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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).

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Phase 3: Reading lists full feature rollout

Hi everyone,

TL;DR: Reading lists are going to be deployed to English Wikipedia September 14. You can read the FAQ about the feature here.

Starting September 14, editors on English Wikipedia will start to see a bookmark icon next to the watchstar. This bookmark allows users to save articles to read later, as part of the reading lists feature.

This screenshot shows how the saved articles page appears on desktop, using Vector 22 skin.

This screenshot shows how the saved articles page looks on mobile web using Minerva skin.

In April the Reader Experience team launched reading lists to all Wikipedias as a beta feature for the desktop and mobile web browser. This beta period helped us to both validate the usefulness of the feature and to fix bugs for a smoother, more polished user experience. We are now confident in the feature’s readiness as a full feature.

What the feature is: This feature is one of our first efforts toward providing Wikipedia readers with a way to participate in their reading experience. With declining pageviews to Wikipedia and fewer readers returning to the site, we hope that by encouraging this kind of engagement with Wikipedia, more readers will return more frequently, with some of them eventually becoming future editors. The feature is already highly utilized on the Apps, where it has contributed to improved reader retention.

What we learned from the beta: During the beta period, 93% of users surveyed responded that the reading list feature was useful to them. At first, the beta feature design replaced the watchstar with the bookmark icon. We heard feedback from editors that this was disruptive to their workflows and disappointed some editors who wanted to use the feature alongside their watchstar usage. As a result, we updated the design so that logged in editors will see both buttons in the toolbar. This change was rolled out into the beta feature in July.

The experience will be as follows:

• Desktop: Users will see both watchstar and bookmark icon above the article in the toolbar. They will also see both saved list and watchlist in the top nav, and both the watchstar and bookmark icon in the sticky header.
• Mobile: Users will see bookmark icon at the top of the article, with the watchstar in the overflow menu.

We also plan to start giving logged out readers on mobile web the option to create an account by showing them the bookmark icon with a pulsating blue dot the first time they see it to indicate that it is new. This is based on findings from an experiment we conducted across German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu wikis from May 18 - June 18, showing logged-out readers on mobile web a bookmark icon instead of the default. We will start showing the bookmark icon to logged out users on mobile web instead of the watchstar throughout September.

How the full feature will be implemented: The full feature first rolled out to Bengali, Chinese, Czech, and Vietnamese Wikipedias on August 25, then Arabic, French, and Indonesian Wikipedias September 1, soon to be followed by English Wikipedia September 14. The feature will then be deployed to all wikis globally September 28. After the rollout, reading lists will no longer be a beta feature, but rather be available to all logged-in users. Users who are logged in across multiple devices will see items they have saved synced across devices, including items saved from the Wikipedia App.

What is coming next: In the beta survey, we received 800 open-ended comments. Suggestions for future additions included folders, collections or categories, notetaking, sharing or exporting, and supporting more namespaces. We look forward to exploring these and other ideas as the feature matures. We plan to add the capability for users to create collections of articles within their saved items, as users already can in the Apps, to the web feature in October.

We encourage you to try out the full feature and give us feedback on the project page. Do you have any other ideas for reading lists based on this information? Please let us know.

Thank you. EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 01:04, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

This is great news. I have really been enjoying reading lists on the app and as a beta feature on the desktop browser. Thanks! Suðurhafsljósæta (talk) 09:28, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Just please be very wary with the suggestion of "sharing" such lists (onwiki, that is), please don't reinvent Wikipedia:Gather which was in that regard similar, and was a disaster. Apart from this, this looks at first glance to be a really good feature, thanks. Fram (talk) 10:50, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks @Fram! Definitely agreed and understood on the sharing lists point. Confirming that the feature is only for private, personal Reading Lists. It does not create publicly viewable lists, allow for sharing on-wiki, or ask editors to moderate user-generated list content. EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 14:23, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! Fram (talk) 14:28, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Hi Fram! Thank you for the valuable reminder of lessons learned in the past! As Eliza said, for this version we're not going to include any sharing features. Our goal is to give logged in users a place where they can privately save pages and return to them in the future. But I want to clarify that in future versions, the idea of sharing may come up and I will want to discuss that in-depth on wiki.

