Risker
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
Stats for pending changes trial |
- Modifications to administrator elections
- Updating speedy deletion criterion G15
- Make Visual Editor the default for new editors
- Add "this week's article for improvement" to the main page
- Discussion about the bureaucrat permission
- Change the requirements for autoconfirmed, extended confirmed, and page creation
Notes
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WP:ARBAP2
{{subst:W-screen}} {{subst:Suppressed}}
Wikipedia:SPI/CLERK and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Indicators
Note to self: Consider writing an article about the Forster Family Dollhouse in the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Some day.
Listeria Bot Wikipedia:New_page_patrol_source_guide#Africa
| Emergency desysops |
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| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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Other note to self re "emergency" desysops:
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Please post below
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A barnstar for you!
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The Real Life Barnstar |
| You did a good job with your wiki rabbit holes presentation. I learned a few things! Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:13, 20 January 2025 (UTC) |
- Thanks so much, Clovermoss. It was great to see you and also so many other cool people there! Risker (talk) 05:34, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
January 2025 NPP backlog drive – Points award
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The Invisible Barnstar | |
| This award is given in recognition to Risker for accumulating at least 5 points during the January 2025 NPP backlog drive. Your contributions helped play a part in the 16,000+ articles and 14,000+ redirects reviewed (for a total of 19,791.2 points) completed during the drive. Thank you so much for taking part and contributing to help reduce the backlog! Hey man im josh (talk) 19:39, 6 February 2025 (UTC) |
BoT election 2025
editHi Risker. Very, very few users have the in-depth, all round experience and institutional memory that you do. Very few have been so engaged on various committees. I once thought I did, but the interest waned somewhat in 2020. I still follow a few things though and write the occasional article, but I've been pretty much put out to pasture by the new generations. I've often wondered how you maintain the enthusiasm I so much admire. The one place you never went was the BoT - I guess you have your reasons although I would have thought you would be a shoe-in for it. Anyways, looking at the lineup for this year's scramble for the two community seats, while the contenders all mean well, it's more like a modern quest for takers for Arbcom (where you are still dearly missed). I'm sure though that you will turn out to vote, so if you do, here's my take on it, and I make no apology for canvassing. Warm regards, Chris. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:47, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- Hello Kudpung, thanks for your very kind words, and for stopping by on my talk page. I think probably my "longevity" can be attributed to the fact that I don't stay in one task too long, and after I've been off in "global Wikimedia" land for a bit, I make sure to reground myself in my home project. The one thing I have always really liked about Wikipedia (and the global roles I've taken on) has been that there's always something different to try or do. At the same time, I still fix typos and grammar errors when I see them, just as I did with my very first contributions. Yes, there have been many who have approached me over the course of several years to put my name forward for the Board of Trustees. Little known fact: I was in fact a candidate for an "expertise" seat back in 2015, but I am the first to admit I wasn't qualified for the proposed seat, and the candidate ultimately selected didn't really work out. It was a very strange time in Wikimedia-land, let's just leave it at that. My decision not to run this year has to do with things outside of the Wikimedia world, and until some of those things stabilize I am not in a position to make that commitment, although I don't rule out something down the road if I'm still around.
My preference is to work on time-limited projects with specific goals (as nebulous as some of those goals may seem), and I think the teams I have worked on have had made some significant contributions to the Wikimedia family. Working on those global committees and task forces and working groups has reinforced to me how critical collaboration is for our success. I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of really fine Wikimedians from many projects (as well as affiliates and the WMF), and have learned a lot about how the Wikimedia world works outside of English Wikipedia. I try to bring those lessons home to this project and share that knowledge. I sometimes fantasize about taking a chainsaw to our extremely overwrought policies, because I believe our overkill in this area has a chilling effect on policy development on other projects.
Thanks for sharing your views on the current WMF Board of Trustees candidates. Myself, I am hoping to see a successful candidate coming out of Africa or Asia in particular; I think the challenge in the past has been getting enough voters to coalesce around one or two of those candidates to result in their success. While I'm pretty sure that, no matter what, there is likely to be a successful candidate from English projects (which I'll note have the most diverse and globalized editorial base of any project), it would sure be nice to see someone from a region that hasn't had their feet under the table before. Risker (talk) 04:04, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you so much for a long and lovely reply! I've not got around all the nooks and crannies of the movement as much as you have, living where I do makes it a bit awkward (and unable to sit in a plane for more than a couple of hours these days and that's why I didn't even fly down to Singapore although I could have driven there - I haven't been out of Asia now since Esino Lario), but I've been around long enough to know what works and what doesn't, and to realise how much I, and I'm sure many others appreciate your work. Your quip with the chainsaw echoes my thoughts entirely, and some of it is exactly at the root of the problems at NPP which has been my hobby horse here for nearly 20 years. Our MoS itself would make any E-in-C of a newspaper of record blanche in horror. There's a PhD thesis out there just waiting to be written on Wikipedia's Policies and Guidelines. Our notability rules alone are over 5 hours of reading for a well educated native English reader! (I know because I did it in a bored moment not so long ago, just to prove a point).
- The WMF ignores, perhaps not deliberately, that we volunteers also have the skill sets - and better ones too - than the salaried devs who can can write good code, agreed, but they don't know enough about addressing the various audiences desire for compelling UX and UI design. Instead, they imagine what's needed and spend fortunes on it without it having any measurable impact at all. And that's one of the reasons why a robust BoT is needed and someone who can stimulate some positive action there. Above all, many of us would like to see a board that is more accessible and mostly populated by our peers.
