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Music
[edit]Been thinking recently about how much Wikipedia does act as a social network, and how valuable that can be. Articles aren't social media, of course, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and a community, and healthy volunteer communities need to foster forms of communication that aren't strictly "talking shop". In that spirit, how about some music talk. Might just be me sharing, but who knows.
What I'm listening to
[edit]Occasionally sharing songs/albums that I find myself listening to repeatedly. Starting this at the end of 2022, so here's what I've been listening to this year. And yeah, it's all over the place.
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December 2022[edit]
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June 2023[edit]
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July 2024 |
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July 2024[edit]
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January 2025
[edit]- Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill (spotify youtube). Kathleen Hanna is the coolest. Bikini Kill is a band that makes it into my regular rotation every few years. This time it was because Hanna did an interview with Marc Maron. One thing I remember from the interview: when she formed Bikini Kill there were a lot of really macho, kind of misogynistic hardcore bands (assuming maybe Cro-Mags? Agnostic Front?). As she started getting booked (or doing the booking), she'd talk about the various bands playing a show and, if one of those hardcore bands were in there, just refer to them as "stand-up comedy".
- I Keep Forgettin' by Michael McDonald (spotify youtube). Smooth.
- Damaged Goods by Gang of Four (spotify youtube). I remember giving Gang of Four a shot a long time ago, and it just didn't work for me, but when I came across this track recentl, something about their [kind of simple] funk-punk was just super infectious -- hard not to move around a bit.
- Cirice by Ghost (spotify youtube). Ghost is basically what would happen if you took a metal band straight out of the late-80s/early-90s and put a theater kid in front. This particular track leans a little more metal than e.g. Mary on a Cross, but the theater is still there.
- Never Fight a Man with a Perm by Idles (spotify youtube). If you took an angry, violent Peaky Blinders villain, gave him a punk band, and caught him in a moment of loud, slightly drunk criticism of the hypermasculine culture he's part of... you'd have this track.
- Sweetest Kill by Broken Social Scene (spotify youtube). We're a long ways from the days when I felt like I *should* like Broken Social Scene, so this one snuck up on me. Don't remember how I came across it, but the melody is just so catchy and patient and satisfying.
February 2026
[edit]- La Vita by Beverly Glenn-Copeland (youtube spotify). Hooked by the opening mix of percussion and operatic vocals, but it's the earnest, wise lyrics that follow that make this something special. It's hard not to get a tiny bit emotional from the switch from rapid stresses of daily life to "my mother says to me, enjoy your life". It's the kind of song that makes me feel a little old for liking, but also wishing I'd heard it sooner.
- Taxes by Geese (youtube spotify). I heard someone compare Cameron Winters' voice to cilantro in that it just tastes like soap to some people. That's probably right, but it works for me. King of a mix of Tim Buckley, Alec Ounsworth, and Julian Casablancas, frequently affected to be warbly or abrasive. Anyway, their album Getting Killed is the first indie rock album I've enjoyed (apart from a single here and there) in some time, and Taxes was the first song I heard from it.
- No Save Point by Run the Jewels (youtube spotify). Run the Jewels brand of boastful insult rap is always good, and their songs tend to work or not based on the music behind them, which can sometimes lean a little to hard into annoying samples or beats that seem a bit too straightforward. The title says this is from Cyberpunk 2077, so presumably they're working with samples from the game, and it winds up working.
- Fire by Kasabian (youtube spotify). Ok, this was a huge hit and I'm late to it. The transition from sparse country-like verses to the big, anthemic chorus is just basic music fun.
- The Logical Song by Supertramp (youtube spotify). Apparently my most listened to song this year. Sometimes a song that's been in the background for basically my whole life pops out and I think "what is that song", look it up, and can't stop listening to it. It happened with I Keep Forgettin' last year, and I guess this was the year of Supertramp.
- Mama Got the Blues by C. W. Stoneking (youtube spotify). That voice has no right coming out of that man, but it's just such a good blues voice, with production that makes it believably sound 80 years older.
