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Administrators' newsletter – June 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2026).

Administrator changes

• Asukite
• Bobby Cohn
• Bonadea
• Ca
• Drm310
• Reconrabbit
• Sammi Brie

• Tamzin
• TonyBallioni

• Ezhiki
• Queen of Hearts

Bureaucrat changes

• WereSpielChequers

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the "persistent usage of large language models" has been included as a common reason for a block.

Technical news

• Mandatory 2FA for bureaucrats: Bureaucrats without two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled have already lost access to their advanced rights on 26 May. Those who do not enable 2FA may be automatically removed from the groups in mid-June 2026, and from that point onward, new members must have 2FA enabled before they can be added. (T423119, T423120)

Arbitration

• The arbitration case SchroCat has been closed.
• The arbitration case Michael Jackson has opened. Evidence submissions in this case closes on 1 June.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the 2026 Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election closes on 1 June.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:15, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-23

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

Updates for editors

• The Reader Experience team is conducting an experiment to show the reading lists feature, which is still in development, to logged-out mobile readers to test whether it encourages account creation at a higher rate compared to the watchstar button. The experiment was launched on May 18th on German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu wikis, and it will run for a month.
• The Wikimedia Apps team released Phase 1 of the redesigned Home Feed to the Android Beta app. The new Home Feed includes a refreshed "Community" tab and a personalized "For You" tab featuring daily updated reading recommendations. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve content discovery and create more engaging learning experiences in the Wikipedia apps.
• View all 18 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where images could fail to load for some suggested edits on Special:Homepage, leaving the thumbnail stuck in a loading state, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:07, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-24

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

Weekly highlight

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

Updates for editors

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

Updates for technical contributors

• The function signature for mw.util.addPortletLink() has been simplified. Developers can now pass a configuration object instead of a list of positional parameters when creating portlet links. The previous function signature remains supported for backwards compatibility. For example, instead of: mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', '#', 'Stub', 'ca-stubtag', 'Add a stub tag to this page'); use mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', { href: '#', text: 'Stub', id: 'ca-stubtag', tooltip: 'Add a stub tag to this page' });. Script maintainers are encouraged to review existing uses of addPortletLink() and update them where appropriate. This change will be available on all wikis from 11 June. Thanks to community volunteer Gerges for contributing this improvement.
• Community Wishlist discussion: Product & Technology introduced changes meant to increase the number and complexity of wishes fulfilled, including the disbanding of the Community Tech team. They are engaging in discussions about a proposed direction for the wishlist from community members. Includes ways to structure annual voting, better tracking of wishes, removing focus areas, and staffing updates.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

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

The Downlink Volume 4, Issue 5

	The Downlink	The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter
		2026 1 — 31 May

Volume 4 — Issue 5
Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink
In the News On 15 May, NASA's Psyche flew 4,500 kilometres (2,800 mi) above the surface of Mars while performing a gravity assist. SMILE was launched on 19 May. A joint mission of ESA and CAS, SMILE aims to study the effects of solar wind on Earth's magnetosphere. On 22 May, Starship flight test 12 was performed. This was the first use of both the Block 3 and Starbase's second launch pad. The ICARUS Initiative launched the first of its ICARUS 2.0 constellation's satellites on 3 May. The satellite, named RAVEN, was constructed by EnduroSat, and is built to track animal migrations.
Article of the month Polyus (spacecraft) Polyus on the Energia rocket The Polyus spacecraft (Russian: Полюс, pole), also known as Polus, Skif-DM, GRAU index 17F19DM, was a prototype Soviet orbital weapons platform designed to destroy Strategic Defense Initiative satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser. It had a Functional Cargo Block derived from a TKS spacecraft to control its orbit and it could launch test targets to demonstrate the fire control system.	Image of the month Integrated Truss Structure of the ISS This graphic is an exploded view of the Integrated Truss Structure, the long segment that has the ISS' distinctive solar panels. The first piece, Z1, was installed in October 2000, while the most recent addition, S6, being installed in October 2007; the current configuration of the ITS dates to June 2023. In addition to providing electricity via the solar panels, the ITS is the location of energy storage, with battery assemblies on the P4/6 and S4/6 segments. These each consist of 24 lithium-ion batteries, for a total of 96 batteries.
Members New Members: ThePrehistoricBlob12345 (19 May) RockyKT (21 May) A Random Hylian (21 May) Analemnas (26 May) The Boat Boy (31 May) Doeze (31 May) Number of active members: 230. Total number of members: 460. May Launches All times stated here are in UTC. See a current list here. Zhuque-2E — Dingzhihua Shiyan Zaihe (14 May at 03:00:00) (success) Vega C — SMILE	Article Statistics This data reflects values from 31 May 2026. Spaceflight articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 6 30 15 8 59 FL 3 4 4 11 FM 124 124 A 1 2 1 4 GA 12 26 34 58 3 133 B 17 78 197 245 8 545 C 42 171 617 904 1 76 1,811 Start 15 133 1,025 2,731 510 4,414 Stub 5 192 1,975 340 2,512 List 11 117 112 244 1 50 535 Category 1,281 1,281 Disambig 47 47 File 276 276 Portal 55 55 Project 108 108 Redirect 2 43 144 1,258 1,447 Template 534 534 NA 1 1 Other 1 47 48 Assessed 104 565 2,241 6,315 3,733 987 13,945 Unassessed 6 113 119 Total 104 565 2,241 6,321 3,733 1,100 14,064 Monthly Changes Since April 2026, there are one fewer Top-importance, two fewer High-importance, eight more Mid-importance, 17 more Low-importance, two more NA-importance, and twenty more Unknown-importance articles, for a total of 44 new articles. There are also five more B-class, eleven more C-class, six more Start-class, 18 more Stub-class articles, and one more list.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list. Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:28, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-25