- I do share your thoughts about Africa and Asia but IMO the current line up falls short of the really required quals and global knowledge. IMO there are almost certainly other opportunities for them to acquire important roles without needing to be on the Board right now. Do enjoy your trip to Nairobi, (it's been decades since I was last in Africa). Take care. Chris. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:08, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- See now, here's where we differ in candidate assessment. There are at least two candidates, one from Africa and one from Asia, who I personally am aware have solid experience on global Wikimedia task forces and/or committees; it's just that you probably haven't heard their names as often as the candidates you prefer, as both of them make most of their contributions on projects or in areas other than English Wikipedia. I'm still looking at other candidates; I agree that there are several with insufficient experience - but there always are. Risker (talk) 06:54, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
- I don't disagree with you at all. I saw those candidates and one from Europe. I am biased however, because the en.Wiki realises most of the money and probably has the most urgent software needs (both editors and other audiences) before processes such as NPP (arguably the most essential of all the backroom operations) get out of control. Therefore we need partners who have not just a bunch of PhDs amongst them but who understand our systems and priorities rather than rubber-stamping the Foundation's high speed expansionism and spending. Also, previous compositions from the non-community contingent have not always been particularly friendly towards the volunteers. Somehow this decades old gaping chasm between the WMF and the volunteer communities has to be bridged, and the BoT is the only organism that could do it officially and effectively if they wanted to. I'll be happy if both of my candidates make the shortlist. People who can "give real thoughtful guidance and oversight" — Jimbo Wales. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:43, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
Barnstar
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The Admin Elections barnstar |
| Thank you very much for being a discussion phase monitor at WP:AELECT2. Considering that we basically had 16 RFAs going at one time, it was quite smooth and drama free. Great job. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:05, 1 August 2025 (UTC) |
P.S. You are invited to participate in the debrief phase if you want to talk a bit about being a monitor and how monitoring went from your perspective. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:07, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
Congratulations
editI think you're a fantastic choice for Wikimedia Laureate. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:58, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
Congrats, Risker! A solid choice; well deserved. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 20:53, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
Congrats! Such well-deserved recognition! --Rosiestep (talk) 22:56, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks all for the very kind words. It is a special honour, because the nominations came from peers. Risker (talk) 21:45, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
Congratulations
editIt was amazing to meet you and I am glad to see what you’ve achieved. You inspire me and congratulations 🥰
Chris - Uganda 🇺🇬 Owobusingye (talk) 17:26, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you, Owobusingye. It was very good to meet you. We talked about some guidance for members of the Uganda-based Wikimedia user group to work toward adminship on English Wikipedia, and I have responded at the talk page section on the user group's Meta page, having gathered the thoughts of a few other administrators about good advice for prospective admins. Risker (talk) 21:49, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
IPBE for Mitte27
editHello. This is a continuation of this topic. The user, who requested an IPBE, was special:centralauth/Mitte27, a very experienced user of ru-, ukwiki, WD and Commons. His problem still not solved, as he says today in ruwiki's Discord chat, could you check him and give him IPBE? He already has one in ukwiki. MBH (talk) 06:37, 15 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hello MBH, and thanks for your message. Yes, IPBE grants are a little behind, as I do a lot of them and have just returned from Wikimania. I've granted IP block exemption to Mitte for six months, and will be happy to review further once I return from traveling for a family matter. Risker (talk) 06:47, 15 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks, I also has one more wish. One year ago I gathered some statistics using my bot, in ru- and enwiki. It was planned to save result tables to ruwiki, but due to bot error result table for enwiki was saved in enwiki with a Russian-language title. The page was planned for Wikipedia: namespace in ruwiki, but, because "Википедия:" isn't a namespace title in enwiki, a page appeared in enwiki's main (article) namespace. Page was located by admin, deleted and this admin blocked my bot indefinitely due to one this edit, like I was some sort of vandal. I requested unblock, but request was declined due to reasons I can't understand (I understand text in this reason, but doesn't understand logic). Could you unblock my bot account? This block notification in my bot's metadata is frustrating for me and sufficient reason for unblock, in my opinion, is that I have no intention to edit enwiki from that account, so there are no reasons to forbid this using block. It was one mistaken edit. MBH (talk) 20:44, 28 September 2025 (UTC)
IP block exemption request
editHi Risker,
Sorry to bug you... I sent in a request to renew my IP block exemption to checkuser-en-wp@wikipedia.org on September 6 (it expires in about a week and I'll be travelling at that point) and haven't heard back from the checkuser team. You've helped me in the past with similar exemptions, so I thought I'd check if you can help me once again. —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:53, 21 September 2025 (UTC)
- Hi there, extended for 2 years. Sorry for the delay. Risker (talk) 18:58, 21 September 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you so much! I really appreciate your (very speedy!) help. 😀 —Joeyconnick (talk) 19:03, 21 September 2025 (UTC)
A chocolate heart for you!
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Chocolate! |
| This sweet little picture looked like someone should appreciate it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:56, 26 September 2025 (UTC) |
- Oh my. That was scrumptious with a nice cup of Kenyan tea. Thank you for the chocolate...and for reassuring me that at least a few people read my comments. Hope you're doing well! Risker (talk) 05:14, 26 September 2025 (UTC)
Chocolate for you
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For you |
| What a week. I think we need a big block of 64% single origin Guittard today, suitable for melting into the bottom of a chocolate pecan pie, but also just for eating out of hand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 23 October 2025 (UTC) |
IP block exemption
editHi,
I was thinking of getting back into editing and was wondering if you'd be able to renew my IP block exemption. I use iCloud Private Relay and unfortunately there's no way to whitelist a single site. If that's not a valid reason, I'll just disable it instead.
Thanks, C F A 19:06, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
- Done, CFA. Risker (talk) 19:52, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you! C F A 20:27, 23 October 2025 (UTC)
Guide to temporary accounts
editHello, Risker. This message is being sent to remind you of significant upcoming changes regarding logged-out editing.
Starting 4 November, logged-out editors will no longer have their IP address publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account (TA) associated with their edits. Users with some extended rights like administrators and CheckUsers, as well as users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will still be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range.
How do temporary accounts work?
- When a logged-out user completes an edit or a logged action for the first time, a cookie will be set in this user's browser and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created for them. This account's name will follow the pattern:
~2025-12345-67(a tilde, year of creation, a number split into units of 5). - All subsequent actions by the temporary account user will be attributed to this username. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser.
- A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will be able to see the underlying IP addresses.
- As a measure against vandalism, there are two limitations on the creation of temporary accounts:
- There has to be a minimum of 10 minutes between subsequent temporary account creations from the same IP (or /64 range in case of IPv6).
- There can be a maximum of 6 temporary accounts created from an IP (or /64 range) within a period of 24 hours.
Temporary account IP viewer user right
- Administrators may grant the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right to non-administrators who meet the criteria for granting. Importantly, an editor must make an explicit request for the permission (e.g. at WP:PERM/TAIV)—administrators are not permitted to assign the right without a request.
- Administrators will automatically be able to see temporary account IP information once they have accepted the Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy via Special:Preferences or via the onboarding dialog which comes up after temporary accounts are deployed.
Impact for administrators
- It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
- It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
- Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this (see a video about IPContributions in a gallery below).
Rules about IP information disclosure
- Publicizing an IP address gained through TAIV access is generally not allowed (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 previously edited as 192.0.2.1 or ~2025-12345-67's IP address is 192.0.2.1).
- Publicly linking a TA to another TA is allowed if "reasonably believed to be necessary". (e.g.
~2025-12345-67 and ~2025-12345-68 are likely the same person, so I am counting their reverts together toward 3RR
, but not Hey ~2025-12345-68, you did some good editing as ~2025-12345-67) - See Wikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer § What can and can't be said for more detailed guidelines.
Useful tools for patrollers
- It is possible to view if a user has opted-in to view temporary account IPs via the User Info card, available in Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options →
Enable the user info card
- This feature also makes it possible for anyone to see the approximate count of temporary accounts active on the same IP address range.
- Special:IPContributions allows viewing all edits and temporary accounts connected to a specific IP address or IP range.
- Similarly, Special:GlobalContributions supports global search for a given temporary account's activity.
- The auto-reveal feature (see video below) allows users with the right permissions to automatically reveal all IP addresses for a limited time window.
Videos
- How to use Special:IPContributions
- How automatic IP reveal works
- How to use IP Info
- How to use User Info
Further information and discussion
- For more information and discussion regarding this change, please see the announcement from the Wikimedia Foundation at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) § Temporary accounts rollout.
Most of this message was written by Mz7 (source). Thanks, 🎃 SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:48, 31 October 2025 (UTC)
User:WereSpielChequers/Smart Blocking
editHi Risker, many, many moons ago you gave me some feedback on a proposal of mine to reduce collateral damage in our blocking process. I have finally got round to reworking and updating the proposal and have a new page at User:WereSpielChequers/Smart Blocking, your feedback would be most welcome. ϢereSpielChequers 17:03, 2 November 2025 (UTC)
ANI ping
editNothing against you, don't worry! I just pinged you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Jimbo Wales; IDHT, inability to DROPTHESTICK, COI, and abusing his position as founder for self-promotion as you are best placed to clarify the powers and authority of the NPOVWG, if you wish to give more specific details in that context! (you don't necessarily have to if you don't wish to/don't have time, I linked your previous post) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:32, 4 November 2025 (UTC)
Two policies? One too many.
