User talk:B722N

Hello

Feel free to leave a message here BalukuBrian (talk) 11:30, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

List-building Support

Baluku, we were recently on a call with the Search Platform Team. I'm reaching out to gain insights on your experiences with locating missing Wikipedia articles and to see if I might be able to provide support to Wikipedia Uganda's list-building efforts.

I'm a contractor with the foundation who was brought in to pilot a topical list-building service for organizers and editors. My background is in academic librarianship, instructional design, and online instruction (read more here [1]). Through my conversations with a number of contributors, I've learned that most currently rely on a combination of tools and manual processes for topical list-building. Is this your experience as well?

I've offered support to communities who are building lists for campaigns. As a member of the Uganda user group, I'm curious if you've worked with anyone from the foundation in support of your campaigns. Perhaps you've collaborated with members of the content translation or movement communications teams?

If not, I'd like to offer my support in the remaining months of my contract to your group. Might I be able to assist your list-building efforts by locating relevant references for the upcoming Women in Wikisource campaign? Or, maybe you have other ideas!

I appreciate your time and look forward to hearing back from you! CPickens-WMF (talk) 16:23, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Apologies for the late response @CPickens-WMF, list building has been a challenge in the campaigns that we run in Wiki Uganda. Your support will be highly appreciated especially by the wiki trainers on the different campaigns such as Wiki Gap.

And say in this year's Wiki Gap, we want to build a list of Ugandan women who have Wikidata items and not Wikipedia articles. So that we can create articles on both the English and Luganda Wikipedias. We have tried using tools such as WDQS and also Petscan to build the lists but we still have some challenges writing queries.

Thank you B722N (talk) 08:13, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

No worries, and thanks for these details. I'm currently traveling but will share your info with a colleague from Movement Communications. Hopefully she can be in touch in the meantime.

Chanelle P 152.165.112.138 22:12, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I will be glad to work with your colleague B722N (talk) 13:35, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Join the 6th Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Campaign – 2025 Edition

Dear Wikimedia affiliate community leader,

Thanks for organizing the previous editions of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Campaign in your community. We invite your community again to participate in the 6th edition of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Campaign, a global campaign taking place from July 1 to August 31, 2025.

Participants will choose among Wikipedia pages without photos, then add a suitable photo from among the many thousands of photos in the Wikimedia Commons, especially those uploaded from thematic contests (Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Folklore, Wiki Loves Monuments, etc.) over the years.

More than 80 Wikimedia affiliates have participated since the campaign was launched in 2020 and have added images to more than 400,000 Wikipedia articles in over 245 Wikipedia languages. Thanks to the volunteer contributors!

We now invite your affiliate to organize and lead the campaign within your community. As a local organizer, you may:

• Encourage individual members to take part by adding images to Wikipedia articles.
• Host edit-a-thons focused on improving visual content.
• Organize training workshops to teach contributors how to correctly integrate images into Wikipedia.

These activities will help build local capacity and increase visual content across Wikipedia.

Please note that for participants to be eligible to participate in the campaign, they need to have registered an account for at least a year before the official start date of the contest. That is, for the 2025 edition, they must have registered an account on or before July 1, 2025. The account can be from any Wikimedia project wikis.

The organizing team is looking for a contact person to coordinate WPWP participation at the Wikimedia user group or chapter level (geographically or thematically) or for a language Wikipedia.

We would be glad for you to sign up directly at WPWP Participating Communities.

With kind regards,

User:Reading Beans On behalf of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos campaign 2025. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:43, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Join the 6th edition of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Campaign

Hello there,

Thank you for participating in the previous editions of Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos campaign.

We are glad to inform you that this year's edition started on 1 July, 2025. You are invited to participate in the campaign again to help improve the quality of Wikipedia articles and Wikidata with photos. For more information about the campaign and how to participate, please visit the campaign page here.

If you have any question or need more information, please either contact the organizing team, leave a message at the campaign's discussion page or send an email to wpwpcampaigngmail.com.

User:Reading Beans (On behalf of the Organizing Team, #WPWP Campaign 2025). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:28, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

WikiIndaba 2025: Call for Program Submissions Now Open!

Hello B722N,

The wait is finally over!

We’re excited to announce that the Call for Program Submissions for WikiIndaba 2025 is now officially open!
This is your chance to share your ideas, projects, tools, research, and experiences with the broader African Wikimedia movement, whether you're based in Africa or the diaspora.

We warmly invite you to submit a session proposal and help shape an inclusive and impactful WikiIndaba program. The deadline to submit is 20th July 2025.

Click on the button to submit your session proposal.

Submit your session proposal

Let’s make WikiIndaba 2025 Conference an unforgettable experience — tell a friend to tell a friend!
We are looking forward to your awesome proposals!

