User talk:ZLEA
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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. [1]
- 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. [2]
- 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 inMediaWiki:Ipboptions
. This allows administrators to easily block temporary accounts for 90 days, which is functionally equivalent to an indefinite block. The advantage of this solution is that it does not clutter Special:BlockList. More documentation is available. [3] 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. [4][5] - 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. [6]
- 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. [7]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 03:37, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
Kosovo military sock
[edit]Hey, looking at List of equipment of the Kosovo Security Force, I'm seeing a renewal of what looks to be the Kosovo military sock. I can't recall the name that the SPI is under and I'm planning to file at RPP to prevent non-autoconfirmed accounts from editing it. Do you mind checking out the article history and offering any thoughts? Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 14:19, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- Pbritti I see you've found the SPI (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Elmedinhajr for all you watchers out there). I do see a lot of overlap, so I think you made a good call. An RPP is probably a good idea as well. On a side note, one of the accounts you listed in the SPI, Daekeo, doesn't appear to exist. Did you make a typo when reporting it? - ZLEA T\C 19:00, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the heads up—yup, that was a spelling error. I was able to find the SPI in my user talk archives thanks to your previous work, so another thank you is in order. If the disruption expands or a clerk/CU/admin needs additional context, I may drop you a line over there. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 19:17, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- No problem. Also, I was pinged when you linked my userpage in your edit summary. I didn't know a ping could be sent that way. 8 years and I'm still learning new things about Wikipedia. - ZLEA T\C 21:13, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the heads up—yup, that was a spelling error. I was able to find the SPI in my user talk archives thanks to your previous work, so another thank you is in order. If the disruption expands or a clerk/CU/admin needs additional context, I may drop you a line over there. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 19:17, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2025
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2025).
- 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.
- Administrators can now restrict the "Add a Link" feature to newcomers. The "Add a Link" Structured Task helps new account holders get started with editing. Administrators can configure this setting in the Community Configuration page.
- The arbitration case Indian military history has been closed.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
- The contentious topic designations for Sri Lanka (SL) and India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (IPA) are folded into this new contentious topic.
- The community-authorized general sanctions regarding South Asian social groups (GS/CASTE) are rescinded and folded into this new contentious topic.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
- The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case closed on 31 July.
- The arbitration case Transgender healthcare and people has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 11 August.
- Wikimania 2025 is happening in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years of Wikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You can register here now.
The Downlink Volume 3, Issue 7
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The Downlink | The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter |
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2025 1 — 31 July |
Volume 3 — Issue 7 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In the News
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Featured Content
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Article of the month
![]() Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments (AREE) is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts project to design a rover that can operate in the environment of Venus, controlled by a wind-powered mechanical computer. Venus's atmosphere is about 90 times denser than Earth's and the surface temperature is at least 462 °C (864 °F), conditions which would prevent a standard electronic computer from operating for any significant period of time. While AREE is being designed for operation on Venus, the rover's design could be re-purposed for use on Mercury, which has a comparably high surface temperature, on Jovian moons Europa or Io, where high radiation makes use of traditional electronics difficult, or on lava flows or highly radioactive areas on Earth. The project was first proposed in 2015, and funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program with a phase-I study in 2016, and a phase-II study from 2017 to 2018. |
Image of the month
Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the Moon
![]() In July of 1969, Apollo 11 successfully fulfilled John F. Kennedy's goal of a person landing on, and returning from, the moon before the 1970s. Taking off on 16 July, the lunar lander, Eagle, touched down on the evening of the 20th (UTC). Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin exited the lander six hours later, becoming the first men on the moon. The pair stayed on the lunar surface for about 21 hours. This image is actually the second of a pair of images, taken by Aldrin so that the lunar surface's ability to bear weight could be measured. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Members
New Members:
Number of active members: 213.
Total number of members: 439.
June Launches
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Article Statistics This data reflects values from 31 July 2025.