editHi Risker. A couple years ago at WCNA you said that Wikipedia should just have two policies: a content policy and a conduct policy. That really stuck in my head, and so when I got the chance to write a new wiki's policies from the ground up, I decided to try to do you one better. As of a few minutes ago, the Toki Pona Wikipedia now has precisely one policy: "o toki pona" (roughly, 'engage in good talk'). I doubt we're the only small wiki with only one policy, but we might be the only one where that's a deliberate decision with community backing. That's because, in addition to "good talk", another translation of "toki pona" is 'language of simplicity', so it was important to the community that we keep things simple. The goal is to be able to fit all policy considerations, from civility to style guidance to deletion criteria, into that overarching concept of "good talk", and for that to remain the case even as we add to the policy going forward. Will it work? I'll let you know. But if it does, maybe there'll be some lesson for enwiki to learn there... even if getting down to one or two policies still seems like a steep hill to climb. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 20:36, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
- Tamzin, I wish you and your colleagues the very best in establishing this new Wikipedia. It's my belief that many of our young and small projects have a great deal of potential to be the future of Wikimedia. The secret is always in ensuring that the core of editors is expanding to support the project as it grows, and I hope that Toki Pona finds that success. It is not necessarily a good idea to develop a new project by looking at older, long-established ones: I've been working with a small group to support smaller projects with the concept of "neutral point of view", and I was shocked at how many of them are simply referring to the English Wikipedia version of that policy - with all its complexity and years of one-off concepts plastered onto what we have managed to boil down to about 130 words. (I expect you'll see the results of our work in January, when it goes out for community consultation.) So yes, I suspect that the overarching concept that Toki Pona has chosen is a good way to start. Most important advice I can give you: don't build policies on individual situations. That has been one of the biggest weaknesses in policy development on a lot of our bigger and older projects. I hope you are enjoying the work you are doing on this new project. And I'm very flattered that you found what I said to be so inspiring. Risker (talk) 21:28, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 23
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Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues
- CEO appointment: The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has appointed Bernadette Meehan as the new CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation. She will be meeting communities around the puzzle globe when she officially joins on January 20, 2026.
- Wikipedia's 25th birthday party: Join the virtual celebration for games, prizes, musical performances, volunteer spotlights, data visualization, surprise guests and more. January 15 at 16:00 UTC. Register on Meta.
- Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees: Join the next Conversation with the Trustees on December 11 at 17:30 UTC.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Wishathon: 15 patches were written and 5 merged, as part of a Wishathon for the Community Wishlist. One wish from the community was completed ("Preview page with this template" should not work with pages that do not transclude the template), and three more now have a clearer path forward.
- Activity Tab on Mobile App: The Wikipedia iOS app is running an experiment that replaces the History tab with a redesigned Activity tab. This new tab surfaces personalized insights about reading, editing, and donations — all stored locally on your device for privacy. The goal is to see whether the new experience increases engagement and retention among logged-in readers.
- Wikipedia Year in Review in Apps: The Wikipedia Year in Review 2025 is now available for the iOS and Android apps. This year introduces new personalized insights, updated reading highlights, and refreshed designs.
- Add a Link: A feature that suggests links to be added to articles based on a prediction model, Add a link, has been deployed at Japanese, Urdu and Chinese Wikipedias. While this feature has already been available on most Wikipedias, the prediction model could not support certain languages. A new model has now been developed to handle these languages, and it will be gradually rolled out to other Wikipedias over time.
- Abstract Wikipedia: The second round of voting on the name of Abstract Wikipedia concluded with Abstract Wikipedia as the top-voted name with 100 votes, followed by Wikigenerator with 91 votes. The name for the wiki project will now remain Abstract Wikipedia.
- Anti-vandalism tool: Automoderator, now has the option to choose between two machine learning models to power the software on wikis using the tool.
- Tools to support newcomers: Newcomers failing to add a citation to support added content has been one of the most common mistakes on Wikipedia. Reference Check, a tool that prompts them to add a citation before publishing an edit, has gone live for an A/B test on English Wikipedia.
- Tech News: Latest updates from Tech News week 48 and week 49 include the Foundation working on improving the text and presentation of the Verification Email sent to new users to make them more welcoming, useful, and informative; and two new wikis being created: a Wikipedia in Toki Pona and a Wikiquote in Nigerian Pidgin.
- Infrastructure: Unifying our mobile and desktop domains achieved 20% faster mobile response times, improved SEO, and reduced infrastructure load.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · list of movement events
- Legal win in France: Wikimedia Foundation secures crucial legal win in France against legal attacks on freedom of speech.
- CEE Hub: Overview of three years of growth, learning, and regional impact of CEE Hub.
- Don't Blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
- Digital Violence: How the Wikimedia movement is responding to digital gender based violence.
- Wikimedia Research Showcase: The next research showcase will feature a special panel on "Experimentation on Wikipedia" and will take place on December 10 at 17:30 UTC.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Audit Report: Key takeaways from the Foundation’s audit report for fiscal year 2024-2025.
- Wikimedia Enterprise: Wikimedia Enterprise Financial Report for fiscal year 2024-2025.
- Annual Plan Progress: A look back at progress made against the plan during the second half of our fiscal year. Up to date regular updates are included in the Foundation Bulletin.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Sister Projects Task Force: Results of the consultation about Wikispore and Wikinews: No immediate changes should be made to Wikispore's current technical setup and archive all editions of Wikinews, preserving their content.
Foundation statements
- Wikipedia's unique revenue model: How is Wikipedia funded and how does the Wikimedia Foundation use donations to Wikipedia?
- Most read articles: Wikipedia’s most-read articles of 2025.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcac
wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
Io, Saturnalia!
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Io, Saturnalia! | |
| Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and troll-free. Ealdgyth (talk) 13:57, 19 December 2025 (UTC) |
- Thank you for the best wishes, Ealdgyth - Same to you and yours. Risker (talk) 02:26, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
Happy holidays
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Hi Risker Season's Greetings and all the best for 2026 | |
| Wherever you are and whatever you believe in (or don't), reach out for peace on this little planet of ours! HAPPY HOLIDAYS 🥳 Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:46, 23 December 2025 (UTC) |
- Thank you so much for the lovely thoughts, Kudpung. Risker (talk) 02:27, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
Merry Christmas!
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Adapted from {{Xmas6}}. Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:User:Altamel/Christmas}} to their talk page.
Thedarkknightli (talk) 06:08, 25 December 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you so much for thinking of me, Thedarkknightli. Hope that 2026 is a good year for you. Risker (talk) 02:28, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
Happy First Edit Anniversary Risker 🎉
editHello @Risker. Your wiki edit anniversary is today, marking 20 years of dedicated contributions to English Wikipedia. Your passion for sharing knowledge and your remarkable contributions have not only enriched the project, but also inspired countless others to contribute. Thank you for your amazing contributions. Wishing you many more wonderful years ahead in the Wiki journey and a wonderful, happy 2026 ahead. :) -❙❚❚❙❙ GnOeee ❚❙❚❙❙ ✉ 17:03, 27 December 2025 (UTC)
- Gnoeee, it's hard to believe that it's been 20 years. I can still remember the feeling of making my first edit before I even registered this account, and it's special that I still have that feeling of excitement and satisfaction when making a good edit all these years later. All the best to you in 2026. Risker (talk) 02:29, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
New pages patrol January–February 2026 Backlog drive
edit| January–February 2026 Backlog Drive | New pages patrol |  |
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New Pages Patrol is hosting a one-time, two-month experimental backlog drive aimed at reducing the backlog. This will be a combo drive: both articles and redirects will earn points.
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| You are receiving this message because you are a New Pages Patrol reviewer. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself from here. | |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 27 December 2025 (UTC)
Happy New Year, Risker!
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Risker,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Volten001 ☎ 07:18, 2 January 2026 (UTC)
Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 1
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Highlights
- Wikipedia turns 25: Time to start the party! Join the virtual celebration featuring musical performances, games, and more on January 15 at 16:00 UTC. and The party will be live interpreted into Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Annual planning: Key questions for the Wikimedia movement to shape the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2026-2027 annual goals. Join the discussion on-wiki.