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

Weekly highlight

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

Updates for editors

• The Article guidance feature is currently being tested with some editors creating new articles on the Simple English, French, and Turkish Wikipedias. The experiment will soon begin on the Arabic and Bangla Wikipedias as well. This feature gives editors community-curated guidance to help them create articles that follow community standards. Experienced editors can continue creating or adapting outlines for specific article types that are commonly created by less experienced contributors. The outlines guide less experienced editors in creating high-quality articles. A quick guide to markups used in outlines can be found on this page. Example outlines that can be adapted and instructions for how to adapt them are on this section of the project page.
• Wikis that wish to replace the "indefinitely" button in Special:Block for temporary accounts (for example, wikis that block temporary users only until account expiration) will be able to do so by creating MediaWiki:ipb-indefinite-expiry-temporary-account with the block duration they want.
• View all 41 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• By the end of June, a valid user-agent string will be required for automated dumps downloads from the dumps.wikimedia.org website. Automated requests that provide a generic or empty user-agent will be blocked. This extends enforcement of the long standing user-agent policy. Access to dumps through Wikimedia Cloud Services will not change.
• The roll out of global API rate limits is now complete, with limits enforced across all APIs and at the documented levels for all groups. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki remain exempt. All bots should continue to follow the documented best practices to avoid being rate limited.
• The API Portal wiki will be read only starting this week (June 15-18). The following week (June 22-25), all API Portal wiki URLs will redirect to Wikimedia APIs on mediawiki.org. Learn more on the project page.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:47, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue 242, June 2026

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 and Nick-D look at three recent works Timeline: This month in military history

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 13:17, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Incorrect date on one of the photos on your user page

Hi, I really like your profile page with all the aviation content, but I have noticed that one of the images on your profile page is dated incorrectly. The photo of the Delta Bombardier CRJ900 was labelled as from May 23, 2025, however, the plane in question had crashed several months earlier, perhaps you made a typo and actually meant 2023? Because that's what the date label from the Wikimedia Common file says. I just thought I should tell you that so you can correct the mistake. Shaun135 (talk) 13:05, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

Good catch. It's fixed now. Thanks! - ZLEA ^TǀC 16:24, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 June 2026

• From the editors: Ways for beginners to support The Signpost community journalism
  Pointing the way to your contribution to The Signpost!

• News and notes: Community Tech development team disbanded
  And English Wikipedia reaches a milestone in number of highly active editors.

• Disinformation report: PR for the people?
  Or, "PR using PR for PR"?

• Recent research: Proposed tagging system for AI involvement; successful and unsuccessful AI tools for contributors
  And other new research publications.

• In the media: Who won a 14th century battle and who won the 2026 Iran war?
  Media take issue with portrayals of recent and medieval history on Wikipedia. Plus a team supporting Wikipedians gets dissolved, and a few other things.

