Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [1]
Hidden content that is within collapsible parts of wikipages will now be revealed when someone searches the page using the web browser's "Find in page" function (Ctrl+F or ⌘F) in supporting browsers. [2][3]
A new feature, called Favourite Templates, will be deployed later this week on all projects (except English Wikipedia, which will receive the feature next week), following a piloting phase on Polish and Arabic Wikipedia, and Italian and English Wikisource. The feature will provide a better way for new and experienced contributors to recall and discover templates via the template dialog, by allowing users to put templates on a special "favourite list". The feature works with both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. The feature is a community wishlist focus area.
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that had caused some Notifications to be sent multiple times. [4]
Administrator elections will take place this month. Administrator elections are an alternative to RFA that is a gentler process for candidates due to secret voting and multiple people running together. The call for candidates is July 9–15, the discussion phase is July 18–22, and the voting phase is July 23–29. Get ready to submit your candidacy, or (with their consent) to nominate a talented candidate!
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
Temporary accounts have been rolled out on 18 large and medium-sized Wikipedias, including German, Japanese, French, and Chinese. Now, about 1/3 of all logged-out activity across wikis is coming from temporary accounts. Users involved in patrolling may be interested in two new documentation pages: Access to IP, explaining everything related to access to temporary account IP addresses, and Repository with a list of new gadgets and user scripts.
Updates for editors
Anyone can play an experimental new game, WikiRun, that lets you race through Wikipedia by clicking from one article to another, aiming to reach a target page in as few steps and in as little time as possible. The project's goal is to explore new ways of engaging readers. Try playing the game and let the team know what you think on the talk page.
Users of the Wikipedia Android app in some languages can now play the new trivia game. Which came first? is a simple history game where you guess which of two events happened earlier on today's date. It was previously available as an A/B test. It is now available to all users in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Turkish, and Chinese. The goal of the feature is to help engage with new generations of readers. [5]
Users of the iOS Wikipedia App in some languages may see a new tabbed browsing feature that enables you to open multiple tabs while reading. This feature makes it easier to explore related topics and switch between articles. The A/B test is currently running in Arabic, English, and Japanese in selected regions. More details are available on the Tabbed Browsing project page.
A new feature related to Template Recall and Discovery will be deployed later this week 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.
It is now possible to access watchlist preferences from the watchlist page. Also the redundant button to edit the watchlist has been removed. [7]
As part of MediaWiki 1.44 there is now a unified built-in Notifications system that makes it easier for developers to send, manage, and customize notifications. Check out the updated documentation at Manual:Notifications, information about migration in T388663 and details on deprecated hooks in T389624.
WikidataCon 2025, the conference dedicated to Wikidata is now open for session proposals and for registration. This year's event will be held online from October 31 – November 02 and will explore on the theme of "Connecting People through Linked Open Data".
The administrator elections process has officially started! Interested editors are encouraged to self-nominate or arrange to be nominated by reviewing the instructions at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/July 2025/Candidates.
Here is the schedule:
July 9–15 - Call for candidates
July 18–22 - Discussion phase
July 23–29 - SecurePoll voting phase
Please note the following:
The requirements to run are identical to RFA—a prospective candidate must be extended confirmed.
The process will have a seven day call for candidates phase, a two day pause, a five day discussion phase, and a seven day private vote using SecurePoll. Discussion and questions are only allowed on the candidate pages during the discussion phase.
The outcome of this process is identical to making a request for adminship. There is no official difference between an administrator appointed through RFA versus administrator elections.
Ask any questions about the process at the talk page. A separate user talk message will be sent to official candidates with additional information about the process.
If you are interested in the process, please make sure to watchlist the appropriate pages. A watchlist notice will be added when the discussion phase opens, and again when the voting phase opens.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Featured templates, a new feature related to Template Recall and Discovery will be deployed this week to all Wikimedia projects: With this feature, editors will be able to quickly access a list of templates that are likely to be useful. These templates will be displayed in a list, under the "featured" tab of the template discovery interface. Administrators can define the list via the Community Configuration interface. The feature fulfills a request by the community through the Community Wishlist. [8][9]
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the request to add Malayalam fonts in the Wikisource Book Export Tool was resolved and now, the rendering of Malayalam letters in exported Wikisource books are accurate. [10]
WikiIndaba 2025 scholarship application and program submission is open until 23:59 GMT on July 20. WikiIndaba is a regional conference for African Wikimedians both on the continent and in the diaspora to unite and grow together. Submit your scholarship application and program proposal now!
WikiCon Brasil 2025 will take place on July 19-20 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The Brazilian community members are encouraged to register and attend!
On July 23, we will start the voting phase. The candidate subpages will close again to public questions and discussion, and everyone will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's totals during the election. You must be extended confirmed to vote.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last approximately four days, or perhaps a little longer. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (you may want to watchlist this page) and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and must also have received a minimum of 20 support votes. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.
This template's initial visibility currently defaults to autocollapse, meaning that if there is another collapsible item on the page (a navbox, sidebar, or table with the collapsible attribute), it is hidden apart from its title bar; if not, it is fully visible.
To change this template's initial visibility, the |state=parameter may be used:
{{SilverLocust|state=collapsed}} will show the template collapsed, i.e. hidden apart from its title bar.
{{SilverLocust|state=expanded}} will show the template expanded, i.e. fully visible.
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. [11]
Administrators can now limit "Add a Link" to newcomers. The "Add a Link" Structured Task helps new account holders start editing, but some communities have requested the ability to restrict it to its intended audience: newcomers. Administrators can configure this setting within the Community Configuration feature.
For AbuseFilter editors on some wikis, it is now possible to filter edits based on the RevertRisk score of the edit being attempted. It is only populated if the action being evaluated is an edit. For more information, please see the ORES/AbuseFilter variables documentation.
The Beta Cluster wikis have been moved from beta.wmflabs.org to beta.wmcloud.org. Users may need to update URLs in any tools, or in their password managers. Any related issues can be reported in the task.
