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News and notes: An exclusive club Wikipedia Co-Founder Larry Sanger gets a community ban for canvassing.
In the media: Battle for a soul – who won? Commissars, winners and losers, blocks or bans, a Wiki red card, social engineering on wikis, and Swift action!
On the bright side: Fatherhood, weather, and diplomacy Father's Day, Canada Day, and the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence.
User talk here is not archived. Old talk is deleted. Users are allowed to remove anything from their talk pages, or to ask others not to comment on their talk pages. See WP:OWNTALK and WP:USERTALKSTOP. and other wikipedia guidelines/policies. Like Wikipedia articles over time, people change, and there is little point in referring to past stale arguments and discussions.
To keep the discussion in one thread some comments added here are moved to the user talk page of the author. I reply there. I also watchlist that talk page for awhile in order to note when the user there replies. Harassing comments are also sometimes moved off this talk page. Sometimes the original author is offended by their own harassing comments, and my reply, on their user talk page. They then remove both from their talk page. I guess the light from their own verbal reflection offends them. One can find removed comments by using the history link on a talk page. Inappropriately-applied warning templates, etc.. are also removed from this talk page. Sometimes I remove stuff from my talk page for no particular reason, or for many varied reasons. Removal of comments from my talk page implies nothing. Don't take it personally. Unless I have requested otherwise, feel free to leave new messages on my talk page.
Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
I had an image from Flickr from a photographer I just dealt with. He made the mistake of changing his copyright license to a Creative Commons one--but not one we accept. I took his word for it that he removed copyright in favor of Creative Commons, but since I'd just uploaded two of his photos with a correct one we accept, it was my oversight that he made a mistake and I didn't check it. The result of this was that the photo was not accepted in Commons for upload. Fine. But now I can't get the damned thing to upload it now that the license is correct! How RUDE. I've been uploading photos for years- more than any other editor I know of on the en.wikipedia. It is for this photo: [1]. How can I fix this? --Leahtwosaints (talk) 14:38, 16 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
You have GOT to be the coolest Wikisloth with super-powers that I ever met!! For a Sloth, you sure move at a quick pace!! :) Do you wear a "super cape", I wonder? That would really complete the whole outfit and mystique.. I keep trying to think of things I could maybe do for you since you are such a blessing and a help... Hmmm. Did you ever contact Roger Ebert before his untimely demise? Is there perhaps a photo of someone that I can search for on your behalf? Just say the words. I feel a great debt to you for your help over these years. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 12:00, 17 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments1 person in discussion
Could you believe the dark hearts won in deleting this entry? And now an article I started is also up for deletion by some nobody called LuckyLouie. --HafizHanif (talk) 21:24, 19 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Timeshifter, would you be able to give your honest opinion regarding the deletion of Boyd's page? I think my suggestions at the discussion are fair and at least his memory as a scientist should be in wiki, regardless of the mention of any alien stuff. --HafizHanif (talk) 20:19, 21 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
It is interesting how other deleted pages usually have a trail of information, but Boyd's has nothing. I didn't get to read what the final verdict was ( other than obvious deletion ). --HafizHanif (talk) 21:38, 30 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I might have been buzzing through the disambig. page for the Van Morrison/Robbie Robertson song, "Caravan", seen here: Caravan (Van Morrison song) which they played during the filmed final concert "The Last Waltz" - if it's just my need for glasses please forgive me. Hopefully I'll have a computer soon. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 11:10, 22 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
What you saw was Flow.
The WMF has been eliminating most of their talk pages (user pages and some major mainspace pages), so you're forced to use Flow if you want to contact them to discuss problems with their projects. A particular problem is that they switched over all official contacts points related to Flow itself! That is particular problem for discussing Flow bugs. (Writing about the bug *in* Flow triggers the problem!)
You've only seen the tip of the iceberg. The list of problems with Flow is 142 feet long. Copy-paste is broken. A simple revert destroyed my original comment. Problems with templates. History is a disaster. The reply-threading turns modest-size discussions into unreadable spaghetti. You can't delete your own comments, much less someone else's. (You "hide" it, which leaves a link for it on the board.) IMO the biggest issue is that Flow does not store an accurate stable copy of what you write! Flow can randomly rewrite your formatting codes and nowikis etc. The way Flow works is kind of like translating your text into Russian, then translating it from Russian back to English when someone views or edits it. Sometimes those bugs can mangle your entire post into garbage during the rewrite. In fact Flow preforms that round-trip translation every time you try to preview what you wrote. So you preview, return to editing your wikitext, and Flow has REWRITTEN your wikitext! It's like editing on quicksand. There's no "truetext", everything Flow shows you is an illusion created on the fly.
It seems the WMF still wants to eventually get Flow deployed, but the good news is that they've realized that there are serious objections here. They have been *trying* to improve their relations with the community ever since the superprotect incident, with limited success. Putting Flow on hold has been one of the successes. The current official policy is that no Flow pages will be deployed without local consensus requesting it. I think they are hoping the tiny wikis start accepting it, and that eventually all the 'obstructionist-change-averse editors' get dragged along into the wonderful future. BTW there's a doc page where "Admins" and the most "Experienced" editors are defined as the change-averse groups. Lols.
