User talk:Matthewrb/Archive/2025/November

November article improvement drive

Starting on 1 November, the month-long 2025 Article Improvement Drive will target a number of content improvement areas and backlogs. Participating editors will be in line for barnstars and other awards; articles from all aspects of the project will be eligible so there will be something for everybody. Interested editors are encouraged to sign up now! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:18, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

WikiCup 2025 November newsletter

The 2025 WikiCup has come to an end. Our top scorers, based on the tournament point rankings (which can be seen here), are:

1. BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,604 tournament points, will receive the 1st place award.
2. Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1,075 tournament points, will receive the 2nd place award.
3. Arconning (submissions) with 860 tournament points, will receive the 3rd place award.
4. History6042 (submissions) with 804 tournament points
5. Sammi Brie (submissions) with 635 tournament points
6. TheDoctorWho (submissions) with 386 tournament points
7. AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) with 373 tournament points
8. Thebiguglyalien (submissions) with 362 tournament points

Our high scorers in the final round were:

• BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,035 round points, mostly from 19 good articles and 21 did you know articles about athletes
• vigilantcosmicpenguin (submissions) with 819 round points, mostly from 13 good articles and 11 did you know articles about a wide range of topics from abortion topics to African cities
• TheNuggeteer (submissions) with 508 round points from 9 good articles, 4 good topic articles and 6 did you know articles mainly about Philippines topics, along with 19 good article reviews

The final round was very productive, and contestants had 2 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 106 good articles, 5 good topic articles, 178 article reviews, 76 did you know articles, and 9 in the news articles. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

The top eight scorers will receive awards shortly. The following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. These prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field during the competition.

• Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured article prize, with 12 featured articles total, and the featured topic prize, with 9 featured topic articles in total
• Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured list prize, with 10 featured lists total
• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, submitting the only featured picture in the entire contest during round 3
• History6042 (submissions) wins the featured content reviewer prize, with 127 featured content reviews. He will also share the ITN prize, with 20 in the news articles in total.
• BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the good article prize, with 100 good articles total, and the DYK prize, with 147 did you know articles in total. He will also share the ITN prize, with 20 in the news articles in total.
• TheDoctorWho (submissions) wins the good topic prize, with 16 good topic entries in total
• Arconning (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize, with 68 good article reviews in total

A special mention also goes to these users who scored the highest in a particular category in a single round:

• Sammi Brie (submissions), with 27 good articles in round 3, and 45 good article reviews in round 1
• Tails Wx (submissions), with 10 in the news articles in round 3

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate. The WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2026 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement!

On behalf of the judges, Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), Frostly (talk · contribs · email), Guerillero (talk · contribs · email) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs · email):

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

Wikidata weekly summary #704

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-11-03. Missed the previous one? See issue #703.

Discussions

• Closed request for adminship: Samoasambia
• New requests for permissions/Bot: langCodesBot - Task(s): Python script to automate the cleanup of deprecated language codes (e.g., kr) from Wikidata items. Delete or move labels, descriptions, and aliases based on comparisons with fallback and related languages. The script uses the Pywikibot framework to process each item and logs cases it skips due to data inconsistencies or ambiguity to a CSV file for manual review.
• New request for comments: Exhibition models by Hexatekin - This proposal focuses on standardizing models for art exhibitions. There is not a consistent data model used for art exhibitions that factors in parent-child relationships for traveling exhibitions, show series, or biennials, despite these being important and common types of events in international art history.

Events

• Past:
  • Happy Birthday, Wikidata 🎉! We celebrated Wikidata’s 13th birthday with a community call to unveil presents and play games. Check out the replay of the event and the cool gifts people made: Wikidata:Thirteenth Birthday/Presents & messages
  • WikidataCon: You can catch up on the recordings and slides in the program
  • Wikidata Workshop at ISWC: You can catch up on the published papers on the website.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs:
  • Building an Internet for Everyone: Wikidata Recognized as a Digital Public Good
  • Enriching Wikidata with AuthorityBox. An interview with Stefano Bargioni
    • examples of AuthorityBox can be seen in PUSC catalogue, URBE catalogue (code), Keratsini-Drapetsona catalogue; cf. also Stefano Bargioni, From Authority Enrichment to AuthorityBox. Applying RDA in a Koha environment (2020)
  • Exploring Nairobi and Building a Global Network: The Inspiring Wikimania@20 Experience
  • Supercharging Cultural Institution Collections with Wikidata
• Videos:
  • Por qué el conocimiento libre importa más que nunca | Gustavo Candela | Jornadas Anuales 2025
  • Wikidata Ontology Course | A NotebookLM Deep Dive
  • Odia Wikimedians User Group Celebration of the 13th Wikidata Birthday
  • Como utilizar o OpenRefine para cadastrar artigos científicos na Wikidata? - WikiTutoriais #05
  • Supercharging Cultural Institution Collections with Wikidata [October 2025]
  • ¿Cómo es la ontología de Wikidata?
  • Wikidata @13 celebration by the Tyap Wikimedians

Tool of the week The Wikidata Reference Validator by User:JosefAnthony helps check and replace broken or outdated references — keeping Wikidata’s knowledge verifiable and trustworthy. It checks whether external references are still accessible or offline, so we can ensure that every statement on Wikidata shows how we know what we know.