• Community view: Putting the Wish into the Wishlist
  A history of the Wikimedia community's request process to Foundation developers.

• In focus: A global standard for Neutral Point of View
  Wikipedians are commenting on a proposed global standard for neutral point of view.

• On the bright side: Flowers, blue helmets, reefs, pride, and Juneteenth
  Nice things around the world.

• Op-ed: Breathe, Don’t Panic, there is a different story about Wikimedia + AI futures
  We can build a strategy about AI that doesn't just center on readers; there are still plenty of humans to write the encyclopedia and work on diverse global knowledge.

• Opinion: Wikimedia Foundation staff develop union and Wikimedia user community reacts
  Why should editors support the Wiki Workers United union drive? Lessons the Wikimedia movement can learn from other labor struggles.

• Technology report: Community Tech team is disbanded, controversy erupts
  WMF disbands Community Tech, sparking community backlash over the future of the Wishlist and concerns about unionization.

• Traffic report: 'Cause this is thriller, thriller night
  Horror movies and Michael Jackson dominate theaters in the lead-up to the World Cup.

• WikiConference report: Report of Volunteer Supporters Network Annual Meeting 2026
  Outreach staff of Wikimedia chapters host a global discussion.

• Comix: Take your turn
  In a maze of twisty little edits, all alike.

• Humour: Group of banned T-shirt makers comes out of hiding to sell new Wikipedia-themed merchandise
  It ain't WikiProject United Nations, but you will find some PUNs.

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:20, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-26

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

Weekly highlight

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

Updates for editors

• The special page Special:RangeCalculator has been created. It allows users to find an IP range without needing to rely on external tools. Until now, this tool was only available to CheckUsers.
• Sub-referencing is a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details. It will be deployed to most small and medium-sized Wikipedia language versions on June 23. The FAQ lists possible actions to take on your wiki to support the deployment. Check the rollout plan for the next deployment steps.
• Starting next week, users will get a notification when they are blocked or unblocked from editing, or if this block changes.
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

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

Meetings and events

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

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

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

Beta Technologies Alia

Hi ZLEA, just wanted to make you aware of this redirect request to WP:AFC/R given you have reverted the TA's changes. S0091 (talk) 21:46, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

S0091 Thanks. The user has claimed that they are using SkyCards (a mobile game by Flightradar24) as a source. Even without considering the questionable reliability of a mobile game made for entertainment, I don't see the Alia or "CX30" anywhere in the game's "Airpedia" list. That said, "CX30" was added as the FAA type designator (but not yet an official ICAO type designator) for the CX300 variant of the Alia by Air Traffic Organization Policy Order JO 7360.1K. However, this only applies to a single variant of the aircraft and is by far not the WP:COMMONNAME of the type as a whole. Might be worth adding a link to the disambiguation page if "CX30" ever becomes an official ICAO designator, but I'm not sure it's necessary now. - ZLEA ^TǀC 23:51, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-27

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

Updates for editors

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

Updates for technical contributors

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 11:46, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2026).

Administrator changes

• Chipmunkdavis
• TechnoSquirrel69

• Mlaffs
• SpuriousQ
• Lectonar
• Dennis Brown
• Hog Farm

CheckUser changes

• Giraffer
• TonyBallioni

• Dbeef
• EdJohnston

Oversight changes

• Giraffer
• TonyBallioni

L235

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment asks whether the criteria for autoconfirmed and extended confirmed should be modified.
• A request for comment proposes an addendum for the Real name section of the Username policy.

Technical news

• The special page Special:RangeCalculator has been created for any users to use to find an IP range. (phab:T268429)
• The "indefinitely" button in Special:Block for temporary accounts can be replaced with a preferred block duration stated on MediaWiki:ipb-indefinite-expiry-temporary-account. (phab:T427125)

Arbitration

• Following a series of motions, changes to the contentious topics procedure to restructure awareness have been implemented.
• The arbitration case Michael Jackson has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• The 2026 Developing Countries WikiContest will run from 1 July to 30 September. Sign up now!
• 10 candidates have been appointed to the U4C.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:08, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-28

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

Updates for editors

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

Updates for technical contributors

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

In depth

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 13:55, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Birthday Cookies!

☘︎☘︎☘︎ALEXHammeke (talk | guestbook | sandbox) 01:09, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 July 2026

• News and notes: An exclusive club
  Wikipedia Co-Founder Larry Sanger gets a community ban for canvassing.