- Hackathon:
- Apply to join the Northwestern Europe 2026 Hackathon from March 13-14 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Application will close mid-January 2026 or earlier based on event capacity.
- General Registration for the 2026 Wikimedia Hackathon is now open! The hackathon will take place in Milan, Italy from May 1 - 3, 2026. Event details can be found here and registration will remain open until March 30th or until event capacity is reached.
- Semantic search: Wikimedia Foundation is working on making it easier to find the information readers want.
- Tech News: Latest updates from Tech News week 50, week 51, and week 52 include that now edit filters can be set to automatically suppress their details which will help oversighters to prevent doxxing.
- Wikifunctions: The first Wikifunctions Volunteers' Corner of the next year will take place on February 9.
- Blazegraph Migration: To support the migration away from Blazegraph as the backend of Wikidata Query Service (WDQS), we are hosting regular calls starting on January 27. Wikidata users and tool maintainers are are invited to join, ask questions, and share migration-related concerns.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · list of movement events · The Wikipedia Library
- Upcoming Conferences: Announcing the six Wikimedia conferences funded for 2026 in the first round.
- Wikimania 2026: A glimpse on what the team is currently working on to prepare for Wikimania 2026 in Paris.
- Public Policy: Explore the resources available for public policy advocacy work, including explainers that describe key policy positions, guides on how to build a campaign or write a policy brief, and examples of open letters submitted to governments.
- Don't Blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
- Public-Interest content: The Project Gayatri content expansion program brought 7,656 new articles on Indonesian Wikipedia.
- Wikimedia Research Showcase: The research showcase will return on January 22 at 17:30 UTC with the theme "Celebrating 25 Years of Wikipedia and the Research Behind It".
- Wikimedia Research Report: The Wikimedia Foundation has published its 13th bi-annual Research Report, highlighting the work completed during the first six months of this fiscal year.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Past issues of the bulletin for progress on the annual plan
- Wikimedia Enterprise: Read the full annual wrap-up of 2025 of Wikimedia Enterprise and how the year marked a fundamental shift in open knowledge.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Board of Trustees: Wikimedia Foundation welcomes two new Board Trustees Bobby Shabangu and Michał Buczyński.
- Affcom News: Read the year-end issue of AffCom News (July-December 2025), the newsletter that distributes relevant news and events about the work of Wikimedia's Affiliations Committee.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters ·Milestones ·
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Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 2
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Highlights
Let's Talk continues
- Annual planning: The Annual Plan is the Wikimedia Foundation’s description of what we hope to achieve in the coming year. This is a time of urgency and focus for the Wikimedia projects and we invite you to shape this plan together with us.
- Year 2 of PTAC: As it reached its first year, Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) shared a retrospective and proposed future improvements.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Account security: All users with registered accounts can now use passkeys for two-factor authentication (2FA), providing a simple and secure way to log in.
- Wikifunctions: An overview of the quarterly plan (January–March) and how it connects to the broader goals for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions.
- Tech News: Latest updates from Tech News week 03, 04 and 05 include unregistered contributors on blocked IPs can now interact on-wiki to appeal a block by creating a temporary account.
- Collaborative contributions: Wikimedia Foundation is hosting a learning session to share new releases around collaborative contributions and discuss future project ideas.
- Structured task: The Revise Tone Structured Task is now live in A/B testing on pilot wikis: English, Arabic, Portuguese, and French Wikipedia. It helps new editors improve promotional language in existing articles through a quiz style onboarding experience and a guided in article suggestion.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- Wikimania 2026: Call for sessions is open until March 1.
- Wikipedia 25: Wikipedia celebrates 25 years of knowledge at its best with docuseries, time capsule, and more.
- Virtual celebration: In case you missed it, over 10,000 people have watched the virtual celebration that brought together generations of Wikimedians, featured an ode to the talk page, a dramatic reading of a real talk page, a Magnetikpunk song dedicated to Wikipedia, a passing of the cake baton from Maryana to Bernadette, "The Birthday Cake Song" and more. All of it written and performed by humans of Wikimedia.
- Birthday mascot: Meet the Wikimedian whose casual sketch inspired Wikipedia’s 25th birthday mascot.
- Legal: Learn about two recent submissions advocating the need for proportionality in Brazil’s new online child safety law.
- Policy: The Global Advocacy team shared a report from digital policy organization InternetLab about the intersection between the open knowledge movement and public interest journalism.
- Global Resource Distribution Committee: Refreshed Funding Principles are ready for review.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Solving puzzles together: A final reflection from Maryana Iskander.
- Wikimedia Enterprise: Mistral AI and Wikimedia Enterprise announced a new strategic partnership.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
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Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 3
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Highlights
- Wikipedia Library: Wikipedia Library gained new content partnerships, restored access to the British Newspaper Archive, and added an Arabic language academic resource with more than 7 million records.
- Gender gap: The Celebrate Women 2026 campaign will run from March 1–31 to advance the achievements of the women’s rights and gender equity movement globally.
- Annual Planning: The Annual Plan is the Wikimedia Foundation’s description of what we hope to achieve in the coming year. We invite you to shape this plan together with us. Between now and the end of June 2026, we will have continuous conversations about how global trends may shape our future, how we can experiment, adapt and respond together.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Patrolling improvements: A new feature available on Special:Contributions shows temporary accounts that are likely operated by the same person, and so makes patrolling less time-consuming.
- Wikifunctions: How Abstract Wikipedia articles can be integrated into Wikipedia language editions to enable Wikipedians to write an abstract article once and have it available in many languages.
- Suggestion Mode: A new Beta Feature for the VisualEditor, Suggestion Mode, is now available on English Wikipedia for experienced editors. This features proactively suggests actions that people can consider taking to improve Wikipedia articles, such as "add citation", "improve tone", or "fix an ambiguous link".
- WDQS Blazegraph Migration: As part of the migration away from Blazegraph (the current backend of the Wikidata Query Service), an initial evaluation of open-source triple store candidates has been completed. Using the published evaluation methodology, performance, stability, and compatibility was assessed.
- Tech News: Latest updates from Tech News week 06 and 07 include the new Watchlist labels feature that allows logged-in contributors to organise and filter watched pages in ways that improve their workflows. They also link to the 44 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- Funding Principles: The interim Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC) has published a first version of the Funding Principles which guides the broader grantmaking ecosystem across the Wikimedia Movement. Share your feedback in the Discussion page.
- Wikipedia 25: Celebrating 25 years of Wikipedia in Warsaw.
- Responsible AI: Why the Global Index on Responsible AI matters for Wikimedians.
- Open Knowledge: Why the Open Knowledge Movement and Public Interest Journalism must unite forces. Shared principles and interdependence, points of convergence and the path forward.
- Journalism Awards: Applications for the Open the Knowledge Journalism Awards are now open until March 1. Presented by the International Center for Journalists in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation, the awards seek to recognize African journalists whose reporting helps close knowledge gaps about Africa on Wikipedia.
- UN General Assembly: Wikimedia Foundation was invited to speak at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) hall about Wikipedia’s role in global digital governance.