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Wikidata has been recognized as a digital public good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance
• Wikimedia chapters are providing scholarships for Wikimania 2026. Apply here if you're interested: Wikipedia:Förderung/Wikimania/English

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest External identifiers: ‎Newegg item ID, ‎Hardcore Gaming 101 game ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • Luminous flux (Numerical value of the luminous flux emitted by a lighting device or light source, measured in lumens)
  • anatomical structure in view (the anatomical structure in view in the photo, e.g. head, wing, habitus (body))
  • anatomical view (view of an anatomical structure, e.g. ventral, dorsal, frontal)
  • collector (person or group who physically collected a specimen or object in the field)
  • Serbo-Croatian preferred project code (For an interwiki article, the property points to the Serbo-Croatian project (sh, bs, hr, sr) that either has a special connection to the topic or the highest quality article.)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: BG IISDA org ID, BG NACID person ID, GCatholic former diocese ID, Grokipedia ID, The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland ID, Encyclopedia of African American History 1896 to the Present entry ID, Davis Cup player ID 2025, Eiga.com drama ID, AntCat ID, Last Address ID, Disney+ browse ID, Japanese Film Database ID, Japan Location Database ID, Fight.ru fighters ID, IMI person id

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Map of ~12.000 western European tram stops among their respective networks
  • Count of Wikipedia articles about UNESCO Memory of the World inscriptions
• Showcase Items: perestroïka (Q167634) - political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s, widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost policy reform
• Showcase Lexemes:baseline (L46097) - English noun (ˈbeɪslaɪn) meaning "a starting point for comparison", "a benchmark in budgeting", or "a reference line in typography or surveying"

Development

• Mobile editing of statements: We are continuing the work on qualifiers and reference editing
• GraphQL: We are continuing the work on making labels of linked entities available in GraphQL (phab:T404692)
• Dumps: We are continuing to look into improvements for the dump process

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) 15:43, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-45

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

• Administrators will now find that Special:MergeHistory is now significantly more flexible about what it can merge. It can now merge sections taken from the middle of the history of the source (rather than only the start) and insert revisions anywhere in the history of the destination page (rather than only the start).
• For users with "Automatically subscribe to topics" enabled in their preferences, starting a new topic or adding a reply to an existing topic will now subscribe them to replies to that topic. Previously, this would only happen if the DiscussionTools "Add topic" or "Reply" widgets were used. When DiscussionTools was originally launched existing accounts were not opted in to automatic topic subscriptions, so this change should primarily affect newer accounts and users who have deliberately changed their preferences since that time.
• Scribunto modules can now be used to generate SVG images. This can be used to build charts, graphics and other visualizations dynamically through Lua, reducing the need to compose them externally and upload them as files.
• Wikimedia sites now provide all anonymous users with the option to enable a dark mode color scheme, featuring light-colored text on a dark background. This enhancement aims to deliver a more enjoyable reading experience, especially in dimly lit environments.
• Users with large watchlists have long faced timeouts when editing Special:EditWatchlist. The page now loads entries in smaller sections instead of all at once due to a paging update, allowing everyone to edit their watchlists smoothly. As part of the database update, sorting by expiry has been removed because it was over 100× slower than sorting by title. A community wish has been created to explore alternative ways to restore sort-by-expiry. If this feature is important to you, please support the wish!
• View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the fixing of the persisting highlighting when using VisualEditor find and replace during a query.

Updates for technical contributors

• Since 2019 the Wikimedia URL Shortener at https://w.wiki is available for all Wikimedia wikis to create short links to articles, permalinks, diffs, etc. It is available in the sidebar as "Get shortened URL". There are 30 wikis that also install an older "ShortUrl" extension. The old extension will soon be removed. This means /s/ URLs will not be advertised under article titles via HTML class="title-shortlink". The /s/ URLs will keep working.
• On Thursday, October 30, the MediaWiki Interfaces and SRE Service Operations teams began rerouting Action API traffic through a common API gateway. Individual wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
• MediaWiki Train deployments will pause for the final two weeks of 2025: 22 December and 29 December. Backport windows will also pause between Monday, 22 December 2025 and Thursday, 2 January 2026. A backport window is a scheduled time to add things like bug fixes and configuration changes. There are seven deployment trains remaining for 2025.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• In 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation reported that AI systems and search engines increasingly use Wikipedia content without driving users to the site, contributing to an 8% drop in human pageviews compared to 2024. After detecting bots disguised as humans, Wikimedia updated its traffic data to reflect this shift. Read more about current user trends on Wikipedia in a Diff blog post.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2025

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2025).

Administrator changes

Toadspike

• Elahrairah
• Juliancolton
• Magnus Manske

CheckUser changes

asilvering

Guideline and policy news

• The speedy deletion criteria U5 has been repealed, with U6 and U7 replacing it. See the FAQ for more clarifications.
• Community-designated contentious topics may now be enforced and appealed at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard (AE) as a result of an RfC.

Technical news

• You can enable a handy user info card next to usernames, which when clicked displays edit count, blocks, thanks, and other information. To enable this feature, visit Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options → Enable the user info card

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Transgender healthcare and people has been closed
  • Uninvolved administrators may impose an AE participation restriction on any thread at the Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

• An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2025 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #225 is out: First round of voting for naming the wiki for abstract content closed; Calling for Wiktionary functions; Embedded Wikifunctions on Bengali Wikipedia and seven more Wiktionaries

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we update you on the closing of the first phase of the naming contest for Abstract Wikipedia, we introduce a possible implementation of Wikifunctions for Wiktionaries, we talk about our latest outreach events, and we take a look at the latest Type and software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:06, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Online meeting Tuesday

Wikimedia US Mountain West

We will host an online meeting for Wikipedia users in the Mountain States from 8:00 to 9:00 PM MST, Tuesday evening, November 11, 2025, at meet.google.com/kfu-topq-zkd. Anyone interested in the future direction of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement is encouraged to attend. We will discuss how users in each of our states can help one another. Help is available for new users, and all guests are welcome. Please see our meeting page for details.

