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Early Explorations Into Semantic Search: Phase 0

Hi everyone,

We’re sharing an early look at an exploration into improving how people search on Wikipedia in order to gather your input. The goal is to help readers find the information they’re looking for more easily on Wikipedia itself, without needing to rely on external search engines.

One focus of this work is semantic search, a type of search that looks at the meaning of a query, not just the exact words typed, to help people find information resources. Today, Wikipedia search relies almost entirely on keyword matching, which works well when readers know the exact article they want, but less well when they have a question or are exploring a topic and the answer is inside an article without a keyword title match.

This post outlines why we’re exploring this, what our early research shows, and what kind of small, early experiment we’re considering.

Why are we working on this?

Many readers do not start their searches on Wikipedia. Instead, they often use external search engines or AI-powered tools, which then direct them to Wikipedia – or sometimes provide answers based on Wikipedia content without sending readers to the site at all.

If Wikipedia search does not meet modern expectations, especially for question-based or exploratory searches, readers are less likely to begin or continue their journeys here and instead rely on platforms where information isn’t made by humans, and is less reliable, neutral, and complete.

In short, improving search is one way to help Wikipedia readers find and enjoy what they read on our platform.

What has our preliminary research shown?

Our early research checked whether this problem is real and whether improving search could meaningfully help readers. Our findings suggest that it could.

1. About 98% of Wikipedia reading sessions originate outside Wikipedia search.

• The small group who use internal search are much more likely to be editors than casual readers. Most readers move between articles by returning to external search engines, even when links exist within Wikipedia itself.

2. Roughly 80–95% of on-wiki search sessions use autocomplete suggestions.

• The preference for autocomplete suggestions – those that appear as someone types – shows that small improvements to speed can have a large impact on success.

3. Between 4–7% of Wikipedia search queries are phrased as questions, but these queries are less likely to succeed.

• While this is a minority of searches, it shows that some readers attempt it and that many others likely avoid it because they’ve learned it doesn’t work.

What stage is this project in?

This work is currently in Phase 0, sharing early ideas, learning from research, and gathering community input.

What idea are we testing?

We’re exploring whether a hybrid search experience, one that combines keyword search with semantic search, could help readers find information more easily. The hybrid search would use machine learning, similar to how search engines rank and surface results today, to better match readers’ queries with relevant existing articles and sections.

Semantic search performs better for questions and exploratory searches, while keyword search works better for very specific or name-based queries. In early prototypes, combining the two approaches produced more useful results than either one alone.

Importantly, this exploration does not involve generating new answers or rewriting Wikipedia content. The goal is to better match readers’ queries to existing, editor-created articles and sections. Any experiment in this area would be small, limited, and designed to test whether this approach provides real value to readers.

What is the timeline?

Right now, we’re focused on discussing the problem space and sharing the findings of the report with you all. We especially want to understand if this problem space is worth learning more about. We are also trying to better understand if a simple Minimal Viable Product could be technically feasible.

Should there be alignment around further exploration, a possible next step would be a tightly constrained, time-bound A/B test with a limited group of readers, potentially beginning in February, to help answer open questions surfaced together.

What input are we looking for from you?

We’d especially appreciate your thoughts on the following:

1. What are your overall reactions to this exploration and the research behind it?
2. Are there risks or concerns you think we should be paying closer attention to?
3. What signals or outcomes would matter most in deciding whether a hybrid search approach is worth pursuing further?

For more details, including links to our research and early mockups, please see the project page.

Thank you! EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 16:09, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

Google is not a good role model here, given the amount of negative media coverage they have received in the last few years about how they are currently destroying their flagship product, in part by messing with people's search queries. Bringing this up as something Google "excels at" is actually baffling given how constant and how inescapable the negative commentary has been. (But I guess these are just "Internet pundits" and the feature isn't for them.)

Also, based on the project page, this seems to go well beyond "improving search." The mockups that claim to be "semantic search" appear to actually illustrate a "Because you liked..." recommendation feature, and a "suggested questions" widget, which surfaces AI-generated questions for no apparent reason. (For Q&A use cases, AI-generated questions can potentially introduce factual or representational bias. -- you don't say!)

(Neither here nor there: I'm pretty sure that the project page was at least edited, if not fully generated, with AI.) Gnomingstuff (talk) 04:41, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff Google is good at semantic interpretation (and many other things as well). It's not as good at giving the right answer as it USED to, but that has more to do with the overall pool of garbage that they have to sort through, not keeping up with development of their own platform's core functionality, as well as actively worsening their quality because they want to keep you coming back to their website.

On a scale of 1 through 10, they are however still at 7. If people want to focus on Google messing up the 7-10 part, then they are ignoring that WE are at 0 and not even close to their 7.

this seems to go well beyond "improving search."

I think that depends on if your definition of search is that of someone used to old style search (a specific word matching technology), or the actual meaning for most people in the world (finding what they are looking for). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:50, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

The post here seems to only discuss "old style" search: We’re exploring whether a hybrid search experience, one that combines keyword search with semantic search, could help readers find information more easily.. What the Phase 0 proposal page seems to actually be proposing are "since you liked..." and AI-generated questions widgets, with proof-of-concepts already built out.

I also guess I don't see the problem with people getting to Wikipedia pages via Google rather than internal search or blue links. They still get to the page either way, the only difference is squeezing out 2 extra pageviews." Gnomingstuff (talk) 20:21, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

I feel WMF developers should be informed somehow that any LLM-generated text placed within the Wikipedia UI is unlikely to receive a positive community reaction (either due to anti-AI sentiment or cautious acceptance but feeling Wikipedia's human-written nature is what gives it a purpose distinct from ChatGPT etc.). Otherwise they will continue to spend effort on stuff that is unlikely to be accepted by the editing community.

On the core idea of semantic search, I somewhat disagree. Yesterday I was searching for some New Zealand-related topics. I typed NZ {phrase}, but it didn't come up with the correct article; although it works often enough for me to instinctively do it, stuff like this still fails for me a reasonable portion of the time. Having a search system that handles this sort of thing would be a better way of handling this rather than creating redirects for every conceivable topic.  novov talk edits 09:28, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

"with proof-of-concepts already built out" proof of concepts get built all the time for a variety of reasons. to spark discussion, to visualize ideas etc etc. Stop telling people what to do. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:00, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

...I didn't tell anyone what to do? Pointing out the contents of a page is not telling anyone what to do and I have no idea how you are twisting "proof of concepts are built out" into "I order you to do XYZ."

