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Tech News: 2026-04

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 tray shown on Special:Diff in mobile view has been redesigned. It is now collapsed by default, and incorporates a link to undo the edit being viewed, making it easier for mobile editors and reviewers to take action while keeping the interface uncluttered.
• The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension continues to improve — it now automatically determines the text direction (ensuring correct display of sites with unusual domain names) and shows detailed descriptions for log actions. Later this week, a new permanent link for page creations and CSS classes for each entry element will be added.
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the previously observed issue in Vector 2022, where anchor link targets were obscured by the sticky header, has now been addressed.

Updates for technical contributors

• As mentioned in the October 2025 deprecation announcement, MediaWiki Interfaces team will begin sunsetting all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from the MediaWiki REST API the week of January 26. Changes are expected to roll out to all wikis on or before January 30th. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found, compared, and tested using the REST Sandbox. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in Phabricator to the #MW-Interfaces-Team board.
• Interactive reference documentation for the Wikimedia REST API has moved. Requests to API docs previously hosted through RESTBase (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/) are now redirected to the REST Sandbox.
• The WMF Wikidata Platform team (WDP) has published its January 2026 newsletter. It includes updates on the legacy full-graph endpoint decommissioning, the User-Agent policy change, the monthly Blazegraph migration office hours, and efforts to reduce regressions caused by the legacy endpoint shutdown. As a reminder, you can subscribe to the WDP newsletter!
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• The Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026 will take place on 13-14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Applications opened mid-December and will close soon or when capacity is reached. It's a two-day, technically oriented hackathon bringing together Wikimedians from the region. Hope to see you there!

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 20:27, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #716

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-01-26. Missed the previous one? See issue #715.

Events

• Upcoming events:

• Reminder: Blazegraph Migration Office Hours: The WMF Wikidata Platform team is kicking off its monthly Blazegraph migeration office hours tomorrow, 27th January, 16:00 UTC. These sessions focus exclusively on supporting the migration away from Blazegraph as the backend of the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS). See the office hours page for details and future sessions.
• Art+Feminism online hands-on training session: Intro to Wikidata + Archives. January 29, 15:00 UTC (16:00 CET). Alan Ang (WMDE) and d:User:Epìdosis host this workshop on collective editing and how Wikidata connects with archives. More info and Zoom registration @ Art+Feminism.org
• OpenStreetMap X Wikidata Meetup #85 February 9 Time: 19:30-21:00 UTC+8 at Mozilla Community Space Taipei (Q61752245).
• Mapping Africa: Visualizing Knowledge and Communities - 28.01.2026, 16:00 UTC. Episode #54 of the WikiAfrica Hour explores the power of maps and geospatial data.

• General Registration is Open! 2026 Wikimedia Hackathon - May 1-3, 2026

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs: Wikidata replaces the CLARIN Concept Registry in the Component Registry
• Papers:
  • Analysis and Generation of Wikidata Descriptions Focusing on Bangla Language - A rule-based Grammatical Framework resource grammar for Bangla generates accurate, consistent Wikidata descriptions across diverse entities, achieving over 99% coverage and enhancing low-resource language content in multilingual knowledge bases. By Mohammad, (2025).
• Videos:
  • Fact-Checking with Wikidata by Philippe Saadé - a recording of the workshop hosted by DataTalks.Club in collaboration with User:Philippe Saadé
  • Wikimedia and Biodiversity Data: A Mutualistic Relationship in the Open Knowledge Ecosystem
  • Collaborative Cultural Heritage Geodata, session 2 of SunoikisisDC's Digital Approaches to Cultural Heritage. Discusses how Wikidata is used and contributes data to the field of spatial and geographic technologies.
  • Wikimedia projects & smell-related content: WMUK Sandbox Session - User:Lajmmoore describes how to add and model sensory experiences such as smell, to Wikidata.