What I should be listening to (and what you're listening to)
[edit]Open to anyone.
Past suggestions) |
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More please
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Wonderful work
[edit]Great work on Book banning in the United States (2021–present). I saw The Librarians (2025 film) last night, such a powerful and timely piece. My most beloved article still haunts my dreams. No Swan So Fine (talk) 08:24, 10 October 2025 (UTC)
- @No Swan So Fine: Archiving my page and realized I never responded to this. Thank you for your message. That article has gotten away from me a bit since I started it. Used this as an opportunity to go in and fix it up a bit just now. Lost literary work is a wonderful topic, and an article that could use help. Can't promise anything, but if you get around to it and want help, give me a ping. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:50, 9 September 2026 (UTC)
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January music
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| story · music · places |
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happy new year! - inviting you to check out "my" story (fun listen today, full of surprises), music (and memory), and places (pictured by me: the latest uploads) any day! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:06, 10 January 2026 (UTC)
20 January is the 100th birthday of David Tudor (see my story) and the 300th birthday of Bach's cantata Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, BWV 13, if we go by date instead of occasion as he would have thought, so see my story for last Sunday, and celebrate ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:32, 20 January 2026 (UTC)
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Your nomination of United Nations Convention against Cybercrime has passed
[edit]Your good article nomination of the article United Nations Convention against Cybercrime has 
passed; congratulations! See the review page for more information. If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Femke -- Femke (talk) 09:03, 18 January 2026 (UTC)
en.wiki and AI
[edit]Hi Rhododendrites, your lengthy reply to the Signpost Special Report was well written contained a lot of good points, thought I might reply/inquire here as that page has devolved. I made a very similar point on the great divergence framing when this was discussed in Discord, although I focused more on the different expectations regarding what "being online" means when for so many people it means having a phone with Facebook and WhatsApp apps etc. However, you have a different impression of the community's response than I do. I feel the community has responded very slowly to the topic of llms. Rather than instinctively respond to the topic like an allergy, it did very little. The few llm-related policies and guidelines we have were produced after extremely slow and very contested procedures. We have a backlog of llm article text that is becoming just another forever-filled maintenance category. Reactions on ANI tend to be stronger, but that is usually because the AI exacerbates communication issues. (And away from en.wiki I have definitely not seen an allergy in some other projects or in WMF/meta, but this may be off-topic to your post.) I am thus curious as to the factors that brought you towards a very different impression. Best, CMD (talk) 00:45, 19 January 2026 (UTC)
- Hi Chipmunkdavis. My impression is that while we be a little slow to formally implement concrete policies and guidelines, the reality on the ground is that any use of LLMs for writing articles, talk page messages, or just about anything brings quite strong pushback. I agree that other projects, and especially Meta and in-person events, have seen a lot more interest in LLM experimentation. But to actually implement any of those on enwp seems like a fool's errand. I remember that time there was some sort of ... game, maybe? ... that the WMF promoted using an image that a bunch of English Wikipedians were certain was AI-generated, leading to much fury until it was revealed that no, it was created by a human. That's just to say I see a lot of skepticism and cynicism towards any generative AI use, but especially on talk/project pages and especially associated with the WMF.