- Advocacy: Wikimedia Foundation has adopted new and updated policies regarding the use of banners, logo changes, and blackouts on the projects, particularly for advocacy purposes. Specifically, the new "Use of Wikimedia sites for advocacy purposes" policy, and updates to the guidelines for CentralNotice usage and requesting wiki configuration changes. The policies establish clearer processes for advocacy activities, and require notification of Foundation staff for some proposed uses of the Wikimedia sites.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Wikimedia Futures Lab: Reflections from a Wikimedian who attended the Wikimedia Futures Lab.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
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Miracle On Ice II
editThere will be another Miracle On Ice on Sunday, Feb 22. ~2026-11486-61 (talk) 23:59, 20 February 2026 (UTC)
- I called it! GO YANKS! ~2026-11664-78 (talk) 15:54, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
- It was a really good game, either team could have taken it. And that's the way it should be. Sad about the outcome, but not sad I got up at a ridiculous hour to watch that game. Shame about Crosby, shame that the refs didn't make the too-many-men call, but that's the game. Risker (talk) 16:25, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
- Agree it was a good game, but I'm not sad, wink. The too many men call was a USA goof and missed by the refs but the Canadians also made an obvious slashing penalty that wasn't called. Yes, could have been either way, like in 2010. It's extra sweet because the Yank women took gold in OT against Canada at this Olympics too. I've been waiting for this for 16 years. Best wishes.~2026-11664-78 (talk) 16:51, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
- Just for the record, this really isn't a repeat of Miracle on Ice, where a clearly inferior US team won over the USSR. *That* was a miracle. Today's game was even-odds between two very, very talented teams. Of course, this is just one more Olympics for a grey-hair like me. I still remember watching the Canada/USSR series back in 1972. Risker (talk) 17:12, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
- Well, on that particular day we weren't clearly inferior. haha.~2026-11664-78 (talk) 19:03, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
- Just for the record, this really isn't a repeat of Miracle on Ice, where a clearly inferior US team won over the USSR. *That* was a miracle. Today's game was even-odds between two very, very talented teams. Of course, this is just one more Olympics for a grey-hair like me. I still remember watching the Canada/USSR series back in 1972. Risker (talk) 17:12, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
- Agree it was a good game, but I'm not sad, wink. The too many men call was a USA goof and missed by the refs but the Canadians also made an obvious slashing penalty that wasn't called. Yes, could have been either way, like in 2010. It's extra sweet because the Yank women took gold in OT against Canada at this Olympics too. I've been waiting for this for 16 years. Best wishes.~2026-11664-78 (talk) 16:51, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
Qualitative Research + Documentary for Wikimedia
edit
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Hey Risker, let me know if my note went through. Thanks! Jonah Ginsburg (talk) 23:25, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 4
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Highlights
Let's Talk continues
- Birthday mode: This limited-time campaign feature celebrates 25 years of Wikipedia with a birthday mascot, Baby Globe. When turned on, Baby Globe is shown on ~2,500 articles, waiting to be discovered by readers. The feature is available for all Wikipedias to customise through Community Configuration until 6 April 2026. So far 17 Wikipedias have joined in the fun.
- Wikipedia's 25th birthday party celebrated on Commons: Content from the January 15th global birthday party selected as Media of the day.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Etherpad cleanup: For security and performance reasons, all current pads on Wikimedia’s Etherpad instance, the web-based "ephemeral" editor for real-time collaborative document editing, will be permanently deleted after 30 April. We will continue running this Etherpad instance to support events and other short-term collaboration, but will be periodically deleting data going forward. If you have content in Etherpad you want to keep, please create local backups, as data will be permanently deleted and will not be able to be recovered.
- Activity tab: Wikipedia iOS app has rolled out the improved Activity tab to all users in version 7.9.0. A/B test results showed increased account creation among users with access to the feature. Updates include enhanced editing impact insights, module customization, and relocation of History into the Search tab.
- Reference Check: The feature Reference Check has been deployed to all Wikipedias. In A/B testing, the impact was substantial: newcomers shown Reference Check were approximately 2.2 times more likely to include a reference on desktop (or acknowledge/explain why they did not) and about 17.5 times more likely on mobile web.
- Semantic search: The Foundation has launched a limited Android mobile app experiment that tests hybrid search capabilities which can handle both semantic and keyword queries. The Phase 1 beta is now live on Greek Wikipedia. The goal is to understand whether combining meaning-based retrieval with keyword search helps readers find information more effectively. Testing will expand to English, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias in March.
- Navigation experience: The Foundation will run an experiment for mobile web users, that adds a table of contents and automatically expands all article sections, to learn more about navigation issues they face. The test will be available on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
- Site notices: Site notices (MediaWiki:Sitenotice and MediaWiki:Anonnotice) now will render on all platforms, not just on the desktop site. Users on mobile web will now see these notices and be informed.
- Tech News: Latest updates from Tech News week 08 and 09 include the new “Edit full page” button for people who are editing a page-section using the mobile visual editor. They also link to the 40 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
- Wikifunctions: Abstract Wikipedia is going to have its public preview within the next few weeks, here is the preview.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- Gender gap: The Celebrate Women 2026 is coming! The Wikimedia Foundation will host a kick-off celebration that will work as a welcome session for both organizers and participants on March 5 at 13:00 UTC.
- Language: New edition of the Language and internationalization newsletter highlights new feature developments and improvements in various language-related technical projects.
- Let’s Connect Learning Clinic: Watch the recordings of past learning clinics about Wikipedia’s 25th Birthday Tool and Strengthening Local-Language Admin Communities.
- Wikimedia Research Showcase: You can watch the recording of this month research showcase whose theme is about "AI and Communities".
- Hubs: Lessons from hub pilots.
- Banners & logo policies: Wikimedia Foundation has adopted new and updated policies regarding the use of banners, logo changes, and blackouts on the projects, particularly for advocacy purposes.
- Digital Safety: The next edition of Digital Safety Office Hours will be on Mar 27 at 9:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC. The session will explore practical threat modelling: a structured way to think about risks, assess your exposure, and make informed choices.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Wikimedia Enterprise: Ecosia Enriches Search Results and AI Answers with Wikimedia Enterprise.
- Human centered AI: Members of the Wikimedia Enterprise team presented on "Wikipedia in the Age of AI and Bots" at the seminar of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
- Inclusive AI: Advancing Open, Inclusive AI with Free and Open Knowledge at the India AI Impact Summit 2026.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let foundationbulletinwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 5
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Highlights
- Supporting readers: For most of its history, Wikipedia did not have to worry about attracting readers. But with the way people search for information changing, there is a drop in the number of readers which is impacting the number of accounts created and contributions to our sites. Have a look at some of the ongoing and planned work to support reader experience.
- Server switch: All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests, which happen twice a year.
- Tools improvement: The PTAC Unsupported Tools Working Group continued improvements to Video2Commons in February, with fixes addressing authentication errors, large-file handling, task queue visibility, and clearer upload behavior. Work is still ongoing in some areas, including changes related to deprecated server-side uploads.
- Wikipedia 25 Grants: The celebration continues! The Wikimedia Foundation offers Wikipedia 25 Birthday Funds to communities planning Wikipedia’s 25th birthday events with funding between USD 1,000–2,000. Apply before March 31.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Experiments: The Foundation is frequently conducting experiments to help learn what features will be most effective and valuable to the projects. The list of experiments in Product and Technology, tracks upcoming, live, in-analysis, and completed experiments as well as their rationale. For example, the tracker shares that one upcoming experiment, Reader to Contributor Baseline, will measure how many readers create contributor accounts and whether the rate differs depending on how people arrived to the site.
- Article guidance: Help less experienced editors by filling out a questionnaire on this page (available in 7 languages). The Foundation are looking particularly for experienced Wikipedia editors from these pilot wikis. Your answers will help customize guidance for less experienced editors while creating an article.
- Wikifunctions: You can now create Functions that will show a citation in their output.
- Editing feature: Suggestion Mode is available as a beta feature within the visual editor at all Wikipedias. This feature proactively suggests various types of actions that people can consider taking to improve Wikipedia articles, and learn about related guidelines.
- Paste Check: Paste Check is now available at all Wikipedias. The feature prompts newcomers who are pasting text they are not likely to have written into VisualEditor to consider whether doing so risks a copyright violation.
- Mobile experience: The user menu in the top corner for all mobile users is standardized so that it is closer to the desktop experience to improve the user interface for readers.
