User talk:The Anome
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Support request with team editing experiment project
[edit]Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta.
ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
[edit]Hello, The Anome. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page.
NHRP detaggables
[edit]So, I ended up here: User:The Anome/NHRP detaggables because of this redirect, Skeleton Cave Massacre Site. I recently created Skeleton Cave (Arizona), and when I was linking other pages to the article, I found the detaggables page. In scanning your list, I came across Work, John, House and Mill Site which I then linked to John Work House and Mill Site which has existed since 2006.
It occurred to me that there may be a number of pages already in existence, but since they are not formatted the same as what's on this page, they aren't being identified as being done. I'm trying to think on how to solve this problem. --evrik (talk)

The article Punk Bunny Coffee has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:
Article reads like an advertisement, and I can barely find any sources following the name change.
While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.
Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.
Whack!
You've been whacked with a wet trout.
Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.Tech News: 2026-13
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- 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. [1]
- 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. [2]
- 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. [3]
- 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. [4]
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. [5][6]
- 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.
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- WMDE Technical Wishes is considering improvements to automatically generated reference names in VisualEditor. Please check out the proposed solutions and participate in the request for comment.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-14
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- The 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. [7]
Updates for technical contributors
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 19:24, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 March 2026
[edit]- News and notes: Entirety of Wikinews to be shut down
All languages to be shut down in May; first AI agent blocked; new name for AfD?
- In the media: AI ban, newspapers disrupt archiving; and antisemitism complaints
Perennial challenges with AI, demographic representation, and attacks from people buying media influence.
- Community view: Videos from WikiConference North America 2025 in NYC
In attendees' own words.
- Disinformation report: Cleaning up after Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Nygard, and Mohamed Al-Fayed
Countering the edits of the rich and dangerous.
- WikiConference report: WikiConference North America 2025 in NYC review
About the conference series, and this conference particularly.
- Obituary: Dr. Subas Chandra Rout
Rest in peace.
- Traffic report: Call in the dogs of war, soldier of fortune
Though of course the picture needs to be Chuck Norris...
- Gallery: Canadian Rangers participate in Operation Enduring Encyclopedia
Analogies between how Wikipedia works and how Canada works.
- Comix: n00bsitting
...!
Your draft article, Draft:Religion and the Decline of Magic
[edit]
Hello, The Anome. This message concerns the Articles for Creation submission or draft page you started, "Religion and the Decline of Magic".
Drafts that go unedited for six months are eligible for deletion, in accordance with our draftspace policy, and this one has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply , and remove the {{db-afc}}, {{db-draft}}, or {{db-g13}} code.
If your submission has already been deleted by the time you read this, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the draft so you can continue to work on it.
Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia! DreamRimmer bot II (talk) 16:25, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – April 2026
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2026).

- The content of Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models has been updated following a request for comment. It now prohibits using LLMs to generate content, with exceptions for translation and copy-editing.
- Following a motion, the GSCASTE extended-confirmed restriction in the Indian military history case has been narrowed. It now applies to caste-related topics in South Asia, and the preemptive protection remedy has been amended accordingly.
- The arbitration case Pbsouthwood has been closed.
- The arbitration case Maghreb has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 7 April.
Tech News: 2026-15
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- The 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. [8]
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. [9]
- 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. [10] - The Special:NamespaceInfo page now includes namespace aliases. For example "WP" for the "Project" ("Wikipedia") namespace on the German Wikipedia. [11]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:17, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-16
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- 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.
