Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).

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Several AMPOL pages are unable to load on mobile

Since shortly after the 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting, the wikipedia articles for that page, the Charlie Kirk page, Assassination of Charlie Kirk, and Attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania have all been unable to load on mobile, at least on my iphone. Whenever I open any of these four pages, it says "a problem occurred repeatedly" after being open for a couple seconds. I'm not sure what is causing this issue; I suspected it was length that was the problem, but Donald Trump's own wikipedia page loads just fine on mobile so I'm not sure. This issue persists whether logged out or in, and adblocker on or off. Unnamed anon (talk) 08:17, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Which browser do you use? Could you try another one? Could you try clicking Special:Random until you find a few other pages that crash? Could help in finding out what the pages have in common that could cause the problem. — Chrisahn (talk) 11:24, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

I use Safari on ios 17. I do not currently have another browser on my phone, though I have not yet noticed major issues on Chrome on my PC. I clicked random many times and did not find any other pages that crashed. Unnamed anon (talk) 17:26, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

I have tested something by going onto desktop mode on my iphone. Initially, it appeared that it fixed the lag issue. However, the pages all experienced some slight lag, and crashed after about a minute (a significant improvement over crashing in 5 seconds though). Unnamed anon (talk) 17:41, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

The three pages you mention there are all too long and need to be reduced. Your phone is probably just choking on their length. Izno (talk) 18:44, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

If anybody starts a split suggestion for Tyler Robinson, I would absolutely support it, partially on the basis of letting the assassination page load properly, partially because Robinson has enough notability. Unnamed anon (talk) 22:18, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable and that's what the OP suspected, but OP also said the page Donald Trump loads fine, although it's much longer than 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting. — Chrisahn (talk) 19:36, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, that is weird. Izno (talk) 20:18, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

That is interesting—and it's not like only one aspect of the page is longer, there's more text, more images, more references, etc. Perhaps the only difference I notice is that Donald Trump, unlike the others linked, has no videos? Do other pages with videos crash for you? LittlePuppers (talk) 21:13, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

I had a sneaking suspicion that might be related. Let's try pinging the resident expert @TheDJ. Izno (talk) 21:34, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

None of them crash for me, but I’m on iOS 26. Could be some sort of iOS CSS measuring bug of course, but I don't have that browser version anywhere any longer :( —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:56, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

@LittlePuppers: @Izno: @Chrisahn: I think the pages having multiple videos (in combination with the length) might be the issue. Killing of Iryna Zarutska also crashes, and that article also has 2 videos. Kirk's page has 3 videos, the page on the murder of Kirk has 4 videos, and the pages on the first and third attempts on Trump's life have 3 videos each. Interestingly, Attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Florida loads properly in my experience, and only has one video. Unnamed anon (talk) 22:19, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

That definitely makes sense. Although I would think that (at least ideally) an unloaded video shouldn't take many more resources than an image. LittlePuppers (talk) 01:38, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

@LittlePuppers: @TheDJ: Add another mobile crashing AMPOL page to the list: I just found out that 2025 Brown University shooting also crashes on mobile. I currently only have access to my iphone; does that page also have a video? Unnamed anon (talk) 07:06, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that page has one video. In any case, iOS 17 is quite old. Are you able to update to a newer iOS version or try another browser on your phone? Some1 (talk) 11:57, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

@Unnamed anon So you have had this issue since April ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:53, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Around April, May, or June. I remember that in 2024 and 2025, the first Trump Assassination page loaded just fine. Then, the third attempt happened, and that page loaded fine for only about a month before multiple AMPOL pages started crashing. Unnamed anon (talk) 22:18, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Page preview images (hyperlink mouseover)

During the past weeks I have noticed that some of the pictures in the page preview window are not showing (like Ramin Djawadi, Jeffrey Lieber, Terry O'Quinn, Jeremy Davies, Sonya Walger, and Sam Anderson). Is this intentional?

