User talk:Ocaasi/Archive 43
Latest comment: 6 months ago by MediaWiki message delivery in topic Books & Bytes – Issue 71
 | This is an archive of past discussions with User:Ocaasi. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
| Archive 40 | Archive 41 | Archive 42 | Archive 43 | Archive 44 | Archive 45 |
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 13
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on June 27. Please help translate.
![Laptop with Wikipedia "W" illustration](http://wiki.nitrosworld.org/wiki/File:Laptop_with_Wikipedia_"W"_illustration.png)
Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues
- Wikimania Hackathon 2025: The Wikimania Hackathon 2025 is inviting you to submit your project idea.
- WikiWomen* Summit 2025: The WikiWomen* Summit 2025 will take place in a hybrid format on 5th August, the pre-conference day of Wikimania 2025. Register now.
- WikiIndaba 2025: The scholarship applications and program submissions are open until 23:59 GMT on July 20.
- WikiCon Brasil 2025: WikiCon Brasil 2025 will take place on July 19-20 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
- WikiConvention francophone 2025: The WikiConvention 2025 will take place in Cotonou, Benin, October 2-5. The call for submissions is open until July 15.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Tech News: Temporary accounts have been rolled out on 18 large and medium-sized Wikipedias, including German, Japanese, French, and Chinese; The CampaignEvents extension has been enabled on all Wikipedias. More updates from Tech News week 27 and 28.
- AbuseFilter: AbuseFilter maintainers can now match against IP reputation data in AbuseFilters. IP reputation data is information about the proxies and VPNs associated with the user’s IP address. This data is not shown publicly and is not generated for actions performed by registered accounts.
- Favorite Templates: A new feature related to Template Recall and Discovery will be deployed to all Wikimedia projects: a template category browser will be introduced to assist users in finding templates to put in their “favourite” list. The browser will allow users to browse a list of templates which have been organised into a given category tree. The feature has been requested by the community through the Community Wishlist.
- Wikipedia App: We have launched an A/B test of tabbed browsing in the Wikipedia iOS app. This feature allows users to open multiple articles in separate tabs, making it easier to switch between topics, explore, and return to previous reading spots. The test is currently running in Arabic, English, and Japanese in selected regions. We’re collecting feedback and plan to make the feature more widely available soon.
- MediaWiki: The MediaWiki Platform team has introduced a unified Built-in Notifications system, as part of MediaWiki 1.44, that makes it easier for developers to send, manage, and customize notifications across the platform.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · list of movement events
- Hubs: Personal, consistent and deeply human: How CEE Hub support the region organizations.
- Legal: Good intentions make for bad law in Utah, we argue in our amicus brief in the Netchoice v. Brown case.
- Wikimedia Organizations: The Wikimedia Foundation and a group of experienced co-authors with affiliate background have drafted the paper Towards a Healthy Ecosystem of Wikimedia Organizations. This paper aims to be presented as a proposal for the movement at Wikimania in August 2025 in Nairobi. Share your feedback before July 29.
- Advocacy: We have created The Wikipedia Test: a public policy tool and a call to action to help ensure regulators consider how new laws can negatively affect online communities and platforms that provide services and information in the public interest.
- Wikimedia Research Showcase: The next showcase will center around the theme of "Examining the Impact of LLMs on Knowledge Production Communities" and will take place on July 16 at 16:30 UTC.
- Administrative Update to Our Privacy Policies: Following personnel changes, we are removing the name of our former point of contact serving the European Economic Area and the UK for questions and requests related to personal data in the privacy policy and donor privacy policy.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Affiliations Committee: New resolution from AffComm on User Group recognition interval period.
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 askcac
wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
The Signpost: 18 July 2025
- News and notes: Is no WikiNews good WikiNews? — Election season returns!
Endowment tax form, Wikimania, elections, U4C, fundraising and a duck!
- In the media: How bad (or good) is Wikipedia?
And how do we know?
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Medicine reaches milestone of zero unreferenced articles
Five-year journey comes to healthy fruition.
- In focus: Wikimania 2025: Connecting Wikimedians across the world for 20 years
Wikimedians from around the world will gather in person and online at the twentieth annual meeting of Wikimania.
- Recent research: Knowledge manipulation on Russia's Wikipedia fork; Marxist critique of Wikidata license; call to analyze power relations of Wikipedia
As well as "hermeneutic excursions" and other scientific research findings.
- News from the WMF: Form 990 released for the Wikimedia Foundation’s fiscal year 2023-2024
The report covers the Foundation's operations from July 2023 - June 2024
- Discussion report: Six thousand noticeboard discussions in 2025 electrically winnowed down to a hundred
A step towards objective and comprehensive coverage of a project nearly too big to follow.
- Comix: Divorce
Drawn this century!
- Opinion: Women are somewhat under-represented on the English-language Wikipedia, and other observations from analysis
How data from the Wikipedia "necessary articles" lists can shed new light on the gender gap
- Community view: A Deep Dive Into Wikimedia (part 4): The Future Of Wikimedia and Conclusion
Annual plans, external trends, infrastructure, equity, safety, and effectiveness. What does it all mean?
- Obituary: Pvmoutside, Atomicjohn, Rdmoore6, Jaknouse, Morven, Martin of Sheffield, MarnetteD, Herewhy, BabelStone
Rest in peace.
- Traffic report: God only knows
Wouldn't it be nice without billionaires, scandals, deaths, and wars?
- Humour: New forum created for people who don't care about Wikipedia
If you are too blasé for Mr. Blasé and don't give a FAC.
Tech News: 2025-30
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- The Translation Suggestions feature in the Content Translation tool now has another level of article filters added to the "... More" category. Translators who use the Suggestions feature can now select and receive article suggestions that are customized to geographical locations of their interest using the new "Regions" filter.
- Administrators can now limit "Add a Link" to newcomers. The "Add a Link" Structured Task helps new account holders start editing, but some communities have requested the ability to restrict it to its intended audience: newcomers. Administrators can configure this setting within the Community Configuration feature.
View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- For AbuseFilter editors on some wikis, it is now possible to filter edits based on the RevertRisk score of the edit being attempted. It is only populated if the action being evaluated is an edit. For more information, please see the ORES/AbuseFilter variables documentation.
- The Beta Cluster wikis have been moved from
beta.wmflabs.orgtobeta.wmcloud.org. Users may need to update URLs in any tools, or in their password managers. Any related issues can be reported in the task. - Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- WikiCite 2025 will take place from 29–31 August, both online and in-person in Bern, Switzerland. The event's goals are to reconnect communities, institutions, and individuals working with open citations, bibliographic data, and the Wikidata/Wikibase ecosystem. Registration is open and the call for proposals will be announced soon.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Tech News: 2025-31
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- The Community Tech team will be focusing on wishes related to Watchlists and Recent Changes pages, over the next few months. They are looking for feedback. Please read the latest update, and if you have ideas, please submit a wish on the topic.
Updates for editors
- The Wikimedia Commons community has decided to block cross-wiki uploads to Wikimedia Commons, for all users without autoconfirmed rights on that wiki, starting on August 16. This is because of widespread problems related to files that are uploaded by newcomers. Users who are affected by this will get an error message with a link to the less restrictive UploadWizard on Commons. Please help translating the message or give feedback on the message text. Please also update your local help pages to explain this restriction.
- On wikis with temporary accounts enabled and Meta-Wiki, administrators may now set up a footer for the Special:Contributions pages of temporary accounts, similar to those which can be shown on IP and user-account pages. They may do it by creating the page named
MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-temp. - View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
- The MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Fall 2025 will be held 28–30 October 2025 in Hanover, Germany. This event is organized by and for the third-party MediaWiki community. You can propose sessions and register to attend.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 14
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on July 11. Please help translate. The bulletin will be back after Wikimania with a special issue on the 19th August.
Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues
- Wikimania 2025: Register to join virtually the 20th Wikimania taking place from August 6-9. The programme has highlights from across Wikimedia projects and communities including the reveal of who will be this year's Wikimedians of the year.
- Strengthening a neutral point of view: An overview of NPOV policies across Wikipedia projects, shows that 153 Wikipedias out of 342 (45%) don’t have easily accessible guidance on neutrality. The research was conducted to help understand how neutrality is ensured in our projects. and to provide an opportunity for peer learning across project communities. Read the full research and join the conversation.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Tech News: See all the 60 community-submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks in Tech News week 29 and 30. For example, the request to add Malayalam fonts in the Wikisource Book Export Tool was resolved and now, the rendering of Malayalam letters in exported Wikisource books are accurate.
