This is an archive of past discussions with User:Benison. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
The administrator elections process has officially started! Interested editors are encouraged to self-nominate or arrange to be nominated by reviewing the instructions at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/July 2025/Candidates.
Here is the schedule:
July 9–15 - Call for candidates
July 18–22 - Discussion phase
July 23–29 - SecurePoll voting phase
Please note the following:
The requirements to run are identical to RFA—a prospective candidate must be extended confirmed.
The process will have a seven day call for candidates phase, a two day pause, a five day discussion phase, and a seven day private vote using SecurePoll. Discussion and questions are only allowed on the candidate pages during the discussion phase.
The outcome of this process is identical to making a request for adminship. There is no official difference between an administrator appointed through RFA versus administrator elections.
Ask any questions about the process at the talk page. A separate user talk message will be sent to official candidates with additional information about the process.
If you are interested in the process, please make sure to watchlist the appropriate pages. A watchlist notice will be added when the discussion phase opens, and again when the voting phase opens.
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Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Second quarter of 2025
Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, and welcome to the second newsletter of 2025! In this edition, we’ll walk you through exciting experiments, features, and improvements that took place in the Wikipedia mobile apps during March, April, and May.
We launched a 30-day experiment on Chinese, French, Spanish, and Turkish Wikipedias to explore whether a centralized "Activity" space could increase user engagement.
The experiment shows the Suggested Edit “Add an image” feature to newcomers, and we hope to learn if it helps them activate and begin editing. We also hope to learn what users think about an early “Activity tab” prototype that summarizes their weekly editing, reading, and saving activity.
We released support for Temporary Accounts to Wikipedias where the feature is currently enabled. This helps protect IP addresses of unregistered editors.
Bug Fixes & Enhancements
Thanks to internal and volunteer efforts, we resolved:
We completed our Rabbit Holes experiment, and began work on a permanent version of Personalized Reading Lists, tracked in this Epic ticket.
Early designs aim to make suggested reading lists more useful, personalizable, and persistent.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
We addressed:
Talk page crashes
Search-related language issues
OATHAuth hyperlink bug
On This Day incorrect year
Samsung Galaxy S25 editing toolbar bug
UI bugs with Picture of the Day
Language display issues
Other Updates
A 50-edit requirement was added to use Article Descriptions on English Wikipedia.
We fixed pageview analytics and updated reading list icons.
Looking Ahead
From long-requested features like tabbed browsing to smarter personalization and more engaging games, this quarter was packed with progress. Your feedback continues to guide our path forward.
Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Featured templates, a new feature related to Template Recall and Discovery will be deployed this week to all Wikimedia projects: With this feature, editors will be able to quickly access a list of templates that are likely to be useful. These templates will be displayed in a list, under the "featured" tab of the template discovery interface. Administrators can define the list via the Community Configuration interface. The feature fulfills a request by the community through the Community Wishlist.
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the request to add Malayalam fonts in the Wikisource Book Export Tool was resolved and now, the rendering of Malayalam letters in exported Wikisource books are accurate.
WikiIndaba 2025 scholarship application and program submission is open until 23:59 GMT on July 20. WikiIndaba is a regional conference for African Wikimedians both on the continent and in the diaspora to unite and grow together. Submit your scholarship application and program proposal now!
WikiCon Brasil 2025 will take place on July 19-20 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The Brazilian community members are encouraged to register and attend!
Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The Translation Suggestions feature in the Content Translation tool now has another level of article filters added to the "... More" category. Translators who use the Suggestions feature can now select and receive article suggestions that are customized to geographical locations of their interest using the new "Regions" filter.
Administrators can now limit "Add a Link" to newcomers. The "Add a Link" Structured Task helps new account holders start editing, but some communities have requested the ability to restrict it to its intended audience: newcomers. Administrators can configure this setting within the Community Configuration feature.
For AbuseFilter editors on some wikis, it is now possible to filter edits based on the RevertRisk score of the edit being attempted. It is only populated if the action being evaluated is an edit. For more information, please see the ORES/AbuseFilter variables documentation.
The Beta Cluster wikis have been moved from beta.wmflabs.org to beta.wmcloud.org. Users may need to update URLs in any tools, or in their password managers. Any related issues can be reported in the task.
WikiCite 2025 will take place from 29–31 August, both online and in-person in Bern, Switzerland. The event's goals are to reconnect communities, institutions, and individuals working with open citations, bibliographic data, and the Wikidata/Wikibase ecosystem. Registration is open and the call for proposals will be announced soon.
Gaganyaan-1 (from Sanskrit: gagana, "celestial" and yāna, "craft, vehicle") is the first planned uncrewed test flight of the Gaganyaan programme. ISRO has officially scheduled the mission for H2 2026.