Warm regards,
Joris Darlington Quarshie
On behalf of the WikiIndaba 2025 Organizing Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk)
07:54, 07 July 2025 (UTC)

7 Days Left to Submit Your Program Proposal for WikiIndaba 2025!

Hello B722N,

Just a friendly reminder — there are only 7 days left to submit your session proposal for WikiIndaba 2025!

If you’ve been thinking about sharing a project, idea, tool, research, or story that can inspire or support the African Wikimedia movement, now is the time! Whether you're based in Africa or in the diaspora, your voice matters.

Submission deadline: 20th July 2025

Submit your proposal now

Let’s shape an inclusive, diverse, and impactful conference together! 💡 Tell a friend, remind a colleague — let’s make WikiIndaba 2025 unforgettable.

Warmly,
Joris Darlington Quarshie
On behalf of the WikiIndaba 2025 Organizing Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk)
11:08, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Only 3 Days Left to Submit Your Program Proposal for WikiIndaba 2025!

Hello B722N,

Just a quick reminder — there are only 3 days left to submit your session proposal for WikiIndaba 2025!

If you have a project, idea, tool, research, or story that aligns with and uplifts the African Wikimedia movement, now is the time to share it. We welcome contributions from across the continent and the diaspora.

📅 Submission deadline: 20th July 2025

Submit your proposal now

Need help with your submission?

Join our Programming Office Hour happening today at 1:00 PM UTC (starting in 1 hour and 30 minutes). We’ll be there to assist you with your questions or if you're having any challenges filling out the submission form.

🔗 Join here: meet.google.com/hpb-ywbg-fqk

Let’s shape an inclusive and impactful WikiIndaba 2025 together. Don’t wait — share your idea!

Warmly,
Joris Darlington Quarshie
On behalf of the WikiIndaba 2025 Organizing Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk)
11:30, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

One More Week to Submit Your Proposal for WikiIndaba 2025!

Hello B722N,

Good news! The WikiIndaba 2025 program submission deadline has been extended to July 27, 2025!

We are especially looking for more poster session proposals. Have a project, research, or initiative you’d love to present visually? Poster sessions are a great way to highlight your work and start engaging conversations with fellow Wikimedians.

Submit your proposal today and be part of shaping the future of free knowledge in Africa!

👉 Submit here:

Submit your proposal now

Let’s make WikiIndaba 2025 inspiring, inclusive, and unforgettable!

The WikiIndaba 2025 Program Team

---

Bonjour B722N,

Bonne nouvelle ! La date limite pour proposer une session pour WikiIndaba 2025 est prolongée jusqu’au 27 juillet 2025 !

Nous recherchons en particulier plus de sessions d'affiches. Avez-vous un projet, une initiative ou une recherche à partager ? Les affiches sont une belle façon de valoriser visuellement votre travail et d'engager la communauté.

👉 Soumettez votre proposition ici :

Submit your proposal now

Construisons ensemble un WikiIndaba 2025 mémorable et inspirant !

Le comité du programme WikiIndaba 2025

---

,B722N مرحبًا

يسرّنا أن نعلن تمديد الموعد النهائي لتقديم الجلسات في مؤتمر WikiIndaba 2025 حتى يوم 27 يوليو 2025!

نحن نبحث بشكل خاص عن مزيد من جلسات الملصقات. هل لديك مشروع، أو مبادرة، أو بحث ترغب في مشاركته؟ جلسات الملصقات تتيح لك عرض أفكارك بشكل بصري ومميز.

👉 قدّم اقتراحك الآن عبر:

Submit your proposal now

فلنُسهم معًا في إنجاح WikiIndaba 2025 بإبداعاتنا الجماعية!

— لجنة برنامج WikiIndaba 2025

MediaWiki message delivery (talk)
09:26, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Capacity Exchange: New Design, Features & Ways to Connect!

Hello B722N!

Our platform has undergone several updates and has a new design and brand-new features available. We would like to invite you to explore the tool and give your feedback to help us make it even better.

Also, call your wiki-friends to Join for the Exchange.

If you experience any difficulty navigating the tool, here is our User Guide with a step-by-step tutorial on how to use each feature.

To interact with the CapX team, share your feedback, or offer a suggestion, you can use the Bug Reports feature in the tool or email capxwmnobrasil.org.

For quick questions and suggestions, we've set up a Telegram channel. We also invite you to add the {{CapacityExchange}} template and the {{CapXsupporter}} userbox to your user page to express your support.

Finally, we created a newsletter channel for those interested in receiving regular updates about the tool and the Capacity Exchange project - click here to subscribe.

See you exchanging around!

You are receiving this message because you have registered on Capacity Exchange.

Sincerely,
AJurno (WMB)
MediaWiki message delivery (talk)
13:02, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

WikiIndaba Hackathon 2025 Registration Open!

Hello B722N,

Registration for the WikiIndaba Hackathon 2025 is now open! If you are excited to join in person or virtually, this is your opportunity to collaborate, code, and create with Wikimedians across Africa and beyond.