- I'm surprised that there's a backlog of LLM article text, though. When there's no doubt about it being LLM-generated, is it controversial to just undo/remove it? Or is the challenge that it's suspected LLM-generated text that needs to be more carefully scrutinized? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:25, 20 January 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks. I would say while on the ground there is sometimes very strong pushback, it tends to be inconsistent. A lot of the WMF-associated furor is likely backlash due to the simple article summary experiment and its being revealed as scheduled deployment. I don't know if similar experiments were tried on other projects. (I remember that AI-image incident, and to my knowledge the final conclusion was that it was probably AI-generated but we don't actually know as the WMF staff in charge of the game was not the creator.)We do have a lot of AI-written content scattered around and repeated opposition to even tagging it. There are challenges both to undoing/removing (eg. 'should be assessed on merit') and as to whether it is llm text or not, the second one being a particular effective way of bogging everything down. We have very recently become much more effective as a community at deleting fully AI-generated articles, but that came after a few years of inaction and disputes, and other edits remain harder to manage and assess. CMD (talk) 02:23, 21 January 2026 (UTC)
- @Chipmunkdavis: late reply, sorry:
and repeated opposition to even tagging it
- This is, again, really surprising. What is the objection to tagging? Like it is disputed because "no, it's not LLM-generated" or because "LLM-generated content is ok"? What about the use of detection systems? I know they're imperfect, and I think I was initially skeptical, but let's say I'm coming around. :) It looked like Wiki Ed had some success with Pangram. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:59, 15 February 2026 (UTC)- No problem. Both of those objections have been raised in various discussions. The first one can be resolved by community discussion and usually by editing the text in question if specific problems are identified. The second one is trickier, as there are different community feelings on the less obviously problematic LLM-written text. The Wikipedia:The World Destubathon for example, was won using an LLM to generate articles. Another objection I've seen not uncommonly raised is that the tag is vague and doesn't point to specific textual problems that can be fixed. The tag has had
|reasonand|partialparameters added in recent months to help make the tag more useful in this respect.That said, the tag does exist and is used. Detection systems on the other hand seem to lack any positive consensus; every time they are raised it is common for "detection systems aren't perfect" to pop up almost immediately, sometimes accompanied by "the irony of using an LLM to accuse someone else of using an LLM" or similar. In typical en.wiki fashion, it is community consensus over whether something is llm-written that seems to shift most threads on specific examples (especially on AN/I). I personally found the WikiEd claimed false positive rate of 0.00 very surprising; I expected a small number, but 0.00 is a not only a 0 but a very specific 0. I'd like to see that replicated somehow. CMD (talk) 04:58, 15 February 2026 (UTC)
- No problem. Both of those objections have been raised in various discussions. The first one can be resolved by community discussion and usually by editing the text in question if specific problems are identified. The second one is trickier, as there are different community feelings on the less obviously problematic LLM-written text. The Wikipedia:The World Destubathon for example, was won using an LLM to generate articles. Another objection I've seen not uncommonly raised is that the tag is vague and doesn't point to specific textual problems that can be fixed. The tag has had
- @Chipmunkdavis: late reply, sorry:
- Thanks. I would say while on the ground there is sometimes very strong pushback, it tends to be inconsistent. A lot of the WMF-associated furor is likely backlash due to the simple article summary experiment and its being revealed as scheduled deployment. I don't know if similar experiments were tried on other projects. (I remember that AI-image incident, and to my knowledge the final conclusion was that it was probably AI-generated but we don't actually know as the WMF staff in charge of the game was not the creator.)We do have a lot of AI-written content scattered around and repeated opposition to even tagging it. There are challenges both to undoing/removing (eg. 'should be assessed on merit') and as to whether it is llm text or not, the second one being a particular effective way of bogging everything down. We have very recently become much more effective as a community at deleting fully AI-generated articles, but that came after a few years of inaction and disputes, and other edits remain harder to manage and assess. CMD (talk) 02:23, 21 January 2026 (UTC)
Thanks
