Rusty Cat
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New Page Patrol Newsletter - May 2026
editHello Rusty Cat,
Backlog update
At the time of this message, there are 15,282 articles and 32,951 redirects awaiting review.
After the January–February drive the article backlog was reduced to 15,179 articles and the redirect backlog to 19,053 respectively. Great job! However, both queues are growing rapidly and any additional reviews are highly appreciated.
2024 and 2025 NPP Awards
Hey man im josh and MPGuy2824 won the Redirect Ninja Master Award for 2024 and 2025 respectively, for reviewing the most redirects.
Overall in 2024, one Platinum, two Gold, eight Silver, 12 Bronze and 45 Iron Barnstars were awarded. Additionally, 66 reviewers got the NPP barnstar for doing more than 100 reviews through the year. In 2025, one Platinum, ten Silver, 13 Bronze and 38 Iron Barnstars were awarded. Additionally, 38 reviewers got the NPP barnstar for doing more than 100 reviews through the year.
BoyTheKingCanDance, Rosiestep, SunDawn, and Vanderwaalforces were inducted into the NPP Hall of Fame for having two separate years of 2,000+ article reviews.
January–February backlog drive
The experimental two-month long backlog drive concluded with 183 reviewers patrolling over 27,761 articles and 35,309 redirects, earning over 36,836 points. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 6,484.6 points in this drive.
May backlog drive
An article-only backlog drive is currently underway. We are hoping to make a big dent in the backlog. You can read more about it or join at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Backlog drives/May 2026.
PageTriage
An attempt was made to get the New Pages Feed to sort by date marked as reviewed instead of date created. However we had to revert it due to bugs. We may try again in the future. You can subscribe to the Phabricator ticket if you're interested in following along.
Reminders:
- You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
- Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Tech News: 2026-21
editLatest 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 Abstract Wikipedia team has identified five potential pilot wikis to assess their interest in adopting abstract articles on their wikis. The pilots are Malayalam, Bengali, Dagbani, Arabic, and Indonesian Wikipedia. The feedback period will be open until May 22. If your community is interested in becoming a pilot, let us know on Meta.
Updates for editors
- An experiment to show Reading Lists to logged-out readers on mobile web will launch on May 18 across German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu Wikipedias, and will run for one month. The effort supports broader goals of helping readers save and organize articles for later reading, while encouraging habits that could lead to future Wikipedia contributions.
- To support a bookmark button in the Reading List beta feature, the "Tools > Action" menu has been updated to display icons, including the watch star indicator that helps editors identify temporarily watched articles. The icons now also match those used on mobile, improving consistency across platforms. The change is currently limited to the actions menu and mainly affects editors with privileged user rights.
- Suggestion Mode was released as an A/B test for newcomer editors on the mobile website at ~15 Wikipedias. The experiment will measure the impact that Suggestion Mode has on the proportion of newcomer mobile web edit sessions that result in constructive (un-reverted) article edits. The experiment will also evaluate the feature's impact on editor retention, and monitor changes in revert and block rates.
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue in the Wikipedia Android app where images could sometimes fail to load after opening a recommended reading list notification, has now been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
- The Wikidata Platform team has published its backend replacement recommendation and accompanying technical architecture for the migration of the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) away from Blazegraph. Feedback is invited until May 25th 2026, especially on potential gaps and impacts on advanced use cases. Wikidata community members and WDQS users are also encouraged to help identify high-impact tools and workflows that may need attention on this page. Feedback can be shared on the Migration talk page or during the next office hour. See the WDP team newsletter for more details.
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- On English, French, Japanese, and a few other Wikipedias, there was a trial of hCaptcha, a third-party bot detection service. The trial showed that hCaptcha effectively detects and deters some bad-faith automated activity, on its own and by giving checkusers and stewards signals to look into. Because the results were positive, hCaptcha will be rolled out across all wikis over the next few weeks. See the hCaptcha project page for technical information about the implementation and privacy protections. Learn more.