WikiCite 2025 will take place from 29–31 August, both online and in-person in Bern, Switzerland. The event's goals are to reconnect communities, institutions, and individuals working with open citations, bibliographic data, and the Wikidata/Wikibase ecosystem. Registration is open and the call for proposals will be announced soon. [12]
In the voting phase, the candidate subpages will close to public questions and discussion, and everyone who qualifies to vote will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's vote total during the election. The suffrage requirements are similar to those at RFA.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for approximately four days, perhaps longer. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (this is a good page to watchlist), and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and a minimum of 20 support votes. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.
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. [13]
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. [14]
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.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the 27th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 2025! Boy, does it feel good to kick off the year with an issue. Yep, it's been a year since we cleared out the 2022-2024 backlog with issues 23 and 24! Good times. Though in this case "a year" just means... 6 months? 😯 The salience of whatever joke I was planning to make here has vanished speedily. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:00, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
WikiTextExpander by Polygnotus, is this edition's featured script. At the click of a configurable hotkey, this script will find and replace or link a configurable list of phrases within the selected text in all source editors (even in the comment/reply field!). Besides allowing the quick insertion of templated messages, this script greatly mitigates the WP:WTF? problem by providing both the legibility of familiar words and the convenience of shortcuts. And to those asking, the capitalization of "Wikitext" as "WikiText" was a necessary sacrifice for far-more-memorable acronymy.
CanonNi: AlertAssistant has been fixed and rewritten using OOUI instead of Twinkle's Morebits. Such modern, very tool. (Do note that the maintainer has since become inactive.)
NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh/AjaxLoader has been updated to use modern JS APIs that replace the browser's URL bar with the link you clicked on to load in place. The "back" (and "forward") buttons also work now. Cool, innit?
andrybak: Unsigned helper no longer shows an error when the message to sign was added in the earliest 50 revisions of a page's history. This is especially relevant to pages with short histories.
BilledMammal/Move+ needs updating to order list of pages handle lists of pages to move correctly regardless of the discussion's page, so that we may avoid repeating fiasco history.
In breaking m:Tech/News, Gadgets can now include .vue files. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons are now also available. The documentation has examples.
Appo/Globstory integrates OpenHistoryMap, updating the map whenever hovering/clicking on a location or year, the latter of which changes the map to be (hopefully) accurate to the year selected. It's pretty interesting.
linkinfo Somewhat similar to WP:NavPops, Awesome Aasim/linkinfo(pictured) provides a collection of links to replace the right-click context menu, presented beautifully.
PreviousDiscussions provides a link to search for your username on subpages of another user's userpage and talkpage conveniently.
Twineeea/noRedLinks brings you to the "read" instead of the "create" tab when you visit a red link. Contemplate life's mysteries as you stare into the blank! Deeply.
No, this is not going to be the enduring tradition of S++ for the future. This was meant to be a joke for the special occasion on the first day of the fourth month but was delayed by four months because I'm lazy.
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. [15]
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. [16]
Administrators can now define the default block duration for temporary accounts. To do that, they need to create a page named MediaWiki:Ipb-default-expiry-temporary-account and use a value defined in MediaWiki:Ipboptions. This allows administrators to easily block temporary accounts for 90 days, which is functionally equivalent to an indefinite block. The advantage of this solution is that it does not clutter Special:BlockList. More documentation is available. [17]
Gadgets can now include .vue files. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons can be loaded through the gadget definition. The documentation has examples. For user scripts that use Vue.js, an API module now exists to load Codex icons. [18][19]
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. [20]
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. [21]
Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
Following a request for comment, there is a new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses of temporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors can request access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.
South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
Wikimania 2025 is happening in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years of Wikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You can register here now.
Just letting you know that this draft is nearing CSD G13 time and it is old enough that you might not receive a notification when it is deleted. Hope all is well with you. LizRead!Talk!03:37, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"It is not right to block Alejandro Zamora Shiv Shambhu from Wikipedia. He helps ensure that a Mexican figure is recognized as important in the field of Yoga. I kindly request that you unblock me." 189.180.215.241 (talk) 13:08, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are instructions on the user talk page for requesting an unblock. The block should be appealed from that page while logged in to that account. Logging out in order to edit other pages (like this one) is block evasion and may led to your IP address being blocked. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 22:10, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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. [22]
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. [23]
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. [24]
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. [25]
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. [26]
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. [27]
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. [28]
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. [29]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Template authors can now use additional CSS properties, since the CSS sanitizer used by TemplateStyles was updated. For example: width: fit-content; ruby-align; relative units such as lh; and custom strings in list-style-type. These improvements are a Community Wishlist wish. [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]
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. [45]
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. [47][48]
Two fields of the recentchanges database table are being removed. rc_new and rc_type are being removed in favor of rc_source. Queries to these older fields will start to fail starting this week and developers should use rc_source instead. These older fields were deprecated over 10 years ago and should not be in use. This is part of work to improve the performance and stability of queries to the recentchanges table. [50]
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.
Just wanted to say that I was at 800 words (-/+ 10%) which was my word limit (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement&diff=prev&oldid=1300894058) when the thread was archived. I've added another 200 words (and asked for an extention for it) to deal with the unauthorised unarchiving of the thread and additional allegation about things that happened after the thread was archived. I've edited my bit a few times to bring the word count down and to make it more concise, as the statement that you've brought back from 18th July was full of responses to other people directly, I've since reworded it to reduce my word count and not directly respond to every comment. This was my first arbitration I've been involved with and it's hard to know the process, plus I'm often on mobile, and mobile editing for the arbitration page is extremely hard if you're trying to reply to someone. I will refrain from getting involved in the process anymore, just wanted to explain my actions, because the arbitration started six weeks ago (and was closed four weeks ago) and a lot has developed since then. Icecold (talk) 09:50, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I'd like to request that the warning be downgraded to an informal reminder, as you originally suggested. I understand the problems with my edit and I've committed to being more careful with my future edits. You might say that in such case I'd have nothing to fear. However, as you can see from another editor's off-topic comment in the AE thread about an unrelated RUSUKR edit, editors like myself working in contentious areas get scrutinised a lot and sanctions can be weaponised in future. Alaexis¿question?19:01, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would be opposed both per my comments at AE about the edits we looked at, but also because I trust AE admins as a body will not give more than necessary weight to a logged warning. I appreciate the ask. Vanamonde93 (talk) 21:40, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The headcount in favor of a logged warning was 2 in favor, 1 not-opposed, 1 opposed, so per WP:CTOP your closure was correct under a rough-consensus standard, and can't be reversed outside of a formal appeal. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 06:53, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe the appeal procedures are a restriction on the closer's ordinary discretion around revising or reverting a close. Anyway, purely hypothetical since as I said I wouldn't reduce it unless you agreed. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 07:41, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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. [51]
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. [52]
On September 3rd, 2025 we will increase the sampling percentages of our group by toggle experiment of the Special:RecentChanges, Special:Watchlist, and Special:RelatedChanges pages 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. [53][54]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 (like en.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. [56]
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. [57]
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. [58][59]
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. [60]
The RFC phase of the July 2025 administrator elections has started. There are 10 RFCs for consideration. You can participate in the RFC phase at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/July 2025/RFCs.