• Dates: November 21–23, 2025
• Registration open until: November 23, 2025
• WikiIndaba Hackathon

Don’t miss out—be part of building the future of Wikimedia!

Learn more about the Hackathon: WikiIndaba Hackathon

Warm regards,
WikiIndaba Hackathon 2025 Organizing Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk)
16:07, 03 October 2025 (UTC)

WikiIndaba Hackathon 2025 Registration Open!

Hello B722N,

Registration for the WikiIndaba Hackathon 2025 is now open! If you are excited to join in person or virtually, this is your opportunity to collaborate, code, and create with Wikimedians across Africa and beyond.

• Dates: November 21–23, 2025
• Registration open until: November 23, 2025
• WikiIndaba Hackathon

Don’t miss out—be part of building the future of Wikimedia!

Learn more about the Hackathon: WikiIndaba Hackathon

Warm regards,
WikiIndaba Hackathon 2025 Organizing Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk)
16:07, 03 October 2025 (UTC)

WikiIndaba Hackathon 2025 Registration Open!

Hello B722N,

Registration for the WikiIndaba Hackathon 2025 is now open! If you are excited to join in person or virtually, this is your opportunity to collaborate, code, and create with Wikimedians across Africa and beyond.

• Dates: November 21–23, 2025
• Registration open until: November 23, 2025
• WikiIndaba Hackathon

Don’t miss out—be part of building the future of Wikimedia!

Learn more about the Hackathon: WikiIndaba Hackathon

Warm regards,
WikiIndaba Hackathon 2025 Organizing Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk)
16:07, 03 October 2025 (UTC)

Join us for “Many Tongues, One Movement: Voices Across Languages”!

Hello B722N,

We’re excited to invite you to an inspiring global virtual gathering: the first Capacity Exchange Translat-a-thon.

Together with Language Diversity Hub, the Capacity Exchange (CapX) team will host its first Translation Marathon dedicated to ensuring linguistic equity in access to this amazing tool aimed to connect Wikimedians.
If you enjoy contributing to Wikimedia projects through translating and adapting content into different languages, this event is for you! Join us in the celebration of the multilingual spirit of the Wikimedia Movement at an event where communities that contribute in diverse languages will be able to share local knowledge and collaborate across borders.
Many Tongues, One Movement: Voices Across Languages

• Date: December 6, 2025
• Time: 12 PM (UTC) - Check the event page for your local timezone
• Location: Online (Meta-Wiki + live session links)

Register for the Event here

If you can’t join the live event, you can still contribute to the translations! Edits will be counted for two weeks, until December 20th. And everyone who participates will receive a special badge to display on their CapX profiles.

Strengthen your collaboration through CapX

We invite you and your community to join the Capacity Exchange (CapX), a Wikimedia community-built platform for connecting, collaborating, and exchanging skills with peers across the movement.

CapX helps Wikimedians and organizations find each other, share expertise, and build stronger, more connected communities.

Whether you’re an individual contributor, a user group, a community initiative or an affiliate, CapX helps you grow through knowledge exchange.

Sign up to CapX

More information

→ Explore the CapX platform: capx.toolforge.org
→ Read: User Guide & FAQ
→ Watch: Meet the Capacity Exchange video
→ Join our Telegram community chat: CapX Telegram Group

If your community, usergroup or affiliate would like to have a CapX organization profile, please reach out at capx@wmnobrasil.org, and we’d be delighted to support you.

With warm regards,
Joris Darlington Quarshie
Outreach Facilitator,
Capacity Exchange Project – Wikimedia Brasil

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:55, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-31

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

• Content Translation now supports dark mode, fulfilling a Community Wishlist request. This brings the tool in line with the accessibility features available in the Vector 2022 and Minerva skins, helping reduce visual fatigue for users translating content. [2]
• DiscussionTools' source mode and the 2017 wikitext editor will now offer autocomplete for links ([[), templates ({{), HTML and parser tags (<), and magic words (__), making it quicker and easier to insert links, templates, and other wiki markup while editing. [3]
• The Readers Growth team has concluded its experiment with mobile page previews and will not roll out the feature. Page Previews are a pop-up bottom sheet that appears when readers tap a blue link, showing a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and an option to open the article. The experiment showed flat retention and negative indicator metrics, suggesting that mobile web readers preferred navigating directly to linked articles rather than using page previews.
• The Reader Experience team has seen encouraging early results from the Reading Lists feature, with 93% of participating users reporting that it was useful. Reading Lists help active readers save articles for future reading and support their learning goals on Wikimedia projects. The team plans further improvements before expanding the feature to more users.
• The Explore Feed Refresh initiative was tested with new and casual Wikipedia app readers. The refreshed feed helps readers discover new and relevant content. After a 10.5% increase in engagement with the feed, Wikimedia Apps team has decided to scale the Home Feed redesign to iOS with the learnings from the Android release applied.
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where subject names in the Article Guidance feature were displayed with incorrect capitalization on French Wikipedia, has now been fixed. Subject names will now follow the correct capitalization rules for the language. [4]