- The latest Community Tech update is now available, with progress across several Community Wishlist initiatives, including Reading Lists expansion from the mobile app to the website, new language support for "Who Wrote That" and the Personal Dashboard, improvements to 3D rendering and Charts, and upcoming work on talk page sorting, audio playback, and editing workflows. The update also shares current priorities, wishlist status trends, and opportunities for community feedback on future focus areas and the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2026–2027 Annual Plan. Read the full newsletter for details.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Hello, I wrote a draft about the botanical garden of Thutmose III. Could you please take a look at my sandbox I am waiting for your feedback Thanks. A123a1 (talk) 00:53, 21 May 2026 (UTC)
- @A123a1: In general, I prefer for other editors to review drafts. By the way, are you aware of the already-existing article Botanical garden of Thutmosis III? Do you plant to add the content of your draft directly into the article Thutmose III, or into Botanical garden of Thutmosis III? ~ rusty meow ~ 23:18, 24 May 2026 (UTC)
- Hello, I appreciate your reply and the feedback. I prefer to add it to Thutmose III article. Is this suitable for it? If it has no issues, I will keep going.
- Thanks
- A123a1 (talk) 15:38, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
- @A123a1:
- Since the article Botanical garden of Thutmosis III already exists, I'm thinking you should add it there instead of the Thutmose III article. A section can be created in the Thutmose III article linking to the botanical garden article.
- Your second source, from the British Museum, doesn't mention the botanical gardens at all, so it can be removed. Some things in the article are not supported by the first and fourth source, like how there are engraved birds and animals, and how he introduced the pomegranate and iris to Egypt; I would check the 3rd source, but I haven't found it online yet. ~ rusty meow ~ 15:03, 26 May 2026 (UTC)
- "Hello, thanks for your effort. I updated the article with sources according to your notes. Can you explain what I should do in the Thutmose III article? Thanks
- A123a1 (talk) 20:41, 26 May 2026 (UTC)
- @A123a1: Sorry for a late reply! You can just add the content you have in your sandbox to Botanical garden of Thutmosis III. I took a look and it looks like Thutmose III already links to the botanical garden article, so no action is needed there. ~ rusty meow ~ 21:09, 27 May 2026 (UTC)
- I just moved it. I appreciate your help, thanks!
- A123a1 (talk) 23:15, 28 May 2026 (UTC)
- Hello, I received a comment from a user who claimed that I used AI tool in our chat and I assure you this didn't happen. so, what should I do?
- A123a1 (talk) 19:52, 29 May 2026 (UTC)
- @A123a1: You want to reply to them and ask why they think so, and what parts are AI.
- Happy editing, ~ rusty meow ~ 18:28, 30 May 2026 (UTC)
- @A123a1: Sorry for a late reply! You can just add the content you have in your sandbox to Botanical garden of Thutmosis III. I took a look and it looks like Thutmose III already links to the botanical garden article, so no action is needed there. ~ rusty meow ~ 21:09, 27 May 2026 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 May 2026
edit- News and notes: Offline: Osama Khalid still in prison
He has been imprisoned since 2020 for his Wikipedia edits. A fresh campaign is calling for his release.
- In the media: Indonesian editors, you shall return!
And lawspam, may you be away.
- Disinformation report: Who is a typical paid editor? Who are their typical clients?
Remember the golden rule!
- Recent research: WikiLambda the Ultimate
Does Abstract Wikipedia help fight "One ring to rule them all" solutions for knowledge access - or does it implement one itself?
- Traffic report: This is where I'll be, so heavenly, so come and dance with me Michael!
A real off the wall thriller, invincible, can't beat it, or is it dangerous and just bad?
- Forum: WikiAnnotate: help us build a dataset of article quality evaluations
A research project to build better automated article assessment tools.
- In focus: Demystifying the 2026-27 Annual Plan
A guide to WMF's Tech Annual Plan for the next year.
- Opinion: Wikipedia isn't a battleground. So why does it feel like one?
Do we really have to fight?
- Serendipity: Wikinews: Into the Wikiverse
The early suggestions for what the wiki could have been.
- Special report: Wikimedia Foundation closes Wikinews after 21 years
Displaces 700 active editors among 31 language editions.
- Community view: Wikipedia's traffic drop: more on languages and freshness
Which topics are dropping, and is the pattern the same everywhere?