[edit]A note to say thanks for the common sense you've been posting at the WMF VP. I also saw some sensible comments from Sohom. Having enwiki as customers must be nightmarish for the WMF developers, and I assume the liaisons that are forced to engage with us quickly realize they have to discount a great deal of what they hear from us, without having a good way to tell what part to discount. I am embarrassed almost every time I look at the way WMF staff get treated. I have the WMF VP page on my watchlist but I don't have the stomach to read all of it and comment, though I've intermittently done so in other venues in the past. Seeing your comments there is a relief. I appreciate your fairhanded approach (I certainly don't think the WMF can't improve) and I hope you have the stamina to continue there. Thank you. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:52, 3 February 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks for the note, Mike Christie. I was thinking about this a bit as I sat in on one of my local community board meetings (in NYC, community boards advise various lawmakers and agencies on a range of issues like land use, permits, development deals, zoning, etc.). The meetings are open to the public, and follow a format along the lines of: (1) updates from local representatives; (2) updates on past official business, (3) new official business, (4) the airing of grievances. Frequently, much of the crowd shows up because of a desire to participate (either as a speaker or an audience member) in the last part. Last time this was about a bike lane that some people felt very strongly about. It occurred to me it must be difficult for the board to sit there, seeing the same crowd that shows up anytime things change, and having to assess to what extent attendees represent the neighborhood. There must be a term for the phenomenon in political science or sociology. Let's call it an "intensity bias" subset of selection bias or something -- people who feel the strongest are more likely to self-select and coordinate and are thus overrepresented in any public forum. And when we're talking about discussion of governance structures themselves, as we do with the WMF on that village pump, it's just not realistic to think there's anyone who feels as strongly in a positive direction as all those who feel strongly in a negative direction, so it skews negative. I'd like to see some sort of structure where they look at everyone with more than 5k-10k edits who have been active in the last month, reach out to random N users from that list, and form a discussion involving just them, but then you do lose out on the deep knowledge of the already self-selected. What a hassle! — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:59, 11 February 2026 (UTC)
Your nomination of American Privacy Rights Act has passed
[edit]Your good article nomination of the article American Privacy Rights Act has passed; congratulations! See the review page for more information. If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of MasterfulNerd -- MasterfulNerd (talk) 04:02, 13 February 2026 (UTC)
Your comments
[edit]I was re-reading some older stuff. Has it only been five weeks? Your comments at 14:38, 21 June 2026 (UTC) on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents/Possible_off-wiki_canvassing_by_User:Larry_Sanger were spot-on. The code-switching that you mentioned was surprising to me, because he must know that we can see all social media. (Well, I don't do X or FB, but I know that others do.)
Your summary was great. I admire good writing, especially when it crystallizes my own thoughts! Thanks. Interesting and slightly surprising outcome, but I think it was for the best, especially as it relates to "saving editor time arguing in the future". David10244 (talk) 03:10, 29 July 2026 (UTC)
Yellowstone
[edit]I'm glad to see your pictures of Yellowstone, we've been there a half dozen times, but the last was eight years ago. Was it crowded? I realize you don't have a baseline to judge from, but over time the proportion of tour buses with foreign tourists has steeply risen - the park seems to be a bucket-list destination for Chinese and German tourists, but given current events I expect that's not so much now. And the price of gas might have dented visitation for domestic visitors. Acroterion (talk) 13:08, 7 August 2026 (UTC)
- @Acroterion: Thanks. Yes, it was my first time. We had a trip to [elsewhere in] Montana on the books and decided to add a couple days, rent a car, and drive down to Yellowstone. Very very glad we did. Probably the most spectacular natural space I've been to (although I still have a long bucket list of my own). We were certainly prepared for crowds, given it was peak season, but the only time we felt it was in a couple bear-based traffic jams. It was hot, and there weren't a lot of bears around, so when a grizzly was spotted in Hayden Valley it drew a crowd even long after it was gone. Probably only saw a couple tour buses, though. I thought it was interesting that the biggest international tour demographics were South Asian, but lots of languages spoken -- we got a scope for the occasion, which means you wind up talking to lots of people as you share a view of a grizzly or some mountain goats. :) All in all, with nothing to compare it to, and expecting throngs of people at the gate, we were quite content with the crowd levels. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:29, 7 August 2026 (UTC)
- I'm glad you had a good experience and saw critters. Bison jams were a feature even back in 1973, when the 14-year-old me visited for the first time with my parents. It was August, and it briefly snowed. Yellowstone is one of our favorite places, but given the size of the place we've found we have to plan out the day to get the most out of it, preferably staying in the park. We've stayed in the OF Inn a couple of times, which is wonderful late in the evening when things get quiet. It sounds like some of the visitor pressure might have eased, which given NPS funding and staffing cuts, would be a blessing. Acroterion (talk) 14:42, 7 August 2026 (UTC)
You appear to know what you're talking about