...also, the entire point of this topic was to ask for feedback, in part to help decide what to do Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:31, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Gnomingstuff, I'm pretty sure that the project page was at least edited, if not fully generated, with AI. - No, I'm pretty sure it isn't. WP:AISIGNS is not a good metric for finding AI-gen pages outside of encyclopedic articles. A lot developers write with bolded phrases as signposts and bulleted lists since it makes it easier to skim documents. with proof-of-concepts already built out I can personally tell you that those prototypes could be built at speed, over a evening if required. (in fact, if I were to speculate, [1] (which is their other design) took more time to create than the AI question screenshot).

That being said,

EBlackorby-WMF, wrt What signals or outcomes would matter most in deciding whether a hybrid search approach is worth pursuing further? I do want to amplify one specific criticism by @Gnomingstuff and @Mir Novov, I do think The robot icon and AI label failed to clarify what was machine- vs human-generated and instead increased confusion. is a alarming finding that should have been a guard-rail, we cannot have Although the questions were AI-generated, participants often assumed questions were crowdsourced or editor-curated be a thing. The (enwiki-) community cares deeply about making sure folks understand that the encyclopedia is human-generated and organic and having some mixing of AI-gen content/attribution of human-gen content to AI will likely be poorly recieved by the community.

Moving to my personal feedback, I really really like "Concept 1" (the "because you read" feature). It's something I've been missing a fair bit. I really dislike the Q/A interfaces (mostly due to the reasons that folks in the thread have outlined). I'm personally ambivalent to the ask.toolforge.org prototype, though I wonder if instead to prompting the question, the interface could silently engage the reader to page snippets? (For example, iff a user types in "Company that owns biggest browser", y'all could silently switch from using CirriusSearch to surfacing Google#Google Chrome or similar). Sohom (talk) 14:19, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I specifically had in mind stuff like "underscoring the need for transparent provenance labeling" and "align with Wikimedia’s infrastructure and privacy standards." As I said it's neither here nor there, this kind of document at any workplace is more likely than not to be AI-assisted and there's no rule against it. Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:33, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I wonder if the AIs learned to write that way from the kind of techno-corporate bureaucratese that certain types of people have been writing for a long time? Anomie⚔ 00:06, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

(Probably, which is why I suspect no AI usage, that language is a bit corporate-speaky, but I've seen it used in earnest were folks were not using GPT) Sohom (talk) 10:51, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta and @Mir Novov, I appreciate your notes and acknowledge your concern around perceived mixing of AI- and human-generated content, as it's one we take very seriously as well. User testing showed that the bot labeling was confusing and would have to be completely rethought if Q&A explorations are found to be worth continuing. Right now it's clear that the current iteration of Q&A is not in production- or even an experiment-ready state.

However, there does seem to be interest in improvements to the search to support semantic-style queries. If this continues to be the case, we would return with a proposal for an experiment around search improvements and establish guardrails and goals together. Similarly, if there is another concept for improving wayfinding (that wouldn’t lead to confusing AI- with human-generated content) we’d return again to discuss before proceeding.

Interesting idea on silently engaging the reader to page snippets! Would this look like directly taking the user to the relevant heading instead of the top of the article? Do you have any other suggestions for areas for us to look into for information-finding? EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 20:47, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

@EBlackorby-WMF It would definitely be interesting if the search could send you to a specific heading in a article or even use tech like scroll-to-text-fragments to highlight areas in a article relevant to the user's queries. Sohom (talk) 19:30, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff, thanks for your feedback. It helped us realize we uploaded a still of the design concept instead of a GIF, fixed here, which may have led to confusion about this work focusing on “Because You Read”-style suggestions.

While Google is definitely not a role model for this work, it is the most popular global search engine for people to discover content from Wikipedia, thus making it an important tool for understanding modern reader expectations. We’re trying to see how we can support the kind of queries users are used to making.

As for people coming to Wikipedia from Google, readers are now often simply reading the previews provided by Google Knowledge Panels and AI summaries (or their LLM of choice), rather than visiting the articles themselves. This tendency could harm their understanding of both the article content and the Wikipedia project, as well as prevent them from potentially becoming editors.

Do you have any other thoughts on ways to improve findability of article information for readers? EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 20:39, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

Notified: Help talk:Searching, Help talk:Navigation, Help talk:Introduction to navigating Wikipedia/1 and mw:Help talk:CirrusSearch. Sdkb‑WMF ^talk 19:56, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Working on a better search system is a good idea, question based search has been a my staple on Google for 20 years and now I use LLMs. Take the question how is gps accurate enough for surveying (how can the same system that says I am sitting my neighbour's living room be used with any accuracy). Wikipedia has the answer in Surveying, in the History section, 20th century subsection. Or we have an article: Real-time kinematic positioning, that is too complicated to answer the question efficiently. Neither Surveying or Real-time kinematic positioning appear in the top 20 results of a Wikipedia search (Toronto Marathon does though :-P). I tried answering this question more than 15 years ago on the Reference desk (I can't find it in my contribs now, kudos to anyone that can).

When someone has a question, they don't want a search to tell them "the answer may be in this 7,000 word article, have a look". Or they ask a LLM "write me 7,000 word passage that overviews the topic related to my question".

Wikipedia does topic overviews. Wikipedian's can make it easier to find information by placing anchors in article introductions to relevant sections and making articles readable for the general population. And they can participate in a human-written q&a system.

Side note: recently I used Google to search for perth contours (to make a map for a Wikipedia article). The entire screen on the first results page was dedicated to skin contouring clinics around Australia. When I scrolled down after the two results wanting me to pay, the CC BY-4.0 contours were found by searching the gov website that was 4th result. I am more than happy to write an answer to that question for the next person so they can avoid my terrible experience, naturally that is outside the scope of Wikipedia. Google search is vulnerable at the moment.

To answer to your initial questions:

1. I am not surprised that 98% of visits originate outside Wikipedia search (search engines offer better results), and people using Wikipedia search have learnt that it is only good for auto-completing a topic title.
2. Risks: Wikipedia provides articles that overview a topic and the current search box is effective at getting you to an article. If people want to find a Wikipedia article this behaviour with auto-complete is great. Unfortunately it is not good for everything else.
3. I think a decent search should be pursued regardless (to be honest I want a Google competitor that doesn't try to sell me stuff or generate erroneous answer), I am not sure what other options apart from hybrid there are. If hybrid can get me to the answer my question above faster, that is great.

Commander Keane (talk) 10:07, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

@Commander Keane, Thanks for this feedback! Yes, we think for now, hybrid search is the logical next step to explore. Keyword search definitely has its uses so we want to ensure we are building upon our existing capabilities. We’ll share more details on the initial experiment soon.

