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The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
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Before commenting, note:

  • This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
  • Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals.

Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for 10 days.

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Guided tours!

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Help:Guided tours are a very powerful functionality that can allow for easy onboarding of newcomers, or help out more experienced users get a hold of tools/workflows with steep learning curves. However, they are sadly quite underutilized. I've recently worked on one to help administrator election clerks set up SecurePoll, and I would love to hear out your ideas for more functionalities that tours could help with! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:26, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

See mw:Article guidance – maybe this could be developed further to broader scope/application and it could be sth like that is already planned but I'm not sure about it...could also be a broad goal about helpful guidance at point needed/useful or nothing 'official'. Two other or related ways for this is some editor assistant tool as proposed here which can provide links and maybe help if you ask things in natural language and videos – see c:Category:Instructional videos on using Wikipedia. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:49, 29 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
These all look very interesting, although a bit separate in functionality from guided tours, as the first one is another extension intended specifically for article creation and the second one is some kind of chatbot, which might not be as well-received by the community. Guided tours are more flexible (as they can be directly written on-wiki without requiring developer work, since the extension already exists) and can provide interface-level guidance, so they are in some way complementary with what you suggest. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:14, 29 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Article guidance currently is just about article creation but again maybe that could be expanded. The context was that the extension you linked seems not use much by both people providing tools and especially users and has been developed it seems around 2013 while the article guidance is used by many users and has been developed just recently. So to me it seemed like expanding that is probably the more feasible approach for optimal results. Maybe one could ask about the differences between the two at the article guidance talk page where maybe it could be clarified if the guided tours extension could be used or why not. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:53, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm very confused as these two extensions seem to have very different purposes and functionalities, so using one over the other doesn't seem especially meaningful? For example, the SecurePoll setup tours aren't something that could have been done with the Article guidance extension, as the goal is to guide users through navigating an existing interface rather than have them answer a series of questions. Noting that the latter extension is also currently experimental, and hasn't been fully deployed yet, so expanding it would be a bit premature (although it's good to plan it in advance!) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:34, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Guides tours are interactive tours of a part of Wikipedia. They are meant to complement help pages, by showing users directly how to do something in a step-by-step way overlaps with Article guidance … provides tailored, community-adjustable guidance throughout the creation process [in this context also other processes and pages] and I don't see why it couldn't be adapted for SecurePoll setup; also things like SecurePoll setup seemed like an example, not some particular thing you were asking about. Prototyperspective (talk) 16:10, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The intent is similar, but the actual execution is different, as Article guidance provides a standalone window while Guided tours show up as an overlay. Both are helpful in different use cases – to go back to my SecurePoll example (which I'm referring to as it's the one I've developed recently, so it helps to have a concrete example), the setup requires the clerk to use Special:SecurePoll/create, while article creation is more flexible and a separate window can be used to send preload data (which I don't think is feasible with SecurePoll). In general, Article guidance is still experimental and more tailored to the specific task of article creation, and doesn't yet have options to be adapted by the community for other tasks. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:42, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I had originally started this as a new topic before I realized its already somewhat talked about here, so I'm just copy pasting here instead:
I recently started editing on wikipedia (like a month ago), and I found that one of the most challenging parts of wikipedia was knowing and understanding all the various policies and all the things I even could do in wikipedia. And, if you do ask questions or aren't sure what you can or should edit, I've seen people be hit with a 'be bold!' which can read to me as "I don't want to help you understand processes, I just want to correct you when you're wrong" which is discouraging when you barely even know the tenants of wikipedia or how to contribute.
All in all, It was... overwhelming. And while I was ready to take the time to sift through through pages upon pages of WP:Whateverxyz, what I really really would have loved is even more hand holding in my very first edits - even beyond what is already there.
For example - say as part of one of my newcomer tasks, I try to add a citation to an article, I would love a box to pop up the first time I add a citation that gives me a summarized "here's what a reputable source looks like and resources that could help." Or say I am adding a large chunk of text for the first time, an automated box pops up saying "here's how you edit for tone, here is the POV you should be using, etc.". The newcomer tasks gives a good explanation to a lot of things, but so much else you really have to dig to understand. And it's not for lack of the policies and explanations being there, it's just the sheer quantity and how to find it is vastly overwhelming.
I know my idea is vague- I think what I'm looking for is even more of those guided tours that you see in newcomer tasks for ALL areas of wikipedia (like AfD discussion, submitting an AfC, even contributing here in the village pump)- that perhaps only show up the first time you do it or show interest. Something like a live "oh you clicked on AfD for the first time, lets walk you through contributing" rather than me having to sift through procedure explanations and see what other people have been doing. Or even, if the page you are editing is a certain category, certain categorical explanations pop up like subject specific notability and things like that.
Perhaps my experience is different than what is expected - that most people learn and expand their contributions over the course of months or years and aren't trying their hand at contributing to AfD discussion within the first month (and I kinda speed ran this because I got so invested). Any thoughts? Does this already exist and I'm just not really seeing it?  Stormh99 (talk) 15:25, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply][reply]
This is actually amazing feedback to have, thanks you so much! Many Wikipedia introductions are pretty much written for an imagined content writer/copyeditor who wouldn't branch off in other areas before being already experienced everywhere, which doesn't really match the reality (or diversity) of editors we see. Even these few ideas (AfD, AfC, village pump) are already good starting points for me to work on and write tours for them!
Also: while the technical capacity to add tours to the interface is limited to a dozen or so people, suggesting ideas, tour content, or even whole tour outlines that we can then implement faster helps immensely, and I would honestly be so happy to have other folks working on this. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:45, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I'd be happy to help out or provide outlines, or honestly just be an extra set of newcomer eyes to flag any areas where I might be confused- feel free to let me know. I have some limited knowledge of CSS, Java, and JSON, but not really enough to contribute in that way (and also uh yeah still newcomer so I wouldn't call myself in expert in these processes)- though if you're willing to train me up on specific items I'm willing to learn if it helps you create tour outlines. This sounds like a cool project to be part of- would love to chat more. .
The biggest help (and I've got no idea the technical capabilities of this) would be if you had hover-over boxes for any WP:link. Like if you hover over WP:GNG it gives you a tiny blurb saying something like "A commonly cited reason for AfD, this refers to general notability guidelines for wikipedia including that a topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject."
This alone would be super helpful because right now these WP shortcuts that are a subsection of a larger page don't really give much context unless you click the link and do a lot of reading. Having a quick hover-over summary would go such a long way. Additionally, a cool technical thing would be to automatically have the guided tour explain policies that have already been mentioned in the discussion or provide a list of the the most commonly brought up discussion items (such as WP:GNG), or an explanation of the different outcomes as part of the guided tour (delete, merge, keep, etc.)
I even in my editing stumbled upon an article that I thought could be deleted or merged, but had to do some digging before I found if I (as a new user and not an admin) could even nominate it, how to nominate it, and what that process was. My initial assumptions were that only admins could do this. Stormh99 (talk) 16:29, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That looks great, and I think this might be possible (not the hover part, but at least the "find the relevant discussion items and add them to the tour") with MediaWiki's JavaScript! And also point out a few important ones to consider that might not always be written explicitly, such as GNG or WP:BEFORE. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:34, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

AfD guided tour demo

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I've been working on a prototype for the AfD guided tour, it can be found here (the tour can be started through the menu on the right)! Wondering if I should additionally bring up the different outcomes suggested in !votes (I already have the code for that, although I don't want the tour to appear too bloated). Courtesy ping to @Stormh99 for the idea! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:05, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Ah sweet this looks great! Yeah I would include the different vote outcomes - even just briefly listing them if not going in depth. I would also put right before the final message an explanation on how an AfD is officially closed/final decision made beyond 'if a consensus was reached'. Does an admin make the call? Can a non admin decide- if so how?
Additionally - as I know it's not released yet, will this tour appear automatically for first time visitors to the AfD page, or do you have to click start a tour to see it? I myself sometimes glaze over the details of a page because it all looks a bit similar after a point- took me too long to realize there was a helpful toolbar on the right side and it wasn't just more links to stuff I don't know lol. So having it be an almost forced popup upon first visit might be helpful. Stormh99 (talk) 16:32, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking about showing it the first time an editor visits AfD, although I'm not sure if the extension currently supports "complex" cookies like this, or automatic tour starts, which is why it's currently in button form. Having both would be ideal, as many editors might just skip it the first time they see the pop-up, and want to go back to it later. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:37, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've just added both ideas from your first paragraph, thanks again for your feedback! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:56, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to Autoconfirmed and Extended Confirmed

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The WMF has recently changed Autoconfirmed to apply from the date the first edit was made, not the date the account was first created.

I'm opening this discussion because there was some discussion in that AN thread about additional changes to autoconfirmed or extended confirmed, with the intent to get a list of changes that the community might want to see made to these rights. These possible changes would then be taken to a multi-part RfC.

How they are presented in the RfC depends on the proposed change. Configuration changes (changing the seniority or number of edits required for autoconfirmed or extended confirmed) are simple to implement and only require a consensus to be formed and a request made through the process listed at meta:Requesting wiki configuration changes, and would be listed in the RfC as being there to determine whether the required consensus exists.

Proposals for changes that are not simple to implement, such as changing extended confirmed to be from the date the first edit was made, not the date the account was first created, would be listed in the RfC as going into an open letter if there is a consensus for them, which would request that the WMF consider implementing them.

Changes to discuss in the RfC could include:

Configuration changes
  1. Change AC to require 7/14/30 days of seniority, not 4
  2. Change AC to require 25/50/100 edits, not 10
  3. Change ECR to require 60/90/180/365 days of seniority, not 30
  4. Change ECR to require 750/1000/2000 edits, not 500
Other changes:
  1. Change AC to require 7 days with edits, not 7 days seniority
  2. Change ECR to apply from the date the first edit was made, not the date the account was first created
  3. Change ECR to apply from the date the account received autoconfirmed, not the date the account was first created
  4. Change ECR to require 30 days with edits, not 30 days seniority
  5. Change ECR to count only the first 10/25/50 edits on any day

Please proposal additional ones. BilledMammal (talk) 06:29, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think other changes 1, 4, and 5 are too complicated to explain to new editors, but I wanted to include them here to allow for discussion on them.
Regarding configuration change 3, ECR period, according to statistics from Sean.hoyland, most accounts already take more than a year to obtain it, so extending the period is not likely to be disruptive.
BilledMammal (talk) 06:29, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
One easily overlooked effect of increasing the requirements is that we would get more requests for manual granting of these permissions, so more work for admins. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:10, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how sensitive the number of requests for manual EC grants is to the requirements. Most requests seem to be related to either the content translation tool, alternative accounts, restoration of the grant after it was revoked or the occasional "the rules don't apply to me because..." claims (which can presumably be declined at leisure). It's not obvious to me how or the extent to which requirements changes would impact those sets. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:18, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I note that changing ECR to count from first edit would be simple to implement, just swap APCOND_AGE for APCOND_AGE_FROM_EDIT in the configuration. Some wikis already do this. Anomie⚔ 11:58, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I have to wonder what the purpose of all these proposed changes is. I find it hard to believe that the sort of vandals that make sleeper accounts would be significantly inconvenienced by the change from "age from creation" to "age from first edit" or by modest increases in the thresholds. Similarly, the "days with edits" might make it easier for vandal fighters to catch obvious patterns (if they have the bandwidth to watch), but other than that I don't see it being much barrier to persistent vandals either. On the other hand, legitimate new editors are probably much more likely to be affected. Anomie⚔ 11:58, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
What would be the effects on legitimate new editors in your view? I should clarify that I don't see EC as a barrier for vandals. Vandals can just be reverted (or they won't be able to edit EC protected pages anyway). The EC grant is interesting for me because I think it is effectively our only enforceable restriction for contentious topic areas, and there are interesting statistical relationships between grant acquisition rates and outcomes for accounts (e.g. [1][2][3]). It's possible that the EC requirements could be one of the few dials we can turn to regulate disruption in contentious topic areas. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:50, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Having said that, when it comes to contentious topic areas, with their complicated feedback loops, I have very little confidence in our ability to predict the effects of actions. Things done in good faith to improve things may not have the intended effect and may make things worse e.g. AE seems like a good idea in theory, but in a polarized environment with the additional issue of an inability to establish whether accounts are in good standing, the system becomes weaponized and a cause of conflict. Similarly, changing the EC requirements might have the opposite of the intended effect by filtering out the semi-disinterested parties (who can't be bothered to acquire EC) and concentrating the dedicated partisans willing to put in the effort. One contentious topic area, for example, is currently under attack by organized, probably paid, ban/block/lock evading actors, and I doubt that changing the EC requirements would significantly impact these kinds of actors, although it would extract more pre-EC work from them, which probably benefits the project. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:04, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I see the purpose similar to how Dennis Brown sees it. It increases the barrier that WP:NOTHERE editors must overcome to engage in their chosen disruption, deterring them and making them easier to catch, and it protects newer editors from themselves.
I don't think all of these proposals will help with those goals - I agree that changing from "age from creation" to "age from first edit" for EC won't do much - but I don't want to preempt the community by removing options before the WP:BEFORERFC. BilledMammal (talk) 05:14, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that WP:BEFORERFC does not say what you think it says. That section is about how to not have an RFC in the first place, because you were able to resolve your question/dispute another way. To give you a general flavor, the first item in the BEFORERFC bullet list is "Asking over at the Teahouse". If you definitely need an RFC, then nothing at BEFORERFC applies to you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:53, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Change ECR to require 50 edits, not 500. The current bar is already absurdly high and makes XC protected articles considerably worse. LordCollaboration (talk) 14:03, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Lowering XC would probably just make ARBECR revert to its old definition and make it more annoying to enforce it. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 18:52, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Any time-based limits are moot to me, since you don't need experience to go and do something else for a bit.
ECR involves articles with the most potential for disruption, so I absolutely think #4 in config changes is my preference (1k edits). There are plenty of editors with 500 edits at ANI or Teahouse who still don't know how to find reliable sources properly - especially when it comes to contentious topics.
The difference between the amount of editors who manually ask for EC vs. the potential save in disruption from otherwise-well meaning editors (or not-so-well meaning ones) is going to be pretty significant IMO.
AC editors can still work on any non-ECR article, so this won't impact new editors that much, it's just raising the bar on our definition of an experienced editor.
I also think #4 on the second section is best (within that section) as it has the least potential for exploitation, #5 would be great but I don't know if that's technically possible? Overall, I prefer #4 at the top. Blue-Sonnet 14:07, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at the Days and Unique Dates columns in https://gamingcheck.toolforge.org/recent_grants_table with the Verbose option switched on, it's clear that account age and active editing days are very different kinds of time that would presumably have different effects in requirements. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:18, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible for autoconfirmed to require mainspace edits? Or at the very least non-userspace/draftspace edits, so that somebody can't get 10 edits to their own article draft and then be able to create it in mainspace. ScalarFactor (talk) 17:00, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's currently possible. However, we could take that request to the WMF, or we could create an admin bot to grant AC, although I think that's better left to the server.
A different option would be to require EC to create articles - it may be beneficial for editors with less than 500 edits to be required to go through AfC? BilledMammal (talk) 05:19, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think any criteria can give us what we want. The idea of the "confirmed" status is to give us some idea that the user is not just here to vandalise, and "extended confirmed" to show us that the user is experienced and has some idea of policy/guidelines. These are very difficult to automate. For exanple a user with 50 edits could know policy/guidelines inside out, but a user with 5000 could know nothing about them. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:08, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think a big part of that problem is that "we" don't agree on what "we" want in the first place. You (and I) think of autoconfirmed as a low bar to stop the simplest drive-by vandalism by people who've effectively never edited before. Dennis Brown, just below, wants it to be something much stronger for many different purposes. Anomie⚔ 01:53, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • I personally think AC should be 50 edit + 30 days. Some may argue this is a high bar, but I would argue that for one the largest and heavily trafficked websites on the planet, it is a reasonable limit that allows new users to edit most articles, and protects sensitive articles. This isn't just about vandalism, it also protects against sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry, and even from innocent "bad edits" from users that are too new to understand how things work here. 50 edits is also enough to establish patterns for bad acting accounts, to see if they are gaming the system, if they are essentially SPAs, and if they are actually WP:HERE to build an encyclopedia. I don't think we need to limit it to $x number over $y days, or only count mainspace edits, just keep it simple. 50/30 makes it easy to understand, easy to determine someone's motivation, and is based on the reality that it takes a month for a good faith editor to have a clue about things like WP:BRD, how to use talk pages, etc. If anything, it would prevent new, good faith editors, from getting into trouble on sensitive pages simply due to a lack of experience, and improve the experience for all editors. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:41, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    That would exclude slightly more than 95% of registered editors, and it would prevent them from doing things like moving pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:39, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    it would prevent them from doing things like moving pages That might be a good thing. In 2025, 9101 editors moved 17252 pages within their first 50 edits. Of those editors 1691 are currently banned, and 6416 pages have been deleted.
    In addition, many of the moves that are associated with pages that still exist were not good moves. The first existing page I found was Ayaan Institute of Medical Sciences, which was moved by the creator after being twice declined by AfC. The second was Nasira Sharma, which was moved to an incorrect spelling.
    The third was Emergency Response Coordination Centre. Unlike the other two it doesn't have issues directly related to its move, but it has since been tagged as having notability, COI, primary source, and LLM issues, and it would probably have been better if it had gone through AfC. BilledMammal (talk) 06:34, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    We can grandfather existing editors, but 95% of all editors probably edit a few times and never come back regardless, so that stat can be misleading. I have no issue with the idea that someone should have at least 50 edits before they start moving articles. Most people should NOT be moving stuff like that with 10 edits and a few days worth of experience, as likely they would be doing it without consensus, or even know what "consensus" means here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 10:15, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • This past RfC proposed changing EC from 30 days to 90 days, but was quickly snow-closed: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Extended confirmed definition. So I don't think anything over probably 60 days for EC would get support. Some1 (talk) 01:37, 2 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
One possibility, instead of going to the WMF if the consensus is for one of the other options, is to remove automatic granting of EC and hand over the responsibility to an admin bot which could implement the more complicated configurations. BilledMammal (talk) 05:16, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This feels rather Wikipedia:Solution in search of a problem. I mean, most of us could look at the names in this discussion and formulate guesses like "he's probably trying to reduce the number of people who can create articles again" and "that editor only cares about CTOPs" or whatever, but I really think that "first identify the problem" is good advice, even if it was a business management fad in the 1990s. Instead of making lists of all the ways that we could complicate the user rights, why don't we first identify a single problem that we want to solve, and then talk about all the different ways that this problem might be addressed? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:49, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
One way I think about it is that EC is meant to be a proxy for editing experience. The hope being that accounts have enough time and gain enough experience to prepare them for editing in contentious topic areas. It doesn't seem to do that at the moment. That is a single problem that would be nice to solve. Maybe it isn't really possible to do that effectively, but it might be possible to get closer to a solution. Sean.hoyland (talk) 07:24, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've been here almost 20 years, over half as admin. From my perspective, this isn't a solution looking for a problem at all. When you are using the tools regularly, you notice patterns. Discussing these changes is all about addressing those patterns. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 09:22, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be reasonable and the most likely of the options to pass would be to change 30 day timer in EC to start from first edit. This wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience for a new editor. This change would further disrupt sockpuppetry - I've seen accounts sprint to EC after being appropriately aged before first edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MER-C (talk • contribs) 18:39, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That's playing Whac-A-Mole, as a problem editor can easily make a token contribution at sock creation time. (Make 10 and get autoconfirmed absolutely free! Allow 4 days for delivery.) However, it shouldn't hurt. If EC is meant to be a measure of editing experience, one doesn't get that by sitting on an unused account. Certes (talk) 18:37, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A proposal relating to ECP gaming was accepted last year but never implemented as far I understand. It also tries to stop gaming but uses a more technical approach using private abuse filters. Just thought this may be somewhat relevant – PharyngealImplosive7 (talk) 00:26, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly thought the timer already started as of first edit and not account creation, so I would be in favor, as to me this is just common sense: readers can make accounts for a variety of reason, and do not necessarily become editors simultaneously. Having said that, in spite of the stats we currently have, consequences (both positive and negative) of any such change to our automatic permission levels are hard to predict, so I think we should err on the side of caution when considering adjustments. AC and EC have two very different aims which they currently seem to fulfill reasonably well, so I would need to be convinced by hard data and robust pros vs cons analysis before supporting any tweak. While everyone (including me) is going to have a feeling regarding semi-arbitrary numbers being too big or too small, we can only improve this system through a well-informed consensus; otherwise we are just setting ourselves up for terrible RfCs begging for messy WP:BARTENDER closes. Choucas0 🐦‍⬛ 13:40, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Adding my two cents here that making the bar to AC higher will also make it harder for new editors to do core things like nominate an article for deletion or merging (they can't use twinkle or complete the nom manually with templates). It also excludes them from other maintenance related tasks like recent changes patrolling. We also shouldn't forget that there are plenty of potential editors who have read our policy pages or have read talk pages before, but haven't actually started editing for one reason or another and I think we should be careful to not raise the bar on participation and scare off newbies. I don't think we should let the bad behavior of some people make us scared of all newbies and make it more difficult for them to "prove" that they're here for the right reasons. ScrubbedFalcon (talk) 17:05, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Seconding this. Currently, editor retention is a much more pressing concern than vandalism or sockpuppetry, and a determined vandal reaching for autoconfirmed won't be deterred by raising the bar slightly higher, while a well-meaning new editor absolutely would. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:26, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