Updates for technical contributors

• After running several Account Creation Experiments to improve registration completion rates, a new version of the username field on Create Account has been rolled out. It includes a popover summarizing the username policy to provide clearer guidance during account creation. As part of this change, the messages createacct-helpusername and createacct-username-help that several communities have configured will no longer be used. If communities want to customize the guidance shown in the new popover, they can instead edit the following messages: createacct-username-policy-popover-bullet1, createacct-username-policy-popover-bullet2, and createacct-username-policy-popover-bullet3. [5]
• Later this week, the CodeMirror syntax highlighter will offer themes. The themes can be picked from a dropdown menu in the full CodeMirror preferences dialog. For wikitext, available themes are default, colorblind-friendly (previously the colorblind preference option on Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing) and no-highlighting. For code languages (i.e., CSS/JavaScript/JSON/Vue/Lua), there are several themes available. These same themes will eventually be available for wikitext, too. [6]
• From now on, wikis can restrict editing in the "User" namespace to only the page owner and certain user groups. Read the configuration documentation to learn more.
• 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 18:46, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-32

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

Updates for editors

• The Reader Experience team has developed a patch demo that wraps the page toolbar onto two lines when there is not enough horizontal space for all the buttons. This aims to reduce crowding in the Vector 2022 toolbar, which can occur on some language Wikipedias at certain screen widths. [7]
• The Reader Experience team is planning to launch Reading Lists, a Community Wishlist item, which is currently available to try in beta, as a full feature in September. Before then, volunteer translator help is needed for string translations into a number of languages. The feature supports reading and learning goals on Wikipedia.
• Next week, the table of contents on Wikimedia Commons file pages will be improved by consolidating the file page table of contents with the page table of contents. This will make it easier to understand a file page’s structure, navigate to specific sections, and share links to individual sections. [8]
• View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where some TIFF images failed to load after clicking their thumbnail, causing a broken image to be displayed instead of the full-size image, has now been fixed. [9]

Updates for technical contributors

• The variable and function selector in AbuseFilter has been updated to support search and autocomplete. It will allow filter maintainers to find the desired variable or function more quickly. [10]
• The MJPEG and VP8 formats are removed from the video player. The MP4 format (MPEG-4 Part 2) is added instead, which provides higher quality videos to older iPhone devices. It may take a few weeks to retroactively update all existing videos. The default format for modern devices stays the same (VP9/WebM). [11]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:43, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-33

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

• A new ChartWizard is now available on Wikimedia Commons for users interested in creating charts from their own data. The wizard makes the Chart extension more beginner-friendly by allowing editors to create charts, such as bar and pie charts, without needing to use JSON. Users can still switch to the JSON editor if they prefer. Feedback on the new tool is welcome on the wish talk page.
• View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the Wikipedia iOS app’s Picture of the Day widget displayed the same image every day instead of updating daily, has now been fixed. [12]

Updates for technical contributors

• Math formula SVG images will soon be generated in the browser instead of on the server. MathML continues to be generated on the server and renders in the browser without JavaScript. Wikibooks will see this change on 12 August, Wikisource on 19 August and Wikipedia from 20-27 August. You can try this by selecting "MathML with SVG image (client side MathJax rendering)" in your preferences. This change is part of deprecating RESTBase and deprecating Mathoid. [13]
• Category pages will soon support sorting entries by the time they are added to a category. This will make it easier to find recently or long-standing categorized pages. It will also improve workflows for maintenance categories such as deletion backlogs and other time-based review tasks. You can use cldsort=timestamp URL argument in category view to sort the entries. [14]
• Gadgets and user scripts on Wikimedia wikis may now use ES2018 features and ES2019 features in JavaScript code. Previously, the platform only allowed up to ES2017. MediaWiki validates the source code to protect functionality from syntax errors and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. [15]
• 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 20:42, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-34

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

Weekly highlight

• The Worklist feature for the Event Registration tool is now live on all Wikimedia wikis. With Worklist, event organizers can add the articles their event will focus on directly to the event page. The Worklist also powers Event Pathways which notifies other editors of the upcoming or ongoing event when they edit an article featured in the event's Worklist. This is the minimum viable version (MVP), and feedback is welcome. Organizers are encouraged to try the feature. A hands-on Worklist Setup Workshop will take place on 18 August at 16:00 UTC and 19 August at 11:00 UTC.