• In the media: Battle for a soul – who won?
  Commissars, winners and losers, blocks or bans, a Wiki red card, social engineering on wikis, and Swift action!

• Opinion: We need to innovate with Wikimedia decision-making
  Rules we can actually read, trust and change!

• Recent research: LLMs and NPOV, 20 years of user blocks, Esperanto and Volapük Wikipedias
  And other research findings.

• News from Diff: How to host Wikicurious in your own community
  The Wikicurious team shares their approach to Wiki-event organizing.

• Community view: CUNY Newmark Wikimedian-in-Residence Quarterly Brief – April to June 2026
  Quarterly update on the activities of the City University of New York's Wikimedian-in-Residence, Richard Knipel.

• Special report: Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act – for now
  A possible future recategorization by the UK Government remains an existential threat to Wikipedia.

• On the bright side: Fatherhood, weather, and diplomacy
  Father's Day, Canada Day, and the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence.

• Op-ed: A Layup Easy Proposal for Wikimedia at 25: Spend 25% of Donations on the Community
  If strategy priority 1.1 is supporting the community, can we not increase the support to the community? Increasing grantmaking to 25% of the budget would be a move toward equality in the movement.

• Traffic report: The grass was greener, the light was brighter
  We reached the dizzy heights of that dreamed of World Cup.

• Comix: schnozzed
  on lollerskates

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:25, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-29

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

Updates for editors

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

Updates for technical contributors

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

In depth

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

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

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

Precious anniversary

Precious

Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:49, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue 243, July 2026

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 looks at works on the US and Australian militaries Review essay: Nick-D on South African military museums Timeline: This month in military history

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 13:15, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-30

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

Updates for editors

• The Reader Experience team has incorporated community feedback around the placement of watchstar and watchlist buttons for the Reading Lists beta feature, which would allow for saving articles for later reading – a wishlist item to bring the functionality to web. Editors are invited to enable the beta feature to test it out and share their thoughts.
• Suggestion Mode offers edit suggestions within the VisualEditor for improving Wikipedia articles. All suggestions are community-configurable. The TextMatch feature is a way for volunteers to create custom local suggestions. The feature searches in articles for strings of text, and now includes support for regular expressions. This gives volunteers greater precision and flexibility over the kinds of local suggestions they can create. Note: Suggestions can be targeted based on the edit count of the person editing as well as other aspects of the page. You can find examples from other communities for inspiration, including TextMatches that detect: typos, grammar-errors, potential advertisements, clichés, incorrect dash or hyphen usage, non-specific time keywords, outdated names, and more. Any feedback is appreciated.
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the SVG Translate tool could use an outdated version of a file, causing existing translations to be overwritten when new ones were uploaded, has now been fixed. Overall, in the last quarter from April – June 2026 about 337 community tasks were resolved by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Updates for technical contributors

• On Parsoid-enabled wikis, Parsoid now renders a maximum of 1,250 images per page. A new tracking category, "media-limit-reached", will be soon made available to identify pages where this limit is reached, making it easier to find content whose media output may have been restricted during rendering. See phab:T430854 for more information and to provide feedback.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 05:45, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Edits

Howdy ZLea,

Thanks for the accountability. The changes I made to the Memphis Belle reference the journal and article associated the The Friends Journal which is the quarterly publication of the Air Force Museum Foundation. The claims I made are substantiated in Friends Journal, Winter 2026, Vol. 49 No. 1. Those same changes are also on the Tony Starcer wiki as well. Vestiges35 (talk) 17:25, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Vestiges35 Thank you for clarifying. The problem is that simply using sources isn't enough. You must also add a citation to that source so other readers and editors can verify the information and know where it came from. - ZLEA ^TǀC 17:32, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

The problem is the Journal isn't hosted on the foundations website aside from the most-current edition. Any suggestions? Vestiges35 (talk) 17:42, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Template:Cite journal is what you would use in this case. Though URLs are recommended if available, they are not absolutely necessary when citing journals or books. That said, you might be able to find previous editions of the journal using the Wayback Machine. - ZLEA ^TǀC 17:49, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

And that URL isn't archived by the Wayback Machine...dang it. Can I use screenshots from the journal? Vestiges35 (talk) 17:58, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