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.
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. [61]
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 [62]
for both intitle: and insource: 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). [63]
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. [64]
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. [65]
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. [66]
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).
Hi,
I want to ask for your help on a problem, for which I apologize here.
I have been writing articles on Wikipedia for quite some time now, and I have many articles to my name, but I have never been involved in the deeper rules of the site; I was simply interested in spreading historical knowledge. That is why, at the same time, I think due to a system error, I made a mistake. When I tried to upload a picture to Wikimedia once, the system wouldn't let me, forcing me to create the address Sylvain5791 there to upload the image to Wikimedia. I didn't realise this address also worked on Wikipedia. And the Sylvain5791 address was created from the same email address I use for the Sylvain1975 account.
A few days ago, I noticed a date error (the starting date of a period) on one of my maps uploaded to Wikimedia. Since that map was part of a series of maps concerning the Austro-Hungarian confrontations during 1848-1849, made by me on Wikimedia, I had to adjust the date on the map that followed this map, as well. To make these corrections, I used the account Sylvain5791, because Wikimedia did not allow me to do so with my original account Sylvain1975.
Afterward, without paying attention to which account I was logged into, I made small changes to the descriptions of these maps on the Wikipedia pages where they were used. I thought I was still editing from my original account (Sylvain1975), but in fact, those two minor edits appeared under the Sylvain5791 account.
I was not aware that having separate accounts on Wikipedia and Wikimedia was against the rules, nor that clicking back into Wikipedia would cause edits to be made with the Wikimedia account, because I thought that my Sylvain1975 address would not change into Sylvain5791 there by using it on Wikimedia. That is how the two edits appeared in the articles Spring Campaign and Winter Campaign (1848–1849).
I sincerely apologize for this.
I never used the account for a malicious purpose. If I had intended to do anything wrong, I would have created that account from a different email address. I did not mean to break any rules. As I mentioned, I only created the second account by mistake, because the system would not allow me to upload an image to Wikimedia with my original account.
These edits were limited to articles I had written myself, and the Sylvain5791 account was not used for any malicious purpose (Creating an illusion of support, Internal discussions, Circumventing policies, Strawman, etc.).
When I figured out that I made a mistake, I put the template retired on that account, and I also wrote an explanation on its talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sylvain5791
So, I want to ask you, what can I do? Can you help me?
Maybe I can use:
- Clean Start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Clean_start,
- Legitimate users option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry#Legitimate_uses,
- or to tag the Sylvain5791 account as: Maintenance: An editor might use an alternative account to carry out maintenance tasks, or to segregate functions to maintain a user talk page dedicated to the purpose. The second account should be clearly linked to the main account, as "This account is the alternate account of "Sylvain1975Original account", with the mention that it is used only for image uploading.
Or any other option you propose.
Hi Sylvain1975. There's no need to worry. You can just put {{User alternative account banner|Sylvain1975}} at the Sylvain5791 user page. (Wikipedia:Clean start doesn't apply here, because this you aren't starting over with a new account.) If you want to make it clearer at a glance that the two accounts are connected, you could make a quick request to rename it to "Sylvain1975 (alt)" (while logged in to Sylvain5791), but that isn't necessary. I don't think anyone looking at your alternative account's edits and similar name would think it is intended for deception (or other impermissible purposes stated at Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry). (Personally, I use the alt account name SilverLocust+.) ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 17:23, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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. [67]
Adding or editing a DISPLAYTITLE for 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.
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).
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. [68]
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.
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. [69]
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-notice will be removed and replaced with those prefixed with blocked-notice-logextract in 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. [70]
One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote in Malay (q:ms:) [71]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the User Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks. [72]
Updates for technical contributors
Later this week, editors using Lua modules will be able to use the mw.title.newBatch function 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.
Hi, I'd like to ask a question regarding the latest AE proceedings I was the subject of. I'm asking you since you've commented on them and have been involved in other incidents, so you likely have the necessary context.
I don't want to appeal my BER - some of my edits were inappropriate and I'm still reflecting on the arguments made by admins and other users, in the meantime I've taken a break from the more contentious topics related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
While reading what BER is I suddenly realised that I'd be banned from opening enforcement requests. I'm not a big fan of them, I don't think I've ever made AE or ANI requests. However I'm concerned that the problematic behaviour that has been happening in the PIA topic area (primarily a severe lack of AGF and removal of reliable sources supporting opposing viewpoints) would continue and I would have no way of bringing it to the admins' attention. Short of requesting an exception to this part of the ban, what would you recommend as the best way to address such issues if they arise?
@Alaexis: Sorry, I missed the notification that you had sent this. If you think administrator intervention is necessary, personally I'm willing to be pinged from your user talk space or by email to take a look, provided that you keep the request brief (say, under 200 words for the initial message), that you don't ping others in the request, and that you only do so occasionally. However, I will try to resolve it without issuing sanctions, since I don't want to treat this as a broad workaround to the restriction. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 05:10, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also love the design of these. I looked at the table and thought "hell yes". And then I checked who added them and found noone, checked for template changes, checked for module changes and then lacked words. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 04:12, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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 (like en.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. [74]
New date filters, creationdate: and lasteditdate:, 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. [75]
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. [76]
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. [77]
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. [78]
Updates for technical contributors
The field rev_sha1 in the revision database table is being removed in favor of content_sha1 in 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. [79]
Starting on Monday, October 6, API endpoints under the rest.php path 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. [80]
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.