Tool of the week

• Wikidata Property Creation Helper is a tool by ArthurPSmith. The tool takes a property proposal page and translates it into a QuickStatements batch (and then a second one for the examples) that a property creator can use to quickly create a new property.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Wikimedia Deutschland 2026 first quarter development plan has been published: Wikidata:Linked Open Data development plan.
• Job opening: The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Wikidata Platform Backend Migration Specialist (contract position) to support backend migration work on the Wikidata Query Service. This role focuses on technical work related to the migration away from Blazegraph. If you're interested in the role or want to learn more, see the full job description and application details.

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • translates from (language(s) that this person, company or organization translates works texts from)
  • translates into (language(s) that this person, company or organization translates works and texts into)
• Newest External identifiers: MAX username, CriticDB game ID, ‎Finnish railway station code, Sketchfab model ID, Sketchfab channel ID, Sketchfab user ID, BRAHMS identifier, LegiStorm person ID, NHK Archives program ID, Polski Petersburg encyclopedia ID (Polish version), Bercail ID, ‎InterSportStats athlete ID, ‎Erdős Problem number, Trismegistos editor ID, ‎woordenlijst lemma ID, ‎European Vehicle Number, CourtListener person ID, Australian National Kennel Council ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review: incompatible type (instances of this type or of its subclasses cannot be instances of that type nor of its subclasses)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: KaraokeTexty.cz album ID, Biographical encyclopedia of Maros County-ID, ShotOnWhat film ID, Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Architects 1800-1950 ID, CardCow.com publisher ID, Stockholms SL Realtidsinformation identificator, Lost Pubs Project ID, Handball Base ID, Handballnews.pl person ID, SFDb förlaga-ID, RITVA company ID, RITVA corporate body ID, TC Infos network identifier, French Trade Mark Number

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples: Wikidata Items with a frequency (hertz) within human-hearing range (source)
• Schema examples: WikiProject Schemas: A tutorial - to create a simple ShEx schema and apply it to a set of Wikidata items.
• Newest WikiProjects: No Longer at the Margins - 2026 Hackathon
• WikiProject Highlights: WikiProject Bahamas - list of buildings in Nassau
• Newest database reports: Entities missing a description - choose a language and entity type (Item or Property) and generate a list of entities that have no description.
• Showcase Items: Mount Kilimanjaro - mountain massif in Kilimanjaro National Park in Tanzania
• Showcase Lexemes: мундштук (L130056) - Russian noun (mʊnʂˈtuk) meaning "mouthpiece (of a musical instrument)", "mouthpiece (of a pipe/cigar holder)", or "a horse's bit"

Development

• Mobile statement editing:
  • We started working on supporting editing of monolingual text statements
  • We continued working on supporting editing of geocoordinate and quantity statements
  • We are fixing display issues with date statements
  • We continued work on showing constraint violations
• GraphQL:
  • The security review was finished, removing a blocker to deploying GraphQL support to Wikidata
  • We added pagination to querying items by statement properties or values
  • We are extending the labels of linked entities functionality to also let you get the descriptions of the Items linked in a statement
• Wikidata integration in the other Wikimedia projects: We are continuing to investigate options for further reducing the amount of Wikidata changes in recent changes and watchlist on the other wikis to reduce the size of the database tables.
• Wikidata Query Service: The Wikidata Platform team is continuing the evaluation of potential replacements for Blazegraph.

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Govdirectory weekly focus countries: Albania and Kosovo
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue . Full report · Unsubscribe · JosefAnthony talk ·MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:28, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-05

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

• Wikimedia Foundation invites comments on proposed future of the Product and Technology Advisory Council until 28 February.
• All users with registered accounts can now use passkeys for two-factor authentication (2FA). Passkeys are a simple way to log in without using a second device. They verify the user's identity using a fingerprint, face scan, or a PIN code. To set up a passkey, first set up a regular 2FA method. Currently, to log in with a passkey, users must also use a password. Later this quarter, passwordless login will allow users to log in with a single click and a passkey. Users with advanced rights will also be required to have 2FA enabled. This is part of the Account Security project.
• Unregistered contributors on blocked IPs or blocked IP ranges can now interact on-wiki to appeal a block by creating a temporary account to appeal a block on the user talk page, unless the "prevent this user from editing their own talk page" is enabled. This solves the problem of logged-out users unable to use the default unblock process via user talk page.
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) methods description on the management page has been updated. It is now clearer and easier for users to understand and make use of.