- Two-factor authentication: For security reasons, members of certain user groups are required to have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled. Currently, 2FA is required to use the group, but not to be a member of it. Given that this model still has some vulnerabilities, the situation will gradually change in March.
- Tech News: Latest updates from Tech News week 10 and 11 include the new GraphQL API has been released as a flexible alternative to select features of the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS). They also link to the 50 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- WikiCelebrate: Celebrating Mervat, one of the most experienced and dedicated contributors to Arabic Wikipedia.
- Wikimedia ecosystem: The pilot on the ecosystem of Wikimedia organizations has published a draft proposal for a Future Affiliate Landscape. It welcomes your review and feedback.
- Fundraising: The Fundraising Report 2024–2025 has now been published on meta.
- International Women's Day 2026: Women, visibility, and the future of trusted knowledge on Wikimedia.
- Don't Blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
- Wiki Loves Earth 2025: See the winners from the 13th annual edition of the globe-trotting photo contest.
- Wikimania 2026: While most Wikimania program submissions are closed, the research track is open until March 31. It accepts proposals from both professional researchers and Wikimedians.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let foundationbulletinwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 6
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Highlights
- Supporting the mobile experience: The Foundation is starting conversations with communities to explore how editing should work on the Wikipedia mobile apps. The goal is to understand how to better support both new and experienced editors, and how the app can guide users to the right editing tools. Your input is welcome. Join the discussion!
- Wikimania 2026: Registration for Wikimania 2026 is opening soon from the end of March to May 1. Like other Wikimedia events this year, we are introducing a "request for invitation" process, with trust and safety checks conducted prior to confirming in-person attendance. Our priority is to create a safe environment for connection, collaboration, and shared learning.
- Around the Puzzle Globe in the CEE region: On March 23 almost 60 Wikimedians took part in the CEE-Catch up- a meeting for Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. As a part of continuous conversations we have with the communities around the Foundation's annual plan, participants discussed the global trends related to Readers and Contributors in their regional context. The meeting was also an opportunity to connect with the new Foundation CEO, Bernadette Meehan, who is meeting communities around the puzzle globe to listen, learn and engage with the communities.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Crawlers: The Foundation is now detecting and blocking billions of bot requests that don’t follow our robot policy, such as aggressive scrapers, to make sure our resources go towards serving human readers. In the coming months we’ll be working on better detection of rapidly changing bot behavior and better API infrastructure.
- Moderator tools for newer editors: Wikipedia editors in Indonesian, Thai, Turkish, and Simple English now have access to an early version of Special:PersonalDashboard. It introduces newer editors to patrolling workflows, making it easier for them to move from making edits to participating in more advanced moderation work on their project.
- Account creation on mobile: Mobile editors at several wikis are now presented with a simplified logged-out warning message, which encourages them to create an account or log in. This test is part of our ongoing effort to enhance the account creation experience on mobile and increase participation.
- Verification email redesign: The verification email sent to new accounts that add an email address during signup has been redesigned. When tested on English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata, the same-week email verification rate increased from 41.6% to 45.9%.
- Retaining notification history: Wikimedia site users can export their notifications older than 5 years using a new Toolforge tool. This will ensure that users retain important notifications and avoid losing them based on the planned change to delete notifications older than 5 years, as previously announced.
- Tech News: Latest highlights from Tech News weeks 12 and 13 include the update that Wikimedia site users can now log in without a password using passkeys as a secure method supported by fingerprint, facial recognition, or PIN. See also the 64 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
- Experiments: Check out the list of experiments in Product and Technology to see all upcoming, live, in-analysis, and completed experiments. One new experiment that just went live is the "Improve the logged-out warning message on mobile web," which aims to reduce the sense of friction or alarm when users encounter the logged-out warning upon editing.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- Digital rights and free knowledge: Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimedians from across the movement will contribute to important conversations on AI governance, information integrity, and equitable access to knowledge at RightsCon 2026 from May 5–8. Join the conversation virtually.
- Microtask Generator: Learn more about the Microtask Generator, a tool which identifies content quality gaps in Wikipedia articles and suggests tasks for editors to address within a dashboard. Users can input lists of articles for analysis, or get recommendations based on article categories. Ideal for edit-a-thons and other article improvement drives.
- WikiLearn: Discover the latest edition of WikiLearn News where you can find the latest online learning opportunities to take your editing skills to new heights.
- Diff Event calendar: The event calendar on Diff is now redirected to the list of events on Meta-wiki. This list pulls in all events that are open to all wikis.
- Grantmaking Strategy: The GRDC has identified the key challenges that will inform the design of the new Grantmaking Strategy.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Audit report: Highlights from the Wikimedia Endowment’s fiscal year 2024-2025 audit report.
- Enterprise partnerships: Wikimedia Enterprise announced new partnerships. Together with Firecrawl to reform how AI agents access the world’s largest online repository of human knowledge and with Aligned AI to develop Ethical AI products for families by providing Wikimedia Enterprise Snapshot API.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Endowment Board: Welcoming Nataliia Tymkiv to the Wikimedia Endowment Board of Directors.
- Affiliate recognition: Affiliations Committee extended the pause on new affiliate recognition to September 1, 2026.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
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Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 8
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Highlights
- Annual Planning: The Wikimedia Foundation published the draft Annual Plan for the coming fiscal year (2026–2027) which will focus on four main goals that directly respond to the external trends. The goals include increasing our reach, deepening engagement, protecting our projects and building speed and resilience to enable the change needed to respond to the internet being at an inflection point. Feedback welcome on the talk page and many other places.
- Global conversation: A global conversation about the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan will take place on May 7 at 5:00 PM UTC.
- Sustainable reuse of Wikimedia content: The Attribution API is now in beta. It makes it easier to credit Wikimedia content fairly wherever it is used. It provides all information required by the Wikimedia Attribution Framework in a single, well-structured and easy-to-use endpoint, simplifying attribution for off-wiki reuse. Share your feedback on the project talk page.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Feedback on Article guidance: Experienced editors are invited to test the Article guidance feature. This tool helps less-experienced editors create structured, policy-compliant Wikipedia articles. Review the outlines and share your feedback on the project talk page. Check out the step-by-step and video instructions.
- Games Hub available on Android: The Games Hub is live in the Wikipedia app for Android. This new feature offers a space for users to find all available games in one place, explore archives, and get updates on new games. It currently includes Which Came First?, with more games coming soon.
- Update to Wikipedia app for iOS: A major update to the Wikipedia app for iOS has rolled out, redesigning the interface to align with Apple’s latest “Liquid Glass” visual design. Download the latest version and explore the update.
- Confirming email addresses: On several wikis, logged-in editors who haven’t confirmed their email addresses now see a banner encouraging them to do so. Confirming the email address helps users restore account access if they lose it and receive messages about their accounts. It also provides an easy option to communicate with other users off-wiki if they choose. As of early 2026, about 62.9% of all registered Wikimedia user accounts that have an email set had not confirmed it.
- Testing mobile web page previews: Mobile page previews experiment was launched on Arabic, English, French, Italian, Polish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Page previews are pop-ups that show a thumbnail, a lead paragraph, and a link to the full article to improve content discovery. It is already available on desktop and in the apps.
- Account creation experiment: Account creation experiment is live on Hindi, Indonesian, Bengali, Thai, and Hebrew Wikipedia targeting 10% of logged-out mobile web users. It looks at whether adding a button to create accounts in the mobile web header boosts new registrations and increases mobile users contributing to the wikis.
- Experimenting with Hybrid Search on mobile apps: The Hybrid Search Phase 1 experiment on the Wikipedia Android app has concluded. It tested a combined keyword and meaning-based search methods to meet various information needs. The team is analyzing data and feedback, and will share insights and next steps soon.