RfC Draft

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I've drafted a possible format for the RfC, though I don't plan to open the RfC for a while as I first want to gather additional data.

I haven't included options for reducing EC, as there won't be a consensus for them and it will only confuse the RfC. I've removed "other changes" 1, 4, and 5 for similar reasons. There are some other questions I would like to consider, including whether to require a certain number of article or talk space edit for EC, but I think including them will make the RfC too complicated. BilledMammal (talk) 05:53, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The number of day requirement questions (call them quantitative questions) seem substantially separate and independent from the start date question (call it a qualitative question). Mixing those together is probably more likely to confuse the RfC than provide a clear discussion. CMD (talk) 05:59, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Do you suggest two RfC's, first one on quantitative questions, then a second on qualitative questions (unless the result of the first makes it obvious there won't be consensus for the second)? BilledMammal (talk) 06:00, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the order matters or that they're as related as they seem. The quantitative questions are about figuring out what the community expects is a reasonable proxy for experience. The qualitative question is about intuition whatever that proxy is, what is the intuitive 'start' for both new and experienced users? CMD (talk) 06:07, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, editors will be assumed to also support all increases smaller than the one they !vote for. So if we get 49% !voting for no increase, 20% for 30 days, 15% for 14 days, 10% for 10 days, and 6% for 7 days, would that result in "no increase" because an increase of 0 is smaller than 7 days, or 7 days because that's the lowest non-zero increase and 51% total !voted for some increase, or what? Anomie⚔ 11:49, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This kind of confusion is exactly what I meant by setting ourselves up for terrible RfCs begging for messy WP:BARTENDER closes... I really don't think we should be rushing into drafting a RfC when the merits of any of these specific thresholds have not even been discussed, or barely. This draft is just the exact same thing as the initial post two weeks ago, meaning that the discussion that happened since has not informed the design of this draft RfC in any way. Choucas0 🐦‍⬛ 12:12, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Your confusion was what I was trying to avoid with this draft; it needs to be worked on. My intention is to just say that if an editor !votes for increasing AC to 14 days, that should also be seen as supporting as a second choice increasing to 7 days. BilledMammal (talk) 05:56, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A reduction to the EC threshold should absolutely be on the table. Currently, suggesting changes in one direction but not the other sets you up for an anchoring effect, predisposing voters to support some level of increase. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:44, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
+1 ScrubbedFalcon (talk) 17:06, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Would a reduction to XC actually accomplish anything productive? Currently it acts as both a means for arbitration enforcement and a deterrent against vandalism, due to AC being easy to game. Lowering it would just weaken the deterrent against vandalism and would probably just result in ECR reverting to its "500/30" definition, while becoming much more annoying to enforce. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 21:26, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Beyond the argument of making the encyclopedia more accessible to good-faith editors, the main reason should be avoiding the anchoring effect. If we ask "how much should XC be increased by?", voters will be predisposed to support some increase as the premise of the question implies that only a change in that direction is on the table, which may unintentionally lead to biased results compared to a question offering both options. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:49, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
My concern is that there is no chance there will be a consensus to reduce the EC requirements, and letting the few editors who support such a reduction argue for it will increase the chance this RfC turns into a trainwreck. BilledMammal (talk) 05:54, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think these questions are poorly formulated in that they're asking two different questions in one. For example Should the age requirement for Autoconfirmed be increased to 7/10/14/30 days? should be separated into two questions:
  1. Should the age requirement for Autoconfirmed be changed? (yes/no)
  2. If question 1 has consensus for yes, should the age requirement be increased to 7, 10, 14 or 30 days?
Or for EC Should the age requirement for Extended confirmed be increased to 45/60/90/180/365 days? can be revised to:
  1. Should the age requirement for extended confirmed be be increased, decreased, or stay the same? (per Chaotic Enby's comment on anchoring)
  2. If question 1 has consensus for an increase, what should the maximum age for the XC requirement be, if there's consensus to decrease, what should the minimum age be?
Just suggestions to try and keep the consensus manageable and avoid BARTENDING if possible. ScrubbedFalcon (talk) 17:16, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Chaotic Enby and ScrubbedFlacon. I also think the idea mentioned above that EC be needed for mainspace article creation should be in the RfC. If we're going to have a big multi-part RfC, we might as well put that in there. InfernoHues (talk) 17:12, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Similar to reducing the EC requirements, I think it's very unlikely that such a proposal will receive consensus, especially because it means we will need to limit page moves to EC, and including doomed proposals will increase the chance of the discussion turning into a trainwreck. If editors here agree it should be included I will do so, but I have concerns. BilledMammal (talk) 05:54, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Unbolding the donate button

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Donate button in Vector 2022

Recently, Vector 2022 has been showing the donate button in bold to logged out users, making it more prominent than "Create account".

In a discussion at the Fundraising Hub, Toadspike, Barkeep49, and Chaotic Enby have proposed unbolding it but the WMF doesn't seem receptive. However, it should be possible for us to do that ourselves, by editing MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css.

I want to start a discussion on doing so here, to see what the general opinion of the community is, and if the community is supportive then possibly open an RfC if the WMF isn't willing to act. BilledMammal (talk) 07:04, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I think giving the "Donate" button more prominence than the "create account" button really gets our priorities backwards. We are in great need of more editors. We are not really in need of more donations. Toadspike [Talk] 08:43, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Would bolding Create account put a thumb on that scale? CMD (talk) 09:35, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Agree but maybe it's styled bold because the button is there temporary, unlike the create account button. On a related note, I think it needs open source developers / technical contributors too and this is essentially never highlighted (I've suggested occasional campaigns/banners above IT-related articles). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:58, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't love the message bolding Donate and not create an account sends. I have consistently pushed for "editing" to be a meaningful part of the "donation" process because a semi-regular editor provides far more value to the project than someone throwing money equivalent to a few cups of coffee at the foundation once a year. However, I'm not sure I agree that We are not really in need of more donations. First I don't agree because I don't see myself as part of the WMF so their need for donations is not something that includes me in a "we" situation. But I also don't agree because, for the first time since I became an active participant in these kinds of discussions, I think the WMF does need donations. Even for those who think all the Foundation should do is keep servers running and defend us legally, the costs of maintaining the project have risen dramatically in the last year, with AI scrapers placing real strain on our servers and the political and legal climates in numerous places causing increase stain there. And, for me, I want the foundation also developing the mediawiki software and think its done a better, though still highly imperfect, job of orienting that development towards community desires and needs. Together, I think the WMF's objective needs are greater and it's doing a better job of spending the money it does raise. So I am troubled by the decreased number of donors in last year's fundraising drive both from a financial standpoint and because of what it means for our readership (with readership being something I care about a huge amount). I suggest instead of finding ways to unbold "Donate" we should go the opposite direction, leaving that bold, and instead using our abilities to also bold "Create an account". Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:50, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Co-signing the above, and I'd like to draw on because of what it means for our readership a bit more. AI isn't just a threat to our server capacity. It's preventing readers of our information from being readers of Wikipedia. And that's where we get both editors and donations from. We are going to start needing both, much more than usual. -- asilvering (talk) 15:20, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Seconding Barkeep once again on this. The only worry I'm having with this is that bolding conveys relative importance as well as absolute importance – if everything is bolded, we're giving the reader more or less the same impression as if nothing is, although the buttons will be (on aggregate) slightly more visible. Bolding the Donate and Create account buttons but not the Log in button could be another option, although I'm afraid it might look a little odd. But yes, we do need both more editors and more donors in the grand scheme of things. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:55, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all - A major area of the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2026-2027 annual plan is around deepening contributor engagement, where we’re trying to double the number of retained editors over the next two years. That’s a huge goal, but it’s the right one; our entire mission depends on growing the number of volunteers who create and improve Wikipedia content. It’s also one that has been strongly recommended by editors on the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). Foundation teams are spending a lot of time thinking about what are the most effective entry points to do that, including things like lowering the barriers to entry for newcomers through structured editing. If you have any thoughts about this, we’d love your feedback on the annual plan talk page. KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
cc @KStineRowe (WMF)'s point, I remember talking about this exact thing with @OVasileva (WMF) about this a while back after Toadspike mentioned it on the Fundraising Hub page. TLDR, I think the current status quo of donate having more prominence than creating a account is temporary? and the plan is to double down on bringing account creation to the forefront in the next year to my understanding. Sohom (talk) 21:16, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
For those who don't speak WMF, "next year" refers to the next Fiscal Year which starts in July. But future promises does nothing in my mind to diminish actions we might want to take as a community now. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:22, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Barkeep49 Yes and no. They are working on some of it this year. For example, mw:Readers/Reader Experience/Reading lists trials (one of the features that WMF thinks might get a lot of folks to create accounts) are ongoing right now. But again you are right that most of the work appears to be scheduled for the next year. Sohom (talk) 21:33, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Also cc @SToyofuku-WMF who was more directly involved in the experiment per the List_of_experiments_in_Product_and_Technology. Sohom (talk) 21:36, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Reading lists are a project because the WMF sees a large number of people who create accounts and whose only desired role is to be a reader. The WMF wants to make Wikipedia more useful for them. This is great. I support such work. I take our readers seriously and delivering value to users keeps them coming here as opposed to relying on AI slop; it's an example of why I want to see the WMF able to continue to fundraise successfully. That, however, is different from getting people to be an editor which is what I am focused on in this discussion. The good news is that bolding the "Create an account" serves both kinds of registered accounts. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:44, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
On the linked page it does say that it may encourage more users to become editors. Personally I think this is unlikely, though I agree that improving the reader experience is still a worthwhile goal.  novov talk edits 12:53, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks all - we're pretty open to discussing turning off the donor button bolding and exploring the idea of bolding the account creation button, but these decisions fall across a few different teams/timezones, and some key people are at an offsite. Would it be ok with you if we paused this discussion and followed up with you all next week? KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 14:50, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds great, thanks a lot for the feedback! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:07, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That definitely works! Sohom (talk) 15:32, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Sohom Datta @Barkeep49 Regarding work done at the moment, the Growth team has launched a series of improvements on the account creation process. These include a better account discovery process, a streamlined account creation form (currently tested at English Wikipedia), a way to remind users that they can log-in when saving an edit being logged-out and more. While these efforts are focusing on mobile first, as it is where most they would be carried on desktop too. Your ideas and feedback are more than welcomed at the project's talk page. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:02, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
What are the reasons that make this current temporary status quo (which might add confusion to readers about our priorities) necessary, and would it be possible to make these changes sooner instead of waiting a fiscal year? I'm worried that, while "temporary" at first, it might stay here as a fait accompli and be much harder to change moving forward. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:53, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Noting that it was Some1 not me who raised the bolding issue. It got misattributed to me. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:26, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping Barkeep49, but I believe it was Toadspike who raised the bolding issue, not me [4]. I haven't commented on the new Donate button yet, but since I'm here, I'll just give my 2 cents and say that bolding the Donate link makes it look tacky. My preference would be to not bold any of those three top-right corner links (donate, create an account, log in), unless data shows that bolding those links will increase the number of donations/user account creations, etc. Some1 (talk) 22:39, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
But the WMF seems perfectly prepared to "look tacky" as long as the money keeps rolling in. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:32, 1 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Would we really need an RfC for this? It’ll just get speedily closed in favour and stir up animosity Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 16:23, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think if the community wants Iadmins to start a fight with the WMF then it should be really clear that they truly have community support. Speaking as an interface admin myself I definitely would not be willing to do this without an RfC. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:29, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Same here (although, being WP:INVOLVED, I shouldn't be the one to do this either way). If there isn't a clear message from the community showing overwhelming consensus, we shouldn't be doing this. And, if there is, our primary goal should be convincing the WMF instead of circumventing them. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:46, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto from me, I'm happy to talk with WMF folks on behalf of the community, I'm not going to be taking any controversial WP:IADMIN actions without strong community consensus. Sohom (talk) 21:25, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
On a different front from the IA points raised by Pppery and CE, as this thread shows in the discussion so far even when there's agreement on the problem (bolding the Donate button by itself is bad), there may be disagreement on the solution and so finding consensus can be useful. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:55, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Imho the only button that should be bolded is "Edit", as it was before Monobook.-- sapphaline (talk) 19:44, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure that any spammer can tell you that everyone clicks and donates loads of money on anything that is bolded. And donations are surely more important than anything else, aren't they? I thought we were a little better than that, but it seems I was wrong. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:19, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Phil Bridger I wonder if you would be willing to temper your sarcasm going forward? Comparing WMF to spammers is probably a slight overreach in terms of criticism that can be considered constructive. Sohom (talk) 04:34, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If the WMF stop behaving like spammers I will stop comparing them to spammers. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:41, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Which part of raising money to maintain the tech behind Wikipedia is "behaving like spammers" ? Sohom (talk) 15:54, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for a start, there's bolding the donate button. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:40, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
to maintain the tech behind Wikipedia I wish. However, it's absurd to claim bolding a donate button text is anything like spammer-behavior. Prototyperspective (talk) 09:59, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It's not only something like spammer behaviour it's exactly spammer behaviour. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:40, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hey everyone -- thank you for your patience as we gathered the relevant data for this. In looking at data from before and after we changed that “Donate” link, we do see that the change seems to have led to a relatively modest increase in donations.  We don’t have a fully precise estimate on the increase because we’re not looking at this via a true A/B test, and because the data is from a short time period.
But given that this is a modest impact for a pretty visible change, it looks like we should put the button back the way it was – so I think we are all on the same page.  (That’s not to say that we wouldn’t put it back if it had had a larger impact – but in that scenario, we probably would have had more to discuss/consider together.)
Going forward, I think this would be a good course of action:
  • We’ll put the button back the way it was.
  • Let’s keep the conversation going about how to encourage account creation.
  • I think we should consider another test of a change to the donate button – perhaps one in which we have the heart icon, but not the bold – because I think we should continue to experiment with how best to fundraise in this space.  This would be an A/B test set up to get a full picture of impact, and we could test it in concert with any changes to the Create Account link.
What are your thoughts on this?
On the topic of account creation, as @Trizek (WMF) said below, we want to get into the details with you all.  I think the best place to do that is on this talk page, where the Growth team is making plans.  That's where we can bring the ideas around bolding the Create Account button, and Trizek and @KStoller-WMF will be able to join in. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 04:03, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! It's genuinely heartwarming to see you so in touch with community feedback! Happy to continue experimenting (especially with true A/B tests) and see which configuration the community is more comfortable with after having more solid data on the benefits. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 04:10, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should consider another test of a change to the donate button, I think this makes sense! I do think having the prominent Donate button is a good thing over burying it inside the side menu. (Thought maybe other folks would disagree?) The main problem is the appearance of prioritizing donating over account creation due to bolding and if the changing the position without bolding still holds the moderate increases, I would support that~! Sohom (talk) 04:19, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
What emoji could encourage Account creation? A Wingdings pencil? CMD (talk) 16:08, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A pencil tends to imply editing; I think a fountain pen (or just the nib, considering the size) would translate ‘sign up’ better. As for the heart, an outlined version would be less obtrusive than the solid one shown above, and a better match for non-bold text.—Odysseus1479 02:17, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
something like: [5] might work? (Account to edit?) Sohom (talk) 02:31, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the update, and for being open to reverting this change. Can we get a timetable for when the revert will happen? BilledMammal (talk) 02:37, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much for the thoughtful discussion and engagement, everyone! As Marshall mentioned, we will revert the Donate button for logged out desktop users back to a simple link across all wikis. This change will be deployed through our usual rollout train next week, so it will make its way gradually through the wikis from Tues through Thurs. The bolded button might still be cached on some people's devices locally, so there's a chance it may persist for some individual users even after the change is deployed until their cache is cleared. Feel free to track the work here in this Phabricator ticket. HFan-WMF (talk) 17:18, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

