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Attention: I prefer to keep discussions unfragmented. If you leave a comment for me here, I will most likely respond to it on this same page—my talk page—as an effort to keep the entire conversation in one place. By the same token, if I leave a comment on your talk page, please respond to it there. Remember, we can use our watchlist and topic subscriptions to keep track of when responses are made. At the same time, feel free to send an alert to me on this page about a comment you have left elsewhere.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
The Wikimedia Foundation has shared some guiding questions for the July 2026–June 2027 Annual Plan on Meta and Diff. These focus on global trends, faster and healthier experimentation, better support for newcomers, strengthening editors and advanced users, improving collaboration across projects, and growing and retaining readership. Feedback and ideas are welcome on the talk page.
Updates for editors
As part of the current work of Community Tech team on the Multiple watchlists project, the display of EditWatchlist will be updated as a first step towards multiple watchlists. Additionally, the pagination on Search will be updated too, as a part of the work on the Revamp pagination / page navigation wish. [1]
The Global Watchlist is a MediaWiki extension that lets you see your watchlists from different wikis on the same page. It was recently updated to look more like the regular Watchlist, such as preparing it for temporary accounts in IP masking (including rerouting user links to contributions pages), making page titles bold, and opening links in edit summaries and tags in new browser tabs. [2][3][4][5]
View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where global blocks did not have the option to disable sending emails, has now been fixed, and will be available for use in the week of January 13. [6]
Hi Bruce1ee, thanks for the recent minor edit. Just a note that the page has an active editing template at the top to avoid edit conflicts while a major edit is in progress. Many thanks. Mmberney (talk) 10:21, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
No problem and no harm done :). I also want to take the opportunity to say thanks for sorting out various lint errors on articles I’ve created in the past — they do occasionally slip through! Mmberney (talk) 10:40, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The tray shown on Special:Diff in mobile view has been redesigned. It is now collapsed by default, and incorporates a link to undo the edit being viewed, making it easier for mobile editors and reviewers to take action while keeping the interface uncluttered. [8]
The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension continues to improve — it now automatically determines the text direction (ensuring correct display of sites with unusual domain names) and shows detailed descriptions for log actions. Later this week, a new permanent link for page creations and CSS classes for each entry element will be added. [9][10][11][12]
View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the previously observed issue in Vector 2022, where anchor link targets were obscured by the sticky header, has now been addressed. [13]
Updates for technical contributors
As mentioned in the October 2025 deprecation announcement, MediaWiki Interfaces team will begin sunsetting all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from the MediaWiki REST API the week of January 26. Changes are expected to roll out to all wikis on or before January 30th. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found, compared, and tested using the REST Sandbox. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in Phabricator to the #MW-Interfaces-Team board.
The WMF Wikidata Platform team (WDP) has published its January 2026 newsletter. It includes updates on the legacy full-graph endpoint decommissioning, the User-Agent policy change, the monthly Blazegraph migration office hours, and efforts to reduce regressions caused by the legacy endpoint shutdown. As a reminder, you can subscribe to the WDP newsletter!
The Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026 will take place on 13-14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Applications opened mid-December and will close soon or when capacity is reached. It's a two-day, technically oriented hackathon bringing together Wikimedians from the region. Hope to see you there!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
All users with registered accounts can now use passkeys for two-factor authentication (2FA). Passkeys are a simple way to log in without using a second device. They verify the user's identity using a fingerprint, face scan, or a PIN code. To set up a passkey, first set up a regular 2FA method. Currently, to log in with a passkey, users must also use a password. Later this quarter, passwordless login will allow users to log in with a single click and a passkey. Users with advanced rights will also be required to have 2FA enabled. This is part of the Account Security project.
Unregistered contributors on blocked IPs or blocked IP ranges can now interact on-wiki to appeal a block by creating a temporary account to appeal a block on the user talk page, unless the "prevent this user from editing their own talk page" is enabled. This solves the problem of logged-out users unable to use the default unblock process via user talk page. [14]
View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) methods description on the management page has been updated. It is now clearer and easier for users to understand and make use of. [15]
Updates for technical contributors
A new AbuseFilter variable, account_type, has been added to provide a reliable way to determine the account type being created in the createaccount and autocreateaccount actions. As part of this change, the variable accountname has been renamed to account_name, and accountname is now deprecated. Edit filter managers should update any filters that use hardcoded account type checks or the deprecated variable. [16]
Image thumbnails that are requested in non-standard sizes, and using non-standard methods such as direct requests to upload.wikimedia.org/… will stop working in the near future. This change is to prevent ongoing external abuse by web-scrapers and bots. Some users with custom CSS/JS, Interface Admins who can fix gadgets and local skins, and Tool-authors, will need to update their code to use standard thumbnail sizes. Details, search-links, and examples of how to fix them, are available in the task.
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 "Page information" feature, which gives validating information about a page (example), now automatically includes a table of contents. If there is a local MediaWiki:Pageinfo-header page created by individual users, it can now be removed. [17]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, VisualEditor previously added bold or italic formatting inside link descriptions, making the wikicode complex. This has now been fixed. [18]
Updates for technical contributors
There was no XML dump on 20 January. Additionally, from now on, dumps will be generated once per month only. [19]
The MediaWiki Interfaces team removed support for all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from the MediaWiki REST API. All API users currently calling those endpoints are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in phabricator to the #MW-Interfaces-Team board.
Users are reminded that the Wikimedia Foundation has shared some guiding questions for the July 2026–June 2027 Annual Plan on Meta and Diff. These focus on global trends, faster and healthier experimentation, better support for newcomers, strengthening editors and advanced users, improving collaboration across projects, and growing and retaining readership. Feedback and ideas are welcome on the talk page.
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
Logged-in contributors who manage large or complex watchlists can now organise and filter watched pages in ways that improve their workflows with the new Watchlist labels feature. By adding custom labels (for example: pages you created, pages being monitored for vandalism, or discussion pages) users can more quickly identify what needs attention, reduce cognitive load, and respond more efficiently. This improves watchlist usability, especially for highly active editors.