As long as the journal still exists in print or some other tangible form, you should be fine without a URL or screenshot. As I said, URLs are recommended if available, but are not necessary. - ZLEA ^TǀC 18:03, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-31

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

Updates for editors

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

Updates for technical contributors

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:48, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

The Downlink Volume 4, Issue 6

	The Downlink	The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter
		2026 1 — 30 June

Volume 4 — Issue 6
Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink
In the News On 7 June, Tianwen-2 performed a successful orbital insertion around 469219 Kamoʻoalewa; this is the first mission to the quasi-satellite SMILE, the joint heliophysics mission between the ESA and CAS, achieved its final orbital position on 20 June.
Article of the month Expedition 24 A last-quarter crescent moon above Earth's horizon is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 24 crew member. Expedition 24 was the 24th long-duration mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Expedition 24 initially had two planned spacewalks, one Russian and one American Extra-vehicular Activity (EVA). The U.S. EVA was re-planned and a second U.S. EVA was added.	Image of the month NASA spacecraft comparison This graphic, created c. 1964, compares the relative sizes of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft (right, bottom-to-top). Each successive craft is larger and has a greater crew capacity than the previous; additionally, while the Mercury and Gemini craft are fairly similar, the Apollo craft (actually two craft, the Apollo command and service module and Apollo Lunar Module) is substantially different: the reentry module is more conical, and has a much large thruster. These changes, and the lunar lander, are present because Apollo was the first crewed missions to the moon, with the changes necessary to ensure that the crew could return to Earth alive. A similar pattern can be found in the comparison of the launch vehicles on the left: while the Mercury (Atlas-D) and Gemini (Titan II) vehicles are similar in size, differing primarily in height, the Apollo vehicle, the Saturn V, is significantly larger, both for the need to transport the CSM and LEM, but also in order to get to the Moon in the first place.
Members New Members: LonghairSpaceHistoryGuy (8 June) Jake11223344 (23 June) DragonPowerZ (23 June) Number of active members: 232. Total number of members: 463. June Launches All times stated here are in UTC. See a current list Here. Long March 12B — 2 Qianfan satellites (1 Jun. at 08:40:00) (success) H3-30S — various (12 Jun. at 00:53:59) (success) Long March 3B/E — Shijian-31 (16 Jun. at 09:45:00) (success)	Article Statistics This data reflects values from 30 June 2026. Spaceflight articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 6 30 15 8 59 FL 3 4 4 11 FM 124 124 A 1 2 1 4 GA 12 26 34 62 3 137 B 18 78 200 246 10 552 C 41 171 617 906 1 80 1,816 Start 15 133 1,024 2,734 513 4,419 Stub 5 192 1,974 338 2,509 List 11 117 112 246 1 50 537 Category 1,283 1,283 Disambig 47 47 File 276 276 Portal 54 54 Project 108 108 Redirect 2 42 144 1,259 1,447 Template 534 534 Other 1 36 37 Assessed 104 565 2,242 6,326 3,723 994 13,954 Unassessed 7 112 119 Total 104 565 2,242 6,333 3,723 1,106 14,073 Monthly Changes Since May 2026, there are one more Mid-importance, 12 more Low-importance, ten fewer NA-importance, and six more Unknown-importance articles, for a total of nine new articles. There are also four more GA-class, seven more B-class, five more C-class, five more Start-class, three more Stub-class articles, and two more lists.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list. Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:07, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 August 2026

• In the media: Union drive, most prolific editor make headlines
  AI's impact on Wikipedia, World Cup editing, and encyclopedia's place in public life.

• News and notes: Foundation rejects voluntary recognition of union, proposed board eligibility rules sharply restrict candidates
  Further: harassment allegations at Wikimania, and new RfC for Abstract Wikipedia.

• WikiConference: "Kurier, Signpost, wikipress: You can be a Wikimedia journalist" - Wikimania presentation by User:Noé Recap
  A recap of Noé Gasparini's Wikimania 2026 presentation on the variety of wikipress outlets

• In focus: Is Larry Sanger the co-founder of Wikipedia?
  A look over the years.

• Arbitration report: Think, and not just about content
  ArbCom continues business.

• News from Diff: Meet the Wikimedians of the Year 2026!
  Wikimedians of the Year 2026 announced at Wikimania 2026 - Paris

• On the bright side: The beautiful game
  2026 Men's FIFA World Cup, Wikimania music, and wikipress.