[edit]Please see User:WhatamIdoing/Internet hosting costs. I'm looking for errors, omissions, and anything that might need clarification. Additionally, feel free to boldly add links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:10, 13 August 2026 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing: took a month, but got around to checking this out. I made a bold edit you can undo if you want (it's to the introductory text and the headings, not to the list itself). Trying to get right to the point and contrast "hosting costs" from "what it takes to actually operate Wikipedia" (and then beyond that to "what we all expect beyond basic operation"). I think your list includes things from all of those. As for errors and omissions, I think I'd have to pass it off to someone who actually knows what their talking about regarding the back-end of Wikipedia. AntiCompositeNumber and Bawolff are two names that pop into my head. :) — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:43, 9 September 2026 (UTC)
- I had no idea that "hosting costs" was just this little piece of the cost of hosting. I'm more than a little shocked. Guettarda (talk) 21:20, 9 September 2026 (UTC)
- I think accounting is a different world, with its own language. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:26, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- Really, you probably need to talk to someone on the SRE side. Bawolff (talk) 00:06, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- I can't speak to how WMF decides to put what spending in which accounting bucket. A lot of the DC ops stuff is also non-public. Some things that folks may not realize is that unlike many other websites, WMF owns all their own servers and runs their own global network and content delivery network. WMF does use Cloudflare's Magic Transit product, but only when necessary to deal with an attack or routing problem. The connection to the Internet is a little more complicated than just "we pay for it" (see Peering), but WMF definitely does pay for dark fiber and IP transit services. As far as racks go, according to wikitech:SRE/Dc-operations/Common Data center Specifications#Enclosure specifications they have a mix of WMF-owned and datacenter-provided racks, depending on the DC, with the big clusters being WMF-owned. A lot of the day-to-day "please unplug this and plug the new one in" work is done by remote hands provided by the datacenter instead of WMF staff. Bigger jobs are done by WMF DC Ops staff/contractors. Would definitely be best to talk to someone from SRE about this sort of thing, the visibility into exactly how the website is run has gotten worse over time as things have gotten more complicated and more secret. But you've got the big stuff at least. AntiCompositeNumber (they/them) (talk) 00:36, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks, all. I think that some of this might need to come with footnotes, because some things will vary from site to site. And I think it needs a bunch more links, especially to wikitech: and mw: pages. I'm also thinking about chopping the last half off (ending with the table).
- Rhododendrites, I like your changes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:21, 10 September 2026 (UTC)
- I had no idea that "hosting costs" was just this little piece of the cost of hosting. I'm more than a little shocked. Guettarda (talk) 21:20, 9 September 2026 (UTC)
Re: this edit summary
[edit]Hello, I was slightly confused about the edit of yours I linked above, until I noticed this earlier edit by @11WB:, which clarified what happened (and might clarify things for you as well). I'm also OK with this reworking by @KylieTastic:. Graham87 (talk) 16:42, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
- @Graham87: Aha, yes that solves it, yes. Just didn't seem to make sense to have a note about "that page" above an RfC. :) Thanks KylieTastic. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:50, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
- I removed my own comment which is permitted. It no longer made any sense. Thanks for the ping. 11WB 💬 01:26, 29 August 2026 (UTC)
Jason Arday changes
[edit]There was consensus on the talk page to keep opinion pieces. See Midnightblueowl's comments in particular. Can you check if these two changes: 1 2 can be recovered and inserted somehow back in please? They seem be arbitrary or POV pushing if removing comments only on one side. Thank you. Keshetsven (talk) 19:05, 29 August 2026 (UTC)
- @Keshetsven: Hi. Just to be clear, you're not talking about edits I've made -- just asking for help with someone else's? If so, I'll take a look but that's probably better for the article talk page. There's certainly not going to be consensus to include all/any opinion pieces, or no opinion pieces, of course. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:33, 30 August 2026 (UTC)
Always precious
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Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:07, 30 August 2026 (UTC)
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- PS: Could you archive this talk page. It has more than 250 sections. Regards, Armbrust The Homunculus 11:39, 9 September 2026 (UTC)
- @Armbrust: On it, thanks. Once a year apparently not enough. :) — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:47, 9 September 2026 (UTC)
September 2026
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This Month in GLAM: August 2026
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Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 17
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Highlights
- Data center switch: All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 23 at 14:00 UTC as part of a scheduled switchover to allow for essential maintenance and improvements. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes in advance.