Updates for technical contributors

• A new AbuseFilter variable, account_type, has been added to provide a reliable way to determine the account type being created in the createaccount and autocreateaccount actions. As part of this change, the variable accountname has been renamed to account_name, and accountname is now deprecated. Edit filter managers should update any filters that use hardcoded account type checks or the deprecated variable.
• Image thumbnails that are requested in non-standard sizes, and using non-standard methods such as direct requests to upload.wikimedia.org/… will stop working in the near future. This change is to prevent ongoing external abuse by web-scrapers and bots. Some users with custom CSS/JS, Interface Admins who can fix gadgets and local skins, and Tool-authors, will need to update their code to use standard thumbnail sizes. Details, search-links, and examples of how to fix them, are available in the task.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:15, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2026

• Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2025
  Everybody had a hard year, everybody had a good time.

• News and notes: Good news... but also bad news for the Public Domain
  Benvenuto Betty Boop, arrivederci Italian Photos.

• News from Diff: Solving puzzles together
  Maryana Iskander says farewell.

• In the media: Every view on the 25th anniversary of everything
  Media about hard-core nerds, a place with paragraphs, baby globes, and wikipedes.

• Comix: Perspectives
  Everybody has one.

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:26, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Women in Red February 2026

Women in Red | February 2026, Vol 12, Issue 2, Nos 358, 359, 361, 362, 363 Online events: New: Alphabet run: countries starting with B | Black Women | Works by women: theatre, opera, music Continuing: #1day1woman ( year-long initiative) | Sports (year-long initiative) Announcements from other communities Join Wikipedia:26 for '26 and create or substantially improve twenty-six Wikipedia articles during the year 2026, at least one for each letter of the English alphabet. Tip of the month: Our redlists are a great resource, but not every redlinked subject is notable. Be sure to research before starting a new article. Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest

--Lajmmoore (talk 22:46, 31 January 2026 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Wikidata weekly summary #717

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-02-02. Missed the previous one? See issue #716.

Discussions

• New requests for permissions/Bot: Sapper-bot 2 - Task: Monthly updates of the Dead Sea level and the "lowest point" property for Israel, Jordan, and Asia.
• Closed request for permissions/Bot: LiteraryWorksMetaDataUploadBot - Task: Upload metadata for literary works from research project. (Approved)
• Other: Proposal to configure the Newcomer Dashboard for Wikidata

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • Call for Sessions: Wikimania 2026 is Coming to Paris! The submission form will remain open until March 1. Results will be published in May.
  • Who's hiding behind museum collections? - A Wikidata Edit-a-thon by WiNoDa Knowledge Lab (February 24th, 1:00pm-4:30pm CET). This online Edit-a-thon will focus on the many collectors that contributed to the Arachnida and Miryapoda collection of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Join us to uncover the unspoken human networks that shaped the history of science! Register here: http://winoda.de/en/event/wikidata-edit-a-thon/

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs: Strengthening the Latin American public domain with Wikidata
• Thesis: Hebeis, Maximilian (2026): Entity Matching for Person Records in Authority Files, Bamberg: Otto-Friedrich-Universität (Master thesis in computer science: "a case study into applying learningbased entity matching to person records from two large authority databases, namely the German national Integrated Authority File (GND) and the crowd-sourced open knowledge base Wikidata")
• Papers: Special Collection of the Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD): Wikidata across the humanities: datasets, methodologies, reuse, https://openhumanitiesdata.metajnl.com/collections/wikidata_across_the_humanities (new papers have been published during the last week; see a list at d:Q136325279#P527)
• Videos:
  • Africa Wiki Women 1st Newbies Community Meetup - held an orientation for new members on editing Wikidata, Wikipedia, and Commons, to help bridge knowledge gaps of African women on Wiki platforms.
  • Mapping Africa: Visualizing Knowledge and Communities - explores how African communities use maps and geospatial data to enhance Wikidata, improve Wikimedia articles, and make local knowledge more visible globally.