EDIT: I tested this with three browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and Edge); same result. My OS is Win10. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aloysius Jr (talk • contribs) 22:52, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

EDIT 2: Just to comment on things I saw on phab:T437938. I swear I saw Ramin Djawadi's picture in the preview window in recent months, why has it now disappeared? My monitor is 1080p and was purchased in around 2009. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aloysius Jr (talk • contribs) 21:26, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Extra questions:

1. Why is there no page preview image in Jewish partisans, Remilitarisation of the Rhineland or Mukden incident?
2. No page preview image in Firefly (TV series). Is this because the image is non-free?

Aloysius Jr (talk) 11:59, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

(0) I've filed phab:T437938 for this. I can't see any obvious reason why those aren't displaying as expected. -- (1) I'm not sure. Potentially the same bug as (0)? -- (2) I believe that is correct, per the docs. -- Hope that helps. Quiddity (talk) 19:30, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Maybe the same thing I found last month when someone raised the same problem? Anomie⚔ 21:57, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Aloysius Jr (talk) 22:34, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

For what its worth, I am a Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups user and I see page previews for all those links on my Chromebook. -- Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 01:34, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Which is irrelevant to the question asked. Izno (talk) 04:21, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Did some several backtracking in the repo and found out the bug which is in "src/gateway/rest.js", specially the const safeImage = /.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$/i; (image source has "?" in it, which makes the image fallback from the popup). Will Gerrit it later. CONFUSED SPIRIT(Thilio).Talk 05:32, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Enabling iFrame graphics from Our World in Data on English Wikipedia

Hi all I’m posting this on behalf of Booksmurf, Doc_James and myself.  We would like to try and get a consensus on whether to enable iframes from Our World in Data, specifically allowing MDWiki:WikiProjectMed:OWID_popup to be run on English Wikipedia. showing a static image from Commons which becomes an interactive graph once clicked on and a reader agrees to the consent pop up. Below we have put together a summary of the background information but in short the system has passed a security review from the WMF and is currently being used on Basque and Spanish Wikipedia. Just to make clear, this isn’t a discussion on using iFrames from any source, only from Our World in Data.

Context

About Our World in Data

Our World in Data is a project run by the UK charity Global Change Data Lab, which is attached to the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development at the University of Oxford, They produce over 2,000 interactive charts and data tools on a very wide range of topics under CC BY-SA licenses. They collate data from the UN, governments, and other reliable sources. Several people within the community, affiliates and WMF, have connections with the OWID team. In addition the Head of Engineering at Our World in Data took part in the last discussion about this topic (links below).

Development history

1. The OWID gadget was created by Wiki Projtec Med.
2. There was a pilot rollout on Basque and Spanish Wikipedia in April 2024, which the WMF paused shortly after to address concerns raised at the time.
3. An interim process was created to show images from OWID on Wikipedia, which relies on thousands of files on Commons and many kinds of images are not possible to visualise on Wikipedia using this method.
4. There was a security review where WMF security assessed the risk as low.
5. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was put in place between WMF and Our World in Data in July 2025 covering how projects may incorporate this visualization method.
6. Implementation on Wikipedia
   1. The OWID iframe has been enabled on Spanish and Basque Wikipedia under the July 2025 MOU.
   2. The method includes a one-time consent prompt: the iframe content is not loaded until a reader actively interacts with the gadget (e.g. presses "play").

Example graphics

Below we provide examples of the kinds of graphics OWID produces. These graphics were created using the current, more difficult process, which can only visualise some kinds of graphic OWID produces. The iframes however allow using many types of interactive content that the all Commons approach does not support. there are two options for what to display:

1. Current: A current version of the graphic that will remain synced with the latest version on the OWID website
2. Snapshot: Allows users to choose a specific versions of the graph from a specific time period

Literacy rates

Annual co2 emissions per country

Asthma prevalence

Some examples of the kinds of graphics that currently can’t be shown using the older method but could be shown using this proposed method are shown here on the Wikiproject Med Wiki.

Summary of discussion

Previous discussions

There have been three previous discussions on the English Village Pump, none of which reached consensus but a lot of technical issues were discussed and resolved.