A new feature available on Special:Contributions shows temporary accounts that are likely operated by the same person, and so makes patrolling less time-consuming. Upon checking contributions of a temporary account, users with access to temporary account IP addresses can now see a view of contributions from the related temporary accounts. The feature looks up all the IPs associated with a given temporary account within the data retention period and shows all the contributions of all temporary accounts that have used these IPs. Learn more. [20]
When editors preview a wikitext edit, the reminder box that they are only seeing a preview (which is shown at the top), now has a grey/neutral background instead of a yellow/warning background. This makes it easier to distinguish preview notes from actual warnings (for example, edit conflicts or problematic redirect targets), which will now be shown in separate warning or error boxes. [21]
The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension continues to improve — it now properly supports more than one Wikibase site, for example both Wikidata and testwikidata. In addition, issues regarding text direction have been fixed for users who prefer Wikidata or other Wikibase sites in right-to-left (RTL) languages. [22][23]
The automatic "magic links" for ISBN, RFC, and PMID numbers have been deprecated in wikitext since 2021 due to inflexibility and difficulties with localization. Several wikis have successfully replaced RFC and PMID magic links with equivalent external links, but a template was often required to replace the functionality of the ISBN magic link. There is now a new built-in parser function{{#isbn}} available to replace the basic functionality of the ISBN magic link. This makes it easier for wikis who wish to migrate off of the deprecated magic link functionality to do so. [24]
A new global user group has been created: Local bots. It will be used internally by the software to allow community bots to bypass rate limits that are applied to abusive web scrapers. Accounts that are approved as bots on at least one Wikimedia wiki will be automatically added to this group. It will not change what user permissions the bot has. [27]
The MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Spring 2026 will be held March 25–27 in Salt Lake City, USA. This event is organized by and for the third-party MediaWiki community. You can propose sessions and register to attend. [28]
Hi, re this edit - a closing </p> tag is rarely required in HTML5, and this is one of the situations where it isn't - the <p> is implicitly closed by the next bullet, which emits a <li> tag. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:33, 16 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
The SRE Team will be performing a cleanup of Wikimedia's Etherpad instance, the web-based editor for real-time collaborative document editing. All pads will be permanently deleted after 30 April, 2026 – if there are still migration projects in progress at that point the team can revisit the date on a case by case basis. Please create local backups of any content you wish to keep, as deleted data cannot be recovered. This cleanup helps reduce database size and minimize infrastructure footprint. Etherpad will continue to support real-time collaboration, but long-term storage should not be expected. Additional cleanups may occur in the future without prior notice. [29]
Updates for editors
The Information Retrieval team will be launching an Android mobile app experiment that tests hybrid search capabilities which can handle both semantic and keyword queries. The improvement of on-platform search will enable readers to find what they’re looking for directly on Wikipedia more easily. The experiment will first be launched on Greek Wikipedia in late February, followed by English, French, and Portuguese in March. Read more on Diff blog. [30]
The Reader Growth team will run an experiment for mobile web users, that adds a table of contents and automatically expands all article sections, to learn more about navigation issues they face. The test will be available on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
Previously, site notices (MediaWiki:Sitenotice and MediaWiki:Anonnotice) would only render on the desktop site. Now, they will render on all platforms. Users on mobile web will now see these notices and be informed. Site administrators should be prepared to test and fix notices on mobile devices to avoid interference with articles. To opt out, interface admins can add #siteNotice { display: none; } to MediaWiki:Minerva.css. [31][32]
View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue on Special:RecentChanges has been fixed. Previously, clicking hide in the active filters caused the "view new changes since…" button to disappear, though it should have remained visible. The button now behaves as expected. [33]
Updates for technical contributors
New documentation is now available to help editors debug on-site search features. It supports troubleshooting when pages do not appear in results, when ranking seems unexpected, and when you need to inspect what content is being indexed, helping make search behavior easier to understand and analyze. Learn more. [34]
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
Reference Check has been deployed to English Wikipedia, completing its rollout across all Wikipedias. The feature prompts newcomers to add a citation before publishing new content, helping reduce common citation-related reverts and improve verifiability. In A/B testing, the impact was substantial: newcomers shown Reference Check were approximately 2.2 times more likely to include a reference on desktop and about 17.5 times more likely on mobile web. [35]
Updates for editors
The InterwikiSorting extension, which allowed for the sorting of interwiki links, has been undeployed from Wikipedia. As a result, editors who had enabled interwiki link sorting in non-compact mode (full list format) will now see links reordered. The links moving forward will be listed in the alphabetical order of language code. [36]
Later this week, people who are editing a page-section using the mobile visual editor, will notice a new "Edit full page" button. When tapped, you will be able to edit the entire article. This helps when the change you want to make is outside the section you initially opened. [37][38]
The Reader Experience team is inviting editors to assess whether dark mode should still be considered "beta" on their wiki, based on their experience of how well it functions on desktop and mobile. If the feature is deemed mature, editors can update the interface messages in MediaWiki:skin-theme-description and MediaWiki:Vector-night-mode-beta-tag to indicate that dark mode is ready and no longer considered beta.
The improved Activity tab which displays user-insights is now available to all users of the Wikipedia iOS app (version 7.9.0 and later). Following earlier A/B testing that showed higher account creation among users with access to the feature, it has been rolled out to 100% of users along with some updates. The Activity tab now shows your edited articles in the timeline, offers editing impact insights like contribution counts and article view trends, and customization options to improve in-app experience for users.
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug that prevented DiscussionTools from working on mobile has now been fixed, restoring full functionality. [39]
Updates for technical contributors
The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension that makes this possible continues to improve. The latest upgrade is the inclusion of a new hook, ext.globalwatchlist.rebuild, which fires after each watchlist rebuild. This allows you to run gadgets and user scripts for the Special page. [40]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Wikipedia 25 Birthday mode is now live on Betawi, Breton, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, Gorontalo, Indonesian, Italian, Luxembourgish, Madurese, Sicilian, Spanish, Thai, and Vietnamese Wikipedias! This limited-time campaign feature celebrates 25 years of Wikipedia with a birthday mascot, Baby Globe. When turned on, Baby Globe is shown on ~2,500 articles, waiting to be discovered by readers. Communities can choose to turn Birthday mode on by getting consensus from their community and asking an admin to enable the feature and customize it via community configuration on the local wiki.
Paste Check will become available at all Wikipedias this week. The feature prompts newcomers who are pasting text they are not likely to have written into VisualEditor to consider whether doing so risks a copyright violation. Paste Check tags all edits where it is shown for potential review. Local administrators can configure various aspects of the feature via Special:EditChecks. Research across 22 wikis found that Paste Check resulted in an 18% decrease in relative reverted-edits compared to the control group. Translators can help to localize this and related features.
The Reader Experience team will be standardizing the user menu in the top right for all mobile users so that it is closer to the desktop experience. Currently this user menu is only visible to users with Advanced Mobile Controls (AMC) turned on. The only change is that a couple buttons previously in the left-side menu will move to the top right for users who do not have AMC turned on. This change is expected to go out March 9 and seeks to improve the user interface. [41]
Starting in the week of March 2, the emails sent out when an email address was added, removed, or changed for an account will switch to a substantially nicer and clearer HTML email from the prior plaintext one. [42]
Notifications are currently limited to 2,000 historic entries per user, and extend back to 2013 when the feature was released. This is going to be changed to only store Notifications from the last 5 years, but up to 10,000 of them. This will help with long-term infrastructure health and help to prevent more recent notifications from disappearing too soon. [43]
The Global Watchlist which lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on a single page continues to see improvements. The latest update improves label usage experience. The extension now allows activating the language fallback system for Wikidata items without labels in the viewed language, and showing those labels in the user’s preferred Wikidata language if no uselang= URL parameter is provided. [44][45]
The Wikipedia Android team has started a beta test of hybrid search on Greek Wikipedia. Hybrid search capabilities can handle both semantic and keyword queries enabling readers to find what they’re looking for directly on Wikipedia more easily.