- Temporary Accounts: After the rollout of temporary accounts on 18 large and medium-sized Wikipedias, we are monitoring the impact of this change, and preparing for the next deployments. See the full project update.
- Add a link: Administrators can now limit "Add a Link" to newcomers, as opposed to keeping it open to more experienced editors as well. "Add a link" helps newcomers to start editing, so restricting the feature to them enables Administrators to cater the feature to that specific group, which they can do via the Community Configuration feature.
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: PEN America shares 5 tips for bolstering your safety and privacy online.
- Amicus brief: Our amicus brief in Patterson v. Meta: Defending free speech and the open internet in another Section 230 legal case.
- UK Online Safety Act: Court hearings for the Wikimedia Foundation's challenge to the UK Online Safety Act "Categorisation Regulations" happened on July 22 and 23. A verdict is not expected until August.
- Advocacy sessions: Collaborate for change at these policy advocacy sessions at Wikimania 2025.
- Public-Interest content: Expanding Indonesian Wikipedia with Public-Interest Content through Project Gayatri.
- The Wikipedia Test: Learn how to use the Wikipedia Test, a tool to protect the public interest internet.
- Equity Fund: As it closes, the Equity Fund has announced its final round of grants to six past grantees. It will also be providing four "Connected Grants" to movement organizations who will pair closely with one of the grantees to collaborate together.
- Don't blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
- Content Translation: Translators who use the Suggestions feature in the Content Translation tool can now select and receive article suggestions that are customized to geographical locations of their interest using the new "Regions" filter.
- Wikifunctions: Wikifunctions now has a new kind of Types: Wikidata-based enumerations, also known as light-weight enumerations.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Endowment: Sharing the Wikimedia Endowment’s Form 990 for fiscal year 2023 – 2024. Learn more from the frequently asked questions.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Annual plan: The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees approved the Foundation's annual plan for next year virtually in their quarterly meeting. You can read more about the goals for next year and a summary of the continuous conversations that shaped the plan.
- Board selection: The Elections Committee shared a list of the all eligible candidates. As there are more than 10 eligible candidates, a shortlisting process is currently taking place. Representatives of Wikimedia movement affiliates that are currently compliant with their reporting obligations can participate in the shortlisting process. Learn more about this process and next steps on Meta.
Foundation statements
- WIPO permanent observer: For fifth time, China blocks Wikimedia Foundation as permanent observer to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
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!
Tech News: 2025-32
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Editors can now enable the User Info card. This feature adds an icon next to usernames on history pages and similar user-contribution log pages. When you tap or click on the icon, it displays data related to that user account such as the number of edits, reverted edits, blocks, and more. It's part of a broader project to make it easier for moderators to evaluate account trustworthiness. The feature can be enabled in your global preferences, and later this week it will be available in local preferences.
- Everybody is invited to share comments on Collaborative Contributions, a project recently launched by the Connection team. The project aims to create a new way to display the impact of collaborative editing activities (such as edit-a-thons, backlog drives, and WikiProjects) on the wikis. Post your comments on the project talk page.
- Administrators can now define the default block duration for temporary accounts. To do that, they need to create a page named
MediaWiki:Ipb-default-expiry-temporary-accountand use a value defined inMediaWiki:Ipboptions. This allows administrators to easily block temporary accounts for 90 days, which is functionally equivalent to an indefinite block. The advantage of this solution is that it does not clutter Special:BlockList. More documentation is available. - View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Gadgets can now include
.vuefiles. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons can be loaded through the gadget definition. The documentation has examples. For user scripts that use Vue.js, an API module now exists to load Codex icons. - Module developers can now use a Lua interface to simplify the preparation of Lua modules for translation on Meta-Wiki. This improvement makes it easier for translators to find and edit module strings without dealing with raw Lua code. It helps prevent mistakes that could break the module during translation. Module developers and translators are invited to watch the demo video, read more about translatable modules to understand how it works, refer to Meta-Wiki's Module:User Wikimedia project for example usage, and share their feedback on how well it addresses the challenges in their workflow. The interface still has some performance issues, so it should not be used in widely used modules yet.
- Developers of external tools that connect to Wikimedia pages must set a user-agent that complies with the user-agent policy. This policy will start to be more strongly enforced in August because of external crawlers that are overusing Wikimedia's resources. Tools that are hosted on Wikimedia's Toolforge or Cloud VPS will not be affected by this for now, but should still set a user-agent. More technical details are available, and related questions are welcome in that task.
- Parsoid Read Views is going to be rolling out to some smaller Wikipedias over the next few weeks, following the successful transition of Wikivoyages and Wiktionaries to Parsoid Read Views. For more information, see the Parsoid/Parser Unification project page.
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Administrators' newsletter – August 2025
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2025).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion, G15, has been enacted. It applies to pages generated by a large language model (LLM) without human review.
- Following a request for comment, there is a new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses of temporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors can request access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.
Technical news
- Administrators can now restrict the "Add a Link" feature to newcomers. The "Add a Link" Structured Task helps new account holders get started with editing. Administrators can configure this setting in the Community Configuration page.
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Indian military history has been closed.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
- The contentious topic designations for Sri Lanka (SL) and India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (IPA) are folded into this new contentious topic.
- The community-authorized general sanctions regarding South Asian social groups (GS/CASTE) are rescinded and folded into this new contentious topic.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
- The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case closed on 31 July.
- The arbitration case Transgender healthcare and people has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 11 August.
Miscellaneous
- Wikimania 2025 is happening in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years of Wikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You can register here now.
The Signpost: 9 August 2025
- News and notes: Court order snips out part of Wikipedia article, editors debate whether to frame shreds or pulp them
Plus a mysterious CheckUser incident, and the news with Wikinews.
- Discussion report: News from ANI, AN, RSN, BLPN, ELN, FTN, and NPOVN
A review of June, July and August.
- Disinformation report: The article in the most languages
Who is this guy?
- Community view: News from the Villages Pump
Threads since June.
- In the media: Disgrace, dive bars, deceased despots, and diverse dispatches
And slop.
- Crossword: Accidental typography
It's not a conlang, it's a crossword puzzle.
- Comix: best-laid schemes o' wikis an' men
gang aft agley, an' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, for promis'd joy!
- Traffic report: I'm not the antichrist or the Superman
Everybody's Somebody's Fool.
This Month in GLAM: July 2025
| ||||||
Tech News: 2025-33
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- The WikiEditor toolbar now includes its keyboard shortcuts in the tooltips for its buttons. This will help to improve the discoverability of this feature.
- The Product and Technology Advisory Council published a set of proposed experiments the Wikimedia Foundation can try to improve communication with community. Feedback on the proposals are welcomed until August 22 on this talk page.
- The search bar on the Minerva skin (mobile) has been updated to use the same type-ahead search component that is used on the Vector 2022 skin. There are no changes in search functionality but there are minor visual changes. Specifically, the close-search button has been changed from an "X" to a back arrow. This helps to distinguish it from the other "X" button that is used to clear any text.
- Editors on some wikis will see a new toggle for "Group results by page" on watchlist, related changes, and recent changes pages. This is an A/B experiment that is planned to start on August 11, and will run for 3–6 weeks on the Bengali, Chinese, Czech, French, Greek, Portuguese, and Urdu Wikipedias. The experiment will examine how making this feature more discoverable might affect editors' ability to find the edits they are looking for.
- View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- The multiwiki datasets of Unicode data have been moved to Category:Unicode Module Datasets on Wikimedia Commons, to follow the idea of "One common data source, multiple local wikis". Most wikis have been updated to use the Commons version. You can ask questions at the talkpage.
- Lua code can add warnings when something is wrong, by using the
mw.addWarning()function. It is now possible to add more than one warning, instead of new warnings replacing old ones. If you maintain a Lua module that used warnings, you should check it still works as expected. - 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.
Tech News: 2025-34
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Later this week, people who are logged-in and have the "Discussion tools" Beta Feature enabled will gain the ability to "Thank" individual comments directly from talk pages, rather than needing to navigate to page history. Learn more about this feature.
- An A/B test comparing two versions of the desktop donate link launched on testwiki on 12 August and on English Wikipedia 14 August for 0.1% of logged out users on the desktop site. The experiment will run for three weeks, ending on 12 September.
- An A/A test to measure the baseline for reader retention was launched 12 August using Experimentation Lab. This measures the percentage of users who revisit a wiki after their initial visit over a 14-day period. No visual changes are expected. The experiment will run through 31 August.
