User talk:Andrew Davidson

This is Andrew Davidson's personal talk page.

Please edit this page to leave me a message but note that the Visual Editor does not work on such talk pages and so you will have to use the original Wikitext editor. The simplest way of doing this is to start a new section by using the standard link above or by clicking here.

Old discussions and messages are subject to regular housekeeping. Archives are organised mainly by topic (see right).

Thai teaser

ผึ้งได้พิสุทเ้วยตัวของผึ้งเิงค่ะเพราะผลการวิจัยละคนอายุ่ไท่มีเหตุผลค่ะประสพการไม่มีแระโยชค่ะและความไกล้ชิดก่อไห้เกิดกทรโบภม่กและทำไห้อสีนหายย่างร้ายแรงรวยเหรอไช้เหตุปลทีคนเจาะจงจุดนี้ค่ะเป้าหมายออ่นเกินไปค่ะทุกรสยล้ในแต่ไม่มีแระโยชค่ะ 223.24.162.9 (talk) 18:31, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Google Translate renders this as follows. Curious... Andrew🐉(talk) 19:48, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The bee has proven it by itself. The research results and the fact that people are still young don't provide a solid reason. Experience has no benefit. And closeness causes too much impact and leads to serious losses. Being rich? Is that the reason people focus on this point? The goal is too weak. Everything feels exhausted inside but still serves no purpose. 64.158.132.206 (talk) 19:11, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The bee has been able to confirm the identity of the bee because of the results of the study. Each person of any age has a reason. He experiences a lack of energy and closeness causes an overabundance of the body and causes Is there a serious loss of wealth? Is it possible for people to focus on this point? The goal is too soft. Every taste is delicious but there's no reason for it.

AI survey

@Andrew Davidson hi, I sent you an email about a day ago, just wanted to send a reminder here again. Thank you so much for your time! Looking forward to hear from you, and have a great weekend! Phoebezz22 (talk) 18:34, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I saw the email, thanks, and will reply directly. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:14, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds great, Thank you so much! Will wait for your response then =) Phoebezz22 (talk) 22:18, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Having looked, I'm not sure I'm ready for an interview yet. My activity is currently experimental and today's recent update is a typical example. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Request_for_closure where I tried using Gemini to summarise a discussion. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:47, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Davidson Thank you for the thoughtful reply, I really appreciate it! I also took a look at the examples you provided, and I still believe your interactions in such discussions with examples of LLM outputs will provide very valuable insights - and in fact, I think you'll provide a very interesting perspective. Please let me know if you are interested in participating! And if you don't mind, we can also change to emails. Have a great weekend =) Phoebezz22 (talk) 02:31, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi and... Black Middens

Hi Andrew Davidson! In due deference to your seniority, you should have been the first editor I bothered in my quest for info, but it has only just occurred to me to check who created the article on the Black Middens. To cut a long story short, I'm trying to tie up a couple of loose ends I've come across regarding the Spanish Battery Rocks, at the estuary of the River Tyne, as an oft-mentioned hazard to shipping in the area. However, I have come up against a series of doubts which render that redlink (or simply a section at another article, a non-starter, at least for the moment. I have already bothered another user, Barabbas1312 who, though kindly tolerant of my imposition has, so far, been unable to shed further light on the matter at hand, beyond confirming that the "name doesn't appear to be used on the relevant Admiralty chart, though the battery itself is marked".

Not knowing the area at all, and as sources are few and far between, one of my main doubts is whether said rocks refer to "your" Black Middens or to the rocks on other side of the headland, where the actual artillery battery was located. If the former, since that article already exists, it might just be a matter of adding/finding a couple of sources that link the two sites, or not, as the case may be. Thanks for your time and, as I commented to Barabbas1312, please don't feel obliged to do anything regarding this matter. Happy Editing! Technopat (talk) 17:08, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I started the Black Middens as a spinoff from the Lights of North Shields.