To your second point on risks, do you have any ideas for wayfinding within an article? EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 18:25, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

1. "What are your overall reactions to this exploration and the research behind it?" → Chat-style search is going to be a necessary part of Wikipedia as that becomes more and more how people expect to engage with the internet. Younger kids shout questions to Alexa or Siri without ever surfing the web. Early Wikipedia used a model that barely made use of search at all; this just feels like a logical step.
2. "Are there risks or concerns you think we should be paying closer attention to?" → A reader should always know upfront if any writing or content was generated by AI.
3. "What signals or outcomes would matter most in deciding whether a hybrid search approach is worth pursuing further?" → Do the changes result in people using Wikipedia's native search more or less? As search engines and AI software become increasingly eager to quote or even plagiarize Wikipedia, we need local solutions because without readers actually seeing the articles, none of them will ever become editors.

I liked the highlighting in the prototype. Cat is also a good example as it's 7853 words long and much of the specific cat information is spread across other articles. For example, I was recently trying to remember what to make sure to avoid when getting floor cleaner to use around cats. The answer (phenols) is on Wikipedia but located at Disinfectant § Phenolics.

On the search results example, the results copied over from cat have their citations omitted:

Cats have excellent night vision and can see at one sixth the light level required for human vision. This is partly the result of cat eyes having a tapetum lucidum, which reflects any light that passes through the retina back into the eye, thereby increasing the eye's sensitivity to dim light. Large pupils are an adaptation to dim light. The domestic cat has slit pupils, which allow it to focus bright light without chromatic aberration. [...]

Have you all tested ways to show the citations in the search?

Cats have excellent night vision and can see at one sixth the light level required for human vision. This is partly the result of cat eyes having a tapetum lucidum, which reflects any light that passes through the retina back into the eye, thereby increasing the eye's sensitivity to dim light. Large pupils are an adaptation to dim light. The domestic cat has slit pupils, which allow it to focus bright light without chromatic aberration. [...]

References

Good luck with the project, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 14:25, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

@Rjjiii, appreciate your thoughtful comment. To your third point, our hope is that the changes would result in more readers using Wikipedia’s native search, so that is a key area we will be testing here.

Your note about citations within surfaced results is really helpful. The linked example is a very early mockup and does not reflect any sort of final design choice, so citations will be carefully considered. In addition to highlights, is there anything else you would be interested in seeing in terms of surfacing in-article results? EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 18:28, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

@EBlackorby-WMF: It makes sense to get feedback early on. One note regarding citations is that a study on how folks read Wikipedia showed that people were checking the citations in medical articles (via the popup) even when they were not going to the linked website.[2] I bring it up because I think it would affect how any testing is done. Few people follow citation links, but apparently, in context-dependent situations, some people are checking the citation itself to evaluate the type of source. Regarding "surfacing in-article results", I hesitate to suggest anything here because an important thing make clear to the reader is what has been added by their search plus the AI tool. Highlighting has long been used by search engines, so that's intuitive. For other elements, I suspect you would need to do some kind of test where you ask readers afterward to see if they were confused or mistaken. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 18:57, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I believe hybrid search is worth exploring. As an editor I use site full-text search to find related and duplicate material, and I'd like to be able to run longer and more natural-language queries and still get meaningful results. I'd also like to see better snippets on search results pages. It's interesting to see this question because a work teammate and I recently implemented hybrid semantic search to improve information retrieval for users of an internal reference website. For that website's purpose, AI-generated text is not desirable/appropriate, but users needed better relevance rankings for search results. We were using PostgreSQL full-text keyword search, and we added pgvector and embeddings generated with a commercial general-purpose foundation model, using reciprocal rank fusion to blend the results. (Switching to Elasticsearch was out of budget/scope.) To figure out whether hybrid search was worthwhile for us, I made a sample list of recent real queries and realistic queries, and we did a lot of qualitative testing to figure out whether the new approach returned similar or better results for the majority of sample queries, rarely worse results. We used a prototype where we could fiddle with the parameters, similar to https://semantic-search.wmcloud.org/. I'm no expert in any of this, but I learned a few things that may be interesting:

1. For my site, semantic search works better for longer and more complex queries, and keyword search works better for single-word and quoted queries. So for one-word and quoted queries, we just run keyword search, and for queries longer than ~15 words, we just run semantic search.
2. Snippet quality and presentation have a big impact on making search results meaningful and usable; people want to see a quick preview of their keywords in context in the document. We kept a relatively traditional search results page, but started offering multiple snippets and longer snippets from each document.
3. It wasn't easy to figure out a good chunking strategy for our documents, but chunking made a big difference for quality of ranking and snippets, both for traditional keyword search and semantic search.
4. We've had difficulty getting really good semantic search ranking with our very DIY approach. Some keyword queries that did well in traditional search got worse with early versions of hybrid search because the semantic search results were not helping. So we limited the impact of the semantic element by limiting the distance threshold. Tested a lot of queries to figure out the best threshold for us. We found that the right threshold lets semantic search shine when keyword search is struggling to produce any relevant results, without muddying up search keyword search results when they're quite relevant.
5. On the search results page, we changed the search input box a little bit - made it a multi-line entry box, with new labeling, to encourage longer queries and more natural-language queries.

Dreamyshade (talk) 06:52, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Moving (sandbox > Draft: space)

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation § Moving (sandbox > Draft: space)

 – HurricaneZeta^C 23:00, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

I've just had to move a couple of sandbox drafts into the draft namespace manually, because the 'Move to Draft space' function in the submission template isn't working: when you try to move a draft with no talk page, it throws an error saying

The talk page could not be moved, for the following reason: The page User talk:DKT SUN/sandbox doesn't exist and cannot be moved. If you really want to leave the talk page behind, unselect the "Move associated talk page" button.

However, the "Move associated talk page" button isn't available so cannot be unselected.

I don't even know where to go looking for the problem, so I'm just leaving this here and going to walk the pooch before the heavens open. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:30, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

I have the same, repeatedly. An exampe is User:SWJeff1750/sandbox

The talk page could not be moved, for the following reason::The page User talk:SWJeff1750/sandbox doesn't exist and cannot be moved. If you really want to leave the talk page behind, unselect the "Move associated talk page" button.

