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Tech News: 2025-32

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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

  • 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 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. [3]
  • 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. [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]
  • 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]

Kosovo military sock

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2025

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

Administrator changes

added
removed

CheckUser changes

removed

Oversight changes

removed

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]
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The Downlink The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter
2025
1 — 31 July
Volume 3 — Issue 7
Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink
In the News
  • The first launch attempt of an Australian-made rocket, Gilmour Space Technologies' Eris-1, was made on 29/30 July. The launch vehicle crashed 14 seconds after launch due to insufficient thrust.
  • The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite launched on 30 July. The first radar imaging that uses dual frequencies, it is a joint project between NASA and ISRO, and believed to cost ~US$1.5 billion, making it one of the most expensive Earth-imaging satellites.
Featured Content
Article of the month
Artist's conception of AREE on the surface of Venus, showing the wind turbine inside the rover's frame.

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
All times stated here are in UTC. See a current list: here.

  1. China Long March 4C — Shiyan 28B-01 (3 Jul. at 09:35) (success)
  2. Russia Soyuz-2.1a — Progress MS-31 (3 Jul. at 19:31) (success)
  3. United StatesIsrael Falcon 9 Block 5 — Dror-1 (PR-8000) (13 Jul. at 05:04) (success)
  4. China Hyperbola-1 — Kunpeng-03 (Enshi Xidou Shanquan/HS-9) (29 Jul. at 04:10) (success)
  5. Australia Eris Block 1 — Jar of Vegemite (29 Jul. at 21:30) (launch failure)
  6. China Long March 8A — 9 Guowang (30 Jul. at 07:49) (success)
  7. IndiaUnited States GSLV Mark II — NISAR (30 Jul. at 12:10) (success)
 Article Statistics
This data reflects values from 31 July 2025.
Spaceflight articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total
FA 7 28 15 8 58
FL 3 4 4 11
FM 124 124
A 1 2 1 4
GA 11 26 33 57 2 129
B 15 85 201 224 4 529
C 45 162 588 788 40 1,623
Start 16 140 1,019 2,603 461 4,239
Stub 7 204 2,035 247 2,493
List 10 120 109 236 1 36 512
Category 1,270 1,270
Disambig 47 47
File 222 222
Portal 55 55
Project 109 109
Redirect 2 42 134 1,248 1,426
Template 528 528
NA 1 1
Other 25 25
Assessed 105 573 2,217 6,090 3,630 790 13,405
Unassessed 10 130 140
Total 105 573 2,217 6,100 3,630 920 13,545
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.
Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:48, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 9 August 2025

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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) 02:26, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-33

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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

  • 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]
  • 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. [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]
  • 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]

Submision rejection

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
No problem. Let me know if you have any more questions. - ZLEA T|C 03:46, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-34

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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

  • 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:
  • 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]

The Bugle: Issue 232, August 2025

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Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-35

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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

  • 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. [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]
  • 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. [36]
  • 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]

Nomination for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!

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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)[reply]

"Talk:Quora"

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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)[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. [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, 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. [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.
  • 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]

Signature contains delimiter

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Thanks, you too. - ZLEA TǀC 03:23, 6 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) 17:17, 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

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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 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. [41]
  • 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. [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]
  • 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]

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)[reply]

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: 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). [49]
  • 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.
  • Recurrent item 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).
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

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MediaWiki message delivery 17:03, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[edit]
The Downlink The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter
2025
1 — 31 August
Volume 3 — Issue 8
Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink
In the News
Article of the month

NAOS (National Advanced Optical System) is a high-resolution Earth observation satellite developed by OHB Italia for the Luxembourg Directorate of Defence as part of the Luxembourg Earth Observation System (LUXEOSys). Designed for dual-use governmental and military purposes, NAOS provides very high-resolution optical imagery for applications in defense, security, and humanitarian efforts, supporting organizations such as NATO, European Union, and the United Nations. The satellite was launched on August 26, 2025, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

NAOS will be operated by LUXEOPs, consortium consisting of RHEA System Luxembourg, LUXSPACE, OHB and RHEA System.