Tool of the week

• Wdlist : Create and manage a personal list of Wikidata items.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Wikimedia Deutschland Job vacancy - Architect of Storage Solutions - (freelance contract / 4-6 weeks)
• You can now nominate your favorite Wikidata research award for 2025. Call for Nominations now open until February 15, 2026.

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest External identifiers: U.S. Copyright Office Public Records System name ID, Lenta.ru person ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • value type of this mathematical property (type of the value of this mathematical property when applied to this object or this type of objects)
  • Gifu Prefectural Shrine Association ranking (One of the three rankings given by the Gifu Prefectural Shrine Association)
  • instances must not have (instances of this class or of its subclasses must not have given property or statement)
  • African Scientists Directory ID (identifier for a scientist in the African Scientists Directory)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Center for Jewish History person ID, LINCS ID, Artdoc.Media film ID, Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Architects 1800-1950 practice ID, Walloon-French dictionary ID, Russian Register of Film Distribution Certificates ID, Hentaigana for Academic Information Exchange ID, Identifiant inventaire Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek ID, Woordenboek van Nieuwe Woorden ID, Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal ID, Woordcombinaties ID, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands ID, Database of the Southern Dutch Dialects concept ID, GiveSendGo ID, CrowdRepublic project ID, European Dictionary Portal ID, Gravestone Project Cemetery ID, Uzbek-Russian dictionary ID, Ruwiki ID, Swedish National Archives ID, GDUNO ID, JMRC person id, Catalunya Romànica ID, Mercantile Navy List ID, Igromania author ID, Danmarks Kirker, Medvik ID, Obálky knih ID, National Theatre in Prague artist ID, National Theatre in Prague performance ID, Alpine Linux Wiki article, Microsoft Store developer ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples: Item with a Wikipedia page in lang. X but not Y (source) - modify the wd: QID and the schema:isPartOf for your own purposes.
• Newest WikiProjects:
  • WikiProject Chess - Rubinstein-Memorial list
  • WikiProject Units of Measurement
  • Wikiproject Medicine - List of Italian Doctors
  • WikiProject Evanion Collection
• WikiProject Highlights: WikiProject every Politician / Canada - all Commons lists were updated.
• Newest database reports: Variety of reports for deletion candidates

Development

• Wikidata integration in the other Wikimedia projects:
  • We are making progress with identifying additional ways in which we can reduce the number of irrelevant changes from Wikidata showing up in recent changes and watchlist on Wikipedia and co.
  • We are discussing with pilot Wikipedias about turning on showing Wikidata changes by default in watchlist and recent changes (moving it from opt-in to opt-out)
• GraphQL: We are putting the last touches on a GraphQL endpoint for Wikidata. We are planning to get it live later this month for feedback.
• LDF endpoint: We are planning to decommission the endpoint in preparation for the migration away from Blazegraph on the 18th of February (phab:T415696)
• Mobile statement editing:
  • We are almost done with adding support for editing statements with quantity and monolingual text datatype and finished support for mathematical expression statements. We started support for editing coordinate statements.
  • We are continuing the work on showing constraint violations.
• Wikibase Ecosystem: We are in the process of setting up a demo system for ontology federation (i.e. using Wikidata Items as values in statements on another Wikibase instance)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Govdirectory weekly focus country:
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue · Full report · Unsubscribe . JosefAnthony talk ·MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:42, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-06