There used to be 7 Flow pages on EnWiki. Activity has dropped to zero on every board where Flow gets deployed. One board was the Flow testing board: it died and was never fixed after an admin tried testing admin tools on it. I had a pair of abandoned boards deleted at MFD. I have another abandoned board at MFD with unanimous deletes so far. I have an open RFC at a dead wikiproject to roll back Flow - I *think* its passing but running an RFC inside Flow is a disaster. We can't move the discussion posts down to a separate discussion area, it's almost impossible to tell who is replying to who, and it is difficult to figure out which posts are !votes. Anyway, assuming it passes, that will leave us with two dead Flow pages. It's possible that EnWiki will be Flow-free in a month or two. I need to contact some of the other language Wikis with Flow to see if they want to move forward with Flow or start rolling it back. Alsee (talk) 17:28, 24 December 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Alsee: Thanks for all the info on Flow! I had to look up MFD. I see that it is Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. Are there any wikis using LiquidThreads still? The WMF or the devs or whoever is in charge (I have no clue), take simple requests for improvement (such as watchlisting sections of talk pages) and then go crazy with complete rewrites of all the code. Same for the request for a WYSIWYG editor. I just wanted a simple WYSIWYG editor that did the simple stuff, and did it in article sections. But they went crazy and created this monster VE that edits the whole page, and tries to do everything the wikitext editor does and more. I just want VE lite for section editing. Bold, italic, links. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:01, 26 December 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, I’m Chris, a community liaison in the Discovery department at the Wikimedia Foundation. One of the projects we’re working on is to bring interactive maps to Wikipedia. If you are interested, I’d like to have an informal conversation with you about your work with WikiProject Maps, and the conventions you all have created. I'd like to learn more about your work and how that might influence the design of interactive maps.
Please let me know of some good times to chat via email and I can setup a meeting for us. I can be reached at ckoernerwikimedia.org.
If you’re not interested, that’s fine. I would appreciate any direction to other editors that have been involved and might be interested.
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hi, I don't know if there is a procedure to let people know when an editor quits to place a semi-retired placard on their talk page. In the case of Catfish Jim, one of my closest editing friends from the past, his talk page is looking like he's here, when it's just Admin and other bots that deposit info on timed intervals. To my knowledge, he hasn't been working since before I went into a coma three years ago. I think it's March 2012: [2]. I'll leave this to you as an Admin. I'm only doing little edits and am still not healed so, if you don't do something with this, I hope you'll pass it to someone who will. Thanks. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 13:09, 27 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
As a member of WikiProject Cannabis, you are invited to help organize the project's upcoming "420" collaboration, which is scheduled for April 2017. Yes, we're a few months away, but we're hoping to get the ball rolling by getting buy-in from experienced Wikipedia editors and seek help fleshing out some goals and ideas for a successful campaign. We also plan to conduct both on-wiki and offlline outreach so non-Wikipedias can also contribute. If you are interested in participating, please sign up and contribute to the ongoing discussions. All editors are welcome! ---Another Believer(Talk)16:55, 10 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Dudley Miles. Thanks. Looks good. I adjusted and clarified a few things. Check history for explanations. I don't have MS Word. So I can't help there. I use freeware LibreOffice. Of that free office suite I only use Calc. And I am a beginner with it. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:02, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 years ago9 comments2 people in discussion
First I noticed that you undid the revision at Template:COVID-19 pandemic death rates by country/styles.css however it doesn't seem you have implemented the changes from User:Timeshifter/Sandbox119 there yet so the table is now no longer scrolling with sticky headers. Are you still planning to re-add those features? If yes is there a reason you're waiting to implement them?
Secondly, are you looking to create a table stylesheet that can be used to implement any of these features more generally, it seems to me this might be a good idea going forward if you are aware of any feature requests that have or are likely to recur.
Apologies if this has been asked and answered elsewhere I don't really have time to read through any of those discussions in full at the moment; thanks for your help. (please ping on reply)
Update: OK I just noticed the link to Template:COVID-19 pandemic death rates on the help talk page; I presume then that this supersedes Template:COVID-19 pandemic death rates by country? If so it should probably be redirected to the new table. Second question still stands; although as I mentioned earlier it will have to be a bit before I can start on it, thanks. (please ping on reply)
Thanks for clearing that up. Well if things are moving fast I probably won't be much help. I may drop in briefly every now and then for the next 2-3 weeks but substantive projects will have to wait until towards the end of the month at least. So I'm about to log-out in a few minutes but if you hit me with a ping I'll see it sooner or later.𝒬𝔔01:11, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Quantocius_Quantotius. I am assuming that the non-scrollable table template does not need the changes you made to it. Since those changes assumed it was a scrollable table. So I will revert your changes. Feel free to add back whatever you think is useful for a non-scrollable table. I haven't been working on that article and its template. Feel free to edit its CSS style sheet now that you know it is for a non-scrollable table.
I have been concentrating on the scrollable tables. Feel free to work on the CSS for those scrollable tables. I am a newb at CSS. I wish there was a collapse button to collapse the scrollable tables back to scrollbox size after they have been fully expanded by the "show all" button. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:27, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Belatedly Done please see Template:COVID-19 pandemic data. Let me know if there are any issues or if there are any other templates you would like this feature added to.Sorry for the delay, had a lot more IRL stuff to attend to than I anticipated. If I do get a bit of extra time I was planning on setting up a workspace on testWP so we can try to work on some additional css features of general applicability, but I do ask for your patience. I'm already a bit overcommitted to stuff here considering the volunteer time I have available.𝒬𝔔16:16, 25 October 2020 (UTC)Reply
(unindent). Thanks Quantocius Quantotius! There is a problem though. The collapse button only works on the template page. I just noticed this concerning "Show all" too. It works fine on the template pages. But when the 3 templates are together on COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory the buttons only work on the top template. So I guess the classes below are not specific enough. I copied the wikitext below from your recent addition to Template:COVID-19 pandemic data.