1. August 2025 (concerns raised)
2. November 2025 (no engagement)
3. April 2026 (overall support)

Impact

There was consensus that the tool would be very useful for showing visualisations of data. Editors and affiliates who work with external data-holding organisations (UN agencies, governments, NGOs) noted that the existing options for getting institutional data onto Wikipedia ( manually uploading static images to Commons, or attempting to route data through Wikidata) do not scale and are error-prone.

There was consensus that the tool would be very useful for showing visualisations of data — and the case for it is stronger than a simple feature request. A few things make this approach powerful rather than just convenient:

• It fills a longstanding gap. Editors have wanted interactive data visualisations for years, but MediaWiki has no native way to render them — Wikipedia has always been limited to static images (SVGs, PNGs). This is a persistent capability gap, not a new ask. Using static images from Commons means that there is significant and often undone work to keep the graphics up to date on Wikipedia when new versions are released. The OWID graphics using the Commons approach do not fill this gap because they an only render a limited number of OWID graphics
• The content is built and maintained by a partner who already specialises in data visualisation. OWID already produces and maintains 2,000+ interactive charts as its core mission, with dedicated engineering resources behind them. Wikipedia doesn't need to build or maintain any visualisation tooling itself — it only needs to display what OWID already keeps current. That's a fundamentally different cost structure from the Commons or Wikidata routes, where volunteers have to do the ongoing maintenance work by hand (see John's reply below for a detailed account of why those routes don't scale).
• The usual iFrame risk profile doesn't map cleanly onto this case. The standard objection to embedding iframes is that you're pulling in content from an unvetted, potentially unreliable third party with no accountability. That's not the situation here: this isn't a general allowance for arbitrary third-party iframes, it's a single, named non-profit partner, vetted through a WMF security review, and governed by a signed MOU that constrains what they can do with any data collected through the embed. The generic risks of "working with iframes" — foreign control of content, uncertain data handling, no recourse if something goes wrong — are mitigated specifically because there is a formal governance relationship in place, not because iframes are inherently safe.

Put together: this is a capability the community has wanted, it comes at very low build/maintenance cost to Wikipedia, and the usual reason to be cautious about embedding someone else's content doesn't really apply here, because OWID isn't "a third party" in the open-ended sense — it's a defined, agreed-upon partner.

Security discussion

WMF security assessed the overall security risk as low.

Summary of concerns

The main concerns raised in the August 2025 discussion centred on two related issues:

• Loss of local control: an iframe embeds content that Wikipedia projects cannot version, vet, or revert the way they can wikitext or hosted media, since it is served live from an external domain (OWID) rather than from WMF infrastructure.
• Reader privacy / IP exposure: loading the embedded graph causes the reader's browser to contact OWID's servers directly, exposing their IP address to a third party.

Summary of mitigations

The mitigations put in place, and discussed by the community, include:

• A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the WMF and Our World in Data, agreed in July 2025, governing how OWID may (or may not) use data collected through the embed. The exact terms of the MOU have not been made public to editors.
• A consent pop-up shown the first time a reader triggers the gadget on a page — nothing loads from OWID until the reader explicitly agrees.
• Browser storage partitioning (e.g. in Chrome), which limits OWID's ability to correlate a given visitor's iframe activity with their activity elsewhere on the web — noted as a partial mitigation rather than a complete guarantee, since it depends on the reader's browser.
• Version control: OWID has built the ability for us to link to a specific archived version of the content rather than the most recent live version. Therefore we have some version control.

Thanks for your time

John Cummings (talk) 16:04, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Discussion

Support/Oppose

List of people supporting, opposing goes below

• Support: Personally I think having this would be extremely valuable, I work in the UN system, helping different agencies share their knowledge and content on Wikipedia. I think my experience is fairly representative of other people I know working with other large institutions. A lot of UN and other Intergovernmental Organization data is shared on Our World in Data.