- Five new wikis have been created:
- a Wikisource in Tagalog (
s:tl:) - a Wikisource in Madurese (
s:mad:) - a Wikipedia in Rakhine (
w:rki:) - a Wikibooks in Minangkabau (
b:min:) - a Wiktionary in Standard Moroccan Amazigh (
wikt:zgh:)
- a Wikisource in Tagalog (
- View all 46 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- 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.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 15
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on July 25. Please help translate.
Special Wikimania issue This is a special Wikimania issue of the Bulletin. We'll be back to our regular format in the next issue
- Wikimania Nairobi: Catch up on missed sessions of Wikimania 2025 by checking session pages in the program. These links will be replaced by Commons links when the uploads are finished.
- Meet the Wikimedians of the Year 2025: The Wikimedian of the Year awards give us an opportunity to pause, taking a moment to recognize people who make our mission possible. Learn about all of this year's winners.
- Highlights: Daily highlights from Wikimania:
- Product and Tech: Wikimania 2025 sessions about Product and Tech you can watch, with links to the recordings.
- Affiliate Strategy: Wikimania 2025 Brings Affiliate Strategy Recommendations into Focus.
- Twentieth edition of Wikimania: Celebrating humans who make Wikipedia possible.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Tech News: Some of the latest update from Tech News week 31, 32, and 33: The Wikimedia Commons community has decided to block cross-wiki uploads to Wikimedia Commons, for all users without autoconfirmed rights on that wiki, starting on August 16; The WikiEditor toolbar now includes its keyboard shortcuts in the tooltips for its buttons. This will help to improve the discoverability of this feature.
- Collaborative Contributions: Share your comments on Collaborative Contributions. This project aims to create a new way to display the impact of collaborative editing activities (such as edit-a-thons, backlog drives, and WikiProjects) on the wikis.
- PTAC: The Product and Technology Advisory Council published a set of proposed experiments the Wikimedia Foundation can try to improve communication with community. Feedback on the proposals are welcomed until August 22.
- Watchlists and Recent Changes: The Foundation will be focusing on wishes related to Watchlists and Recent Changes pages over the next few months. Please read the latest update, and if you have ideas, please submit a wish on the topic.
- Wikifunctions: The Foundation is working on demonstrating functions that generate sentences and fragments in several languages. This is a considerable step towards creating text for Abstract Wikipedia.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · list of movement events
- Wikimedia Futures Lab: The Wikimedia Futures Lab is a process and convening co-designed by the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland that will help us all learn more about global trends and discuss potential movement-wide responses. You can apply now to join the in-person convening hosted on January 30 – February 1, 2026 in Frankfurt, Germany with participants from affiliates, contributors and external experts.
- Don't Blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
- Language and Internationalization: Read about language support for new languages and other highlights from the July 2025 edition of the Language and internationalization newsletter.
- Language Community: The next language community meeting will be held on August 29 at 15:00 UTC.
- UK Online Safety Act: The High Court of Justice has dismissed the Wikimedia Foundation's challenge to the UK's Online Safety Act (OSA) Categorisation Regulations. While the decision does not provide the immediate legal protections for Wikipedia that we hoped for, the Court’s ruling emphasized the responsibility of Ofcom and the UK government to ensure Wikipedia is protected as the OSA is implemented.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Affcom News: Read the latest issue of AffCom News (April-June 2025), the newsletter that distributes relevant news and events about the work of Wikimedia's Affiliations Committee.
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!
Tech News: 2025-35
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Template authors can now use additional CSS properties, since the CSS sanitizer used by TemplateStyles was updated. For example: width: fit-content;ruby-align; relative units such aslh; and custom strings inlist-style-type. These improvements are a Community Wishlist wish.- On large wikis, the default time period to display edits from, within the Special:RecentChanges page, has been changed from 7 days to 1 day. This is part of a performance improvement project. This should have no user-facing impact due to the quantity of edits on these wikis.
- Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find.
- Wikimedia Commons videos were not shown in the Videos tab in Google Search. The problem was investigated and reported to Google who have now fixed the issue.
- One new wiki has been created: a Wiktionary in Betawi (
wikt:bew:) - View all 39 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Two fields of the recentchanges database table are being removed.
rc_newandrc_typeare being removed in favor ofrc_source. Queries to these older fields will start to fail starting this week and developers should userc_sourceinstead. These older fields were deprecated over 10 years ago and should not be in use. This is part of work to improve the performance and stability of queries to the recentchanges table. - Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: support for new languages in MediaWiki and translatewiki; the start of the Language Onboarding and Development project to help support the growth of new and small wikis; updates on research projects; and more.
Meetings and events
- The next Language Community Meeting is happening soon, August 29th at 15:00 UTC. This week's meeting will cover: the Avro keyboard developers from Wikimedia Bangladesh, who were recently awarded a national award for their contributions to this keyboard; and other topics.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Tech News: 2025-36
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 Editing team wants to compile a list of templates, jargon terms, and policies used in edit summaries when a copyright violation is removed. This will help them identify the number of edits reverted due to copyright issues. We invite community members from the following Wikis to list these terms in T402601, or to share their list with Trizek_(WMF): Arabic Wikipedia, Czech Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. This project is open until September 9th 2025.
Updates for editors
- The CampaignEvents extension has been enabled for all Wikisources. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. The extension has three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. To request the extension for your wiki, visit the Deployment information page.
- The lists in the footer of the editing interface, such as "Templates used on this page," will now be organized into columns when there is enough space. This enhancement minimizes scrolling when editing lengthy articles on Wikipedia.
- On September 3rd, 2025 we will increase the sampling percentages of our group by toggle experiment of the
Special:RecentChanges,Special:Watchlist, andSpecial:RelatedChangespages on the Chinese, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias to 100 percent, allowing more editors to be part of this experiment. This adjustment is intended to ensure we have sufficient data to make informed decisions when evaluating the experiment results. - Upon clicking an empty search bar, logged-out users will see suggestions of articles for further reading on English Wikipedia beginning the week of September 22. The feature will be available on both desktop and mobile. All non-English wikis received this change in June and July. The goal is to make it easier for users to find articles. Learn more.
- View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- Wikifunctions now has a new capability called "lightweight enumeration types", an enumeration type is simply a fixed set of values that's in the type's definition. This capability makes it quick and easy to define such a type, and allows for the reuse of values that are already present in Wikidata. Here is a newsletter to learn more.
- The latest Readers Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: the formation of two new teams — Reader Growth and Reader Experience; insights into declining pageviews and account creations; highlights from the Wikimania Nairobi panel on improving the reading experience; upcoming experiments to engage new and existing readers; and more.
Meetings and events
- Spotlight on some Wikimania 2025 Sessions:
- Identifying AI-generated text by searching for ISBNs whose checksums fail: Mathias Schindler of WMDE shared tools to help communities search for these.
- La durabilité du mouvement Wikimedia face aux défis actuels et futurs: This session explored how Wikimedia can stay a trusted source of knowledge in the age of generative AI, information overload, and disinformation.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 16
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on August 16. Please help translate.
Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues
- Wikimedia Futures Lab: Apply before Sep 4 to join The Wikimedia Futures Lab, the in-person convening hosted on January 30 – February 1, 2026 in Frankfurt, Germany with participants from affiliates, contributors and external experts, to learn more about global trends and discuss potential movement-wide responses.
- Wikimania 2026: The theme and date for Wikimania 2026 have been decided: Liberté, Équité, Fiabilité (Freedom, Equity, Reliability). This edition will take place in Paris, from July 21 to July 25, 2026.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Tech News: Some of the latest updates from Tech News week 34 and 35: An A/B test comparing two versions of the desktop donate link launched on testwiki and English Wikipedia for 0.1% of logged out users on the desktop site. The experiment will run for three weeks, ending on 12 September; Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find.
- Spread Wikilove, thank comments: A new improvement was added to the "Discussion tools" Beta feature; it is now possible to thank a user for their comment. This new feature is released for a 3-months long test.
- Community Wishlist: Template authors can now use additional CSS properties, since the CSS sanitizer used by TemplateStyles was updated. These improvements are a Community Wishlist wish.
- Wikipedia Mobile Apps: The Android app team has launched a new experiment in Italy that lets logged-out readers of Italian and English Wikipedia set their own donation reminders based on how often they read. This new approach responds to feedback from donors who say their motivation to give is tied to their reading habits. Instead of one-size-fits-all banners, readers can now choose reminders that fit their own usage, all while keeping their privacy intact.
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: To celebrate Wikipedia’s 25th birthday, the Wikimedia Foundation is adding several resources to the Wikipedia 25 Meta-Wiki hub.