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Annual Goals Progress on Engage
See also: Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia
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- Domain change for thumbnails: The domain of URLs for thumbnails is changing from
upload.wikimedia.orgtothumb.wikimedia.org. The old URLs will continue to work but MediaWiki will advertise the new domain instead. Original files, videos, and transcodes will still be served fromupload.wikimedia.org. - Reading lists rollout continues on desktop: Following the initial deployment to Bengali, Chinese, Czech, and Vietnamese Wikipedias, reading lists went live on Arabic, French, and Indonesian Wikipedias and will go live on English Wikipedia on Sep 14, with all remaining wikis following on Sep 28.
- New features of Pageviews Analysis: Several new features have been added to the Pageviews Analysis tool which allows users to compare pageviews across multiple pages. They include WikiNav which provides insights into how readers of Wikipedia explore the content, editing stats in Siteviews, the ability to lookup articles belonging to a WikiProject, and support for dark mode.
- Article guidance: As part of an A/B experiment, Article guidance is now available in Turkish and Simple English.
- Latest experiments: A current experiment for logged-out mobile readers on Bengali, Czech, English, Farsi, and Polish Wikipedias is testing whether simplifying the Minerva navigation bar improves reader retention. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
- Wikifunctions status updates: Thanks to all contributors, Wikifunctions has now reached 5,000 functions.
- Latest highlights from Tech News: Weeks 36 and 37 of Tech News include the Article guidance feature is now enabled by default for editors with less than 100 edits on Simple English and Turkish Wikipedia.
Annual Goals Progress on Enable
See also: Research newsletter · WikiLearn News · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Affiliates and grant funding: Have your say on proposals establishing (1) a new model and set of expectations for movement affiliates; (2) new, connected requirements to determine eligibility for receiving Community Fund grants from the Wikimedia Foundation; and (3) updated criteria for affiliate recognition processes.
- Community Fund reflections: Read the reflections on the fiscal year 2025–2026 of the Rapid Fund and General Support Fund, covering $17.73 million across 427 grants in 90 countries, with 56.2% distributed outside North America and Northern & Western Europe.
Annual Goals Progress on Reach
See also: Wikimedia Apps · Readers
- World of Wikipedia launches: The World of Wikipedia game has been released. It is an online collectible card game where players sort fact from fiction across Wikipedia articles to build their card library. The game is the latest experiment in reaching younger audiences through familiar formats, following Wikispeedia on Roblox and Which Came First? on the Wikipedia app.
Other updates
See also: Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Celebrate Women 2026: Read the impact of Celebrate Women 2026 as the campaign concluded with 112 events, 238,222 unreverted content edits and 2,499,773,577 bytes added.
- US staff union vote: On Sep 3, eligible Wikimedia Foundation staff in the United States voted in favor of union representation in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election.
Other Movement-curated newsletters & news
Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l'actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
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For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. If you have feedback or suggestions about the bulletin, let us know at foundationbulletin@wikimedia.org. For questions about the Wikimedia Foundation's work, contact us!
The Signpost: 16 September 2026
[edit]- News and notes: The Balance of Power
Wikimedia employees unionize, officer departs, The Signpost gains sister on Wiktionary
- In the media: Shocking photos may be changed on Wikipedia
The image gallery anyone can edit.