If you don't wish to receive these invitations anymore, please remove your username from our invitation list. Thanks. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:17, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 November 2025

• News and notes: Temporary accounts go live and WMF board member self-suspends
  ArbCom elections draw close, and Wikimania '27 in Santiago.

• Community view: Six Wikipedians' thoughts on Grokipedia, and the humanity of it all
  It ain't a five course meal, according to one of our interviewees.

• Wikicup report: BeanieFan11, WikiCup victor of 2025, covers the results
  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

• In the media: Jimbo's book, an argument about genocide, and a train of shame
  Wikipedia's new rival, political controversy in Italy and other Wiki-reports.

• Recent research: Taking stock of the 2024–2025 research grants
  $400,000 USD in total funding: what did we get?

• Opinion: With Grokipedia, top-down control of knowledge is new again
  Does it shed any light on particular topics that are better suited to LLM-generation than others?

• Obituary: Struway
  Rest in peace.

• Traffic report: The documentaried, the disowned, the deceased, Diwali and the Dodgers
  You know your man is working hard, he's worth a deuce.

• Comix: Head of steam
  'Sblood!

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:54, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #705

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-11-10. Missed the previous one? See issue #704.

Discussions

• Other: Draft policy for temporary account IP viewers. What requirements should be set for this user right?

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs: Introducing the Unicode Inflection Library Technical Preview Release : The Unicode Inflection Library leverages comprehensive lexicons from Wikidata to support standardized, multilingual grammatical transformations for global software applications.
• Videos:
  • Art+Feminism Celebrates Wikidata!
  • Day 5_Using WikiData with Spyral Notebook and Project Presentation
  • Wikidata and Wikipedia training for Art+Feminism 2025 in Uganda
  • What are Wikidata WikiProjects, and why should you join one? Watch this great explainer from the #LevelingUpDays2024 to see how these communities work together! Then, find your project: Wikidata:WikiProjects

Tool of the week

• User:Difool/WikidataCleanup.js: gadget allowing to do, in one click, a wide series of cleanups in an item: normalize labels, descriptions, and aliases (double spaces, certain Unicode characters), remove weak references, remove weakly referenced dates when they have lower precision than a strongly referenced date and downgrade unnecessary preferred ranks; about the general issue of redundancies in Wikidata, you can check WikiProject Redundancy
• Ghanasupremecases is a webapp that dynamically pulls and displays over 2,000 Supreme Court of Ghana cases from Wikidata, allowing users to access case details linked directly to Wikidata items. The goal is to make African legal data more open, structured, and discoverable, and to demonstrate how Wikidata can serve as a foundation for national-level legal archive

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• Temporary accounts rollout: Starting November 12, the community will see logged‑out edits handled through temporary accounts instead of IPs, prompting tool and bot checks.
• Help shape the future WikidatCon! If you attended WikidataCon 2025, please take 10 minutes to share your feedback in this anonymous GDPR-compliant survey (sslsurvey)

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • operating humidity (humidity at which a device operates)
  • collector (person or group who physically collected a specimen or object in the field)
  • Serbo-Croatian preferred project code (For an interwiki article, the property points to the Serbo-Croatian project (sh, bs, hr, sr) that either has a special connection to the topic or the highest quality article.)
• Newest External identifiers: CACI company ID, AEK Football player ID, Sultanlar Ligi player ID, BeWeb historical or artistic asset ID, SofaScore sports team ID, FootballFakts.ru football match ID, Kicker sports match ID, BDFutbol match ID, Foot Mercato / Fichajes / Fussball Transfers player ID, ‎Disney+ browse ID, ‎Filmarks ID, Memorial Book of Social Democracy-ID, NLAI ID, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain ID, The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts ID, Antique Chinese and Japanese Porcelain Dictionary and Glossary of Terms entry, Filmfriend movie ID, Hesse School ID, The Oxford Dictionary of Dance entry ID, Saxony School ID, NCL Taiwan Periodical Literature periodical identifier, NZ Charities Register Number, IFES Election Guide ID, Arte de la Argentina ID, Democratic Memory Bank ID, Kicker competition ID, Soccer365.net team ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • time of deposition (date or point in time when an archaeological object or assemblage was buried, hidden, lost, or otherwise deposited.)
  • readiness (readiness)
  • greenhouse gases emissions (amount of greenhouse effect emited by a given company or industry sector)
  • neuter form of label (neuter form of name or title)
  • current season ({{TranslateThis | an identifier for the team's current season <!-- | xx = descriptions in other languages --> }})
  • flag carrier of (country of which the airline is the flag carrier)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: BFXC authority ID, BWB-nummer, Schulnummer Brandenburg, Encyclopedia of Shinto ID, Power Thesaurus ID, WDSF person ID, Blu-Ray.com film ID, Japanese Law Translation ID, USGS Publication ID, Afrikaregisteret ID, National cultural monument of Czechia ID, Admirable Façades styles ID, Brussels Inventory of Architectural Heritage buildings ID, Brussels Inventory of Architectural Heritage streets ID, Dicionário Biográfico de Cientistas, Engenheiros e Médicos em Portugal ID, TikTok User ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples: Map of all places related to persons with layers by property of the place (source)
• WikiProject Highlights: Passionate about highlighting women's achievements? WikiProject Women is dedicated to creating and improving data about women worldwide. Help close the gender gap in knowledge! #WikidataWikiProjects
• Showcase Items: Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape (Q1136251) - cultural landscape in South Africa
• Showcase Lexemes: fold (L4479) - English verb (foʊld) meaning "to bend over on itself", "to mix ingredients gently", or "to fail or give in"

Development The development team were involved in roadmap planning meetings so not much happened in the past week.

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: Paraguay
• 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) 15:44, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-46

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

Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.