It works great on the template pages. But in the article with the 3 templates clicking any of the "show all" buttons in any table other than the top one does nothing. So the collapse buttons do not show up on the lower tables. Since they don't expand.
I created a sandbox just for you where you can experiment:
Izno. I believe you are mistaken. Mediawiki software converts everything it sees into what it puts on the page. The browser sees none of what is in the wikitext until Mediawiki converts it to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc..
<ul> in the wikitext in the case of side-by-side tables and/or images contributes nothing to accessibility.
Side-by-side tables and/or images look exactly the same with or without <ul> in the wikitext.
I am not mistaken. HTML text in wikitext passes straight through the parser as HTML (both Parser.php and Parsoid) in all cases (with some HTML causing additional changes to how the parser deals with the contained text; <pre> is a notable example). That is why we have an allowed list of HTML and CSS directly in the parser as part of Sanitizer.php: we do not want bad-faith actors to use HTML elements in malevolent ways.
Subsequently, to provide valid HTML per the HTML standard, <li> must be placed inside either <ol> or <ul>, whether in an actual HTML document or a MediaWiki wikitext document. Perhaps you did not understand the point that John was making.
(N.b. I am not speaking to wikitext as wikitext just to be clear e.g. * at the beginning of a line.)
If I may butt in: if y'all are talking about this edit vs. this one, then I can definitely see a difference, in both the HTML output and the rendered output of the page. Timeshifter's edit is missing the surrounding <ul></ul> in the browser HTML, and in the rendered output (at least in my browser), the images are placed closer to the left margin. So it seems that John and Izno are correct. Writ Keeper⚇♔21:04, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Writ Keeper. See my reply to Izno. Also, John like Izno was talking about inaccessibility problems, not the left margin. John and I discussed this elsewhere. And he did not show any inaccessibility problems. He just suspected there might be some. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:25, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Izno. As you said everything has to go through the parser, sanitizer, etc.. And in some cases the HTML is not allowed to be used. Some deprecated HTML for example. Some works. Some doesn't.
In the case of side-by-side tables I am not seeing any inaccessibility problem. See:
In this case <ul> serves no purpose except to mess up the left margin. Someone complained about this elsewhere. Removing <ul> fixes that problem, and it is more efficient code. Less to remember.
It allows tables to fit in narrower screens too. Since there is no left margin. Narrow your browser window on the sandbox page to see. The horizontal scrollbar shows up sooner on the lower set of side-by-side tables that have <ul>
What inaccessibility problem are you seeing? I see none when doing without <ul> in this sandbox case.
Yeah, no. Bold text that indicates an argument on how your device provides you content isn't how accessibility works. "I like less code" also isn't how we make decisions where accessibility is relevant. Much less conformant HTML. If you personally cannot remember that list item elements must be inside o/ul elements, then you specifically should not revert an editor correcting that issue; if you want to fix any particular display that you do not like, you need to ask how to do that, not revert. In this case, if you want to "fix" the left margin, the way to fix that is to set margin-left: 0 on the list item elements. Izno (talk) 21:33, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Izno. If you google style=display:inline-table you will see it used in many different ways. Many different ways without <ul>. I already knew about margin-left:0
I also already knew how to fix the problem without it. So I fixed it. You have yet to show me why my fix is incorrect. As in how it is inaccessible. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:44, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
You are barking up a totally weird tree if you think my concern has anything remotely to do with CSS display. I am strictly concerned about outputting both valid and accessible HTML, for which you must include ol/ul elements.
Izno. In my first reply to you, I mentioned screenreaders. You have yet to show me a problem with accessibility. There are many cases in wikitext that don't use the same full HTML that one would use as a webmaster. Long ago I did my share of basic web pages on Tripod, Angelfire, Geocities, etc.. So I know the difference. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:00, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Some people use screenreaders even though they have perfect eyesight. Some developers for example. But I take your point, and I ask everybody: What accessibility problems are you claiming? If you don't have a screenreader how can you claim anything unless someone with a screenreader tells you something? Send them to User:Timeshifter/Sandbox153. Ask them if their screenreader detects any difference other than the left margin. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:06, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Okay, first of all, it is not the responsibility of people who need accessibility aids to analyze a page for accessibility issues; it is our responsibility as editors (and as coders) to anticipate and address all such issues proactively. Second of all, look at this: [4]: specifically errors 11 and 12 (further errors suppressed). li tags are invalid HTML when used the way they are. (Granted, there are a ton of other errors, too, but that doesn't mean it's okay for us to throw a bunch more onto the pile; an analogy to WP:OTHERSTUFF comes to mind.) As Izno points out, screen readers parse the HTML structure of a page to present it to their users, and any invalid HTML can cause problems for screen readers; thus, it is incumbent on us as editors to avoid invalid HTML wherever possible, because being proactive about avoiding accessibility issues is our responsibility as editors. We should not wait until a person who depends on a screen reader to complain; if they complain, we have already failed. I don't think "I like the margin padding better" is reasonable as an excuse to use invalid HTML, especially when the same effect can be accomplished with valid HTML, and "I think the HTML looks better" is certainly not a reasonable excuse. Do better. Writ Keeper⚇♔22:30, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
I think you are making my case. There are 597 errors on that page. And additional warnings. HTML always has this problem. That is why we have transitional HTML versions, and so on. There will never be perfection.