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. [81]
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. [82]
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. [83][84]
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. [85]
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.
I believe but am not entirely certain that this edit constitutes a 1RR violation. I informed the editor of it and they claim it is not, without addressing it and instead discussing the merits of the tag. Can you resolve this if this is indeed a violation?
I believe it may be as according to Wikipedia:Edit warring, "to revert is to undo the action of another editor." Uw-3rr states that "undoing another editor’s work — whether in whole or in part, or whether it involves the same or different material — counts as a revert." Maintenance tags are not exempt from 1RR. Tags like
are substantive, contentious claims about an article's quality. Their removal and restoration are treated as any other content edit under 1RR. Furthermore, in the same series of edits the editor reverted other content alongside adding the tags, constituting one revert. Because re-adding a tag after it has been removed constitutes undoing the removal, that action qualifies as a revert under the policy definitions. Reinstating something they had been reverted constitutes a second revert, and thus is a violation of 1RR.
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. [86]
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. [87]
Updates for technical contributors
The work to reroute all traffic to API endpoints under the rest.php route 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. [88]
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. [89]
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. [90]
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. [91]
Your name came up here. [92] Perhaps you have some sort of clue as to what the heck this is all about? I attempted to answer a somewhat confusing question about section heading formatting regarding an article on a long-dead illustrator, and through an increasingly convoluted discussion, am now apparently being accused of mistreating a 'Supreme Court rape victim', while 'obtain[ing] information about this article offering to assist me' - an odd accusation to make, since I was being asked to assist. There appears to be some sort of CoI involved too, which apparently TheArtandVintage, who started the thread, would rather didn't get discussed further, despite revealing it on their user page some time back. [93]AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:14, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Judging by this post on TheArtandVintage's talk page, [94] they may well have been editing with a previous account, and have been blocked. Maybe that will jog your memory? Probably not, but I'm thoroughly baffled - more so, since I'm now being told that suggesting that “it’s not an emergency to update an article about an illustrator that died in 1975”, as I did, was defamatory. Just bizarre... AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:36, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
or users with few or no edits outside user space, excessively unrelated or grossly improper<ref group=meta>The words "or grossly improper" will be deleted if 3B passes over 3A.</ref>
Hello, SilverLocust. 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?
Editing from a temporary account
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
How to enable IP Reveal
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)
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). [96]
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. [97]
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. [98]
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. [99]
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! [100]
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. [101]
Updates for technical contributors
Since 2019 the Wikimedia URL Shortener at https://w.wiki is available for all Wikimedia wikis to create short links to articles, permalinks, diffs, etc. It is available in the sidebar as "Get shortened URL". There are 30 wikis that also install an older "ShortUrl" extension. The old extension will soon be removed. This means /s/ URLs will not be advertised under article titles via HTML class="title-shortlink". The /s/ URLs will keep working. [102]
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. [103]
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.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.
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. [105]
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. [106][107][108]
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. [109]
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. [110]
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. [111]
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example the inability to lock accounts on mobile sites has been fixed. [112]
The JWT subject field in OAuth 2 access tokens will soon change from <user id> to mw:<identity type>:<user id>, where <identity type> is typically CentralAuth: (for SUL wikis) or local:<wiki id> (for other wikis). This is to avoid conflicts between different user ID types, and to make OAuth 2 access tokens and the sessionJwt cookie more similar. Old access tokens will still work. [114]
A REL1_45 branch for MediaWiki core and each of the extensions and skins in Wikimedia git has been created. This is the first step in the release process for MediaWiki 1.45.0, scheduled for late November 2025. If you are working on a critical bug fix or working on a new feature, you may need to take note of this change. [116]
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. [117][118]
I've just realized there's a draft for this article, and I thought it was a redirect for a novel. But I didn't copy-paste from the draft, so why does it need to be merged? Shouldn't we open a discussion first? 𝙰𝚒𝚍𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊(talk)22:01, 13 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They didn't have to be merged for attribution, but they are literally on the same exact subject so there's no need to discuss merging them. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 22:05, 13 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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.
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.
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.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Last week, the Wikimedia Search Team recreated the "DWIM" (Do What I Mean) gadget functionality server-side, for Russian and Hebrew Wikipedias. This feature adds cross-keyboard suggestions to the standard search-box suggestions. For example, searching for cxfcnmt on Russian Wikipedia will now add suggestions for счастье ("happiness") that the user probably intended. They plan to enable this feature for other Russian and Hebrew wikis this week. [120]
Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will have syntax highlighting available in DiscussionTools. This requires that the "Enable editing tools in source mode" preference be set. [121]
Campaign events extension – the set of tools for coordinating events and other on-wiki collaborations has now been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. A new feature known as Collaborative contribution to help organizers and participants see the impact of activities has also been added. Join the upcoming learning session to see the new feature in action and share your feedback.
View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug which stopped CodeReviewBot from working, has now been fixed. [122]
Updates for technical contributors
Users of Wikimedia API can join a usability study to help validate the new design of Wikimedia REST API sandboxes. Interested participants should fill the recruitment survey. [123]
The MediaWiki Interfaces team is deprecating XSLT stylesheets within the Action API. Support for format=xml&xlst={stylesheet} will be removed from Wikimedia projects by the end of November, 2025. In addition, it will soon be disabled by default in MediaWiki release versions: v1.43 (LTS), v1.44, and v1.45. Support for XSLT stylesheets will be fully removed from MediaWiki v1.46 (expected to release between April and May 2026). [124]
The WDQS legacy endpoint (query-legacy-full.wikidata.org) will be decommissioned at the end of December 2025, and finally closed down on 7th January 2026. After this date, users should expect requests to query.wikidata.org that require the full graph to fail or return invalid results if they are not rewritten to use SPARQL federation. The team encourages users to ensure that tools and workflows use the supported WDQS endpoints (https://query.wikidata.org/ - Main graph or https://query-scholarly.wikidata.org/ - Scholarly graph). For support with migrating use cases, please review the Data Access and Request a Query pages for details and assistance on alternative access methods.