- Disinformation report: Have UN Secretary-General candidates manipulated Wikipedia?
Speaking diplomatically, not all of them.
- Recent research: Google's AI overviews may have reduced search engine referrals to English Wikipedia by 5%
And other research findings.
- WikiConference report: The backwater symbiosis – reflections from Wiki Conference India 2026
The fourth iteration of Wiki Conference India.
- Traffic report: Heaven let your light shine down
The recently deceased dominate while still leaving room for some entertainment.
- Serendipity: Wikipedia Family Mosh Pit
A poem by Mollystarkdean.
- Obituary: Passing of Gobonobo, community leader advocating for women and minorities
Promoter of cultural knowledge and organizer of global cooperation.
- On the bright side: Fantasy video games, hopeful science fiction, and the change of seasons
The Legend of Zelda, Star Trek, and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.
- Comix: The Adventure of the Unknown Corpse
An elementary case for fiction's greatest detective.
Sep 30: Wikimedia NYC Annual Election Meeting
[edit]| Annual Election & Members Meeting | |
|---|---|
 You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our Annual Election & Members Meeting, in-person at Prime Produce in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan and also via Zoom. The Members' Meeting is similar to other WikiWednesday meetups, except that its primary function is to elect new members to the Board of Directors. We will elect three board seats – half of the elected seats on the board – and the elected board can appoint up to five more board members. As part of the Members Meeting, we will also focus on the Wikimedia NYC Programs Plan for the coming year, the Financial Report, and how to participate in our chapter member committees for Tech and Engagement. Election info:
Meeting info:
All attendees are subject to Wikimedia NYC's Code of Conduct and Photography Policy. | |
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)
--Wikimedia New York City Team via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:52, 18 September 2026 (UTC)
Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment
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Books & Bytes – Issue 76
[edit]
Issue 76, July–August 2026
- New partnership: The Chronicle of Higher Education
- New Partnership Manager joins the team
- Spotlight: TWL page on Meta
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 11:44, 23 September 2026 (UTC)
(This message was sent to User:Rhododendrites and is being posted here due to a redirect.)
Just in time
[edit]It's official: The aurora season has started. :) Fingers crossed for you! --Cart (talk) 19:26, 25 September 2026 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 18
[edit]
Highlights
- Introducing the Wikipedia Starter Kit: The Foundation has launched a new Toolforge-hosted tool giving new and small language Wikipedia communities a guided pathway through essential onboarding tasks, activity indicators, and connections to the wider movement.
- Apply for a scholarship to Wikimania 2027: Scholarship applications are now open to attend Wikimania 2027 in Santiago. To help with preparing submissions, orientation sessions in Spanish, Portuguese, and English will be held starting the week of October 5. The final deadline is October 31.
- Reading Lists rolling out to all Wikipedias: Starting September 28, logged-in users on every Wikipedia will be able to save articles to a "read later" list using the bookmark icon, following successful rollouts on Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
- WikiCelebrate: WikiCelebrating Juan "BugWarp" Kulichevsky, who has contributed to Wikimedia projects since childhood and is passionate about sports photography and community building in Argentina and beyond.
- The 2026 appointment cycle is open now through 31 October 2026 for the Ombuds Commission (OC) and the Case Review Committee (CRC). You can learn more about the committees, the roles, and how to apply on the Committee Appointments page on Meta-wiki.
Annual Goals Progress on Engage
See also: Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia
- Community Wishlist 2027: The Community Wishlist Process is now updated, taking into account the feedback received. Look out for the call for wish submissions towards the end of October.
- Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2026: From Sep 18-20, Wikimedians, open-knowledge researchers, and free-culture advocates from Central and Eastern Europe gathered for the first time in Romania. Take a look at the novelties and history behind CEE Meeting.