Until we get someone with a screenreader to check out the sandbox (User:Timeshifter/Sandbox153), we are talking in circles. Mediawiki would be paralyzed if it held up everything until every single change in the mediawiki code was run by someone with a screenreader. And I have heard from someone with a screenreader who pointed out that a Mediawiki problem he experienced was annoying, but that the alternative was worse because it only helped him, but made things seriously worse for far more people. So everything is a balance. I find it annoying that you, John, and Izno are all going on strictly your suspicions, but without any evidence of a problem. I don't think there will be a problem. Screenreaders have no problem with basic tables with a single row of headers. As long as they have captions. That is what we have at User:Timeshifter/Sandbox153. See if you can round up someone with a screenreader. I will too. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:00, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Okay, so this conversation is indeed going around in circles, but I think it's for different reasons than the ones you're thinking. You started out by saying there was no difference in the page between your version and JohnFromPinckney's version: Side-by-side tables and/or images look exactly the same with or without <ul> in the wikitext. That is demonstrably false, though; there is both a visible difference and a difference in the HTML output. When this was pointed out to you, you said In this case <ul> serves no purpose except to mess up the left margin. Someone complained about this elsewhere. Removing <ul> fixes that problem. So, now, you're saying that you see the difference (in the left margin), and are remivng UL tags deliberately to fix that. But you see how that does not correspond with what you said forty minutes earlier and ten lines above, right? You're moving the goalposts. Now, you're demanding that a person who uses a screen reader come in and prove to you that there's an accessibility issue. But it should not take a blind person with a screenreader to tell you that you're messing up the page to convince you to stop inserting invalid HTML into a page. If there are hundreds of HTML problems with a page, we don't fix it by adding ten more. And honestly, the rules of how HTML works should be the baseline for any conversation about HTML in Wikipedia, even before we get into any questions about accessibility. The burden of proof is on you to justify why you're breaking the rules of HTML, and "I don't like the margin (which can be fixed with valid HTML)" and "it's nine bytes less code" does not cut it. Writ Keeper⚇♔00:42, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
(unindent). I have been clear all along that other than the left margin, the visible output is the same. Both versions are side by side tables that wrap. Someone else on the Help:Table talk page complained about the left margin. They did not like all the clutter of using <ul style="margin-left:0px;"> to get rid of the left margin. I experimented and noticed that getting rid of <ul> altogether got rid of the left margin. This allowed side by side tables to work in narrower screens with simpler wikitext. It is all on the talk page. You keep thinking that HTML in wikitext has to follow all the rules of HTML elsewhere. According to this w3schools page <p> without </p> is malformed HTML. But Help:HTML in wikitext says: "Note that the closing tag </p> is not strictly necessary for MediaWiki installations that output HTML 5 (such as Wikipedia)." There are many other examples of allowed HTML use in wikitext that does not follow the HTML rules elsewhere.--Timeshifter (talk) 02:00, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
...Okay, I'm not sure how this isn't clear yet, but none of us are concerned about what the HTML looks like in the wikitext (i.e. in the edit box, when you're editing the page). Of course that doesn't have to be valid HTML, because it hasn't gone through the Mediawiki parser to become true HTML yet. What we're all talking about is the output HTML of the rendered page (i.e. what you see if you view the page like a reader would and right-click to view source). The edits you're making are causing errors in the output HTML, *not* the wikitext. As I explained on VPT, the example you give eith the <p> tag is not a relevant comparison. The reason the page says that the closing p tag is optional is because, when the wikitext containing an unclosed p tag goes through the Mediawiki parser, the parser will automatically close the p tag for you. So, while there is an unclosed p tag in the wikitext, there is no unclosed p tag in the output HTML, because the parser fixes it for you. But the parser does not fix orphaned li tags in the same way, so using li tags without an enclosing ul tag will lead to invalid HTML in the output HTML, not just the wikitext. You can see this in action here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=parse&page=User:Writ_Keeper/sandbox . Notice how, although there is an unclosed p tag in the wikitext, the p tag is properly closed, and thus valid HTML, in the HTML code that the parser outputs. They're not the same thing. Writ Keeper⚇♔02:20, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
There is lots of other stuff that ends up in the output HTML that is not perfect HTML. Deprecated HTML, etc.. Others in the VPT thread have pointed out various examples. As I have said several times, if it doesn't effect anything then it doesn't matter. You have yet to show that this lack of <ul> here effects anything in a negative way. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:30, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Both JAWS and NVDA detect the version with ul as containing HTML lists but do not detect the HTML lists in the version without ul. Please do not use the latter version. Also, screen readers don't normally detect margins. Graham8702:42, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks Graham. I am confused though since technically there are no lists at all in either section. There are just 2 side by side tables in each of the 2 sections.
But no problem. We no longer need that method that uses the list HTML of li and ul.
isaacl found a simpler solution that only uses divs. It is elegant, legal, and simpler. I pasted it in as a third section on that sandbox page:
Sounds good re divs. Technically there are lists in the section that contains ul ... that is exactly what the ul tag does; it creates an unordered list. Whether it's *semantically* appropriate is another thing entirely ... but a list should be marked up properly in any case. Graham8703:02, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
(unindent). Graham. So your screen readers read the divs option OK at sandbox 153? Or below? I pasted it below so that others reading this thread can check it out too.