The spacecraft will carry Vyommitra, a half-humanoid robot, to simulate astronaut conditions and provide critical data on life-support and environmental systems. The mission will demonstrate the performance of the crew module and service module in low Earth orbit, serving as a precursor to future human spaceflight under the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme.
The launch was originally scheduled for December 2020, then in December 2021, but it was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The flight plan was finally ready by April 2022 and the launch is expected to take place in early 2025, after the TV-D1, TV-D2, TV-D3 and TV-D4. It was proposed in April 2022 that the crew module should be depressurized, something kept in the final planning.
The Gaganyaan spacecraft will be launched, with the humanoid robot Vyommitra, by a Human-rated LVM 3 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre and inserted into a 170 x 408km orbit. The circularisation maneuver will be performed at the third orbit. The landing should follow the same pattern as the TV-D1. The mission will also validate the life-support system, crew escape mechanism, and re-entry technologies.
Image of the month
Hybrid-Propellant Rocket Fuel
Rocket engines typically use one of two types of propellant: Solid or liquid. Hybrid-propellant rockets use a combination of these two forms of fuel, and lack some of the disadvantages of both. Their specific impulse is usually between solid-propellant and liquid-propellant rockets. The image shown here is of a 3D-printed grain, designed for a small hybrid rocket engine which would be used to demonstrate rocket combustion. On the left are two helical fuel ports, on the right a de Laval nozzle.
Since May 2025, one new high-importance, two new mid-importance, ten new low-importance, four new NA-importance, and twelve new unknown-importance articles have been created, for a total of 29 new articles. There is also one fewer A-class article, one more GA-class article, six more B-class articles, 13 more C-class articles, ten more Start-class articles, seven fewer Stub-class articles, and five more lists.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list.
Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space
In the voting phase, the candidate subpages will close to public questions and discussion, and everyone who qualifies to vote will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's vote total during the election. The suffrage requirements are similar to those at RFA.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for approximately four days, perhaps longer. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (this is a good page to watchlist), and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and a minimum of 20 support votes. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
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On July 23, we will start the voting phase. The candidate subpages will close again to public questions and discussion, and everyone will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's totals during the election. You must be extended confirmed to vote.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last approximately four days, or perhaps a little longer. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (you may want to watchlist this page) and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and must also have received a minimum of 20 support votes. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
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Tech News: 2025-31
Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
The Community Tech team will be focusing on wishes related to Watchlists and Recent Changes pages, over the next few months. They are looking for feedback. Please read the latest update, and if you have ideas, please submit a wish on the topic.
Updates for editors
The Wikimedia Commons community has decided to block cross-wiki uploads to Wikimedia Commons, for all users without autoconfirmed rights on that wiki, starting on August 16. This is because of widespread problems related to files that are uploaded by newcomers. Users who are affected by this will get an error message with a link to the less restrictive UploadWizard on Commons. Please help translating the message or give feedback on the message text. Please also update your local help pages to explain this restriction.
On wikis with temporary accounts enabled and Meta-Wiki, administrators may now set up a footer for the Special:Contributions pages of temporary accounts, similar to those which can be shown on IP and user-account pages. They may do it by creating the page named MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-temp.
Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
The MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Fall 2025 will be held 28–30 October 2025 in Hanover, Germany. This event is organized by and for the third-party MediaWiki community. You can propose sessions and register to attend.
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Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 27
Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello everyone, and welcome to the 27th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 2025! Boy, does it feel good to kick off the year with an issue. Yep, it's been a year since we cleared out the 2022-2024 backlog with issues 23 and 24! Good times. Though in this case "a year" just means... 6 months? 😯 The salience of whatever joke I was planning to make here has vanished speedily. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:00, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
WikiTextExpander by Polygnotus, is this edition's featured script. At the click of a configurable hotkey, this script will find and replace or link a configurable list of phrases within the selected text in all source editors (even in the comment/reply field!). Besides allowing the quick insertion of templated messages, this script greatly mitigates the WP:WTF? problem by providing both the legibility of familiar words and the convenience of shortcuts. And to those asking, the capitalization of "Wikitext" as "WikiText" was a necessary sacrifice for far-more-memorable acronymy.
Updated scripts
CanonNi: AlertAssistant has been fixed and rewritten using OOUI instead of Twinkle's Morebits. Such modern, very tool. (Do note that the maintainer has since become inactive.)
NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh/AjaxLoader has been updated to use modern JS APIs that replace the browser's URL bar with the link you clicked on to load in place. The "back" (and "forward") buttons also work now. Cool, innit?
andrybak: Unsigned helper no longer shows an error when the message to sign was added in the earliest 50 revisions of a page's history. This is especially relevant to pages with short histories.