Updates for editors

• Special:ShortPages displays short pages by their size, but in many cases it gets filled with disambiguations and soft redirects, making it harder to find the short articles themselves. Starting this weekend, you will be able to choose not to include an article in the special page by adding the magic word __EXPECTSHORTPAGE__. [16]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Bole (w:bol:) [17]
• Starting the week of August 17, the page toolbar will wrap onto two lines when there is not enough horizontal space for all the buttons. This is a fully merged patch from the Reader Experience team which aims to reduce crowding in the Vector 2022 toolbar, that may occur on some language Wikipedias at certain screen widths.
• View all 16 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, uploading large files to Wikimedia Commons has become more stable and less prone to failure following some fixes related to the “Could not acquire lock” upload error. [18]

Updates for technical contributors

• Debian Bullseye will reach the end of its Long Term Support on 31 August 2026. Some Cloud VPS projects still have instances running Debian Bullseye. Maintainers of those projects are encouraged to migrate to Debian Bookworm or Debian Trixie. A migration guide is available to help with the process, and users may also want to consider whether their workload is better suited to Toolforge. If you need help or cannot complete the migration by 31 August, please contact the Cloud VPS admins as soon as possible. Read more.
• 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 21:00, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-35

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

Updates for editors

• The Special:CreateAccount page has been simplified as part of ongoing work to modernize the account creation experience. The panel showing project statistics no longer appears next to the form on desktop and mobile web. Multiple account creation experiments show that a simpler form helps newcomers complete registration. [19]
• In order to improve page performance, images now load when they are viewed. This means images lower down an article will not load if a reader never scrolls to that part of the page, which may affect some image-related metrics. [20]

• View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where image thumbnails in Abstract Wikipedia could fail to display after the corresponding file was moved on Wikimedia Commons, has now been fixed. Thumbnails will now update correctly when files are moved. [21]

Updates for technical contributors

• User Info card is a feature that helps patrollers see information about user accounts. So far, it has been available only in places such as page history, logs and recent changes. Now, it's possible to place it in the page content as well, using the {{#uic:}} parser function. It can be particularly useful in templates like {{Userlinks}} (or their specialized variants), as it will make it easier to see the context about a user on various noticeboard pages. The card will be displayed only to users who have it enabled in their preferences. [22]
• Due to user security and privacy risks, we have disabled access to Special:MyPage URLs when specifically using action=raw. If you are impacted by this, consider whether you can use an alternative approach. Special:MyPage URLs can still be accessed and used without action=raw. Specified user page URLs (e.g. User:Myusername) can still be used with action=raw. [23]
• Due to an update, the thumbnailing software has been improved. This includes upgrading librsvg to 2.60 and ImageMagick to 7, as well as resolving a number of long-standing thumbnailing bugs like rendering errors. [24]

• 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 20:42, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-36

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

Weekly highlight

• A new format for the Community Wishlist is open for feedback. You can read the proposed ideas on Meta. This new process plans to improve how wishes are triaged, voted on, and prioritized in a way that is transparent and balanced across project families and language editions. This consultation is open for two weeks.

Updates for editors

• The latest release of the Wikipedia Android app includes updates to the Saved feature, bringing the app’s saving experience closer to iOS and Web. The update redesigns the Saved tab with an “All articles” view, removes the default “Saved” reading list, renames reading lists to “Collections,” and modernizes the article-saving experience. [25]
• The Reading Lists feature was enabled for all logged-in users on Bengali, Chinese, Czech and Vietnamese Wikipedias on August 25, after several months as a beta feature. Reading Lists will be available to all logged-in users on Arabic, French and Indonesian Wikipedias on September 1, followed by English Wikipedia on September 14, and all other Wikipedia wikis on September 28.
• At the end of the month, some logged-out readers on Bengali, Czech, Persian, English, and Polish Wikipedias using the Minerva skin on mobile will see an updated navigation bar in an A/B test. The test will compare the current navigation bar with a new version designed to make it easier to find information more quickly. The goal is to determine whether these changes encourage readers to return more often. This experiment will not change the experience for logged-in readers and/or editors.
• Editors who maintain redirects, templates, and categories used on redirect pages now have improved ways for finding and curating redirects. Previously, redirects pages could not be searched. Two new search keywords, onlyredirects: and withredirects:, now allow redirects to be searched directly and can be combined with existing keywords such as incategory:, intitle:, and insource:. [26]
• The ISBN lookup tools for generating citations were recently not working because of external service problems. Developers are working on solutions. [27]
• View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where searching for pages by category using deepcat could return no results or unrelated results has now been fixed. [28]

Updates for technical contributors

• The domain of URLs for thumbnails is changing from upload.wikimedia.org to thumb.wikimedia.org. The old URLs will continue to work for the foreseeable future but MediaWiki will advertise the new domain instead. URLs to other types of media such as original files, videos and transcodes will still be served from upload.wikimedia.org. [29]
• The Wikimedia Math API is now deprecated. These endpoints will be fully sunset by the end of September 2026. Developers who call these endpoints should transition to alternative math rendering solutions, such as the native MathML or MathJax. Third-party MediaWiki installations that utilize the Math extension for formula rendering are required to upgrade to v1.43+ to avoid disruption of service.