- The Wikipedia Library: Collections from Dow Jones & Company, including the The Wall Street Journal, are now available to editors who are eligible for The Wikipedia Library.
- Don't Blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Affiliate recognition: The recognition of new User Groups, Chapters, and Thematic Organizations is paused until March 31, 2026.
- Board of Trustees selection: The voting period for the upcoming Board selection process will now open on October 8 and close October 23.
- New Board member: Wikimedia Foundation welcomes incoming Board Trustee Mayree Clark.
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!
Administrators' newsletter – September 2025
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2025).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC is open on whether use of emojis with no encyclopedic value in mainspace and draftspace (e.g., at the start of paragraphs or in place of bullet points) should be added as a criterion under G15.
Technical news
- Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find. T393240
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been closed.
- An RfC is in progress to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
The Signpost: 9 September 2025
- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation loses a round in court
UK Online Safety Act remains undefeated.
- In the media: Congress probes, mayor whitewashed, AI stinks
Plus Wiki rules, Wiki Spin, and physicists get street cred!
- Disinformation report: A guide for Congress
The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance.
- Recent research: Minority-language Wikipedias, and Wikidata for botanists
And other new research findings.
- Technology report: A new way to read Wikisource
Tis true: there's magic in the web of it.
- Traffic report: Check out some new Weapons, weapon of choice
With the usual mix of war, death, super heroes, a belt, and Wednesday.
- Essay: The one question
It's an easy one.
Tech News: 2025-37
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 Editing team is working on a new check: Paste check. This check informs newcomers who paste text into Wikipedia that the content might not be accepted. This check is an effort to increase the likelihood that the new content people are adding to Wikipedia is aligned with the Movement's commitment to offering information under a free content license. This check will soon be tested at a few wikis. If your community is interested in this test, please tell us in this task, or contact the team.
Updates for editors
- Later this week, users of the "⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽" beta feature will be able to use a linting tool to see errors or other potential problems in wikitext in real time. See the help page for more information.
- When browsing a wiki (like
en.wikipedia.org), the software responds in one of two ways: a desktop page, or a redirect to a mobile version on an "m" domain (likeen.m.wikipedia.org). Over the next three weeks, MediaWiki will start displaying the mobile version to mobile devices directly on the standard domain, without this redirect. This change does not affect existing m-dot URLs, or the "Desktop view" opt-out. Learn more. - When an edit changes the categories of a page, the changes to the category membership counts are now happening asynchronously. This improves the speed of saving edits, especially when moving many pages to or from the same category, and reduces the risk of site outages, but it means that the counts can show outdated information for a few minutes.
- Edits on Wikidata to qualifiers (properties and values) and references (properties and values) in a Wikidata item statement will now not add entries to the RecentChanges or Watchlist pages on all other Wikis. This is a temporary change to improve performance while other solutions are created. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. Learn more.
- Japanese-language wikis have had a major upgrade to the way that search works. The new search should generally give more accurate and more relevant search results.
- View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- 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.
This Month in GLAM: August 2025
| ||||||
Cite Unseen September 2025 updates
Hello! Thank you for using Cite Unseen. We are excited to share details about a big update we just deployed. With grant support from Wikimedia CH, we've added several new features, including a citation filtering dashboard, settings dialog, support for localization, and the ability to easily suggest domain categorizations. Cite Unseen now also lives on Meta Wiki, as part of our effort to serve all Wikimedia projects. Our source lists are now also on Meta-Wiki, where they can be collaboratively edited by the community.
Please see our newsletter on Meta-Wiki for full details. If you have feature ideas, notice any issues with our new updates, or have any questions, please get in touch via our project talk page. Thank you!
This message was sent via global message delivery. You received this message as you've been identified as a user of Cite Unseen. If you are not a Cite Unseen user, or otherwise don't want to receive updates in the future, you can remove yourself from our mailing list here.
Tech News: 2025-38
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
- References lists that are made using the
<references/>tag will now automatically display with columns in Vector 2022 when readers are using its 'standard' settings for text-size and page-width. - Starting in the week of October 6, on small wikis and medium wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled, all autoconfirmed users will be able to use Event Registration as an organizer. No changes will be made for large wikis unless requested in Phabricator. This change is being made to make it easier for more people to use Event Registration, especially on wikis that are less likely to have policies related to the Event Organizer right. Learn more.
- Users that search using regular expressions (regex) can now use additional features including:
- for the
intitle:keyword: metacharacters for start-of-line (^) and end-of-line ($) anchors - for both
intitle:andinsource:keywords: shorthand character classes for digits (\d), whitespace (\s), and word characters (\w); and escape codes for line feed (\r), newline (\n), tab (\t), and unicode (e.g.\uHHHH).
- for the
- When you search for text that looks like an IP, the system will now show search results. It used to take you to the contributions for that IP instead of showing search results.
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 24. This is planned at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests which happen twice a year. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog.
- View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that affected users who used the page-tabs to switch from wikitext editing of a section into the visualeditor.
Updates for technical contributors
- The MediaWiki Interfaces team is redesigning the Wikimedia REST API Sandbox with Codex. If you have feedback on improvements for the API documentation or what makes developer experiences smooth (or frustrating), you’re invited to join an upcoming discovery interview, or leave feedback onwiki. Learn more.
- Edits to Wikidata aliases (an alternative name for an item or a property) will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. Learn more.
- The new Unicode 17.0 version has been released. The datasets on Commons for the Module:Unicode data have been updated. Wikipedias that do not use the Commons datasets should either update their own data or switch to the Commons datasets.
- Users of the Wikimedia Enterprise Structured Contents endpoints can now access Parsed Tables. The new Parsed Tables feature extracts and represents Wikipedia tables in structured JSON. This improves machine accessibility as part of the Structured Contents initiative. Structured Contents output is freely available through the On-demand API, or through Wikimedia Cloud Services.
- A dataset of English Wikipedia biographical information from Wikimedia Enterprise has been published on Kaggle, for evaluation and research. This provides structured data from more than 1.5 million biographies, including birth and death dates, education, affiliations, careers, awards, and more (from a June 2024 snapshot).
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2026 in Paris, France, are open until October 31.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 17
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on August 29. Please help translate.
Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues
- Wikimania 2026: The scholarship application for Wikimania 2026 is open. Apply now by October 31.
- Wikipedia 25: Help us find inspiring stories to share during birthday celebrations by September 23.
- Wikimedia Research Showcase: "Readers and Readership Research" will be the featured theme for the next research showcase taking place on September 24 at 16:30 UTC.
- Update to banner and logo policies: Feedback is requested on proposed policy and documentation updates regarding the use of banners and logos for advocacy purposes.
- GLAM Wiki 2025: The registration for GLAM Wiki Conference is open until September 30.
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
- Better bot detection: How we are improving bot detection and replacing our CAPTCHA.
- Temporary Accounts: Temporary accounts are now deployed to almost all wikis except the last 11.
- User Info: This new feature displays data related to a user account when you tap or click on the "user avatar" icon button next to a username. It's meant to be useful for different users with extended rights as well as newcomers.
- Newsletter highlights: The latest Readers Newsletter is now available. It includes considerations about Wikipedia's declining pageviews in the recent years, how the Foundation and communities may work on addressing this together, and the formation of two new teams — Reader Growth and Reader Experience.
- Activity Tab Experiment: The Foundation launched an experiment testing a new Activity tab in the Wikipedia Android app to our beta testers. Instead of only showing editing activity, this tab also surfaces insights about reading and donation behavior.
- Search Suggestions: To make it easier for users to find articles, logged-out users on both desktop and mobile will see suggestions of articles for further reading on English Wikipedia beginning the week of September 22. All non-English wikis received this update in June and July.
- Paste Check: The Foundation is working on a new check: Paste check. This check informs newcomers who paste text into Wikipedia that the content might not be accepted to ensure it is aligned with the Movement's values. This check will soon be tested at a few wikis.
- CampaignEvents extension: The CampaignEvents extension has been enabled for all Wikisources. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. To request the extension for your wiki, visit the information page.
- Structured Task: The Add a Link Structured Task has been fully released at English Wikipedia. This release is an important step in making editing more accessible for new contributors, especially on mobile.
- Tech News: Read more updates from Tech News week 36 and 37.
- Wikifunctions: Wikifunctions is now available on 65 Wiktionaries and has a new capability to copy function calls from one Wikipedia to another.
- Multilingual Contributors: The Language and Product Localisation team is launching a CentralNotice campaign to attract multilingual contributors to specific Wikipedias. The campaign will feature regionally targeted banners to reach potential native speakers.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · list of movement events
- Global Resources: Introducing the interim Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC).