"what exactly does all the money go towards?"

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Pardon my ignorance but what exactly does all the money go towards? I've heard Jimmy say that there is a big fund stacked up just in case of emergencies, but I'm not really sure what that means. Again apologies if I'm confused but isn't all the hard work done by volunteers? I'm not really seeing the need for all the pleas for donations. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 10:53, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Wh1pla5h99, the budget is part of the annual plan. The current budget is published on Meta. The 2026-27 Plan is drafting now, and is open to any contribution, to know which priorities should be chosen to fulfill the goals: Diversify our traffic beyond traditional search, Deepen engagement by building a more engaged user base (which includes making editing easier and more efficient), Protect our projects and Build speed and resilience. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:27, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the links, but I'm not very well versed in corporate speak. Are there any actual concrete things you could mention? "Build speed and resilience" sounds very nice but I don't have a clue what it actually means. I also find it slightly concerning that when someone clicks the "Donate" button they are asked to donate "If the knowledge you gained here was valuable", but the knowledge is, of course, given out for free. It mentions nothing of the work the Foundation actually does, but instead focuses on the "volunteers" who "work together to create and verify the pages you rely on, supported by tools that undo vandalism within minutes, ensuring the information you seek is trustworthy". Could this possibly give the mistaken impression that it is volunteers who are receiving these donations, rather than the (staffed) nonprofit? This is undeniably a savvy way to raise money, and perhaps such "strategic messaging" is for the greater good. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 15:25, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Wh1pla5h99: WMF plans to spend over $240M this next year and spending over 77% of which is going to be spent on tech improvement (48%) and supporting volunteers (legal, T&S etc) (22%) the rest is being spent on advertising ourselves and raising funds for next to next year (12%) with only 11% on administrative expenses wrt to the Foundation. This money (~240M) needs to be raised from somewhere and will not fall into WMF's lap. I've written up a more concise guide to WMF 2026-27 annual plan here if you want specifics on what will be worked on within the 48% being spent on tech. Sohom (talk) 15:45, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the details. Is there somewhere I can see how much money is raised year on year? I guess ~$120 million a year on tech improvement is a little surprising, and I was really hoping you would be able to at least explain what is actually being done in this vein. If I'm not mistaken most of the tech used on here is also created by volunteers. From briefly looking at the plan it seems like a list of goals ("we will create unspecified experiences", "we will work on unspecified features") rather than actual actions. It sounds like that $30 million is largely surplus to requirements, as surely next year's funds should be part of next year's budget, and this is not the kind of project that needs marketing. I'm not denying that funds are needed, I'm just a little skeptical about the urgency with which people are encouraged to donate to a largely volunteer based project. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 16:16, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If I'm not mistaken most of the tech used on here is also created by volunteers. Not really? There are volunteer developers yes, but the the tech side is largely WMF driven. Also, fighting scrapers and managing traffic as a top 10 property on the web is not "easy" and those 120 million are for the most part, well spent. Wrt to "we will create unspecified experiences", "we will work on unspecified features" the teams with those goals will be working on specific features, but they will need to A/B test if those features work and if not they might discard them, which is why they aren't committing to specific experiences this early in the planning cycle. (For example I know one of the team is working on some kind of reading list for readers, but since they aren't sure it will work, they aren't committing to it explicitly) It sounds like that $30 million is largely surplus to requirements, as surely next year's funds should be part of next year's budget, and this is not the kind of project that needs marketing. You'll be surprised at how little people outside our bubble know that you can actually edit Wikipedia or the rich troves of information we have, this needs communicating to folks especially at a time when less people are coming in through search due to AI summaries. A significant chunk of this money is also spent trying to get other companies to attribute to us the content that they are using from us, since if they don't, the amount of people coming to our sites will fall, leading to a significant margin. Sohom (talk) 16:51, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking about scripts and things like Twinkle; the actual website itself doesn't seem to change that much each year. I suppose fighting scrapers must be very expensive. Bookmarks might have beat you to the reading list idea. Are there any ideas that were not scrapped and implemented recently that you can mention? On letting people know they can edit Wikipedia, a good start might be to refrain from bolding the donate button rather than the create account button. It seems a little illogical to have people click the donate button to raise funds to tell people about the create account button just next to it. Competent people are aware you can edit Wikipedia, and also (for the most part) the only ones able to edit effectively. I take it the figures on funds raised are not published. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 17:07, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Wh1pla5h99 there is money spent on the mediawiki software which runs the various projects the WMF hosts (and which is open source so others can use it as well). There is a fair amount of financial disclosures presented [here which may help you dive into the areas you're hoping to. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:20, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. $114,039,077 in salaries 24-25 to do things like think about adding a reading list? Sorry if it sounds facetious but no one's really telling me what is actually being built, so in that year exactly what was achieved in "tech improvement"? Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 18:40, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
There is a whole long annual plan that describes what they hope to, and then end up, acheiving each fiscal year. I would recommend putting your questions together and then you can email answers@wikimedia.org to hopefully get better answers than the off topic discussion in this thread. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:13, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
We are back to hopes and dreams. Interesting that you can't even name one thing that was achieved with that money. It almost sounds like virtually nothing of substance was done, but I'm sure the answering machine will fill me in. (This is on topic, this thread is not merely about an aesthetic gripe but whether such an aggressive fundraising campaign is warranted. I think you have given us our answer). Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 19:38, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Wh1pla5h99 I find it interesting that you expect a volunteer to do work for you. As a volunteer I wasn't interested in doing that and instead I attempted to point you in one direction to answer your own question and then when you had more questions I attempted to give you a different way of answering your questions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:01, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes let's not get bogged down in the details like where did that $114 million go. That would be pedantic. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 20:06, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
$114M to maintain high availability while serving a whopping 183,350 requests/second, fighting malicious scrapers, build features like reading lists, introducing semantic search to Wikipedia, a moderator dashboard, a new way to create articles, mw:Edit checks, an attribution framework for enterprises, a system to fight against oversightable content, writing a new parser, fighting supply chain attacks, improving infrastructure behind wikitech:Toolforge, trying to test if Abstract Wikipedia is sustainable among others things I cannot remember of the top of my head. To put these number into context, 114 million is a drop in the bucket for basically every other company in the same league of the List_of_most-visited_websites and some of them manage worse availability compared to Wikipedia. Sohom (talk) 19:20, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Except Internet hosting is listed separately from salaries, and came to $3,474,785 for that year. You seem to be throwing the kitchen sink at me here; I don't consider any of those things (which were surely not all done in one year) to warrant such costs. What you seem to be missing is that the brillliance in every other company on that list comes from people and innovations within the company. The brilliance in Wikipedia (once it got up and running) comes from its volunteers. You (WMF) matter far less to the project than your their fundraising would suggest. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 19:43, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This is entirely off-topic for the question of whether to un-bold the donate button. Seems like it would be more appropriate at Wikipediocracy. Simonm223 (talk) 19:48, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Must talk about text formatting in the unbolding section. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 19:51, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
WPO has a whole forum channel for WMF finances that is not covered by WP:NOTFORUM where this page is. You are permitted to feel however you like about WMF finances. The question here is rather "should the donate button be bolded." We don't need to know WMF payroll to answer that question. For the record I would concur that we should unbold the donate button and bold the register button and that doing this likely requires a well-attended RfC to confirm broad consensus. Simonm223 (talk) 19:57, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion of WMF finances and spending might be off topic for this discussion, but it is on topic for the Village Pump generally. There is no need to take it to Wikipediocracy, Wh1pla5h99 is welcome to open a new discussion perhaps at WP:VPW. BilledMammal (talk) 02:36, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is on topic and important for establishing community views on donation requests. Wh1pla5h99 is asking questions in an eloquent manner that is proving value to others like myself. Czarking0 (talk) 07:11, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Per others, this is offtopic, so I will stop responding to you here. For future record, I am not the WMF or even employed by them in any capacity (the last I checked?) My POV is that of a informed volunteer who through WP:PTAC has some working knowledge of how the sausage is made and I can in fact tell you, that all of those (and more) did get done in a single year. Sohom (talk) 20:14, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
They aren't even paying you? Shameful. Toolforge has been around for years, no idea what edit check is (I guess its still in the works, as most of those seem to be). At least the millions of donors have one hell of a reading list to look forward to in exchange for their ~ $200 million in contributions a year. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 20:51, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Edit check is currently active. -- asilvering (talk) 04:50, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
My mistake. Looking at it I guess it's a nice (if entirely unnecessary) feature for visual-editing newcomers. But I think we are simply lying to people (or allowing them to be lied to) by giving the message that if they don't stop donating at this rate Wikipedia will run into issues. The websites (and app) would stay up and running with a tenth of that money. A lot of the WMF seems to function like a Wikipedia-adjacent charity, spending millions on conferences and figuring out more ways it can extract donations in order to do things like give out grants and awards; all the while somehow spending more than half the contributions on salaries. Some of this is great, but it's not necessary for Wikipedia, nor is it what donors are led to believe they are contributing to. Does anyone know what the $170 million endowment is for (on top of the $300 million net assests on the balance sheet)? Back in 07/08 WMF received $6 million in contributions, ten years ago it was $77 million, now we are being told $200 million isn't enough. Haven't they had pretty much the same effect on the website throughout? The only reason it bothers me is that they are acting as the "face" of Wikipedia while riding the coattails of people who actually edit here voluntarily without expecting anything in return. It's exploiting the high regard people have for the website to collect rent and do things that are tangentially related. We should at least be aware of this, and if people are ok endorsing that behaviour then fine. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 09:31, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Internet hosting is listed separately: Yes, but don't make the mistake of thinking that "internet hosting" is "everything it takes to let people read Wikipedia". Think about what it takes for you to use the internet at home. A DSL connection, maybe? But also things like electricity and a computer, right? And sometimes even repair costs and perhaps insurance, and if you're hosting a website, then there's an annual charge to register each domain name.
So if someone said to you "Why are you complaining that using the internet is so expensive? Your DSL connection is only x a month?", an accountant would say that if you look only at the phone bill, you're overlooking all of the necessary indirect costs. The item listed as "internet hosting" by the accountants is nowhere near the total cost of keeping Wikipedia online. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:45, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
For those that remember the Packard Commission in the 1980s, equating "internet hosting" with everything necessary to get Wikipedia to readers is like believing the US federal government actually did pay $435 for a $15 hammer, only in reverse. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The category “Internet Hosting” expenses in the audit report includes the costs we pay to data center and telecommunication providers for physical hosting (space), power and cooling for our servers, and Internet connectivity. [6] Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 10:27, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. You're reinforcing WAID's point here. -- asilvering (talk) 14:40, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
See m:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024#What is the money being spent on (concretely)?. The financial reports are super broad, I don't know what the money roughly is being spent on; as far as I can see so far it mostly wasn't tangible technical developments which is why I tried to find out. Prototyperspective (talk) 10:02, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Odd that your question of "where is the money actually going?" was apparently undeserving of an answer. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 11:28, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

YouTube spam epidemic

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There has been an epidemic of new accounts bot-posting spam YouTube links across many articles. These accounts are usually blocked in short order, but not before a certain amount of labor and watchlist churn. I wonder if, to minimize disruption, it is feasible to introduce technical restrictions on new accounts posting YouTube links at all. Given that YouTube is not a reliable source, would it be possible to limit the ability to add such links to (e.g.) autoconfirmed users? Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:20, 4 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Technically this is something that an edit filter can probably do. WP:EFR is the place to request one, but the folks there will probably want to see if there is consensus for it, and this is a good place to answer that question. Thryduulf (talk) 11:24, 4 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This is known about and the most effective actions to mitigate it are being taken. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:28, 4 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, and the YouTube spam is a lot less disruptive than what some of the alternatives were previously. nil nz 13:15, 4 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, see WP:LTA/SB1 for who's spamming the links. OutsideNormality (talk) 19:40, 4 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
To give context on what OutsideNormality said: There's this one vandalbot based in Russia, Salebot1, who does this every single day. If you see it happen immediately report accounts to both AIV and m:SRG as they'll spam on other projects if they're not globally locked. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 16:08, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Versageek and Beetstra: It looks like XLinkBot hasn't made an edit for a month now. Isn't it supposed to revert YouTube links added by new accounts? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:05, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I bet that we could set a bot to detect any account adding a YouTube link to more than one page, and to immediately report. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:06, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I have login-issies with the new authorization system with the bots. They can't login at the moment, I'll try to fix somewhere in near future. Dirk Beetstra T C 08:21, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This is fascinating. Do we have any idea why they are doing this? This is pretty sophisticated operation to just screw up the Spore page or other niches. EatingCarBatteries (contribs | talk) 05:37, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like an attempt to game YouTube's monetization rules, looking at the amount of videos uploaded to their channel[7]. Their efforts aren't even as futile as they may appear to be (look on comments for this video). Though you can never know for sure why people vandalize.
How they manage to break hCaptcha is a better question.
Has anyone ever tried to complain to YouTube about this channel? ~2026-28728-03 (talk) 10:48, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Is it always the same channel? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
One possible solution to this abuse might be a bot scraping this RSS feed every ~30-60 minutes and automatically adding new videos to the spam blacklist. I could build such a bot, though editing spam blacklist requires sysop permissions, which I lack. sapphaline (talk) 12:13, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That probably won't work, because Salebot1 switches to spamming something that isn't a YouTube link occasionally. Example. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 12:26, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
General reminder. When you use a publicly-accessible page to come up with ideas for stopping an LTA, you are helping that LTA. Thank you. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:02, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at MOS:LAYOUT

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Editors are invited to a discussion at MOS:LAYOUT's talk page. The discussion concerns adding instructions on when to split sections with additional headings and subheadings. Z1720 (talk) 01:59, 6 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Potential RfC around Master thesis reliability

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Our current policy says that:

"Masters dissertations and theses are considered reliable only if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence. Some theses are later published in the form of scholarly monographs or peer reviewed articles, and, if available, these are usually preferable to the original thesis as sources."

