Ckoerner

Thank you

Thank you for endorsing my TPS. I really appreciate it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kwameghana (talk • contribs) 00:18, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

My pleasure. If you don't mind I'd love to see your photos when you return from your trip. Please send me a link if you get a chance. Ckoerner (talk) 17:13, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Sure I will --Kwameghana (talk) 00:37, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Movement Wide Finance Report 2014

Dear Ckoerner,

I’m Alex, currently a finance fellow (i.e intern) at the Wikimedia Foundation. I worked before for Wikimedia France, planning the Hackathon Lyon 2015 mainly. I'm today contacting you because of your activity for Wikimedia MediaWiki Steakeholder User Group.

Last year, Finance Fellows produced a financial report that included financial activity from every chapters. It was great and has been presented at the Wikimania in Mexico.

If you haven’t seen the results of the Report 2013, here they are: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter-wide_Financial_Trends_Report_2013

We’re currently starting the Report 2014 and this year we also want to include user groups to improve the scope of our work. I want to tell you that I’ve tried to make the process as short and easy as possible, so that shouldn’t require a lot of your time.

The aim of such a report is global. It helps having an idea of how the money is used across the movement, it helps chapters and user groups to learn about best practice and finally it leads to more transparency through a qualitative work, which I believe is important.

Could you briefly tell me if you had any income and expenses in 2014? If you are not the person responsible for this, please tell me who is the user the most likely to know this information.

I’ll be your contact for this project this year, I’m looking forward to working with you!

Cheers, ACella (WMF) (talk) 22:51, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello Alex! I think you want to talk to Marcus Glaser User:Mglaser or Mark Hershberger User:MarkAHershberger for information about expenses. Ckoerner (talk) 17:03, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Chris!

Re: Income/Expenses. This year we were self-funding. A big part of this was possible because we relied on travel grants from the WMF and used free tools (Amazon's free tier of AWS, and servers I already lease personally). Now that you mention "income" though, it makes me think about how we might generate some and increase our activities. -- ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 18:21, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Hetty Reckless

— Coffee // have a cup // beans // 12:01, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Nomination of Christina Warren for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Christina Warren is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christina Warren until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. HappyValleyEditor (talk) 06:36, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Christina Warren references

Hello! I am surprised to see you work for the Wikimedia foundation. Could you please have a look at WP:RS and refresh yourself on what consitutes a strong source? The recent addition of references published on christinawarren.com, Twiiter and the like to Christina Warren are not good references. Yes, Twitter can sometimes be used for uncontroversial referecne support. But in this case you were using CHristina Warren's own Twitter account as the reference! Honestly, if you work for Wikimedia, onw would expect that you would know what a reliable source is before you started editing an article. Prior expereince is not a requirement for the general public... but come on, you work for Wikimedia? My suggestion is that you should know better. HappyValleyEditor (talk) 17:23, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello HappyValleyEditor. Thanks for the note. I did look through the guidelines on reliable sources. I also looked at WP:BLPSPS where it states, "Never use self-published sources – including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets – as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject" - emphasis mine. I understood that statement to say that my citations were in line with community expectations. Apologies if my interpretation of the policy was incorrect.

I'm just as surprised that I work at the Wikimedia Foundation. So far I've enjoyed the short time I've been here. It's a great opportunity to work with many diverse people with different approaches to the movement. As you can see from my edit history, I am new to this corner of the community. I have created a very small number of new articles and have made my edits with good faith and civility. I would appreciate it if you would approach my volunteer edits with the same hospitality that you would for any new editor, regardless of my employ. Ckoerner (talk) 19:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry but the fact that you work for "the company" means you should be more familiar with the editing policies. Yes the Twitter references are technically ok, but they are the most minimally desirable, being just a shade past entirely invented. The notability of the article you created is suspect as well. Newbies get a warm welcome on Wikipedia (most of the time) and one expects them to make mistakes and learn in the process. This volunteer does not mind helping them. However when you work for Wikipedia, I think it is safe to say that you are subject to a higher standard, and you should familiarize yourself better with the policies. Would you expect an employee Apple to know how to properly use a Mac computer, or an employee of Adobe to know something about how to use Photoshop? I think the answer is yes. In any case, welcome aboard!HappyValleyEditor (talk) 22:06, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

With respect to the maps...