Before this opportunity there were three options for sharing data visualisations and none worked very well at all and basically weren’t scalable:

1. Sharing graphics on Commons: I do this for a lot of my work and its extremely time consuming to agree licenses, someone has to update the graphics on Commons and exchange them on all versions of Wikipedia, its a huge amount of work and isn’t scalable.
2. Visualise using data from Wikidata: as far as I know no UN agency is willing to share under CC0 and is very unlikely to change this policy. Visualising from Wikidata onto Wikipedia is very complicated and is also risky for the organisation since on Wikipedia it can say the data is coming from an organisation but then anyone can change a value on Wikidata and this isn’t true any more. Also extremely time consuming to keep updated.
3. Use the old OWID in data approach: This approach has over 1.7 million+ svg files, its extremely complicated and fiddly, I’ve read the instructions several times and cannot make it work. I do not think its a realistic option for a long term widely adopted approach.

If this is approved I would like to spend time on improving the documentation and encouraging UN agencies to make sure their data is up to date in OWID

Thanks again

John Cummings (talk) 16:07, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

• Support: This will allow us to use more complicated interactive graphs that are not supported via the current all Commons approach. The current methods also do not support at all or support well, the larger interactive graphs pertaining to COVID. Just to many SVGs I think. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:20, 16 September 2026 (UTC)
• Support: This is a great idea! Interactivity makes this vastly more useful than a static image. Wikipedia really needs things like this to keep people visiting articles instead of just reading summaries. I really hope it gets approved! NavinoEvans (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 11:53, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Yearly healthcare expenditure per person (total public and private). See file page.

• Support: Go to Commons:Help:Interactive data graphics by Our World in Data for info on what exists now, the OWID slider. The iFrame version that is proposed is much better, provides much more info, and is much easier to maintain. Go to any OWID interactive graphic at the source, and compare it to the current OWID slider to see what I mean. For example, OWID source versus the OWID slider to the right. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:54, 17 September 2026 (UTC)
• Support: As per above. Battleofalma (talk) 09:19, 18 September 2026 (UTC)
• Support: The functionality described above has multiple practical uses that would benefit open knowledge sharing. EriedgenArc (talk) 08:34, 19 September 2026 (UTC)
• Support Looks reasonable and beneficial. -- GreenC 16:15, 19 September 2026 (UTC)
• Support: The more ways ze can visualise data the better! Octavosaurus (talk)
• support - we know our readers want more readily accessible graphics, especially since sharing knowledge becomes more image focussed due to social media, so I see lots of readership benefits Lajmmoore (talk) 16:00, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. Have to say this every time this up: I am not interested in giving up our presentational autonomy to OWID. The information we share must be something we can change locally (or within our sphere of influence). OWID is not.

  And again, please ensure this kind of request is advertised at a place where people don't just care about bugs and misbehaviors. It is exceedingly obnoxious that it keeps coming up at VPT, which is a place for technical problems, and not at WP:VPR. Izno (talk) 16:10, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Discussion and questions

• "link to a specific archived version": if you do that, you are right back to the volunteers-have-to-update-manually problem that you seemed to be trying to solve. You can link straight to the OWID, and always get the latest version, no manual updating; or you can go for versioning, in which case the approach isn't solving the problem. You surely can't do both. Best would be to extract the version ID from the (current) OWID ... if it's there: if not, persuade them to provide it ... and not try to do manual version updates. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:54, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

  Editors can choose which version they want. I would generally go with the most recent version, agree. But even if one goes with an archived version, it is just the one instance that needs updating, not the 100s or 1000s of underlying files. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:08, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

  Hi Chiswick Chap, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, I've put a few lines in the summary above to explain that there are two options, one to have a live version of the graphic that stays synced to OWID and one to have a specific snapshot of the graphic. John Cummings (talk) 08:51, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

  Oh good. Thanks for explaining. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:19, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

  No problem Chiswick Chap, let us know if you have any other questions and please consider supporting the request :) John Cummings (talk) 22:07, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

• In addition to the "return to article" button at the bottom, I would like to see an X in the upper right corner to close the pop-up window. The bottom button wasn't very obvious to me, since it filling the entire width of the page has a bit of a dark pattern effect since it looks like a footer and not a button. Having an ✕ or Ⓧ in the upper right has become the standard for pop-ups, pop-ins, and modal dialogues across the web such as cookie notices, privacy policies, "special offers", newsletter signups, and even our own MediaViewer. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 18:48, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