For security reasons, members of certain user groups are required to have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled. Currently, 2FA is required to use the group, but not to be a member of it. Given that this model still has some vulnerabilities, the situation will gradually change in March. Members of these groups will be unable to disable last 2FA method on their account, and it will be impossible to add users without 2FA to these groups. Users will still be able to add new authentication methods or remove them, as long as at least one method is continuously enabled. In the second half of March, users without 2FA will be removed from these groups. This applies to: CentralNotice administrators, checkusers, interface administrators, suppressors, Wikidata staff, Wikifunctions staff, WMF Office IT and WMF Trust & Safety. Nothing will change for other users. See the linked task for deployment schedule. [46]
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue preventing users from creating an instance in Wikibase.cloud has now been fixed. [47]
Updates for technical contributors
To help ensure fair use of infrastructure, over the next month the Wikimedia Foundation will implement global API rate limits across our APIs. In early March, stricter limits will be applied to unidentified requests from outside Toolforge/WMCS and API requests that are made from web browsers. In April, higher limits will be applied to identified traffic. These limits are intentionally set as high as possible to minimise impact on the community. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits.
The Wikidata Query Service Linked Data Fragment (LDF) endpoint will be decommissioned in February. This endpoint served limited traffic, which was successfully migrated to other data access methods that were better suited to support existing use cases. The hardware used to support the LDF endpoint will be reallocated to support the ongoing backend migration efforts. [48]
The new Parsoid parser continues to be deployed to additional wikis, improving platform sustainability and making it easier to introduce new reading and editing features. Parsoid is now the default parser on 488 WMF wikis (268 Wikipedias), now covering more than 10% of all Wikipedia page views.
The process and criteria for requesting exceptional access to the high volume feed of the Wikimedia Enterprise APIs (at no cost for mission-aligned usecases), have now been published. This is to provide more thorough and clearer documentation for users.
Tech Blog, the blog dedicated to the Wikimedia technical community will be migrating to Diff, the community news and event blog. The migration should be complete in April 2026, after which new posts will be accepted for publishing. Readers will be able to access posts – old and new – on the landing page at https://diff.wikimedia.org/techblog.
Thanks for uploading File:Henry Cow in performance.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of non-free use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
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
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday, 25 March 2026 at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests, which happen twice a year. During the switchover, all Wikimedia website traffic is shifted from one primary data center to the backup data center to test availability and prevent service disruption even in emergencies.
Last week, all wikis had 2 hours of read-only time, and extended unavailability for user-scripts and gadgets. This was due to a security incident which has since been resolved. Work is ongoing to prevent re-occurrences. For current information please see the post on the Stewards' noticeboard (translations).
Updates for editors
Users facing multiple blocks on mobile will now see the reasons for each block separately, instead of a generic message. This helps them understand why they are blocked and what steps they can take to resolve the issue. For example, users affected for using common VPNs (such as iCloud Private Relay) will receive clearer guidance on what they need to do to start editing again. [49]
Later this week, Suggestion Mode will become available as a beta feature within the visual editor at all Wikipedias. This feature proactively suggests various types of actions that people can consider taking to improve Wikipedia articles, and learn about related guidelines. The feature is locally configurable, and can also be locally expanded with custom Suggestions. Current settings can be seen at Special:EditChecks and there are instructions for how administrators can customize the links to point to local guidelines. The feature is connected to Edit check which suggests improvements while someone is writing new content. In the future, the Editing team plans to evaluate the feature's impact with newcomers through a controlled experiment. [50]
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where the cursor became misaligned during the use of CodeMirror’s syntax highlighting, which makes wikitext and code easier to read, has now been fixed. This problem specifically affected users who defined a font rule in a custom stylesheet while creating a new topic with DiscussionTools. [51]
Updates for technical contributors
API rate limiting update: To help ensure fair use of infrastructure, global API rate limits will be applied this week to requests without a compliant User-Agent that originate from outside Toolforge/WMCS and to unauthenticated requests made from web browsers. Higher limits will be applied to identified traffic in April. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits.
The new GraphQL API has been released. The API was developed as a flexible alternative to select features of the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS), to improve developer experience and foster adaptability, and efficient data access. Try it out and give feedback. You can also sign up for usability tests.
The PTAC Unsupported Tools Working Group continued improvements to Video2Commons in February, with fixes addressing authentication errors, large-file handling, task queue visibility, and clearer upload behavior. Work is still ongoing in some areas, including changes related to deprecated server-side uploads. Read this update to learn more.
The Article Guidance team invites experienced Wikipedia editors from selected pilot wikis and interested contributors from other Wikipedias to fill out this questionnaire which is available in English, Arabic, Bengali, Japanese, Portuguese, Persian, and Turkish. Your answers will help the team customize guidance for less experienced editors and help them learn community policies and practices while creating an article. Learn more on the project page.
Special report: What actually happened during the Wikimedia security incident? A horrifying exploit took place, which could have had catastrophic and far-reaching consequences if used maliciously; instead, it seems to have happened by accident and was used for childish vandalism. How did this happen, and what did the script actually do?
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 ⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽ beta feature, also known as CodeMirror 6, has been used for wikitext syntax highlighting since November 2024. It will be promoted out of beta by May 2026 in order to bring improvements and new features to all editors who use the standard syntax highlighter. If you have any questions or concerns about promoting the feature out of beta, please share. [52]
Some changes to local user groups are performed by stewards on Meta-Wiki and logged there only. Now, interwiki rights changes will be logged both on Meta-Wiki and the wiki of the target user to make it easier to access a full record of user's rights changes on a local wiki. Past log entries for such changes will be backfilled in the coming weeks. [53]
On wikis using Flagged Revisions, the number of pending changes shown on Special:PendingChanges previously counted pages which were no longer pending review, because they have been removed from the system without being reviewed, e.g. due to being deleted, moved to a different namespace, or due to wiki configuration changes. The count will be correct now. On some wikis the number shown will be much smaller than before. There should be no change to the list of pages itself. [54]
Wikifunctions composition language has been rewritten, resulting in a new version of the language. This change aims to increase service stability by reducing the orchestrator's memory consumption. This rewrite also enables substantial latency reduction, code simplification, and better abstractions, which will open the door to later feature additions. Read more about the changes.
Users can now sort search results alphabetically by page title. The update gives an additional option to finding pages more easily and quickly. Previously, results could be sorted by Edit date, Creation date, or Relevance. To use the new option, open 'Advanced Search' on the search results page and select 'Alphabetically' under 'Sorting Order'. [55]
View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug that prevented UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons from importing files from Flickr has now been fixed. [56]
Users of the ⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽ beta feature have been using CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor for syntax highlighting when editing JavaScript, CSS, JSON, Vue and Lua content pages, for some time now. Along with promoting CodeMirror 6 out of beta, the plan is to replace CodeEditor as the standard editor for these content models by May 2026. Feedback or concerns are welcome. [58]
The CodeMirror JavaScript modules will soon be upgraded to CodeMirror 6. Leading up to the upgrade, loading the ext.CodeMirror or ext.CodeMirror.lib modules from gadgets and user scripts was deprecated in July 2025. The use of the ext.CodeMirror.switch hook was also deprecated in March 2025. Contributors can now make their scripts or gadgets compatible with CodeMirror 6. See the migration guide for more information. [59]
The MediaWiki Interfaces team is expanding coverage of REST API module definitions to include extension APIs. REST API modules are groups of related endpoints that can be independently managed and versioned. Modules now exist for GrowthExperiments and Wikifunctions APIs. As we migrate extension APIs to this structure, documentation will move out of the main MediaWiki OpenAPI spec and REST Sandbox view, and will instead be accessible via module-specific options in the dropdown on the REST Sandbox (i.e., Special:RestSandbox, available on all wiki projects).