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Read more about TextMatch in a Diff post titled, Custom edit suggestions for every wiki: How communities are shaping Suggestion Mode with TextMatch.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:50, 31 August 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. [30] [31]
• 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. [32]
• 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. [33]
• 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. [34]
• 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. [35]

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. [36]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

Tech News: 2026-38

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

Weekly highlight

• The Future Audiences team has started a discussion on English Wikipedia about a proposed new experiment to show a temporary notice about the new Google Preferred Sources feature to Wikipedia readers coming from Google. The experiment is to test whether this notice makes visitors come back to Wikipedia more often. Preferred Sources feature lets users choose websites they trust so Google can highlight content from those sources more prominently in Search and AI experiences. We are interested in testing this on other languages that Google supports and would welcome assistance with starting conversations on other wikis. If interested, please reach out to Future Audiences on the talk page.

Updates for editors

• The chat platform Discord is releasing a new self-service framework that websites can use to specify how their links should look when shared on Discord. The Future Audiences team is planning to start using this new framework to improve how Wikipedia links look when shared on Discord, giving better attribution and credit to contributors. The link appearance and behavior won't change in the first phase of this project as we want to first collect some baseline data to assess the impact of future changes. However, if community members who are active on Discord spot any issues, they can reach out on Phabricator or Metawiki.
• The Reader Growth team will be running an experiment to test whether compacting article lead sections on mobiles with the addition of a "read more" button improves reader retention. The test will begin on September 17 on Arabic, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Chinese Wikipedias and will run for four weeks.
• 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 week. [37]
• View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where Wikistats for Wikipedias was returning an HTTP 500 error and could not be reached, has now been fixed. [38]

Updates for technical contributors

• Developers who maintain a tool that queries the Wikimedia Commons links tables need to update their code to connect to the new x4 database cluster. The links tables have been moved from the s4 cluster to x4, and will no longer receive updates on s4. The page and redirect tables remain available on both clusters. A wiki replica for the x4 cluster will be set up afterwards. The change is being made because the s4 cluster has grown too large to operate efficiently. You can read more.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:28, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-39

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

Weekly highlight

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday, 23 September 2026 at 14:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests, which happen twice a year. During the switchover, all Wikimedia website traffic is shifted from one primary data center to the backup data center to test availability and prevent service disruption even in emergencies. [39]

Updates for editors

• The Growth team tested a new post-edit notice designed to encourage Temporary Account holders to register for a permanent account. The new notice replaced multiple dialogs and a simultaneous welcome notification with a single message highlighting the benefits of creating an account. The experiment increased permanent account creation from 1.94% to 3.66%, an 87% relative increase. The change will now be released to all wikis. [40]
• For Wikipedia editors using the "Suggestion mode" Beta Feature, there is a new opt-in user preference for showing "experimental" edit checks and suggestions. These types are listed at Special:EditChecks, and are intended for early developer-testing and for gathering feedback from experienced users. Administrators can change the configuration details for each suggestion as usual. Administrators can also use this feature to help test their community's ideas for locally created checks and suggestions. Experimental types will have a more distinct visual style later this week. Feedback is welcome.
• The CEE Technical Village Pump has been launched as a space for technical discussions and collaboration among Wikimedia communities in Central and Eastern Europe.
• A new tool, Starter Kit, is now available for new and small language Wikipedia communities. It brings together guided tasks, tools, and resources to help communities get started, monitor their progress, and collaborate with the broader Wikimedia community. Starter Kit is hosted on Wikimedia Toolforge and is designed for Wikipedias with fewer than 50,000 articles. Learn more about how Starter Kit works and how communities have been using it in this Diff blog post.
• The Reader Growth team is launching a retest of the image carousel experiment. The retest will use three new versions of the design, updated based on community feedback. The team will assess results and determine with communities whether or not to proceed with the feature. The experiment will begin the week of September 28 and will run on Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, English, Farsi, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
• After successful rollouts to Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias, the Reading Lists feature from the Reader Experience team will be available to all logged-in users on all Wikipedia wikis starting September 28.
• View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the mentor status script repeatedly updated mentors’ status even when nothing had changed, creating unnecessary Recent Changes entries, has now been fixed. [41]

Updates for technical contributors

• The abusefilters list query API, used to retrieve specific details about active or historical abuse filters configured on a wiki, has been updated to support the formatversion=2 configuration parameter, thereby leading to breaking changes to the API response. All users who maintain user-scripts or other code need to check if they use the abusefilters list query API, and respond to any breaking changes. [42]
• 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 11:53, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-40