I'm bringing this up because we've heard some interest in the beta survey for versions that could be collaborative and shareable (between editors who want to work together, or readers with their friends, for example). However, if we do explore any of those ideas based on popular demand, we will start here with the community as step one, to collaborate with you all on ways we can address the needs and desires of our readers in ways that are safe, privacy-conscious, and avoiding the pitfalls of Gather. HFan-WMF (talk) 03:45, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

@EBlackorby-WMF I see the "Saved" page has a lock icon. I personally find this a bit confusing since I'm left wondering what exactly am I being protected from ? :) Sohom (talk) 11:29, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

@EBlackorby-WMF I'm guessing it is to indicate that the page is not editable from there ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:01, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

The lock is to indicate that the lists are private to the user, and they are not shareable on-wiki like what we had with Gather. KFilbert-WMF (talk) 13:07, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

How many people in the intended audience would know about Gather? Sohom (talk) 14:00, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

An update:

The reading list/bookmark is going out to all logged-in users between now and Sep 28. Soon after that, we'll start showing the bookmark at the top of articles to logged out readers on mobile web (on all wikipedias) in October, and also adding the bookmark button for logged out desktop readers after that.

In an experiment from May, we saw that mobile web logged out users were twice as likely to tap on the bookmark than the existing star, and were subsequently four times more likely to try to create an account, so we are making this change to encourage readers to create accounts. We hope this change will encourage users to save articles and return to the site to read and discover more content on Wikipedia, rather than only consuming our content off-platform (search results, AI chatbots)! HFan-WMF (talk) 04:23, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

Folders/Collections for saved articles (ie stuff you want to read but not necessarily edit) are available on the app. I also managed to get my sandbox (linked in the 🧪) as one of my saved articles while on the app, but not on the web. Are there any plans to bring the "save any page into your reading/saved list with the ability to create folders" functionality onto the web? Hason-LEK-🇸🇬 ● 💬 ● 🧱 ● 🧪 02:58, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Speaking of my sandbox... I added it to my saved pages on the mobile app because there was no way I could access it without first going to my userpage from the "More" tab on the app, which resulted in my top read categories in the "Activity" tab being Category:User en-N, Category:User ja-1, and Category:Wikipedians interested in rail transport, aka my userpage. 🤣 Could I suggest that a link to the user's sandbox be added to the "More" tab of the app? Thanks! Hason-LEK-🇸🇬 ● 💬 ● 🧱 ● 🧪 03:07, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Possible error on G15 speedy deletion edit summaries

When an administrator deletes an article under CSD G15, this bug happens. Instead of:

• G15: Unreviewed LLM-generated content (communication intended for the user: <reason>)

it appears like:

• G15: Unreviewed LLM-generated content (communication intended for the user<reason>),

giving the illusion that the text is quite jumbled inside. So if the reason was "Explanation Here", the deletion message would've been "G15: Unreviewed LLM-generated content (communication intended for the userExplanation Here)". I'm not an admin, but this is likely a bug within Twinkle or the standard administrators' toolset, in where the reason to CSD G15 tag a page gets jumbled within the "user"/"references" text in the deletion summary.

(Example deletion message is copied from Draft:Steve Sole) — SimpleObjects-9ei 🍂/🌰/🤗 (see talk) 21:40, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Should be fixed by Special:Diff/1372707107. Anomie⚔ 22:26, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Hey, should we test if the G15 deletion message works now by creating a... dummy AI draft? I have one on queue but a bit embarrassed to do it. — SimpleObjects-9ei 🍂/🌰/🤗 (see talk) 23:17, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

I've created two pages for deletion in my userspace, User:Nyttend/test page for deletion and User:Nyttend/test page for deletion 2, and will ask someone else to delete them. Nyttend (talk) 21:06, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Note that, to reproduce the original bug case, you'd have to put something like {{db-g15|communication=yes|reason=some other reason too}} on the page. You didn't do that in either of those. Also note that the intended result was "(communication intended for the user and some other reason too)" rather than "(communication intended for the user: some other reason too)" as the report here thought. Anomie⚔ 22:17, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, but you didn't specify an original bug case that has this error — the only difference between your "instead of" and "appears like" is the colon and space, and Steve Sole's deletion log has a colon and space in this place. Since you suggested that it might be in the standard administrators' toolset, I wanted to demonstrate how it works with the standard toolset: I'm proving that it's not somehow a problem with the standard. Nyttend (talk) 20:55, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