Monthly Changes
Since June 2025, there are seven fewer high-importance, six new mid-importance, three new low-importance, three new NA-importance, and 29 new unknown-importance articles, for a total of 34 more articles. There is also one GA-class article, three more B-class articles, three more C-class articles, 18 more Start-class articles, two fewer Stub-class articles, and one fewer lists. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list. |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:48, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
The Signpost: 9 August 2025
[edit]- News and notes: Court order snips out part of Wikipedia article, editors debate whether to frame shreds or pulp them
- Discussion report: News from ANI, AN, RSN, BLPN, ELN, FTN, and NPOVN
- Disinformation report: The article in the most languages
- Community view: News from the Villages Pump
- Crossword: Accidental typography
- Traffic report: I'm not the antichrist or the Superman
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. [8]
- 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. [9]
- 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. [10]
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. [11]
- 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. [12] 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)
Submision rejection
[edit]Good afternoon. I was just wanting to find out why you rejected my submissions on the Memphis Belle page stating that I was an (Not a reliable source). I was stationed at Memphis TNANG from February 1991 to December 2021 retiring at the rank of Master Sergeant. I worked there full time from 1996 till I retired in 2021 and was involved in their conversions from C-130A's to C141B's to C-5A's and finally to C-17A's which they are still flying today. For the C-130A I even included a link to a page that had a brief statement and picture of the nose art. I have a picture in my possession of the C-130A Memphis Belle sitting on the flightline at Memphis TNANG. It was taken at one of our Family days during the base's conversion from C-130A's to C-141B's (you can see the tail of a C-141 in the picture). All of the years I included I got off the 164th Airwing's website, because even thou I was there I don't remember the exact dates (164th Airlift Wing > About Us > History). Thank you for your time.Zort173 (talk) 18:24, 13 August 2025 (UTC)
- Zort173 Hello. I reverted your edit because you did not provide a reliable source. Unfortunately, we cannot use personal experience to add content to articles as there is no way to verify the information. Let me know if you have any more questions. - ZLEA T|C 18:38, 13 August 2025 (UTC)
- Ok, I understand your reasoning. What information do you need.
- For the C-130A Memphis Belle Tail# 57-0463, here are some links showing it setting at the bone yard
- LOCKHEED C130A HERCULES 57-0463 USAF | Seen in the ARM yard … | Flickr
- C-130A 57-0463 | Lockheed C-130A Hercules, s/n 57-0463 (c/n … | Flickr
- Aerial Visuals - Airframe Dossier - Lockheed C-130A Hercules, s/n 57-0463 USAF, c/n 3170
- before they cut the nose art off and sent it the 164th AW where we framed it and hung it on the wall in our chow hall
- DVIDS - Images - Recovered Memphis Belle Nose Art
- This website show that C-130A tail# 57-0463 was assigned to the 155th TAS which is the airwing of the 164th Airlift Wing and was received into AMARC in Jan 1992.
- C-130.net - The ultimate C-130 Hercules reference
- For C-141C Memphis Belle Tail# 67-0024, I did have the model and date wrong for AMARC. It was a C model, I forgot they redesignated it after its glass cockpit upgrade. According to AMARC's website it was sent to them in 2003 not 2004 like I had listed. Type in the tail# on the AMARC website.
- The AMARC Experience - The AMARC Experience
- For the C-5A it was Transferred to 167th AS, 167th AW, West Virginia ANG, Shepherd Field ANGB, Martinsburg, WV.. in 2012 and was retired to AMARC in 2015. Type in the tail# on the AMARC website.
- The AMARC Experience - The AMARC Experience
- I don't know how much more information you need but I understand why you have to be careful. As I've learned while composing this message. some of the information that I had posted was wrong. Zort173 (talk) 01:38, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
- Most of those sources appear to be self-published and therefore are almost certainly unreliable. However, DVIDS is a government service and is probably usable as a primary source. That said, it does not appear to provide the level of detail you want. - ZLEA T|C 02:24, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
- Ok, I tried. I've already put more time into this than I wanted to. Thanks for your help.Zort173 (talk) 03:07, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
- No problem. Let me know if you have any more questions. - ZLEA T|C 03:46, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
- Ok, I tried. I've already put more time into this than I wanted to. Thanks for your help.Zort173 (talk) 03:07, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
- Most of those sources appear to be self-published and therefore are almost certainly unreliable. However, DVIDS is a government service and is probably usable as a primary source. That said, it does not appear to provide the level of detail you want. - ZLEA T|C 02:24, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
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. [13]
- 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. [14]
- 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. [15]
- Five new wikis have been created:
View all 46 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:34, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
The Bugle: Issue 232, August 2025
[edit]
|
The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 10:56, 25 August 2025 (UTC)
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
Template authors can now use additional CSS properties, since the CSS sanitizer used by TemplateStyles was updated. For example:
width: fit-content
;ruby-align
; relative units such aslh
; and custom strings inlist-style-type
. These improvements are a Community Wishlist wish. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]- 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. [31]
- Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find. [32]
- 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. [33][34]
- One new wiki has been created: a Wiktionary in Betawi (
wikt:bew:
) [35] 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
andrc_type
are being removed in favor ofrc_source
. Queries to these older fields will start to fail starting this week and developers should userc_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. [36] 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)
Nomination for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!