• Starting November 12, users will see a change in the appearance of talk pages on some Wikipedias. Almost all wikis have received this design change; English Wikipedia will get these changes later. You can read more on Diff. Users can opt out of these changes in their user preferences in "Show discussion activity".
• MediaWiki can now display a page indicator automatically while a page is protected. This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled by community request.
• Using the "Show preview" or "Show changes" buttons in the wikitext editor will now carry over certain URL parameters like 'useskin', 'uselang' and 'section'. This update also fixes an issue where, if the browser crashed while previewing an edit to a single section, saving this edit could overwrite the entire page with just that section’s content.
• Wikivoyage wikis can use colored map markers in the article text. The text of these markers will now be shown in contrasting black or white color, instead of always being white. Local workarounds for the problem can be removed.
• The Activity tab in the Wikipedia Android app is now available for all users. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.
• The Reader Growth team is launching an experiment called "Image browsing" to test how to make it easier for readers to browse and discover images on Wikipedia articles. This experiment, a mobile-only A/B test, will go live on English Wikipedia in the week of November 17 and will run for four weeks, affecting 0.05% of users on English wiki. The test launched on November 3 on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese wikis, affecting up to 10% of users on those wikis.
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example the inability to lock accounts on mobile sites has been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• Nominations are open on Wikitech for new Toolforge standards committee members. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open through 2025-11-28.
• The JWT issuer field in OAuth 2 access tokens for SUL wikis has been changed to https://meta.wikimedia.org. Old access tokens will still work.
• The JWT subject field in OAuth 2 access tokens will soon change from <user id> to mw:<identity type>:<user id>, where <identity type> is typically CentralAuth: (for SUL wikis) or local:<wiki id> (for other wikis). This is to avoid conflicts between different user ID types, and to make OAuth 2 access tokens and the sessionJwt cookie more similar. Old access tokens will still work.
• MediaWiki's block messages (blockedtext, blockedtext-partial, autoblockedtext, systemblockedtext, blockedtext-tempuser, autoblockedtext-tempuser) now support additional parameters indicating whether the user is blocked from editing their own user talk page $9 or emailing other users $10.
• A REL1_45 branch for MediaWiki core and each of the extensions and skins in Wikimedia git has been created. This is the first step in the release process for MediaWiki 1.45.0, scheduled for late November 2025. If you are working on a critical bug fix or working on a new feature, you may need to take note of this change.
• The process for generating CirrusSearch dumps has been updated due to slowing performance. If you encounter any issues migrating to the replacement dumps, please contact the Search Platform Team for support.
• 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 20:36, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 21

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on October 24. Please help translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

Wikimania Santiago will happen in 2027.

• Wikimania 2027: Santiago, Chile is announced as the location for Wikimania 2027. The annual conference returns to Latin America after more than 10 years, following previous editions in Buenos Aires (2009) and Mexico City (2015).
• Wikidata recognized as a Digital Public Good: Wikidata became the second Wikimedia project to be officially recognized as a digital public good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Tech News: Read updates from Tech News week 44 and 45 including the community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
• Activity Tab: The Wikipedia Android app expands the new Activity tab to all users. It offers a complete view of your Wikipedia activity: reading time, saved articles, edits, and donation history (for known donors). This change aims to make Wikipedia a more engaging experience for readers and contributors alike, while keeping all personal data private and stored locally on your device.
• Tabbed browsing: Tabbed browsing is now available on the Wikipedia App for iOS. Tabs will let you keep more than one article open at a time, making it easier to explore complex topics, follow links without losing your place, and pick up where you left off.
• CampaignEvents extension: Autoconfirmed users on small and medium wikis with the CampaignEvents extension can now use Event Registration without the Event Organizer right. This feature lets organizers enable registration, manage participants, and lets users register with one click instead of signing event pages.
• Image browsing: The Wikimedia Foundation launched image browsing, an experiment that puts images on top of your Wikipedia article reading journey, on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
• Temporary accounts: Temporary Accounts are now enabled on 1,000+ projects including English Wikipedia.
• Abstract Wikipedia naming contest: The first round of “abstract content wiki” naming vote has ended and the first legal review had begun to determine the 6 names that will make it to the second round on November 17.
• Wikifunctions: Wikifunctions is now deployed across 12 Wiktionaries and 4 Wikipedias.

Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · list of movement events

Digital Safety Resource Center provides tips and tools to protect yourself online.

• Privacy in Wikipedia research: The Wikimedia Foundation published Privacy in Public: Navigating Research, Personal Data, and Safety on Wikipedia, a whitepaper which guides researchers in navigating privacy of Wikipedia editors in their research. Read the highlights and key takeaways for researchers and Wikipedians.
• Digital Safety: The Wikimedia Foundation is launching Digital Safety Office Hours to explore how to stay safe digitally, what does digital safety mean, what extra precautions can Wikimedians take. The first session will take place on November 28 at 9 AM and 7 PM UTC. Check out also our Digital Safety Resources Center to learn practical tips and tools you can use immediately.
• Volunteer roles for movement governance: The Movement governance committees are seeking new volunteers to support essential and high-impact work across the Wikimedia ecosystem. The current appointment cycle is open for the AffCom, Ombuds Commission, and Case Review Committee. Applications for these committees will remain open until December 11. The team will host a community conversation on November 26, at 3 AM UTC.
• Don't Blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
• Wikimedia Core Curriculum: Want to learn how to edit Wikipedia? – A new free self-paced course, all in video with subtitles, is available from the Wikimedia Foundation!

Foundation statements

• Transparency builds trust: The latest edition from the series "Lessons from Wikipedia" explores how deep transparency has helped make Wikipedia one of the most trusted sources on the internet.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 23:05, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #226 is out: Getting ready for second round of voting for naming the wiki with abstract content; Rewriting the backend: Why Rust?