All I suggested was that I fixed the problem. Anomie⚔ 22:29, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

SimpleObjects-9ei, please check the deletion log entries for these two pages. Nyttend (talk) 21:20, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

@Nyttend, both deletion messages just show "G15: Unreviewed LLM-generated content" and don't show the reason. Anyways, I (intentionally) created this AI draft using Gemini, CSD tagged it with a placeholder explanation and wait for an admin to delete it with or without Twinkle. — SimpleObjects-9ei 🍂/🌰/🤗 (see talk) 00:49, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

The test didn't exactly work the first time around — an admin noted that you'd both created it and requested its deletion, so he just G7-deleted it. (This makes sense: someone might argue that it wasn't really AI-generated, but there's no question that it qualified under G7.) I've undeleted it and redeleted it; see its deletion log. It doesn't match your "appears like", saying simply communication intended for the user and your reason here, which makes sense because the tag indicates that it has communication intended for the user, and the tagger added extra information. Nyttend (talk) 21:00, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Thankfully it went as Anomie was expecting, now showing "G15: Unreviewed LLM-generated content (communication intended for the user and <reason>", although my expectations were to place a ":" instead of an "and". — SimpleObjects-9ei 🍂/🌰/🤗 (see talk) 21:35, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

This is a Twinkle bug. I reported it a couple months ago here. ~ A412 ^talk! 23:46, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

I doubt it's a Twinkle bug, versus Twinkle reading the incorrect metadata included in the deletion notice since Special:Diff/1327414148 (until Special:Diff/1372707107 fixed it). Anomie⚔ 00:50, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Map on Avengers Campus is centered on wrong location

See title and page. For some reason, even though there is a pinpoint at the correct location, the map is centered in center-left Algeria. Infoboxes and maps are not my specialty, so I was wondering if someone could explain this to me and how to fix it. Thanks! EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 08:04, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

The process of elimination usually narrows down the problem. I've tried various things in preview including deleting everything inside the infobox except a single set of coordinates, which didn't work. It still didn't work when I changed |coordinates1= to |coordinates=. I also tried pasting in an infobox from another article, namely Pleasure Island (Walt Disney World), where the mapframe works as intended, but mysteriously the mapframe broke when used at Avengers Campus.

After all that, I assumed the problem was something outside the infobox, so I deleted all the page contents except the infobox, but that didn't work either (even when the infobox was the working one I copied in from another article).

Since infobox mapframes also sometimes use data from Wikidata, I checked there. The map displayed by the coordinate location property on Wikidata is centered on the correct location.

I don't know what else could be causing this. – Scyrme (talk/solidarity) 09:37, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

I tried looking at old revisions. Though old revisions don't necessarily display exactly as they did in the past due to changes to templates etc. I wanted to see whether the issue affects every revision or only appears in revisions after a certain date.

The most recent and only revision I could find which did not center the map on Algeria is the first one, when the article was created, however it was incorrectly centered on Northeastern Iran instead. This is because the coordinates given were for the site in France. Putting the {{coords}} for that site into |coordinates= makes the map center on Northeastern Iran again.

Importantly, just changing the coordinates for the numbered coordinates parameters had no effect on the map, Only adding {{coords}} to the unnumbered |coordinates= parameter resulted in a change in the displayed map. This suggests the infobox is taking the coordinates from Wikidata. – Scyrme (talk/solidarity) 09:58, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Pasting the infobox from Avengers Campus into Pleasure Island (Walt Disney World) confirms. firstly, that the coordinates parameters in the infobox aren't being used by the mapframe, and, secondly, that the problem is specific to Avengers Campus (or its Wikidata item?) not its infobox. The copied-over infobox displayed the same map that the infobox at Pleasure Island (Walt Disney World) already currently displays (because it's pulling the coords from the Wikidata item linked to Pleasure Island (Walt Disney World), which are identical to those currently in the infobox). – Scyrme (talk/solidarity) 10:19, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