It has been happening for at leats two days 🇵🇸‍🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦‍🇵🇸 16:00, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

I've been getting this message often when swapping pages for WP:RMTR requests, but it always goes through normally (sometimes it moves the wrong way like this but it's easily fixable). HurricaneZeta^C 19:12, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

I suspect this is a phab issue over an AFC template issue, the (move) link is just a standard Special:Move with some pre-filled options (and nothing talk page related). Might be worth moving this discussion to VPP. Primefac (talk) 21:38, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

VPP or VPT? HurricaneZeta^C 22:24, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

T. Primefac (talk) 22:50, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Done HurricaneZeta^C 23:00, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

By the way I have set up User:Primefac/RandName2 temporarily to demonstrate the issue (though please don't actually move the page). Primefac (talk) 23:15, 11 January 2026 (UTC) Page deleted, G7. Primefac (talk) 11:34, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Should be reported to phab as a regression. @Pppery has been making some changes to the MovePage code lately. – SD0001 (talk) 06:01, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

If you ignore the error and click submit it works properly - this is a purely UI issue where I neglected to handle the situation in which you enter a prefilled URL for a movepage form involving a page without a talk page. Will submit a patch for that soon. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:22, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

gerrit:1225606. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:28, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

429 (Too many requests)

My Bots are getting 429 (Too many requests) errors. Any ideas what is going on? Is there some sort of request limiting in progress? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:58, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

First thing would probably be to check that you're sending a proper user agent. WMF started rate limiting generic agents somewhat recently, and may have ramped it up. Rumor has it that "proper" wants the agent to contain an email address or an https link. Anomie⚔ 00:27, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Hmmm. That could be it. I updated the UserAgent last year, and that got it going again, but did not include an email address. I have added it so it now looks exacly like the recommendation Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:46, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

There have been pretty aggressive rate limits recently. Apparently there is some bots that are refusing to play nice. It seems that some legitimate traffic is being affected by those limits as well, which I presume is because it's too difficult for the sysadmins to tell the legitimate and non-legitimate traffic apart. It's a bit hard to get the sys admins to talk about what's going on here, as that seems to lead to the parties at play adapting and choosing the next avenue to attack the website. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:45, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

I've been getting these 429 errors in my normal gnome editing off and on over the past three weeks or so. Granted, my "normal gnome editing" consists of requesting up to 50 pages at the same time, in separate tabs, so that I can flip from tab to tab and edit each one with a script to fix Linter errors. I manually open and manually save each page by clicking my mouse. I have been editing in this way for over seven years with the same browser and the same scripts, fixing hundreds of thousands of errors in the process, and I've never run into rate-limit errors. Reloading the tabs with errors allows me to continue, but it slows down my editing. Is there anything I can do to get on a whitelist so that I don't run into this problem? – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:58, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Following up: The actual error I am getting is

Error
Your user is making too many web requests. Please reduce your request rate or contact noc@wikimedia.org (3231bf1)

I will write to that address. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:53, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Each of the 50 pages may be making multiple API requests in the background depending on the user script, user preferences, and/or extensions enabled. This might trigger the rate limit that even power users like you may face?

I'm not sure what whitelist is available for this, but how about consider being an admin? At least on the surface, there is no rate limit applied on the administrator user group. – robertsky (talk) 21:57, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

I have written to noc@wikimedia.org and will see what they say in reply, if anything. I would consider becoming an admin only as a last resort. I am reluctant to add the drama and capability to unwittingly make admin-level errors that would necessarily accompany admin rights, and I have less than zero desire to come anywhere near the RFA process. Template editor is exactly my speed, and I'd rather keep it that way. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:57, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

I've already replied to @Jonesey95 via email, but let me clarify this here too: what happened yesterday was indeed due to the sheer amount of requests made in a short burst, which triggered a defensive measure we've introduced recently, but that, due to a seemingly-unrelated bug, was never enforced. When we fixed the bug, I didn't check back to see if the rule was triggered regularly or not, my bad. Also, in this case, being an admin wouldn't have offered any larger rate-limit.

GLavagetto (WMF) (talk) 06:28, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

I can confirm that the problem is fixed for me. Thanks to GLavagetto (WMF) for the quick fix. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:40, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, as already suggested by people who replied to you, you should set the user-agent correctly according to the UA Policy. That will allow you to make the volume of requests per second stated in our Robot Policy.

If that is not enough, and your bot is making edits/using the API heavily, is to log in as bots with the bot flag set are granted higher rate limits. If your bot is only reading content, I would suggest to switch to using more sustainable (for our servers) avenues like wikimedia dumps.

GLavagetto (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

I am reading far less than 50 pages and not updating any in the development environment. So I am not using the API heavily, and every effort is made to reduce the number of API calls to a minimum (albeit to save processing time rather than your servers). The Bot runs okay in the production environment on Toolforge (where it does update a small number of pages). This supports the notion that a tightening of restrictions on the User-Agent header is indeed the case as it was exempt (but may not be in the future). But I cannot do development work there. Changing the user agent to something like User-Agent: FACBot/2.1.0 worked last year but it looks like requirement have been tightened as per the rumour. I have added an email address and library version to the User-Agent so it closely resembles the example i.e. User-Agent: FACBot/2.1.0 (my.name@wikimedia.org.au) wikimedia.library/2.1.9 and this seems to work. This will be propagated to Toolforge with the next release. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:20, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

How to create a table of content based on a bunch of magazine pdfs?

Some editors including myself are using reviews of games from print magazines to establish their notability/write articles, but for many magazines, there are no databases listing the magazine's contents, so at WikiProjects for Board/RPG/VG we are occasionally creating them. I've recently spend several weeks creating two such lists (Wikipedia:WikiProject Board and table games/ŚGP and Wikipedia:WikiProject Board and table games/Rebel Times). It took me many hours, despite having access to digitized table of contents (that I then fed to AI, and pastakingly verified one by one; still double checking stuff, but it's useful enough for project space). The verification is of course a necessity while working with AI, no way around it. But that was still "easy", due to digitized ToCs. I have a bunch more magazines in pdfs format with no ToC I'd love to convert to a searchable lists, as currently I am manually opening and transcribing ToCs from all these PDFs - and I am not looking fwd to it, and realistically, it will take me years to finish that. Any ideas what tools could be used to speed this up? I am honestly wondering if I shouldn't just pause my efforts for few years until AIs are good enough to "eat" a bunch of magazine PDFs (non-OCRed, some of them) and spit out the information needed. Perhaps it can already be done with some? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:38, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps it can already be done with some? I think so. Try NotebookLM. I have not used it myself but heard very good things about it. – SD0001 (talk) 06:20, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

@SD0001 I tried ChatGPT and after some fighting it seems to be able to finish the messy OCR I am dealing with. Huh. Well, good. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:05, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

AfD Statistics for User:Maile66

The individual AfD Statistics in the table/grid sees to have stopped late yesterday and not resumed. Is this a normal pause? — Maile (talk) 12:46, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

@Maile66 As long as toolforge:replag-embed isn't reporting any replication lag, there's no reason AfD Stats should be out of date. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:53, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Template help

is there a place for template help?

