Technical Update: November 30, 2015

Here are the latest technical updates at Wikia. Keep in mind that our system updates happen every Tuesday and Thursday - today's notes are for tomorrow's site update. Also note that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.

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.

• Template pages will receive a few updates:
  • Templates will no longer be editable by anonymous editors, which also means they cannot change Template Types. From our review of editing behaviour, very, very few template edits are made by anonymous editors, and many are vandalism.
  • The special template editor will now only appear on pages marked with the Infobox Template Type, as this is where it works best. Other template pages will see the 'classic' editor.
  • The entry point to change Template Type will be easier to click.
• Admins will be able to delete pages in the MediaWiki namespace, and undelete those on the whitelist.
• Insights will receive a couple of updates:
  • Various entry points will show the count of items on that Insights list, letting you see how long it has become without having to directly visit it.
  • The Insights module on WikiActivity will be limited to four items, and will be moved below the Chat module.
  • An Insights module will show on the right rail of articles for more active editors ('power users').
• We will add a section to the top of Special:RecentChanges (on English communities) to let editors know about recent major updates on Wikia. This box is collapsible, and this state is remembered.
  • Additionally, the "Recent changes options" box will become collapsible.
• We will show a banner notification to some users, to let them know about portable infoboxes.

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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