Image of the month
Apollo 15 Lunar Module

Launched on 26 July, 1971, Apollo 15 was the fourth Apollo mission to successfully land on the moon, and the first of the longer, more science-focused J Missions. Landing at Hadley–Apennine on the 30, Commander David Scott and Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin (Irwin on left) stayed on the moon's surface until 2 August, while Command Module Pilot Alfred Worden stayed in orbit, collecting a variety of data on the moon. Apollo 15 was the first mission to use the Lunar Roving Vehicle (on right), which allowed Scott and Irwin to travel farther from the Lunar Lander (center) than previously possible.

On 4 August, the lunar orbiter departed from orbit at the end of Apollo 15's 74th lunar orbit. On the 5, Worden performed an EVA which lasted 39 minutes. This was the first of three deep-space EVAs, all performed during J Missions. The command module landed in the North Pacific Ocean on the 7, with the command module and crew being recovered by USS Okinawa. Apollo 15 was the longest Apollo mission, lasting for a total of 12 days and 7 hours, until Apollo 17, which lasted 12 days, 13 hours, and 52 minutes.

Members

New Members: No new members

Number of active members: 213. Total number of members: 439.

August Launches
All times stated here are in UTC. See a current list here.

  1. France Ariane 62 — MetOp-SG A1 (13 Aug. at 00:37) (success)
  2. United States Vulcan Centaur VC4S — NTS-3 (13 Aug. at 00:56) (success)
  3. Russia Soyuz-2.1b — Bion-M No.2 (20 Aug. at 17:13) (success)
  4. United States SpaceX Starship — 8 Starlink simulators (26 Aug. at 23:30) (success)
 Article Statistics
This data reflects values from 31 August 2025.
Spaceflight articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total
FA 7 28 15 8 58
FL 3 4 4 11
FM 124 124
A 1 2 1 4
GA 11 27 33 57 2 130
B 16 85 200 226 4 531
C 45 162 594 794 46 1,641
Start 16 140 1,017 2,615 463 4,251
Stub 6 203 2,022 246 2,477
List 10 119 109 236 1 37 512
Category 1,275 1,275
Disambig 48 48
File 260 260
Portal 55 55
Project 109 109
Redirect 2 42 140 1,246 1,430
Template 528 528
NA 1 1
Other 30 30
Assessed 106 572 2,219 6,103 3,677 798 13,475
Unassessed 10 129 139
Total 106 572 2,219 6,113 3,677 927 13,614
Monthly Changes

Since July 2025, there is one new top-importance, one fewer high-importance, two new mid-importance, 13 new low-importance, 47 new NA-importance, and seven new unknown-importance articles, for a total of 69 more articles. There is also one more GA-class article, two more B-class articles, 18 more C-class articles, 12 more Start-class articles, and 16 fewer Stub-class articles.

Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list.
Newsletter contributors: User:Ships&Space

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:22, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-39

[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

  • 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. [53]
  • 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.
  • Recurrent item View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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 22:52, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Bugle: Issue 233, September 2025

[edit]
Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 11:53, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-40

[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

  • 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. [54]

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. [55]
  • 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. [56]
  • One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote in Malay (q:ms:) [57]
  • Recurrent item View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the User Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks. [58]

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.
  • 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 20:49, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 2 October 2025

[edit]
This time "not merely negative".
Wickedpedia wrangles post-truth politics.
Unexpected news!
Fifty hot topics from fourteen noticeboards.
Policy, politics, icons, captchas, and LLMs.
And other recent publications.
When to walk away.
Rest in peace.
Celebrities, deaths and software.
All invited!
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:53, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-41

[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

  • Paste Check is a new Edit Check feature to help avoid and fight copyright violations. When editors paste text into an article, Paste Check prompts them to confirm the origin and licensing of the content. Starting Wednesday, 8 October, 22 wikis will test Paste Check. Paste Check will help new volunteers understand and follow the policies and guidelines necessary to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia projects.