- Latest experiments: See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology. One upcoming experiment is testing a refreshed Explore Feed to make it easier for readers to discover interesting content and visit Wikipedia app more often.
- Wikifunctions: Wikifunctions crossed 4,000 functions, with subtracting two complex numbers as the 4,000th function. Also, Abstract Wikipedia reached 1,000 articles. The article about the famous Indian Brahmin Chanakya marked this milestone.
- Reading lists now a beta feature: New accounts are now opted into Reading lists by default on all Wikipedia wikis. This brings the "Save pages" feature to the web, which has been popular in mobile apps. For users in the beta, a "Save page" (bookmark) button appears in the toolbar on every page. The watch/unwatch (star) option moves to the tools menu. The "Watchlist" button in the top navigation shifts to the user menu. A new "Saved pages" button takes its place. In June, the feature will be available to all users and a user preference will be added to choose between two sets of buttons: Watch + Watchlist or Save + Saved list. The other set will be in the tool and user menus.
- Structured Contents: Article Images and Lists now in Structured Contents payloads.
- Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 16 and 17 include CodeMirror 6 being promoted out of beta on Tuesday, April 21. See also the 45 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- Wikimedia Research Fund submissions in review: The submission period for this year's Wikimedia Research Fund is now closed. The technical and internal reviews of the proposals have begun.
- Events and conferences: Take a look at the different community events happening later this year: ESEAP Conference (May 15-17), WikiConference India (Sep 4-6), WikiConference North America (Sep 24-27), Language Diversity Conference (Oct 2 to 4), Queering Wiki (Oct 23-25), WikiArabia (Nov 6-8).
- Around the puzzle globe in the America region: More than 60 people joined America call to discuss the annual plan and the global trends impacting the movement. Participants came from across the region, and the audience included a mix of affiliates from LATAM, online contributors, and users with extended rights.
- Transparency Report: The Wikimedia Foundation published a transparency report covering July to December 2025.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- 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 and share your ideas on the talk page.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let foundationbulletinwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
New pages patrol May 2026 Backlog drive
edit| May 2026 Backlog Drive | New pages patrol | |
| |
| You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. | |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:24, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 9
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Highlights
- Community Protection: Wikimedia Foundation secured Indonesian government’s commitment to user safety, privacy, and content integrity ahead of administrative registration in Indonesia.
- Stronger protections against bots: Wikimedia Foundation is replacing our CAPTCHA with a new approach to detect bad-faith activities without making things harder for users.
- Transparency Report: The Wikimedia Foundation has published its latest Transparency Report. This provides an overview of the work to protect Wikimedia projects and support the volunteer communities who handle the majority of content requests. Our users trust us to protect their identities against unlawful disclosure, and we take this responsibility seriously, granting only 1 of 30 requests for disclosure we received from July to December 2025.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Reading Challenge: As part of the 25th birthday celebrations, Wikipedia Mobile Apps launched a limited-time feature, the 25-day reading challenge with Baby Globe. This challenge encourages a daily habit of reading one Wikipedia article. The goal is to motivate users to come back to the app regularly.
- Latest experiments: One upcoming experiment is introducing the Incident Reporting System (IRS) to help contributors easily find the right place to seek help when facing harassment or other issues. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
- Change in how new users are autoconfirmed: The account age for autoconfirmed users will now start from their first edit, not the registration date. This is to avoid exploitation by vandals. This change will only apply to wikis that require at least one edit for autoconfirmation.
- Organized Reading lists: All Wikipedia users with new accounts and those who activated the “automatically enable most beta features” option can now use the reading lists beta feature. This lets you save articles for later reading and keep it organized in one place for easy access.
- Thumbnail size preferences: Default thumbnail size preference for article content is now limited to three sizes: Small (180px), Regular (250px), and Large (400px). This change aims to improve performance and reduce strain on thumbnail services. Current preferences will shift to the nearest new size.
- Wikifunctions: To make the development of Abstract Wikipedia visible, the Foundation is requesting your input: which metrics about Abstract Wikipedia pages do you deem important?
- Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 18 and 19 include improvements on Global Watchlist. See also the 62 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- Annual Planning: We welcome your feedback on the main talk page for the 2026–2027 draft Annual Plan and many other places for the coming fiscal year.
- Wikimania: Wikimania is a joyful event. It is a chance to celebrate our community and projects, share ideas and information, build connections among Wikimedians, and inspire and develop future projects. If you and your community are interested in hosting Wikimania in 2028 and 2029 submit an expressions of interest.
- Community Conferences: The Foundation is supporting 15 strategic, diverse, and critical convenings taking place in 2026 and 2027, bringing together approximately 1800 Wikimedians across various regions, themes, and language communities.
- Don't blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
- Wiki Loves Monuments: The winners of the 2025 Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest are announced.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Enterprise: How CivicLens Uses Wikidata APIs to Make Civic Data More Accessible.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Wikinews closure: All Wikinews have been closed and switched to read-only mode. Content will remain accessible, but no new edits or articles will be able to be added. This closure was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation following extended discussions.
- Affcom News: Read the latest issue of AffCom News (January-March 2026) to learn more about the latest news about the work of Wikimedia's Affiliations Committee.
- Model for affiliates to support contributors through tools: The Product and Technology Advisory Council has published draft recommendations on a model that affiliates can follow when contributing to the technical space.
- Grantmaking: The Global Resource Distribution Committee closed their request for feedback on three initial questions about grantmaking, and published their monthly update for April.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let foundationbulletinwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!
New Page Patrol Newsletter - May 2026
editHello Risker,
Backlog update
At the time of this message, there are 15,282 articles and 32,951 redirects awaiting review.
After the January–February drive the article backlog was reduced to 15,179 articles and the redirect backlog to 19,053 respectively. Great job! However, both queues are growing rapidly and any additional reviews are highly appreciated.
2024 and 2025 NPP Awards
Hey man im josh and MPGuy2824 won the Redirect Ninja Master Award for 2024 and 2025 respectively, for reviewing the most redirects.
Overall in 2024, one Platinum, two Gold, eight Silver, 12 Bronze and 45 Iron Barnstars were awarded. Additionally, 66 reviewers got the NPP barnstar for doing more than 100 reviews through the year. In 2025, one Platinum, ten Silver, 13 Bronze and 38 Iron Barnstars were awarded. Additionally, 38 reviewers got the NPP barnstar for doing more than 100 reviews through the year.
BoyTheKingCanDance, Rosiestep, SunDawn, and Vanderwaalforces were inducted into the NPP Hall of Fame for having two separate years of 2,000+ article reviews.
January–February backlog drive
The experimental two-month long backlog drive concluded with 183 reviewers patrolling over 27,761 articles and 35,309 redirects, earning over 36,836 points. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 6,484.6 points in this drive.
May backlog drive
An article-only backlog drive is currently underway. We are hoping to make a big dent in the backlog. You can read more about it or join at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Backlog drives/May 2026.
PageTriage
An attempt was made to get the New Pages Feed to sort by date marked as reviewed instead of date created. However we had to revert it due to bugs. We may try again in the future. You can subscribe to the Phabricator ticket if you're interested in following along.
Reminders:
- You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
- Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
You may be eligible to vote in the U4C election
editI am contacting you because you previously voted in elections related to the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). You may be eligible to vote in the current U4C election, which is open now and closes on 2 June 2026. You can find out more about the candidates and the election on the election page on Meta, and from there you can access the vote itself. Your participation in these elections is important to the governance of Wikimedia communities, and your time spent learning about the candidates and voting is appreciated.
-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk)
A barnstar for you!
edit |
The Writer's Barnstar |
| For your lengthy and detailed comments here regarding the changes to the Community Tech team. ↠Pine (✉) 07:01, 9 June 2026 (UTC) |
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 10
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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.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- 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.