The Scribunto extension provides different pieces of information about the wiki where the module is being used via the mw.site library. Starting last week, the library also provides a way of accessing the wiki ID that can be used to facilitate cross-wiki module maintenance. [60]
The 2026 Coolest Tool Award celebrating outstanding community tools, is now open for nominations! Nominate your favorite tool using the nomination survey form by 23 March 2026. For more information on privacy and data handling, please see the survey privacy statement.
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
Wikimedia site users can now log in without a password using passkeys. This is a secure method supported by fingerprint, facial recognition, or PIN. With this change, all users who opt for passwordless login will find it easier, faster, and more secure to log in to their accounts using any device. The new passkey login option currently appears as an autofill suggestion in the username field. An additional "Log in with passkey" button will soon be available for users who have already registered a passkey. This update will improve security and user experience. The screen recording demonstrates the passwordless login process step by step.
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday, 25 March 2026 at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests, which happen twice a year. During the switchover, all Wikimedia website traffic is shifted from one primary data center to the backup data center to test availability and prevent service disruption even in emergencies.
Updates for editors
Wikimedia site users can now export their notifications older than 5 years using a new Toolforge tool. This will ensure that users retain their important notifications and avoid them being lost based on the planned change to delete notifications older than 5 years, as previously announced. [61]
Wikipedia editors in Indonesian, Thai, Turkish, and Simple English now have access to Special:PersonalDashboard. This is an early version of an experience that introduces newer editors to patrolling workflows, making it easier for them to move from making edits to participating in more advanced moderation work on their project. [62]
The Special:Block now has two minor interface changes. Administrators can now easily perform indefinite blocks through a dedicated radio button in the expiry section. Also, choosing an indefinite expiry provides a different set of common reasons to select from, which can be changed at: MediaWiki:Ipbreason-indef-dropdown. [63]
Mobile editors at several wikis can now see an improved logged-out edit warning, thanks to the recent updates from the Growth team. These changes released last week are part of ongoing efforts and tests to enhance account creation experience on mobile and then increase participation. [64]
View all 36 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug that prevented mobile web users from seeing the block information when affected by multiple blocks has been fixed. They can now see messages of all the blocks currently affecting them when they access Wikipedia.
Updates for technical contributors
Images built using Toolforge will soon get the upgraded buildpacks version, bringing support for newer language versions and other upstream improvements and fixes. If you use Toolforge Build Service, review the recent cloud-announce email and update your build configuration as necessary to ensure your tools are compatible. [65][66]
The API Portal documentation wiki will shut down in June 2026. API keys created on the API Portal will continue to work normally. api.wikimedia.org endpoints will be deprecated gradually starting in July 2026. Documentation on the API Portal is moving to mediawiki.org. Learn more on the project page.
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 Beta version of Abstract Wikipedia a new Wikimedia project which is language-independent, was launched last week. The project allows communities to build Wikipedia articles in their native language, which can be readily accessed by other users in their own languages. The wiki is powered by instructions from Wikifunctions and also based on structured content from Wikidata. Read more.
Updates for editors
The Growth team is running an A/B test to evaluate a clearer, more user-friendly message that promotes account creation on wikis. Currently when logged-out mobile users begin editing, they see a jarring warning message that can feel abrupt and discouraging. This also presents temporary account editing as the default rather than encouraging account creation. The test is running on ten Wikipedias, including Arabic, French, Spanish and German. Read more.
The Wikimedia Apps team is inviting feedback on how editing should work on the Wikipedia mobile apps. The discussion focuses on improving how users access editing tools when they tap "Edit". This is part of a broader effort to convert readers who develop an interest in editing, to access a more user-friendly pathway to start contributing.
View all 45 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where citation fetching from the large newspaper archive Newspapers.com was no longer working, due to a block in Citoid requests, has now been fixed. [67]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The CampaignEvents extension now includes a new group goal-setting feature, enabling organizers to set and track event goals such as the number of articles created and participating contributors in real time. Similarly, participants can work toward shared targets and see their collective impact as the event unfolds. The feature is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. Learn more in the documentation.
The new watchlist labels feature (announced in Tech News 2026-07) is now available via VisualEditor, the source editor, and the 'watchstar' (or watch link, for skins that don't have a star icon). Previously it was only possible to assign labels via EditWatchlist. In all three places it is a new field following the expiry field.
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where talk pages on mobile with Parsoid are unusable after empty section headers, has now been fixed. [68]
Updates for technical contributors
The sub-referencing feature, which lets editors add details to an existing reference without duplicating it, will be gradually rolled out to more wikis later this year. Wikis using the Reference Tooltips gadget are encouraged to update their version (typically at MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js as shown here) to ensure compatibility. Other reference-related gadgets may also be affected. [69]
All Wikinews editions will be closed and switched to read-only mode on 4 May 2026. Content will remain accessible, but no new edits or articles can be added. This closure was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation following extended discussions. Read more.
The Action API has had several formats for requested output. One of them, format=php, is being removed soon. Please ensure your scripts or bots use the JSON format. This removal should affect very few scripts and bots. [70]
The Special:NamespaceInfo page now includes namespace aliases. For example "WP" for the "Project" ("Wikipedia") namespace on the German Wikipedia. [71]
Sup tags don’t need an end on them to work. They can have the end tag but they don’t need them to work. Please stop adding them when it’s not needed. Thanks HelpingHand26 (talk) 15:28, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately this isn’t quite right. The sup tags works with or without the end tag. Each tag should serve a purpose and a rule of coding is if a tag isn’t needed then you don’t put it. HelpingHand26 (talk) 18:23, 9 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
They may work in your browser without the closing tag, but that doesn't mean that it would work in other browsers. Browser vendors are expected to abide by the HTML specifications, but they're not forced to. The number of HTML elements that are allowed in Wikipedia and where the closing tag may be omitted is very small - specifically, there are five elements that cannot have a closing tag (<br /><hr /><link /><meta /><wbr />), and just six where a closing tag is permitted but optional: <dd>...</dd><dt>...</dt><li>...</li><td>...</td><th>...</th><tr>...</tr>. These six are all elements that are only ever used inside some larger structure, such as a table or list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:38, 9 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
HelpingHand26, if you would like to see examples of missing closing tags causing rendering problems, click through some of the links that I have saved from this tag cleanup work. Sometimes, missing tags are caught by your browser (or Wikipedia's rendering engine) and silently provided for the viewer, but it can't be counted on. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:25, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Experienced editors are invited to test the Article guidance feature, designed to help less-experienced editors create well-structured, policy-compliant Wikipedia articles. Testing instructions are available. Also, after reviewing the outlines, please provide feedback on the project talk page. Based on your input, the feature will be refined and transferred to the pilot Wikipedias to translate and adapt. Check out the video explaining the feature.