• Traffic report: Odyssey and Oyarzabal
  To take you in the sun to (Ithaca), to show you the World Cup, it's the time of the season for editing!

• Comix: Well-spotted
  You dasherdly—dash–dash−dash-dash!

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:16, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-32

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

Updates for editors

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

Updates for technical contributors

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:44, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2026).

Administrator changes

• MCE89
• Staraction

• Danaman5

CheckUser changes

• dbeef

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the 30-day requirement for extended-confirmed status now begins after an account's first edit instead of its registration (T431060).

Technical news

• Inactive editors can now be removed as mentors at Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship automatically.
• The Suggested Edits' Revise Tone feature is now enabled. It encourages editors to identify and revise non-neutral language in articles.

Miscellaneous

• The Unreferenced articles August 2026 backlog drive is underway. Help to add references to 47,000 articles.
• The Articles for creation August 2026 backlog drive is under way. Help to review 4,500+ drafts.

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• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:52, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-33

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

Updates for editors

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

Updates for technical contributors

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:43, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-34

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

Weekly highlight

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

Updates for editors

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

Updates for technical contributors

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:02, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue 244, August 2026

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7, Pickersgill-Cunliffe, Nick-D and Simon Harley look at six works Timeline: This month in military history

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 23:13, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 August 2026

• News and notes: Union process progresses, unanswered questions about Littler Mendelson remain
  And Raju Narisetti leaves WMF board after nine years.

• In the media: Wikipedia editors save Sam Altman's life
  Can AI do that? Meanwhile, Ruwiki gives porn the shaft, and has Grokipedia ghosted?

• Recent research: Women in blue? Wikipedia's gender gap reverses in some areas
  And other new research findings.

• Discussion report: Again and Again
  The community comes to consensus.

• Traffic report: Look out, here comes the Spider-Man!
  Plus The Odyssey and varied topics caught in his web.

• Humour: Her tastes, her Wikimania, her upcoming tour... Baby Globe reveals everything
  A short (parody) interview with Baby Globe via the French wikipress outlet, Regards sur l’Actualité du mouvement Wikimédia (RAW).

• On the bright side: The great outdoors
  Blue Angels, Indigenous Peoples' Day, and the Perseids meteor shower.

• Opinion: Are we embarrassed yet?
  One editor wants to find out more about a Department of Justice investigation of Wikipedia and its editors.

• Special report: Paris Syndrome: Labor Strife, AI Anxiety, and a Leadership Test at Wikimania 2026
  Notes from a delightful Wikimania and the ugly week that followed.

• Comix: WP:FAOWN
  "Explaining civilly" probably should go both ways...

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:23, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-35

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

Updates for editors

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

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

Updates for technical contributors

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

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:43, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

The Downlink Volume 4, Issue 7

	The Downlink	The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter
		2026 1 — 31 July