Updates for editors

  • Mobile devices will receive mobile articles directly on the standard domain (like en.wikipedia.org), instead of via a redirect to an "m" domain (like en.m.wikipedia.org). This change improves performance. This week it will be enabled on Wikipedias. The existing mobile URLs and the "Desktop view" opt-out remain available. Learn more. [59]
  • New date filters, creationdate: and lasteditdate:, are now available in the wiki search engine. This allows users to filter search results by a page's first or last revision date. The filters support comparison operators (e.g. >2024) and relative dates (e.g. today-1d), making it easier to find recently updated content or pages within specific age ranges. [60]
  • Wikifunctions now supports rich text in embedded calls across the 150 wikis where it's enabled. To showcase this, the team created a Latin declination table that Wiktionary editors can use to automatically generate noun forms, producing clear, formatted results — see an example output. If you need any help or have any feedback, please contact the Wikifunctions Team. [61]
  • An edit link will now appear inside the categories box on article pages for logged in users, which will directly launch the VisualEditor category dialog. [62]
  • Recurrent item View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a problem downloading pdf files last week and that has been resolved. [63]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The field rev_sha1 in the revision database table is being removed in favor of content_sha1 in the content database table. See the announcement for more information.
  • The Reader Experience team will roll out Dark Mode user interface on all Wikimedia sites on October 29, 2025. All anonymous users of Wikimedia sites will have the option to activate a color scheme that features light-colored text on a dark background. This is designed to provide a more comfortable reading experience, especially in low-light situations. Template authors and technical contributors are encouraged to learn how to make pages ready for Dark mode and address any compatibility issues found in templates in their wiki before the enablement. Please contact the Web team for questions or any support on this talk page before the enablement. [64]
  • Starting on Monday, October 6, API endpoints under the rest.php path will be rerouted through a new internal API Gateway. Individual wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board. [65]
  • 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 17:20, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

P-51 talk page revert

[edit]

Just in case you weren't aware, the IP contribution you reverted is a long-time-abuser who has edited this talk page and multiple times - see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Waterspaces where you can see the various IP addresses used as well as account "Wisdom-inc". So nicely done on the revert, sockpuppets can never win. 10mmsocket (talk) 07:02, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

10mmsocket Thanks. That actually explains a lot. - ZLEA TǀC 16:51, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2025

[edit]

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

Administrator changes

removed

CheckUser changes

removed Vanamonde93

Arbitration

  • After a motion, arbitration enforcement page protections no longer need to be logged in the AELOG. A bot now automatically posts protections at WP:AELOG/P. To facilitate this bot, protection summaries must include a link to the relevant CT page (e.g. [[WP:CT/BLP]]), and you will receive talk page reminders if you forget to specify the contentious topic but otherwise indicate it is an AE action.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:58, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-42

[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

  • Last week, improvements to account security and two-factor authentication (2FA) features were enabled across all wikis. These changes include user interface improvements for Special:AccountSecurity, the support of multiple 2FA methods via authenticator apps and portable security keys (previously users could only enable one method), and a new Recovery Codes module which facilitates fewer account lockouts due to lost two-factor apps and devices. As part of the Account Security project, work is continuing through the rest of 2025 on further user experience improvements, and support for passkeys as an alternate second factor.