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 "Page information" feature, which gives validating information about a page (example), now automatically includes a table of contents. If there is a local MediaWiki:Pageinfo-header page created by individual users, it can now be removed.
• View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, VisualEditor previously added bold or italic formatting inside link descriptions, making the wikicode complex. This has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• There was no XML dump on 20 January. Additionally, from now on, dumps will be generated once per month only.
• The MediaWiki Interfaces team removed support for all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from the MediaWiki REST API. All API users currently calling those endpoints are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in phabricator to the #MW-Interfaces-Team board.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Weekly highlight

• Users are reminded that the Wikimedia Foundation has shared some guiding questions for the July 2026–June 2027 Annual Plan on Meta and Diff. These focus on global trends, faster and healthier experimentation, better support for newcomers, strengthening editors and advanced users, improving collaboration across projects, and growing and retaining readership. Feedback and ideas are welcome on the talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 17:41, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #718

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-02-09. Missed the previous one? See issue #717.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs: Numishare Blog: Improving searchability using Natural language Processing + Wikidata - How NLP-based search improvements for numismatic collections for the American Numismatic Society. Python NLP tools and Wikidata add a semantic layer that links equivalent terms (e.g. “serpent” and “snake”) to improve discovery across coin databases such as OCRE and MANTIS. Author: Ethan Gruber.
• Videos:
  • Art+Feminism Conversations / Intro to Wikidata + Archives: Led by User:Epìdosis and User:Alan Ang (WMDE), this recording covers tools that support collaborative Wikidata editing, and includes with brief updates on mobile editing, Wikibase software, and work at the intersection of AI and Wikidata. Find more info and tools covered on Meta:Art+Feminism
  • Custom Upload Funnel Creation on Wikimedia Commons: Wiki Loves Africa 2026 - User:Kambai Akau and the Tyap User Group demonstrate how to contribute to the Wiki Loves Africa 2026 contest, incl. how to add a Wikidata Infobox to your contributions, and how to create Wikidata Items if they are missing.
  • (Papiamento) Add a different language Label to a Wikidata Item Wikipedia Above Aruba|Ep. 9 - it's not always obvious how to add labels, descriptions and aliases of different languages to Wikidata items, this short video demonstrates how.
  • Hands-on Exercise: Data Cleaning & Preparation with OpenRefine - Daniel Garjio guides through exercises to cluster and merge duplicate values, standardise formats, reconcile data with external authority sources such as Wikidata.
  • (Spanish) Mapeo colaborativo, plataformas libres y autonomía local, part of the Conference on Climate Justice, Indigenous Voices, and Wikimedia Platforms (2024) - speaker: Túllio Morais Franca shows how to integrate mapping tools suchas OpenStreetMap and Mapillary with Wikidata, Commons and Wikipedia.

Tool of the week

• Wiki Clarity Tool: Clarity Tool is a lightweight web application built to empower editors across Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons. It helps contributors identify missing information in articles and suggests structured data from Wikidata to fill those gaps.

• Name Suggestion Index : Submit a Brand - A tool that links Wikidata brand items to the Name Suggestion Index project on OpenStreetMap.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Mobile editors can now edit String and External ID datatypes directly in the mobile view. To help improve this new interface, Wikimedia Deutschland is looking for volunteers for UX testing sessions. Participants will be compensated for their time. Sign up here (greatquestion) and learn more on the project page: Mobile editing of statements

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • ‎braille transcription (transcription in Braille)
  • location collected (geographic location where a specimen or sample was collected in the field)
• Newest External identifiers: Rappels theatrical production ID, Berlin School ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • Siège occupé ({{TranslateThis | fr = siège occupé par une personne au sein d'une académie ou autre société à ''numerus clausus'' }})
  • Standard Number (A standard serial number)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: MusicaPopular.cl ID, JMRC person id (en), Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography ID, CAMEO page ID, TeamNL athlete ID (new), World Flora Online Plant List, radeberger-stadtgeschichte.de Objekt Identifikator, Master Ideographs Seeker Character ID, Flohic ID, Oricon News person ID, radiko person ID, Xcity actress ID, TV Drama Database Program ID, Van Dale Rijmwoordenboek sentences ID, Van Dale Rijmwoordenboek word ID, BISMaL taxon ID, Vlaams Woordenboek ID, Kotobank Japanese ID, Nişanyan Adlar ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Items with two or more Olympedia people ID (source) - find duplicate external identifier.
  • Music roll releases with recordings of works performed by composer (source)
• Newest WikiProjects:
  • WikiProject progressive Metal
  • Wikiproject Basque Cultural heritage and GLAM
• Newest database reports: 'Template' items with only one sitelink - per Wikidata:Notability, "If a link is a template, the item must contain at least two such sitelinks..."
• Showcase Items: It Was Just an Accident (Q133866932) - a 2025 thriller film, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival
• Showcase Lexemes:

Development

• Dumps: We published the report from our research into the user experience with Wikidata's dumps.
• Mobile editing: We are finalizing the support for quantity, monolingual text, mathematical expression and musical notation statements as well as a first version for coordinate statements.
• Wikidata integration in the Wikimedia projects: We have continued our investigation into existing Lua modules in order to find more ways in which we can reduce unwanted entries from Wikidata in Recent changes and watchlists on Wikipedia and co. We found a number of options that we are looking into now. (phab:T416822, phab:T416825, phab:T416826, phab:T416827)
• Wikidata Vector embedding: We added German to the embedding (next to English, French and Arabic)

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Govdirectory weekly focus country:
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue . Full report · Unsubscribe . JosefAnthony talk ·MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:26, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-07

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

• Logged-in contributors who manage large or complex watchlists can now organise and filter watched pages in ways that improve their workflows with the new Watchlist labels feature. By adding custom labels (for example: pages you created, pages being monitored for vandalism, or discussion pages) users can more quickly identify what needs attention, reduce cognitive load, and respond more efficiently. This improves watchlist usability, especially for highly active editors.
• A new feature available on Special:Contributions shows temporary accounts that are likely operated by the same person, and so makes patrolling less time-consuming. Upon checking contributions of a temporary account, users with access to temporary account IP addresses can now see a view of contributions from the related temporary accounts. The feature looks up all the IPs associated with a given temporary account within the data retention period and shows all the contributions of all temporary accounts that have used these IPs. Learn more.
• When editors preview a wikitext edit, the reminder box that they are only seeing a preview (which is shown at the top), now has a grey/neutral background instead of a yellow/warning background. This makes it easier to distinguish preview notes from actual warnings (for example, edit conflicts or problematic redirect targets), which will now be shown in separate warning or error boxes.
• The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension continues to improve — it now properly supports more than one Wikibase site, for example both Wikidata and testwikidata. In addition, issues regarding text direction have been fixed for users who prefer Wikidata or other Wikibase sites in right-to-left (RTL) languages.
• The automatic "magic links" for ISBN, RFC, and PMID numbers have been deprecated in wikitext since 2021 due to inflexibility and difficulties with localization. Several wikis have successfully replaced RFC and PMID magic links with equivalent external links, but a template was often required to replace the functionality of the ISBN magic link. There is now a new built-in parser function {{#isbn}} available to replace the basic functionality of the ISBN magic link. This makes it easier for wikis who wish to migrate off of the deprecated magic link functionality to do so.
• Two new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Jju (w:kaj:)
  • a Wikipedia in Nawat (w:ppl:)
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• A new global user group has been created: Local bots. It will be used internally by the software to allow community bots to bypass rate limits that are applied to abusive web scrapers. Accounts that are approved as bots on at least one Wikimedia wiki will be automatically added to this group. It will not change what user permissions the bot has.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• The MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Spring 2026 will be held March 25–27 in Salt Lake City, USA. This event is organized by and for the third-party MediaWiki community. You can propose sessions and register to attend.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:28, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #719

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-02-16. Missed the previous one? See issue #718.