- Funding the Movement: Key Takeaways, Trends, and Lessons from FY 2024-2025 Community Fund Grants.
- Open Indonesia: Reflections on Open Indonesia, an event in Bandung gathering communities dedicated to advancing open knowledge to build the country's Open Knowledge Roadmap.
- WikiWomen*: Reflections from the WikiWomen* Summit 2025.
- Gender & AI: Is Gendering AI Possible? Reflections from the 2025 Gendering AI Conference.
- Wikipedia 25: What one centenarian can teach us about 25 years of Wikipedia.
- Knowledge Equity Fund: Wikimedia Ghana User Group receives Knowledge Equity Fund Connected Grant.
- Wikimania 2025: ESEAP First Timers at Wikimania Nairobi.
- César do Paço Lawsuit: Update about a lawsuit in Portugal and the Foundation's appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
- UK Online Safety Act: The Wikimedia Foundation will not appeal the UK High Court’s decision to dismiss our challenge to the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) Categorisation Regulations.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- August board meeting: Updates on board appointments and selection, CEO search, work to strengthen Wikipedia's approach to neutral point of view and updates on three pilots around more shared decision-making and shared accountability across the movement.
- New Endowment board members: Welcoming New Wikimedia Endowment Board Members, Kevin Bonebrake and Ike Kier.
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!
Books & Bytes – Issue 70
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 70, July–August 2025
Issue 70, July–August 2025
- New collections:
- Times of Malta
- Africa Intelligence
- Intelligence Online
- La Lettre
- Glitz
- Spotlight: Wikimania
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 13:15, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
(This message was sent to User:Ocaasi and is being posted here due to a redirect.)
Books & Bytes – Issue 70
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 70, July–August 2025
Issue 70, July–August 2025
- New collections:
- Times of Malta
- Africa Intelligence
- Intelligence Online
- La Lettre
- Glitz
- Spotlight: Wikimania
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 13:16, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
(This message was sent to User:Ocaasi and is being posted here due to a redirect.)
Tech News: 2025-39
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
- On September 24th at 15:00 UTC, all Wikimedia sites users will experience a brief read-only period due to a scheduled datacenter server switchover. The Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team will redirect all traffic from one primary server to its backup. You can listen to the switchover using the "Listen to Wikipedia" tool, where you will hear edits stop for a few minutes during the read-only phase, then resume. This twice-yearly datacenter server switchover ensures reliability by testing the backup datacenter, so that our sites can stay online even if the primary datacenter fails. You can read more about the process on the Diff blog.
Updates for editors
- Editors of 60 more Wiktionaries will soon be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them into their pages. A function takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, like adding numbers, converting miles to meters, calculating elapsed time, or declining a word into a case. They will join the other 65 Wiktionary language editions, which already have access to embedded Wikifunctions calls. Later this year, plans are in place to expand to more Wiktionaries and the Incubator.
- A new parser function has been added:
{{#contentmodel}}. Template editors and admins can use it to get the localized or canonical name of the content model of a specific page. The function makes it easier to create and edit system messages, such as MediaWiki:editinginterface, even when you switch types of pages, like wiki, JavaScript, CSS or JSON page. - Adding or editing a
DISPLAYTITLEfor an article using VisualEditor will no longer be broken. Editors who use VisualEditor mode to modify the{{DISPLAYTITLE}}would no longer have the literal text "DISPLAYTITLE" or its localized variant added to their articles. A list of pages that may have been affected and might need cleanup is documented in this ticket. - Beta users of the Wikipedia Android app can now try the redesigned Activity tab, which replaces the Edits tab. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.
- View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- Wikifunctions users can now import many essential facts involving geo-coordinates, quantities and time values from Wikidata. This is made possible by the creation of Wikifunctions types for these values, which makes them available for use by functions in Wikifunctions. Learn more about how this works in this video and Wikifunctions' August 1 newsletter (for quantities) and August 22 newsletter (for geo-coordinates).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Tech News: 2025-40
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
- A major software upgrade has been made to Phabricator. The update introduces performance improvements, a refreshed search interface, enhancements to Maniphest task search, updates to user profile pages and project workboards, new Herald automation features, as well as general text input, mobile experience improvements and more.
Updates for editors
- The Community Tech team will release the new Community Wishlist extension on October 1, that will improve the way wishes will be submitted. The new extension will allow users to add tags to their wishes to better categorise them, and (in a future iteration) to filter them by status, tags and focus areas. It will also be possible to support individual wishes again, as requested by the community in many instances. The old system will be retired. There will be a brief period of downtime while the extension is deployed and wishes are migrated to the new system. You can read more about this in the latest update or you can consult the current documentation on MediaWiki.
- As announced on Diff blog, the production trial of the hCaptcha service for bot detection has begun. The trial is currently using hCaptcha to protect account creation on Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Turkish Wikipedias, where it will replace our existing CAPTCHA (FancyCaptcha). The goal with the trial is to better block bots while also improving usability and accessibility for users who encounter CAPTCHA challenges.
- The CampaignEvents extension has been deployed to Wikimedia Commons. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. On Commons, anyone who is a registered user can use it as an event participant. To use it as an organizer, someone needs to have the event organizer right.
- Sub-referencing, a new feature to re-use references with different details has been released to German Wikipedia. You can test the feature on testwiki or on betawiki as well. Please share your thoughts on using templates in sub-references or volunteer to become a pilot wiki.
- On wikis using the Mentorship system, communities can now opt experienced editors out of Mentorship through Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship. Within this setting, communities may define thresholds, based on edit count and account age, to decide when an editor is considered experienced enough to no longer receive Mentorship.
- The Editing Team and the Machine Learning Team are working on a new check for newcomers: Tone check. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits, using artificial intelligence. We invite volunteers to review the first version of the Tone language model for the following languages: Arabic, Czech, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Farsi, Italian, Norwegian, Romanian and Latvian. Users from these wikis interested in reviewing this model are invited to sign up at MediaWiki.org. The deadline to sign up is on October 3, which will be the start date of the test.
- The rollout of multiblocks had the side effect that non-active block logs may have been shown on Special:Contributions and on blocked users' user and user_talk pages. This issue will be fully resolved in a few days. As part of the fix, messages prefixed with
sp-contributions-blocked-noticewill be removed and replaced with those prefixed withblocked-notice-logextractin a few weeks. Please help translate the new messages and update any local overrides if needed. - There was a bug with links added using visual editor if they included characters such as
[ ] |after the fragment identifier (#). They were not encoded properly creating an incorrect link. This has been fixed. - One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote in Malay (
q:ms:) - View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the User Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks.
Updates for technical contributors
- Later this week, editors using Lua modules will be able to use the
mw.title.newBatchfunction to look up the existence of up to 25 pages at once, in a way that only increases the expensive function count once. - A new Unsupported Tools Working Group has been formed as part of ongoing efforts to collectively determine technical work priorities, similar to the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). The working group will help prioritize and review requests for support of unmaintained extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. For the first cycle, the group will be prioritizing an unsupported Wikimedia Commons tool.
- 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.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 18
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on September 13. Please help translate.
Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues
- CEE Meeting: Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2025 will be held in Thessaloniki, Greece, September 26-28.
- Learning Clinic: The next Let's Connect Learning Clinic will talk about "Mastering the Capacity Exchange (CapX) Tool" and will take place on September 30 at 13:00 UTC.
- Big Fat Brussels Meeting: The tenth in-person gathering of Wikimedians enthusiastic in free knowledge advocacy, Big Fat Brussels Meeting, will take place on October 3-4.
- Wikimedia Research Showcase: "Celebrating 13 Years: Wikidata’s Role in Learning and Culture" will be the featured theme for the next research showcase taking place on October 15 at 16:30 UTC.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Tech News: Read updates from Tech News week 38 and 39.
- Wikifunctions: Wikifunctions is now available on 123 Wiktionary languages and have more than 3,000 functions available.
- Collaborative Contributions: A new feature, called Collaborative Contributions, allows editors to see the impact of their collaborative editing activities. It was live demoed earlier and you can follow instructions to test it out.
- CampaignEvents extension: The CampaignEvents extension was deployed to Wikimedia Commons and all Wikisources -80+ wikis.
- Event registration: Starting the week of October 6, on small and medium wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled, all autoconfirmed users will be able to use Event Registration as an organizer. No changes will be made for large wikis unless requested in Phabricator. More information on Meta.