I think that this is a bit silly considering the fact that we regularly cite local news and other sources that are often seen by fewer people than the average thesis, and are in general subject to less scrutiny. This has come up a few times in at the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard over the years, and there is normally a strong contingent of editors that argue in either direction, for many reasons. I will ping any of them here and cross-post this discussion, but I think there might be enough interest in at least loosening these restrictions to something more along the lines of:

"Masters dissertations and theses are **presumed** reliable only if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence. **If this can not be shown, they should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. ** Some theses are later published in the form of scholarly monographs or peer reviewed articles, and, if available, these are usually preferable to the original thesis as sources."

This would allow the use of good and well researched thesis, particularly in history and other liberal arts fields, to be evaluated on merits, rather than on number of citations, which puts papers about more esoteric or niche subjects at a disadvantage.

Pinging @Dreamyshade, @Phil Bridger, @Dclemens1971, @TarnishedPath, @Narutolovehinata5, @Simonm223, @Yesterday, all my dreams..., @Mackensen, @GordonGlottal, @Generalissima, and @Agnieszka653, who all contributed to the previous discussion.


Kingsmasher678 (talk) 05:00, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Kingsmasher678, do you have any links to other prior discussions? TarnishedPathtalk 05:47, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Some previous discussions on RSN in the past few years:
Related from RSN talk page:
Dreamyshade (talk) 14:03, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Masters thesis are essentially self published sources. They are reviewed by a committee, but their quality is inconsistent. They also vary by country, department, and institution. Committees are often not deeply reading a thesis, and will pass people if it is "good enough" even with problems still in the document. Stuff slides through the cracks. If we allow the general use of thesis, there will be serious problems with unreliable information being cited. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 06:04, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'd recommend that we evaluate masters theses on a case-by-case basis using RS guidelines in general, instead of broadly considering them reliable (too generous) or considering scholarly influence to be the only relevant criteria for reliability (too restrictive). We can productively use a wide range of news articles from news publications of widely varying quality because we have the guidelines of WP:SOURCEDEF and WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. I believe that a well-researched history masters thesis on a relatively narrow and well-scoped topic, from a department that specializes in that topic area, can be a sufficiently reliable secondary source for non-controversial claims in non-contentious topic areas.
I'd suggest a change like this to WP:THESIS: "Masters dissertations and theses are considered reliable only if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence, or on a case-by-case basis if carefully evaluated under reliable source guidelines in general." Dreamyshade (talk) 14:52, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Just expanding on this suggestion with a couple of selected quotes from the past discussions I linked above:
  • March 2024: "The situationality of reliability is a great point, and it's about more than just individual reporters. The fact that a masters' thesis isn't at all usable for media and drama interpretation, but a rushed, insignificant capsule review in Rolling Stone is, is sheer lunacy." (@Theleekycauldron)
  • May 2023: "It's a bit odd to me that we treat thesis papers as if they were all deprecated (worse than Fox News!), when many of them are actually pretty excellent; their only problem is inconsistent quality depending on uni, supervisor, and field. Some thesis papers are complete nonsense or fringe, but it's unfortunate that we often treat all of them as borderline radioactive." (@DFlhb)
Dreamyshade (talk) 19:00, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I would put the average thesis only slightly above an undergraduate research paper in terms of quality. I've seen some truly excellent Reddit posts, doesn't mean they are reliable. A thesis is fundamentally still a learning exercise where a student learns how to conduct research, and how to write in an academic voice. With news sources, we can at least debate trends in bias from the publication, a thesis is a one off from an unknown individual. The journalists hired by a News agency are not writing an article to learn how to write articles, they have presumably passed some screening process to borrow the reputation of their agency. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 02:03, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It's this, and more. A news organization's standards and practices are brought to bear on every article published. With some exceptions, reliability largely derives from the publication itself and not the individual journalist. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:46, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I used to mark masters theses. No committee for the ones I marked. And they were only part of the degree. Doug Weller talk 08:58, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Having written a Master's Thesis that made a significant historical error that slipped by because it was tangential to a main point of the thesis, they are a mixed bag and need to be very carefully used. Viking metal uses one because it's some of the earliest scholarship that presaged a (relative) explosion of scholarship of that genre ten years later. Much of that late scholarship references the thesis.----3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 00:35, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • I share the sentiments of GegSage in that the quality of master items are often highly inconsistent. Once in a blue moon we get a master thesis such as the 1978 thesis by Chu which became a serious item via Chu spaces. But I personally can not recall another case that comes anywhere close. In many cases if a professor is top class in his field and has a tough character, he will check the thesis carefully. But in 80% of cases the committee members just go along with what the adviser says. They may need him when one of their own students is standing up to defend his PhD thesis. The role of departmental politics should not be ignored. And do you think the committee members have time to read the thesis page by page? No way. And in many cases if committee members are from another department they just sit there to collect the small fee they get for attending. I still smile when I recall attending the PhD defense by another student. One of the outside committee members was a world class fellow who has a well known discovery named after him. He was a few years before retirement at the time. He sat there and literally read that day's newspaper as the student made his presentation. At the end he asked a simple question that showed he had no idea about the thesis, which was outside his department. We all knew he came there just to get the fee. So in my view theses quality is as random as a roulette table outcome. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 06:56, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment: Personal anecdote, I'm pretty proud of my master thesis. My entire committee was very involved and one member was fairly recognizable in the field, it won regional awards, has been cited by at least one peer-reviewed publication, and consistently has a relatively large number of weekly views on ResearchGate. I don't think it should be cited on Wikipedia. My methods were good enough, but amateur. I've considered trying to get the results peer-reviewed, but would want to conduct the entire study again to address several issues I ran into. I've never seen a thesis that I'd consider good enough to meet the threshold for "reliable," and I've read quite a few exceptional ones. That said, I'm the outside committee member for a defense today, and hope to be proven wrong. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 07:40, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    GeoSage, let us all be reminded that some roulette table outcomes are wins, and sometimes big wins. Chu was a big win, and your thesis was a win. But that is how roulette tables work. As for your thesis meeting today, please be sure to take a newspaper, just in case. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 08:08, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    They brought doughnuts, they bribed me for full attention. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 01:37, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    @GeogSage Curious, would you consider your thesis mostly a primary source or a secondary source, as defined by WP:PSTS? Broadly, it seems like some masters theses are mostly reporting and discussing new results from a study or experiment (often in scientific fields), and some are mostly synthesizing and interpreting existing source materials (often in humanities fields). This is part of why I'm interested in revising WP:THESIS to allow case-by-case evaluation of whether a masters thesis can be a reliable source - the secondary type is more likely to be a useful reliable source for Wikipedia citation purposes. Dreamyshade (talk) 16:05, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Dreamy, your categorization of master theses into 2 groups is based on your experiences. John Tukey would frawn... We have no data to support that assumption. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 16:56, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Thesis has a rather extensive literature review which would be secondary, followed by the experimental methodology, results, analysis, discussion, and conclusion, which is primary. As proud of my literature review as I am, I do not think it should be cited. The sources I cited would be much more appropriate to use. Something I'm guilty of in it that I see often in others is using the thesis to be edgy from an academic perspective, and to use it as an opportunity to soap box about a hot take or opinion. While I don't necessarily disagree with the opinions I advanced, I don't think it was as supported by the literature as I thought it was. Masters thesis are usually written by people just out of undergraduate course work, and they are often closer in quality to a good term paper then a peer-reviewed publication. The thesis is a step towards learning how to write well, do research, and contribute to the literature. During the course of writing one, students are given feedback from their advisors, but ultimately the final decisions are left to the student. There isn't editorial oversight, and the professors are generally trying to make the process as painless as possible and not trip the student up if something goes really poorly. A bad article is rejected, a bad thesis will be polished a bit and the student will move on. A Ph.D. dissertation is where the requirement is contributing to the literature in a meaningful way, and most of the time in the U.S. the good parts of a dissertation are published in journals, so it is unnecessary to cite the dissertation itself. If a masters thesis is actually really good, then the student is often encouraged to clean it up and submit to a journal as well, at which point we wouldn't need to cite the thesis. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 23:05, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
King, to get more responses you may want to put links to here on some project pages. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 08:04, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • These days it is rather standard to get thesis content (MSc and up) published in peer-reviewed article form, which then makes the material reliable by our standards. If that does not happen, it may be due to the author being busy with the next thing, but in my experience there is also a good chance that the reviewers agreed that this was good enough for a degree, but not good enough to enter the body of research. In other words, the current guidelines seem correct to me - be careful with hanging anything on a thesis source if the material was not published as a proper article. Having said that, I'm not sure how applicable the notion is to older theses; the "build your thesis as a future journal submission" approach is a relatively recent trend, and probably does not apply to (my guess) material from the 80s or earlier. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 10:57, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree that this shift from thesis-in-itself to quasi-journal article is worth taking into account. Practices likely vary by field as well. Toadspike [Talk] 13:41, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree that a journal article (from a reputable journal) is distinct from a thesis. Blueboar (talk) 14:22, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    +1 and I would treat most journal articles from reputable journals as WP:BESTSOURCES. The question becomes one of reputation. We all know about the Frontiers journals and the Journal of Controversial Ideas as journals with minimal or negative reputations so it's not just non-predatory = good but, in general, if a thesis is published in a journal then we can just use that version. Simonm223 (talk) 19:04, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed, and I think this goes without saying. We evaluate journal articles by the standards for journal articles. The credentials of the lead author or first author may occasionally be a consideration but we would not evaluate the reliability of a journal article as though it were a master's thesis. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 23:32, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Elmidae, I think your point about the student intentions is valid, but needs more detail. Some students do a master degree because they intend to go on to a PhD. Some others do it because it improves their chances of getting a better job in industry. This second group does not gain a lot by getting things published. And of course it is all highly dependent on the ability and intelligence of the student. The very clever students (yours truly included) figure out how to "work the system" and move on to a PhD without writing a master thesis. So, in a sense, the most clever master theses are never written. I generally do not trust master theses unless they have been published in an RS source. But then we would NOT need the thesis. So let us only reply on RS journals. I see no point in the RFC. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 14:31, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
"presumed" is used in some specific ways on Wikipedia, I would be strongly against using it here.
There is variability in the quality of master thesis, and I don't think the current wording takes that into consideration. So many of them will be of far higher quality than most websites that are regularly used for referencing. I'm unsure about the particular wording though, "If this can not be shown, they should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis". I think it should reflect that it's the editor wanting to use it that needs to show why it should be used. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:43, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Actively, I agree, specially about your last sentence. We would need a super WP:BURDEN criterion. As I said above to Elmidae, I would prefer not to have any references to master items not published in an RS journal. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 14:38, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I would be okay with the ability to ask for an exception to use a thesis, however I would not want to greenlight it as general practice. It's hard to prove something isn't reliable, and it is really hard to get people to avoid using bad sources as it is. On a talk page I've pointed out an article failed the RS noticeboard, is in a predatory journal, and is likely 95% AI generated, and they still argue for its inclusion because it has been cited several times (I suspect many of those citations are equally dubious, but haven't checked). If using masters thesis becomes generally accepted, instead of only as rare exceptions, there will be a lot of time wasted trying to demonstrate why a thesis is not a good source. I also suspect there will be a lot of hurt feelings when students try to anonymously insert their thesis into an article, and get it eviscerated by editors. Even if it isn't the student, I would feel a bit bad ripping into a thesis someone else tried to get cited on the off chance some poor grad student stumbles upon the discussion. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 23:41, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This would be acceptable to me. What would you recommend for wording? Kingsmasher678 (talk) 23:48, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, if someone is going to use a thesis as a source, the burden should be on them to prove that:
  • No better source exists
  • The thesis is of high quality
  • The thesis satisfies a need within the article, and is not just superfluous information.
  • The thesis is used to describe or describe something objective/factual/quantitative, not speculation or interpretation by the author.
Generally, if something is notable enough to include on Wikipedia, there will be other sources, which would make this a very rare occurrence. I'd suggest the thesis first pass the reliable source noticeboard, at the very least. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 23:51, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is reasonable. Having the policy in place that allows the source to pass the noticeboard is my goal. Kingsmasher678 (talk) 23:56, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Also maybe have a tier list for the reliability of the journal itself? Are masters's theses published in journals like Nature or just PhD's? This may be a dumb question but my only experience is with PhDs. Agnieszka653 (talk) 00:01, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Masters thesis are usually published on Proquest, or something equivalent. Same with dissertations. After they are published (or sometimes before), they can be trimmed and worked into a format for a journal. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 00:10, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think they should need to be preapproved, that sounds a bit to much like having to ask for permission to edit. But if challenged the editor wanting to use a master thesis should be required to show that it's a suitable source. This is meant to be an exception not a green light. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:17, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think when it comes to masters thesis, I would rather see them all considered unreliable then to be allowed unless challenged. I've dealt with this recently, as an example, on the third RfC in the last 6 months on the Dead Internet Theory talk page, the user opened it with a table of sources they scraped off of Google Scholar. They did not vet these sources, at all. The RfC moved forward considering them as evidence, and I had to spend hours checking each source for reliability. The damage to the RfC is done, people don't go back and check their statements, and honestly most editors are probably just going with their gut most of the time anyway. Allowing masters thesis puts the burden of checking documents that might be hundreds of pages long on the person challenging it, not the editor that wants to see it included. Most of them are not appropriate sources, if an exception has to be made for edge cases, it needs to be carefully implemented. Most people don't check the sources others are adding in any great depth as it is, it could be really easy to get a thesis published at a disreputable university, add something to a page, and have it sit for years. The most serious issue is it risks citogenesis situations. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:20, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in favor of something like this. But maybe we should join it with a special rule against any user citing their own thesis, whatever other circumstances apply. Because I think it will be a particular problem with MA theses. GordonGlottal (talk) 14:12, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, impossible to enforce rules should not be put on the books at all. If a source is good, then it doesn't matter who is adding it. We don't know the names of editors, and while it is possible to dox them, that goes against the rules (and for very good reason). If a rule like this is put on the books, it just leads to impossible to prove accusations that get in the way of discussions about content. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:37, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I agree we shouldn't have a special rule for MA theses. And WP:SELFCITE already covers this. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 21:05, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I like Dreamyshade's proposed wording. Echoing the points above, they can be useful if there are no better sources available, but should only be used on a per-claims-basis and not for anything even approaching WP:EXCEPTIONAL. I've used some occasionally for blind spots in the literature and have found that those tend to have several cites in peer-reviewed scholarship (according to Scholar), which makes usage a lot more comfortable. Have even seen unpublished theses used in historical scholarship. Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 15:16, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I would ideally like to include master's theses I am an inclusionist by nature. However echoing some of the other points above, I think it's hard to pick and choose what master's theses are worth citing and which ones are questionable. Considering that so many graduate degrees are pushed through every year the quality of these publications can very widely which I think is one of the major issues here. Agnieszka653 (talk) 16:29, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Agnies, I agree. It is a roulette game. But I have already said that. So let this be my last comment here. I am done on the discussion here. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 16:59, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
As a Masters holder in the humanities myself, I agree with what most of Greg Sage says. Sometimes a thesis has as much rigor and value as a professionally published work and sometimes it does not. The point of a grad school thesis is different from that of a published article. The candidates are there to demonstrate that they can research and write in a certain way. It's not always about the content of the text, so the thesis, even if reviewed by professionals, is not getting the same kind of attention as an article composed for publication. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:51, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
NOTE: My general comment is more that everything said against masters theses is also applicable to many of the other sources that are regularly cited. We have decided that our editors are competent enough to determine reliability in that case. There is no reason the same can not be done for this one. Kingsmasher678 (talk) 19:34, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think the issue is some of us are not competent enough--hence why we have the RS noticeboard. Like I stated above I would love to include more sources and I actually don't agree with the tier list, the reason the RS noticeboard exists is to (theoretically) prevent not only mis and disinformation from permeating the platform but to also prevent ideologically abuse--as in prevent bad actors from abusing certain sources to fit an ideological narrative. I think unfortunately higher ed particularly the social sciences and liberal arts (though it is now permeating the hard sciences too) has issues with research being skewed to fit a certain world view. Also there is the Replication crisis where experiments are having issues with being repeated by different research teams where they are NOT achieving the same results. Since a Master's Thesis is usually an academic or newly minted professional's first foray into scholarly writing and research I'm not sure we should treat these sources as reliable for this reason. Agnieszka653 (talk) 20:51, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This makes sense for certain types of theses, like hard science one in chemistry an the like. It is not a concern for history, as long as we use common sense in the ways that we do for all other sources. If we want to raise the bar to meet these requirements in all situations, fine, but it is not fair to act as if the rest of the common sources we use, like newspapers and the like, don't have those same issues. In those cases, we use our brains and minds to figure out how to balance biasis, and there is no reason not to do the same here. Kingsmasher678 (talk) 21:12, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I would actually argue its the other way around. I actually trust masters theses in chemistry and physics way more than I would those in history because the latter is not supposed to be based on subjectivity. Newspapers are supposed to be much more reliable as well because they are (ideally--not saying it's great all the time) supposed to be reporting on current events--ie facts. Can be facts be subjective? Can two different journalists have completely different interpretations of a breaking news story? Yes. It's a lot harder though to deduce this in a masters thesis where an extremely obtuse liberal arts or social sciences field could have very few scholars who may have a shewed view of a topic with very little outside pushback. In the hard sciences your masters thesis should be based on quantifiable results produced over years of observable results from carefully constructed experiments based on other scientists previous work. Agnieszka653 (talk) 21:25, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
In the hard sciences your masters thesis should be based on quantifiable results produced over years of observable results from carefully constructed experiments based on other scientists previous work. Reality is that in the hard sciences, they are usually based on one or two experiments that were done in the last two semesters (or often, the last semester) of grad school. The first year of a masters thesis is mostly coursework and some literature review, generally ending with a proposal. Students just don't have the time or money to be very rigorous, and unfortunately because time is a limiting factor, often have to stick with the results they get the first go around without following up with additional experiments. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 23:47, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Oh. that's unfortunate I worked in a lab for many years that only had PhD students and post-docs so that's probably where my skewed perspective is coming from. Agnieszka653 (talk) 23:59, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That'll do it. Ph.D. is another beast entirely, 4 to 6 years instead of 2, and the requirement is generally that you make a novel contribution to the body of knowledge. Depends on the discipline, university, and department, but it is common for it to essentially be three journal articles that are loosely related sandwiched between an introduction and conclusion section. In these cases, the core chapters have passed peer-review or something like it (I've also seen book chapters used in a dissertation that were not peer-reviewed but did have editorial oversight outside their advisor/committee). Much higher bar then a thesis. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 01:33, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't find the comparison to other types of sources like news articles fitting. Reliability is a factor of the types of claims for which a source is (generally) reliable and the underlying standards and practices that confer such reliability. News stories are not usually reliable for claims about ancient Egyptian pharmacology or comparative religion novel rating scales for storm damage. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 23:48, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I lean against this proposal. The provision that master's theses that cannot be shown to have had significant scholarly influence […] should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis doesn't add much guidance and would seem to just open up more disputes. I didn't read every linked discussion in its entirety, so I may have missed something, but it appears that in most cases the thesis is determined to be unusable and in a few it has been given a pass based on some exceptional set of circumstances. I think it should continue to be uncommon that we cite a master's thesis, that has not been cited or discussed in other literature, for a factual claim that is not found in any other sources. I'm open to the idea that there are exceptions, for example areas where there are systemic gaps in the literature and the thesis was supervised by a recognized authority in the field. I would think there should be a high bar and these should perhaps include in-text attribution. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 00:09, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly, I just want to find a way to allow the use of theses that study understudied things and area, like the history of environmental disasters in Appalachia. There are often very serious and life changing events that get little or no coverage outside of the rare theses or the like. This whole thing cam up when I was writing the article about Bumpus Cove. The only half decent, and collected, coverage of the whole superfund site located in the cove is in an extremely well written master thesis. I had to spend HOURS digging through newspaper archives to find enough to source the article, and it is still a bit shaky. That seemed very stupid to me, so it ended up here, and RSN and DYK and on the article's talk page.
The policy clearly needs a bit more flex, I just don't have the experience to really nail down how much. Kingsmasher678 (talk) 00:19, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I hear you. And you've done a great job navigating all these discussion forums and policy considerations, laying out the issues, and, I think, gaining at least some support. I'd be more comfortable allowing a one-off exception for Bumpus Cove than loosening up the guidance. (Note—I have not reviewed the Bumpus Cove issue closely enough to confidently make that assessment, so this should not be taken as a firm endorsement.) —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 01:19, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I second that--and I agree it makes sense for that article--and articles like it. Agnieszka653 (talk) 01:22, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Myceteae and @Agnieszka653, I appreciate that! I have to say that I would prefer some sort of process that others can follow. I like what @GeogSage said above:
Generally, if someone is going to use a thesis as a source, the burden should be on them to prove that:
No better source exists
The thesis is of high quality
The thesis satisfies a need within the article, and is not just superfluous information.
The thesis is used to describe or describe something objective/factual/quantitative, not speculation or interpretation by the author.
Generally, if something is notable enough to include on Wikipedia, there will be other sources, which would make this a very rare occurrence. I'd suggest the thesis first pass the reliable source noticeboard, at the very least.
Kingsmasher678 (talk) 01:37, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The double describe was supposed to say "describe or explain." I need to proofread better. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 01:39, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That criteria sounds reasonable to me. I wonder if a good next step could be writing an WP:ESSAY that summarizes this discussion to provide informal context and suggestions for interpreting WP:THESIS for masters theses, as a reference for future discussions on RSN. Could also add a version of the checklist I used in this discussion about the Bumpus Cove DYK. Dreamyshade (talk) 14:00, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
An essay is a good idea. It would help to workshop and refine this over a longer period of time and with more test cases. The essay and its talk page could serve as a repository of links to relevant discussions. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:09, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think @Dreamyshade's analysis here did a good job of this. The provision that it satisfies a need within the article is important and gets and gets at other potential issues related to notability and neutrality (specifically WP:DUE and WP:PROPORTION). —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:01, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
So we have a bit of an egg and chicken problem here though. Because for a master's thesis to fill that need we'd need to establish encyclopedic significance absent the master's thesis and that would imply better sources already exist in which case why not just cite them instead. In other words: if the only source is a master's thesis we can't really establish relevance. Simonm223 (talk) 14:13, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Some locations are notable like the Bumpus Cove example. Per Wikipedia:NPLACE. Kingsmasher678 (talk) 14:25, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm very aware that Bumpus Cove is at the root of this discussion. My question is rather about how to establish that the Master's thesis is needed there if it's the only source for the information it contains. It's a circular establishment of relevance: the master's thesis becomes the argument for its own necessity in inverse proportion to the number of other sources that exist. And that's problematic as a source inclusion criterion. Simonm223 (talk) 14:28, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Another example I'm thinking of is Isla Vista, California, which, like Bumpus Cove, is a census-designated place. It is undeniably notable, especially due to significant secondary coverage especially post-1970, but there are few reliable sources available about the earlier history of the place, especially 1910s-1960s. See the local university's list of resources about Isla Vista history - the best sources available for pre-1970 history are largely self-published works and theses written at the neighboring university, including several masters theses and one PhD dissertation published in 1994. The article's early history section is poorly cited at the moment, but I want to work more on it at some point, and if I had to limit myself to the dissertation, the section would miss out on depth and balance. Dreamyshade (talk) 14:43, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This raises additional issues. The difference between these cases is instructive. At Bumpus Cove, the MA thesis is used as a citation 13 times. In 7 of these instances, it is supported by at least one additional citation. Overall, my impression is that the thesis fleshes out important details but is not the sole source in terms of verifiability/reliability, notability, or neutrality. For Isla Vista, California, if there is a 60-year time period that is only covered in master's theses and is systematically underrepresented in generally reliable sources, this suggests we should not devote substantial coverage to it in our article. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 17:02, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
There is secondary coverage available in newspaper and magazine articles, but the historical material is largely derived from research published by students - for example, this 2026 news feature quotes the person who wrote a 1987 masters thesis and 1994 dissertation, which is great because she really is the best expert on this material. As another example, this 2025 news feature is mostly a synthesis of previously published research, along with some primary source research done by the author, who is a knowledgeable community member without formal training. There are also government reports with some summaries of early history. I can cite these materials as supporting sources, but they're not necessarily more reliable for factual information than the masters theses. In general it wouldn't be WP:DUE to write a particularly lengthy section about the early history of this place, but I do want the material to be substantive and use the best available sources. Dreamyshade (talk) 18:31, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I would be wary about over-reliance on primary sources and master's theses but I can appreciate that for local history sourcing is limited. WP:INTEXT citation might be called for here. It's difficult to assess reliability or due weight without looking at specific article content and the how sources are used. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 19:34, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Comparing a government source to a masters thesis, the issue is institutional accountability. A government source is backed by the government, and if it is incorrect then we can point to that as an issue. A peer-reviewed publication has the reputation of the authors institution and the journal to back it up. A news article is backed by the agency that published it. A masters thesis is essentially self published, and while a bad one might reflect poorly on their advisor, the point of the thesis isn't to create sources but to teach a student how to do research. Universities are not staking their reputation on the quality of individual students thesis work, and students are told they are the only ones responsible for the statements written in their document. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:54, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I can speak to geography as an example. A region might be notable, but specific details about that region might not exist, or be difficult to find, in the literature. A thesis written by a student about that region might contain something about it that might satisfy a need. It could be something as simple as "_________ region, known locally as __________" where the local name is demonstrably known to us from unacceptable sources like social media, but not in a reliable source. Once we find the fact in a better source, we can swap the thesis for that. Generally, I'm not in favor of adding them at all, but I can see where it might be useful in some situations, and if we are going to do it would want it heavily restricted to ensure it remains an edge case. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:44, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's a real problem. I didn't want to get too off-topic but this issue really is at the intersection of all these inclusion criteria/considerations. I think it's possible there can be a situation where:
  1. A subject is notable
  2. A particular aspect of the subject is important enough to warrant coverage, perhaps even so much so that omissions would run afoul of DUE/PROPORTION