Updates for editors

  • Another part of the Account security project is making 2FA generally available to all users. Along with editors with advanced privileges, such as administrators and bureaucrats, 40% of editors now have access to 2FA. You can check if you have access at Special:AccountSecurity. Instructions for activation are on the linked page. The plan is to continue increasing availability if it is determined that the user support capabilities are able to support global usage. [66]
  • This week, users at wikis where talk page Usability Improvements are already available by default (everywhere except the 12 wikis listed in T379264) will gain the ability to Thank a comment directly from the talk page it appears on. Before this change, Thanking could only be done by visiting the revision history of the talk page. You can learn more about this change. [67]
  • Users who have not verified their email address will soon be receiving monthly Notification reminders to do so. This is because users who have verified their email can more easily recover their account. These reminders will not be sent if the user is inactive or removes the unverified email from their account. [68][69]
  • Recurrent item View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a fix was made for an occasional error with saving translated paragraphs in the Content Translation tool, and the related error messages are now easier to see. [70]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The Unsupported Tools Working Group has chosen Video2Commons as the first tool for its pilot cycle. The group will explore ways to improve and sustain the tool over the coming months. Learn more on Meta.
  • 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 18:56, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[edit]
The Downlink The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter
2025
1 — 30 September
Volume 3 — Issue 9
Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink
In the News
Article of the month

Project POSTAR was the first space experiment created entirely by members of the Boy Scouts of America. On September 12, 1992, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-47 carried 10 Get Away Special (GAS) canisters. Amongst these GAS cansisters was G-102 sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America's Exploring Division in cooperation with the TRW Systems Integration Group, Fairfax, Virginia. The project was named Project POSTAR. (The name was a combination of the words "Post" and "Star").

Image of the month
Space Shuttle Enterprise

The Space Shuttle Enterprise (OV-101) was the first orbiter built in the Space Shuttle program. Designed for atmospheric test flights, it lacked both engines and a heat shield, making it unable to go to space. Rolled out on 17 September 1976, it was initially named Constitution, but was renamed following a large letter-writing campaign from Trekkies. Unlike its eponym, the USS Enterprise from the original Star Trek series, OV-101 never achieved spaceflight; originally intended to be refitted to become the second space-rated orbiter after Columbia, changes to the design of the Space Shuttle made it both simpler and cheaper to instead construct a new shuttle, Challenger, around a test article. It was later considered for refitting following the Challenger disaster, but it was instead decided to build a replacement, Endeavour, out of spare parts from the construction of Discovery and Atlantis.

Enterprise flew a total of five times, from 12 August to 26 October, 1977. It was then flown to Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, where it was placed into the Saturn V dynamic test stand for the Mated Vertical Ground Vibration Testing, in order to test the Space Shuttle's launch stack. It was then used for a variety of fit checks at Kennedy Space Center and Vandenberg Air Force Base, between which it toured Europe and North America, including a showing at the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition. It was then moved to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum on 18 November 1985. It was then moved to its present location aboard the USS Intrepid museum ship on 12 December 2011.

Members

New Members:

Number of active members: 214. Total number of members: 440.

September Launches
All times stated here are in UTC. See a current list here.

  1. United States Falcon 9 Block 5 — 28 Starlink (5 Sept. at 13:56) (success)
  2. United States Falcon 9 Block 5 — 24 Starlink (6 Sept. at 18:06) (success)
  3. United StatesIndonesia Falcon 9 Block 5 — Nusantara Lima (12 Sept. at 00:56) (success)
  4. China Long March 2D — Shiyan 30A/B (29 Sept. at 03:00) (success)
 Article Statistics
This data reflects values from 30 September 2025.
Spaceflight articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total
FA 7 28 15 8 58
FL 3 4 4 11
FM 124 124
A 1 2 1 4
GA 12 27 33 57 2 131
B 15 79 191 230 5 520
C 45 167 599 808 1 49 1,669
Start 15 135 1,035 2,658 473 4,316
Stub 5 196 1,989 245 2,435
List 11 119 109 235 1 39 514
Category 1,276 1,276
Disambig 48 48
File 261 261
Portal 55 55
Project 109 109
Redirect 2 42 141 1,245 1,430
Template 529 529
NA 1 1
Other 30 30
Assessed 106 565 2,226 6,131 3,680 813 13,521
Unassessed 10 126 136
Total 106 565 2,226 6,141 3,680 939 13,657
Monthly Changes

Since August 2025, there are seven fewer high-importance, seven more mid-importance, 28 more low-importance, three more NA-importance, and twelve more unknown-importance articles, for a total of 43 more articles. There is also one more GA-class article, 11 fewer B-class articles, 28 fewer C-class articles, 65 more Start-class articles, 42 fewer Stub-class articles, and two more lists.

Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list.
Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:11, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-43

[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

  • To optimize how user data is stored in our databases, the saved preferences of users who haven't logged in for over five years and have fewer than 100 edits will be cleared. When those users return, default settings will apply. [71]
  • Recurrent item View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a broken link from the GlobalContributions interface message to the XTools GlobalContributions page which has now been fixed. [72]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The work to reroute all traffic to API endpoints under the rest.php route through a common API gateway is now complete. If any issues are observed, please file a phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
  • Edits to Wikidata references or qualifiers will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. [73]
  • 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 19:33, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 20 October 2025

[edit]
And the "Global Resource Distribution Committee" emerges.
Two shortlisted WMF Board candidates removed from the ballot.
Who was bumped and why?
...while Musk prepares to launch "Grokipedia".
Serial-killer miniseries, deceased scientist, government shutdowns and Sandalwood hit "Kantara" crowd the tubes.
Don't get too excited before you read this.
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:44, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

About the J-35 picture

[edit]

Hi, Mr.ZLEA, I’m In Stealth Mode.

Thanks for the picture which you chose, but is any other pictures better than this one? That’s the prototype of J-35, if you can help me change this picture it would better when you knew it.

Thanks you so much From In Stealth Mode In Stealth Mode (talk) 00:41, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Stealth Mode At the moment, it appears there is no better image available. Most of the images on Wikimedia Commons were copyright violations and either have been deleted or are expected to be deleted within the next few hours. The only remaining image of a production aircraft is this one from below, but its unusual angle makes it less suitable than the prototype image currently in the infobox. - ZLEA TǀC 03:35, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OkOk,I got it,Thank you so much In Stealth Mode (talk) 14:35, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

About the numbers of J-35

[edit]

Hi, Mr.ZLEA,I’m ISM

Emmmm, Are the sources not correct or something wrong for the numbers of J-35?

here’s the sources: https://www.hk01.com/即時中國/60286260/央視曝光殲-35工廠-產量密碼-藏在機身編號中-號稱72小時造1架

you restored revision that has no new numbers of J-35

Tank you so much. In Stealth Mode (talk) 00:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Stealth Mode The revert was primarily to remove the image that was added before your edit, which was yet another copyright violation. I saw that your subsequent edit changed the caption, but I didn't notice the other changes you made. I have no objection to restoring the updated number so long as you cite the source in the article (providing a link in an edit summary is not enough because it requires the reader to dig through the edit history to find the source). - ZLEA TǀC 01:00, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Got it Got it, love you In Stealth Mode (talk) 01:37, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-44

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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

  • The Wikipedia iOS app has launched an A/B/C test of improvements made to the tabbed browsing feature for select regions and languages. The test, named “More dynamic tabs”, explores new tab experiences and includes “Did you know” and “Because you read” article recommendations. You can read more on the project page.
  • Autoconfirmed users on small and medium wikis with the CampaignEvents extension can now use Event Registration without the Event Organizer right. This feature lets organizers enable registration, manage participants, and lets users register with one click instead of signing event pages.
  • Recurrent item View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue of flashing colors when holding or pressing the arrow keys under the dark mode settings in Vector 2022 has been fixed. [74]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The CampaignEvents extension will be deployed to all remaining wikis during the week of 17 November 2025. The extension currently includes three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. For this rollout, Invitation List will not be enabled on Wikifunctions and MediaWiki unless requested by those communities. Visit the deployment page to learn more.
  • The SwaggerUI-based REST sandbox experience is now live on all wiki projects. The sandbox can be accessed through the Special:RestSandbox page. Please report any issues to the MediaWiki Interfaces team board, or join the discussion on the project launch page. [75]
  • Transform endpoints with a trailing slash path in the MediaWiki REST API are now marked as deprecated. They will remain functional during this time, but removal is expected by the end of January 2026. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found and tested using the REST Sandbox. See the MediaWiki REST API Deprecation page for more detailed information about the API deprecation policies and procedures.
  • A dedicated changelog now exists for the MediaWiki REST API. The changelog provides an overview of these changes, making it easier for developers to keep track of improvements and iterations. Announcements will also continue to flow through the standard communication channels, including Tech News and email distribution lists, but can now be more easily referenced from a central location. If you have feedback about the style, structure, or content of this changelog, please join the discussion.
  • Administrators can delete the tracking category which was previously added by the JsonConfig extension, as it is no longer used. See the categories linked from Q130635582. It is OK if there are still pages listed in the category as that is just a caching issue, and they will be automatically cleared out the next time each page is edited. [76]
  • 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 19:28, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Bugle: Issue 234, October 2025