(If is easier to just fix it than redirect me, here's the problem. A tiny template ({{OS2NS}}) that I wrote and was working fine for years has gone silly after three minor edits. Where did the extraneous newline come from?

• Test case: {{OS2NS|13 May|1751|24 May}},

produces

• 13 May [24 May N.S.] 1751,

(Note position of terminal comma.) If the character after the invocation is a semicolon, a pseudohead results, as this diff that Statisticalphil had to use to band-aid it demonstrates. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:00, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

fixed —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:10, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Tyvm, I'm obliged. <blush> It's always the ones that are staring you in the face that are the hardest to see. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:52, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-03

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. [3]
• 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. [4][5][6][7]
• 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. [8]

Updates for technical contributors

• The VisualEditor citation tool and Reference Previews now support "map" as a reference type. [9]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki/MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Additionally, the pagination on Search will be updated too, as a part of the work on the Revamp pagination / page navigation wish. Ugh, the suggestions in that wish look ugly. Anomie⚔ 23:49, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

... and Codex tables are not mobile friendly presently. Hopefully the search screen just gets the navigation buttons and not the whole table experience.... Izno (talk) 02:40, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

But y'know, sure am glad we're getting people working on wishes with 5 people supporting. Izno (talk) 02:41, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Modules vs. DRAFTNOCAT/USERNOCAT

Another module-related issue I don't know how to fix. Within the past few days, a user created a new Module:Music chart, and modified both {{Album chart}} and {{Single chart}} to call that instead of being directly coded as they used to be — however, as a result of that the most recent runs of the polluted category reports for drafts and userspace content in mainspace categories are now picking up large clusters of the "Album chart usages for X" and "Single chart usages for X" tracking categories that those templates generate to track their usage.

These were never picked up by those reports before, and in fact we don't really want them getting picked up by those reports — since they're maintenance categories, not end-user mainspace categories, having draft or user sandbox pages in them isn't really a major problem that the category cleanup crew needs to fix in the first place, and since they're template-transcluded they'd be incredibly difficult to fix anyway — since people use the album and single chart templates on draft and sandbox content all the time, I'd have to manually wrap every new usage on non-article content in the {{suppress categories}} wrapper, which would basically become a full-time job that's not worth taking on.

So does somebody know a way to ensure that these categories go back to just not getting picked up by the category cleanup reports in the first place as they used to? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Have you asked Solidest or posted on Module talk:Music chart? I recommend starting there. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:01, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

I already disabled all categorization from all spaces except the main one yesterday. Perhaps the reports or cache haven't been fully updated yet? Solidest (talk) 21:09, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

undocumented parameters on {{infobox play}}

what are playbill_event, playbill, ibdb_id, iobdb_id, theatricalia_id supposed to do in {{infobox play}}? i can't get them to do anything other than add the page to category:pages using infobox play with external database links. ltbdl (pop) 05:15, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Looking at the template's talk page can sometimes help. Those parameters were deprecated 11 years ago. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:56, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Wayback Machine issues?

I went to use a webarchive link and got a message I had never seen before: "503 Service Unavailable No server is available to handle this request." Is this a new issue? Old issue that I somehow have missed before? Anyone know what is going on? - Shearonink (talk) 20:00, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

It happens from time to time, in my experience. It's an Internet Archive problem; There's nothing that can be done about it from our end. Compare this old and fairly useless Reddit thread about it. Graham87 (talk) 04:19, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I had been concerned that Wayback was down or hacked or something... - Shearonink (talk) 16:01, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

template css :has() pseudo-class is incorrectly parsed by validator

we're working with a table where a big point is showing which values repeat.

the solution I came up with was highlighting, copying from row-hover-highlight. when one cell is hovered over, all cells which share its class get highlighted:

@media screen {
    table.mytemplate:has(.match:hover) .match {
        background-color: var(--background-color-progressive-subtle, #f1f4fd);
        color: var(--color-base, #202122);
	}
}

where a template would be used to set cell content and class at the same time.

however, when actually putting this in a template css file, I get The document contains errors. Are you sure you want to publish? and then Invalid selector list at $position. the code works exactly as expected without this one statement, and this statement works as exactly as expected in all the browsers I've cared to try opening up dev tools and adding it to the end of the style sheet my template is inserting.

it appears the validator wants :has() to only use elements; no ids, classes, attributes, psudo-classes, or psudo-elements that I have tried work. is there a way we could get classes and psudo-classes working here? rokke (talk) 07:51, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

I tried to report this upstream in the past, and they rejected my bug :( Bawolff (talk) 08:14, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

where would upstream be? I don't really know where that kind of stuff actually is rokke (talk) 09:15, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace/issues/5018 Bawolff (talk) 10:10, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

If you mean your own common/skin/global.css and CodeEditor's linter (which is pretty old so doesn't recognize :has()), you can just ignore the errors and save it. If you mean TemplateStyles, :has() is not supported by all Grade A browsers so it's not going to happen anytime soon. Nardog (talk) 08:25, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

the only browsers on that list which don't support has are the mobile browsers, but mobile browsers aren't great at hovering anyways. this isn't adding any information, and doesn't break anything for browsers which don't understand it, it's just making a better user experience for the browsers which do support it. besides, looking at caniuse, it's been pretty much universally supported since 2023, and is available for 97.2% of the users that they track. rokke (talk) 09:12, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

has() is part of Selectors Level 4 spec, which is tracked in phab:T217722. TemplateStyles supports some CSS features which don't have full browser support, so I don't think that is a blocker. – SD0001 (talk) 09:45, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