This page about the Spanish Battery shows a map derived from Google. This labels the Black Middens and other specific features fairly clearly and also shows the coastal rocks. My impression is that the Black Middens usually means the reef of rock in the channel where the name label is. The rocks which form the shore around the headland seem to be a more general coastal feature and don't have particular names. So, the rocky shore near to the battery might be considered distinct but I doubt that it warrants a separate article.

We could use an article about the battery as the article Tynemouth Priory and Castle doesn't mention it. We could also use an article about the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade Watch House which was built there specifically because shipwrecks were common. I'll make a start on that now.

A person who might be able to help is Ojsyork who is active in the RNLI and RNLI task force here.

Andrew🐉(talk) 18:01, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Davidson@Technopat

Sorry chaps, can't help. I can find histories of Lifeboat Stations, but any ref. to wreck locations etc I just assume they're correct, and add a link if an article exists.

All the RNLI stations are now done, but I'm still on with List of former RNLI stations, whilst fending off the nonsense created by one other member of the RNLI group!

And then there are RNLI Fleet pages to update constantly - I'm unlikely to get to Volunteer Rocket Brigades, sorry. Ojsyork (talk) 18:55, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings All! Many thanks for your prompt replies. As this is your talk page, Andrew Davidson, I hope you don't mind that I respond here also to Ojsyork so as not to have too many loose ends lying around. Yes, regarding that Spanish Battery link, thanks, I have that one and I agree with you regarding the specific reef versus the rocks under the battery and yes, the Watch House merits an article, so if you're happy to do that, great! Look forward to checking it out!

Regrading the RNLI, Ojsyork, I have just started using its Tynemouth's Station history page as a reference to pages on the Category:Lists of shipwrecks by year. Hope you manage to fend off the nonsense-peddler. In the absence of 10-foot bargepoles, boathooks are quite effective, as are sculls... (I once had the privilege of seeing a Thames waterman —and ex-British commando— smack a drunken idiot who had fallen into the Thames on the dodgy ebb tide over the head with a scull so as to stun him and stop him from capsizing the skiff we had gone to rescue him in. One of the highlights of my youth! Sorry, off on one of me tangents... --Technopat (talk) 21:25, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ITN recognition for Melsonby Hoard

On 26 March 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Melsonby Hoard, which you nominated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Step hen 03:29, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for a truly interesting news item! - I also liked your look at Britannica for Satie. - My story today: Jörg Streli, an architect to whom you can listen (in German, though) and the Jahrhundertring, nominated for GA (both hidden on the same main page). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:58, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ITN recognition for 2025 Grand National

On 10 April 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article 2025 Grand National, which you nominated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Step hen 01:08, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Lunchtime O'Booze" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Lunchtime O'Booze has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 17 § Lunchtime O'Booze until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer 1234qwer 4 02:34, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

File:Peanut the squirrel.png listed for discussion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Peanut the squirrel.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Jay Cubby 18:30, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The BBC Radio 4 series Book of the Week

I saw the banner on your user page about being a deletion patroller. I wonder if you have any views on the current deletion discussion for Book of the Week at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Book of the Week. Snowman (talk) 23:01, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m interested in such radio topics and will see how I can help. Am busy today so more later… Andrew🐉(talk) 12:07, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I found a good detailed source which is visible to me at Google Books so you may be able to read it there too. I have made a variety of other smaller edits and will do more as and when more occur to me.

We ought to start an article about Di Speirs using sources such as this.

And, if you're interested in radio please check out the List of longest-running radio programmes. We should add a Book at Bedtime to that as it's older than the Archers though it did have a break of three years, it seems.

Andrew🐉(talk) 20:03, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have been thinking about an article for Di Speirs too. I am very much a part-time editor, though. Thanks for your work on the Book of the Week article. The delete discussion has been closed with no overall discussion, so the article is retained. Snowman (talk) 09:17, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I saw that Eddie891 had noticed the book that I added as a source and was expecting this to produce a no-consensus result. That's good enough so we can move on to Speirs now. Some people don't like stubs but I'm quite keen on them. The way to get a job done is to start it... Andrew🐉(talk) 09:25, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Case Notes (radio show)

I see that this BBC Radio show has been turned into a redirect (effectively deleted) following a merge discussion earlier this year. I would like to restore this article. Do you know how to go about this? Snowman (talk) 10:28, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the process of editing a redirect is described at WP:EDRED. I don't recall ever listening to that programme and am not seeing many sources for it but will put it on my watchlist and see what you can do with it. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:12, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have listened to the radio show many times. It was redirected following a deletion discussion. I think there has to be a discussion on the talk page before the page can be restored. I have started a discussion on the talk page. Snowman (talk) 09:16, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

DYK nomination of Stuart Stanton (surgeon)

Hello! Your submission of Stuart Stanton (surgeon) at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there at your earliest convenience. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! (CC) Tbhotch^™ 23:53, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ITN recognition for Vera C. Rubin Observatory

On 23 June 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which you nominated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Schwede 66 12:45, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, and thanks for the work at the Vera Rubin Observatory. Maybe you can help, I have no idea how to edit one of those "edit at Wikidata" infoboxes (those should all be local Wikipedia and not offsite), if you do can you change the LSST in the caption to Large Synoptic Survey Telescope? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:58, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the caption should contain the full name 'Vera C. Rubin Observatory' (the other was the former name). Thanks.

DYK for Stuart Stanton (surgeon)

On 3 July 2025, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Stuart Stanton (surgeon), which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that surgeon Stuart Stanton popularised an operation for stress incontinence? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Stuart Stanton (surgeon). You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Stuart Stanton (surgeon)), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Gatoclass (talk) 00:03, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ITN recognition for Glen Michael

On 16 July 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Glen Michael, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Spencer^T•C 16:02, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ITN recognition for Fauja Singh

On 17 July 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Fauja Singh, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Black Kite (talk) 14:24, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ITN recognition for Connie Francis

On 21 July 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Connie Francis, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Schwede 66 19:05, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

July thanks

Thank you for your efforts for Robert Lewis Baker! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:47, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. Gardening and Wikipedia have some similarity, I reckon – activities like labelling, planting, pruning, seeding, weeding and so forth are common to both and the results can be equally attractive and rewarding. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:09, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nice analogy! - Béatrice Uria-Monzon and her story, Julia Hagen and her no story --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:04, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On Bach's day of death, I decorated my user pages in memory, with his music, and my story ends on "peace". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:11, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bach seems timeless and eternal now. Myself, I'm remembering Tom Lehrer who died recently (see ITN). His lyrics are witty and his mastery of the piano seemed excellent. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:35, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Texas

Thanks for defending my article suggestion. I cannot comprehend their logic that it's not relevant. 77eagle (talk) 15:56, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's not based on logic or evidence. Per WP:ITNSIGNIF, "Whether a topic is significant enough for inclusion in ITN is often contentious. ... It is highly subjective whether an event is considered significant enough..." There is some gerrymandering too... Andrew🐉(talk) 17:51, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ITN recognition for Biddy Baxter

On 11 August 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Biddy Baxter, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Ad Orientem (talk) 20:01, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉

That's weird, you have a similar signature to User:Jeraxmoira! ~Rafael! (He, him) • talk • guestbook • projects 14:57, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One reason for that is that we are both WikiDragons. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:33, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Davidson oh, got it! ~Rafael! (He, him) • talk • guestbook • projects 15:34, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are other reasons in my case including:

I wanted to have a shorter sig and the sigil is just a single Unicode character
The sigil looks like the letter D in Apple's iOS font and so it works as an initial
I'm a dragon of a different sort too
Dragons are cool!

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:38, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

New pages patrol September 2025 Backlog drive

September 2025 Backlog Drive \| New pages patrol
On 1 September 2025, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each review will earn 1 point. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:30, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red September 2025

Women in Red | September 2025, Vol 11, Issue 9, Nos. 326, 327, 347, 348, 349
Recognized as the most successful topic-based WikiProject by human changes.

Online events:

New: Alphabet run Q & R | Women writers & their works | Microstates
Continuing, year-long initiatives: #1day1woman | Music

Announcements:

Wikipedia:Developing Countries WikiContest runs 1 July 2025 until 30 September 2025

Tip of the Month:

Researching historical women writers who used pseudonyms requires careful investigation across multiple sources, as many women adopted pen names to avoid gender bias and judgment (e.g., being labeled a bluestocking) and, ultimately, to get published.

Progress ("moving the needle"):

The WikiProject Women in Red homepage is usually updated weekly, using the Humaniki tool. Sadly, Humaniki has been out of action since 23 June.

Other ways to participate:

Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications.
Join the conversations on our talkpage.
Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project.
Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest

--Rosiestep (talk) 23:51, 31 August 2025 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Tech News: 2025-36

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

The Editing team wants to compile a list of templates, jargon terms, and policies used in edit summaries when a copyright violation is removed. This will help them identify the number of edits reverted due to copyright issues. We invite community members from the following Wikis to list these terms in T402601, or to share their list with Trizek_(WMF): Arabic Wikipedia, Czech Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. This project is open until September 9th 2025.

Updates for editors

The CampaignEvents extension has been enabled for all Wikisources. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. The extension has three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. To request the extension for your wiki, visit the Deployment information page. [1]
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. [2]
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. [3][4]
Upon clicking an empty search bar, logged-out users will see suggestions of articles for further reading on English Wikipedia beginning the week of September 22. The feature will be available on both desktop and mobile. All non-English wikis received this change in June and July. The goal is to make it easier for users to find articles. Learn more.
View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

Wikifunctions now has a new capability called "lightweight enumeration types", an enumeration type is simply a fixed set of values that's in the type's definition. This capability makes it quick and easy to define such a type, and allows for the reuse of values that are already present in Wikidata. Here is a newsletter to learn more.
The latest Readers Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: the formation of two new teams — Reader Growth and Reader Experience; insights into declining pageviews and account creations; highlights from the Wikimania Nairobi panel on improving the reading experience; upcoming experiments to engage new and existing readers; and more.

Meetings and events

Spotlight on some Wikimania 2025 Sessions:
- Identifying AI-generated text by searching for ISBNs whose checksums fail: Mathias Schindler of WMDE shared tools to help communities search for these.
- La durabilité du mouvement Wikimedia face aux défis actuels et futurs: This session explored how Wikimedia can stay a trusted source of knowledge in the age of generative AI, information overload, and disinformation.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:46, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in Education: August 2025

This Month in Education

Volume 14 • Issue 8 • August 2025

Contents • Headlines • Subscribe

In This Issue

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: ZI Jony 15:15, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of Streameast for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Streameast is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Streameast until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

^EF⁵ 17:00, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-37

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

The Editing team is working on a new check: Paste check. This check informs newcomers who paste text into Wikipedia that the content might not be accepted. This check is an effort to increase the likelihood that the new content people are adding to Wikipedia is aligned with the Movement's commitment to offering information under a free content license. This check will soon be tested at a few wikis. If your community is interested in this test, please tell us in this task, or contact the team.

Updates for editors

Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will be able to use a linting tool to see errors or other potential problems in wikitext in real time. See the help page for more information. [5]
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. [6]
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. [7]
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. [8][9]
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. [10]
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:10, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in GLAM: August 2025

This Month in GLAM – Volume XV, Issue VIII, August 2025
Headlines
Albania report: Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos campaign 2025 in Albania and Kosovo Brazil report: Expanding Cultural Heritage in Brazil: School communities, Wikisource course, GLAM-Wiki Impact and Wiki Takes Alcântara India report: Digitization starts at two more libraries in West Bengal Indonesia report: Grant for GLAM Indonesia is open! Italy report: From food festivals to PhD courses: Wikimedia in Italian academia New Zealand report: NZ species edit-a-thons, a scholarly article, a course, and Auckland Museum editors at Wikimania Nigeria report: Highlights from Wiki Heritage Fellowship and Policy Advocacy in Nigeria North Macedonia report: Wiki Loves Film – Collaboration with MakeDox Film Festival Poland report: WikiChełmoński: When Wikipedia Becomes a Guide in the Museum Switzerland report: BAM Hackathon, 3D for Cultural Heritage, Wiki Cite UK report: Working towards more image sharing USA report: Wiknics Biodiversity Heritage Library report: News on BHL transition and updates on work by BHLWiki Working Group members AvoinGLAM report: Steps towards a sustainable cultural commons Memory of the World report: A pivotal month Wikisource report: Wikisource Reader app released on Google Play Store Calendar: September's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 18:24, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-38

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

References lists that are made using the <references/> tag will now automatically display with columns in Vector 2022 when readers are using its 'standard' settings for text-size and page-width. [11]
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 [12]
- 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). [13]
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. [14]
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 24. This is planned at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests which happen twice a year. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog.
View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that affected users who used the page-tabs to switch from wikitext editing of a section into the visualeditor. [15]

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. [16]
The new Unicode 17.0 version has been released. The datasets on Commons for the Module:Unicode data have been updated. Wikipedias that do not use the Commons datasets should either update their own data or switch to the Commons datasets.
Users of the Wikimedia Enterprise Structured Contents endpoints can now access Parsed Tables. The new Parsed Tables feature extracts and represents Wikipedia tables in structured JSON. This improves machine accessibility as part of the Structured Contents initiative. Structured Contents output is freely available through the On-demand API, or through Wikimedia Cloud Services.
A dataset of English Wikipedia biographical information from Wikimedia Enterprise has been published on Kaggle, for evaluation and research. This provides structured data from more than 1.5 million biographies, including birth and death dates, education, affiliations, careers, awards, and more (from a June 2024 snapshot).
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2026 in Paris, France, are open until October 31.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:02, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Green's 9th Edit-a-thon

Hello Andrew Davidson:

WikiProject Women in Green is holding a month-long Good Article Editathon event in October 2025!

Running from October 1 to 31, 2025, WikiProject Women in Green (WiG) is hosting a Good Article (GA) editathon event with the theme What Women Do! All experience levels welcome. Never worked on a GA project before? We'll teach you how to get started. Or maybe you're an old hand at GAs – we'd love to have you involved! Participants are invited to work on nominating and/or reviewing GA submissions related to women and women's works (e.g., books, films) during the event period. We hope to collectively cover article subjects from at least 31 different occupations or professions (or broader roles in society) by month's end. GA resources and one-on-one support will be provided by experienced GA editors, and participants will have the opportunity to earn a special WiG barnstar for their efforts.

We hope to see you there!

Grnrchst (talk), Spookyaki (talk) & Alanna the Brave (talk)

You are receiving this message as a member of the WikiProject Women in Green. You can remove yourself from receiving notifications here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:38, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Books & Bytes – Issue 70

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 70, July–August 2025

New collections:
- Times of Malta
- Africa Intelligence
- Intelligence Online
- La Lettre
- Glitz
Spotlight: Wikimania

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 13:15, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(This message was sent to User:Andrew Davidson and is being posted here due to a redirect.)

Tech News: 2025-39

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

On September 24th at 15:00 UTC, all Wikimedia sites users will experience a brief read-only period due to a scheduled datacenter server switchover. The Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team will redirect all traffic from one primary server to its backup. You can listen to the switchover using the "Listen to Wikipedia" tool, where you will hear edits stop for a few minutes during the read-only phase, then resume. This twice-yearly datacenter server switchover ensures reliability by testing the backup datacenter, so that our sites can stay online even if the primary datacenter fails. You can read more about the process on the Diff blog.

Updates for editors

Editors of 60 more Wiktionaries will soon be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them into their pages. A function takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, like adding numbers, converting miles to meters, calculating elapsed time, or declining a word into a case. They will join the other 65 Wiktionary language editions, which already have access to embedded Wikifunctions calls. Later this year, plans are in place to expand to more Wiktionaries and the Incubator.
A new parser function has been added: {{#contentmodel}}. Template editors and admins can use it to get the localized or canonical name of the content model of a specific page. The function makes it easier to create and edit system messages, such as MediaWiki:editinginterface, even when you switch types of pages, like wiki, JavaScript, CSS or JSON page. [17]
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.
View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

Wikifunctions users can now import many essential facts involving geo-coordinates, quantities and time values from Wikidata. This is made possible by the creation of Wikifunctions types for these values, which makes them available for use by functions in Wikifunctions. Learn more about how this works in this video and Wikifunctions' August 1 newsletter (for quantities) and August 22 newsletter (for geo-coordinates).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:51, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red | October 2025, Vol 11, Issue 10

Women in Red | October 2025, Vol 11, Issue 10, Nos. 326, 327, 350, 351, 352
Recognized as the most active topic-based WikiProject by human changes.

Online events:

New: Alphabet run S & T | Women in STEM | Halloween
Continuing, year-long initiatives: #1day1woman | Music

Announcements:

Sister wikiproject Women in Green October 2025 Good Article Edit-a-thon focuses on What Women Do

Tip of the Month:

Notable does not always mean admirable; you don't have to like an article's subject to make the article a useful contribution to Wikipedia.

Progress ("moving the needle"): Statistics available via various tools: previously, Humaniki tool; currently, QLever.
Thank you if you contributed one or more of the 6,283 articles during this period:

19 May 2025: 20.114% of EN-WP biographies are about women (2,066,280; 415,618 women)
24 September 2025: 20.20% of EN-WP biographies are about women (2,088,533 biographies; 421,901 women)

Other ways to participate:

Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications.
Join the conversations on our talkpage.
Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project.
Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest

--Rosiestep (talk) 18:28, 29 September 2025 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Tech News: 2025-40

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

A major software upgrade has been made to Phabricator. The update introduces performance improvements, a refreshed search interface, enhancements to Maniphest task search, updates to user profile pages and project workboards, new Herald automation features, as well as general text input, mobile experience improvements and more. [18]

Updates for editors

The Community Tech team will release the new Community Wishlist extension on October 1, that will improve the way wishes will be submitted. The new extension will allow users to add tags to their wishes to better categorise them, and (in a future iteration) to filter them by status, tags and focus areas. It will also be possible to support individual wishes again, as requested by the community in many instances. The old system will be retired. There will be a brief period of downtime while the extension is deployed and wishes are migrated to the new system. You can read more about this in the latest update or you can consult the current documentation on MediaWiki.
As announced on Diff blog, the production trial of the hCaptcha service for bot detection has begun. The trial is currently using hCaptcha to protect account creation on Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Turkish Wikipedias, where it will replace our existing CAPTCHA (FancyCaptcha). The goal with the trial is to better block bots while also improving usability and accessibility for users who encounter CAPTCHA challenges.
The CampaignEvents extension has been deployed to Wikimedia Commons. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. On Commons, anyone who is a registered user can use it as an event participant. To use it as an organizer, someone needs to have the event organizer right.
Sub-referencing, a new feature to re-use references with different details has been released to German Wikipedia. You can test the feature on testwiki or on betawiki as well. Please share your thoughts on using templates in sub-references or volunteer to become a pilot wiki.
On wikis using the Mentorship system, communities can now opt experienced editors out of Mentorship through Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship. Within this setting, communities may define thresholds, based on edit count and account age, to decide when an editor is considered experienced enough to no longer receive Mentorship. [19]
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. [20]
One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote in Malay (q:ms:) [21]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the User Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks. [22]

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.
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:48, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ITN recognition for 2025 Ryder Cup

On 30 September 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article 2025 Ryder Cup, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Schwede 66 00:30, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ITN recognition for George Smoot

On 30 September 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article George Smoot, which you nominated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Schwede 66 00:32, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]