The Growth team has launched an account creation experiment to evaluate whether adding an account creation button to the mobile web header increases new account registrations and encourages more mobile users to contribute to the wikis. The experiment is currently live on Hindi, Indonesian, Bengali, Thai, and Hebrew Wikipedia, and targets 10% of logged-out mobile web users.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where VisualEditor could get stuck loading on Windows devices with animations turned off, has now been fixed. [73]
Tools and bots that access the Notifications API (action=query&meta=notifications) will need to update their OAuth or BotPassword grants to also include access to private notifications. [76]
Due to a library upgrade, listings on category pages may be displayed out of order starting on Monday, 20th April. A migration script will be run to correct this, and will take hours to days depending on the size of the wiki (up to a week for English Wikipedia). [77]
You are invited to participate in the Destubathon of the Americas, a contest/editathon which will run from May 1 to May 31. The goal is to destub as many of our 475,000+ stubs for the Americas (from Alaska down to Chile) as possible. A good chance to have fun in expanding many of our old stale stubs and win up to £2000 ($2680) in Amazon vouchers for expanding stub articles. Sign up in the Contestants/participants section on the contest page if interested. Even if not interested in prizes you are still warmly welcome to participate in it as an editathon! Hopefully we can achieve something significant in the month of May together! ♦ Dr. Blofeld16:45, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Jimma Oromo Women Cultural Clothing and Hairstyles
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
After two years of development, ⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽, also known as CodeMirror 6, is to be promoted out of beta on Tuesday, April 21. It brings better code and wikitext readability, reduction in typing errors, and other benefits to all users of the standard syntax highlighter. A huge thank you to volunteer Bhsd who developed many of the new features, including code folding, autocompletion, and linting. [78]
A major update to the Wikipedia app for iOS is now rolling out, redesigning the interface to align with Apple's latest "Liquid Glass" visual design. Download the latest version and explore the update.
Updates for editors
Reading lists is a feature which allows readers to save articles to a list for reading later. This feature is now in beta on Arabic, French, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Chinese Wikipedias and by default for all new accounts on all Wikipedias.
An experiment which explores extending Page Previews to mobile web will be launched in the week of April 20 on Arabic, English, French, Italian, Polish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Page Previews are pop-ups that display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and a link to open the full article of a blue link, thereby improving content discovery. The feature is already available on desktop and in the apps. Read more about this experiment and others.
On several wikis, logged-in editors who haven't confirmed their email addresses can now see a banner encouraging them to do so. Having the email address confirmed allows a user to restore access to the account if they lose it. Learn more. [79]
View all 15 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where editing very large wiki pages in the 2017 wikitext editor caused slow loading, preview and scrolling lag, and performance issues when selecting, cutting, or pasting content, has now been fixed. [80]
Updates for technical contributors
As part of the promotion of CodeMirror from a beta feature, all users will use CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor for syntax highlighting when editing JavaScript, CSS, JSON, Vue and Lua content pages. [81]
The mirrors.wikimedia.org service for Debian and Ubuntu users will sunset and stop working on May 15. The resources for the service will be replaced with new and better options. Some users may need to switch to a different server which should take about a minute. You can read more. [82]
The image and oldimage table will be removed from wikireplicas. If your tools or queries access image or oldimage directly, please update them to use the file and filerevision table before 28 May. [83]
Following the recent implementation of global API rate limits on unidentified traffic, the Wikimedia Foundation will continue efforts to ensure fair use of infrastructure by applying global limits to identified API traffic beginning the last week of April. These limits are intentionally set as high as possible to minimise impact on the community. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
The Attribution API is now available as a beta. The API fetches information for crediting Wikimedia articles and media files wherever they are used. Reference documentation is available through the REST Sandbox special page available on all Wikimedia wikis (such as the REST sandbox on English Wikipedia). Share your feedback on the project talk page.
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
There is a change in how new users are autoconfirmed that will improve anti-vandalism protection. Currently, users who have had an account for a few days and made a few edits are automatically added to the Autoconfirmed users group. This configuration tends to be exploited by some vandals, who create accounts and start to use them only after some time. To mitigate this, the configuration will be updated next week so that – for the purpose of becoming autoconfirmed – the account age will be counted from their first edit, instead of registration date. The numeric value of the age threshold will remain the same. This change will be deployed only to wikis which require at least one edit as part of the autoconfirmation conditions. [84]
All Wikipedia users with new accounts and those who activated the "automatically enable most beta features" option in their preference can now use the reading lists beta feature to save articles for later reading. This helps organize reading interests in one place for convenient access.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where infobox images have huge padding in Firefox, has been fixed. [85]
Updates for technical contributors
As a reminder, the global API rate limits will be applied this week to identified API traffic. This is to help ensure fair use of infrastructure. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, including the actual rate limits, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
Greetings ,
I have made the changes according to chats with mr Schazjmd and I am waiting for his review to my version updated
the version doesnt ciolate the policies its neutral , and I added refrences and links < and I updated the page as the current page that u returned has a lack of info,
and the photo is old , and Madam Amal Murkus has requested the photos update and she has sent an email to weki commos and I have the authority to use the photos
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 Article guidance team invites experienced editors of pilot Wikipedias—Arabic, Bangla, Japanese, Portuguese, Persian, Turkish, Simple English, Spanish, and French—to help translate and adapt sample outlines. These outlines will guide editors in creating clear, well-structured, and policy-compliant articles when using the feature once it is launched in May 2026. Simple instructions on how to translate and adapt the outlines are available.
The number of available thumbnail size preferences in MediaWiki is being reduced to three standardized options—Small (180px), Regular (250px), and Large (400px), as part of ongoing efforts to improve performance and reduce strain on thumbnail services. As a result, existing preferences will be mapped to the nearest new size (for example, smaller selections like 120px or 150px will render at 180px, while larger ones like 300px or 360px will render at 400px). The preferences interface will soon be updated to reflect these changes, and users who wish to opt out or provide feedback can do so. [86]
From now on, even when a permission expires automatically, users will receive an Echo notification similar to the standard notification for permission changes. There is a difference between this and Global reminder bot in that the latter reminds users a week before the rights are due to expire, so that they can renew the rights.
View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the problem where the ULS language selector in Special:Translate would scroll vertically when it shouldn't, has been resolved. Previously, when users opened the "Translate to English" dropdown and typed certain inputs, the dialog would scroll vertically by a few pixels even when there was enough space to display all results. The dropdown no longer shifts unnecessarily when filtering languages. [87]
The Global Watchlist, which lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on a single page, continues to improve. For example, watchlists for Wikibase sites such as Wikidata now support EntitySchema elements for better tracking. The Live Updates mode now refreshes the special page every 60 seconds to comply with the updated global API rate limits for improved real-time responsiveness. Additionally, a directionality bug that displayed links as "changes 3" instead of "3 changes" in mixed-direction lists has been fixed. [88][89][90]
Updates for technical contributors
The second phase of global API rate limits has been rolled out to reduce the impact of AI crawlers and ensure fair, sustainable access to Wikimedia resources, prioritising human and mission-aligned traffic. Limits have been shifted from per-hour to per-minute, producing smoother traffic patterns and more predictable API load. Community users are not expected to be affected, and no action is required. Early indications show some User-Agent-based requestors are adjusting behaviour, and around 64% of automated API traffic has been identified. Monitoring continues, and Wikimedia Enterprise remains available for commercial support.