Total number of matches played in official competitions only.
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello :)
I am writing my MA dissertation on Wikipedia Wars and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I noticed that you have contributed to those pages. My dissertation will look at the process of collaborative knowledge production on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the effect it has on bias in the articles. This will involve understanding the profiles and motivations of editors, contention/controversy and dispute resolution in the talk pages, and bias in the final article.
For more information, you can check out my meta-wiki research page or my user page, where I will be posting my findings when I am done.
I would greatly appreciate if you could take 5 minutes to fill out this quick surveybefore 8 August 2021.
Participation in this survey is entirely voluntary and anonymous. There are no foreseeable risks nor benefits to you associated with this project.
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I realize we have been butting heads (in good faith!) a bunch recently. But I wanted to stop by and just say I appreciate the work you do maintaining tables across the website, ensuring text-citation integrity, and helping others understand how to maintain the encyclopedia. Thank you, and happy new year! Enjoy this stroopwafel – I saw "stroopwafel" in the WikiLove menu and needed to see what one is. They look delicious, but I can't say I've heard of one before, much less tried one :)
Latest comment: 11 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello everyone, and welcome to the 27th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 2025! Boy, does it feel good to kick off the year with an issue. Yep, it's been a year since we cleared out the 2022-2024 backlog with issues 23 and 24! Good times. Though in this case "a year" just means... 6 months? 😯 The salience of whatever joke I was planning to make here has vanished speedily. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:00, 31 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
WikiTextExpander by Polygnotus, is this edition's featured script. At the click of a configurable hotkey, this script will find and replace or link a configurable list of phrases within the selected text in all source editors (even in the comment/reply field!). Besides allowing the quick insertion of templated messages, this script greatly mitigates the WP:WTF? problem by providing both the legibility of familiar words and the convenience of shortcuts. And to those asking, the capitalization of "Wikitext" as "WikiText" was a necessary sacrifice for far-more-memorable acronymy.
CanonNi: AlertAssistant has been fixed and rewritten using OOUI instead of Twinkle's Morebits. Such modern, very tool. (Do note that the maintainer has since become inactive.)
NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh/AjaxLoader has been updated to use modern JS APIs that replace the browser's URL bar with the link you clicked on to load in place. The "back" (and "forward") buttons also work now. Cool, innit?
andrybak: Unsigned helper no longer shows an error when the message to sign was added in the earliest 50 revisions of a page's history. This is especially relevant to pages with short histories.
BilledMammal/Move+ needs updating to order list of pages handle lists of pages to move correctly regardless of the discussion's page, so that we may avoid repeating fiasco history.
In breaking m:Tech/News, Gadgets can now include .vue files. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons are now also available. The documentation has examples.
Appo/Globstory integrates OpenHistoryMap, updating the map whenever hovering/clicking on a location or year, the latter of which changes the map to be (hopefully) accurate to the year selected. It's pretty interesting.
linkinfo Somewhat similar to WP:NavPops, Awesome Aasim/linkinfo(pictured) provides a collection of links to replace the right-click context menu, presented beautifully.
PreviousDiscussions provides a link to search for your username on subpages of another user's userpage and talkpage conveniently.
Twineeea/noRedLinks brings you to the "read" instead of the "create" tab when you visit a red link. Contemplate life's mysteries as you stare into the blank! Deeply.
No, this is not going to be the enduring tradition of S++ for the future. This was meant to be a joke for the special occasion on the first day of the fourth month but was delayed by four months because I'm lazy.
Latest comment: 9 months ago5 comments2 people in discussion
@Timeshifter:, I noticed you provided only examples and a link to a talk pages as descriptions on the templates' talk pages {{Table TOC/doc}} and {{Table help/doc}}. I tagged them for improvement so you can a better more concrete description of the templates' usage. Listing the parameters and their purpose would be a good start. 8rz (talk) 03:25, 27 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
That is not how doc pages are written. At least provide more info on the template. I won't do it. I could but I choose not to. 8rz (talk) 03:53, 27 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
We released the "Add a Link" Structured Task to 100% of accounts at English Wikipedia on Tuesday, September 2nd (before then it was available to 20% of accounts).
After examining if the Growth features and Mentorship could be adapted to Wikidata, we activated the Growth features on Beta Wikidata to allow for testing and discussion (T400937).
Although some features, like Suggested Edits, are Wikipedia-specific, the Growth team designed most features to be more wiki-agnostic.
The machine learning team has been working on a new model that can suggest links to more languages, including Urdu, Chinese, and Japanese Wikipedias. We are starting to release the “Add a Link” feature to Wikipedias that weren’t supported by the previous model.
The Growth team is involved in several research initiatives to help guide our future work:
Progression System – We have published initial findings from interviews with 10 English and French Wikipedia newcomers.
The research examined motivations, challenges, and feedback on a prototype system intended to help editors build confidence, develop skills, and contribute more constructively over time.
Mobile Web Editing Research – This project combines quantitative and qualitative data, community feedback, and user journey analysis to identify possible ways to enhance the mobile editing experience.
Newcomers Survey – This project surveys successful newcomers on English Wikipedia to understand their early editing experiences, tool use, and community interactions.