Hi, Thanks for the information, I think it could serve, although the original idea was coloring the municipalities I think it's probably better and easier to put them markers also seems very easy to edit, is now available for all wikis ?. PS: Sorry for so late answer... and the bad English... use automatic translator. Miguu "Mexican Synarchism and Nationalist Front of Mexico=Nazism" 23:33, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank You

Hi Chris, thank you for helping me improve the accuracy of the Maritz LLC Wikipedia Page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritz,_LLC). I'm also a new user to Wikipedia and want to ensure I follow all Wikipedia rules, so if you have any feedback or tips for me to make revision requests as easy as possible for those without a COI (conflict of interest), please let me know. I have submitted more edits to the page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Maritz,_LLC) to further improve the accuracy and was wondering if you wouldn't mind reviewing and incorporating the proposed changes to improve the page. It includes adding new information to the history section and a few additions to the facts section to ensure the page is completely updated. Please let me know if you have any questions about the proposed revisions.

MadisonfromStanding (talk) 19:58, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Most edited article report

Hi Chris, it was nice meeting you today. The report I mentioned is at User:DataflowBot/output/Top 20 enwiki articles by edits and editors in past 7 days (id-1) (with Pokemon Go at #8). Plantdrew (talk) 02:25, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Ah, great! It was nice meeting you as well. Thank you for humoring all of my questions. :) Ckoerner (talk) 15:22, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Ingress (video game)

That was a good suggestion, and I've implemented it. --Thnidu (talk) 16:29, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Abby Miller

Hello. My name is Abby Miller and I don't understand why the wrong information regarding my birthday keeps popping up on your site. It's incorrect and could cause concern with my job. I would very much like the incorrect birthday removed. (Dec. 30, 1978) how do I do this? What do you need from me? Thank you so much! Miller abby (talk) 03:28, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Hello Abby. Sorry for any stress this has caused you. I can't speak for all editors, but when information is removed from an article without reason that can be perceived as a bad thing. As an encyclopedia we're trying to share more of the world's knowledge, not less! :) I saw that the birth date was removed without reason and simply put it back.

I see that there are no citations for the birth date and so it has been removed. Wikipedia has many policies regarding the biographies of living people. Which in this case handling an unsourced birthday is pretty clear (That's a long and nerdy link, so beware!). If something like this happens again, where there is inaccurate information that needs to be addressed, the best thing to do is leave a note on the talk page for the article and ask for help. You can also post a new section on the noticeboard for biographies of living people to get the attention of editors who are interested in shepherding this corner of Wikipedia.

I hope that helps explain things. I wish you the best of luck in your career! Ckoerner (talk) 16:13, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Protect user pages by default

A request for comment is available on protecting user pages by default from edits by anonymous and new users. I am notifying you because you commented on this proposal when it was either in idea or draft form. Funcrunch (talk) 17:53, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Too late, I already commented! :) But thank you for the notification Funcrunch. Good luck on the RfC. Ckoerner (talk) 23:58, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Hey Chris. After a discussion at T149445, it looks like a filter is a better approach to implementing these changes. We're developing some language for a message that editors will see when the filter is triggered. Comments and suggestions on this message are welcome at the talk page. Take care, I JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 15:59, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Page blanking Facebook

Hello, I'm Semmendinger. I noticed that you recently removed some content without adequately explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an accurate edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry; the removed content has been restored. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. Semmendinger (talk) 15:05, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

I have blocked this account as it appears to have been compromised. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 15:19, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

This blocked user is asking that his block be reviewed on the Unblock Ticket Request System:

Ckoerner (block log • active blocks • global blocks • autoblocks • contribs • deleted contribs • abuse filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

---

UTRS appeal #16891 was submitted on Nov 12, 2016 19:38:31. This review is now closed.