  3. A high quality master's thesis is the best source for specific details
But it's a tough case to make and should be a high bar. Bumpus Cove appears to be a special case that may clear that bar but I'm not convinced we should open the flood gates. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 16:10, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm kind of in the same place. I know at RS/N I was pretty rigid about Bumpus Cove but that was because that's the reliability rules we have in front of us. Based on this extensive discussion it seems like an edge case. My concern is that we don't want to be building policy from the edges in. Simonm223 (talk) 19:34, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like the comments by WhatamIdoing and David Eppstein in the 2025 discussion on dissertations, especially the comment "the key question isn't "Is it reliable?" but "Is it reliable for this claim?"" In that vein, I don't think blanket prohibitions or even discuragemnt of finished theses and dissertations matter, it is whether there are no better sources for the claim exists. (And I would strongly hesitate to use only a master's thesis for determining notability, but again extrordinary circumstances may arise). --Enos733 (talk) 16:22, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Theleekycauldron I noticed you expressed an opinion about this here, thought you might be interested. Kingsmasher678 (talk) 17:28, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@PARAKANYAA and @Cremastra from here. Kingsmasher678 (talk) 17:31, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with theses is that they vary so much. However, I dislike the status quo of what is effectively total prohibition. I think it would be beneficial to be given more latitude; maybe a presumption that masters' thesis are no consensus off the bat rather than generally unreliable. It varies wildly by field, so I think making it more case by case would be reasonable, as in some fields masters theses are respectable contributions with overview and in others they are effectively worthless to cite. PARAKANYAA (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
COMMENT: I would encourage people to send this to anyone they think may be interested. I would like to have as much imput as possible before starting any sort of official RFC. Kingsmasher678 (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Information Note: Notice placed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 17:57, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I think there is certainly an issue of variability with master's theses and the level of scrutiny they undergo. One issue is the wide variation in expectation for a master's thesis, in particular (in the UK at least) the difference between research master's and taught master's (including integrated master's). A taught master's thesis is basically an extended essay on a project, with most of the marks being from examination on taught courses, while a research master's thesis is the basis for most of the marks for the degree and is examined in a similar way to a PhD, with external examiners reading the thesis. A taught master's thesis is therefore only slightly higher than a final year bachelor's project and I think the presumption that these are not reliable is reasonable. A research master's is, in contrast, often supposed to be work of publishable quality and a much stronger argument can be made for treating these as reliable. In the UK, institutional research repositories will normally hold research master's theses but not taught master's theses.
However, the same variability also applies to doctoral theses, with some doctorates (particularly in the US) awarded for taught programmes. The general advice at WP:THESIS includes "If possible, use theses that have been cited in the literature, supervised by recognized specialists in the field, or reviewed by independent parties." At the moment, only the first of these is considered to make a master's thesis reliable, which seems over-restrictive. The implication of the policy as currently written is that it's okay, even if not preferable, to cite a thesis from a taught professional doctorate (such as a US JD) that has been supervised by a non-specialist and has not been reviewed by an independent examiner, but that a research master's thesis supervised by a recognised specialist and reviewed by an external examiner is considered unreliable unless it can be shown to have had "significant scholarly influence". Such a division in how we treat theses based on what an institution decides to title its programme does not seem particularly useful.
I think the 'treat on a case-by-case basis' idea has some merit, but requires guidance. I would suggest that for a thesis to have been reviewed by independent parties is a minimum bar for all theses (not just master's theses) to be considered reliable, and that research master's theses that have been subject to external review and that are expected to be work of publishable quality should be considered reliable in the same way as research doctoral theses (with the onus on the person wanting to use the thesis to demonstrate this, in the same way it currently is). Robminchin (talk) 21:45, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a misread of the situation. The bulk of the guidance, including the portion you quoted, applies to Completed dissertations or theses written as part of the requirements for a doctorate. Only the last two sentences apply to Masters dissertations and theses, which have more restrictions on use. In the US, professional doctorates like JD and MD do not include a dissertation, so the guidance doesn't really apply. As I just learned, the use of "thesis" vs. "dissertation" for master's vs. doctoral degrees is opposite in different countries. Perhaps the guideline could be improved by specifying doctoral theses and masters theses. You're right that terminology varies even within each country, from program to program, and that we can't rely on something simply being called a "thesis". —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 23:02, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
There are JD courses in the US that have a (sometimes optional) thesis component, e.g.,[8] There are also other places that have non-research doctorates with thesis requirements below those for master's degrees, e.g.,[9]. In an international encyclopedia we can't rely on doctorate vs masters any more than thesis vs dissertation as a discriminator of the level of a work.
As currently worded, a thesis produced after two years of research and subjected to external review for an MPhil is unreliable, but a 5 credit-hour internally marked thesis for a JD is acceptable. This clearly needs major revision, not just tinkering. Robminchin (talk) 01:01, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
True, fair point. That is quite different from a dissertation (US usage), and I read doctoral theses as meaning dissertations here but I see that it is open to different readings. I read it as clear that the first part would not refer to a thesis in a professional doctorate program in the US but strictly speaking, as worded, it is open to different readings. As I read it, a US JD "thesis" or master's or doctoral "capstone" is not explicitly addressed here. I see two separate (but intertwined) issues here that might be handled differently. One is to possibly clean up the wording and the other is to decide if there is going to be a change in the standard. If the reliable sources standard is not changing, then it's just a question of confirming everyone's current understanding and clarifying the wording as needed. Although it's not clear doctoral dissertations or JD theses have been a source of controversy in the past. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 02:05, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, the current policy allows limited usage of master's theses/dissertations, based on specific circumstances and good-faith vetting by the editor. In addition, the policy indicates a preference for secondary publications. At first, I thought it was adequate, but am beginning to change my mind. It might be helpful to change the phrasing to “good-faith vetting”, " strengthening the concept of researching the source before using it. Should we also note that such sources would not count toward notability and should not be used to support the majority of an article's content?
We should probably discuss how such works can serve as both primary and secondary sources. A master’s thesis or dissertation might have a limited distribution, but is not self-published. Although there is an assumption that such works are always primary sources that present original research, many serve as secondary sources that provide analysis or summaries of the works of others. Wikipedia recognizes the potential for this dual role, noting that newspapers, for example, can be a secondary source. Such clarification could limit how these sources should be used, but could also strengthen the case for how they could be used. Rublamb (talk) 16:08, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I agree largely with these issues raised and I'm unsure how to proceed. My sense, based on this discussion and the others linked, is that the guidance has served us fairly well despite real ambiguity in the terminology, unclear applicability to certain degree types, and some disagreement about the current scope. I worry about WP:CREEP, bogging down the guidance with a lot of minutiae about terminology and special circumstances—or adding vague guidance about good-faith vetting or a case-by-case basis—and potentially creating more loopholes or disputes. To be clear, I find my own objections here rather unsatisfying. tl;dr: You raise good points and I don't know what the right answer is. A key question for me is whether these issues have been a locus of recurring disputes. As for the primary vs. secondary source discussion, I'm not sure it is the critical test here, especially if we get the rest of the guidance right, although it may be worth mentioning and linking to existing guidance on this. If an MA thesis contains primary research that goes on to be widely cited and considered a major contribution to the field then we can probably use it, with the usual caveats that secondary sources may still be better. On the other hand, a master's student's secondary analysis of prior literature is generally unusable unless it's been published or cited elsewhere. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 18:19, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think that Myceteae has it correct above in some of their responses: If the only place where we can find information is in weak sources then that information (probably) doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article.
With that said, I have no objection an editor using a Master's thesis that can be demonstrated as being sufficiently reliable (which is the same position I hold for any kind of source). But I think the current approach of defaulting to not presuming that a Master's thesis is reliable is the correct one given what we know about how they are typically written and reviewed. So I'm not convinced that our current policies and practices need to change. ElKevbo (talk) 22:18, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
On "If the only place where we can find information is in weak sources then that information (probably) doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article", who is "we" here? We (in this discussion) are essentially talking about what to do when we find an average WP editor, more than likely only using sources available online (and of course in English) has found a masters thesis and used it. What are "we" to do? Of course "we" could ideally conduct a full library etc search (multilingual if necessary) for better sources, but "we" probably won't. Johnbod (talk) 03:31, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
"We" would be the reliable source noticeboard and the article in questions talk page. I think including a thesis should be hard to do, and the burden to prove an exception should be on the editor wanting to include it. If we find any source in a more traditionally acceptable medium, we replace the thesis with it. Alternatively, we just don't use masters theses at all. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 03:36, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: My own Master's thesis was a research thesis. It was reviewed by two academic reviewers, one in the UK and one in Australia. (The PhD was reviewed by three, all experts, all overseas.) It is cited more often in books and articles than the PhD and required just as much work. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:14, 8 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If a thesis is cited in peer-reviewed books and articles (such as yours), it meets the threshold of significant scholarly influence. Mine won an award from an international organization in the field--I think this would qualify as proof of significance/reliability, but maybe not of influence. However, one person in my cohort didn't even meet the minimum length, was not passed by peer reviewers, and go the degree anyway. As noted above, all works are not equal. There are a few dissertations that I have used as sources for Wikipedia articles because the author is widely accepted as the leading authority in a particular subject, often publishing on the topic as a professional (but with fewer details than found in the thesis or dissertation). Considering this, some changes to the wording of the policy might be beneficial, but maybe not as broad as allowing a case-by-case analysis, as that will totally depend on who is reviewing these. Maybe wording such as "significant scholarly influence or other external evidence of scholarly reliability" might open up usage, but would not invite every editor to make their own determinations regarding a thesis. Rublamb (talk) 00:40, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The amount of work that goes into a document has little to do with how reliable it is. Awards have little to do with how reliable they are, especially if the awards are for presenting the research and not the document itself. We could cite the scholarly sources that have made the choice to cite a thesis, but should generally avoid citing them. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 01:59, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your sentiment, but you are making an assumption that a secondary scholarly source replicates the contents of the thesis. The caveat here is when an editor lacks access to a better source. As I said above, there are rare cases where a scholar's thesis and dissertation become the definitive source on a subject. The best examples I can think of are works about specific architects that have yet to receive treatment in a book (and probably never will). The sources used for the thesis or dissertation are largely archival, with the thesis or dissertation providing analysis and an amalgamation of facts. A book or article might cite the thesis regarding a building or the architect, but they are unlikely to replicate the biographical content or the comprehensive analysis of the architect's style and contributions found in the dissertation or thesis. Yet, the dissertation or thesis might be heavily cited in a nomination form for the National Register or Historic Places (which are heavily used as sources in Wikipedia), making it important when it comes to identifying and recognizing significant structures in the U.S. I know I am going very specific here, but my point is that there are cases when this type of publication is appropriately used as a source. Our current policy allows for such usage.
FYI: In my case, the award was for the paper, without a presentation. Thus, the award consisted of a review by a panel of international experts in the field. I was also approached by a publisher to convert it into a book. However, my thesis is unlikely to be used as a source in Wikipedia; I was just using it as an example because there are numerous such awards out there that can be used to help determine the credibility of a thesis or dissertation. Rublamb (talk) 15:04, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
In these exceptional cases where no other source exists, we can have a discussion and make exceptions. Some barrier should exist to keep the exception from becoming the norm. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 17:09, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, these represent exceptional cases. And, again, this gets back to the issues of notability and due weight, in addition to reliability. If an architect is wiki-notable enough to have a standalone article and the only source for key biographical details or unique interpretations of their style is a master's thesis. And, yes, this is a different standard than a biography published by a reputable book publisher or in a peer reviewed journal. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 18:31, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Georg, I agree their use should be the exception and should never be the "go to" source for anything. I actually feel the same way about doctoral dissertations. I provided these examples as a possible reason to allow their use in a limited way, since there was some pushback on that concept. In terms of the wording under discussion, isn't this type of analysis (primary vs. secondary sources, reliable vs. unreliable) covered in general guidelines for sources in Wikipedia? Rublamb (talk) 00:22, 10 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
In general, a thesis is covered on Wikipedia:Reliable sources under WP:THESIS. I think the language used there is too lenient, and that in general, most fall under WP:SELFPUB. Fundamentally, they are reviewed by a committee, but that review is just to ensure it meets minimum standards to pass the defense. The student is responsible for the content of the thesis, and copies generally need to be paid for by the student out of pocket. To publish on ProQuest, it is often a requirement to be under the open-access license which the student generally needs to pay for out of pocket. They often include both primary and secondary information, but more importantly, they are ultimately self published by individuals who are going through a very rushed learning exercise. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 01:59, 10 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Wearing my librarian hat here: A thesis is not self-published; it is technically published by the academic institution that binds, catalogs, and stores the document. APA Style says, "A dissertation or thesis is considered published when it is available from a database such as ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global or PDQT Open, an institutional repository, or an archive." Note that there is a middleman/publisher between the author and access to the publication, which is different from publishing and selling your own book. In the old days, the fee for a copy of a thesis/dissertation was shared between the university library and the vendor--the author was not part of the conversation. Today, the thesis is supposed to include a copyright page, with the author signing an authorization for the library to distribute copies through a vendor. Once ProQuest gets involved with digital or microfilm copies, the publisher is considered to be ProQuest. You could say that ProQuest is not a reliable publisher of scholarly works, as it makes no review for quality. However, many general nonfiction books are published by reputable houses, with the scholarly side of the book only receiving a narrow review with regard to its accuracy. Such firms have also been known to hire general writers, rather than experts, for a series of books. These books are not scholarly but are used as sources in Wikipedia without question.
Rushed is relative--one semester of research and one semester writing is a longer time than is spent on many nonfiction books that are considered reliable sources. It is certainly more time than is spent on newspaper or magazine articles that are considered reliable sources. I have seen an event happen, with books from reputable publishing appearing on library shelves within 3 to 4 months. And that was before AI!
Are we getting overexcited about a minor issue. How often do people use a thesis or dissertation as a source? Their general lack of availability through a Google search probably limits their use. I guess it depends on discipline. I would rather see a thesis citation than no source or a random Internet source. However, ask me again in twenty years when there are shelves full of AI-crafted and reviewed theses.... Rublamb (talk) 03:06, 10 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • ProQuest doesn't check the work you publish, they explicitly tell you that before they take your money. There are a number of Vanity press that will publish things for you and enter it into a database. ResearchGate will make anything available you want in a database as well, in fact I tell my students to upload their conference posters onto it, and it even generates DOI numbers for them (Every poster I have ever presented is on ResearchGate with a DOI, they even show up if you search well enough on Google Scholar). There are Degree mills that will give anyone a paper that says "Master."
  • I've recently seen them attempted to be used on dead Internet theory, and have seen them on other pages. Google Scholar readily shows theses.
  • In the context of research, they are usually quite rushed. Students are busy, and generally have a graduation date in mind, limited funding, and job offers. I had to hurry through my thesis and defend over a Summer session because I had been accepted into a Ph.D. program, I had to defend my dissertation over a Summer because I had accepted a job offer. On my dissertation, I was forced to cut two publications out as my committee didn't think they would be ready in time to defend (5 instead of 7, with a minimum of 3, so it wasn't a problem, but it wasn't as complete as I intended in my proposal). This is pretty normal from what I've observed, people don't have the time or energy to dedicate to these that you would expect from other original research.
  • I would rather not include content then have it poorly cited. I have read a lot of theses, and something that I have noticed across all of them is that students like to slip in hot takes that are tangentially related to the main topic. This is something that is expected as they experiment with the idea of having an expert opinion, but the result can be pretty damaging if we green light theses as acceptable sources.
GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 05:06, 10 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yet, we're allowed to use news sources and magazine sources with wild abandon. The review that goes into a masters thesis is usually going to be above most news organizations, and more of an expert quality work than any news source, but news sources are generally reliable and masters theses are generally unreliable. Absurd. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:17, 10 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The review that goes into most masters theses is three people who are offering suggestions a student should do to meet minimum standards. Most of the time, only one or two committee members offer substantial feedback. The people want the student to pass, and students will often ignore some of the suggestions and as long as it isn't to outrageous no one will stop them. A news and magazine source will have editorial oversight, and importantly, if it publishes enough slop we can exclude it. A thesis is a one off, and most of the time it is by a person who is unknown. There isn't really any organization that is accountable for a really bad or inaccurate thesis, and few people will ever look over a document after the student pays to have proquest host it. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 00:24, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Accountability is a big one. There was a discussion not too long ago at RSN about a major blunder by The Times. There was an initial call to downgrade their 'generally reliable' status but the overall sentiment was that one error did not sully their entire reputation and that their response, which included pulling the article and issuing an apology, demonstrated their overall reliability. The overall news ecosystem also contributes to reliability. For the controversy surrounding The Times, the fact that other outlets reported on and verified the true facts shows how news org's hold one another accountable and gives us multiple sources to assess the reliability and neutrality of individual pieces of reporting. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 15:29, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd be interested as to whether the comments above are based entirely or near-entirely on experiences of masters theses written and reviewed in the Global North. I suspect that might well be the case. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:14, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    I know that what constitutes a masters thesis can vary by country, but I haven't seen a trend where the Global south is substantially different overall. What is the difference in your experience? GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 12:02, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Rather negative, I'm afraid. A number of bad experiences especially with theses on Central Asian history. Barely-veiled polemical nationalistic screeds masquerading as a scientific analysis, no doubt "reviewed" (if at all) by a tick-box committee.
    That said, having read more of the 10k words above, I wouldn't be totally opposed to a change which allows limited use of masters theses on obscure topics with the caveats that their due weight should not be over-represented and that they have limited bearing on notability standards. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:08, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    I've read some poor theses from various places, and unfortunately there is one country (shall remain nameless) I've read several from, yet never seen a good one. Didn't know there was a broader trend people were noticing. I've graded a lot of student work, generally a thesis is about on par with a long final paper. I teach my students how to make a ResearchGate and generate their own DOI, it is not difficult for a student to post a term paper on there and make it look really professional, but we should not be using those. A thesis is pretty much just graded work, and pass/fail at that. They are hosted at the school library and published on ProQuest, but that is not much different from uploading to ResearchGate. I think this is true across most countries; however, some may have looser standards than others. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 13:23, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you think the academic institution makes a difference? Rublamb (talk) 17:41, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    No, at least not meaningfully in a way we could model. The department matters a lot, and presumably the countries University system. The saying I've been told repeatedly is that there are exactly two types of mutually exclusive masters thesis: Perfect, and finished. That philosophy exists as long as there are students on a short time line and faculty wanting to kick them out the door so they can bring in the next cohort. The emphasis is always on "good enough," and if it is really good then students are encouraged to go the extra mile and polish it for review after they graduate. A thesis is very much functionally just a massive term paper. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 18:22, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • If my current experience in the (physics) academia with master's theses is anything to go by, it is that they are in general not reliable. The current guideline is fine as it stands and needs no change. JavaHurricane 17:11, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I've been thinking of this for a while now, and think that a major issue is people are not really understanding what a thesis is. Rather then thinking of them as a scientific publication, they should be viewed as an assignment that is graded pass/fail by three professors and then self-published by the student as a requirement for their degree. Fundamentally, it is closer to a term paper then a scientific article, and just like a term paper, if it is good enough the student can get it peer-reviewed at which point it has external checks by parties without an interest in seeing the student succeed.
GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 20:23, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Not all master's degrees are in science, and different subjects have different requirements. For example, a history thesis or dissertation requires a thorough analysis of prior publications on the topic. That, in and of itself, is a significant amount of research that would not be included in a typical term paper. Other subjects do not require a literature review. A chemistry or physics thesis might involve an experiment, while a geology thesis might involve field work. The latter is highly unlikely to be involved in a term paper. As someone with two undergraduate degrees and two master's degrees spanning science, social sciences, and the humanities, I find it baffling that anyone would say that a thesis or dissertation is the equivalent of a term paper. Term papers are 10 to 15 pages long, and often have limits of no more than 20 pages. A thesis or dissertation is usually 60 to 100 pages, although some subjects will allow as few as 40 pages. I never spent an entire semester conducting research for a term paper or an entire semester doing nothing but writing one. Nor did I ever write a term paper that involved a written review and oral discussion with a cohort of peers, along with one-on-one consultation from two faculty members. Furthermore, I can remember when term papers could be handwritten! My point is that term papers are usually rushed, written at the end of a semester while a student is juggling other classes and exams. A thesis or dissertation is/should be more considered, more comprehensive, and more of a passion project. Are there graduate students who crank out crap--absolutely. Are there varying degrees of reliability within theses and dissertations--absolutely. But to say that all theses or dissertations equate to term papers is akin to saying that all theses and dissertations are great sources. The truth is somewhere in between.
Also, dissertations and theses are not self-published; although the student is the author and holds the copyright, such works are published by the university that accepts, binds, catalogs, and stores them. This is a well-established academic and library cataloging standard that pre-dates the era of computer publishing. Rublamb (talk) 22:45, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I hold three degrees, have sat on committees, and have read theses across multiple disciplines. Theses are certainly big papers, but not much different from a typical term paper, lab report, or similar assignment. They are definitely the largest single assignment most people are likely to do, but that is because they are the last assignment you turn in to complete the (often terminal) degree. The 100+ page thesis is usually rushed, with the bulk written at the end of the final semester, while students are juggling other classes, exams, and TA/RA work. While they have large page counts, that is often double spaces, and sometimes even printed single sided. I have a minor in history, and have written multiple 20 page literature reviews for those classes, if I bound them together, it would easily exceed the length of my masters thesis. I have done field work for physical geography and geology classes that involved written lab reports that were as long as the results section of my thesis. In fact, my masters thesis has content from multiple term papers I wrote in it, as we were encouraged to do work related to our thesis in those classes. Masters theses are something that take a lot of work, and are definitely a passion project, but that does not make them a reliable source. Fundamentally, a theses is a big assignment that spans multiple semesters and is required to receive the degree, typically graded pass/fail by three professors.
Vanity press publishers also accepts, binds, catalogs, and stores publications after receiving payment from the author, Universities are not much different. There might be checks related to format of the thesis before the University accepts it, but content is not considered by the publisher and the student bears all responsibility for the final product.
I think you're confusing the pride and effort that goes into creating a document with reliability as a source. As you stated, there are varying degrees of reliability, and graduate students do crank out crap. Professors are on the students side, they don't want to fail a student and are likely to overlook issues that would get a paper rejected from an academic journal. The thesis is a learning experience more then a demonstration of ability, and that is kept in mind when evaluating them. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 15:37, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I had to have five members on my PhD dissertation committee. I was able to bring in someone from another university in the state system so that I could have two members on the committee who had some idea of what I was writing about. Donald Albury 17:59, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A dissertation is not a master's thesis; five on a committee for a dissertation is the norm, thesis is three. In terms of dissertation, classically if it was a really good dissertation, the student would turn it into a book (an example of this is Theoretical Geography by William Bunge). Today, it is much more common to do the three peer-reviewed publications sandwiched between a unifying introduction and conclusion chapter, although it varies. One of my chapters is still needing to go through peer-review (it has been returned with minor revisions I still need to make), I would not recommend anyone cite the content of it on Wikipedia until it is in a journal, and I'm very proud of that chapter (it won a national award and several regional awards). On that one for example, four of my five committee members are co-authors. I led the work and did 95% of it, but fundamentally, dissertations, like theses, are judged by people who are biased in favor of the author. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 23:11, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
My point is that even for a PhD dissertation only two members of my committee were qualified to evaluate what I was doing, hardly a selling point for the reliability of the work. Donald Albury 13:11, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
How is the one editor at a tiny hometown newspaper supposed to be more qualified than that? Kingsmasher678 (talk) 14:56, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Qualified for what? One would assume that if a thesis is being cited, it is as a scholarly work, rather than as something one would expect to find in a local newspaper. As always with citations, context matters. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:05, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CONTEXTMATTERS is the core reason why I'm interested in a tiny bit of wiggle room for evaluating citations to masters theses using RS criteria beyond scholarly influence. We have a lot of articles that merit a quite high standard of sourcing, including many scientific topics with strong peer-reviewed literature available, and there's rarely a good reason to use a non-peer-reviewed masters thesis on those articles unless it has significantly scholarly influence. We also have a ton of articles about small populated places, which may be notable under WP:NPLACE rather than WP:GNG, where most of the secondary sources available are local newspaper articles. That's the kind of article where I'm interested in the option to cite a history masters thesis from a regional research university that provides helpful synthesis of past government records, newspaper articles, oral history interviews, etc., on a topic of local interest. Dreamyshade (talk) 16:03, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: A Wikipedia I originated was mentioned in a "Letter from the editor" section of a peer-reviewed publication, specifically that "the page deserves to be opened and read[10]." The Wikipedia page is not a reliable source because it was mentioned, and even if it was cited would not transform the Wikipedia page into a reliable source. A journal article (or several) citing dubious content doesn't necessarily elevate that content to reliable either. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 05:20, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well it depends on the type of claim being cited. We would not cite a small-town local paper for a bold new archaeological discovery or a novel chemical synthesis. For details about local festivals or the mayor's race, it would be a good source. For local history, its might depend on the specifics. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 16:14, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. It really does come down to the credibility of the source for a specific subject. Historically, we have trusted certain newspapers and magazines because of their editorial standards and reputation for having qualified staff. Journalists for reliable publications are trained professionals who studied their craft in college and adhere to professional standards. The local paper might be great for an article about a hometown hero or local history, but it would not be the best source for national news. Someone above, another editor noted that the academic institution does not make a difference with theses and dissertations. However, the publisher’s reputation (the university) is supposed to be part of the source evaluation process. A student writing a thesis or dissertation for a well-regarded department at a highly selective academic institution should have a higher level of reliability than a thesis from a lower-ranked institution or department. That does not mean that all master's work from an Ivey League school is fantastic, but this does provide some reasonable guidance when considering such sources. Rublamb (talk) 17:04, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Universities are very clear that they are not responsible for the content published in a thesis. The only evaluation given by the University itself is usually related to format. University department rankings are largely arbitrary, and programs that are well regarded because of faculty research may not give as much attention to their students as you might think, while smaller programs you've never heard of might give almost all of their attention to students. Especially at the masters level, it will be very hard to tell just based on the program. Each thesis needs to be considered individually for reliability, independent of the institution and advisor as we know the institution doesn't check content, and don't know how involved the advisor was. Such consideration needs to start with with the assumption a thesis is not a reliable source unless proven otherwise, with a high burden of proof needed. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 21:46, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is written by humans, for humans. About the "for humans" part.