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we summarise current discussion regarding the naming contest for Abstract Wikipedia, we discuss how we are rewriting the backend, we ask for help in substituting a function, we suggest you the recordings of Wikifunctions-related sessions at the WikidataCon 2025, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Also we remind you that the next Natural Language Generation Special Interest Group meeting will be held on November 18, at 16:00 UTC (link to the meeting).

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:42, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

December 2025 administrator elections - schedule

Administrator Elections | Schedule

• The December 2025 administrator elections are set to proceed.
• We plan to use the following schedule:
  • Nov 25 – Dec 1: Candidate sign-up
  • Dec 4 – Dec 8: Discussion phase
  • Dec 9 – Dec 15: SecurePoll voting phase
• If you have any questions, concerns, or thoughts before we get started, please ask at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:47, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #706

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-11-17. Missed the previous one? See issue #705.

Discussions

• New requests for permissions/Bot:
  • Che-W-bot - Task(s): Possible duplicate of the bot below.
  • CheWikibot - Task(s): Import new articles created on Chechen Wikipedia (ce.wiki) to Wikidata.
  • DDResearchBot - Task(s): This bot will facilitate adding structured, cited data from trusted integrity sources to Wikidata for Dewey Digital.
• Closed request for comments:
  • Adapt blocking policy to IPv6 networks - While there is a general agreement for admins to block /64, no consensus to add to the blocking Policy was reached.
  • Proposal to better document featured SPARQL queries - Consensus was reached and a vote is planned.
  • Gender neutral Labels for occupations/positions in French - Majority support for using male and female forms in French labels and aliases, gender-neutral descriptions, and completing male/female label properties.
  • Items for videos of online platforms that represent notable Items - No consensus could be reached.
  • Should Labels of interlanguage links from other Wikipedia Projects? - There is general support to import labels, however there are concerns about the import as an Alias.
  • Signed Statements - No consensus could be reached.
  • Use of dates in descriptions of items regarding humans - Dates on Wikidata are community-specific; add only to disambiguate, don’t remove, and format per language conventions.
• Project chat: Proposal:Prohibiting LLM-generated content
• Other:
  • Wikidata:Temporary account IP viewer - users who may view IP addresses associated with temporary accounts.
  • Wikidata:Self-promotion - an essay on creating an Item about yourself, your organisation, or your work is a form of self-promotion and is strongly discouraged. Feel free to update this page.

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • Wikidata Days: IWUG and WAFTAI - A 4 day edit-a-thon beginning November 26, 2025, for Cameroonian and Nigerian educational institutions.
  • WikiLatih Wikidata - November 21, 08:50am (WIB), learning around Wikidata: how to reuse data and edit Items. Organised by the Faculty of Science and Technology Universitas Airlangga.
• Just missed it: First steps in Wikidata for the Wikimedia LGBT Community - two introductory workshops for English, French and Spanish Wikipedians with an interest in learning Wikidata.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs: GLAM Netherlands report The joint Radboud–Maastricht project Open Topstukken concluded at the Dutch National Library, showcasing 30 digitized collection highlights enriched with Linked Open Data via Wikidata and supported by new tools, documentation, and visualizations to enhance digital accessibility and interoperability.
• Videos:
  • (Spanish) Mujeres que Inspiran: Layla Michán - Wikidata e investigación (Women who inspire. Wikidata & research)
  • Wikidata Workshop: Improving African Authors and Books Items
  • (Spanish) Enriquecer, reutilizar y modelar datos y metadatos usando Wikidata. Tomás Saorín Pérez (Enrich, reuse, and model data and metadata using Wikidata.)
  • Guide to the Wikidata Notability Policy
  • Wikidata: Wikimedia's knowledge graph in a world of generative AI
  • (Portuguese) O que saber antes de editar no Wikidata (What to know before editing on Wikidata)
  • (Portuguese) Para além da Wikipédia: como os dados estruturados conectam saberes (Beyond Wikipedia: how structured data connect knowledge)

Tool of the week

• ArchiveExternaLinks is a UserScript by Poro26. The UserScript automates the archiving of all external links present in an item, whether they appear in statements, references or identifiers. For each external link, the script automatically adds an archive link [archive], similar to what is done on Wikipedia for web sources cited in references

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • data collection method (scientific data collection procedure used in/by the subject)
  • time of deposition (point in time when an archaeological object or assemblage was buried, hidden, lost, or otherwise deposited)
  • Commonwealth Sport country code (code for countries participating in Commonwealth Sport events)
• Newest External identifiers: Japanese Film Database ID, GCatholic former diocese ID, Myanmar Company Registration Number, Team Austria athlete ID, ‎ECHL.com player ID, ‎Genbu.net ID, ISTAMPIE ID, HarmonyOS NEXT APP ID, Federal Legal Information ID, UNESCO Virtual Museum inventory ID, South Korean Business Registration Number, ‎Lämningsnummer, ‎Mackolik football manager ID, Biserici.org church ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review: role in naming (the role the namesake played in relation to this item, i.e. why the item is named after the namesake)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: Korea Heritage Service Heritage Portal ID, Lubimyczytać version/edition ID, UEA catalogue ID, CRA program account number, PL-AED, Yandex Object Answer ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Towns named after Alexander the great
  • Heritage added to the Memory of the World International Register in 2025 (newly added data)
• Newest WikiProjects: WikiProject LGBTQ History - aims to improve and organize data related to the history, people, places, events, and organizations that have contributed to LGBTQ+ experiences across time and geography.
• WikiProject Highlights:
  • 👩🔬Passionate about highlighting women's achievements? WikiProject Women is dedicated to creating and improving data about women worldwide. Help close the gender gap in knowledge! WikiProject Women
  • 🗳️ Interested in democracy and political data? Join WikiProject Elections to model data about elections, candidates, and results from around the globe. Make electoral data open and accessible! WikiProject Elections
  • 🏛️ How do you find info on government institutions? WikiProject Govdirectory has a structured data model for that! Help improve data about public agencies on Wikidata. WikiProject Govdirectory
  • 🎵 Into music? From classical to K-pop, WikiProject Music needs your expertise to harmonize data on songs, artists, and releases. Join the band! WikiProject Music
  • 🧬 Your skills can help model lifesaving data. WikiProject Medicine works on structured data for diseases, drugs, clinical trials, and anatomy. Join a project that matters. WikiProject Medicine
  • 🔍 Interested in how knowledge itself is structured? WikiProject Ontology delves into the fundamental classes and properties of Wikidata. Shape the backbone of the knowledge graph! WikiProject Ontology
• Showcase Items: Aboriginal Australians (Q12060728) - First Nations people of Australia
• Showcase Lexemes: ਦਿਮਾਗ਼ (L1078947) - Punjabi noun (dɪ.mäːɣ) meaning "brain (organ)", "intellect/mind", or "understanding/consciousness"