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Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 03:59, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

November article improvement drive

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Starting on 1 November, the month-long 2025 Article Improvement Drive will target a number of content improvement areas and backlogs. Participating editors will be in line for barnstars and other awards; articles from all aspects of the project will be eligible so there will be something for everybody. Interested editors are encouraged to sign up now! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:18, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-45

[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

  • Administrators will now find that Special:MergeHistory is now significantly more flexible about what it can merge. It can now merge sections taken from the middle of the history of the source (rather than only the start) and insert revisions anywhere in the history of the destination page (rather than only the start). [77]
  • For users with "Automatically subscribe to topics" enabled in their preferences, starting a new topic or adding a reply to an existing topic will now subscribe them to replies to that topic. Previously, this would only happen if the DiscussionTools "Add topic" or "Reply" widgets were used. When DiscussionTools was originally launched existing accounts were not opted in to automatic topic subscriptions, so this change should primarily affect newer accounts and users who have deliberately changed their preferences since that time. [78]
  • Scribunto modules can now be used to generate SVG images. This can be used to build charts, graphics and other visualizations dynamically through Lua, reducing the need to compose them externally and upload them as files. [79]
  • Wikimedia sites now provide all anonymous users with the option to enable a dark mode color scheme, featuring light-colored text on a dark background. This enhancement aims to deliver a more enjoyable reading experience, especially in dimly lit environments. [80]
  • Users with large watchlists have long faced timeouts when editing Special:EditWatchlist. The page now loads entries in smaller sections instead of all at once due to a paging update, allowing everyone to edit their watchlists smoothly. As part of the database update, sorting by expiry has been removed because it was over 100× slower than sorting by title. A community wish has been created to explore alternative ways to restore sort-by-expiry. If this feature is important to you, please support the wish! [81]
  • Recurrent item View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the fixing of the persisting highlighting when using VisualEditor find and replace during a query. [82]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Since 2019 the Wikimedia URL Shortener at https://w.wiki is available for all Wikimedia wikis to create short links to articles, permalinks, diffs, etc. It is available in the sidebar as "Get shortened URL". There are 30 wikis that also install an older "ShortUrl" extension. The old extension will soon be removed. This means /s/ URLs will not be advertised under article titles via HTML class="title-shortlink". The /s/ URLs will keep working. [83]
  • On Thursday, October 30, the MediaWiki Interfaces and SRE Service Operations teams began rerouting Action API traffic through a common API gateway. Individual wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
  • MediaWiki Train deployments will pause for the final two weeks of 2025: 22 December and 29 December. Backport windows will also pause between Monday, 22 December 2025 and Thursday, 2 January 2026. A backport window is a scheduled time to add things like bug fixes and configuration changes. There are seven deployment trains remaining for 2025. [84]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • In 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation reported that AI systems and search engines increasingly use Wikipedia content without driving users to the site, contributing to an 8% drop in human pageviews compared to 2024. After detecting bots disguised as humans, Wikimedia updated its traffic data to reflect this shift. Read more about current user trends on Wikipedia in a Diff blog post.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2025

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

Administrator changes

added Toadspike
removed

CheckUser changes

added asilvering

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]