- Search Suggestions: Upon clicking an empty search bar, logged-out users now see suggestions of articles for further reading on all Wikipedias, in order to make it easier for users to find articles.
- Datacenter server switchover: A successful datacenter server switchover backup test took place on September 24.
- Activity Tab now on Android: Beta users of the Wikipedia Android app can now try the redesigned Activity tab, which replaces the Edits tab. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · list of movement events
- Banners & Logos policies: The Wikimedia Foundation has published draft proposals for policies related to the use of banners and logo changes for advocacy purposes.
- Wikipedia 25: Wikimedia Foundation is creating playful, celebratory interventions on the Wikipedia portal page, the Wikipedia app, and potentially any interested Wikipedias to celebrate Wikipedia’s 25th birthday. Please share your inputs and add your username on the Talk page if you think your community would be interested in participating.
- Regional Funds: Welcoming new ESEAP Regional Funds Committee Members.
- Peer Learning: Reflections from Let’s Connect at Wikimania Nairobi 2025.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Wikimedia Georgia: Wikimedia Georgia becomes the newest Wikimedia Chapter.
Foundation statements
- Knowledge integrity: The Wikimedia Foundation launches a new series that explores how Wikipedia can inspire new standards of knowledge integrity for our times.
Highlights from 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
- National award: Wikipedian and current chair of Wikimedia Deutschland, Alice Wiegand, receives the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her voluntary commitment to Wikipedia and the global Wikimedia movement.
- Supporting admins and patrollers: Motivating, training and networking – Wikimedia Ukraine’s plan to support Wikipedia admins and patrollers.
- Wikimania roundup: A roundup of Wikimania and this year's Wikimedians of the year by the French-speaking community's newsletter, Regards sur l’actualité du mouvement Wikimédia (Views on Wikimedia movement's events, or RAW).
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!
The Signpost: 2 October 2025
- News and notes: Larry Sanger returns with "Nine Theses on Wikipedia"; WMF publishes transparency report
This time "not merely negative".
- In the media: Extraordinary eruption of "EVIL" explained
Wickedpedia wrangles post-truth politics.
- Disinformation report: Emails from a paid editing client
Unexpected news!
- Discussion report: Sourcing, conduct, policy and LLMs: another 1,339 threads analyzed
Fifty hot topics from fourteen noticeboards.
- Community view: The pressing questions of the modern WWW, as seen from the Village Pump
Policy, politics, icons, captchas, and LLMs.
- Recent research: Is Wikipedia a merchant of (non-)doubt for glyphosate?; eight projects awarded Wikimedia Research Fund grants
And other recent publications.
- Opinion: Some disputes aren't worth it
When to walk away.
- Obituary: Michael Q. Schmidt
Rest in peace.
- Traffic report: Death, hear me call your name
Celebrities, deaths and software.
- Comix: A grand spectacle
All invited!
Wikipedia library
I wasn't exactly sure who to contact regarding my issue. If not just let me know who to contact.
When I log into Wikipedia library it says I haven't made 10 edits in the last month. I know that isn't correct. So I'm not sure what the problem is.
Let me know if there is anything I can do. Thanks!--Kansas Bear (talk) 00:16, 29 September 2025 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9 (WMF), This seems like a bug (or misunderstanding). Also, feel free to point to a better place to report. Cheers! Ocaasi t | c 16:00, 29 September 2025 (UTC)
- @Kansas Bear This is a known, temporary, issue (T404708) which should now be resolved. You may need to log out/in to fix it - please let me know if that doesn't work! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 12:00, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
- Everything appears to be back to normal. My sincerest thanks to both you and Ocaasi! --Kansas Bear (talk) 12:33, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
- @Kansas Bear This is a known, temporary, issue (T404708) which should now be resolved. You may need to log out/in to fix it - please let me know if that doesn't work! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 12:00, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-41
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
- Paste Check is a new Edit Check feature to help avoid and fight copyright violations. When editors paste text into an article, Paste Check prompts them to confirm the origin and licensing of the content. Starting Wednesday, 8 October, 22 wikis will test Paste Check. Paste Check will help new volunteers understand and follow the policies and guidelines necessary to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia projects.
Updates for editors
- Mobile devices will receive mobile articles directly on the standard domain (like
en.wikipedia.org), instead of via a redirect to an "m" domain (likeen.m.wikipedia.org). This change improves performance. This week it will be enabled on Wikipedias. The existing mobile URLs and the "Desktop view" opt-out remain available. Learn more. - New date filters,
creationdate:andlasteditdate:, are now available in the wiki search engine. This allows users to filter search results by a page's first or last revision date. The filters support comparison operators (e.g.>2024) and relative dates (e.g.today-1d), making it easier to find recently updated content or pages within specific age ranges. - Wikifunctions now supports rich text in embedded calls across the 150 wikis where it's enabled. To showcase this, the team created a Latin declination table that Wiktionary editors can use to automatically generate noun forms, producing clear, formatted results — see an example output. If you need any help or have any feedback, please contact the Wikifunctions Team.
- An edit link will now appear inside the categories box on article pages for logged in users, which will directly launch the VisualEditor category dialog.
- View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a problem downloading pdf files last week and that has been resolved.
Updates for technical contributors
- The field
rev_sha1in the revision database table is being removed in favor ofcontent_sha1in the content database table. See the announcement for more information. - The Reader Experience team will roll out Dark Mode user interface on all Wikimedia sites on October 29, 2025. All anonymous users of Wikimedia sites will have the option to activate a color scheme that features light-colored text on a dark background. This is designed to provide a more comfortable reading experience, especially in low-light situations. Template authors and technical contributors are encouraged to learn how to make pages ready for Dark mode and address any compatibility issues found in templates in their wiki before the enablement. Please contact the Web team for questions or any support on this talk page before the enablement.
- Starting on Monday, October 6, API endpoints under the
rest.phppath will be rerouted through a new internal 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. - 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.
Administrators' newsletter – October 2025
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2025).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Arbitration
- After a motion, arbitration enforcement page protections no longer need to be logged in the AELOG. A bot now automatically posts protections at WP:AELOG/P. To facilitate this bot, protection summaries must include a link to the relevant CT page (e.g.
[[WP:CT/BLP]]), and you will receive talk page reminders if you forget to specify the contentious topic but otherwise indicate it is an AE action.
This Month in GLAM: September 2025
| ||||||
Tech News: 2025-42
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
- Last week, improvements to account security and two-factor authentication (2FA) features were enabled across all wikis. These changes include user interface improvements for Special:AccountSecurity, the support of multiple 2FA methods via authenticator apps and portable security keys (previously users could only enable one method), and a new Recovery Codes module which facilitates fewer account lockouts due to lost two-factor apps and devices. As part of the Account Security project, work is continuing through the rest of 2025 on further user experience improvements, and support for passkeys as an alternate second factor.
Updates for editors
- Another part of the Account security project is making 2FA generally available to all users. Along with editors with advanced privileges, such as administrators and bureaucrats, 40% of editors now have access to 2FA. You can check if you have access at Special:AccountSecurity. Instructions for activation are on the linked page. The plan is to continue increasing availability if it is determined that the user support capabilities are able to support global usage.
- This week, users at wikis where talk page Usability Improvements are already available by default (everywhere except the 12 wikis listed in T379264) will gain the ability to Thank a comment directly from the talk page it appears on. Before this change, Thanking could only be done by visiting the revision history of the talk page. You can learn more about this change.
- Users who have not verified their email address will soon be receiving monthly Notification reminders to do so. This is because users who have verified their email can more easily recover their account. These reminders will not be sent if the user is inactive or removes the unverified email from their account.
- View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a fix was made for an occasional error with saving translated paragraphs in the Content Translation tool, and the related error messages are now easier to see.
Updates for technical contributors
- The Unsupported Tools Working Group has chosen Video2Commons as the first tool for its pilot cycle. The group will explore ways to improve and sustain the tool over the coming months. Learn more on Meta.
- 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.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 19
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on September 26. Please help translate.
Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues
- Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Selection: Announcement of the final ballot for the 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election and more answers about the decision. Eligible voters can vote between October 8 – October 23.
- Wikipedia 25: Are you planning to organize events to celebrate Wikipedia's 25th birthday? The Wikimedia Foundation offers grants to support active Wikimedia groups in organizing short-term, low-cost projects to celebrate this milestone. Applications are open until November 1.
- WikiConference North America 2025: WikiConference North America will take place from October 16–19 in New York City, USA.
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
- Mobile Editing: Insights on mobile web editing on Wikipedia in 2025 are now available. This report highlights that ~95% of IP mobile users editing via wikitext open the editor but make no changes at all, a vast untapped potential. It also pinpoints where contributors most often drop off.