Development

• Mobile statement editing:
  • We are working on editing statements that link to other entities in their value (phab:T403974, phab:T409149)
  • We enabled mobile statement editing as a beta feature on test.wikidata.org (phab:T407737)
• GraphQL prototype: We finished the work on making labels of linked entities available (phab:T404692)
• Dumps: We are continuing to work on making the dump process more robust

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) 15:18, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-47

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 Reader Experience team is experimenting with reading lists on mobile web, allowing logged-in readers with no edits to save private lists of articles for later. The experiment is running on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias since the week of 10 November, and will begin on English Wikipedia the week of 17 November.
• Users who can’t receive their email verification code during login can now get help by submitting a form on a new special page. This update is part of the Account Security initiative. If your account has an email address, please make sure you still have access to it. When logging in from a new device or location without 2FA, you may be asked to enter a 6-digit code sent by email to finish logging in. Learn more.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikisource in Minangkabau (s:min:)
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• As part of the Parser Unification project, the Content Transform Team rolled out Parsoid as the default parser to many low-traffic Wikipedias and is preparing the next step to high traffic ones. This message is an invitation for you to opt-in to Parsoid, as described in the Extension:ParserMigration documentation, and identify any issues you might encounter with your own workflow using bots, gadgets, or user scripts. Please, let us know through the "Report Visual Bug" link in the Tools sidebar or create a phab ticket and tag the Content Transform Team in Phabricator.
• Unsupported Tools: Several issues with Video2Commons have been fixed, including filename-related upload failures, black-video imports, and retry handling. AV1 support has also been added. Ongoing work focuses on backend stability, ffmpeg errors, subtitle imports, metadata handling, and playlist uploads. To track specific tasks, check the Phabricator board.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• Save the date for the next Wikimedia Hackathon happening in Milan, Italy from May 1–3, 2026. Registration will open in January 2026. Scholarship applications are currently open, and will close on November 28, 2025. If you have any questions, please email hackathon@wikimedia.org.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:24, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

ArbCom 2025 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2025 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 1 December 2025. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #227 is out: Second round of voting for naming the wiki with language-independent content; Sharing function calls

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we announce the start of the second phase of the naming contest for Abstract Wikipedia, we share the results of the MacArthur Foundation's 100&Change contest, we share the recording of the last NLG SIG meeting, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:11, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #707

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-11-24. Missed the previous one? See issue #706.

Discussions

• New requests for permissions/Bot:
  • News2DataBot - Task(s): Check for new, unlinked articles on Polish Wikinews and create relevant Items.
  • WikidataLiteraryWorksMetaDataUpload - Task(s): Upload metadata for literary works from research project.
• New request for comments: The Exhibition Models RfC was split into 2 Schema proposals: Exhibition Concept and Exhibition Manifestation.

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • Upcoming LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session on 25 November 2025: Join the community-driven effort led by WikiProject Personal Pronouns to improve pronoun data modeling and ethics in Wikidata. This is part of a three-session series (Oct 14, Nov 25, Dec 9) focused on implementing new best practices. No prior Wikidata experience required. Join at 17:00 UTC. Event page.
  • Wikimedia Hackathon 2026 - Hosted in Milan, Italy, scholarships are now open, apply on Pretix.
  • Art+Feminism & Whose Knowledge? - A conversation on building a feminist data future, Dec 5, 2025, 13:00 UTC (Time zone converter).

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs:
  • Impact of Wikipedia and Wikidata on ChatGPT search results
  • Wikidata as an authority data source for private collectors
  • (German) Environmental and climate reference in large knowledge databases. Wikipedia, Wikidata and environmental portals in comparison
• Presentations: Wikidata as a challenge for rule systems (Declarative AI 2025 Conf.) - Slides / Recording
• Papers: Snapshot of bibliographic metadata from Wikidata for all Arabic periodicals published worldwide before 1930 - Project Jarāʾid, by T. Grallert, (2025).
• Videos:
  • An introduction to Wikidata and its use for librarians and researchers; slides available on Commons
  • WikidataCon 2025 Session Playlists (YouTube):
    Day 1 (31.10) / Day 2 (01.11) / Day 3 (02.11)
  • Wikidata in library catalogues: Introduction to the Primo VE linked data feature - By Dr Thneed
  • Wikidata Live Editing: Stolpersteine and the Holocaust victims they commemorate
  • Towards Linked Data Fluency: Takeaways from a Wikidata Workflow Pilot Program
  • Enhancing authority files through SPARQL federated queries - Thomas Kerboul and the Bibliothèque de Genève improved person data by comparing Wikidata and IdRef, with manual checks preventing ID mix-ups.
  • (Spanish) Inspiring Women: Layla Michán - Wikidata and research - Dr. Aguirre (UNAM) discusses Wikidata as a collaborative research tool and shared experiences in the “Women Who Inspire” series.