Volume 4 — Issue 7
Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink
In the News On the 2 and 5 July, Tianwen-2 imaged 469219 Kamoʻoalewa and Hayabusa2 imaged 98943 Torifune, respectively. While the latter was a flyby, Tianwen-2 rendezvoused with Kamoʻoalewa on 4 July following orbital insertion at ~20 kilometres (12 mi); it is planned to return samples from the Apollo asteroid. The Swift boost mission was launched on 3 July. This was the final launch of the Pegasus XL, and consequently the end of air-launch-to-orbit worldwide as of the time of writing. China became the second country to achieve the recovery of a booster with the maiden flight of the Long March 10B on 10 July. On 18 July, Vikram-1 was successfully launched, carrying multiple objects to LEO; built and launched by Skyroot Aerospace, it is India's first commercial rocket.
Article of the month Night Glider mode The ISS in 2001 showing solar panels. Night Glider mode (or "XVV Night Glider mode") is one of the procedures for orienting the solar arrays on the International Space Station. Normally the photovoltaic solar arrays of the space station track the sun. However, one of the main causes of orbital decay on the space station is that the area of the solar arrays, brushing against the thin residual atmosphere at orbital altitude, results in a small amount of aerodynamic drag. The drag can be lowered by orienting the solar arrays in "sun slicer" mode, where they fly edge-on to the orbital direction, rather than tracking the sun, however, this orientation reduces the power produced. The "night glider" mode is a hybrid orientation, where the solar arrays track the sun during the period when the space station is illuminated, are rotated edge-on to the orbital direction when it enters in the Earth's shadow, and then are returned to their tracking position when the station re-enters sunlight. This reduces the average drag on the station's solar arrays by about 30 percent, with no reduction in power.	Image of the month Buzz Aldrin and Apollo 11 Lunar Lander Taken by Neil Armstrong, this image shows Buzz Aldrin removing the passive seismometer, part of the Passive Seismic Experiment Package (PSEP), from the lander. Like all experimental instruments, the PSEP was stored in the lander's Scientific Equipment (SEQ) bay; on Apollo 11, it was stored along with the Laser Ranging Retroreflector (LRRR). Initially, NASA planned a full array of experiments for all Apollo missions, but the uncertainty of the first lunar landing led to only these two experiments being conducted. This first package was called the Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package (EASEP); later missions carried the full Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP).
Members New Members: Leaf.Sheap (2 July) KyloRen2017 (6 July) ToadalChaos (22 July) Number of active members: 206. Total number of members: 466. July Launches All times stated here are in UTC. See a current list here. Pegasus XL — Swift boost mission (3 Jul. at 04:24:00) (success Long March 10B — Hulianwang Jishu Shiyan (10 Jul. at 04:15:00) (success) Vikram-1 — SCOPE, SOLARAS S3 (18 Jul. at 06:35:30) (success)	Article Statistics This data reflects values from 31 July 2026. Spaceflight articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 6 30 15 8 59 FL 3 4 4 11 FM 124 124 A 1 2 1 4 GA 12 26 34 62 3 137 B 18 79 202 247 10 556 C 42 173 617 914 1 88 1,835 Start 14 133 1,024 2,742 517 4,430 Stub 5 192 1,971 339 2,507 List 11 117 110 248 1 50 537 Category 1,291 1,291 Disambig 47 47 File 276 276 Portal 54 54 Project 109 109 Redirect 2 44 147 1,257 1,450 Template 535 535 Other 1 43 44 Assessed 104 568 2,244 6,345 3,738 1,007 14,006 Unassessed 4 109 113 Total 104 568 2,244 6,349 3,738 1,116 14,119 Monthly Changes Since June 2026, there are three more High-importance, two more Mid-importance, thirteen more Low-importance, five more NA-importance, and ten more Unknown-importance articles, for a total of 46 new articles. There are also four more B-class, nineteen more C-class, eleven more Start-class, and two more Stub-class articles.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list. Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:08, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-36

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

Weekly highlight

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

Updates for editors

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

Updates for technical contributors

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

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:51, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Nomination for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!

Nominations for the upcoming Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:25, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-37

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

Updates for editors

• Add a Link has been upgraded for English Wikipedia users with improved detection of links that have different capitalization. This will help reduce ambiguous suggestions caused by differences in capitalization in article titles, including articles about cultural goods. A second phase of improvements is planned, which will also prepare the feature for release in other languages.
• The Article guidance feature will be enabled by default for junior editors on Simple English and Turkish Wikipedia starting 10 September 2026 following an experiment. Junior editors with 0 to 99 edits will automatically see the feature when they click a red link or use the "Madde oluşturto" option on Turkish Wikipedia to create a new article. The change is intended to help junior editors create higher-quality articles that meet each Wikipedia’s standards. Additional improvements will continue based on the experiment results and community feedback.
• The Pageviews Analysis tool which allows users to compare pageviews across multiple pages, turns 10 years old this year and several new features have been added. They include WikiNav which provides insights into how readers of Wikipedia explore the content, editing stats in Siteviews, the ability to lookup articles belonging to a WikiProject, and support for dark mode.
• A visually simplified Minerva navigation bar is being tested for logged-out readers using mobile web on the Bengali, Czech, English, Farsi, and Polish Wikipedias. The experiment aims to determine whether simplifying the navigation improves reader retention. The test will run from August 31 to September 28, and no action is required from users.
• WMDE Technical Wishes is working on improving auto-generated reference names in VisualEditor. Editors will only notice a slight change starting this week. When adding automatic reference names the numbering will start at :1 instead of :0. Read more on the project page.
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 23. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
• View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where Parsoid could mishandle nested nowiki tags, causing content to be lost and displaying unwanted text has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• Interface administrators can configure gadgets from MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. The definition format has been updated and no longer requires the ResourceLoader option, as gadgets are always loaded through ResourceLoader. This simplifies gadget configuration by removing an option that is no longer necessary, making gadget definitions easier for administrators.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:42, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-38