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How exactly are Wikipedia designed for humans? It's written in the style of a wall of texts. Even LLM products are easier to read, by now. The way I use wikipedia involve jumping down the rabbit holes of interlink. It doesn't give exactly where I would end up in and the information I might need could be at, apart from how the writer think it should. It's also clear wikipedia should only gather facts from other sources, not an information dump, by the limit of humans, whose credentials are questionable (yes, I know I'm part of the problem), in one of the harder media, which is writing. How are you guys, fellow wikipedia users, using Wikipedia recently? Squall282 (talk) 04:38, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Our credentials are not really important, the facts speak for themselves (at least they should), and I'm really not sure how we could make it easier to read. That said, I have found that Wikipedia is the most effective way for me to perform literature review for my IRL research. Essentially, I will find I need to digest information on a topic, and either write a Wikipedia page for it, or add sources/content to the existing pages. This was particularly useful for the broad theoretical stuff, which is hard to find a good place to start reading about. I made the page technical geography and quantitative geography, and overhauled the main geography page for that reason. There are a few people whose bodies of work I've more or less completely read, and in doing so I created several bibliographies (such as George F. Jenks), updated pages (like Mark Monmonier and Waldo Tobler), and created list articles for two of them (Waldo Tobler bibliography and Mark Monmonier bibliography). Essentially, creating a Wikipedia page helps me organize my thoughts, sources, and have a better understanding of the content so I can teach and write about it, that is how I use it. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 06:12, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Real world credentials are, in my opinion, largely irrelevant in Wikipedia. I very early on realized that my academic and work-life credentials were more or less useless in Wikipedia, in part because my knowledge was outdated or rapidly becoming outdated (my academic training in linguistics was 30 years old at the time, and my work experience with computers had a useful half-life measured in months, and I was already retired) and because I found my real interest was in learning about a wide variety of things. I do tend to write WP articles that I would like to read. As I was that kid who spend a lot of time reading encyclopedias, writing in an encyclopedic style feels comfortable to me. I recognize that I should avoid being too pedantic, but my definition of "too pedantic" may differ from yours. As most of my contributions have been to topics I previously knew little about, I think they have been predominantly shaped by what I have read in reliable sources and not by my prior "knowledge" and predjudices. And if something I have written in WP is too problematic, someone else may well come along and add to and/or rewrite it. Donald Albury 13:34, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think to a degree it comes down to personal preference; I personally prefer the stereotypical Wikipedia house style over that of LLMs, and I like the fact that I come across stuff that I wouldn’t think of looking for myself.  novov talk edits 14:43, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Most search tools I use still present Wikipedia content or a summary of Wikipedia content as the top result for any topic that there is a Wikipedia article about. I also find Wikipedia to be a great starting point for finding sources on any topic outside my domain of expertise, where I don't know of or don't have access to more rigorous reference works. Also the hobby of editing Wikipedia is immensely educational for me (if you want to get a year-by-year breakdown of every cultural or geopolitical issue of consequence from the last 20 years, just work through the backlogged articles in a major maintenance category :D). -- LWG talk (VOPOV) 14:45, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Note: I've started a requested move discussion to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is written by humans. Feel free to discuss there. CheeseAndJamSamdwich (talk) 15:31, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It's written in the style of a wall of texts. – Some Wikipedians remember when this was called "books". I'm half a generation too young for that though. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:29, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This comment is funny. Too bad we don't have a "like" button. It's always good to see a young person reading a book rather than craning over a phone. I see them in the wild occasionally. Carlstak (talk) 04:08, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
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This looks very cool! Small detail, the "Articles only" button doesn't work, and it shows only categories in both cases. I'm also slightly confused about Score = 0.4N + 0.3L + 0.2V + 0.1Q (some of the variables are explained lower, but how are "culturally nearby languages" defined, and how is source article quality measured?)
Also, regarding No AI in the FAQ, is this only about the pipeline's calculations or also about the website itself? Speaking of FAQ, it could be great to add a README.md to the Git. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:36, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the feedback, @Chaotic Enby
Articles only: that toggle was actually added today specifically to address issues like this: another user reported that ja → en results were flooded with Module: namespace entries. It's supposed to filter those out server-side, but if there's a bug , fix is incoming.
Score formula: This is a self-funded solo project, so I'm implementing the formula incrementally as I go. Here's where things stand:
• L (global sitelinks) — done. This is what currently drives the ranking: number of Wikipedias that have the article, normalized to a 0–10 scale.
• N (neighbor coverage) — next up. The idea is to compute a similarity matrix across all 56 supported wikis by measuring article overlap between each pair (Jaccard index). The top 5–10 most similar wikis to your target become "culturally nearby." Then for each gap: how many of those neighbors already have the article? The data for this already exists in the system, it just needs the computation built.
• Q (source article quality) — feasible. Since I don't have full article text (that would be terabytes of dumps), the plan is to use Wikidata statement count as a proxy, more statements = better documented entity. Available from the same dumps.
• V (pageviews from target country) — hardest one. Requires ingesting Wikimedia's pageview dumps (huge, hourly files) or hitting their REST API per-article (rate limited). Plus geo-breakdown adds another layer. This is essentially a whole separate pipeline, so it's further out.
AI: No AI processes, ranks, or generates any of the data. AI coding tools were used to speed up development of the codebase.
README.md: Good call, adding one.
Wikigapmap (talk) 23:09, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hm... it looks nice, but I would hold off using the tool. I would advise caution about visiting such sites using your main browser profile (either use a separate profile or private mode). As a warning reminder to everyone, see the Wikimedia Foundation: March 2026 User Script Incident. Note that your IP will still be registered on at least two sites when you visit the gapmap site.
Things that should raise suspicion:
Also notes that not being on Toolforge means the gapmap site might change at any moment and you will not notice nor any of us will see any trace of that.
Nevertheless, I encourage @Wikigapmap to stay active, perhaps introduce themselves, and build trust over time. Nux (talk) 13:34, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, no hard feelings... But I don't appreciate that answer from an AI generator ;-) Nux (talk) 18:45, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
See also mine very similar tool, written many years ago for creating needed articles lists for ruwiki: https://mbh.toolforge.org/pages-wo-iwiki MBH (talk) 14:00, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Workshopping RfC questions for the default editor for new editors