- Gallery: Earth Day and Mother's Day
Earth Day was on 22 April, and Mother's Day was on 10 May (in the US and many other countries).
- Comix: Brother, can you spare a page?
What would you say?
Hi, nice to meet you. I intend writing some articles here but I thought I should start with improving existing ones that I find interesting and knowledgeable at. I have already did some edits. I was wondering if you can scale through my edits to see if I'm doing it correctly or require some improvements. Thanks. --Kraytus (talk) 17:16, 24 May 2026 (UTC)
- @Kraytus: Hello, and welcome!
- We're glad to have you here; I noticed that some of your edits were reverted by other editors, and in this case I would recommend using a Talk page for discussion if you haven't already. A talk page lets you and other editors discuss edits to the page. For example, the talk page for Cat is Talk:Cat.
- Also, I noticed that in one of your early edits you created a header by using bold and underline. This isn't recommended due to accessibility issues. You can create a dedicated header on the mobile visual editor, which it looks like is what you're using, by typing equal signs (=) at the beginning of a line. How many equal signs depends on the level of the header. For example, a heading would have 2 equals signs, while a sub-heading would have 3. Take a look!
- Happy editing, ~ rusty meow ~ 22:32, 24 May 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks for the feedback, reviews and guidance. Kraytus (talk) 22:39, 24 May 2026 (UTC)
- You're welcome!! ~ rusty meow ~ 23:15, 24 May 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks for the feedback, reviews and guidance. Kraytus (talk) 22:39, 24 May 2026 (UTC)
Hello Rusty Cat, I'm trying to edit my professor George Elliott Clarke's Wikipedia page, using information from his records to correct the many inaccuracies and omissions that have plagued the page over the years. I'm doing it as a favour to him, but with much better information than any of the editors seem to have.
However, when I reworked the page yesterday, my edits got reverted because of a "conflict of interest". Naturally, I understand, but the facts currently on the Wikipedia page are false, badly written, and omit many important aspects of GEC's life and work over the last few years, as well as some of his young adulthood.
Please advise as to how I can get these edits through without an overzealous moderator reverting everything!
Best, Bertinul --Bertinul (talk) 13:31, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
- As you have been told on your talk page, the best way to proceed is to post on the "Talk" page article, Talk:George Elliott Clarke. This is a page where editors discuss improvements to the article. Be sure to provide sources for your changes!
- Happy editing, ~ rusty meow ~ 15:21, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
barnstar + question
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The Username Barnstar | |
| nice username! oh, and what made u rusty? (oh and sign me guestbook too) AltoHampton (talk here) (le contrebutions) 23:56, 24 May 2026 (UTC) |
- @AltoHampton: Thanks! I used to use a different username that had Rusty in it many years ago, and I guess as I went on, the Rusty part stuck. ~ rusty meow ~ 15:10, 26 May 2026 (UTC)
- @Rusty Cat ah ok. thx! alexa knows now… AltoHampton t • c • g • s 00:29, 27 May 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-22
editLatest 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
- Following a successful account creation experiment, an improved logged-out edit warning message will be deployed to all Wikimedia wikis in the first week of June. The change will only affect logged-out users on mobile web who open an editing session. The updated experience is designed to encourage account creation more clearly, while still allowing users to edit with temporary accounts. Results from the experiment showed a significant increase in account creation, with a 27% relative lift among users shown the updated message. As expected, as more people funnel into account creation, temporary accounts decreased by a relative 16%. The experiment did not show any significant changes in constructive edit rates or other monitored contributor metrics.
Updates for editors
- For security reasons, members of certain user groups are required to have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled. Members of these groups will be unable to disable the last 2FA method on their account, and it will be impossible to add users without 2FA to these groups. Users will still be able to add new authentication methods or remove them, as long as at least one method is continuously enabled. In the next few weeks, users without 2FA will be removed from these groups. Notably, this applies to bureaucrats. See the linked tasks for deployment schedules.
- WMDE Technical Wishes will run an A/B test on 10 wikis, testing potential improvements for Reference Previews. The experiment will run for ~2 weeks at the end of May / beginning of June and will affect 10% of desktop readers on the participating wikis.