Updates for editors
- On most wikis, all autoconfirmed users can now use Special:ChangeContentModel page to create new pages with custom content models, such as mass message lists, making custom page formats more accessible. Check Special:ListGroupRights for the status of your wiki. [12]
- 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. [13]
Updates for technical contributors
- Starting later this week, Edit filter managers who have the Improved Syntax Highlighting beta feature enabled will have CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor as the editor at Special:AbuseFilter. This is part of the broader effort to make the user experience more consistent across all editors. [14][15]
- 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. [16] - 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). [17]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 15:17, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
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. Blofeld 17:38, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Coordinates that never get checked
[edit]Can you take a look at the coordinates for Tapaktuan, a town in Indonesia? It seems that they have pointed into the water for c. 20 years. The Anomebot2 added the coords in December 2006. A user came along in October 2022 and changed them from 3°15′N 97°10′E, to 3°15′0″N 97°10′0″E, which is unhelpful. Is there any way that a list of some of the "worst offenders" of these over-rounded coordinates could be generated? Abductive (reasoning) 08:00, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- I've fixed this particular one by hand. I think the best way of finding these is probably comparing them with something like OpenStreetMap - although we cannot, for copyright reasons, use their data as a source, I cannot think of any reason not to use them as a sanity check, particularly if we fuzz the locations slightly before comparison to prevent it from being used for triangulation. It would be a good idea to get this checked by someone knowledgeable in copyright law before attempting this, though. — The Anome (talk) 10:50, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- Is there a way to automate the sanity check? Abductive (reasoning) 21:39, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- It would have to be automated - there are millions of coordinates to cross-check. — The Anome (talk) 21:43, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- How did you derive them in the first place? Abductive (reasoning) 23:40, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- You'd start by looking at containment hierarchies, both on Wikipedia and OSM. For example, United Kingdom -> England -> Wiltshire -> Salisbury is unique on Wikipedia, and also the corresponding path https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/62149 -> https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/58447 -> https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/57533 -> https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3404205 is unique on OSM. Using these as disambiguators, we can often establish 1:1 relationships with high reliability. Where there is ambiguity - for example if there were two different places called 'Salisbury' in Wiltshire in either database - we refuse to make the link. Once we have a candidate 1:1 mapping, we look up the coordinates/boundaries on both OSM and Wikipedia/Wikidata and then compare. If there's a candidate match, then we have something we can flag on Wikidata as a likely mapping to an OSM identifier; if there's a mismatch, we can flag it on Wikipedia as suspicious and needing manual review. We keep a log of pages we have processed so we don't re-flag things repeatedly. To the best of my knowledge, this is compatible with the OSM license terms; see [18].
User:The Anomebot2 works in quite a similar way to this, using GNS data as the reference; unlike OSM, GNS coordinates are public domain so we can put them into articles, rather than just making metadata matches. — The Anome (talk) 15:08, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
- Would you be willing to do a test run? I've been working on improving coordinates for years now, and it's my experience that Italy is the worst, both for lack of corrections by other users, and for the coordinates missing the towns by more than the usual. Abductive (reasoning) 08:37, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
- I've just posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates about this; expect any work to take weeks, if not months, as this is a long-term background project for me. — The Anome (talk) 08:46, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
- I look forward to it. It would be nice to see D°M′S° blossom where now there is only D°M′. Thanks for your consideration. Abductive (reasoning) 08:55, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
- I've just posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates about this; expect any work to take weeks, if not months, as this is a long-term background project for me. — The Anome (talk) 08:46, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
- Would you be willing to do a test run? I've been working on improving coordinates for years now, and it's my experience that Italy is the worst, both for lack of corrections by other users, and for the coordinates missing the towns by more than the usual. Abductive (reasoning) 08:37, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
- You'd start by looking at containment hierarchies, both on Wikipedia and OSM. For example, United Kingdom -> England -> Wiltshire -> Salisbury is unique on Wikipedia, and also the corresponding path https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/62149 -> https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/58447 -> https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/57533 -> https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3404205 is unique on OSM. Using these as disambiguators, we can often establish 1:1 relationships with high reliability. Where there is ambiguity - for example if there were two different places called 'Salisbury' in Wiltshire in either database - we refuse to make the link. Once we have a candidate 1:1 mapping, we look up the coordinates/boundaries on both OSM and Wikipedia/Wikidata and then compare. If there's a candidate match, then we have something we can flag on Wikidata as a likely mapping to an OSM identifier; if there's a mismatch, we can flag it on Wikipedia as suspicious and needing manual review. We keep a log of pages we have processed so we don't re-flag things repeatedly. To the best of my knowledge, this is compatible with the OSM license terms; see [18].
- How did you derive them in the first place? Abductive (reasoning) 23:40, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- It would have to be automated - there are millions of coordinates to cross-check. — The Anome (talk) 21:43, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- Is there a way to automate the sanity check? Abductive (reasoning) 21:39, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-17
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- After two years of development, Improved Syntax Highlighting, 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. [19]
- 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. [20]
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. [21]
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. [22]
- The
mirrors.wikimedia.orgservice 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. [23] - The
imageandoldimagetable will be removed from wikireplicas. If your tools or queries accessimageoroldimagedirectly, please update them to use thefileandfilerevisiontable before 28 May. [24] - 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.
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.