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I've been preparing an RfC question to decide on the default editor (source Vs WP:visual editor or VE) for new editors. VE has changed recently with the introduction of WP:edit check, so this is a good moment to re-evaluate the defaults.

The draft questions are at Wikipedia:Visual Editor for new editors RfC/Workshop. Let's keep the discussion on the talk page there.

I've been chatting with the editing team at the foundation (including @Sdkb-WMF), who had been working on their own RfC in the same question specific to the mobile experience. I've asked them onboard for feedback as they will likely have insight on both research and whether they have the resources to implement the more complicated option (A/B test).

I'm keen to hear if these are the right options for the RfC questions and whether the pre-amble is sufficiently neutral. I like presenting research for a more informed discussion, but realise that it's easy to not quite hit the right tone there and that it might be better to present the options on their own. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:39, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This looks great! Generally, if you want to match WP:RFCBRIEF, the best thing to do is a short, signed question, such as:

Should Visual Editor become the default on mobile and/or desktop? ~~~~

Then, as that is the only part that will be transcluded, you can add a section below it where you are free to expand more on the topic, and discuss the proposed options.
Speaking of: for Q2, does B also have two sub-options B1 and B2 mirroring A1 and A2? If that is the case, it could be good to make it explicit. Also, although that will probably only really be relevant for WMF devs and perhaps myself, will the "guided tour" be included in the VisualEditor extension itself, like the current pop-up text is, or be a real guided tour that we will build on-wiki? (presumably once I finish the AfD one) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:54, 12 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I dislike the "default" language. The default is what happens when you don't have a choice (e.g., if you click the Undo button). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:53, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
User:Chaotic Enby: point taken on starting the RfC with a single question and a signature before putting in the background. For mobile, I was thinking to keep it simpler there, like we do now, but open to other suggestions that work with the small screen. No idea on the technical questions. What would be best?
User:WhatamIdoing: what language would you prefer instead of default? The way I've set the questions now would make this a true default on mobile, but not really on Desktop where we have more space to explain things down the line. Or is there an option for mobile that you would prefer? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:14, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think it needs a description, rather than a single word. Like: "Right now, on your first edit, it asks you if you want to open the page in the 2010 wikitext editor or the visual editor. Should we get rid of the interruption and just always start in the visual editor? People will still be able to switch."
I'd also suggest double-checking the configs, because it's complicated (e.g., at one point, anons weren't getting the same thing as brand-new accounts).
I'm not sure that mobile and desktop should be handled in the same RFC. They're very different experiences. Of course, from the POV of the RecentChanges patroller, you want all the newbies in the visual editor, so that PasteCheck can flag them copy/pasting LLM content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:52, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
My motivation for running the two questions (mobile / Desktop) at the same time in parallel is to ensure that we can update our guidance to new editors in a consistent way. If we keep the RfC options as in the draft, having two separate RfC tags might clarify that the proposed options are different for the two editors: 1. For mobile, what about wording like "Should we change the default editor for new editors to Visual Editor instead of the source code editor? People will still be able to switch." and 2. For Desktop, "Should we give new editors Visual Editor initially, and delay the pop-up introducing the source code editor to edit 10"? I assume this works technically if we put the two RfC tags under the two subheading and sign after these introductory sentences? I've tested this with a single sock on Desktop as well as logged out, but I'm keen to hear from the editing team if anything is wrong. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:54, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Two RFC tags will affect the RFC and FRS bots (manageable, but see the instructions), but two separate pages might be better.
For #1, consider something like "For mobile editors, should the first editing environment they see be the mobile visual editor or the mobile wikitext editor?" It avoids "default" and language about "change" (sometimes people want A, but they don't want the hassle of changing to A). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I find the current wording slightly clearer. The previous RfC was closed as "proposal to unclear to close", and I want to avoid that confusion this time around. The previous RfC had about 19 people supporting VE in some sense, and 6 opposing, so I'm not too worried about people not wanting change.
Wdym with "see the instructions". I'm usually blind, but couldn't find any information if the headings levels at WP:RfC —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:54, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've partially incorporated the wording. I believe you may have referred to the text about multiple RfCs on one page (don't start them at the same time), but to be save I've changed it to level-2 headings rather than level 3. That also implies I won't copy this to VPPr, but the RfCs would instead be on a separate page. I don't have a strong opinion on either option. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:35, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
On the technical side, I would have a strong preference for a built-in tour in the extension, as local JavaScript (including on-wiki guided tours) is disabled on Special:Preferences. Definitely need some feedback from extension developers on this, I might raise the issue at WP:VPT to make sure we don't end up asking for an impossible thing. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:08, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Raised at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § Feasibility of a built-in tour in the Special:Preferences page? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:16, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've found more recent research (2015) comparing VE to source editor, which shows the two editors performing similarly in that pre-edit check era. I'd like to propose deleting the A/B tests as options, so that the editing team can focus on higher-priority tasks, like helping us detect LLM output. Any objections? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:29, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    No objections for me. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:51, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    like helping us detect LLM output, I might even donate if they did this Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 20:49, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    They are working on it, see phab:T420258! It seems that maybe half the pastes from LLMs have some thing they can detect, but it's not super stable. The hope is to make it a variant of the Paste check. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:56, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • The proposal now says we have a delayed pop-up at edit 10. Is that too early? When do people realistically benefit from learning the source editor? Should there be an option to not have the popup at all? Or only a (less intrusive) guided tour? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:37, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • "New editors" is broader, IMO. Why not subcategorize into logged-out users (esp. ones with temp. accounts) and non-(auto)confirmed users? George Ho (talk) 03:10, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    What do you mean by subcategorize User:George Ho? I think that definition of new editors makes sense (logged out + non-confirmed); another one could be editors with fewer than 100 edits. As much as possible, I'd like to give new editors a similar experience so that our help pages can be most focussed. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 06:36, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, I meant differentiate between logged-out editors and non-confirmed ones. Logged-out users should be given first the Visual Editor. Unsure about logged-in but non-confirmed ones, honestly, unless they should be treated the same as logged-out users.
    Fewer than 100 edits, huh? Perhaps give them the source editor. Indeed, hard to tell one bad edit from another for those making less than 100 edits. Sorry for saying "subcategories" without sufficient clarity. George Ho (talk) 06:50, 15 May 2026 (UTC); edited, 13:46, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    (Now totally unsure about such editors after hearing the pop-up question proposal. —George Ho (talk) 13:46, 15 May 2026 (UTC))[reply]
    My main motivation for this is to reduce patroller fatigue wrt to unsourced edits and LLM edits. That is: expose these new editors to edit check, which is only available in VE. LLM disruption frequently continues or starts at higher edit counts, so limiting it to <10 edits might not be as effective. Technically, we can make a distinction between the two type of editors, but I don't see any good reason why: editors in both categories are clueless, and are frequently bitten by experienced editors when they make mistakes. What makes you think we should make a distinction between logged in and logged out editors? Note that the proposal does ask them if they want to explore source editor relatively early (at 10 edits now). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:00, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

    What makes you think we should make a distinction between logged in and logged out editors?