> don't think that is a blocker

if I try to click the 'publish changes' button, I get a The document contains errors. Are you sure you want to publish? dialog box. if I click 'yes,' it reloads the page, adds a Invalid selector list at $position error box, and does not publish any changes rokke (talk) 09:54, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

oh, I see what you actually meant now; blocker for has being added to the sanitizer, not blocker for someone using has rokke (talk) 10:00, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

where would be the right place to submit a hunk? after a quick look, I think

diff --git a/src/Grammar/MatcherFactory.php b/src/Grammar/MatcherFactory.php
index 3819abd..e2d6392 100644
--- a/src/Grammar/MatcherFactory.php
+++ b/src/Grammar/MatcherFactory.php
@@ -1508,6 +1508,7 @@ class MatcherFactory {
 		if ( !isset( $this->cache[__METHOD__] ) ) {
 			$colon = new TokenMatcher( Token::T_COLON );
 			$ows = $this->optionalWhitespace();
+			$selectorList = new Juxtaposition( [ $ows, $this->cssSelectorList(), $ows ] );
 			$anplusb = new Juxtaposition( [ $ows, $this->cssANplusB(), $ows ] );
 			$dirValues = new KeywordMatcher( [ 'ltr', 'rtl' ] );
 			$this->cache[__METHOD__] = new Alternative( [
@@ -1523,6 +1524,10 @@ class MatcherFactory {
 						] ),
 						new FunctionMatcher( 'lang', new Juxtaposition( [ $ows, $this->ident(), $ows ] ) ),
 						new FunctionMatcher( 'dir', new Juxtaposition( [ $ows, $dirValues, $ows ] ) ),
+						new FunctionMatcher( 'is', $selectorList ),
+						new FunctionMatcher( 'where', $selectorList ),
+						new FunctionMatcher( 'has', $selectorList ),
 						new FunctionMatcher( 'nth-child', $anplusb ),
 						new FunctionMatcher( 'nth-last-child', $anplusb ),
 						new FunctionMatcher( 'nth-of-type', $anplusb ),

works, so would just need to add some tests, right? rokke (talk) 11:12, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

It can be submitted to the Gerrit repo; see mw:Gerrit/Tutorial/tl;dr. Patches in this repo are generally accepted if they implement a spec level fully – so in this case you may have to make sure everything in https://www.w3.org/TR/selectors-4/ is supported. – SD0001 (talk) 11:29, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

that's an awesome guide, thanks ^^ that's actually a lot less than I thought it would be, I can probably tackle that rokke (talk) 11:41, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

looking closer, a bunch of stuff noted in various 'Changes Since Level 3' sections is already included, so we'll probably be fine just fixing is, where, has, and not for now. rokke (talk) 12:19, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Page curation failing to add deletion tags

Hello, I've been using Page Curation the past few days to mark articles for deletion, but it keeps failing with the message "Failed to add deletion tags to page". By the time it finally works (very rare), the article or redirect will be listed 5+ times on XFD already. Is there any way to fix this? thetechie@enwiki:~$ she/they | talk 15:57, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

https://wikipedia25.org/ banner

This banner has just appeared linking to the 25 year anniversary site, but https://wikipedia25.org/ gives the error: Domain not configured. This domain points to a Wikimedia Foundation server, but is not configured on this server. Not sure if someone has published the banner early, or what, but something is broken. SmartSE (talk) 18:21, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

I also noticed it but when I reopened Wikipedia in a private tab to see the banner again, it linked to the correct site so I guess they fixed it. Laura240406 (talk) 18:37, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this, yes some of the banners were put up early by mistake. We have taken those ones down now. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

In the upper left corner of this page and every page, I see a blank square about 45x45px, with a "Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia" link next to it. Vector 2022, Desktop view. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:18, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

The Wikipedia logo on Timeless and Vector 2022 is now missing. I think something went sideways with the removal of the banner. I see the broken image icon instead of Wikipedia's logo. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 21:23, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Working now. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:35, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

On another note it would be nice to update the text of the "Welcome to Wikipedia" blurb to maybe say "25 years of the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" alongside a 25 year puzzle piece. A quarter century of adding knowledge is a major achievement for Wikipedia as a whole. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 21:38, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

And now ... the new 25 icon is gone, possibly due to this change by Izno, or by something else. If I put

.mw-logo-icon {
	display: inline;
}

in my personal .css file, the logo reappears. I think the change might need to be reverted. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:35, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

I mean on V22 it is a bit redundant. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 22:38, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

??? The globe is Wikipedia's logo. Did I miss a discussion in which the community decided to hide the Wikipedia logo from every page? We show the logo (link to archive.org from two months ago). – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:42, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

I am talking about the puzzle piece on both the image and text. In typical (or maybe atypical) fashion they cannot make up whether they want to show it on one or the other. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 23:55, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Talk page displaying weirdly

Whenever I click directly onto my talk page, it displays weirdly (like in a very basic format?) - it's totally normal when I edit or look at old versions, any ideas? GiantSnowman 18:21, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

It works for me. Maybe try Wikipedia:Bypass your cache. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:36, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

FOUC, perhaps? Qwerfjkltalk 09:29, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it was FOUC (never heard that phrase before!) - now fixed without me doing anything, very odd, thanks both! GiantSnowman 18:33, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Template field not displaying in infobox

The result field doesn't show in the infobox. See 2025 Boeing machinists' strike. STEMinfo (talk) 21:26, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

|status= overrides |result=. I have clarified the documentation for {{Infobox civil conflict}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:33, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Wierd Symbol next to page title

This just started, and is not doing this on Commons or Wikisource. It looks like a jigsaw piece. And it has the number 25 next to it. It doesn't show if I click on the main page. But it appears next to the title of every article, not just mine. It's really annoying. Help me get ride of this, please — Maile (talk) 01:25, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything but this report might relate to #https://wikipedia25.org/ banner above. Johnuniq (talk) 01:51, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Are you using the old "Modern" skin? From a quick glance at all other skins, that (example) seems to be the only skin which uses something close to the described design for the 25th birthday icon. If so, you can remove it by adding this line .mw-page-title-main::after {background-image: unset} to your Special:MyPage/common.css (or /modern.css). If not, please tell us which skin, and perhaps link a screenshot. HTH. Quiddity (talk) 01:53, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

It related to the Wikipedia 25th anniversary, it will probably be gone in a few days Best wishes, Macaw*! 02:16, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Just checked. Looks like I'm using the old Modern skin. I've never done a screen shot of anything. I'm a little edgy on trying to do what you suggest, concerned I'll screw it up. — Maile (talk) 02:45, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

@Maile66: You may need span in front of the code. Special:MyPage/skin.css will automatically redirect to your current skin and not affect other skins if you change skin later. Just save this in the page:

span.mw-page-title-main::after {background-image: unset}

It will remove https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/W25-puzzle-blue-bordered.png, not destroy your account. And you can always just blank the page later. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:28, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

What's wrong with my script?

When I add a warning to someone's talk page, it always displays as 4 days ago.