BilledMammal/Move+ needs updating to order list of pages handle lists of pages to move correctly regardless of the discussion's page, so that we may avoid repeating fiasco history.
Requested scripts
We need scripts that...
allow sorting lists of citations such as by URI or other identifier
automatically convert the capitalization of citations' titles
collect a list of discussion participants and generate a ping list
In breaking m:Tech/News, Gadgets can now include .vue files. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons are now also available. The documentation has examples.
New scripts
Appo/Globstory integrates OpenHistoryMap, updating the map whenever hovering/clicking on a location or year, the latter of which changes the map to be (hopefully) accurate to the year selected. It's pretty interesting.
linkinfo Somewhat similar to WP:NavPops, Awesome Aasim/linkinfo(pictured) provides a collection of links to replace the right-click context menu, presented beautifully.
PreviousDiscussions provides a link to search for your username on subpages of another user's userpage and talkpage conveniently.
Twineeea/noRedLinks brings you to the "read" instead of the "create" tab when you visit a red link. Contemplate life's mysteries as you stare into the blank! Deeply.
No, this is not going to be the enduring tradition of S++ for the future. This was meant to be a joke for the special occasion on the first day of the fourth month but was delayed by four months because I'm lazy.
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Tech News: 2025-32
Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Editors can now enable the User Info card. This feature adds an icon next to usernames on history pages and similar user-contribution log pages. When you tap or click on the icon, it displays data related to that user account such as the number of edits, reverted edits, blocks, and more. It's part of a broader project to make it easier for moderators to evaluate account trustworthiness. The feature can be enabled in your global preferences, and later this week it will be available in local preferences.
Everybody is invited to share comments on Collaborative Contributions, a project recently launched by the Connection team. The project aims to create a new way to display the impact of collaborative editing activities (such as edit-a-thons, backlog drives, and WikiProjects) on the wikis. Post your comments on the project talk page.
Administrators can now define the default block duration for temporary accounts. To do that, they need to create a page named MediaWiki:Ipb-default-expiry-temporary-account and use a value defined in MediaWiki:Ipboptions. This allows administrators to easily block temporary accounts for 90 days, which is functionally equivalent to an indefinite block. The advantage of this solution is that it does not clutter Special:BlockList. More documentation is available.
Gadgets can now include .vue files. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons can be loaded through the gadget definition. The documentation has examples. For user scripts that use Vue.js, an API module now exists to load Codex icons.
Module developers can now use a Lua interface to simplify the preparation of Lua modules for translation on Meta-Wiki. This improvement makes it easier for translators to find and edit module strings without dealing with raw Lua code. It helps prevent mistakes that could break the module during translation. Module developers and translators are invited to watch the demo video, read more about translatable modules to understand how it works, refer to Meta-Wiki's Module:User Wikimedia project for example usage, and share their feedback on how well it addresses the challenges in their workflow. The interface still has some performance issues, so it should not be used in widely used modules yet.
Developers of external tools that connect to Wikimedia pages must set a user-agent that complies with the user-agent policy. This policy will start to be more strongly enforced in August because of external crawlers that are overusing Wikimedia's resources. Tools that are hosted on Wikimedia's Toolforge or Cloud VPS will not be affected by this for now, but should still set a user-agent. More technical details are available, and related questions are welcome in that task.
Parsoid Read Views is going to be rolling out to some smaller Wikipedias over the next few weeks, following the successful transition of Wikivoyages and Wiktionaries to Parsoid Read Views. For more information, see the Parsoid/Parser Unification project page.
Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
Following a request for comment, there is a new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses of temporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors can request access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.
South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
Wikimania 2025 is happening in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years of Wikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You can register here now.
The first launch attempt of an Australian-made rocket, Gilmour Space Technologies' Eris-1, was made on 29/30 July. The launch vehicle crashed 14 seconds after launch due to insufficient thrust.
The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite launched on 30 July. The first radar imaging that uses dual frequencies, it is a joint project between NASA and ISRO, and believed to cost ~US$1.5 billion, making it one of the most expensive Earth-imaging satellites.
Artist's conception of AREE on the surface of Venus, showing the wind turbine inside the rover's frame.
Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE) is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts project to design a rover that can operate in the environment of Venus, controlled by a wind-powered mechanical computer. Venus's atmosphere is about 90 times denser than Earth's and the surface temperature is at least 462°C (864°F), conditions which would prevent a standard electronic computer from operating for any significant period of time. While AREE is being designed for operation on Venus, the rover's design could be re-purposed for use on Mercury, which has a comparably high surface temperature, on Jovian moons Europa or Io, where high radiation makes use of traditional electronics difficult, or on lava flows or highly radioactive areas on Earth.