The Growth team participated in several community events to listen, share, and collaborate on improving newcomer experiences across Wikimedia projects.
This session invited organizers to share how they introduce newcomers to Growth features and the challenges they encounter. The discussion focused on common newcomer questions and opportunities to strengthen collaboration in supporting new editors.
This talk demonstrated how Structured Tasks help newcomers take their first successful steps on Wikipedia. It shared impact data, community configurations, and a demo of “Add a Link,” illustrating how these tasks make editing more accessible and sustainable, particularly for mobile contributors.
With active editor numbers declining, the Contributors Strategy aims to create a clearer, more engaging path for participation. This session, led by the WMF Contributors group with involvement from the Editing, Growth, Moderator Tools, and Connection (formerly Campaigns) teams, highlighted efforts to streamline contributor experiences, offer structured and mobile-friendly workflows, and foster meaningful engagement. Participants learned about ongoing initiatives and shared feedback to help shape a more inclusive and sustainable future for Wikimedia contributors.
Many communities face a decline in volunteer engagement. Newcomers often leave soon after joining, while experienced editors struggle to manage increasingly complex workflows and overwhelming backlogs. We presented the Contributors Strategy and the different features and workflows that can help communities to address these challenges. We listened to the specific needs of the CEE communities to help guide the Contributors teams' work.
Latest comment: 7 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I really enjoyed your userpage specifically the sentence: Earth explorers went on multi-year voyages around the world. The nearest star is only 4 light years away. Only 4 light years! I could do that in my sleep! Polygnotus (talk) 08:38, 1 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Polygnotus: Thanks! May The Force Be With You! And if your starship is approaching very close to the speed of light it may seem like a night's sleep timewise due to time dilation the faster you are moving. Google AI says: At 99% of the speed of light, the astronauts would experience a trip of a little over four months. At 99.9% of the speed of light, the trip would take only about two months. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:04, 1 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I'm contacting users who signed up as participants of the Wikipedia:Help Project, about a discussion on brainstorming and choosing the first help page to draft on editing Wikipedia pages assisted by AI.
Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Thanks for supporting and advocating for the topics you do such as single payer healthcare AND UAP transparency topics. Too often ufology is considered toxic and grouped with less reputable conspiracy theories or pseudo-science, and associated with right-wing adjacent culture war issues, so I'm grateful for anyone looking to make this more bi-partisan and apolitical. Even skeptics have their bias in how and when they apply skepticism.
Mandatory 2FA for bureaucrats: Bureaucrats without two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled have already lost access to their advanced rights on 26 May. Those who do not enable 2FA may be automatically removed from the groups in mid-June 2026, and from that point onward, new members must have 2FA enabled before they can be added. (T423119, T423120)
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on May 8. Please help translate.
Highlights
Community Wishlist discussion: Product & Technology introduced changes meant to increase the number and complexity of wishes fulfilled, including the disbanding of the Community Tech team. They are engaging in discussions about a proposed direction for the wishlist from community members. Includes ways to structure annual voting, better tracking of wishes, removing focus areas, and staffing updates.
Digital Public Goods: The Wikimedia Foundation has become a member of the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA).
Better bot detection: A trial of hCaptcha on several Wikipedias, including English, French, and Japanese, showed it can effectively detect and deter bad-faith automated activity, on its own and by giving checkusers and stewards signals to look into. Based on these results, hCaptcha will be rolled out across all wikis. See the project page for technical information about the implementation and privacy protections.
Example of the Attribution Framework recommendations.
A better way to give credit: The Wikimedia Attribution Framework and API makes it simple for developers to fairly credit volunteer contribution. When anyone encounters Wikimedia content, we want them to know that it comes from our projects, and they are invited to participate.
Baby Globe joins the Reading Challenge: The Android and iOS Wikipedia apps released the 25-day reading challenge, to drive readers engagement through reading milestones. To track their reading streak during the challenge, users can add a widget featuring Baby Globe to their home screen.
Account security: The Foundation is technically enforcing that all privileges that enable users to take security- or privacy-sensitive actions can only be held by users who have enabled two-factor authentication. Logging in with passkeys is quicker than logging in without two-factor authentication. In addition, logged-in users can see a banner encouraging them to confirm their email address. These changes secure individual accounts as well as communities and the wikis.
Incident reporting form: The Foundation began a trial on English Wikipedia of the incident reporting form. 60% of unblocked logged-in users see a new Report button, allowing them to report conduct issues.
Encouraging account creation: Following a successful account creation experiment, an improved logged-out edit warning message will be deployed to all Wikimedia wikis this week. The change will only affect logged-out users on mobile web who open an editing session.
Wikimedia Android App: The Wikipedia Android App is at the Phase 1 of redesigning its Home Feed. The new feed includes two tabs: Community, featuring refreshed Explore content, and For You, with personalized reading recommendations based on reader interests and activity. The For You feed refreshes daily with updated suggestions.
Reading Lists feature: The Foundation is conducting an experiment to show the reading lists feature, which is still in development, to logged-out mobile readers to test whether it encourages account creation at a higher rate compared to the watchstar button. The experiment was launched on May 18 on German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu wikis, and will run for a month.
A design mockup of what the share card looks like.
Testing Suggestion Mode: Suggestion Mode was released as an A/B test for newcomer editors on the mobile website at ~15 Wikipedias. The experiment will measure its impact on the proportion of newcomer mobile web edit sessions that result in constructive (un-reverted) article edits. It will also evaluate the feature’s impact on editor retention and monitor changes in revert and block rates.