At this point I'm out of ideas. Hopefully these attempts help someone else figure out what the problem is. – Scyrme (talk/solidarity) 10:22, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

The infobox has three sets of coordinates for locations in California, Paris and Hong Kong, so where is the map supposed to be centered? I suggest to just omit it with | mapframe = no. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:34, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and done as you suggested, though it would be nice to know what exactly caused this problem. – Scyrme (talk/solidarity) 16:18, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

This seems logical. The autocentering will try to fit everything you specify into frame. If you override zoom, it will still take that center point from the autofit. To fix that, specify your own zoom and centerpoint for mapframe. Or have separate mapframes for each of the locations. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:34, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

No idea about the specific problem, but I note that the Algeria location seems to be the mean of the California and Hong Kong coordinates, while the northern Iran location seems to be the mean of the France and Hong Kong coordinates. Anomie⚔ 18:14, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Duplicated footnote

Any clue why the first note on 1902–03 FC Barcelona season is duplicated? I can't find [a] in the text, and it shows up correctly in preview. LittlePuppers (talk) 19:58, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

@LittlePuppers: The same happens for me in preview, also if the only code is {{football box collapsible|team2 = '''[[Galliope]]'''{{efn|Name of the English ship at the port of Barcelona}}}}. Special:ExpandTemplates shows it outputs team2 twice, one of them in style="display:none" which prevents Galliope from being displayed there, but doesn't prevent the note from being displayed later. It could use note instead like |note = '''Galliope''' was the name of the English ship at the port of Barcelona. It displays the text in another place and I don't know the significance of this ship. Maybe Barcelona played a team from the ship. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:23, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Interesting, I was wondering if it was the template producing something hidden. It's weird that it doesn't show that way for me in preview. I'll ask at {{football box collapsible}} and see if they have a suggestion/best practice (i.e. if I should just replace everything with |note=); I was attempting to replace some random superscript "footnotes". LittlePuppers (talk) 21:36, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

It seems to me that anything placed inside of display:none should not be rendered. I have submitted T437152 to see if the developers agree. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:33, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

I'll be surprised if they do, since figuring out whether something is hidden is a fairly tricky problem. Even in your example there, some JavaScript might later adjust the styling, or a stylesheet somewhere might override the inline style with !important. Anomie⚔ 00:48, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

To avoid the stray footnotes, and keep that generated hCalendar data clean, I think the best solution would be to either:

• Not put footnotes in the team1 and team2 arguments to the template
• Have the template remove footnotes and other formatting when generating the invisible metadata

Solomon Ucko (talk) 00:58, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Search bar error on mobile...?

I'm currently in vacation (from talk page) and thus I'm on my phone right now. As of writing, there is a bug in the search bar that only occurs in mobile with desktop mode while logged in but can ONLY BE REPRODUCED IF THE "Add a clock to the personal toolbar that displays the current time in UTC and provides a link to purge the current page" gadget is enabled. The search bar appears to be setting a specific size and thus the search bar takes up two lines. — SimpleObjects-9ei 🍂/🌰/🤗 (see talk) 21:12, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

"You have a new talk page message" text visibility on dark mode

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T372056

was told to come here from someone at Teahouse, i just realized that the colors for the "You have a new talk page message" pop-up doesn't exactly fit well in dark mode.. the yellow and the blue is way too light, which makes it hard to see exactly what it is saying... is there a fix for this? TuffMangoPhonk6741 (talk) 06:38, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

How to get RecentChanges into a spreadsheet

Do we have any existing tools that would let me put RecentChanges into a spreadsheet? I specifically want to be able to compare today's edits by a particular group of editors with (e.g.,) Newcomer tasks tags against today's edits by that same group without them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Quarry allows download as a CSV. Massaging SELECT * FROM recentchanges into something close to Special:Recentchanges is somewhat involved, but not terribly difficult. Does quarry:query/109027 do what you need? —Cryptic 16:47, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

I can send you a small tool for this that you can run locally, if that's useful. Just let me know and I'll email you the file link. Max (talk) 17:08, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Metadata error at File:Van Cliburn Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1.jpg ?