The project was first proposed in 2015, and funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program with a phase-I study in 2016, and a phase-II study from 2017 to 2018.
Image of the month
Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the Moon
In July of 1969, Apollo 11 successfully fulfilled John F. Kennedy's goal of a person landing on, and returning from, the moon before the 1970s. Taking off on 16 July, the lunar lander, Eagle, touched down on the evening of the 20th (UTC). Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin exited the lander six hours later, becoming the first men on the moon. The pair stayed on the lunar surface for about 21 hours. This image is actually the second of a pair of images, taken by Aldrin so that the lunar surface's ability to bear weight could be measured.
Since June 2025, there are seven fewer high-importance, six new mid-importance, three new low-importance, three new NA-importance, and 29 new unknown-importance articles, for a total of 34 more articles. There is also one GA-class article, three more B-class articles, three more C-class articles, 18 more Start-class articles, two fewer Stub-class articles, and one fewer lists.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list.
Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space
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Tech News: 2025-33
Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The WikiEditor toolbar now includes its keyboard shortcuts in the tooltips for its buttons. This will help to improve the discoverability of this feature.
The search bar on the Minerva skin (mobile) has been updated to use the same type-ahead search component that is used on the Vector 2022 skin. There are no changes in search functionality but there are minor visual changes. Specifically, the close-search button has been changed from an "X" to a back arrow. This helps to distinguish it from the other "X" button that is used to clear any text.
Editors on some wikis will see a new toggle for "Group results by page" on watchlist, related changes, and recent changes pages. This is an A/B experiment that is planned to start on August 11, and will run for 3–6 weeks on the Bengali, Chinese, Czech, French, Greek, Portuguese, and Urdu Wikipedias. The experiment will examine how making this feature more discoverable might affect editors' ability to find the edits they are looking for.
The multiwiki datasets of Unicode data have been moved to Category:Unicode Module Datasets on Wikimedia Commons, to follow the idea of "One common data source, multiple local wikis". Most wikis have been updated to use the Commons version. You can ask questions at the talkpage.
Lua code can add warnings when something is wrong, by using the mw.addWarning() function. It is now possible to add more than one warning, instead of new warnings replacing old ones. If you maintain a Lua module that used warnings, you should check it still works as expected.
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Tech News: 2025-34
Latest comment: 9 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Later this week, people who are logged-in and have the "Discussion tools" Beta Feature enabled will gain the ability to "Thank" individual comments directly from talk pages, rather than needing to navigate to page history. Learn more about this feature.
An A/B test comparing two versions of the desktop donate link launched on testwiki on 12 August and on English Wikipedia 14 August for 0.1% of logged out users on the desktop site. The experiment will run for three weeks, ending on 12 September.
An A/A test to measure the baseline for reader retention was launched 12 August using Experimentation Lab. This measures the percentage of users who revisit a wiki after their initial visit over a 14-day period. No visual changes are expected. The experiment will run through 31 August.
Latest comment: 9 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Template authors can now use additional CSS properties, since the CSS sanitizer used by TemplateStyles was updated. For example: width: fit-content; ruby-align; relative units such as lh; and custom strings in list-style-type. These improvements are a Community Wishlist wish.
On large wikis, the default time period to display edits from, within the Special:RecentChanges page, has been changed from 7 days to 1 day. This is part of a performance improvement project. This should have no user-facing impact due to the quantity of edits on these wikis.
Wikimedia Commons videos were not shown in the Videos tab in Google Search. The problem was investigated and reported to Google who have now fixed the issue.
One new wiki has been created: a Wiktionary in Betawi (wikt:bew:)
Two fields of the recentchanges database table are being removed. rc_new and rc_type are being removed in favor of rc_source. Queries to these older fields will start to fail starting this week and developers should use rc_source instead. These older fields were deprecated over 10 years ago and should not be in use. This is part of work to improve the performance and stability of queries to the recentchanges table.
The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: support for new languages in MediaWiki and translatewiki; the start of the Language Onboarding and Development project to help support the growth of new and small wikis; updates on research projects; and more.
Meetings and events
The next Language Community Meeting is happening soon, August 29th at 15:00 UTC. This week's meeting will cover: the Avro keyboard developers from Wikimedia Bangladesh, who were recently awarded a national award for their contributions to this keyboard; and other topics.
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the request to add Malayalam fonts in the Wikisource Book Export Tool was resolved and now, the rendering of Malayalam letters in exported Wikisource books are accurate. 
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
Updated scripts
Newly maintained scripts
Improve a script
Requested scripts
Miscellaneous
New scripts
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
Technical news
Arbitration
Miscellaneous
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Template authors can now use additional CSS properties, since the CSS sanitizer used by TemplateStyles was updated. For example: