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Administrators' newsletter – June 2025

[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed

Interface administrator changes

added 0xDeadbeef

CheckUser changes

readded L235

Oversight changes

readded L235

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC is open to determine whether the English Wikipedia community should adopt a position on AI development by the WMF and its affiliates.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • An arbitration case named Indian military history has been opened. Evidence submissions for this case close on 8 June.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:17, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-25

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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

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • Foundation staff and technical volunteers use Wikimedia APIs to build the tools, applications, features, and integrations that enhance user experiences. Over the coming years, the MediaWiki Interfaces team will be investing in Wikimedia web (HTTP) APIs to better serve technical volunteer needs and protect Wikimedia infrastructure from potential abuse. You can read more about their plans to evolve the APIs in this Techblog post.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:36, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-26

[edit]

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

  • This week, the Moderator Tools and Machine Learning teams will continue the rollout of a new filter to Recent Changes, releasing it to the third and last batch of Wikipedias. This filter utilizes the Revert Risk model, which was created by the Research team, to highlight edits that are likely to be reverted and help Recent Changes patrollers identify potentially problematic contributions. The feature will be rolled out to the following Wikipedias: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Latin Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia. The rollout will continue in the coming weeks to include the rest of the Wikipedias in this project. [1]

Updates for editors

  • Last week, temporary accounts were rolled out on Czech, Korean, and Turkish Wikipedias. This and next week, deployments on larger Wikipedias will follow. Share your thoughts about the project. [2]
  • Later this week, the Editing team will release Multi Check to all Wikipedias (except English Wikipedia). This feature shows multiple Reference checks within the editing experience. This encourages users to add citations when they add multiple new paragraphs to a Wikipedia article. This feature was previously available as an A/B test. The test shows that users who are shown multiple checks are 1.3 times more likely to add a reference to their edit, and their edit is less likely to be reverted (-34.7%). [3]
  • A few pages need to be renamed due to software updates and to match more recent Unicode standards. All of these changes are related to title-casing changes. Approximately 71 pages and 3 files will be renamed, across 15 wikis; the complete list is in the task. The developers will rename these pages next week, and they will fix redirects and embedded file links a few minutes later via a system settings update.
  • Recurrent item View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that had caused pages to scroll upwards when text near the top was selected. [4]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Editors can now use Lua modules to filter and transform tabular data for use with Extension:Chart. This can be used for things like selecting a subset of rows or columns from the source data, converting between units, statistical processing, and many other useful transformations. Information on how to use transforms is available. [5]
  • The all_links variable in AbuseFilter is now renamed to new_links for consistency with other variables. Old usages will still continue to work. [6]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: the recent updates for the "Add a Link" Task, two new Newcomer Engagement Features, and updates to Community Configuration.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:18, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 June 2025

[edit]
Admins arrested in Belarus.
Pardon our alliteration!
A get-out-of-jail card!
And other new research publications.
Holy men and not-as-holy movies.
Get your self-nomination in by July 2nd!
After two years RuWiki fails to thrive.
With some sweet-and-sour sauce!
Every thing you need to know about the Wikimedia Foundation?
Egad!
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:29, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy First Edit Day!

[edit]
Hey, TheAstorPastor. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee!
Have a great day! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 02:56, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WikiCup 2025 July newsletter

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The third round of the 2025 WikiCup ended on 28 June. This round was again competitive, with three contestants scoring more than 1,000 round points:

Everyone who competed in round 3 will advance to round 4 unless they have withdrawn. This table shows all competitors who have received tournament points so far, while the full scores for round 3 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 4 featured articles, 16 featured lists, 1 featured picture, 9 featured-topic articles, 149 good articles, 27 good-topic articles, and more than 90 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 18 In the News articles, and they have conducted more than 200 reviews.

Remember that any content promoted after 28 June but before the start of Round 4 can be claimed in Round 4. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:50, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-27

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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

Updates for editors

  • 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. [7]
  • 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. [8][9]
  • Wishlist item 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.
  • Recurrent item 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. [10]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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 23:38, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Books & Bytes – Issue 69

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The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 69, May–June 2025

In this issue we highlight a new partnership, Citation Watchlist and, as always, a roundup of news and community items related to libraries and digital knowledge.

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 13:11, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2025

[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed NuclearWarfare

Interface administrator changes

added L235

Guideline and policy news

Miscellaneous

  • The 2025 Developing Countries WikiContest will run from 1 July to 30 September. Sign up now!
  • 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!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:49, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-28

[edit]

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. [11]
  • 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.
  • Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis can now use Special:VerifyOATHForUser to check if users have enabled two-factor authentication. [12]
  • Wishlist item 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. [13]
  • Recurrent item View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • 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.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

  • 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".

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:02, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-29

[edit]

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. [14][15]
  • Recurrent item 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. [16]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

Meetings and events

  • 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!

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:06, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 18 July 2025

[edit]
Endowment tax form, Wikimania, elections, U4C, fundraising and a duck!
And how do we know?
Five-year journey comes to healthy fruition.
Wikimedians from around the world will gather in person and online at the twentieth annual meeting of Wikimania.
As well as "hermeneutic excursions" and other scientific research findings.
The report covers the Foundation's operations from July 2023 - June 2024
A step towards objective and comprehensive coverage of a project nearly too big to follow.
Drawn this century!
How data from the Wikipedia "necessary articles" lists can shed new light on the gender gap
Annual plans, external trends, infrastructure, equity, safety, and effectiveness. What does it all mean?
Rest in peace.
Wouldn't it be nice without billionaires, scandals, deaths, and wars?
If you are too blasé for Mr. Blasé and don't give a FAC.
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:51, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-30

[edit]

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. [17]
  • 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.
  • Recurrent item View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • For AbuseFilter editors on some wikis, it is now possible to filter edits based on the RevertRisk score of the edit being attempted. It is only populated if the action being evaluated is an edit. For more information, please see the ORES/AbuseFilter variables documentation.
  • The Beta Cluster wikis have been moved from beta.wmflabs.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.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

  • WikiCite 2025 will take place from 29–31 August, both online and in-person in Bern, Switzerland. The event's goals are to reconnect communities, institutions, and individuals working with open citations, bibliographic data, and the Wikidata/Wikibase ecosystem. Registration is open and the call for proposals will be announced soon. [18]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:39, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-31

[edit]

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. [19]
  • 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. [20]
  • Recurrent item View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:23, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-32

[edit]

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. [21]
  • 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. [22]
  • 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. [23]
  • Recurrent item View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • 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. [24][25]
  • 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. [26]
  • 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. [27]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

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

MediaWiki message delivery 03:37, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2025

[edit]

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

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion, G15, has been enacted. It applies to pages generated by a large language model (LLM) without human review.
  • Following a request for comment, there is a new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses of temporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors can request access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • The arbitration case Indian military history has been closed.
    • South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
    • The contentious topic designations for Sri Lanka (SL) and India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (IPA) are folded into this new contentious topic.
    • The community-authorized general sanctions regarding South Asian social groups (GS/CASTE) are rescinded and folded into this new contentious topic.
  • The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case closed on 31 July.
  • The arbitration case Transgender healthcare and people has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 11 August.

Miscellaneous

  • Wikimania 2025 is happening in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years of Wikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You can register here now.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:57, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 9 August 2025

[edit]
Plus a mysterious CheckUser incident, and the news with Wikinews.
A review of June, July and August.
Who is this guy?
Threads since June.
And slop.
It's not a conlang, it's a crossword puzzle.
gang aft agley, an' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, for promis'd joy!
Everybody's Somebody's Fool.
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:25, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-33

[edit]

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. [28]
  • The Product and Technology Advisory Council published a set of proposed experiments the Wikimedia Foundation can try to improve communication with community. Feedback on the proposals are welcomed until August 22 on this talk page.
  • The search bar on the Minerva skin (mobile) has been updated to use the same type-ahead search component that is used on the Vector 2022 skin. There are no changes in search functionality but there are minor visual changes. Specifically, the close-search button has been changed from an "X" to a back arrow. This helps to distinguish it from the other "X" button that is used to clear any text. [29]
  • 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. [30]
  • Recurrent item View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • The multiwiki datasets of Unicode data have been moved to Category:Unicode Module Datasets on Wikimedia Commons, to follow the idea of "One common data source, multiple local wikis". Most wikis have been updated to use the Commons version. You can ask questions at the talkpage. [31]
  • 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. [32]
  • Recurrent item 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 23:26, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-34

[edit]

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. [33]
  • 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. [34]
  • 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. [35]
  • Five new wikis have been created:
  • Recurrent item View all 46 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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 00:34, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-35

[edit]

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

  • Wishlist item Advanced item 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. [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]
  • 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. [51]
  • Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find. [52]
  • 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. [53][54]
  • One new wiki has been created: a Wiktionary in Betawi (wikt:bew:) [55]
  • Recurrent item View all 39 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Two fields of the recentchanges database table are being removed. rc_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. [56]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: support for new languages in MediaWiki and translatewiki; the start of the Language Onboarding and Development project to help support the growth of new and small wikis; updates on research projects; and more.

Meetings and events

  • The next Language Community Meeting is happening soon, August 29th at 15:00 UTC. This week's meeting will cover: the Avro keyboard developers from Wikimedia Bangladesh, who were recently awarded a national award for their contributions to this keyboard; and other topics.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:09, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WikiCup 2025 September newsletter

[edit]

The fourth round of the 2025 WikiCup ended on 29 August. The penultimate round saw three contestants score more than 800 points:

Everyone who competed in Round 4 will advance to Round 5 unless they have withdrawn. This table shows all competitors who have received tournament points so far, while the full scores for Round 4 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 9 featured articles, 12 featured lists, 98 good articles, 9 good topic articles, more than 150 reviews, nearly 100 did you know articles, and 18 in the news articles.

In advance of the fifth and final round, the judges would like to thank every contestant for their hard work. As a reminder, any content promoted after 29 August but before the start of Round 5 can be claimed in Round 5. In addition, note that Round 5 will end on 31 October at 23:59 UTC. Awards at the end of Round 5 will be distributed based on who has the most tournament points over all five rounds, and special awards will be distributed based on high performance in particular areas of content creation (e.g., most featured articles in a single round).

Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges – Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), Frostly (talk · contribs), Guerillero (talk · contribs) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs) – are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck!

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:48, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-36

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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. [57]
  • 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. [58]
  • 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. [59][60]
  • 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.
  • Recurrent item View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:47, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2025

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

Administrator changes

readded Euryalus
removed

Interface administrator changes

readded Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

readded AmandaNP
removed SQL

Oversight changes

readded AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC is open on whether use of emojis with no encyclopedic value in mainspace and draftspace (e.g., at the start of paragraphs or in place of bullet points) should be added as a criterion under G15.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been closed.
  • An RfC is in progress to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:16, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 9 September 2025

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UK Online Safety Act remains undefeated.
Plus Wiki rules, Wiki Spin, and physicists get street cred!
The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance.
And other new research findings.
Tis true: there's magic in the web of it.
With the usual mix of war, death, super heroes, a belt, and Wednesday.
It's an easy one.
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:07, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-37

[edit]

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

  • Advanced item 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. [61]
  • Advanced item 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. [62]
  • 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. [63]
  • 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. [64][65]
  • 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. [66]
  • Recurrent item View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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 01:11, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]