--UTRSBot (talk) 19:38, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks all for your help. I've regained control of my account and changed all passwords. Ckoerner (talk) 22:51, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

BES Utilities

The passage I am deleting is a totally factually incorrect The news papers pieces used to verify are a press release by bes themselves The did not have a court victory It was settled out of court They are outright lies Chasen121 (talk) 17:04, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Chasen121, That's a great distinction. Perhaps it's still worth mentioning? In the context of the settlement (not a court victory) and that it's according to the company's own press release, but not to remove it entirely? Ckoerner (talk) 19:37, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Stakeholders Group

The March 2018 meeting minutes are listed as March 2017. I’m not able to edit the page, but here’s a link to it: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.116.128.20 (talk) 13:38, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the tip, I've fixed the label. Ckoerner (talk) 22:26, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Andy Cohen and racism

Hello Ckoerner (or should I say 172.13.199.59?). You have reverted an edit on Andy Cohen by saying that the source is not reliable per WP:RSSELF. The source is his verified twitter account. Can't get more reliable than that. --1.136.111.144 (talk) 23:27, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Hey 144, I can never tell how familiar IP editors are with the policies around here, so apologies up front if I'm telling you something you already know. Wikipedia is based on reliable secondary sources of information to back up claims. Tweets are considered self-published. The first bullet in the policy states, "The material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim." Emphasis mine. An exceptional claim is clarified as, "surprising or apparently important claims not covered by multiple mainstream sources;". Anyone on Twitter can claim to be anything. You could go on Twitter and claim you're Gabe Newell and that Half-Life 3 is coming out for Christmas. That doesn't make it something worth adding to an encyclopedia. Now, if a reliable source were to publish a report that this was true, then we could talk about how this could be included in the article. We also have a belief in assuming good faith, which at this point I'm afraid I can’t do. As such, here's what I'm going to do. I've reverted the addition (Edit: someone else beat me to it). I added a note on the talk page of the article for folks who want to work constructively. I also asked for the page to be protected for a bit. Cheers. Ckoerner (talk) 03:30, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

The twitter account sourced is verified. It is straight from Andy Cohens mouth. And when someone says he is a racist that is notable. Here is the first hand primary source. --1.136.111.144 (talk) 05:49, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Nope. I’m afraid you didn’t read a thing I wrote. I’m ending my part in this conversation. Ckoerner (talk) 12:17, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Greetings

	Nice to meet you ~
	Thanks for your edits on Bill Paxton ~mitch~ (talk) 18:53, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Another Thank you

Hi Ckoerner, I'm a current MLIS student hoping to work with medieval manuscripts and early print culture. For one of my information science classes, we're exploring how Wikipedia information is edited. Back in October 2023, I was looking at Wikipedia's page on John/Eleanor Rykener. I was disappointed with the pronoun usage, since it felt so behind current research by medievalists. When returning to the page in March 2024 for my class, I was pleasantly surprised to see "he/him" pronouns removed and replaced with "Rykener." Since Eleanor's life predates modern conceptions of trans identities, it's hard to know what pronouns Eleanor would have preferred. While I think "she" and "they" are both appropriate, I recognize the academic safety in using "Rykener," or simply Eleanor. I want to voice my sincere appreciation for you editing a page on such a niche subject! I'm rather new to the Wikipedia-editing world, but I recognize how important this work is, especially for those marginalized throughout past and present.

With gratitude, Amstyles2022

See referenced Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John/Eleanor_Rykener — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amstyles2022 (talk • contribs) 18:54, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the refresh

In case you're still looking at it, several sections of Tim Bray are also quite a bit out of date; I dropped some citations into the talk page back in January. There is much better-known software than in the current section, also I published a book, also one of the companies I founded no longer exists, also a couple more RFCs. Tim Bray (talk) 01:38, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I had a few minutes and gave it a little attention. :) Ckoerner (talk) 21:32, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks so much! One little typo: "co-edited a book Titled Standing on high ground":

• "Titled" isn't part of the title
• The title uses title case: "Standing On High Ground"

Tim Bray (talk) 16:15, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Gah! Sorry for the typo. Fixed. Ckoerner (talk) 13:50, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedians of Chicago: May 2026 Meetup

Hello - this is Luiysia again with Wikimedians of Chicago! For May, we will be having a casual in-person meetup at Jackalope Coffee and Tea from 24 May 2026, from 2-4pm.

Here is the official meetup page, where you can register for the online and in-person edit-a-thon.

