Wikipedia 25/Easter egg experiments
Turn on Birthday mode to celebrate 25 years of Wikipedia
[edit]Birthday mode is now available for communities to customise
[edit]This campaign feature is now live! There are still two updates to come later in the week, but from 23 February, communities are able to fully customise the feature for readers by visiting "Special:Community Configuration" on your wiki.
The feature will be available until 6 April 2026.
Information for admins:
You can now turn on the feature as well as configure it by visiting "Special:Community Configuration" on your wiki.
Information for readers:
If you're visiting Wikipedia in any of the language Wikipedias listed below and you are curious about the "Birthday mode (Baby Globe)" switch in the Appearance Settings on Desktop and Settings on Mobile – well done! You just found a semi-secret easter egg! Turn it on and see if you can find Wikipedia's 25th birthday mascot as you explore Wikipedia. Get to know Baby Globe better.
Participating wikis:
- Betawi
- Breton
- Chinese
- Czech
- English
- French
- Gorontalo
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Luxembourgish
- Dutch
- Madurese
- Sicilian
- Spanish
- Thai
- Vietnamese
- Wayuu
Community Configuration Demo
[edit]To help you navigate and understand better what can be customized for Birthday Mode under the Community Configuration, we have prepared a short demo video.
Timestamps:
- 0:06 - Intro
- 0:42 - How the Birthday Mode will look on wiki
- 1:26 - A glance at the predefined list of articles the Baby Globe will appear on
- 4:07 - Going through the global Community Configuration settings
- 5:45 - Customizing Baby Globe special animation filters
- 12:17 - Closing: Let us know if you need any help!
Feature updates on 23 February
[edit]This campaign feature was in a soft launch period from 16 February to 22 February. We spent the time testing the feature out, fixing technical issues and got great feedback from many of you that helped us make it better! Thank you for the ongoing support and enthusiasm! It is really exciting to be able to see the feature in action and hear how people respond to Baby Globe.
This is the second-last update we will be making to the feature. Two more updates are coming later this week and then we will only do bug fixes until turning the feature off on 6 April.
23 February changes:
- UI copy for Community Configuration updated. We also added a video overview of how the configuration works above.
- Learn more on Minerva is changed to Birthday mode (Baby Globe) settings.
- It is now possible for admins to turn Birthday mode on by default for readers.
- Updated the predefined list of QIDs.
- The Wikipedia portal page was updated to show Synthesizer Baby Globe with the great "Welcome to Wikipedia" recordings many community members shared! Thank you for helping to make this version so special 💙
Later this week, we will also be adding the last two special versions of Baby Globe to the feature. We will share an update once it is live.
As always, please let us know if you have any questions or spot a bug!