Wikifunctions now supports Wikidata references: References in Wikidata statements are now available on Wikifunctions, and you now can use external links in Wikifunctions-generated citations. This allows the use of more than 1.3 billion references available in Wikidata and adding them as citations to individual statements in Abstract Wikipedia.
Pilot wikis adopting Abstract Wikipedia: The Abstract Wikipedia team has identified five potential pilot wikis to assess their interest in adopting abstract articles on their wikis. The pilots are Malayalam, Bengali, Dagbani, Arabic, and Indonesian Wikipedia. If your community is interested in becoming a pilot, let us know on Meta.
Latest experiments: An upcoming experiment is testing whether we can serve readers better when a footnote click in read mode shows the full bibliographic information rather than flying them to the reference list. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 20, 21, 22, 23 include an experiment to test a new Share Card feature that allows readers to create visually engaging cards from Wikipedia articles and share them online See also the 92 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Tech blog moved to Diff: The migration of the Techblog to Diff is now complete: 138 posts going back over a decade have been successfully migrated. Diff is now happy to welcome technology-focused blog posts with renewed vigor.
What’s new in the Wikipedia Library: Access to the American Psychological Association was renewed and collections from the Harvard Business Review and Swiss Media Database (Swissdox) are now available to editors who are eligible for The Wikipedia Library.
New course on WikiLearn: A free self-paced online course, designed for researchers who want to make their field more visible on Wikipedia, was launched on WikiLearn. Share "Wikipedia for Researchers” if you work with early-career researchers, teach in an academic institution, or support open knowledge communities.
Wiki Mentor Africa: The first edition of Wiki Mentor Africa - Women Tech Summit brought together over 315 registered participants across Africa to learn, explore, and grow in tech together.
Let's Connect Learning Clinic: If you missed it, you can now watch the recording of the Let's Connect Learning Clinic "How to support up-and-coming groups in the movement as a long-time Wikimedian" with Wikimedistas El Salvador.
Sharing the Form 990s: The Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Endowment published their Form 990s, covering the fiscal year that ran from July 2024 to June 2025. The Form 990 is an annual form required of all nonprofit organizations in the United States. You can read the highlights on Form 990 for the Foundation and Form 990 for the Endowment on Meta-Wiki.
Wikimedia Enterprise: Wikimedia Enterprise's free API accounts gets a substantial upgrade across the Snapshot and On-demand APIs, including free access to Structured Contents Snapshots.
Board selection process: The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is reviewing and improving how it selects new members. The goal is to ensure that there is the right mix of expertise and community representation on the board. Join the conversation on 16 June at 17:00 UTC, and share your ideas on the talk page.
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. If you have feedback or suggestions about the bulletin, let us know at foundationbulletinwikimedia.org. For questions about the Wikimedia Foundation's work, contact us!
Simplifying account creation: The Foundation is working on improving the account creation process to reduce potential friction for newcomers to create an account. Improvements include making "Create Account" icon more prominent on mobile, simplifying the registration form, and introducing real-time username validation.
New U4C members elected: The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) has new members and has two remaining vacancies in Middle East & North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Wikimania conference program: The Wikimania 2026 program is now live! Take a moment to review the program, and, if you are logged in, you can mark your "must see” sessions with a star to start building your personal schedule. Register for a virtual ticket here, if you haven't signed up yet.
Screenshot showing the Explore Feed refresh in the Wikipedia app (from the Community tab entry point)
App Explore feed: The redesigned App Explore feed, now called "Home", has been released to all Android users. The update introduces a refreshed feed experience along with the first set of new content modules, including Did You Know, Places of Interest, Random Article, and a new end-of-feed experience. Additional content and improvements are planned in future releases.
Wikipedia games: The Which came first? daily trivia game is now available in the beta version of the Wikipedia iOS app in English, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish. The game uses historical events from Wikipedia’s “On This Day” content and challenges readers to guess which of two events happened first.
Reusing references: Sub-referencing, a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details, has been rolled out to Group 1 wikis and French Wikipedia following a successful pilot phase.
Article guidance: The Article guidance feature is being tested with some editors creating new articles on the Simple English, French, and Turkish Wikipedias. The experiment will soon begin on the Arabic and Bangla Wikipedias as well. The outlines guide less experienced editors in creating high-quality articles. A quick guide to markups used in outlines can be found on this page. Example outlines that can be adapted and instructions for how to adapt them are on this section of the project page.
Mobile Page Previews: The Page Previews experiment on mobile web has concluded with the decision not to roll out the feature. The results showed no statistically significant impact on reader retention – the primary success metric. Page Previews, which are already available on desktop and in the apps, display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and link to the full article when readers tap a blue link.
Wikifunctions: You can now add images to Abstract Wikipedia and the loading and display of test results when viewing Functions has been improved.
Wikidata: The Foundation is migrating the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) away from the Blazegraph backend since it no longer scales efficiently with Wikidata’s growth. The migration will take place in several phases. Here is the timeline.
Growth features: Growth features are now available at Wikidata! Wikidata administrators are still configuring the features through Community Configuration, but this update enables access to Mentorship (if configured), Impact, the Help Panel, and a simplified Newcomer Homepage (without Suggested Edits).
Mentors' management: The Growth team will soon provide a system to automatically suspend or remove inactive mentors from the list of mentors. Communities can already start configuring the process in the Community Configuration.