Was patrolling the edit filter log until I came across this. There are two revisions: one from 2013 and the other from 2026. The 2013 revision keeps getting displayed when clicked on both revisions even though the 2026 revision is entirely different from the 2013 one, so finding out if it is a bug. — SimpleObjects-9ei 🍂/🌰/🤗 (see talk) 19:41, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Probably a caching issue, but in any case I have reverted to the original. We only allow low-resolution copies of non-free media. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 14:59, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Could WP use a Unicode-18-complete Latin font?

Unicode 18 will be published in a couple weeks, and there will be some delay before publicly accessible fonts support the new characters. I created the font that's used for most new Latin characters on the Unicode charts. (And for U17 characters as well.) Would this be of use to Wikipedia or Wikimedia? It's SIL Open-Font license, based on Gentium regular, and I could upload it if that would help readers until their default fonts update. It has full support for the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek blocks, apart from mathematical and other technical symbols. (It even has the new musical symbols, which I co-authored the proposals for.)

I don't log in often, so if this is of interest, please email me. Kirk (talk) 04:23, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your work ! That is really important. We generally don't ship web fonts as it is a lot of overhead on our already busy pages, and to do it efficiently requires some very specific infrastructure that is difficult to maintain. (Essentially range definitions for all character ranges and fonts for those ranges for everything that potentially is not supported in a browser. Wouldn’t scale, thus you would have to do content scanning with conditional inclusion, which also doesn’t really scale). We are used to being on a 10 year old web. Will the font end up in google fonts? When we do some conditional loading it will source from our custom fontcdn instance that takes google as its upstream source. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:22, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Outdated track map keeps showing despite purges

At Hurricane Lowell (2026), the {{storm path}} call is stuck showing an old version of File:Lowell 2026 path.png, despite explicit purges of the following pages:

• Lowell's article
• The image pages both here and on Commons
• The template's page

I've also tried removing and readding the template call, to no avail. This has resulted in the last few updates to the file not being reflected. Jasper Deng (talk) 08:56, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

@Jasper Deng: There is sometimes a delay. I see an orange circle above the others at the left end in Hurricane Lowell (2026)#Meteorological history. That appears to be the most recent file version. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:13, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps the purge is needed client-side. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:45, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-37

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• Add a Link has been upgraded for English Wikipedia users with improved detection of links that have different capitalization. This will help reduce ambiguous suggestions caused by differences in capitalization in article titles, including articles about cultural goods. A second phase of improvements is planned, which will also prepare the feature for release in other languages.
• The Article guidance feature will be enabled by default for junior editors on Simple English and Turkish Wikipedia starting 10 September 2026 following an experiment. Junior editors with 0 to 99 edits will automatically see the feature when they click a red link or use the "Madde oluşturto" option on Turkish Wikipedia to create a new article. The change is intended to help junior editors create higher-quality articles that meet each Wikipedia’s standards. Additional improvements will continue based on the experiment results and community feedback.
• The Pageviews Analysis tool which allows users to compare pageviews across multiple pages, turns 10 years old this year and several new features have been added. They include WikiNav which provides insights into how readers of Wikipedia explore the content, editing stats in Siteviews, the ability to lookup articles belonging to a WikiProject, and support for dark mode.
• A visually simplified Minerva navigation bar is being tested for logged-out readers using mobile web on the Bengali, Czech, English, Farsi, and Polish Wikipedias. The experiment aims to determine whether simplifying the navigation improves reader retention. The test will run from August 31 to September 28, and no action is required from users.
• WMDE Technical Wishes is working on improving auto-generated reference names in VisualEditor. Editors will only notice a slight change starting this week. When adding automatic reference names the numbering will start at :1 instead of :0. Read more on the project page.
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 23. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
• View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where Parsoid could mishandle nested nowiki tags, causing content to be lost and displaying unwanted text has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• Interface administrators can configure gadgets from MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. The definition format has been updated and no longer requires the ResourceLoader option, as gadgets are always loaded through ResourceLoader. This simplifies gadget configuration by removing an option that is no longer necessary, making gadget definitions easier for administrators.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:41, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

May be having staying-logged-in problems again...