The process will have a seven day call for candidates phase, a two day pause, a five day discussion phase, and a seven day private vote using SecurePoll. Discussion and questions are only allowed on the candidate pages during the discussion phase.
The outcome of this process is identical to making a request for adminship. There is no official difference between an administrator appointed through RFA versus administrator elections.
Ask any questions about the process at the talk page. Later, a user talk message will be sent to official candidates with additional information about the process.
If you are interested in the process, please make sure to watchlist the appropriate pages. A watchlist notice will be added when the discussion phase opens, and again when the voting phase opens.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.
Hey @SilverLocust. Your wiki edit anniversary is today, marking 10 years of dedicated contributions to English Wikipedia. Your passion for sharing knowledge and your remarkable contributions have not only enriched the project, but also inspired countless others to contribute. Thank you for your amazing contributions. Wishing you many more wonderful years ahead in the Wiki journey. :) -❙❚❚❙❙ GnOeee ❚❙❚❙❙✉17:07, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks—I wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't told me. Though @SilverLocust+ has this account beat by 4 months (it just originally had "Jenson" in the username so I switched to this account to be more anonymous). ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 00:51, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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 Year in Review 2025 will be available on December 2 for users of iOS and Android Wikipedia apps, featuring new personalized insights, updated reading highlights, and refreshed designs. Learn more on the review's project page.
The Growth team is working on improving the text and presentation of the Verification Email sent to new users to make them more welcoming, useful and informative. Some new text have been drafted for A/B testing and you can help by translating them. See Phabricator.
Add a link will now be deployed at Japanese, Urdu and Chinese Wikipedias on December 2. Add a link is based on a prediction model that suggests links to be added to articles. While this feature has already been available on most Wikipedias, the prediction model could not support certain languages. A new model has now been developed to handle these languages, and it will be gradually rolled out to other Wikipedias over time. If you would like to know more, please contact Trizek (WMF).
View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where search boxes on some Commons pages showed no results due to switch from SpecialSearch to MediaSearch, has now been fixed. [125]
The Wikimedia Foundation is in the early stages of exploring approaches to Article guidance. The initiative aims to identify interventions that could help new editors easily understand and apply existing Wikipedia practices and policies when creating an article. The project is in the exploration and early experimental design phase. All community members are encouraged to learn more about the project, and share their thoughts on the talk page.
I'll reduce the base page to temporary PCP as WP:TRYUNPROT. The 21st century page hasn't faced disruption in its month of existence, so I think I'll just leave it unprotected until needed per WP:PREEMPTIVE.
If you're aware of a standard practice of split articles matching the parent protection, I'd be interested in looking at that. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 04:01, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On December 9, we will start the voting phase. The candidate subpages will close to public questions and discussion, and everyone will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's totals during the election. You must be extended confirmed to vote.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which typically lasts between a couple days and a week. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (you may want to watchlist this page) and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate who has not been recalled must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and must also have received a minimum of 20 support votes. A candidate that has been recalled must have at least 55.0% support. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.
Congratulations on your success in the elections and welcome to the 2026 Arbitration Committee. This is the first part of your induction onto the Arbitration Committee.
Please use the EmailUser function to contact us, and indicate the email address you'd like to use for ArbCom and functionary business. It is strongly encouraged to use a Gmail address for ArbCom business, for functionality reasons.
Before you can be subscribed to any mailing lists or assigned CheckUser or Oversight permissions, you must sign the Wikimedia Foundation's confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information (L37) and the VRT users confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information (L45). Please confirm that your username is listed on the Access to nonpublic personal data policy/Noticeboard. If isn't, and you haven't signed the agreements, please do this promptly and let me know when you have signed them. Instructions for signing can be found here. Again, you must sign both agreements listed in the instructions. If you have signed but your username is not listed on the noticeboard, please let me know.
Over the coming days, you will receive a number of emails as part of the induction process. Please carefully read them. If they are registration emails, please follow any instructions in them to finalise registration. You can contact me or any other arbitrator directly if you have difficulty with the induction process.
Thank you for volunteering to serve on the Committee. We very much look forward to introducing ourselves to you on the mailing list and to working with you this term.
Starting on November 4, the IP addresses of logged-out editors are no longer being publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account associated with their edits.
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). T382958
An Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in December 2025, with over 1,000 drafts awaiting review from the past two months. In addition to AfC participants, all administrators and new page patrollers can help review using the Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!
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
Anybody who wishes to secure their user account can now use two-factor authentication (2FA). This is available to all registered users of all Wikimedia projects. This is part of the Account Security initiative. Later, 2FA will be required for all users who can take security- or privacy-sensitive actions.
Updates for editors
Following last week's deployments, the Add a link feature, which allows editors to add suggested links during editing, will be available to an additional 33 Wikipedias starting on 9 December. This expansion is possible thanks to the new prediction model that now supports all languages, including those that were previously not covered. While the feature has been available on most Wikipedias for some time, this rollout brings us closer to using the improved model everywhere. If you have any questions or would like more details please contact Trizek (WMF).
Last week, the Search Platform team added transliterated as-you-type search suggestions to Georgian wikis. If there are only a few regular search suggestions, then queries in Latin or Cyrillic script are now rewritten into Georgian script to look for more matches. For example, searching for either bedniereba or бедниереба will now suggest the existing article about ბედნიერება ("happiness"). You can recommend other languages where transliterated suggestions would be useful on Phabricator for future development.
Later this week, a controlled experiment will begin for editors on the 100 largest Wikipedias who are editing a section in the mobile web visual editor. 50% of these editors will notice a new "Edit full page" button that will enable them to expand their editing session to the whole page. This feature is intended to make it easier for people on mobile web to edit any article section, regardless of which section-edit icon they tapped to begin. The experiment will last ~4 weeks. You can find more details about the project.