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

Weekly highlight

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

Updates for editors

• The chat platform Discord is releasing a new self-service framework that websites can use to specify how their links should look when shared on Discord. The Future Audiences team is planning to start using this new framework to improve how Wikipedia links look when shared on Discord, giving better attribution and credit to contributors. The link appearance and behavior won't change in the first phase of this project as we want to first collect some baseline data to assess the impact of future changes. However, if community members who are active on Discord spot any issues, they can reach out on Phabricator or Metawiki.
• The Reader Growth team will be running an experiment to test whether compacting article lead sections on mobiles with the addition of a "read more" button improves reader retention. The test will begin on September 17 on Arabic, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Chinese Wikipedias and will run for four weeks.
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 23. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming week.
• View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where Wikistats for Wikipedias was returning an HTTP 500 error and could not be reached, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 15:29, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2026).

Administrator changes

Dclemens1971

• Lectonar

• Bucketsofg
• Keenan Pepper
• The Wordsmith
• Caknuck

Oversight changes

• Richwales

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criteria G15 has been renamed from "LLM-generated pages without human review" to "Unambiguously LLM-generated pages" and has an additional sign of detection added to it following a RfC.

Miscellaneous

• The September 2026 New Pages Patrol backlog drive is ongoing. Help tackle the 30,000+ article backlog!
• This week's article for improvement will be added to the Main Page to try converting readers into editors following a RfC.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:37, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!

Voting for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open! A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. You can vote here. Voting closes at 23:59 UTC on 29 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:19, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 September 2026

• News and notes: The Balance of Power
  Wikimedia employees unionize, officer departs, The Signpost gains sister on Wiktionary

• In the media: Shocking photos may be changed on Wikipedia
  The image gallery anyone can edit.

• Disinformation report: Have UN Secretary-General candidates manipulated Wikipedia?
  Speaking diplomatically, not all of them.

• Recent research: Google's AI overviews may have reduced search engine referrals to English Wikipedia by 5%
  And other research findings.

• WikiConference report: The backwater symbiosis – reflections from Wiki Conference India 2026
  The fourth iteration of Wiki Conference India.

• Traffic report: Heaven let your light shine down
  The recently deceased dominate while still leaving room for some entertainment.

• Serendipity: Wikipedia Family Mosh Pit
  A poem by Mollystarkdean.

• Obituary: Passing of Gobonobo, community leader advocating for women and minorities
  Promoter of cultural knowledge and organizer of global cooperation.

• On the bright side: Fantasy video games, hopeful science fiction, and the change of seasons
  The Legend of Zelda, Star Trek, and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

• Comix: The Adventure of the Unknown Corpse
  An elementary case for fiction's greatest detective.

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:10, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Cholent revert

Splitting this off of User talk:The Bushranger/Archive43#ECR question since its not particularly relevant to that discussion, but the article Cholent did appear to refer to "Land of Israel" or just "Israel" before it was changed by a TA to Palestine. Though, I'm not particularly sure which should be kept. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 23:00, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

45dogs That's an interesting one, and I'm not sure I have a definite answer. The "Land of Israel" is the traditional Jewish name for the boundaries described in Ezekiel 47:13–20, which is not limited to the modern day states of Palestine, Israel, or the former British mandate. It is also not entirely synonymous with Ancient Israel and Judah, the United Kingdom of Israel, or any of the related ancient states. The article should probably use the term used by the source, though unfortunately I do not have access to the book to see what it actually says. - ZLEA ^TǀC 00:29, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

I wasn't particularly expecting you to have a definite answer, just thought I should inform you. I did a little bit more digging, and it appears the text was originally "Palestine" before being changed by an IP to Israel. The mention of Palestine was originally sourced to "Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food" pages 101-107 and 183-190. I found a preview of the book, and the pages available (specifically 184-185) seem to indicate it was just a European thing rather than something that happened in the Middle East. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 02:01, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Then I would probably just remove the Palestine/Land of Israel claim, unless of course a source can be found that actually supports it. - ZLEA ^TǀC 02:23, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue 245, September 2026

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 looks at three recent works Timeline: This month in military history

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 09:51, 19 September 2026 (UTC)