User:MrDenjiLover/CHNSAW User:MrDenjiLover/CHNSAW.js MrDenjiLover ^🗣️ (Non-binary) 13:34, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Your code here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:MrDenjiLover/CHNSAW.js&oldid=1332363681#L-573--L-575 has a date that is 4 days ago. Matma Rex talk 14:08, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

It should probably just be ~~<nowiki />~~ instead of a hardcoded signature. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:08, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

I think a self-closed noinclude tag usually works better in that situation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:50, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

People usually start the whole script with //<nowiki> and end it with //</nowiki> so no wikitext is ever parsed and expanded. Ponor (talk) 16:19, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

MrDenjiLover, please fix the accessibility issue in your signature. You were asked to the last time you posted here. — Qwerfjkltalk 19:08, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

someone said that I don't need to so im not gonna fix it plus it's obvious it would be my name even to a colorblind person cause why would a random ass box be in a sig MrDenjiLover ^🗣️ (Non-binary) 15:17, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Making your signature accessible is policy, not optional. Wikipedia:Signatures#cite_note-7 has links to help you find a good contrast ratio. I have provided some suggestions on your talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:04, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

. MrDenjiLover ^🗣️ (Non-binary) 22:02, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Redirect/s needed

My brain must be half-asleep this morning... I read the instruction page of WP:Redirect maker & can't figure out how to frikkin' do it. SO... Paid protestor is an article already. A term much used in the Trump presdiencie has been "Professional agitators". (Just do a WP search for the term...) I think a redirect from "Professional agitators" (and maybe also "Paid agitators"?) pointing to "Paid protestors" should be created. I just can't get it straight on how to do it. Much thanks to one of you smart lovely people who can easily do it. - Shearonink (talk) 16:07, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

@Shearonink  Done. In the future, use WP:AFC/R for these sorts of requests. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:13, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Ahecht Ok, yes, thanks I do know that *but* I'm came here also to say I didn't understand the WP:Redirect instructions. At all. Maybe someone could please write up an easy step-by-step page or something? I kept on redirecting to the wrong title, so I never saved my endeavors. - Shearonink (talk) 23:39, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

The tutorial you're looking for is at Help:Redirect. Wikipedia:Redirect is a guidelines page. —⁠andrybak (talk) 05:18, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Really? Then the Redirect maker shouldn't be labeled as such and the sentence at WP:Redirect should be completely re-crafted: "For technical help relating to how redirects work, see Help:Redirect." If Help:Redirect is the actual step-by-step guide to making Redirects for Dummies it needs to be bolded, highighted or whatever. I'd go in a re-jigger some of the scattered-about prose concerning redirects but I don't want to be accused of messing about because I possibly have some bone to pick with the instructions.

And I have some experience around here. Someone who is completely new would probably have a harder time figuring out/teaching themselves what to do. - Shearonink (talk) 15:53, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Wrong line wrapping on the main page

On the mobile website, the line breaks at the top of the main page are wrong, making the comma appear on a separate line:

File:Broken main page comma screenshot.jpg 🍅 fx (talk) 19:17, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Seems like this only happens when Parsoid is enabled. Should I report it somewhere else then? 🍅 fx (talk) 19:19, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

I can look sometime in the next couple hours to see if this is just a question of needing CSS adjusted for Minerva. Izno (talk) 20:06, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Ok, that's weird. This behavior occurs on mobile but not on desktop with Parsoid on for both. The former wraps it in a div and the latter does not. These should at least match... Izno (talk) 20:41, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Ok, phab:T414734 now. Izno (talk) 20:49, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Geohack down?

Geohack links are throwing 404 pages, it looks like? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:52, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

And now it's working again, so false alarm I guess. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:04, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

What is Aaron Frazer doing?

Will someone who knows more about redirect syntax than I do please look at Aaron Frazer (the redirect, not the redirect target) and tell me why it is displaying several lines of explanation in small type at the top of the screen?

I will try to clean it up, so perhaps the version that is effective as of 0507 GMT, 16 January 2026, should be examined. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:08, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Well, putting a short description in a redirect doesn't seem like a good idea, but I have rearranged it so that it no longer gives a long message. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:12, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Split converter functions from module:clade to a new module

module:clade is currently template-protected due to high-visibility uses via {{clade}}. However, this use does not apply to the entry points called by {{clade converter}}. I believe it makes sense to split out that part of the module to a less protected module, perhaps named module:clade converter.

For formality I also posted the same at Module talk:Clade#Split converter functions to a new module. In any case please help add a link to the module talk page when archiving. Artoria2e5 🌉 09:24, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

User .js page in mainspace categories, again

The latest run of Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories features a category, Category:Book covers, which has a user .js settings page in it, which I can't remove due to not having the necessary privileges to edit other users' .js settings pages. So could somebody get it out of the category? But also, since this has been an occasional recurring problem, is there any way that .js settings pages can be excluded from mainspace categories at the server level so that this stops being a thing entirely? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 15:30, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

@Bearcat So could somebody get it out of the category? you should ask on WP:IANB.

is there any way that .js settings pages can be excluded from mainspace categories at the server level so that this stops being a thing entirely? - you are welcome to open a phab ticket, but I wouldn't get your hopes up (how do we define mainspace categories etc.). Qwerfjkltalk 18:28, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Note that $wgTextModelsToParse exists, but in the past when it has been accidentally disabled then people would complain about intended categories, backlinks, substing, and so on not working. If you decide to try to pursue the request, you may want to be clear about how your request is different from that setting. Anomie⚔ 22:45, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Namespace with extra space

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T315893

In the page Wikipedia:Requests for comment there is an additional space between the namespace and the page title. When inspecting I can see that the span class with mw-page-title-separator is different but I don't know why or where it gets this additional styling from. Reading phab:T315893 it seems that this change was done to talk pages, but that page isn't a talk page. This page also has this, while it is not a talk page it does have talk page features enabled, which Wikipedia:Requests for comment doesn't. So any idea where that page is inheriting that style from? Gonnym (talk) 21:08, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

The processed CSS style adding the whitespace is:

.ext-discussiontools-visualenhancements-enabled .mw-page-title-separator::after {
  content: ' ';
}

The responsible file seems to be https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-DiscussionTools/blob/master/modules/init.styles/dt.init.pageframe.less.