Later this week, the Reader Growth team will launch a mobile web experiment to expand all article sections by default (currently they are collapsed by default) and pin the section header the user is currently reading to the top of the page. The experiment will affect 10% of users on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [128]
The Wikipedia Year in Review 2025, a feature in the Wikipedia mobile apps (iOS and Android) that provides users with a personalised summary of their engagement with Wikipedia over the year, is now available on the iOS and Android apps. This edition includes expanded personalised insights, improved reading highlights, new donor messaging, and updated designs. Open the app to view your Year in Review and explore your reading journey from 2025.
A recent software bug caused edits made with VisualEditor to make unintended changes to wikitext, including removing whitespace and replacing spaces with underscores in wikilinks inside citations. This was partially fixed last week, and further fixes are in progress. Editors who used VisualEditor between November 28 and December 2 should review their edits for unexpected modifications. [129]
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the incorrect handling of URLs copied from the address bar of Microsoft Edge users, has been resolved. [130]
Updates for technical contributors
Starting this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will have CodeMirror as the editor for Lua, JavaScript, CSS, JSON and Vue content models, instead of CodeEditor. With this, the linters will be upgraded. This is part of a larger effort to eventually replace CodeEditor and provide a consistent code editing experience. [131]
Developers are encouraged to take the 2025 Developer Satisfaction Survey, which remains open until 5 January 2026. If you build software for the Wikimedia ecosystem and would like to share your experiences or feedback, your participation is greatly appreciated. [132]
In the voting phase, the candidate subpages close to public questions and discussion, and everyone who qualifies to vote has a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's vote total during the election. The suffrage requirements are similar to those at RFA.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for a few days, perhaps longer. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (this is a good page to watchlist), and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a non-recall candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and a minimum of 20 support votes. Recall candidates must achieve 55.0% support. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.
Time between: ~17 hours, which is less than 24 hours as required by 1RR.
Also, though this concerns content, the edit summary for the latest revert is a misrepresentation: In the talk I explicitly said that the two restored sources were superfluous as they only make a passing mention with no analysis whatsoever, yet they were restored regardless in the second revert.
I would also like to point out that the same editor has violated 1RR only several months prior on the same page and was given a sanction for it by yourself.
That does seem to be a 1RR violation. I'm away from my computer for about another 8 hours, but @Alaexis would you please provide a comment? There seems to be a lot of reverting here over time (by you and others). What needs to change to prevent violations from happening? Is it inevitable that they will happen if you continue reverting (or editing) in this topic? ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 14:40, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SilverLocust I've self-reverted myself. Indeed this is a 1RR violation.
Having said said, I'm quite surprised to see this complaint here. I've literally implemented the wording suggested by @Raskolnikov.Rev[133]: I am happy for "restriction of political freedoms" to be changed to "authoritarian rule" if you prefer that term, but having both is entirely superfluous.
There is indeed a problem with the removal of reliable sources critical of Hamas in the article. @TheJoebro64added the characterisation of Hamas rule as authoritarian (which is hardly disputed btw). When I restored it, it was removed again with a misleading edit summary: We already state that it engages in terrorism multiple times in the lede, so the body is already accurately reflected. Engaging in terrorism and authoritarian rule are two completely different unrelated things. Alaexis¿question?15:26, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Everything @Alaexis has said here is false, and the fact that they have decided to double down after yet again engaging in a 1RR violation on the exact same page they have done this before just a few months back and were sanctioned for, and then received an additional sanction for edits on the same page even more recently, I believe demonstrates that there is a clear pattern here that requires a permanent sanction, as admins were considering in the latest case if they did not begin adjusting their behavior with the balanced editing restriction.
What has Alaexis done since then? They did exactly what other editors predicted they would do with this restriction: They began upping their edits in other areas, so they could maintain the same level of edits in ARBPIA, and the exact same behavior persists on the Hamas and other pages as was noted in that case and led to that sanction, including now a blatant 1RR violating while edit-warring over reverted content that he is now blatantly misrepresenting.
As I said in my prior response, and can be seen in the talk discussion, I did not agree to restoring the two sources Alaexis added, because the sources are entirely superfluous. Go check them. They only have a general reference to "authoritarian rule" once, as a term, without any addtional analysis whatsoever. So why did Alaexis add them? Because he apparently did a Google Books search for "hamas authoritarian gaza", and those two are in the top results, and he did not bother to check if they actually contain substantive analysis warranting inclusion. He was merely interested in finding a reference to that phrase regardless of whether it was suitable as RS.
I then told him this explicitly in the talk, as I had in my edit summary for the very edit he then reverted, that the sources are superfluous and do not contain any substantive analysis whatsoever and merely use the phrase "authoritarian rule" in passing, and so are not suitable to be included, and is entirely redundant because the already cited HRW source does contains this substantive analysis. He quoted me from that talk in his reply to you just now, while deliberately omitting that part.
And he decided to ignore that, violate 1RR as he was edit-warring in violation of WP:BRD and restore the sources, and now he's misrepresenting it by pretending that I was actually in favor of that edit.
And he's also going back to misrepresenting the original edits and accusing me of wrongdoing even though everything I said was accurate both in the edit summary and that talk discussion to justify this behavior.
Again, the fact that they are not at all apologetic after blatantly violating 1RR yet again despite multiple recent sanctions for that exact page, shows that they will not adjust their behavior, exactly as editors pointed out during the last case.
I hope you can now see this as well @SilverLocust, and act accordingly.
Unfortunately this is a good example of the lack of WP:AGF that has been one of the major problems in this topic area. They began upping their edits in other areas is simply false. It's easy enough to see that I didn't ramp up edits in the last two months and also that I contribute in pretty much the same areas I've always edited. There is hardly any dispute about the nature of Hamas rule over Gaza. It's described as authoritarian both by sources that cover broader topics like the ones I cited and those that look in detail at Hamas like Nathan Brown's Gaza Five Years On. Again, this reflects a pattern of removing or downplaying anything critical of Hamas.