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

• Users of default skins on desktop and mobile web (Vector 2022 and Minerva respectively) will now be informed if the search suggestions displayed as they type into Search come from page redirects. Previously, users could get confused when the top search suggestions did not match exactly what they had typed. The new redirect notice clarifies that these suggestions are not random, but related to the search. The suggested pages may be redirects to the most relevant destination articles being searched for. [43]
• Logged-out Wikipedia users on mobile web will begin to see a bookmark button for saving articles to their reading lists instead of the current Watchstar button. When clicked, the bookmark button prompts users to log in or create an account to save an article for later. An earlier experiment found that the bookmark icon was four times more likely than the Watchstar button to encourage logged-out users to create an account. This change is part of efforts to encourage more readers to become account holders and use features that help them save and return to content. [44]
• An experiment will begin on September 29 on Spanish, Arabic, English, and French Wikipedias to simplify the experience users encounter immediately after account creation. The test will explore whether removing friction from the current Welcome Survey helps new users understand what to do next more easily. The experiment will run through the end of October. [45]

• The Product and Technology Advisory Council has put out a call for the community to suggest topics that it should consider and discuss with the Wikimedia Foundation. Editors and technical contributors are invited to add topics to the council's talk page.
• Later this week, it will be possible for communities to configure Edit Checks and Suggestions so that they are shown within additional namespaces, such as a Draft: namespace. Feedback is welcome.
• A bug in the Global Watchlist is causing the page to fail to load for users that have unseen changes on Wikimedia Commons. Developers are working on a fix. Until then, affected users can follow the workarounds described in the relevant help section.
• New magic words {{CATEGORYSORT:TIMESTAMP}} and {{CATEGORYSORT:RTIMESTAMP}} are now available for use. They are able to change the default sorting of categories to be based on timestamp of categorization. [46]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where Wikistats for Wikipedias was not reachable has now been fixed. [47]

Updates for technical contributors

• The datacenter switchover, scheduled on September 23, has been postponed. The equinox exercise revealed capacity issues, preventing the switch of all services to the other datacenter. The process has been paused, prioritizing investigating that issue, to ensure that we continue to be able to serve our users reliably. A new exercise will be scheduled. Meanwhile, all traffic and edits continue to work as usual.
• On September 23, a power loss briefly affected all wikis, creating intermittent issues on both reading and editing modes. This also affected Gerrit. This is unrelated to the datacenter switchover postponement. [48]
• Produnto has been deployed to mediawiki.org and some Indic language wikis. We want to hear your feedback on this experimental product. Produnto allows users to use Lua modules hosted in Wikimedia's GitLab. It simplifies the sharing of Lua code between wikis. Instead of copying each individual Lua module from one wiki to another, users will be able to easily share packages across all wikis.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• A Cross-wiki code collaboration workshop will be held online on October 2 at 12:30 UTC, bringing together South Asian technical contributors to learn about Produnto and begin piloting it on Hindi, Punjabi, Odia, Telugu, and Malayalam Wikipedias. Produnto is a package manager for deploying Lua modules hosted on GitLab to Wikimedia wikis, and was recently deployed on some pilot wikis.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 10:46, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-41

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

Weekly highlight

• The process for this year’s Community Wishlist has been published, incorporating community feedback. The wish submission process will end on November 8. This year, a working group (open for volunteering) that includes community members familiar with the technical aspect of our wikis alongside Wikimedia Foundation staff, will take care of the triage process. The triage is expected to be completed by late November. Votes for wishes will start in January.

Updates for editors

• Editors using the visual editor will now see a warning when they paste text that is likely to have initially been copied from one of five external generative AI chatbots into Wikipedia. This feature is known as LLM Paste Check. It is a type of Edit Check that is community configurable. The check looks for markers in the copied HTML and is not using content watermark detection. Edits will also be tagged so that patrollers can review them more closely. The feature helps newcomers add content that respects Wikipedia’s policies and makes it easier for experienced editors to identify problematic edits. Communities with local policies about LLM usage can adjust the wording and policy that is linked. The team apologizes that this was rolled out without a delay for translations.
• Editors can now easily access the web visual editor directly from the iOS and Android apps. When opening the editor, users will be given a choice between visual editing and source editing. If they choose visual editing, they will be sent to a mobile web window in their phone's browser. After completing their edit, a banner will give them the option to return to the app. This enables readers to make quick contributions while casually reading.
• Users of the Wikipedia Android and iOS apps will now see a one-time account creation prompt after they have used the app for two consecutive weeks. This prompt explains the benefits of having an account. It is intended to help more casual readers become logged-in users who return to the apps regularly. [49]
• Editors on group1 wikis, including Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource, will no longer see notifications on Recent Changes and Watchlist when a link to another language version of a page is added, removed, or changed in its Wikidata item. This change will begin on October 5 at 07:00 UTC as a two-week trial to reduce high-volume, low-value notifications and make important changes easier to identify. Editors who rely on these notifications can read more on the project page and share feedback or concerns on the talk page. [50]
• View all 36 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where mentors who removed themselves from the mentorship program could still have mentees assigned to them and receive questions, has now been fixed. Mentees will now be reassigned when a mentor leaves the program. [51]