- After two successful experiments, the Reader Growth team is rolling out an Image Browsing beta feature for all Wikipedias on mobile on May 25. This means that anyone who has all beta features on by default will start to see this feature, and others can check the box to turn it on in their preferences. The beta feature will include a carousel of all an article's images at the top of the article, with controls for editors to exclude images from the article's carousel or to exclude an article from the feature entirely.
- View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, three dimensional STL files were being rendered incorrectly by the media viewer 3D extension which is now fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
- The legacy CSS classes
tleftandtrighthave been replaced withfloatleftandfloatrightas the former do not work consistently across all MediaWiki platforms, notably mobile web and mobile apps. Projects relying on these classes are encouraged to review related usage and plan for migration. Please note thatfloatleftandfloatrightmay also be deprecated in future, although there are currently no plans to do so. Read more. - Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Women in Red - June 2026
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Announcements, tips, participation... Announcements from other communities: Tip of the month:
Other ways to participate:
|
--Rosiestep (talk) 22:52, 25 May 2026 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Concern regarding Draft:The Green Ember
edit
Hello, Rusty Cat. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:The Green Ember, a page you created, has not been edited in at least five months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.
If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.
Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 22:06, 30 May 2026 (UTC)
Hello
editiam your new apprentice please look after me thanks for you to taking me as your student RishavPatel12 (talk) 06:58, 1 June 2026 (UTC)
- @RishavPatel12: Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! Feel free to ask if you have any questions.
- Happy editing, ~ rusty meow ~ 00:51, 2 June 2026 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2026
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2026).
Administrator changes
Bureaucrat changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, the "persistent usage of large language models" has been included as a common reason for a block.
Technical news
- Mandatory 2FA for bureaucrats: Bureaucrats without two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled have already lost access to their advanced rights on 26 May. Those who do not enable 2FA may be automatically removed from the groups in mid-June 2026, and from that point onward, new members must have 2FA enabled before they can be added. (T423119, T423120)
Arbitration
- The arbitration case SchroCat has been closed.
- The arbitration case Michael Jackson has opened. Evidence submissions in this case closes on 1 June.
Miscellaneous
- Voting for the 2026 Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election closes on 1 June.
Tech News: 2026-23
editLatest 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 conducting an experiment to show the reading lists feature, which is still in development, to logged-out mobile readers to test whether it encourages account creation at a higher rate compared to the watchstar button. The experiment was launched on May 18th on German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu wikis, and it will run for a month.
- The Wikimedia Apps team released Phase 1 of the redesigned Home Feed to the Android Beta app. The new Home Feed includes a refreshed "Community" tab and a personalized "For You" tab featuring daily updated reading recommendations. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve content discovery and create more engaging learning experiences in the Wikipedia apps.
- View all 18 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where images could fail to load for some suggested edits on Special:Homepage, leaving the thumbnail stuck in a loading state, has now been fixed.
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.
Books & Bytes – Issue 74
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Issue 74, March–April 2026
- New partnership: Swissdox
- User survey results
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 10:35, 2 June 2026 (UTC)
Question from Ichbineinekraldöven (16:44, 5 June 2026)
editIs there anything I can do about an academic source made about where i am from by a foreigner which i can prove to be false? --Ichbineinekraldöven (talk) 16:44, 5 June 2026 (UTC)
- @Ichbineinekraldöven: By "prove to be false" I assume you mean there are sources--Wikipedia requires citations to reliable sources, and so original research (in other words, your own experience) won't be accepted
- However, it's not as simple as finding a single source to refute the claim, because we want to avoid giving undue weight to a single viewpoint or source. Depending on what sources say, (whether they show that the viewpoint currently in the article is a minority viewpoint (in other words, your viewpoint is commonly accepted) or not) the article could be revised to either say something among the lines of "Some sources say this, but other sources say that" or "Most sources say this, but some sources say that instead".
- Hope this makes sense; feel free to ask further if you have more questions.
- Happy editing! ~ rusty meow ~ 22:54, 5 June 2026 (UTC)