    Besides recognizing their usernames, ...perhaps you might have a point about both logged-out and newly registered users being clueless and frequently bitten.

    Note that the proposal does ask them if they want to explore source editor relatively early (at 10 edits now).

    Oh... I must've overlooked that part of the proposal, frankly. Curiously, why not ask at their fourth day, another criteria for editors to become auto-confirmed? I mean, ten edits and then ask? Or, why not fourth day and at least ten edits? George Ho (talk) 14:02, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    That might be a better point yes: we might not want to interrupt users who are just getting into the flow of editing. Does 10 edits feel reasonable for you for when editors might want to explore this? Or too early? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:05, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    I just don't feel like arguing about the ten-edit stuff at this time. I think this proposal would successfully pass for especially newcomers. The whole community will decide later about the ten-edit thing some other time then. (Wish it were four-day thing, personally nonetheless.) George Ho (talk) 16:30, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    Changed to autoconfirmed. Curious to hear more opinions. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:43, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not a technical person, so I don't understand that, but I support this proposal regardless because the source editor is just so offputting if you have no experience. Bremps... 19:00, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Image event

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I noticed the Commons has a lot of useful "orphan" images and then a lot of articles are just plain walls of text. I thought some sort of event to encourage users to find orphan images a home could be useful. Wareno (talk) 17:32, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think the emphasis should on finding images useful in an article rather than finding articles in which to place images. We already have too many images in articles that do not really contribute to the usefulness of the article, and that often clutter up the article. Donald Albury 18:05, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Donald. As soon as I read the opening statement, and before I had even read Donald's, my thought was that it's all arse-about-face. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:05, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it was a good way to kill two birds with one stone (images on the Commons get used + articles become less walls of texts). Part of my activity on Wikipedia is just adding suitable images to articles, preferrably ones that have never been used elsewhere, so I still think it would be useful. Wareno (talk) 20:13, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure you do a lot of good work here, but just as the Commons has a lot of useful "orphan" images, it has even more that are no use at all to the English Wikipedia. Commons does not just serve the English Wikipedia, or even Wikipedias in general, but everyone, so they may be being used but we just don't know about it. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:51, 13 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the claim "We already have too many images in articles" is remotely true generally. A tiny minority of articles are so easily illustrated that we have an abundance of choice and people resort to sticking galleries at the bottom. But most articles are not illustrated at all and many are illustrated badly. As a publication, Wikipedia is stuck with virtually the same UI it started with, which is heavily text oriented with very little scope for image layout. Not every topic is suited to photographs, but editors are, in my experience, extremely hostile to artist illustrators. In contrast, many other factual publications for the "general reader" have images dominating and text flowing around. A factual magazine editor, for example, wouldn't dream of having a significant article without illustration(s), and has the budget to commission. I think it is a real shame that Wikipedia hasn't developed a culture where the free content we deliver is as much about illustrations as it is about text. There's no fundamental reason why that couldn't be the case. Can you imagine if browsing Wikipedia wasn't just entertaining for the brain absorbing words on pages, but a delight for the eyes as well?
Wrt the direction of approach, I think "arse-about-face" comment is just rude and, well, ignorant. True, the approach of seeing an unillustrated article on Wikipedia and searching for an image on Commons is more typical ... if you are a Wikipedian. But the opposite, of seeing a great image on Commons and considering if it could be used on Wikipedia is not wrong. It is exactly what lots of Commons photographers and uploaders do all the time. Someone finds, for example, a great new photo of some notable figure or a scene such as a building and wonders if it is better than what's currently illustrating the article. They might have no interest in writing about the person or topic and so wouldn't be approaching it from a Wikipedian point of view. It wouldn't surprise me if a significant proportion of our images came that way, in fact. -- Colin°Talk 07:45, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
But nobody said, "We already have too many images in articles". Try re-reading all of Donald's statement and you will see that by omitting what came after that you completely distorted the meaning. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:41, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Images in articles should support and expand the reader's understanding of the topic. Too often there are images in articles that are merely decorative or that actually misinform the reader about the topic. It can be difficult finding images that enhance an article. I have spent considerable time over the years scouring the Internet for free images that are appropriate for articles I have worked on, and in a few cases, I have taken photos or created maps or other illustrations for such articles. However, I think it is counterproductive to add generic or otherwise inappropriate images to an article just so we can say it has an image. Donald Albury 19:43, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I rarely encounter an article with too many images, and I can't remember the last time I saw one containing any image that was "merely decorative". Even in a heavily illustrated and spam-attracting article like Wedding, none of the images are "merely decorative". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:21, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I recall an article about an island to which an editor added a picture of a sunset taken from the island, but which did not include any part of the island in the field of view. In another case, in an article about a species of palm, an editor added a cityscape photo in which, if you squinted hard, you could see a palm tree in the distance. In an article about a river, someone added a picture of people in a canoe, but nothing in the picture distinguished that river from any other river. Donald Albury 14:27, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Images are popular with readers, and most of our articles have just zero, one, or maybe two images. It would be good to encourage people to add more. However, I understand from previous work on Special:Homepage that it's not an easy task for many new editors (e.g., they'll add anything that's suggested, or they won't provide a good caption). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 14 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • One area where it is extremely easy to improve articles by adding unused Commons images is out-of-copyright artist biographies. We have huge numbers of bios of not very well-known 19th-century painters in particular, very largely taken from PD sources in the very early days of WP. This was long before Commons expanded to its present size, and either no images were added, or very poor ones. Now the situation is completely different, and Commons normally has many images far better than those we are using (not for the few famous artists though - best leave those alone). For the really keen, better images again, at much higher resolutions, can easily be found on the internet & uploaded. This will be true, for example, for most of Category:English watercolourists. Johnbod (talk) 00:32, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • While not sure what the collection of useful orphan images you found is, there's a lot on Commons that probably isn't useful here. The better approach (non arse-about-face some might say) is to find articles which feel like walls of text, and find images for those. Johnbod mentions an example where this may work. I have had mixed experiences with such attempts; occasionally Commons somehow has a fantastic image (and you've somehow found it with Commons search function, probably worth adding), but more times than that I've found myself trawling for images to upload myself. As for events for adding images to articles, they have been tried in the past, and the general reception of the results was not laudatory. CMD (talk) 16:43, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Idea for series of World leader templates

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I often contribute to List of current heads of state and government and notice how often it must be updated every time a country gets a new leader, and its not alone, many pages need updates every time a national leader changes, for that reason I suggested a new series of templates that can be used in lieu of a links to the leader itself, they will consist of only a link to the current title holder of a position and will follow the pattern of "Template:Current [title] of [country]" that way less pages have to be updated since updating the template does does of the work. a handful of pages following this or a similar pattern already exist (Template:Current prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Template:Current president of Bangladesh, Template:Monarch of New Zealand, current, Template:Current president of Slovenia, Template:Incumbent POTUS, and Template:Incumbent pope) but these pages have little adoption and only exist for at least 6 nations. These templates would also need some sort of protection to prevent widespread vandalism.

P.S while writing this proposal I discovered that this idea has been proposed at least once before here but it was not discussed sufficiently. though it did seem from the small discussion that existed that most people were on board. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 14:10, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be possible to make this more efficient with a single template, {{Current world leader|country|position}}, which would store all the presidents/prime ministers/monarchs/supreme leaders and be updated in sync with List of current heads of state and government? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:32, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think the country and position parameters would have to be merged into one but besides that is a better way to do this PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 15:13, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think you could create a test on your sandbox of this template so I could see how it would work? PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 17:36, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It would definitely be possible to make a single template, but doing so only within a template would probably require a very large number of conditional statements making it expensive (WP:PEIS). Templates that rely on large arrays/tables of data, like this one would need, generally use Lua modules. eg. Module:lang/data, Module:GHS phrases/data. This allows for updates to made in a single central location, namely the data module. Updating from List of current heads of state and government would not work; it would make more sense to use the template to automatically update the list article from the data module.
I image making a template like {{Current prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda}} that generalises to any country would be fairly straightforward for someone skilled with Lua. Ideally, the template would also a have a parameter that allows the name to be de-linked, so it just outputs plain text when avoiding overlinking is needed. A parameter could also control whether the template outputs only the name, or both name and title.
It may be better to have separate templates for heads of government vs heads of state to avoid confusion. It would also mean that editors wouldn't have to remember the correct title of any given incumbent head of government/state, they could just specify the country. Another thing to consider is that some countries have multiple heads of state (eg. Switzerland, San Marino), and I'm unsure what the best way to handle those would be. – Scyrme (talk) 17:56, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've started a demo module at Module:Current leader (still very much a work in progress, anyone is invited to add missing entries and functionalities like linking).
Currently, it can directly be called with {{#invoke:Current leader|main|Albania|President}} (which outputs Bajram Begaj), although the intent is to shorten it into a template call like the one I suggested above. A link=yes parameter is probably the next natural functionality – for collective heads of states, they can be stored as an array so links can be built individually if necessary. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:09, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Another natural functionality could be the ability to display a source next to the name. Again, this is just a demo to show how this can be made into structured data. To avoid repetition (especially if we start adding sources alongside names), we could define aliases for each country in a separate array, e.g. have Albania's head of state entry point to its president entry in the data instead of duplicating it. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:11, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Just added the link parameter, now {{#invoke:Current leader|main|Albania|President|link=yes}} outputs Bajram Begaj. We can choose whether to make it the default or not, the template calling this will likely parse it through {{yesno}} or one of its variants either way. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:14, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Having the "head of government" and "head of state" being aliases works too, and avoids the issue having having to remember what the correct title is while still keeping everything in one template. I was about to add that if we did want to implement it in one template it could be implemented with something like a |head-of= parameter that simply takes |head-of=government or |head-of=state, but aliases might be more straightforward as a solution. – Scyrme (talk) 18:15, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be better to separate functions and data into Module:Current leader and Module:Current leader/data? I think you would just change local data = ... to local data = mw.loadData('Module:Current leader/data') to make it work. There will be something on the scale of around 200 entries, so it may be tidier to have the data in a separate module. – Scyrme (talk) 18:26, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely a good idea, thanks! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:27, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Took me longer than I'd admit to wrangle with this read-only data loader. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:40, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It seems the line I quoted just needed to be placed earlier, before the first function. – Scyrme (talk) 18:46, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A good why to handle collective leadership situations is to have the template simply involve all leaders at once, in a situations like San Mario (which I assume you confused with Monaco) where there are only two leaders its easy to fit them both and in Switzerland's case where there are more the two leaders the template can invoke a collapsed list of all members. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 18:24, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've just implemented it, you can try {{#invoke:Current leader|main|Andorra|Head of state|link=yes}} which outputs Josep-Lluís Serrano Pentinat and Emmanuel Macron, using {{Enum}} to list multiple items (genuinely surprised it worked on the first try, but hey!) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:26, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
We could add a parameter to control the list format, similar to Module:GHS phrases, but for now I think {{Enum}} should be fine. Probably best to not over complicate things while it's still early. I'll start adding more entries to the data module later today, assuming no-one else does it first. – Scyrme (talk) 18:52, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
An issue I've encountered while adding entries is that some have parenthetical disambiguators. eg. Philip Davis (Bahamian politician) I have not included the parenthetical disambiguator in the entry, so the module just produces the name. A piped link could be added manually in these cases. eg. [[Philip Davis (Bahamian politician)|{{#invoke:Current leader|main|Bahamas|Head of government|link=no}}]] = Philip Davis. – Scyrme (talk) 23:59, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've been going through List of current heads of state and government, and I've added entries for all the states beginning with A and B. I'm taking a break now; if anyone else decides to pick this up please add {{WIP}} with an estimated time so we don't have multiple people doing the same work or edit conflicts.
I reorganised the data module to allow for synonyms of countries and to allow shared heads of state to be updated from a single entry (thanks to Trappist the monk for showing me how to do the latter!).
For example, among the synonyms I've included the 3-letter and 2-letter ISO country codes so the can be used as quick, standardised abbreviations, as well as basic variants so module still works regardless of whether, for example, someone writes The Bahamas or just Bahamas. – Scyrme (talk) 01:26, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've created a basic template which can be used instead of directly invoking the module: {{Current leader}}. – Scyrme (talk) 01:47, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Since the module/template are now under development, not just an idea, it may be best to move the discussion over to the template's Talk page (which I've redirected the module talk pages to, to keep discussion centralised). I'll post any further updates over there. – Scyrme (talk) 02:05, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I meant San Marino, sorry. A collapsed list wouldn't really work well if this template is intended to also be usable in text. – Scyrme (talk) 18:28, 15 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

AI suggestion helper when creating new articles

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This is related to the new experimental feature of edit suggestions in Visual Editor (I assume the feature is using AI).

It would be great if those suggestions also suggested edits for people who create new articles. There are a lot of articles that are moved to Sandbox because they don't meet technical requirements. Bad formatting, missing references, or no references at all. This is the flow in Polish Wikipedia; the articles are not tested for notability if they have technical issues and only move to the user namespace.

It would be great if there was a mechanism that validated the content of the article and gave warnings with a list of problems that needed to be fixed. Similar to warnings about missing edit description (that you can turn on in the settings).

It would help a lot the people who monitor recent changes. jcubic (talk) 18:33, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Something like the edit suggestions you've linked (which relies on a BERT model for some features) could definitely be helpful, as they point out specific technical issues on which the editor can act on their own. I would be a lot more wary of anything that spontaneously suggested content additions, or more subjective matters such as potential bias (beyond straightforward ones like tone).
Here, we don't move articles to the user namespace just for formatting issues or some missing references, although a complete lack of references can be a justification (although it is always better to write articles the other way around, something that I would love to see being given more focus to in new editor onboarding). Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:10, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of experienced editors don't write articles in the correct direction either. It really needs to be something that editors are regularly reminded of, whether officially or just through Wikipedia culture. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:55, 16 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Agree that the current listed suggestions generally seem fine (iffy on "Revise tone"), as long as there are no content suggestions. Models with their black-box biases and other opaque shortfalls shouldn't be permitted to steer editors. fifteen thousand two hundred twenty four (talk) 00:29, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
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Hello. I sometimes edit on the app version of Wikipedia, but I noticed red links displays as just plain text on the app. I want to add red links to the app, so editors can:

  • get encouraged for article creation
  • help identify missing topics
  • improve navigation and maintenance
  • to see whether a page exists at a glance

So, it would be helpful if the app displayed red links consistently with the web version. Thanks! Versions111 (talk • contribs) 10:58, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Bot for automatic source rescue

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I suggest we should create a bot that automatically adds an archive (and/or automatically archives) certain websites prone to link rot. For example Yahoo! News Japan, which likes to kill its links after around a month. I can’t think of other example but you get the point.

Although, WaybackMedic is already a thing I think repeated request at WP:URLREQ is too much of a hassle. Warm Regards, Miminity (Talk?) (me contribs) 13:49, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Like User:InternetArchiveBot? Anomie⚔ 14:49, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Isn’t internetarchivebot runs semi-automatically? (Like you need to put the article you want to analyze) I might be wrong though. I was hoping for a bot that acts like WaybackMedic that constantly and automatically adds archive links to certain linkrot prone websites. Warm Regards, Miminity (Talk?) (me contribs) 15:02, 17 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]
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