See you soon!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:49, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-19

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 Article guidance team invites experienced editors of pilot Wikipedias—Arabic, Bangla, Japanese, Portuguese, Persian, Turkish, Simple English, Spanish, and French—to help translate and adapt sample outlines. These outlines will guide editors in creating clear, well-structured, and policy-compliant articles when using the feature once it is launched in May 2026. Simple instructions on how to translate and adapt the outlines are available.

Updates for editors

• The Product and Technology Advisory Council has published draft recommendations on a model that affiliates can follow when contributing to the technical space. Community members are invited to provide feedback on the recommendation until May 8th on the talk page.
• The number of available thumbnail size preferences in MediaWiki is being reduced to three standardized options—Small (180px), Regular (250px), and Large (400px), as part of ongoing efforts to improve performance and reduce strain on thumbnail services. As a result, existing preferences will be mapped to the nearest new size (for example, smaller selections like 120px or 150px will render at 180px, while larger ones like 300px or 360px will render at 400px). The preferences interface will soon be updated to reflect these changes, and users who wish to opt out or provide feedback can do so.
• From now on, even when a permission expires automatically, users will receive an Echo notification similar to the standard notification for permission changes. There is a difference between this and Global reminder bot in that the latter reminds users a week before the rights are due to expire, so that they can renew the rights.
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the problem where the ULS language selector in Special:Translate would scroll vertically when it shouldn't, has been resolved. Previously, when users opened the "Translate to English" dropdown and typed certain inputs, the dialog would scroll vertically by a few pixels even when there was enough space to display all results. The dropdown no longer shifts unnecessarily when filtering languages.
• The Global Watchlist, which lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on a single page, continues to improve. For example, watchlists for Wikibase sites such as Wikidata now support EntitySchema elements for better tracking. The Live Updates mode now refreshes the special page every 60 seconds to comply with the updated global API rate limits for improved real-time responsiveness. Additionally, a directionality bug that displayed links as "changes 3" instead of "3 changes" in mixed-direction lists has been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• The second phase of global API rate limits has been rolled out to reduce the impact of AI crawlers and ensure fair, sustainable access to Wikimedia resources, prioritising human and mission-aligned traffic. Limits have been shifted from per-hour to per-minute, producing smoother traffic patterns and more predictable API load. Community users are not expected to be affected, and no action is required. Early indications show some User-Agent-based requestors are adjusting behaviour, and around 64% of automated API traffic has been identified. Monitoring continues, and Wikimedia Enterprise remains available for commercial support.
• 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 20:41, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-20

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

• Community Tech has published new guidance explaining how wishes on Community Wishlist are triaged and prioritized. The documentation is intended to help contributors write stronger proposals by clarifying the factors that influence prioritization decisions. Beyond vote counts, the guidance highlights considerations such as potential impact on the community when determining which wishes move forward.

Updates for editors

• The Reader Growth team is launching an experiment to test a new Share Card feature that allows readers to create visually engaging cards from Wikipedia articles or selected article sections and share them online, with each card linking back to the original article to help expand readership and article discovery. The mobile-only A/B test will be available to a portion of readers on Arabic, Chinese, French, Vietnamese, and English Wikipedia to better understand reading and sharing habits, and is scheduled to begin the week of May 18 and run for four weeks.
• The Android and iOS Wikipedia apps recently released the 25-day reading challenge into Beta, as part of efforts to drive reader engagement by encouraging users to complete reading milestones. To track their reading streak during the challenge, App users can add a widget featuring Baby Globe to their home screen. The challenge officially begins May 11.
• View all 17 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the global preference for enabling syntax highlighting in wikitext could unexpectedly disable itself after being turned on, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• The ResourceLoader module mediawiki.ui.input, deprecated since September 2023, will be removed this week. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it.
• 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 19:18, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-21

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 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. The feedback period will be open until May 22. If your community is interested in becoming a pilot, let us know on Meta.