- Increasing account creation: To convert more casual users into logged-in daily users, the evergreen account creation prompt is released into Beta / TestFlight for iOS and Android. Also, a new post-edit notice designed to encourage Temporary Account holders to register for a permanent account will now be released to all wikis. The new notice has proven to increase permanent account creation from 1.94% to 3.66%.
- VisualEditor is now the default at English Wikipedia: this wiki has now adopted VisualEditor as the default editor on both desktop and mobile web, following a sitewide discussion that found overwhelming consensus to make the change.
- Retesting image carousel: The image carousel experiment will be retested using three new versions of the design, updated based on community feedback. The team will assess results and determine with communities whether or not to proceed with the feature.
- Wikifunctions: Your code can now call back to the Wikidata fetch functions. Wikifunctions have deployed an initial capability by which a code Implementation (in JavaScript or Python) can call certain other Wikifunctions Functions, get back the result, and have it available for further processing.
- Latest experiments: A current experiment is testing whether offering a "generic guidance" path for Article Guidance that does not depend on a Wikidata match would increase the chances of more article creation attempts. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
- Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 38 and 39 include a Reader Growth experiment testing whether showing only part of an article at first on mobile, with a “Read more” button to reveal the rest, encourages people to keep reading. See also the 56 community-submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
- Suggestions for Transliterated Search: If you regularly use two different writing systems (such as Hindi and Latin alphabet), sometimes you accidentally type with the wrong one and need to switch to the right keyboard. Now, this gadget will be able to suggest query based on what you typed.
- Peer-to-peer learning program: Let’s Connect, a peer-to-peer learning program is shifting to a community-organized model.
- LLM Paste Check rolling out to Wikipedia: A new Edit Check will prompt editors who paste text likely copied from an external AI chatbot to consider whether it aligns with movement AI-use policies and decide whether to keep or remove it. It goes live as a default-on feature at English Wikipedia on Sep 24 and at all Wikipedias on Oct 8.
Annual Goals Progress on Enable
See also: Research newsletter · WikiLearn News · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Wikidata bulk downloads now free via Wikimedia Enterprise: New beta API endpoints let anyone download full Wikidata snapshots and pull hourly batch diffs at no cost, opening up bulk access that previously required a paid tier.
- Accountability for Wikimedia production services: To ensure clear accountability for responding to incidents in Wikimedia production services, Wikimedia Foundation published the Service Catalog page. The page is the canonical source of service ownership for code deployed to the Wikimedia Foundation cluster. See also FAQ pages which contain more background details.
- Datacenter switchover has been postponed: The equinox exercise revealed capacity issues, preventing the switch of all services to the other datacenter. The process has been paused, prioritizing investigating that issue, to ensure that we continue to be able to serve our users reliably. A new exercise will be scheduled. Meanwhile, all traffic and edits continue to work as usual.
- Affiliates and grant funding: The conversations on the new proposed model, requirements and criteria continues until the end of next week with public calls on 1) Tuesday, September 29, 16:00-17:00 UTC on affiliate growth paths and Friday, October 2nd, 17:00-18:00 UTC on affiliate overlaps.
Annual Goals Progress on Reach
See also: Wikimedia Apps · Readers
- AI literacy program: A new regional initiative in ASEAN was launched to support training and conversations around AI literacy, accountability, and Indigenous self-determination.
- Testing Google preferred sources: An experiment is proposed on English Wikipedia to run a temporary (2-week) notice asking readers who come from Google to set Wikipedia as a “preferred source” in Google. We would see if this causes people who use Google to visit Wikipedia more. If your language wiki is interested, please reach out on the project's talk page.
Other Movement-curated newsletters & news
Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · The Headword (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l'actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. If you have feedback or suggestions about the bulletin, let us know at foundationbulletin@wikimedia.org. For questions about the Wikimedia Foundation's work, contact us!
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An image created by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, File:Atlantic sand fiddler crab (30996).jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! Armbrust The Homunculus 11:27, 30 September 2026 (UTC) |
Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment
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