Do you consider this edit summary accurate? The human rights violations and political repression in Gaza (supported by HRW) have nothing to do with the terrorism against Israelis.
@SilverLocust, I hope you review the thread which was pretty constructive. I'm still puzzled that this happened at the time when we've almost reached a mutually acceptable solution. The wording was already agreed and the only point of contention was whether to cite the two additional sources. Alaexis¿question?21:30, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe one of the major problems in this topic area are editors who persistently and blatantly violate core editing rules such as 1RR even after having received multiple sanctions for exactly this behavior, and then continue engaging in it as they defend it and try to deflect blame while misrepresenting it as a mere content-dispute. This is not about content and following the normal consensus-building process. This is about you violating 1RR on the very same page you were sanctioned for violating it on recently, and then were additionally sanctioned for your broader editing behavior, including edits on that same page. The major problem of this topic area is that editors who repeatedly violate these core editing principles are able to get away with it for far too long, thereby fundamentally undermining the consensus-building process. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 21:45, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And to be clear, I was basing what I said on the percentage and nature of his edits after the balanced-editing sanction was imposed. In the past 30 days, his edits in ARBPIA comprise 28.26%, right up to the edge of the 33% restriction. And in terms of quality of edits, he has yet again violated 1RR not just in ARBPIA, but on the very same page he had previously violated 1RR just months prior and was sanctioned for, as he was sanctioned recently with the balanced-editing restriction for edits including on that page. I forgot that he was also given a separate warning for his ARBPIA editsseveral months ago by SilverLocust, for his lack of care with primary sourcing and BLPs. So his editing behavior in this topic clearly has not been affected by these recent warnings and sanctions.
What is dispositive to me however is the response to this by Alaexis. He's defending it. He's saying it's not a big deal. It's actually others who are to blame, as he misrepresents what happened by quoting me out of context and deflecting to another unrelated edit. That's what to me indicates that they see absolutely no issue whatsoever with their behavior, despite the multiple sanctions he has been given just recently for it and violating the same core rules yet again, and will continue with it unless a sanction is imposed that stops this persistent pattern of disruptive rule-violating behavior, which I believe has to be at a minimum an ARBPIA topic-ban. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 23:01, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not very impressed with either of your conduct regarding this dispute. I have posted my decision on both of your talk pages. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 06:02, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, hope you are enjoying the holiday season. I understand the point of having bright line rules and understand the reason for my sanction. At the same time I think that the balance of sanctions was hardly fair. I just saw in my watchlist that u:Raskolnikov.Rev keeps removing well-sourced information in the PIA area. The latest example is here. The removed content was supported by an article in the Times of Israel which is a RS. The edit summary was "This is sourced back to UN Watch which is not RS" which is untrue: most of the article contains original reporting by the ToI. Alaexis¿question?15:43, 27 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SilverLocust, my edit is being misrepresented. I stated in my edit summary: "This is sourced back to UN Watch which is not RS, and it has not been confirmed per the report itself. Not suitable for BLP". If you look at the cited source for that claim, a very brief liveblog entry, it matches what I stated:
"Georgetown University in Washington, DC, appears to have dropped its partnership with the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinians, Francesca Albanese."
"Her removal from Georgetown’s directory was first reported by UN Watch, a watchdog group that campaigns against Albanese."
It is entirely in line with BLP standards to not include such unconfirmed poorly sourced claims. @Alaexis, who has been recently warned by you "to be more careful when interacting with primary sources, especially regarding living or recently deceased people", is now complaining about a policy-compliant revert in a BLP.
@Alaexis: While the Times of Israel is considered generally reliable, I think it is fair of R.R to view its "live updates" as a possible exception since WP:NEWSBLOG says to "use them with caution because blogs may not be subject to the news organization's normal fact-checking process" and also considering the post's "appears to have dropped" qualification. See also this RSN thread discussing a live update from TOI, where some users commented on that live update aspect.
While I am not very familiar with the Albanese situation, I see a Georgetown person gave a statement to JNS confirming this disaffiliation while giving the additional context that "U.S. institutions [e.g., Georgetown] are prohibited by federal law from affiliating with individuals subject to U.S. sanctions [e.g., Albanese]" (my parentheticals).
@Raskolnikov.Rev: I excluded talk pages (including this talk page) from the 30 day topic ban.
@C1K98V: Since the two have overlapping edit history (i.e., the live article has edits from from both before and after the draft's edits), I'd prefer not to merge the edit histories. The draft can just be redirected to the live article, and if there's anything there that should be incorporated into the live article just copy it across with attribution. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 04:46, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I truly appreciate your feedback. Hello @ItsKhan Aman, since I'm not very familar with Plot and it's outside my area of expertise, please feel free to follow their advice. Thank you for your consideration. C1K98V(💬✒️📂)05:10, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
clarification on nature, context, and sequence of edits in regard to AE statement
Hey Silverlocust, regarding your statement, I just wanted to ask if were you able to review my summary and contextualization of the sequence of edits? I followed BDR and consensus was apparent to me with the 3 out of 5 editors involved in support—myself, יורם שורק, and Butterscotch Beluga—with the two dissenting editors, Nehushtani and BlookyNapsta, providing non-arguments and "inane comments," demanding an unnecessary RfC, and then going straight to AE instead of coming to my talk page or asking for a self-revert or anything. It also appears that the consensus in the RfC on the matter will vindicate me. Thank you, إيان (talk) 21:21, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi إيان. In looking at that talk page discussion more closely, I agree that my abstraction of what would be problematic for ONUS and EW wasn't quite applicable to the specifics, and have withdrawn the first parts of my recommended outcome. Later I might consider the thread some more and put in a new recommendation (aside from just my preference for page bans over page blocks, which I kept). ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 02:18, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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
View all 18 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, one of the fixes addressed an issue for temporary accounts adding an external URL, which triggered an hCaptcha request in more cases than intended, and did not display the required popup on the first attempt to publish the edit. [134]
Updates for technical contributors
To improve database and site performance, external links to Wikimedia projects will no longer be stored in the database. This means they will not be searchable in Special:LinkSearch, will not be checked by the Spam Blacklist or AbuseFilter as new links, and will not be in the externallinks table on database replicas. In the future this may be extended to other highly-linked trusted websites on a per-wiki basis, such as Creative Commons links on Wikimedia Commons. [135]