- Better discovery of images: The Image Browsing beta feature was rolled out for all Wikipedias on mobile following two successful experiments. 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- 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.
- Community Conferences: Registration for WikiConference North America and Queering Wiki Conference is now opened. Call for Speakers for the Queering Wiki is also opened until June 30.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- 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.
- Structured Contents: How Databricks Parsed Wikipedia to Markdown with Python.
Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- 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.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
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!
Checkuser query
editWondering if you're still involved in IP unblocking requests. I worked with you last time over email. Having gone around in circles with the unblock-request system, I sent an email to utrs-admins@googlegroups.com which, amusingly, just bounced back to me.
I am unable to edit on iOS Safari but can on macOS Safari. I’ve just switched back from Firefox, so would like to be able to edit again via Safari on all platforms. Looking for assistance. Seasider53 (talk) 19:14, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
- Hi there. Have taken a look. Given your experience and recurrent periodic difficulties in avoiding blocked IP ranges, I have granted IP block exemption for two years. We recommend the user of checkuser-en-wp-AT-wikipedia.org for these requests. To be fair, I've been tied up with some other stuff so that queue has fallen behind somewhat. Risker (talk) 20:10, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
June 2026 Wikimedia Café meetups regarding the English Wikipedia Editor Reflections project
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Hello! There will be two Wikimedia Café discussion opportunities during the last weekend of June. Both sessions will focus on the English Wikipedia Editor Reflections project. The featured guest in the Café will be User:Clovermoss. Participants may attend either or both sessions.
- 27 June 2026 15:00 UTC (timestamp converter), at a time friendly to the Americas, Africa, and Europe
- 28 June 2026 03:00 UTC (timestamp converter), at a time friendly to Asia and the Pacific
Please see the Café page for more information, including how to register!
Hi Risker, maybe you'd enjoy attending one of these. ↠Pine (✉) 04:14, 15 June 2026 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 11
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Highlights
- Community Wishlist: Weigh in on proposals and open questions on how the wishlist will operate in the future.
- 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.
- Neutral Point of View: A proposal for a baseline NPOV standard for Wikipedias that do not have one was published, with a community discussion open until July 15, 2026.
Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- 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.
- Collaborative Contributions: 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.
Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events
- 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.
Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan
- Enterprise: SimPPL Uses Wikimedia Enterprise to Map Online Conversations and Fact-Check Social Media.
Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters
Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate
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!
Request for Independent Reviw
editHi @Risker, I'm reaching out to request if you can independently review an ongoing global ban on my community members. I'm only reaching out neutrally on their behalf because I know that they are all different individual and not Sock puppets.
Here is where the discussion taking place and these three users - Chinemeremprince, Ozims Divine and Anumodu favour Amarachi are all different.
To the best of my knowledged Anumodu favour Amarachi has appealed for unblock but was declined. Also Ozims Divine has written the stewards (I don't know the outcome yet).
What I'm requesting for is that you support in reviewing or directing them on how to go about appealing for unblock as they have no access to request via Wiki for now. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 17:40, 27 June 2026 (UTC)
- Hello, Lucy, nice to see your name here, but unfortunate about the situation. I will take a look, but this will not be quick as the blocks are over a year old and it will take a while to sort things out. From the very first look, it appears that the users may have been working together at a single location for some sort of edit-a-thon related to a 1Lib1Ref campaign? A little background on how the accounts wound up in the same place at about the same time would be very helpful, if you have access to that information. Please let me be clear, I am not a steward and thus cannot lift a global ban or block by myself. At most, I can advocate limiting the block (e.g., reducing it from a global lock to a global block) so that it is possible for the users to provide explanations for the issues that brought their editing to the attention of CheckUsers and stewards. On a very surface level, it appears that they were adding poorly referenced or genuinely problematic content on more than one project, and that's pretty serious. Risker (talk) 00:01, 28 June 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks for responding @Risker
- For context, these users were participating in this in-person and images of the event are here which is why I think their IP were flagged and thought to be one person.
- Yes, I quite understand your not being a steward and that it will likely take time to resolve. However, I needed to invite an admin that will understand the circumstances of sharing same IP due to location for users coming from regions like Africa.
- As for their contribution, they have been explained better on the importance of contributing meaningfully.
- And yes, reducing it to global block will give them access to explain their circumstance to the Admins.
- Thank you Risker and nice to connect here with you - even though it's based on a difficult situation like this. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 00:23, 28 June 2026 (UTC)
- Hi @Risker, I understand you mentioned it will take some time.
- I'm just reaching out to also let you know that we still look forward to the response you might have for us.
- Thank you. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 14:05, 16 July 2026 (UTC)
- Hi Lucy. I have done some preliminary review on this, and will be at Wikimania in the near future. Sometimes it works best when one can talk with the people who are most knowledgeable about a situation over a refreshing beverage, face to face. I haven't forgotten this. Risker (talk) 07:00, 17 July 2026 (UTC)
- Hello @Risker and thanks for getting back to me.
- Sure, I look forward to the outcome of the discussion and wishing a safe flight to Wikimania - hopefully I get to meet you there as well as i will be attending. Lucy Iwuala (talk) 16:12, 17 July 2026 (UTC)
- Hi Lucy. I have done some preliminary review on this, and will be at Wikimania in the near future. Sometimes it works best when one can talk with the people who are most knowledgeable about a situation over a refreshing beverage, face to face. I haven't forgotten this. Risker (talk) 07:00, 17 July 2026 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 12
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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.
Annual Goals Progress on Engage
See also: Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia
- 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
skipcaptcharight, 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.
Annual Goals Progress on Enable
See also: Research newsletter · WikiLearn News · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- 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.
Annual Goals Progress on Protect
See also: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- 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.
Annual Goals Progress on Reach
See also: Wikimedia Apps · Readers
- 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.
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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!
July 2026 Wikimedia Café meetups regarding Wikimedia governance and options for reform
editHello! There will be two Wikimedia Café discussion opportunities in July. Both sessions will focus on Wikimedia governance, including possible follow-ups to the Movement Charter and options for reform. Participants may attend either or both Café sessions.
This month, to deconflict the Café meetups from Wikimania, the meetups will be held one day later than usual.
- 26 July 2026 15:00 UTC (timestamp converter), at a time friendly to the Americas, Africa, and Europe
- 27 July 2026 03:00 UTC (timestamp converter), at a time friendly to Asia and the Pacific
Please see the Café page for more information, including how to register!
Signpost help request
editHi. I submitted a signpost article here: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions#Why_Wiki_wouldn't_get_off_the_ground_today_and_why_it's_nosediving. Blueraspberry looked at it and asked I have a wiki friend look it over but I don't have any wiki friends, so I decided to ask you since your article is just above mine on that signpost page. If you don't mind, could you look it over and copyedit it? The actual draft is here: User:BlueRockThrush/Why Wiki wouldn't get off the ground today and why it's nosediving Thank you. BlueRockThrush (talk) 22:34, 13 July 2026 (UTC)
- Hi BlueRockThrush. I am literally about to get on a plane, and I am not sure that I will be in a position to help over the next two weeks. If you can find someone else to help you, that would be your best bet. The article topic is very interesting; I gave it a quick skim, and I think it is just the kind of topic that would work well for the Signpost. If you're still struggling to find some assistance in two weeks, ping me again and I will do what I can. Sorry to not be more help. Risker (talk) 14:30, 14 July 2026 (UTC)
Articles for Creation backlog drive
edit
Hello Risker:
WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive in August!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than a month of outstanding reviews from the current 3+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 August 2026 through 31 August 2026.
You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.
Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.
There is a backlog of over 5000 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:38, 19 July 2026 (UTC)
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