Inviolate perhaps, but not unmodifiable. If all the contributors agree to a relicense, it could indeed be ported to the other wiki. The wider question is "why, though?". Arlo James Barnes21:18, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The SA right If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. means that the license cannot be altered. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:20, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
You can always multilicence a work, which doesn’t change the original licence, but ensures others can use a different licence. See COM:Multi-licensing.
@Star walker: When you make an edit, the following message is displayed above the Publish changes button:
By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Please note the text you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License and the GFDL and in particular the word "irrevocably". Wikipedia text and images cannot be reused under a different license. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:12, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
‘Irrevocably’ appears to mean that the CC-BY-SA licence and the GFDL licence are irrevocable, not that they can’t be multi-licenced. According to the Terms of Use, the copyright of the edit is not granted to the WMF, which means the contributor is still the copyright holder of the edit, and you can’t stop the copyright holder from multi-licensing their work.
Not so. Except in the limited situation where more permissions are being granted or license conditions are waived, if the additional arrangement modifies or conflicts with the CC license terms, then the resulting licensing arrangement is no longer a CC licensing arrangement. To avoid confusing those who may mistakenly believe the work is licensed under standard CC terms, we must insist that in these instances licensors not use our trademarks, names, and logos in connection with their custom licensing arrangement. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:21, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Is it really necessary to re-license the contributions to put it on the BJAODN wiki? I don't have any legal training but I don't think posting something to a place with a more restrictive license requires re-licensing. Nononsense101 (talk) 20:41, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Nononsense101: If a work is licensed with a CC‐BY‐NC‐SA licence, it cannot be modified with CC‐BY‐SA content, as that licence specifically allows commercial use, while the former forbids it. By multi‐licensing the page with a non‐commercial licence, it allows the two works to be combined.
Oh. Now that I think about it, combining them would be a derivative work, requiring the same license per the SA condition, but both can't be satisfied as one requires the allowance of commercial use and the other requires the prohibition thereof. Nononsense101 (talk) 14:36, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Community Tech has published new guidance explaining how wishes on Community Wishlist are triaged and prioritized. The documentation is intended to help contributors write stronger proposals by clarifying the factors that influence prioritization decisions. Beyond vote counts, the guidance highlights considerations such as potential impact on the community when determining which wishes move forward.
Updates for editors
The Reader Growth team is launching an experiment to test a new Share Card feature that allows readers to create visually engaging cards from Wikipedia articles or selected article sections and share them online, with each card linking back to the original article to help expand readership and article discovery. The mobile-only A/B test will be available to a portion of readers on Arabic, Chinese, French, Vietnamese, and English Wikipedia to better understand reading and sharing habits, and is scheduled to begin the week of May 18 and run for four weeks.
The Android and iOS Wikipedia apps recently released the 25-day reading challenge into Beta, as part of efforts to drive reader engagement by encouraging users to complete reading milestones. To track their reading streak during the challenge, App users can add a widget featuring Baby Globe to their home screen. The challenge officially begins May 11.
View all 17 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the global preference for enabling syntax highlighting in wikitext could unexpectedly disable itself after being turned on, has now been fixed. [91]
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 Abstract Wikipedia team has identified five potential pilot wikis to assess their interest in adopting abstract articles on their wikis. The pilots are Malayalam, Bengali, Dagbani, Arabic, and Indonesian Wikipedia. The feedback period will be open until May 22. If your community is interested in becoming a pilot, let us know on Meta.
Updates for editors
An experiment to show Reading Lists to logged-out readers on mobile web will launch on May 18 across German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu Wikipedias, and will run for one month. The effort supports broader goals of helping readers save and organize articles for later reading, while encouraging habits that could lead to future Wikipedia contributions.
To support a bookmark button in the Reading List beta feature, the "Tools > Action" menu has been updated to display icons, including the watch star indicator that helps editors identify temporarily watched articles. The icons now also match those used on mobile, improving consistency across platforms. The change is currently limited to the actions menu and mainly affects editors with privileged user rights. [93]
Suggestion Mode was released as an A/B test for newcomer editors on the mobile website at ~15 Wikipedias. The experiment will measure the impact that Suggestion Mode has on the proportion of newcomer mobile web edit sessions that result in constructive (un-reverted) article edits. The experiment will also evaluate the feature's impact on editor retention, and monitor changes in revert and block rates.
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue in the Wikipedia Android app where images could sometimes fail to load after opening a recommended reading list notification, has now been fixed. [94]
Updates for technical contributors
The Wikidata Platform team has published its backend replacement recommendation and accompanying technical architecture for the migration of the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) away from Blazegraph. Feedback is invited until May 25th 2026, especially on potential gaps and impacts on advanced use cases. Wikidata community members and WDQS users are also encouraged to help identify high-impact tools and workflows that may need attention on this page. Feedback can be shared on the Migration talk page or during the next office hour. See the WDP team newsletter for more details.
On English, French, Japanese, and a few other Wikipedias, there was a trial of hCaptcha, a third-party bot detection service. The trial showed that hCaptcha effectively detects and deters some bad-faith automated activity, on its own and by giving checkusers and stewards signals to look into. Because the results were positive, hCaptcha will be rolled out across all wikis over the next few weeks. See the hCaptcha project page for technical information about the implementation and privacy protections. Learn more.
The latest Community Tech update is now available, with progress across several Community Wishlist initiatives, including Reading Lists expansion from the mobile app to the website, new language support for "Who Wrote That" and the Personal Dashboard, improvements to 3D rendering and Charts, and upcoming work on talk page sorting, audio playback, and editing workflows. The update also shares current priorities, wishlist status trends, and opportunities for community feedback on future focus areas and the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2026–2027 Annual Plan. Read the full newsletter for details.
News and notes: Offline: Osama Khalid still in prison He has been imprisoned since 2020 for his Wikipedia edits. A fresh campaign is calling for his release.
Recent research: WikiLambda the Ultimate Does Abstract Wikipedia help fight "One ring to rule them all" solutions for knowledge access - or does it implement one itself?
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
Following a successful account creation experiment, an improved logged-out edit warning message will be deployed to all Wikimedia wikis in the first week of June. The change will only affect logged-out users on mobile web who open an editing session. The updated experience is designed to encourage account creation more clearly, while still allowing users to edit with temporary accounts. Results from the experiment showed a significant increase in account creation, with a 27% relative lift among users shown the updated message. As expected, as more people funnel into account creation, temporary accounts decreased by a relative 16%. The experiment did not show any significant changes in constructive edit rates or other monitored contributor metrics. [95]
Updates for editors
For security reasons, members of certain user groups are required to have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled. Members of these groups will be unable to disable the last 2FA method on their account, and it will be impossible to add users without 2FA to these groups. Users will still be able to add new authentication methods or remove them, as long as at least one method is continuously enabled. In the next few weeks, users without 2FA will be removed from these groups. Notably, this applies to bureaucrats. See the linked tasks for deployment schedules. [96][97]
After two successful experiments, the Reader Growth team is rolling out an Image Browsing beta feature for all Wikipedias on mobile on May 25. This means that anyone who has all beta features on by default will start to see this feature, and others can check the box to turn it on in their preferences. The beta feature will include a carousel of all an article's images at the top of the article, with controls for editors to exclude images from the article's carousel or to exclude an article from the feature entirely.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, three dimensional STL files were being rendered incorrectly by the media viewer 3D extension which is now fixed. [98]
Updates for technical contributors
The legacy CSS classes tleft and tright have been replaced with floatleft and floatright as the former do not work consistently across all MediaWiki platforms, notably mobile web and mobile apps. Projects relying on these classes are encouraged to review related usage and plan for migration. Please note that floatleft and floatright may also be deprecated in future, although there are currently no plans to do so. Read more.