- Dark Mode: Dark Mode user interface will be rolled out on all Wikimedia sites on October 29. All anonymous users of Wikimedia sites will have the option to activate a color scheme that features light-colored text on a dark background. This is designed to provide a more comfortable reading experience, especially in low-light situations.
- Community wishlist extension: The new Community Wishlist extension has been released. This will allow users to add tags to their wishes to better categorise them, and (in a future iteration) to filter them by status, tags and focus areas. It will also be possible to support individual wishes again, as requested by the community in many instances.
- Paste Check: 22 Wikis are now testing a new Edit Check feature, Paste Check, to help avoid and fight copyright violations. When editors paste text into an article, Paste Check prompts them to confirm the origin and licensing of the content.
- Tone Check: The Wikimedia Foundation is working on a new check for newcomers: Tone check. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits.
- Search Suggestions: Search Suggestions was deployed on English Wikipedia. Upon clicking an empty search bar, logged-out users see suggestions of articles for further reading. The feature is available on both desktop and mobile.
- Unsupported Tools Working Group: A new Unsupported Tools Working Group has been formed to help prioritize and review requests for support of unmaintained extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. The group has chosen Video2Commons as the first tool for its pilot cycle. The group will explore ways to improve and sustain the tool over the coming months.
- Tech News: Read updates from Tech News week 40 and 41 including about Sub-referencing – a new feature to re-use references with different details.
- Wikimedia Research Showcase: Don't miss the next Wikimedia Research Showcase, "Celebrating 13 Years: Wikidata's Role in Learning and Culture" taking place on October 15 at 16:30 UTC.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · list of movement events
- Wikimania: Wikimania Nairobi has been featured in more than 100 stories across community platforms and international media outlets.
- Wikifunctions: Rich text is now available for embedded Wikifunctions calls across the 150 wikis where it’s enabled.
- WikiLearn: New Wikipedia online courses you can join to strengthen your Wikimedia editing skills.
- Human Rights: Making sure AI serves people and knowledge stays human: Wikimedia Foundation publishes a Human Rights Impact Assessment on the interaction of AI and machine learning with Wikimedia projects.
- Don't blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
- Digital Safety & Privacy: Frequently Asked Questions about Wikimedia Foundation's Legal Work.
- Transparency Report: Wikimedia Foundation publishes its Latest Transparency Report.
- Privacy Policy: The Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy is getting a minor update in preparation for Temporary Accounts.
- Learning Clinic: Join the next Let's Connect Learning Clinic on the topic of "Mastering the Capacity Exchange (CapX) Tool (Part 2)" taking place on October 20 at 17:00 UTC.
Foundation statements
- Knowledge integrity: Lessons from Wikipedia on the 3 building blocks of trustworthy information. This is part of the new series from the Wikimedia Foundation that explores how Wikipedia can inspire new standards of knowledge integrity for our times.
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!
Tech News: 2025-43
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
- To optimize how user data is stored in our databases, the saved preferences of users who haven't logged in for over five years and have fewer than 100 edits will be cleared. When those users return, default settings will apply.
View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a broken link from the GlobalContributions interface message to the XTools GlobalContributions page which has now been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
- The work to reroute all traffic to API endpoints under the
rest.phproute through a common API gateway is now complete. If any issues are observed, please file a phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board. - Edits to Wikidata references or qualifiers will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged.
- 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.
The Signpost: 20 October 2025
- News and notes: Board shuffles, LLM blocks increase, IPs are going away
And the "Global Resource Distribution Committee" emerges.
- Special report: The election that isn't
Two shortlisted WMF Board candidates removed from the ballot.
- Interview: The BoT bump
Who was bumped and why?
- In the media: An incident at WikiConference North America; WMF reports AI-related traffic drop and explains Wikipedia to US conservatives
...while Musk prepares to launch "Grokipedia".
- Traffic report: One click after another
Serial-killer miniseries, deceased scientist, government shutdowns and Sandalwood hit "Kantara" crowd the tubes.
- Humour: Wikipedia pay rates
Don't get too excited before you read this.
New message from Tamzin
Message added 05:49, 23 October 2025 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Feel free to ignore this; I just realize that you haven't edited for a few weeks and so might not see a ping. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 05:49, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
- Saw it. Thank you for asking! Ocaasi t | c 05:57, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for your response! And per your request I'll extend no "sympathy or concern", but please know I'm wishing you all the best. For me, in the situation I was in years ago, it was months of playing things back through, thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong... I'd handled the situation just about perfectly, but I kept thinking about things like "What if he'd been farther away and I'd had to choose immediately between rushing him and talking him down?", "What if he'd just drawn rather than threatening to draw", etc. In the long run it's probably one of the traumas I see as most formative: I learned some important things about how I respond to an imminent threat, and it put a lot of other things in my life in perspective. But it took years to fully get to that frame of mind.More generally, I just want to say, your essay that ran in the Signpost in 2016, which @Legoktm showed me a few years ago, was really impactful to me, and steered the development of both User:Tamzin/On mental health and "On the backrooms". I've been thinking about it a lot the past week or two, even before your name popped up regarding WCNA, because I recently hit the point—13 years removed from when I first spiraled out, 5 years removed from my low, 2 years removed from when I first felt kind of okay—where I just realized, wow, mental illness isn't a significant hindrance to my quality of life any more. Not cured, but solidly Better™. And as I process that, I realize I've read very few descriptions of recovering from long-term depression. Not because it's that rare, I don't think, but maybe because most people don't want to look back and don't want to be vulnerable to the world about a past version of themself very different than the version they now put forward. But writing about that is so important, for everyone else dealing with how
there's ... no one time when sanity returns, if there is such a defined state. But suffice to say that it builds upon moments
. I'm really grateful that you did that. To pay that forward, I recently drafted some thoughts of my own about the lows and highs of a gradual recovery, which I'll probably post somewhere once I've had a bit more time to adjust to the strange new reality of life generally not being difficult. Even as someone who's been pretty open about their condition(s), it's a little scary to think of talking openly about some things I've been through. But the lesson I learned from what you wrote is that it's important to show how low the lows can be so people have context for why "I'm okay now" is such a big deal. So, again, thank you for that. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 06:57, 23 October 2025 (UTC)- Hugs. Love. Congratulations on your recovery. May it continue solidly! Ocaasi t | c 08:33, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for your response! And per your request I'll extend no "sympathy or concern", but please know I'm wishing you all the best. For me, in the situation I was in years ago, it was months of playing things back through, thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong... I'd handled the situation just about perfectly, but I kept thinking about things like "What if he'd been farther away and I'd had to choose immediately between rushing him and talking him down?", "What if he'd just drawn rather than threatening to draw", etc. In the long run it's probably one of the traumas I see as most formative: I learned some important things about how I respond to an imminent threat, and it put a lot of other things in my life in perspective. But it took years to fully get to that frame of mind.More generally, I just want to say, your essay that ran in the Signpost in 2016, which @Legoktm showed me a few years ago, was really impactful to me, and steered the development of both User:Tamzin/On mental health and "On the backrooms". I've been thinking about it a lot the past week or two, even before your name popped up regarding WCNA, because I recently hit the point—13 years removed from when I first spiraled out, 5 years removed from my low, 2 years removed from when I first felt kind of okay—where I just realized, wow, mental illness isn't a significant hindrance to my quality of life any more. Not cured, but solidly Better™. And as I process that, I realize I've read very few descriptions of recovering from long-term depression. Not because it's that rare, I don't think, but maybe because most people don't want to look back and don't want to be vulnerable to the world about a past version of themself very different than the version they now put forward. But writing about that is so important, for everyone else dealing with how
A barnstar for you!
 |
The Original Barnstar |
| Thank you Jake for keeping a cool and calm head during the events at WCNA. I'm grateful for your empathy and kindness where I would surely be lacking. Ckoerner (talk) 20:37, 22 October 2025 (UTC) |
- Hey Ocaasi. We didn't get to catch up this time, but just a note that I appreciate you 'round these parts. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:29, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
Have another barnstar
 |
The Good Heart Barnstar | |
| Not everybody is easy to love. To paraphrase a Judean preacher, it is ordinary to love those who love you, but supernatural to love your enemies and to will the good of those who have only caused you distress. For your act of extraordinary compassion, you've earned this barnstar. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 16:21, 23 October 2025 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
 |
The Real Life Barnstar |
| Your actions during the crisis at WCNA took just as much courage as those of Pharos and Fuzheado, and were just as important. Thank you, Jake, for your heroism. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:27, 23 October 2025 (UTC) |
Tech News: 2025-44
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 Wikipedia iOS app has launched an A/B/C test of improvements made to the tabbed browsing feature for select regions and languages. The test, named “More dynamic tabs”, explores new tab experiences and includes “Did you know” and “Because you read” article recommendations. You can read more on the project page.