Updates for editors

• An experiment to show Reading Lists to logged-out readers on mobile web will launch on May 18 across German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu Wikipedias, and will run for one month. The effort supports broader goals of helping readers save and organize articles for later reading, while encouraging habits that could lead to future Wikipedia contributions.
• To support a bookmark button in the Reading List beta feature, the "Tools > Action" menu has been updated to display icons, including the watch star indicator that helps editors identify temporarily watched articles. The icons now also match those used on mobile, improving consistency across platforms. The change is currently limited to the actions menu and mainly affects editors with privileged user rights.
• Suggestion Mode was released as an A/B test for newcomer editors on the mobile website at ~15 Wikipedias. The experiment will measure the impact that Suggestion Mode has on the proportion of newcomer mobile web edit sessions that result in constructive (un-reverted) article edits. The experiment will also evaluate the feature's impact on editor retention, and monitor changes in revert and block rates.
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue in the Wikipedia Android app where images could sometimes fail to load after opening a recommended reading list notification, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• The Wikidata Platform team has published its backend replacement recommendation and accompanying technical architecture for the migration of the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) away from Blazegraph. Feedback is invited until May 25th 2026, especially on potential gaps and impacts on advanced use cases. Wikidata community members and WDQS users are also encouraged to help identify high-impact tools and workflows that may need attention on this page. Feedback can be shared on the Migration talk page or during the next office hour. See the WDP team newsletter for more details.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• On English, French, Japanese, and a few other Wikipedias, there was a trial of hCaptcha, a third-party bot detection service. The trial showed that hCaptcha effectively detects and deters some bad-faith automated activity, on its own and by giving checkusers and stewards signals to look into. Because the results were positive, hCaptcha will be rolled out across all wikis over the next few weeks. See the hCaptcha project page for technical information about the implementation and privacy protections. Learn more.
• The latest Community Tech update is now available, with progress across several Community Wishlist initiatives, including Reading Lists expansion from the mobile app to the website, new language support for "Who Wrote That" and the Personal Dashboard, improvements to 3D rendering and Charts, and upcoming work on talk page sorting, audio playback, and editing workflows. The update also shares current priorities, wishlist status trends, and opportunities for community feedback on future focus areas and the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2026–2027 Annual Plan. Read the full newsletter for details.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:19, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-22

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

• Following a successful account creation experiment, an improved logged-out edit warning message will be deployed to all Wikimedia wikis in the first week of June. The change will only affect logged-out users on mobile web who open an editing session. The updated experience is designed to encourage account creation more clearly, while still allowing users to edit with temporary accounts. Results from the experiment showed a significant increase in account creation, with a 27% relative lift among users shown the updated message. As expected, as more people funnel into account creation, temporary accounts decreased by a relative 16%. The experiment did not show any significant changes in constructive edit rates or other monitored contributor metrics.

Updates for editors

• For security reasons, members of certain user groups are required to have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled. Members of these groups will be unable to disable the last 2FA method on their account, and it will be impossible to add users without 2FA to these groups. Users will still be able to add new authentication methods or remove them, as long as at least one method is continuously enabled. In the next few weeks, users without 2FA will be removed from these groups. Notably, this applies to bureaucrats. See the linked tasks for deployment schedules.
• WMDE Technical Wishes will run an A/B test on 10 wikis, testing potential improvements for Reference Previews. The experiment will run for ~2 weeks at the end of May / beginning of June and will affect 10% of desktop readers on the participating wikis.
• After two successful experiments, the Reader Growth team is rolling out an Image Browsing beta feature for all Wikipedias on mobile on May 25. This means that anyone who has all beta features on by default will start to see this feature, and others can check the box to turn it on in their preferences. The beta feature will include a carousel of all an article's images at the top of the article, with controls for editors to exclude images from the article's carousel or to exclude an article from the feature entirely.
• View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, three dimensional STL files were being rendered incorrectly by the media viewer 3D extension which is now fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• The legacy CSS classes tleft and tright have been replaced with floatleft and floatright as the former do not work consistently across all MediaWiki platforms, notably mobile web and mobile apps. Projects relying on these classes are encouraged to review related usage and plan for migration. Please note that floatleft and floatright may also be deprecated in future, although there are currently no plans to do so. 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 21:50, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-23

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 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 18th on German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu wikis, and it will run for a month.
• The Wikimedia Apps team released Phase 1 of the redesigned Home Feed to the Android Beta app. The new Home Feed includes a refreshed "Community" tab and a personalized "For You" tab featuring daily updated reading recommendations. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve content discovery and create more engaging learning experiences in the Wikipedia apps.
• View all 18 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where images could fail to load for some suggested edits on Special:Homepage, leaving the thumbnail stuck in a loading state, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• 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 21:06, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-24

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

• Wikimedia Enterprise has increased the free usage limits for its API offerings. The monthly request limit for the On-demand API has increased from 5,000 to 50,000 requests, while the Snapshot API limit has increased from 15 to 30 requests per month. In addition, Structured Contents snapshots are now available for free accounts. These changes expand access to Wikimedia Enterprise data for developers, researchers, and organizations using Wikimedia content.