Just out of curiosity, was there a reason my change[99] to Basra War Cemetery caused a lint error or was the error already there but unnoticed until I changed it? I don't want to cause extract work for other editors if I can avoid it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°20:36, 28 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The Reader Experience team is conducting an experiment to show the reading lists feature, which is still in development, to logged-out mobile readers to test whether it encourages account creation at a higher rate compared to the watchstar button. The experiment was launched on May 18th on German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu wikis, and it will run for a month.
The Wikimedia Apps team released Phase 1 of the redesigned Home Feed to the Android Beta app. The new Home Feed includes a refreshed "Community" tab and a personalized "For You" tab featuring daily updated reading recommendations. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve content discovery and create more engaging learning experiences in the Wikipedia apps.
View all 18 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where images could fail to load for some suggested edits on Special:Homepage, leaving the thumbnail stuck in a loading state, has now been fixed. [100]
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
Wikimedia Enterprise has increased the free usage limits for its API offerings. The monthly request limit for the On-demand API has increased from 5,000 to 50,000 requests, while the Snapshot API limit has increased from 15 to 30 requests per month. In addition, Structured Contents snapshots are now available for free accounts. These changes expand access to Wikimedia Enterprise data for developers, researchers, and organizations using Wikimedia content. [101]
Updates for editors
The refreshed Explore Feed, now called the Home Feed, is rolling out to 50% of users of the Wikipedia Android app. The Home Feed helps readers discover relevant content through two new tabs: Community and For You. The Community tab provides a scrollable feed of curated content and updates from the broader Wikimedia community and movement, while the For You tab offers a full-screen, swipeable experience that shows content tailored to a user's interests. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve discovery and enhance the learning experience in the Wikipedia app.
The Which came first? daily trivia game is now available in the beta version of the Wikipedia iOS app in English, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish. The game uses historical events from Wikipedia's "On This Day" content and challenges readers to guess which of two events happened first. The game was previously released on Android. Communities interested in making the game available in their languages can read the instructions and requirements.
Sub-referencing, a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details, will begin rolling out to Wikimedia wikis following a successful pilot phase. Deployment will start on 8 June for most Group 1 wikis and French Wikipedia, with additional Wikipedia language editions receiving the feature over the coming months. Communities are encouraged to prepare by checking for untranslated Cite extension messages in their language and reviewing any use of Reference Tooltips, which may require updates to support the new functionality. Wikis using Reference Previews do not need to take any action. Communities may also wish to create the cite-tracking-category-ref-detailstracking category as a hidden category using __HIDDENCAT__ (or a dedicated template), and connect it to the corresponding Wikidata item d:Q129764848. [102]
The Page Previews experiment on mobile web has concluded. The team decided not to roll out the feature after the results showed no statistically significant impact on reader retention, as the primary success metric was retention improvement. Page Previews, which are already available on desktop and in the apps, display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and link to the full article when readers tap a blue link. The experiment tested this experience on mobile web across six Wikipedias.
The user interface icon library will be updated later this week or next week. Most of the ~300 icons have been slightly refined and ~30 new icons have been added. These changes improve the icons to make them more consistent and comprehensible, and provide more visual balance when they are used in groups.
The Universal Language Selector (ULS) interface in MediaWiki, which helps users select content in other languages, has been updated. The new version improves speed and accessibility, and users of Wikimedia projects can now pin languages for quicker language switching. The deployment to Wikimedia sites will happen gradually in the coming weeks. You can test it now as a beta feature by selecting beta features in your profile preferences and share your feedback on the project page.
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the Pageviews Analysis dashboard on pageviews.wmcloud.org stopped updating graph data in May 2026, affecting all users, has been fixed. [103]
Updates for technical contributors
The function signature for mw.util.addPortletLink() has been simplified. Developers can now pass a configuration object instead of a list of positional parameters when creating portlet links. The previous function signature remains supported for backwards compatibility. For example, instead of: mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', '#', 'Stub', 'ca-stubtag', 'Add a stub tag to this page'); use mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', { href: '#', text: 'Stub', id: 'ca-stubtag', tooltip: 'Add a stub tag to this page' });. Script maintainers are encouraged to review existing uses of addPortletLink() and update them where appropriate. This change will be available on all wikis from 11 June. Thanks to community volunteer Gerges for contributing this improvement. [104]
Community Wishlist discussion: Product & Technology introduced changes meant to increase the number and complexity of wishes fulfilled, including the disbanding of the Community Tech team. They are engaging in discussions about a proposed direction for the wishlist from community members. Includes ways to structure annual voting, better tracking of wishes, removing focus areas, and staffing updates.
Thanks for both fixing this and for tagging me in the diff. Looked it over and I have no explanation as to how the hell that happened. Very odd but again, appreciate you taking the time to not only fix it but also notify me of my error! Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 00:25, 10 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, just created my first article, I ve lived about 29 years in the VRM area, nice for visiting, but that's enough:)
However may you help making this article fitable for the WP please?
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 Reader Growth team has launched an Image Browsing beta feature on the mobile web version of all Wikipedias. The feature shows an image carousel at the top of articles with 3 or more images. Editors can configure this feature with the following controls: to hide a specific image from a page, either use class=notpageimage excluding it from thumbnail previews, or class=noviewer excluding it from MediaViewer. The carousel can also be disabled from a page entirely, with the magic word __NOMEDIAVIEWERCAROUSEL__. To submit feedback or flag bugs, please visit the project page.
Wikitables can now be sorted in descending order on the first click by adding data-sort-order="desc" to the header cell. Previously, by default, clicking a column header for the first time sorts it in ascending order. This addition to a Wikitable gives it more control and flexibility, while the default behavior for subsequent clicks remains unchanged. [105]
Updates for editors
The Article guidance feature is currently being tested with some editors creating new articles on the Simple English, French, and Turkish Wikipedias. The experiment will soon begin on the Arabic and Bangla Wikipedias as well. This feature gives editors community-curated guidance to help them create articles that follow community standards. Experienced editors can continue creating or adapting outlines for specific article types that are commonly created by less experienced contributors. The outlines guide less experienced editors in creating high-quality articles. A quick guide to markups used in outlines can be found on this page. Example outlines that can be adapted and instructions for how to adapt them are on this section of the project page.
Wikis that wish to replace the "indefinitely" button in Special:Block for temporary accounts (for example, wikis that block temporary users only until account expiration) will be able to do so by creating MediaWiki:ipb-indefinite-expiry-temporary-account with the block duration they want. [106]
By the end of June, a valid user-agent string will be required for automated dumps downloads from the dumps.wikimedia.org website. Automated requests that provide a generic or empty user-agent will be blocked. This extends enforcement of the long standing user-agent policy. Access to dumps through Wikimedia Cloud Services will not change.