- 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.
- View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue of flashing colors when holding or pressing the arrow keys under the dark mode settings in Vector 2022 has been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
- The CampaignEvents extension will be deployed to all remaining wikis during the week of 17 November 2025. The extension currently includes three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. For this rollout, Invitation List will not be enabled on Wikifunctions and MediaWiki unless requested by those communities. Visit the deployment page to learn more.
- The SwaggerUI-based REST sandbox experience is now live on all wiki projects. The sandbox can be accessed through the Special:RestSandbox page. Please report any issues to the MediaWiki Interfaces team board, or join the discussion on the project launch page.
- Transform endpoints with a trailing slash path in the MediaWiki REST API are now marked as deprecated. They will remain functional during this time, but removal is expected by the end of January 2026. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found and tested using the REST Sandbox. See the MediaWiki REST API Deprecation page for more detailed information about the API deprecation policies and procedures.
- A dedicated changelog now exists for the MediaWiki REST API. The changelog provides an overview of these changes, making it easier for developers to keep track of improvements and iterations. Announcements will also continue to flow through the standard communication channels, including Tech News and email distribution lists, but can now be more easily referenced from a central location. If you have feedback about the style, structure, or content of this changelog, please join the discussion.
- Administrators can delete the tracking category which was previously added by the JsonConfig extension, as it is no longer used. See the categories linked from Q130635582. It is OK if there are still pages listed in the category as that is just a caching issue, and they will be automatically cleared out the next time each page is edited.
- 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.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 20
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on October 11. Please help translate.
Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues
- Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection: Additional perspectives on current and future board selection processes.
- Global trends: We are seeing 8% declines in human page views on Wikipedia as some users don't directly visit Wikipedia to get information. Learn about this new user trend, how the Wikimedia Foundation anticipate these changes, and how you can help.
- WECUDI 2025: The second conference of Wikimedia, Education, and Digital Cultures will be held from October 29–31 in Mexico City, Mexico.
- GLAM Conference: Wiki GLAM Culture and Heritage Conference (WGCHC) will take place on 30 October – 1 November in Lisbon, Portugal.
- WikidataCon 2025: WikidataCon 2025 will take place online from October 31 – November 2.
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
- Making it easier to say thanks: Users on most wikis will now have the ability to thank a comment directly from the talk page it appears on. Before this change, thanking could only be done by visiting the revision history of the talk page.
- Account security: Improvements to account security and two-factor authentication (2FA) features were enabled across all wikis. Another part of the project is making 2FA generally available to all users. Along with editors with advanced privileges, such as administrators and bureaucrats, 40% of editors now have access to 2FA. You can check if you have access at Special:AccountSecurity.
- Abstract Wikipedia: The naming contest for the new Wikimedia project, known until now as Abstract Wikipedia, is ongoing. Voting is now open until November 3.
- Tech News: Read updates from Tech News week 42 and 43 including the community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Wikimedia apps: The Wikipedia iOS App launched an A/B/C test of improvements to the Tabbed browsing feature into Beta for select regions & languages. Called “More dynamic tabs”, the experiment adds user-requested improvements and introduces article recommendations within the tabs overview, showing “Did you know” or “Because you read” content depending on how many tabs are open.
- CampaignEvents extension: Campaignevents extension will be deployed to all remaining wikis during the week of 17 November 2025. The extension currently includes three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. For this rollout, Invitation List will not be enabled on Wikifunctions and MediaWiki unless requested by those communities.
- Event registration tool: Autoconfirmed users on small and medium wikis with the 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.
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: Explore how you can help make Wikimedia safer by taking our new self-paced course, Safety for Young Wikimedians.
- Wikimedia Core Curriculum: The Wikimedia Foundation has developed seven online video learning modules covering the core English Wikipedia policies. You are invited to use, adapt, and translate the course.
- Advocacy: The Wikimedia Foundation has signed onto a statement that calls on governments and UN bodies to keep discussions about the future of internet governance accessible to non-government actors like industry and civil society. This statement is part of ongoing joint advocacy with affiliates to influence UN discussions about the future of internet governance such as the Global Digital Compact campaign and WSIS+20 deliberations.
- GLAM: The Wikimedia Foundation and several affiliates have signed onto the Open Heritage Statement, which supports galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM institutions) to have the legal rights they need to collect, preserve, and provide access to cultural heritage.
Foundation statements
- How Wikipedia works: Wikimedia Foundation responds to questions about how Wikipedia works.
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!
Guide to temporary accounts
Hello, Ocaasi. This message is being sent to remind you of significant upcoming changes regarding logged-out editing.
Starting 4 November, logged-out editors will no longer have their IP address publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account (TA) associated with their edits. Users with some extended rights like administrators and CheckUsers, as well as users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will still be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range.
How do temporary accounts work?
- When a logged-out user completes an edit or a logged action for the first time, a cookie will be set in this user's browser and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created for them. This account's name will follow the pattern:
~2025-12345-67(a tilde, year of creation, a number split into units of 5). - All subsequent actions by the temporary account user will be attributed to this username. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser.
- A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will be able to see the underlying IP addresses.
- As a measure against vandalism, there are two limitations on the creation of temporary accounts:
- There has to be a minimum of 10 minutes between subsequent temporary account creations from the same IP (or /64 range in case of IPv6).
- There can be a maximum of 6 temporary accounts created from an IP (or /64 range) within a period of 24 hours.
Temporary account IP viewer user right
- Administrators may grant the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right to non-administrators who meet the criteria for granting. Importantly, an editor must make an explicit request for the permission (e.g. at WP:PERM/TAIV)—administrators are not permitted to assign the right without a request.
- Administrators will automatically be able to see temporary account IP information once they have accepted the Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy via Special:Preferences or via the onboarding dialog which comes up after temporary accounts are deployed.
Impact for administrators
- It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
- It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
- Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this (see a video about IPContributions in a gallery below).
Rules about IP information disclosure
- Publicizing an IP address gained through TAIV access is generally not allowed (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 previously edited as 192.0.2.1 or ~2025-12345-67's IP address is 192.0.2.1).
- Publicly linking a TA to another TA is allowed if "reasonably believed to be necessary". (e.g.
~2025-12345-67 and ~2025-12345-68 are likely the same person, so I am counting their reverts together toward 3RR
, but not Hey ~2025-12345-68, you did some good editing as ~2025-12345-67) - See Wikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer § What can and can't be said for more detailed guidelines.
Useful tools for patrollers
- It is possible to view if a user has opted-in to view temporary account IPs via the User Info card, available in Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options →
Enable the user info card
- This feature also makes it possible for anyone to see the approximate count of temporary accounts active on the same IP address range.
- Special:IPContributions allows viewing all edits and temporary accounts connected to a specific IP address or IP range.
- Similarly, Special:GlobalContributions supports global search for a given temporary account's activity.
- The auto-reveal feature (see video below) allows users with the right permissions to automatically reveal all IP addresses for a limited time window.
Videos
- How to use Special:IPContributions
- How automatic IP reveal works
- How to use IP Info
- How to use User Info
Further information and discussion
- For more information and discussion regarding this change, please see the announcement from the Wikimedia Foundation at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) § Temporary accounts rollout.
Most of this message was written by Mz7 (source). Thanks, 🎃 SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:47, 31 October 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 HTMLclass="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.
Administrators' newsletter – November 2025
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2025).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
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!
This Month in GLAM: October 2025
| ||||||
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!
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
.jpg)
- 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>tomw:<identity type>:<user id>, where<identity type>is typicallyCentralAuth:(for SUL wikis) orlocal:<wiki id>(for other wikis). This is to avoid conflicts between different user ID types, and to make OAuth 2 access tokens and thesessionJwtcookie 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
$9or emailing other users$10. - A
REL1_45branch 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.
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
.jpg)
- 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
- 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!
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.
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.
If you wish to participate in the 2025 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:32, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 71
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 71, September–October 2025
Issue 71, September–October 2025
- Spotlight: 1Lib1Ref 2025 in Nigeria
- Frankfurt Book Fair
- Tech tip: Wikipedia Library access template
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 15:21, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
(This message was sent to User:Ocaasi and is being posted here due to a redirect.)