MediaWiki/1.38

MediaWiki 1.38 is the latest version of MediaWiki which was released in June 2022. This MediaWiki release offers several new changes that may affect or benefit your workflow. Miraheze upgraded to it on 15 June, 2022, in keeping with our commitment of always upgrading to the most up-to-date version of MediaWiki. In anticipation, a few extensions will be removed or changed. Below is an upgrade schedule and a list of changes to expect.

Upgrade schedule
Miraheze upgraded to MediaWiki 1.38 on 15 June, 2022 between 20:00 (UTC) and 00:00 (UTC) of 16 June, 2022. During that time, users were unable to make changes to their wikis.

In preparation for this, all extensions which are slated for removal were removed on 12 June, 2022.

Interface changes

 * Vector is getting a huge update! - After more than a decade, Vector has reached a huge milestone with Vector 2022! This update to the Vector skin is the biggest ever and will mark a departure from Vector's classic look. The new refreshed skin will replace Vector as the new default for all wikis and will introduce some breaking changes so please be in anticipation for that. Users will still be able to move their wikis back to legacy Vector or set their global or local default skin as legacy Vector. For more information, please read Vector 2022's documentation page to prepare for this change.

Extension/skin removals/changes

 * AddThis will be removed (T7876) - AddThis will be replaced with a more privacy friendly alternative. AddThis also does not function properly in MediaWiki 1.37 and as such will be removed.
 * FancyBoxThumbs will be removed (T9343) - FancyBoxThumbs will be removed due to incompatibility with MediaWiki 1.38. It has not functioned properly since 1.36 and as such will be removed.
 * Foreground (skin) will be removed (T9168) - Foreground will be removed due to incompatibility with MediaWiki 1.38 along with lack of maintenance.
 * GettingStarted will be removed (T8979) - GettingStarted is no longer maintained and has been undeployed from all Wikimedia projects (T292654). We are evaluating whether it's successor, GrowthExperiments, is a feasible alternative to it.
 * MagicNumberedHeadings will be removed (T8897) - A change in MediaWiki code will cause this extension to no longer work on MediaWiki 1.38. No replacement is currently available.
 * Pivot (skin) will be removed (T9340) - Pivot will be removed due to incompatibility with MediaWiki 1.38.
 * Header Footer will be removed (T9357) - Header Footer will be removed due to incompatibility with MediaWiki 1.38.
 * Tabber has been removed (T8899) - Tabber is in the process of being discontinued per T271418 (Wikimedia Phabricator) and is already marked as archived on MediaWiki.org. Due to this and in anticipation for the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.38, we have removed the extension and automatically migrated users of the extension to TabberNeue. No code changes should be required from your part. If pages are broken, try purging the cache.
 * $wgUseCategoryBrowser was replaced by CategoryExplorer (T8798) - A recent change in MediaWiki core code (T298553) removed $wgUseCategoryBrowser from MediaWiki core and moved it into a new extension. Users of the setting were automatically migrated over.

Poweruser focused changes

 * will allow you to set which skins you want to show up on the top of the Special:Preferences skin list.
 * The  parameter has been added to action=delete which allows you to delete the associated talk page of a selected page.