The roll out of global API rate limits is now complete, with limits enforced across all APIs and at the documented levels for all groups. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki remain exempt. All bots should continue to follow the documented best practices to avoid being rate limited.
On June 17th at 6pm UTC the WMF will be holding Discord call focused on a code review. We've heard through the Developer Satisfaction Survey that volunteers are struggling with code review and we'd like to discuss these experiences with the goal of surfacing workable solutions. You can join the call via the Wikimedia Community Discord server.
The Latin American Wikimedia Conference will host a regional hackathon that will bring together the Wikimedia movement’s technical community including developers, system administrators, data scientists, and users with extended rights. Interested technical contributors can apply for a scholarship to participate until June 21 at midnight (Bolivia time, UTC-4).
Sign up for Wikimania Team Challenges to join this special event. The Team challenges will take place online and in person from July 21 to 22, before Wikimania conference. Everyone is welcome, regardless of skills or Wikimania registration. Teams will work on 10 important challenges supporting the Wikimedia community. For details, visit the Team Challenges page and register there. Registration closes on June 20th at 11pm UTC.
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
Growth features are now available at Wikidata. This update enables access to Mentorship (if configured), Impact module, the Help Panel, and a simplified Newcomer Homepage (without Suggested Edits). Wikidata administrators are still configuring the features through Community Configuration.
Updates for editors
The special page Special:RangeCalculator has been created. It allows users to find an IP range without needing to rely on external tools. Until now, this tool was only available to CheckUsers. [107]
Sub-referencing is a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details. It will be deployed to most small and medium-sized Wikipedia language versions on June 23. The FAQ lists possible actions to take on your wiki to support the deployment. Check the rollout plan for the next deployment steps. [108]
Starting next week, users will get a notification when they are blocked or unblocked from editing, or if this block changes. [109]
Starting next week, abuse filters that are set to "require CAPTCHA verification" will begin to also affect users with the skipcaptcha right, which includes most autoconfirmed users. Bots are exempted. This change only affects edits that trigger an abuse filter. The skipcaptcha right will continue to exempt users from having to solve CAPTCHAs in the ordinary course of using the wikis. [110]
Reference documentation for the Lift Wing API has moved from the API Portal to the interactive REST Sandbox.
Good Day! I just want to ask your help to protect the page of Alden Richards, an unknown registered author keeps changing his school from Dela Salle University to Ateneo University from which the latter school whom the actor did not study.
This is not the first time but multiple times that the unknown keeps subtly vandalizing the page.
I asked you to protect the page before and you locked it for a week. It seems that some people who keeps vandalizing the page and will come back after few weeks.
Can you put the article in protection for two weeks or one months?
@LJA123: I'm not sure what the problem is. All you need to do is avoid empty file options, that is two consecutive pipes, for example:
[[File:Cornelia et Charlotte Hahn-Sabine Lepsius-Musée juif de Berlin.jpg|thumb||240px|Cornelia (left) and her sister in a 1932 portrait by [[Sabine Lepsius]]]]
and don't use the "thumb" option in gallery files, for example:
<gallery>
File:Peacekeeping monument.jpg|thumb|Partial view of grounds, Peacekeeping Monument, Ottawa
</gallery>
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
As part of the Account Creation Experiments, the Growth team tested adding a user account icon in the mobile web header for logged-out users, providing direct access to "Create account" and "Log in" actions. The experiment increased account creation by about 20% without negatively affecting edit quality or constructive edit rates. The feature will now be rolled out to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on mobile web in the first week of July. [112]
After a successful experiment, logged-in users who did not confirm their email address when their account was created see a new banner asking them to complete that process. This helps reduce the risk that users get locked out of their account, and makes account email addresses overall more reliable. This is part of the Account Security project. [113]
An update to Search is refining how the -prefix: behaves when used to exclude results. Previously, using -prefix: with negation could unintentionally broaden search results by adding the namespaces included in the search scope, leading to confusing behavior for users expecting a straightforward exclusion filter. With the update, -prefix: will now strictly exclude matching page titles as intended and may display a warning if the relevant namespace has not been explicitly selected. The behavior of prefix: without negation however remains unchanged. [114]
View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where reviewers using the Page Curation toolbar were not automatically subscribed to talk page discussions they started has now been fixed. Reviewers will now receive notifications when someone replies to those discussions. [115]
Updates for technical contributors
Starting June 29th, automated downloads from the dumps.wikimedia.org website will be subject to the user-agent policy. Automated requests that provide a generic or empty user-agent will be blocked. Access to dumps through Wikimedia Cloud Services remains unaffected. This is a follow up to the announcement made in the 2026/25 issue of Tech News.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the search bar results on Wikidata, showed English results instead of using the correct language fallback for users of language variants, has now been fixed. Search suggestions will now follow the expected language fallback chain. [116]
Updates for technical contributors
In preparation for Celebrate Women campaign planned for March 2027, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Content Enablement team has launched a 22-question survey to better understand technical contributions by women+ (anyone who identifies as a woman) across Wikimedia projects. The survey takes approximately 15–20 minutes to complete and will remain open until 20 July 2026. The questions are also available on-wiki for review in advance.
The Score extension now supports rendering music scores as SVG images in addition to PNG, addressing a long-standing feature request and resolving historical image quality issues. Both formats are now provided to clients, with PNG in the src attribute and SVG in the srcset attribute.
The new Parsoid parser continues to be deployed to additional wikis, making it easier to introduce new reading and editing features. It was enabled on French Wikipedia, bringing total progress to covering 78.9% of Wikipedia page views. Rollout to English Wikipedia desktop will progress through this week.
The Wikimedia Hackathon 2026 recap blog post is now live. It highlights the projects, sessions, and social activities from this year’s event, and shares initial plans for the 2027 Wikimedia Hackathon.
We were editing Masters of the Universe at the same time. You saved first. My save overwrote yours. Over the course of four more edits, I restored most of your changes. What's left is basically dashes in title parameters. It's debatable whether to replace an original title hyphen with an en dash in the Wikipedia reference. Anyway, I encourage you to take a look at the article again. Compare your latest version to my latest version. Cheers! —Anomalocaris (talk) 08:41, 8 July 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Anomalocaris: You edits look fine, although I see you didn't replace the hyphens in citation titles with endashes.. I used the User:Ohconfucius/dashes.js script to fixed dashes, which also replaces hyphens in citation titles. MOS:DASH makes no mention of whether these hyphens should be changed or not, but I guess if the sources use hyphens in their titles, they probably should remain unchanged. —Bruce1ee09:16, 8 July 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Template:30 most populous cities of Denmark has been listed for discussion, which may result in the template being merged or deleted by consensus. You are invited to comment on the proposed action at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Logoshimpo (talk) 23:05, 29 January 2026 (UTC)
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you.
I think you need to read the rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Business_and_economics it tells you to put companies where you keep removing so stop please or I will have to report you. ~2026-38037-79 (talk) 09:40, 10 July 2026 (UTC)