...just got booted when loading a new page, and this time (unlike the usally-happens-once-a-day-ish routine) just cliking "Log in" didn't resolve it, it was a complete had-to-log-in-from-scratch situation. The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:03, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

@The Bushranger I have continued to experience this since that last report. If I edit much at all, I am logged out at some point. Yesterday, I was logged out 5 times and today so far twice. S0091 (talk) 19:49, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

For me, it happens on average once a day, rarely twice. Usually it's just a loss of session data and merely clicking 'log in' is sufficient to "automatically", well, log back in, but yesterday's required a full "username and password screen" re-log-in, which was new. Just had my (first) occurannce today (loading AN) an it was the usual 'click log in and back in business'... - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:53, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Log outs should not happen at any regularity regardless. S0091 (talk) 21:09, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

...and that time it jumped me into a TA. (Probably because the logout happened as I was trying to save a category addition?). Ending the session automatically brought up the "you are now logged in..." thing. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:16, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Unable to login - verification code

I have probably not logged in for a year. When logging in now, I receive a message - 'You need to verify your login. A verification code has been sent to your email address (c***@***.***), please enter that code here'

Unfortunately the email never arrives.

I have tried this several times on several different browsers - Edge, Chrome and Safari. I have checked junk mail, and I have waited - several days now - for the said emails to arrive.

Help - it seems I have effectively lost my account. I have tried the 'recover account' button - but received no help so far.

My account name is Charles.bowyer. My email name starts the same, and is in hotmail.co.uk ~2026-48078-58 (talk) 08:51, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-48078-58 Make sure that it's not going to your spam folder, and that you've whitelisted wiki@wikipedia.org (the email the code will come from). If that doesn't work, you can try to contact Trust and Safety directly at cawikimedia.org. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:21, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I have checked my spam folder.

I have now whitelisted wiki@wikipedia.org

I had already contacted Trust and Safety a couple of days ago - Automatic response received, but nothing further. ~2026-48078-58 (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Weird TOC behaviour

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T437445

I was looking at {{infobox rugby biography}} yesterday and noticed there wasn't a Table of Contents, but the /doc has one, so I added it manually thinking it was a PEIS thing or similar. Then I noticed it at {{infobox cricketer}}, and just looking now it's at {{flagIOC}} and pretty much every template that should have a TOC. Is this new behaviour or am I losing my mind? I could have sworn I've seen TOCs on templates before this last weekend. (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 09:16, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

All of those templates have TOCs when I look at them, whether I load the template or the /doc page. I am using Vector 2022, logged in or logged out, Firefox or Brave browsers. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:06, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Possibly a Parsoid bug? When I look at Template:Flag IOC, it has a TOC with useparsoid=0 and is missing it with useparsoid=1. Anomie⚔ 12:29, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Strange. I see a TOC with Parsoid. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:27, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm on the old Vector. Primefac (talk) 21:09, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Vector 2022 has the normal sidebar TOC. The missing TOC happens in other skins with Parsoid. It appears to only happen if the section headings are transcluded via {{Documentation}}. If I preview {{Flag IOC 2}} with <noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude> in Vector Legacy then the TOC is missing but it displays if I transclude the documentation directly with <noinclude>{{Flag IOC 2/doc}}</noinclude>. It also displays if I write section headings in the source text. If I use Special:ExpandTemplates on the source text of {{Flag IOC 2}} with Template:Flag IOC 2 as context title and copy the result back to {{Flag IOC 2}} for previewing then the TOC displays. So the issue is apparently not caused by the wikitext generated by {{Documentation}} but by the process of using the template (which itself uses Module:Documentation). PrimeHunter (talk) 14:13, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

I have created phab:T437445 about the issue. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:16, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

Appearance sidebar

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T420219

Hello. Apologies if this was discussed before (surprising if it hasn't), but I've searched and could not find past discussions... If you open a new browser without logging in, you will notice that the "Appearance" sidebar is annoyingly expanded by default, sort of squeezing the page. If you click on hide, it moves to a nice small non-intrusive icon on top. Was there any discussion to keep that sidebar closed/hidden by default? Barely 10% of readers (random number pulled out of thin air) would bother adjusting these settings, and would continue reading on the squeezed page without even realising the hide button exists. It would also be nice if the page width is "wide" by default, but I guess that's a separate discussion. Rehman 13:48, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it has been discussed before. The developers budged a little (link to November 2022 discussion). They implemented the so-called "wide" width option for logged-in users, which still has tons of extra padding. At first, that option was persistent for logged-in users, but not for anonymous users, but they fixed that problem with T321498 in early 2023. If you want to do a deep dive on discussions about Vector 2022, this list is a good place to start. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:54, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, Jonesey95!. Rehman 15:12, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Server lag?