Updates for editors

• The refreshed Explore Feed, now called the Home Feed, is rolling out to 50% of users of the Wikipedia Android app. The Home Feed helps readers discover relevant content through two new tabs: Community and For You. The Community tab provides a scrollable feed of curated content and updates from the broader Wikimedia community and movement, while the For You tab offers a full-screen, swipeable experience that shows content tailored to a user's interests. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve discovery and enhance the learning experience in the Wikipedia app.
• 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. The game was previously released on Android. Communities interested in making the game available in their languages can read the instructions and requirements.
• Sub-referencing, a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details, will begin rolling out to Wikimedia wikis following a successful pilot phase. Deployment will start on 8 June for most Group 1 wikis and French Wikipedia, with additional Wikipedia language editions receiving the feature over the coming months. Communities are encouraged to prepare by checking for untranslated Cite extension messages in their language and reviewing any use of Reference Tooltips, which may require updates to support the new functionality. Wikis using Reference Previews do not need to take any action. Communities may also wish to create the cite-tracking-category-ref-details tracking category as a hidden category using __HIDDENCAT__ (or a dedicated template), and connect it to the corresponding Wikidata item d:Q129764848.
• The Page Previews experiment on mobile web has concluded. The team decided not to roll out the feature after the results showed no statistically significant impact on reader retention, as the primary success metric was retention improvement. 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. The experiment tested this experience on mobile web across six Wikipedias.
• The user interface icon library will be updated later this week or next week. Most of the ~300 icons have been slightly refined and ~30 new icons have been added. These changes improve the icons to make them more consistent and comprehensible, and provide more visual balance when they are used in groups.
• The Universal Language Selector (ULS) interface in MediaWiki, which helps users select content in other languages, has been updated. The new version improves speed and accessibility, and users of Wikimedia projects can now pin languages for quicker language switching. The deployment to Wikimedia sites will happen gradually in the coming weeks. You can test it now as a beta feature by selecting beta features in your profile preferences and share your feedback on the project page.
• View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the Pageviews Analysis dashboard on pageviews.wmcloud.org stopped updating graph data in May 2026, affecting all users, has been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• The function signature for mw.util.addPortletLink() has been simplified. Developers can now pass a configuration object instead of a list of positional parameters when creating portlet links. The previous function signature remains supported for backwards compatibility. For example, instead of: mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', '#', 'Stub', 'ca-stubtag', 'Add a stub tag to this page'); use mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', { href: '#', text: 'Stub', id: 'ca-stubtag', tooltip: 'Add a stub tag to this page' });. Script maintainers are encouraged to review existing uses of addPortletLink() and update them where appropriate. This change will be available on all wikis from 11 June. Thanks to community volunteer Gerges for contributing this improvement.
• 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.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:28, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Comment about AI images

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-09-26/Gallery: That Cleopatra image is exactly why I'm concerned about AI media on Commons. It's the default image used when this article is shared on social media. Out of context, does it over time become the default representation of the subject? Preferred over other art representing the subject? Used because it's the most "interesting"? The image has no basis in reality. There's no research into what dress folks wore back then, no careful representation of ethnicity or culture, it perpetuates modern beauty standards, etc. It's a refinement of noise from a sludge of data.
I intend to promote this user subpage of mine to RfC later this week. Whether that specific RfC would apply to that particular image of Cleopatra may be debatable, but if it passes it may get extended with other cases in the future anyway. If you have any insights (perhaps from WMF's POV?) I'd be interested. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 09:09, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-25

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 Reader Growth team has launched an Image Browsing beta feature on the mobile web version of all Wikipedias. The feature shows an image carousel at the top of articles with 3 or more images. Editors can configure this feature with the following controls: to hide a specific image from a page, either use class=notpageimage excluding it from thumbnail previews, or class=noviewer excluding it from MediaViewer. The carousel can also be disabled from a page entirely, with the magic word __NOMEDIAVIEWERCAROUSEL__. To submit feedback or flag bugs, please visit the project page.
• Wikitables can now be sorted in descending order on the first click by adding data-sort-order="desc" to the header cell. Previously, by default, clicking a column header for the first time sorts it in ascending order. This addition to a Wikitable gives it more control and flexibility, while the default behavior for subsequent clicks remains unchanged.