[edit]Nominations for the upcoming Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:03, 1 September 2025 (UTC)
"Talk:Quora"
[edit]Yeah, thanks for notifying me, really. Indeed, I posted a "wp:forum"-styled message instead of a refined one. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 06:45, 1 September 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-36
[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 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. [37]
- 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. [38]
- On September 3rd, 2025 we will increase the sampling percentages of our group by toggle experiment of the
Special:RecentChanges
,Special:Watchlist
, andSpecial: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. [39][40] - 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 20:47, 1 September 2025 (UTC)
Signature contains delimiter
[edit]Hello, using the vertical bar in your signature is not recommended, as it usually breaks things when placed in templates and Wikitables since it is a common delimiter in these cases (You'll see your signature is broken in the section closer). If you wish to keep the display of a vertical bar, I suggest either using {{!}}, or the plain "/". Thank you, Zinnober9 (talk) 23:54, 5 September 2025 (UTC)
- Zinnober9 Yeah, I should have seen that coming. I've since replaced it with the mostly identical-looking U+01C0. - ZLEA TǀC 02:29, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
- I also tried {{!}}, but turns out it doesn't work in signatures because it thinks it's a template and tries substituting it. - ZLEA TǀC 02:31, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
- Ah, I forgot about the template rejection aspect since I'm usually fixing it at the end result and not within the signature settings. Thanks for updating, U+01C0 looks like a good choice. Hope you have a great weekend! Zinnober9 (talk) 02:53, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks, you too. - ZLEA TǀC 03:23, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
- Ah, I forgot about the template rejection aspect since I'm usually fixing it at the end result and not within the signature settings. Thanks for updating, U+01C0 looks like a good choice. Hope you have a great weekend! Zinnober9 (talk) 02:53, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2025
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2025).
- 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.
- Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find. T393240
- The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been closed.
- An RfC is in progress to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
The Signpost: 9 September 2025
[edit]- News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation loses a round in court
- In the media: Congress probes, mayor whitewashed, AI stinks
- Disinformation report: A guide for Congress
- Recent research: Minority-language Wikipedias, and Wikidata for botanists
- Technology report: A new way to read Wikisource
- Traffic report: Check out some new Weapons, weapon of choice
- Essay: The one question
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
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. [41]
When browsing a wiki (like
en.wikipedia.org
), the software responds in one of two ways: a desktop page, or a redirect to a mobile version on an "m" domain (likeen.m.wikipedia.org
). Over the next three weeks, MediaWiki will start displaying the mobile version to mobile devices directly on the standard domain, without this redirect. This change does not affect existing m-dot URLs, or the "Desktop view" opt-out. Learn more. [42]- 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. [43]
- 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. [44][45]
- 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. [46]
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 01:11, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!
[edit]Voting for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open! A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. Voting closes at 23:59 UTC on 29 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:26, 15 September 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-38
[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
- 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. [47] - 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 [48] - for both
intitle:
andinsource:
keywords: shorthand character classes for digits (\d
), whitespace (\s
), and word characters (\w
); and escape codes for line feed (\r
), newline (\n
), tab (\t
), and unicode (e.g.\uHHHH
). [49]
- for the
- When you search for text that looks like an IP, the system will now show search results. It used to take you to the contributions for that IP instead of showing search results. [50]
- 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. [51]
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. [52]
- 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.