Tool of the week

• Timetrail is a website that visualizes the movement of Wikidata items over time by mapping their associated events and locations.
• The redesigned WikiProvenance is now live, featuring a new front end and backend for exploring and comparing Wikidata provenance information. Try examples like Johann Sebastian Bach or Human vs. City and Paris vs. London. Explore it here: https://wikiprovenance.toolforge.org/

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• LDF endpoint retirement considered: The unstable and low-traffic LDF endpoint may be retired to reduce maintenance effort and unnecessary load on WDQS. If your workflow depends on it and you would hate to see it go, please let the Wikidata development team know at Wikidata talk:Data access.
• WDQS Legacy endpoint deprecation: The legacy endpoint (query-legacy-full.wikidata.org) will be fully decommissioned on 7 January 2026. Please migrate tools and workflows to the supported endpoints: query.wikidata.org (Main) or query-scholarly.wikidata.org (Scholarly). Assistance is available on the Data Access and Request a Query pages.
• Insights from Data Governance Research Process 2025: Results of the research to better understand how the communities currently think about which data and communities are best served by Wikidata, Wikibase Cloud or Wikibase Suite respectively.
• Abstract Wikipedia naming contest: Help pick a name for the new Wikimedia wiki project which is provisionally known as Abstract Wikipedia. The second phase of voting is now open until December 1.

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest External identifiers: CUIT, REGAFI id, Hong Kong company ID, California Entity Number, Mã số doanh nghiệp, ‎InfoconDB series ID, ‎InfoconDB conference ID, ‎Biography.com ID, Hudobné centrum person ID, Hudobné centrum group ID, FAIR Epigraphic Vocabularies ID, NVLI ID, SerBenfiquista.com players ID, ‎BG IISDA org ID, ‎BG NACID person ID, The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland ID, Encyclopedia of African American History 1896 to the Present entry ID, National cultural monument of Czechia ID, ‎Davis Cup player ID since 2025, ‎Eiga.com drama ID, Last Address ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • parliamentary group leader (the identity of the leader of a parliamentary group)
  • SignWriting transcription (representation in SignWriting)
  • free height (vertical distance from the floor level to the lowest obstruction in the ceiling of an indoor or outdoor space)
  • thumbtime (Time for video thumbnail in seconds)
  • Credibly accused of (entity (person or organization) that has been credibly accused of a crime or serious misconduct, but is not (yet) convicted)
• New External identifier property proposals to review:: CHZZK streamer ID, FC Barcelona players ID, Qalamos person ID, KISTI conference ID, KaraokeTexty.cz artist ID, KaraokeTexty.cz song ID, DLSite dōjin circle ID, DLSite person ID, DLSite work ID, Showlabs ID, DEUMM Online ID, Kvinnehistorie.no persons ID, Foot Résultats player ID, Manga-DB person ID, Manga-DB publisher ID, Manga-DB magazine ID, Slekt og Data cemetery ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Query examples:
  • Videogames in the wrong genre (source)
  • People buried in Italian (or subregion) cemeteries (source)
• Newest WikiProjects:
  • Bookbindings - share metadata and images from the currently offline Database of Bookbindings at the British Library
  • Irish Traditional Music:Projects - aims to systematically create and enhance Wikidata items for people profiled in the 2024 edition of Fintan Vallely's The Companion to Irish Traditional Music.
  • Basketball: Western Illinois Leathernecks Women's
• WikiProject Highlights: Lost Media/Subpages - aim to list all media lost to time in Wikidata
• Showcase Items: arXiv (Q118398) - online digital archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers
• Showcase Lexemes: Bogucin (L1405411) - Polish proper noun (bɔˈɡu.t͡ɕin) meaning "village in Greater Poland", "village in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship", or "village in Lublin Voivodeship"

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) 15:27, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-48

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

• Last week, the Wikimedia Search Team recreated the "DWIM" (Do What I Mean) gadget functionality server-side, for Russian and Hebrew Wikipedias. This feature adds cross-keyboard suggestions to the standard search-box suggestions. For example, searching for cxfcnmt on Russian Wikipedia will now add suggestions for счастье ("happiness") that the user probably intended. They plan to enable this feature for other Russian and Hebrew wikis this week.
• Later this week, users of the "⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽" beta feature will have syntax highlighting available in DiscussionTools. This requires that the "Enable editing tools in source mode" preference be set.
• Campaign events extension – the set of tools for coordinating events and other on-wiki collaborations has now been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. A new feature known as Collaborative contribution to help organizers and participants see the impact of activities has also been added. Join the upcoming learning session to see the new feature in action and share your feedback.
• View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug which stopped CodeReviewBot from working, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• Users of Wikimedia API can join a usability study to help validate the new design of Wikimedia REST API sandboxes. Interested participants should fill the recruitment survey.
• The MediaWiki Interfaces team is deprecating XSLT stylesheets within the Action API. Support for format=xml&xlst={stylesheet} will be removed from Wikimedia projects by the end of November, 2025. In addition, it will soon be disabled by default in MediaWiki release versions: v1.43 (LTS), v1.44, and v1.45. Support for XSLT stylesheets will be fully removed from MediaWiki v1.46 (expected to release between April and May 2026).
• The WDQS legacy endpoint (query-legacy-full.wikidata.org) will be decommissioned at the end of December 2025, and finally closed down on 7th January 2026. After this date, users should expect requests to query.wikidata.org that require the full graph to fail or return invalid results if they are not rewritten to use SPARQL federation. The team encourages users to ensure that tools and workflows use the supported WDQS endpoints (https://query.wikidata.org/ - Main graph or https://query-scholarly.wikidata.org/ - Scholarly graph). For support with migrating use cases, please review the Data Access and Request a Query pages for details and assistance on alternative access methods.
• 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 15:54, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Administrator Elections - Call for Candidates

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/December 2025/Candidates.