I'm suddenly getting a message on contributions views: Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 65 seconds may not appear in this list. Have never seen this message before. Each time I refresh, the number of seconds increases. Any idea what's going on? Schazjmd (talk) 14:58, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

After reaching 520 seconds, the message has disappeared, so I guess whatever was going on has been fixed. Schazjmd (talk) 15:07, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Every now and then the series of tubes gets clogged up for awhile. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:55, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

Coordinate template not displaying

I am having an issue with Bouvet Island's infobox. The political division infobox has coordinates specified, but they are not displaying inline or in the title like they are set to do. Is this expected behavior of the infobox? Thank you. Tsarivan613 (talk) 16:35, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

The coords will not display unless there is a value for |capital=. I have adjusted the documentation to match the code. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:19, 8 September 2026 (UTC)

All hatnotes to sections on the same page broken

Hatnote templates that link to a section in the same page all currently seem to be broken (e.g. here, here, and here). This seems to be a particular problem in the Wikipedia: namespace, including the MOS. Looks like it's caused by the way Module:Format link renders all links with a leading colon (e.g. [[:#section]] rather than [[#section]]), which Parsoid handles differently than the legacy parser (T433562). A response from WMF staff says Is there a reason why the template wants to colon-escape that link? Dropping the colon would fix the issue, no? Note that [[:]] is not a valid wikilink so it's questionable that [[:#this]] would be. Please could a module guru see if it's possible to fix Module:Format link for now, as it'll probably take a while before Parsoid is changed (if they decide to at all!) --Yodin^T 12:56, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

 Done here. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:16, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

You could tell them that colon-escaping working on any link is convenient so code generating links doesn't have to be conditional on what kind of maybe-needing-escaping link it is. Anomie⚔ 22:49, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

@Anomie That argument failed when the switch from Tidy to RemexHtml made [[::Example]] invalid syntax. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:37, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Not quite the same thing though. Anomie⚔ 22:35, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

OWIM map won't load

When I open the Gender of chief executive map at List of elected or appointed female heads of state or government, it opens completely blank and it shows that loading is at 0%, and it remains at 0%. How long should a reader be expected to wait before the interactive map is displayed? – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 18:57, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

If you're wondering, I'm using Firefox on Windows 10. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 18:58, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

The feature requires "Shows a popup dialog with a slider for OWID images" near the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. I haven't tried it before but it fails for me in all tests. I tried Firefox, Chrome and Edge on different articles in Category:Pages using gadget owidslider. The page history of MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider.js shows updates by Ragesoss from https://mdwiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider.js. It has seven edits since our last update 20 July 2026. Do we need another update by an interface administrator? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:25, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

Persistent 503 error on stats graph

For about a day now I've been unable to render Template:Airport statistics on Innsbruck Airport(I haven't encountered another page yet with the same issue) Instead I get thrown a red box that reads There was a problem during the HTTP request: 503 Service Unavailable. Weirdly I can render it in the Preview window. What's causing this? Electricmemory (talk) In solidarity 03:16, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

I just purged the page, and it seems to be working now. Not sure what the problem was though. It might have just cached on a 503 response to an API call. RandomPerson238 06:34, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:VPW § Source Verification Suggestion

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:VPW § Source Verification Suggestion. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:20, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Bay Area (BAWUG) WikiSalon Tuesday Sept 15 - Technical editors welcome!

Hi I'm Travis, co-organizer of BAWUG. Our next WikiSalon is next Tuesday, so if you're in the SF Bay Area, we'd love for you to come join us. We have a few technical editors who attended regularly, as well as many tech-curious. We'd love to "talk shop" and learn from each other, share tips, and help guide newcomers. If you're interested, you can RSVP on our Event page audiodude (talk) 21:31, 10 September 2026 (UTC)