It disappears when you disable the "Discussion tools" beta feature. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 22:19, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

But do you know why that specific page is showing this and not other WP: namespace pages? Gonnym (talk) 23:18, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Sadly not. In 45 minutes of research, the most I got was:

• The class .ext-discussiontools-visualenhancements-enabled, needed to add the extra space, is present for some reason in some pages (like Wikipedia:Requests for comment) and absent in others (like Wikipedia:Notability)
• Wikipedia:Requests for comment seems to also be styled like a talk page, with its headings shown in a sans-serif font (a documented change at mw:Talk pages project/Feature summary#Usability improvements)

LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 00:51, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Because it has __ARCHIVEDTALK__ on it. In addition to suppressing reply links, that also causes a non-talk page to be considered a discussion page for the DiscussionTools extension's other purposes. Anomie⚔ 03:14, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Jinx, I suppose. :) Skynxnex (talk) 03:17, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Is that it? In that 45 minutes, I pasted Wikipedia:Requests for comment's contents into one of my sandboxes and into Wikipedia:Sandbox, then saved them, but the namespace's extra space did not appear. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 03:53, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Amazing work everyone. I tested with removing it from the template and indeed the space was gone. In my sandbox adding ARCHIVEDTALK did nothing but maybe user namespaces aren't enabled for that. Gonnym (talk) 10:58, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

I think (but am quite unsure) it's because WP:Requests for comments transcludes {{RFC list footer}} which I think will include __ARCHIVEDTALK__ in default usage, which reading mw:Help:DiscussionTools/Magic words and markup makes the page be considered a "discussion page" but doesn't show the reply buttons. Skynxnex (talk) 03:15, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Subscription/notification bug report

I am not sure where to report it, but it's getting annoying: for the last few weeks, I've been getting notifications for main threads in project spaces where I submit report. Two examples: after submitting a DYK to T:TDYK using the relevant gadget, I became subscribe to "current nominations" thread there. And while submitting AfDs using Twinkle, I became subscribed to similar threads on DELSORT pages. Note this is not a problem with Twinkle or gadgets, I've been using them for years (and notifications too). Something changed "under the hood" and is now treating posting in such places as doing something worth subscribing (probably related to the mechanic of subscribing to a parent thread when you post in it, or create a subheading in it?). I assume this affects many folks and is tracked in Phhabricator somewhere, but since it is not being fixed quickly enough, obviously, I am posting here, as it is starting to make notifications annoying (I am getting several false alerts each days now because of this bug). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:08, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

@Piotrus: Is "Automatically subscribe to topics" enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing? If you never want to subscribe then you can also disable "Enable topic subscription". You can unsubscribe individual subscriptions at Special:TopicSubscriptions. They may come back if you edit the same section. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:28, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter Yes, it's useful - for talk pages. Not for project space work pages. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:46, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

@Piotrus: You can subscribe to level 2 sections with comments, probably identified by signatures. Transcluded comments like Template talk:Did you know#Current nominations and Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/North Carolina#North Carolina apparently count since I see subscribe links. I don't know whether such details have changed recently. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:57, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Portlet Links order random

I have a bunch of custom user scripts that add links to the sidebar via mw.util.addPortletLink. What is weird is that the order is totally random. Literally if I refresh the page, the script links all shuffle... I assume this is some sort of race condition thing? Is there some javascript trick that I can use to force these to always load in the same order? Thanks in advance! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 04:44, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Skin? Examples? Links can be added before a link with a known ID. Your added links should also have unique IDs so you can chain them the way you like it. ~2026-35847-2 (talk) 04:53, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes it is a race condition thing. Nardog (talk) 04:57, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

This has been happening to me since I started loading multiple AutoEd scripts into my Actions sidebar section (formerly a custom menu in Vector legacy) in 2013. I would love a solution. Vector 2022. User:Jonesey95/vector-2022.js. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:29, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

The simple way is to do

(async () => {
	await mw.loader.getScript('First script.js');
	await mw.loader.getScript('Second script.js');
	// and so on
})();

but this loads the scripts in sequence rather than in parallel, so it's slower. If you want to request all the scripts at once like you already do, but not execute them until certain scripts are loaded, you could do e.g.

(async () => {
	const scriptUrls = [
		'//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=First_script.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javscript',
		'//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_script.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javscript',
		// and so on
	];
	const fetchPromises = scriptUrls.map(url => fetch(url));
	for (const fetchPromise of fetchPromises) {
		try {
			const response = await fetchPromise;
			if (!/^text\/javascript\b/.test(response.headers.get('Content-Type'))) {
				throw new Error(`${response.url} is not a script`);
			}
			const text = await response.text();
			$.globalEval(text);
		} catch (error) {
			console.error(error);
		}
	}
})();

And perhaps this can be fine-tuned to work with User:SD0001/Making user scripts load faster. Nardog (talk) 14:16, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Search Function Bugs

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T414859

Good Afternoon, I have been dealing with certain issues this week on the wikipedia advance search. For instance, I put "Democratic Socialists of America" under exactly this text, and in the category box, Female United States Representatives. I realized that there were no results shown when there should be. Same went for just "American Democratic Socialists" in the category box, when no results were shown when expected. In addition, I tried putting "she" "american" "environmental economist" under the search bar with category:Living people last week. It worked then, but not today. If I just put "Environmental Economists" under the category, no results show up when there should be some. I am copying and pasting some of the links below: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=%22Democratic+Socialists+of+America%22+deepcat%3A%22Female+United+States+representatives%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%22fields%22%3A%7B%22phrase%22%3A%22Democratic+Socialists+of+America%22%2C%22deepcategory%22%3A%5B%22Female+United+States+representatives%22%5D%7D%7D&ns0=1 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=%22she%22+%22environmental+economist%22+%22american%22+deepcat%3A%22Living+people%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%22fields%22%3A%7B%22deepcategory%22%3A%5B%22Living+people%22%5D%7D%7D&ns0=1 Sincerely, ~2026-36954-3 (talk) 17:38, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-36954-3: Advanced search with "Pages in these categories" uses deepcat: which is currently broken. See phab:T414859: "Searching by category (deepcat) is broken". You can enter incategory:"Female United States representatives" in the search box instead. deepcat: would have included subcategories if it worked. incategory: only searches the category itself. See more at Help:Searching. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:05, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Accesskey for Special pages

The accesskey q for Special:SpecialPages doesn't seem to work anymore. I assume that it's related to the move of the Special pages from the Tools menu to the Contribute menu (T385346). Now the corresponding element has id=n-specialpages instead of id=t-specialpages, and consequently the accesskey under MediaWiki:Accesskey-t-specialpages no longer hits its target. Putting the accesskey in MediaWiki:Accesskey-n-specialpages should work, but this is probably something that should be managed on translatewiki.net, although I do not know how this would work. --Volvox (talk) 01:08, 18 January 2026 (UTC)