Here is the schedule:

• November 25 – December 1 - Call for candidates
• December 4–8 - Discussion phase
• December 9–15 - SecurePoll voting phase

Please note the following:

• The requirements to run are identical to RFA—a prospective candidate must be extended confirmed.
• Prospective candidates are advised to become familiar with the community's expectations of administrators, which are much higher than the minimum requirement of having extended confirmed status. This includes reviewing successful and unsuccessful RFAs, reading the essay Wikipedia:Advice for admin elections candidates, and possibly requesting an optional poll on their chances of passing.
• 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.
• Administrator elections are also a valid means of regaining adminship for de-sysopped editors.

Ask any questions about the process at the talk page. Later, a 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.

You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:49, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 22

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on November 7. Please help translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

Join the celebration for Wikipedia’s 25th virtual birthday party.

• Board election: The 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees vote has elected two new trustees, Bobby Shabangu (Bobbyshabangu) and Michał Buczyński (Aegis Maelstrom), who will be appointed at the next Board meeting in December 2025.
• Wikipedia 25: Wikipedia is turning 25 and it’s time to party! Register now for Wikipedia’s 25th virtual birthday bash on 15 January at 16:00 UTC.
• Wikimedia Hackathon: The 2026 Wikimedia Hackathon will be taking place in person May 1 - 3, 2026 in Milan, Italy. Scholarship applications are open until November 28.
• Language Community: The next language community meeting will be held on November 28 at 16:00 UTC.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Tech News: Some of the latest updates from Tech News week 46 and 47: Wikimedia Foundation is experimentating with reading lists on mobile web, allowing logged-in readers with no edits to save private lists of articles for later; One new wiki has been created: a Wikisource in Minangkabau.
• Wikifunctions: The second round of voting for naming the wiki with abstract content is kicking off with six name proposals to vote for.
• Reference check: The A/B test for reference check has begun on English Wikipedia and will run until December 17. This is a feature which prompts new editors to add citations before they publish an edit adding content to an article.
• Image browsing: Wikimedia Foundation is launching an experiment called "Image browsing" to test how to make it easier for readers to browse and discover images on Wikipedia articles. This experiment, a mobile-only A/B test, is taking place on on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese wikis, affecting a small number of users.
• CampaignEvents extension: Campaign events extension is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. The extension offers tools for running and coordinating events and other on-wiki collaborations. These features include Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List, plus a new feature, Collaborative contribution, which helps organizers and participants see the impact of their collaborative activities. Join the upcoming learning session to see the new feature in action and share your feedback.
• Dark Mode: Dark mode is now available on all Wikimedia projects for all anonymous users! This enhancement aims to deliver a more enjoyable reading experience, especially in dimly lit environments. Learn how to activate this feature.
• Wikimedia Apps: The Activity tab in the Wikipedia Android app is now available for all users. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.
• Usability Improvements: Improvements for talk pages is being rolled out. Users can opt out of these changes in their user preferences in “Show discussion activity.”

Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · list of movement events

• Wikipedia 25 Press toolkit: Wikimedia Foundation is providing press toolkit as guidance and resources to Wikimedia volunteers and affiliates to spread the word about Wikipedia’s 25th birthday to local and regional media.
• Language and Internationalization: Read some key highlights from the October 2025 edition of the Language and internationalization newsletter.
• Information integrity: Wikimedia Project from South America Selected by the UNESCO Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change Fund.
• The Wikipedia Library: The Wikipedia Library team attended the CEE Meeting 2025 celebrated a new partnership with Times of Malta.
• Understanding movement organizers: Wikimedia Foundation concluded a literature review on organizers in the Wikimedia movement focused on capturing their personas, motivations, and impact in order to highlight best practices and opportunities for further support.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan

• Wikimedia Enterprise: Reef Media uses Wikimedia Enterprise Snapshot API to Fact Check and Verify Sources.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Affiliations Committee: Draft recommendations on three strategic areas that need continuous consideration to best support Wikimedia affiliates.

Foundation statements

• Lessons from Wikipedia: The latest edition from the series explores the art of disagreement and how Wikipedia navigates disputes.
• Artificial Intelligence: In the AI era, Wikipedia has never been more valuable. This explainer shows how human-created knowledge isn’t replaceable.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 17:30, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #228 is out: Vote on the new wiki name! Finishing each other’s sentences

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we update you on our naming contest for Abstract Wikipedia, we discuss our progress on sentence creation with functions, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Also, we remind you that if you have questions or ideas to discuss, the next Volunteers' Corner will be held on December 1, at 18:30 UTC (link to the meeting).

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:38, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Matthewrb. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 17:33, 27 November 2025 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

- Rich^T|C|E-Mail 17:33, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

 Done ~ Matthewrb ^{Get in touch · Breadcrumbs} 09:00, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

Nominations are now open for military historian of the year and newcomer of the year awards for 2025!

Nominations now open for the WikiProject Military History newcomer of the year and military historian of the year awards for 2025! The top editors will be awarded the coveted Gold Wiki. Nominations are open here and here respectively. The nomination period closes at 23:59 on 30 November 2025 when voting begins. On behalf of the coordinators, wishing you the very best for the festive season and the new year. MediaWiki message delivery via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 30 November 2025 (UTC)