CollaborativeContributions: If you need help setting up the Collaborative Contributions and the Goal setting features, check out these video guides. These features allow you to view which edits are made during an event and allows the group to track progress against a goal with a public progress bar. Learn more.
Latest experiments: An upcoming experiment is testing whether we can serve readers better when a footnote click in read mode shows the full bibliographic information rather than flying them to the reference list. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News week 24 and 25 include how the user interface icon library is being updated. Most of the ~300 icons have been slightly refined and ~30 new icons have been added. See also the 62 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Digital Safety: Join a conversation about Using AI Safely. It'll explore risks & concerns of using AI tools in personal and organisational contexts and practical strategies to reduce those risks. It will take place at 03:30 UTC & 14:30 UTC on June 26. This session is not about using AI to edit Wikipedia. It's focused entirely on safe personal and organisational use.
Don't Blink: Read the latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values. Highlights include exploring the implications that new child safety regulations have on privacy online.
Grantmaking strategy & Affiliate model: Members of the Global Resources Distribution Committee (GRDC) and the Affiliations Committee (AffCom) met to advance two key movement initiatives: the development of a new Grantmaking strategy and a refreshed Affiliate Model. They produced initial proposals and advanced work on both initiatives ahead of broader conversations planned for Wikimania 2026.
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. If you have feedback or suggestions about the bulletin, let us know at foundationbulletinwikimedia.org. For questions about the Wikimedia Foundation's work, contact us!
Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on June 19. Please help translate.
This edition uses the new annual plan goals for this fiscal year (July 2026–June 2027).
Highlights
Wikipedia 25: Wikipedia's 25th birthday was celebrated with various projects designed to grow awareness and support for Wikipedia and the people who make it possible. This includes the virtual birthday event on January 15, which garnered 10,000 live viewers and 15,000 reactions. Find more details on all related projects and results in the program report.
Sustainable use of Wikimedia infrastructure: A valid user-agent string will now be required for automated dumps downloads from the dumps.wikimedia.org website. Automated requests that provide a generic or empty user-agent will be blocked. This extends enforcement of the long standing user-agent policy. Access to dumps through Wikimedia Cloud Services will not change.
Increasing account creation: The experiment providing direct access to “Create account” and “Log in” actions on mobile increased account creation by about 20% without negatively affecting edit quality. The feature will now be rolled out to all wikis on mobile web.
With Sub-referencing editors can reuse and add details to a main reference.
Add A Link: The Foundation deployed Add A Link as a default-on suggestion within Suggestion Mode. It is now launched on all wikis to all editors who have opted in to the Suggestion Beta Feature.
Reusing references: Sub-referencing, the new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details, was deployed to most small and medium-sized Wikipedia language versions.
Wikifunctions: Check out the 71 new functions with implementations to get a taste of what functions have been created.
Range calculator: The special page Special:RangeCalculator has been created. It allows users to find an IP range without needing to rely on external tools. Until now, this tool was only available to CheckUsers.
Captcha verification: Abuse filters that are set to “require CAPTCHA verification” now also affect users with the skipcaptcha right, which includes most autoconfirmed users. Bots are exempted. This change only affects edits that trigger an abuse filter.
Latest experiments: An upcoming experiment is testing two variations of a "thank you" badge shown to donors after a recent donation to deepen the relationship between donors and the Wikimedia movement. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
Account security on private wikis: Two-factor authentication will become mandatory for user accounts on private wikis. This will protect private information from being exposed by an account with a compromised password.
Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News week 26 and 27 include users will now get a notification when they are blocked or unblocked from editing, or if this block changes. See also the 65 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Team Challenges: The core organizing team for Wikimania is introducing Team Challenges, a different approach to Wikimania Hackathon. This year, Wikimedians and professionals from other fields will join forces to undertake one of the 2026 technical challenges.
Wikimedia Hackathon: A look at the 2026 edition of Wikimedia Hackathon which brought together 216 participants from 29 countries building, collaborating, and shaping the future together.
Wikimedia Hubs: The Hub Fund will pause funding for new pilots in fiscal year 2026–2027 to align with the work on the Ecosystem of Movement Organizations and the Global Resource Distribution Committee. Existing pilots in transition will be offered an additional year of funding.
Open Knowledge And Digital Rights: Wikimedians shared their reflections on how Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum reinforced the role of our movement within broader digital rights conversations.
Journalism Award: Wikimedia Foundation announced three journalists from Africa as recipients of the Open the Knowledge Journalism Awards, run in partnership with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). The awards celebrate the essential role journalists play in creating well-researched articles that volunteer editors can use as source materials to develop content on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. In total, 320 submissions were received from 40 African countries.
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. If you have feedback or suggestions about the bulletin, let us know at foundationbulletin@wikimedia.org. For questions about the Wikimedia Foundation's work, contact us!
Note: Alerts are no longer necessary. Please see Wikipedia:Contentious topics/Awareness repeal FAQ for more information.
wikimedia.org.
Done please see Template:COVID-19 pandemic data. Let me know if there are any issues or if there are any other templates you would like this feature added to.Sorry for the delay, had a lot more IRL stuff to attend to than I anticipated. If I do get a bit of extra time I was planning on setting up a workspace on testWP so we can try to work on some additional css features of general applicability, but I do ask for your patience. I'm already a bit overcommitted to stuff here considering the volunteer time I have available.𝒬𝔔 16:16, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
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