be valid until May 21st) and request an account closure. You will have 30 days to change your mind and request that your account be reactivated by logging in to the account and following the instructions you will see. After this 30 day period, your account will be permanently closed and you will no longer be able to reactivate it. The link to "Disable my account" on Special:Contact will also be replaced with a link to Special:CloseMyAccount.

Major Bugs Fixed

• Issues with missing notifications, or notifications not immediately dismissing after reading the linked page, should be resolved. If you are continuing to see issues, please let us know via Special:Contact.
• A situation that could result in wall messages saying "This message could not be found" has been resolved.
• After opening the VisualEditor, the browser's Back button did not take users back out of it.

Other Notable Changes

Detailed CSS updates can be found at http://report.wikia.net - the diffs show changes to .css, .scss, .tmpl.php, .html, .sass and .mustache files in Wikia's codebase.

• On the Forum Activity module, the full title of a thread can now be seen when mousing over the link. (Thanks, Volunteer Developers)

Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave them below. And if you have additional bugs to report, please send them to us via Special:Contact.

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