Discussions

• Open request for adminship: Sjö - RfP scheduled to end after 17 February 2026 10:02 (UTC)
• New requests for permissions/Bot: SEEKCommonsBot - Task: Synchronize Wikidata records created by the SEEKCommons project with OpenAlex
• Closed request for permissions/Bot:
  • AmeisenBot 3 - Task: Adding descriptions (and possibly labels and aliases as well) to items based on their statements. Request closed as approved.
  • Che-W-bot - Request withdrawn.

Events

• Upcoming events: Next Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session 17 February, 2026: We have our next LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Session on Tuesday, February 17 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET (Time zone converter). Wikiproject P244 maintenance uses SPARQL queries to identify and resolve two types of constraint violations in Wikidata: instances of Wikidata items with more than one LCNAF identifier and instances of the same LCNAF identifier existing on more than one Wikidata item. The February 17th session will walk participants through how to resolve the former issue, while the March 3rd session will focus on the latter. Event page: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_LD4_Wikidata_Affinity_Group/Project_Series/LCNAF_Duplicate_Detection_P244_Maintenance

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs:
  • Wiki for Botanists, why thematic engagement matters: WMNZ/Aotearoa on how sustained outreach with botanists via Wikidata workshops, edit-a-thons, and conferences is improving plant-related knowledge on the Wikimedia projects and building strong collaborative relationships with scientific communities.
  • Tech News Week 7 / Global Watchlists extension: now supports multiple Wikibase instance (i.e. Wikidata + Test Wikidata) and fixes right-to-left (RTL) text directionality issues.
  • The Spark of Linked Data and Libraries: OCLC Passage Project White Paper Translation Report
• Papers: Federating Open Knowledge through Wikibase: the case of the Finno-Ugric data sharing space: Antal et al. (2026) present a community-driven, federated prototype to link multilingual cultural heritage data, open ontologies and preserve local epistemologies.
• Videos:
  • How to Unlock Knowledge Graph Data for LLMs with AI Retrieval - User:Philippe Saade (WMDE), AI/ML Project Manager talks to Chad Jennings of Beyond the Blueprints (IBM Product Hub) on making Wikidata more accessible for AI developers, replacing SPARQL-heavy workflows with vector search and hybrid retrieval.
  • (French) Créer une carte uMap à partir de données géolocalisées extraites de Wikidata - video presentation of 2026 Digital Encounters "Mapping territorial data in uMap"
  • Africa Wiki Women 2026 On Wiki Skills Mentorship Program - Introduction to Wikidata
  • Africa Wiki Women 2026 On Wiki Skills Mentorship Program - Major and Minor edits on Wikidata
  • EMCO Wikidata CoP meeting (2026-01-28) - participants discuss progress on the early adopter phase, incl. how to categorise and track contributions, what statistics to measure and progress on MCO application profiles (persons + corporate bodies)

Tool of the week

• Queer Memory multilingual web app that explores global queer history through live Wikidata timelines, places, rights, culture, and activism. Currently available in English, French, and Spanish.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Etherpad cleanup, save your pads now. All pads after 1st March 2026 willbe deleted so if you need any of your pads, please make a local backup.
• The Wikibase REST API search endpoints are now available on v1 and considered stable! It's important to note that the older v0, which has been live on Wikidata since July 2025, will remain available for a two month transition period until mid-April 2026. We encourage all users to migrate to the new v1 endpoints during this time to ensure that their applications can continue to work seamlessly.
• The WMF Wikidata Platform team has published its February 2026 newsletter. It includes result of an initial evaluation of open-source triple store candidates as part of the migration away from Blazegraph, the next Blazegraph migration office hour, and more. To have new issues of the WDP monthly newsletter delivered to your user talk page, Subscribe to WDP newsletter!