Updates for technical contributors

• Wikimedia Brasil has published its Development Best Practices Framework (ABPD). It is a guide for staff, contractors and volunteers building technical tools and projects. It covers the project lifecycle, security, accessibility, personal data protection and responsible AI use, and explains how movement-wide guidelines were adapted to a local context. They encourage other affiliates to reuse it and adapt it. Read more in the Diff post.
• A new, canonical base URL for Wikimedia APIs will soon be introduced. The new canonical route follows a {projectName}/api/ pattern and will act as an alternative path for current REST APIs (for example: {projectName}/w/rest.php/). Both versions will be callable for all existing APIs, but the new structure will be the preferred path for newly created API modules. This change will be non-breaking for most users. The existing pathways will remain available for all existing endpoint requests. However, some endpoints may return URLs following the new pattern in response bodies. Changes will be available on test wiki first, with the rollout expected to cover all wikis by the end of October. [52]
• 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.

18:49, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-42

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

Weekly highlight

• Starting October 13, wikis can change the default pattern for auto-generated reference names in VisualEditor (currently <ref name=":1" />). They will be able to use human-readable, content-based reference names that are more helpful to contributors using the source editor (e.g. <ref name="Miller2026-1" />). VisualEditor reference name patterns can be defined using MediaWiki system messages, JSON, templates and modules (more information). Admins can enable these changes via community configuration. This is a community wish implemented by WMDE Technical Wishes. [53]
• Sub-referencing is a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details. It will be deployed to English Wikipedia on October 14 and to remaining Wikimedia Foundation wikis by end of October (likely October 21). The FAQ lists possible actions to take on your wiki to support the deployment. This is a long-standing community wish implemented by WMDE Technical Wishes. [54][55]

Updates for editors

• Moderator Tools will be removing the list view of the Watchlist and defaulting everyone to the changelog view. Previously, there were two versions of how the Watchlist is shown to mobile web users: the list view, where editors could see watched articles in a list format, and the changelog view, where editors could see changes to watched articles in a log format, controlled by a user's Advanced Mobile Control settings. This has created issues for code-base maintenance: two different displays means two sets of code to manage. By defaulting to the changelog view, we are simplifying the codebase and avoiding the likelihood of missing bugs.
• The Wikipedia Android app is testing a way to listen to article introductions in the “For you” feed. A text-to-speech model reads the existing article text aloud without rewriting it or adding any content. The 30-day experiment will begin in the Wikipedia Beta app during the third week of September, then move to the regular Wikipedia Android app in October for a limited group of eligible users. A small portion of app users (those with English feeds and at least one topic interest) will have access to the feature. This experiment is part of broader efforts to give app readers options in how they consume content in order to deepen engagement and user retention. Learn more and share feedback.
• CodeMirror syntax highlighting was enabled by default for all logged out and newly registered users on the English Wikipedia on September 14. With no signs of adverse effects, the same change is being proposed to be made globally across all wikis in a few weeks. If you have concerns or feedback, or if your wiki would like to opt out, please see the help page. [56]
• Wikidata mobile statement editing of all datatypes will be officially launched on October 13, when it will be removed from Wikidata beta features and become available to all editors. Users can report bugs and share feedback.
• Last week, language link changes were removed from Recent Changes and Watchlist feeds on Wikivoyage, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikiquote and Wiktionary. As no adverse effects have been observed, the Wikidata For Wikimedia Projects plans to roll out this change globally to all Wikipedias. This is scheduled for October 13 at 07:00 UTC, after which editors will no longer see when a link to another language version of a page is added, removed, or changed in its Wikidata item. Editors who rely on these notifications can read more on the project page and share feedback or ask to opt out their wiki on the talk page. [57]
• View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where accidentally touching the graph while scrolling on the Pageviews tool on mobile could unintentionally zoom in has now been fixed. Click-and-drag zoom is now disabled on touch devices. [58]

Updates for technical contributors

• There are three major changes coming to dumps: the legacy content dumps deprecated in January 2026 will now be sunset, the replacement MediaWiki Content File Exports will be delayed to implement a “safety buffer”, and they are now also available as 7zip-compressed files. Users will need to switch the URL they download their dump from. For more information, timeline and migration instructions, see Legacy content dumps sunset.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The Wikimedia Foundation discovered unauthorized activity by OpenAI agents on Wikimedia projects, including edits to wikis, attempts to exploit a public note-taking tool, and heavy automated traffic. Read the blog post on Diff for more details about the activity and the Foundation’s response.

Meetings and events

• Save the date for the next Wikimedia Hackathon! We’ll be meeting in lovely Tirana, Albania for the 2027 Wikimedia Hackathon from April 9–11, 2027. Scholarship and staff sponsorship applications are currently being accepted through Pretix and will close on October 30, 2026. General registration will open in January 2027.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 07:36, 13 October 2026 (UTC)