Hi Jenson, thanks for answering my enforcement request about ECR violations the other day. In general in these situations (temp users commenting in PIA discussions), what should I/non-admins do? Ignore, report, strike or revert were the options that came to my mind, but I don't know whether one needs permissions to strike/revert others' talk page comments in these scenarios, and reporting seems a bit cumbersome - even with the quick report section at AE. TIA Samuelshraga (talk) 08:46, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Samuelshraga. I have very frequently seen non-admins reverting or striking WP:ARBECR violations, as did I before I was an admin. The procedure just says in a passive phrasing, without specifying by whom, "Reverts made solely to enforce this restriction are not considered edit warring." Absent some future change, it should be fine for non-admins to do that, provided an admin doesn't ask you to stop for some reason (e.g., unreasonable calls about what counts as a violation). If extended-confirmed users have replied to a non-EC comment, then it is better to strike or collapse – otherwise just reverting the violation is also fine (cf. WP:SOCKSTRIKE advice). ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 19:37, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Last year you called my message saccharine. Clearly it was not kind enough. Jenson, as last year, 'twas a pleasure clerking alongside you. WP:PIA5 was already quite challenging, but working with you was a light in that that darkness. There is nobody I would rather share a WCNA room with; I still have flashbacks to us walking down 22 flights of stairs because the elevators were being a royal pain in the rear. I am grateful for your sage counsel, your quick wit, your clueful participation at various venues, and your support throughout the ACE process. And speaking of which, I cannot wait to serve together!! We are both going to be figuring this out, just like we did with clerkin'. I know you celebrate Christmas, but I am not ending my war on Christmas until it ceases its illegal occupation of early November. Sorry, but rules are rules. Happy holidays, Jenson, and all the best to you and yours in 2026!
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
From January, edit filters can be set to automatically suppress their details such as rules and list of attempted edits and actions. This will help oversighters use edit filters to prevent doxxing or other suppressible material. [136]
The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 12 January 2026 because of the end of year holidays. Thank you to all of the translators, and people who submitted content or feedback, this year.
View all 16 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the crash that occurred when tapping "First Steps" in the Wikipedia Android Year in Review has now been fixed, and the feature opens as expected. [137]
Updates for technical contributors
Interface elements such as diffs and categories generated by MediaWiki used to have the attribute data-mw="interface" to distinguish from wiki content. The attribute has been replaced with data-mw-interface="", to avoid potential conflicts with other data-mw attributes, which are generated by Parsoid. [138]
There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
Meetings and events
The Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026 will take place on 13-14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Applications just opened mid-December and will close in mid-January or earlier if capacity is reached. With space for approximately 100 participants, early application is encouraged.
New Pages Patrol is hosting a one-time, two-month experimental backlog drive aimed at reducing the backlog. This will be a combo drive: both articles and redirects will earn points.
The drive will run from 1 January to 28 February 2026.
The drive is divided into two phases. Participants may take part in either phase or across both phases, depending on availability.
Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled during the drive.
Two-month drive-exclusive barnstars will be awarded to eligible participants.
Each article review earns 1 point, while each redirect review earns 0.2 points.
Streak awards will be granted based on consistently meeting weekly point thresholds.
Barnstars will also be awarded for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
Changes to the Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy's disclosure rules include broadening the consecutive-blocks exception to cover all admin actions and removing the requirement to revision-delete permissible disclosures once they become unnecessary (instead requiring only their removal). See WP:TAIVDISCLOSE for more information.
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 Wikimedia Foundation has shared some guiding questions for the July 2026–June 2027 Annual Plan on Meta and Diff. These focus on global trends, faster and healthier experimentation, better support for newcomers, strengthening editors and advanced users, improving collaboration across projects, and growing and retaining readership. Feedback and ideas are welcome on the talk page.
Updates for editors
As part of the current work of Community Tech team on the Multiple watchlists project, the display of EditWatchlist will be updated as a first step towards multiple watchlists. Additionally, the pagination on Search will be updated too, as a part of the work on the Revamp pagination / page navigation wish. [139]
The Global Watchlist is a MediaWiki extension that lets you see your watchlists from different wikis on the same page. It was recently updated to look more like the regular Watchlist, such as preparing it for temporary accounts in IP masking (including rerouting user links to contributions pages), making page titles bold, and opening links in edit summaries and tags in new browser tabs. [140][141][142][143]
View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where global blocks did not have the option to disable sending emails, has now been fixed, and will be available for use in the week of January 13. [144]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The tray shown on Special:Diff in mobile view has been redesigned. It is now collapsed by default, and incorporates a link to undo the edit being viewed, making it easier for mobile editors and reviewers to take action while keeping the interface uncluttered. [146]
The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension continues to improve — it now automatically determines the text direction (ensuring correct display of sites with unusual domain names) and shows detailed descriptions for log actions. Later this week, a new permanent link for page creations and CSS classes for each entry element will be added. [147][148][149][150]
View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the previously observed issue in Vector 2022, where anchor link targets were obscured by the sticky header, has now been addressed. [151]
Updates for technical contributors
As mentioned in the October 2025 deprecation announcement, MediaWiki Interfaces team will begin sunsetting all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from the MediaWiki REST API the week of January 26. Changes are expected to roll out to all wikis on or before January 30th. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found, compared, and tested using the REST Sandbox. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in Phabricator to the #MW-Interfaces-Team board.
The WMF Wikidata Platform team (WDP) has published its January 2026 newsletter. It includes updates on the legacy full-graph endpoint decommissioning, the User-Agent policy change, the monthly Blazegraph migration office hours, and efforts to reduce regressions caused by the legacy endpoint shutdown. As a reminder, you can subscribe to the WDP newsletter!
The Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026 will take place on 13-14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Applications opened mid-December and will close soon or when capacity is reached. It's a two-day, technically oriented hackathon bringing together Wikimedians from the region. Hope to see you there!
.jpg)