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes: category for music in this language (link to category item that contains music in this language)
• Newest External identifiers: ‎DOAB book ID, ‎qamus.inoor.ir root ID, ‎The Session tune ID, Parfumo fragrance note ID, ‎KaraokeTexty.cz album ID, Biographical encyclopedia of Maros County, Alpine Linux Wiki article, ‎Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Architects 1800-1950 person ID, Igromania author ID, French Trade Mark Number, ‎Bane NOR location code, ‎CardCow.com publisher ID, ‎Lost Pubs Project ID, Handball Base ID, Handballnews.pl person ID, Center for Jewish History person ID, African Scientists Directory ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • Number of translations (Number of translations)
  • Panoramax instance URL (the Panoramax instance of/about the subject)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Hentaigana for Academic Information Exchange ID, Bach digital person ID, Bach digital work ID, YList ID, identificativo Antenati, Pesistulokset.fi player ID, Liiga.fi player ID, Letterboxd producer ID, Topplista artist ID, Apple Music Classical work ID, Fragplace brands ID, Fragplace fragrances ID, Fragplace notes ID, Fragplace perfumers ID, Sport Express person ID, ciss.org sportsperson ID (deaf sport)

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Newest WikiProjects: Learned Societies
• WikiProject Highlights: a discussion regarding how to standardise the data model of the membership of learned societies
• Showcase Items: Super Moscato Show (Q3324704) - French radio program and audio podcast
• Showcase Lexemes: collection (L3941) - English noun (kəˈlɛkʃən) meaning "a group of gathered items", "money gathered for charity/church", or "the act of acquiring"

Development

• Mobile statement editing:
  • We are putting finishing touches on editing support for external ID, URL, monolingual text, quantities and coordinate statements.
  • We worked on visually highlighting preferred and deprecated statements on the mobile site similar to how it is done on desktop.
  • We worked on showing more than one constraint violation when a statement violates multiple constraints.
• Ontology Federation: We continued working allowing other Wikibase instances to use Wikidata Items in their statements (and later from other Wikibase instances). You can see a demo video of the current development state at ontology federation demo.
• GraphQL: We worked on documentation to get get the GraphQL endpoint ready for a first release.
• Wikidata Query Service: The Wikidata Platform team published their report of the evaluation of Blazegraph alternatives. You can read it at File:WDQS Triple Store Evaluation - Benchmark Results Report.pdf.

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Govdirectory weekly focus country:
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue · Full report · Unsubscribe . JosefAnthony talk ·MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:26, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-08

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 SRE Team will be performing a cleanup of Wikimedia's Etherpad instance, the web-based editor for real-time collaborative document editing. All pads will be permanently deleted after 30 April, 2026 – if there are still migration projects in progress at that point the team can revisit the date on a case by case basis. Please create local backups of any content you wish to keep, as deleted data cannot be recovered. This cleanup helps reduce database size and minimize infrastructure footprint. Etherpad will continue to support real-time collaboration, but long-term storage should not be expected. Additional cleanups may occur in the future without prior notice.

Updates for editors

• The Information Retrieval team will be launching an Android mobile app experiment that tests hybrid search capabilities which can handle both semantic and keyword queries. The improvement of on-platform search will enable readers to find what they’re looking for directly on Wikipedia more easily. The experiment will first be launched on Greek Wikipedia in late February, followed by English, French, and Portuguese in March. Read more on Diff blog.
• The Reader Growth team will run an experiment for mobile web users, that adds a table of contents and automatically expands all article sections, to learn more about navigation issues they face. The test will be available on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
• Previously, site notices (MediaWiki:Sitenotice and MediaWiki:Anonnotice) would only render on the desktop site. Now, they will render on all platforms. Users on mobile web will now see these notices and be informed. Site administrators should be prepared to test and fix notices on mobile devices to avoid interference with articles. To opt out, interface admins can add #siteNotice { display: none; } to MediaWiki:Minerva.css.
• View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue on Special:RecentChanges has been fixed. Previously, clicking hide in the active filters caused the "view new changes since…" button to disappear, though it should have remained visible. The button now behaves as expected.

Updates for technical contributors

• New documentation is now available to help editors debug on-site search features. It supports troubleshooting when pages do not appear in results, when ranking seems unexpected, and when you need to inspect what content is being indexed, helping make search behavior easier to understand and analyze. Learn more.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 19:15, 16 February 2026 (UTC)