Updates for editors

• The Article guidance feature is currently 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. This feature gives editors community-curated guidance to help them create articles that follow community standards. Experienced editors can continue creating or adapting outlines for specific article types that are commonly created by less experienced contributors. 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.
• Wikis that wish to replace the "indefinitely" button in Special:Block for temporary accounts (for example, wikis that block temporary users only until account expiration) will be able to do so by creating MediaWiki:ipb-indefinite-expiry-temporary-account with the block duration they want.
• View all 41 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• By the end of June, a valid user-agent string will 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.
• The roll out of global API rate limits is now complete, with limits enforced across all APIs and at the documented levels for all groups. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki remain exempt. All bots should continue to follow the documented best practices to avoid being rate limited.
• The API Portal wiki will be read only starting this week (June 15-18). The following week (June 22-25), all API Portal wiki URLs will redirect to Wikimedia APIs on mediawiki.org. Learn more on the project page.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• On June 17th at 6pm UTC the WMF will be holding Discord call focused on a code review. We've heard through the Developer Satisfaction Survey that volunteers are struggling with code review and we'd like to discuss these experiences with the goal of surfacing workable solutions. You can join the call via the Wikimedia Community Discord server.
• The Latin American Wikimedia Conference will host a regional hackathon that will bring together the Wikimedia movement’s technical community including developers, system administrators, data scientists, and users with extended rights. Interested technical contributors can apply for a scholarship to participate until June 21 at midnight (Bolivia time, UTC-4).
• Sign up for Wikimania Team Challenges to join this special event. The Team challenges will take place online and in person from July 21 to 22, before Wikimania conference. Everyone is welcome, regardless of skills or Wikimania registration. Teams will work on 10 important challenges supporting the Wikimedia community. For details, visit the Team Challenges page and register there. Registration closes on June 20th at 11pm UTC.

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MediaWiki message delivery 16:46, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Wikimedians of Chicago Wiknic 2026!

Hello everyone! This is Luiysia again with Wikimedians of Chicago! For our July meetup, we will be having a Wiknic at Wicker Park on July 25th!

Here is the official meetup page, where you can see details and register for the event.

See you soon! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:46, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-26

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

• Growth features are now available at Wikidata. This update enables access to Mentorship (if configured), Impact module, the Help Panel, and a simplified Newcomer Homepage (without Suggested Edits). Wikidata administrators are still configuring the features through Community Configuration.

Updates for editors

• 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.
• Sub-referencing is a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details. It will be deployed to most small and medium-sized Wikipedia language versions on June 23. The FAQ lists possible actions to take on your wiki to support the deployment. Check the rollout plan for the next deployment steps.
• Starting next week, users will get a notification when they are blocked or unblocked from editing, or if this block changes.
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Starting next week, abuse filters that are set to "require CAPTCHA verification" will begin to 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. The skipcaptcha right will continue to exempt users from having to solve CAPTCHAs in the ordinary course of using the wikis.
• Reference documentation for the Lift Wing API has moved from the API Portal to the interactive REST Sandbox.
• The API Portal wiki is now closed. For API documentation, see Wikimedia APIs on mediawiki.org. All API Portal wiki URLs (https://api.wikimedia.org/wiki/) will redirect to the mediawiki.org page starting June 22.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• Join an online call on 25 June at 2:30pm UTC to meet the current Wikimedia interns for Google Summer of Code and Outreachy. Interns will provide an overview of their projects and a brief demo of their work so far. Attendees are encouraged to share ideas and connections in their community.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 13:03, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-27

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

• As part of the Account Creation Experiments, the Growth team tested adding a user account icon in the mobile web header for logged-out users, providing direct access to "Create account" and "Log in" actions. The experiment increased account creation by about 20% without negatively affecting edit quality or constructive edit rates. The feature will now be rolled out to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on mobile web in the first week of July.
• After a successful experiment, logged-in users who did not confirm their email address when their account was created see a new banner asking them to complete that process. This helps reduce the risk that users get locked out of their account, and makes account email addresses overall more reliable. This is part of the Account Security project.
• An update to Search is refining how the -prefix: behaves when used to exclude results. Previously, using -prefix: with negation could unintentionally broaden search results by adding the namespaces included in the search scope, leading to confusing behavior for users expecting a straightforward exclusion filter. With the update, -prefix: will now strictly exclude matching page titles as intended and may display a warning if the relevant namespace has not been explicitly selected. The behavior of prefix: without negation however remains unchanged.
• View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where reviewers using the Page Curation toolbar were not automatically subscribed to talk page discussions they started has now been fixed. Reviewers will now receive notifications when someone replies to those discussions.

Updates for technical contributors

• Starting June 29th, automated downloads from the dumps.wikimedia.org website will be subject to the user-agent policy. Automated requests that provide a generic or empty user-agent will be blocked. Access to dumps through Wikimedia Cloud Services remains unaffected. This is a follow up to the announcement made in the 2026/25 issue of Tech News.
• 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 11:46, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-28

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

• View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the search bar results on Wikidata, showed English results instead of using the correct language fallback for users of language variants, has now been fixed. Search suggestions will now follow the expected language fallback chain.

Updates for technical contributors

• In preparation for Celebrate Women campaign planned for March 2027, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Content Enablement team has launched a 22-question survey to better understand technical contributions by women+ (anyone who identifies as a woman) across Wikimedia projects. The survey takes approximately 15–20 minutes to complete and will remain open until 20 July 2026. The questions are also available on-wiki for review in advance.
• The Score extension now supports rendering music scores as SVG images in addition to PNG, addressing a long-standing feature request and resolving historical image quality issues. Both formats are now provided to clients, with PNG in the src attribute and SVG in the srcset attribute.
• The new Parsoid parser continues to be deployed to additional wikis, making it easier to introduce new reading and editing features. It was enabled on French Wikipedia, bringing total progress to covering 78.9% of Wikipedia page views. Rollout to English Wikipedia desktop will progress through this week.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The Wikimedia Hackathon 2026 recap blog post is now live. It highlights the projects, sessions, and social activities from this year’s event, and shares initial plans for the 2027 Wikimedia Hackathon.

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MediaWiki message delivery 13:54, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-29

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

• Revise Tone helps newcomers identify passages in Wikipedia articles that may contain non-encyclopedic language and encourages them to consider revising the tone. The feature was A/B tested on the Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias, where newcomer task completion rates increased by 38.7% compared to the default Copyedit task, with no decrease in edit quality. The test ended on July 9, and the feature is now available for everyone on these wikis, configurable via Community Configuration. The plan is to release Revise Tone to more wikis.
• The community configuration that allows automatic removal of inactive mentors based on configurable criteria will be enabled on Thursday 16, on some wikis to keep mentor lists up to date. Mentors are experienced contributors who opt in to help new users on-wiki through the Growth Features. Administrators can now prepare the settings via Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship; they will take effect starting Thursday.
• View all 38 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where some users of the Wikipedia Android app were logged out immediately after signing in, preventing them from staying logged in and editing pages, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• Editing a page via user scripts or gadgets was causing watchlist labels that the user had assigned to that page to reset. This has now been fixed.
• To work around a Safari bug (see phab:T425211), on Parsoid-enabled wikis, wikilink hrefs now use absolute urls instead of protocol-relative urls. REST API output remains unchanged and continue to use protocol-relative urls. Gadgets, user scripts, bots, and CSS might need to be adapted if they relied on the presence of protocol-relative urls in wikilink hrefs.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The Wikimedia Foundation’s Experiment Platform Team has published a blog post reflecting on its first year of structured experimentation. It highlights successful experiments such as Paste Check, Reference Check, and Tone Check, which improved editing outcomes and have been rolled out to more users, as well as experiments that did not lead to product changes. Read more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:09, 13 July 2026 (UTC)