  Sure, we can definitely add that to both methods. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:02, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: Shouldn't this discussion be held on VPP? VPT is usually limited to technical issues, questions, and answers, and does not usually hold RFCs or proposals. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:21, 16 September 2026 (UTC)
  • Thanks Jonesey95, I wasn't sure where to put it, its a technical request so I guessed the best place was here. Do you know where any rules for this are? Also do you know if there is a process to move a conversation or is it just a case of copy and pasting the whole thing? John Cummings (talk) 21:57, 16 September 2026 (UTC)
    • Yeah, we should probably have a line at the top of this page that says something about RFCs and proposals generally belonging at VPP. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:00, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Issue with Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects (on the mobile website)

Making requests on it no longer works because you need to include a link to the redirect you want to create as the title but now it no longer lets you put links to pages that don't exist as titles so it's broken. ~2026-50069-98 (talk) 12:30, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-50069-98 I was able to submit one successfully for a page that doesn't exist (see Special:Diff/1375427076). What was the exact error that you saw? Were you using a desktop browser, a mobile browser on a phone, or the app? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:37, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

VE enabled by default for newcomers on desktop

Hi all! I'm very pleased to share that earlier today we implemented the RfC consensus to make VisualEditor the default for new editors on desktop, using the design presented at the follow-up discussion. In this design, editors are initially given VE, and once they become autoconfirmed they are presented with a prompt encouraging them to try out source editing. Immense wikilove to @Femke for spearheading the RfC and to all my colleagues on the Editing team for supporting this work from the Foundation side.

This deployment follows the implementation of the RfC consensus to make VE the default on mobile web in July. We conducted a preliminary analysis which found that this change is helping more newcomers to edit more constructively, leading to a 3.80% relative increase in the proportion of newcomers who successfully saved at least one article edit and were not reverted within 48 hours.

The work we're doing to improve VE is continuing! Some current projects include LLM Paste Check, which will warn editors when they paste content from a chatbot, the Source Verification Suggestion (based on a volunteer-written user script), which will alert experienced editors when article text appears to contradict a cited source, and continuing to improve and broaden the availability of Suggestion Mode. But we also want to hear from you about improvements you'd like to see to VE! You can reach out to us at our team talk page or at any of our individual talk pages anytime, and your suggestions will inform our work.

Cheers, Sdkb‑WMF ^talk 21:21, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for all the hard work, Sdkb and the rest of the team. It's now time to update the more beginner-facing help pages / link to the right help pages from welcome templates etc. I made an incomplete list, but I'm sure there are more places we want updated. Not sure if this is a temporary thing, or intentional, but upon my first edit as a TA, it now shows the choice between VE and source. Is that because they never become autoconfirmed? Not sure if we want that friction? In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 21:37, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

T174303 would be great to see fixed. It just celebrated its ninth birthday. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:49, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

I am a long time editor using the desktop site and source editor on smartphones. Suddenly, I have to use the visual editor when I prefer the source editor. How can I go back to the source editor? Cullen328 (talk) 04:57, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Preferences > Editing > uncheck "Enable the visual editor" should do it, I believe. Black Kite (talk) 05:55, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Just switching to source editing on some page once should remember that you want it elsewhere. If it doesn’t, it’s a bug. Visual editing doesn’t have to be disabled entirely to make it work. stjn 09:23, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Not sure if this is a temporary thing, or intentional That was a bug. We've fixed it now (to align with the RfC result to introduce source editing at autoconfirmation rather than the first edit); thanks for spotting! Cheers, Sdkb‑WMF ^talk 18:39, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Black links on infobox

Is it THURSDAY again? I was looking at the infobox for Lionel Messi on dark mode when I realised several links were completely black (except for the ones I haven't clicked yet, 2022 FIFA World Cup, 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2007 Copa América), even if they display correctly in light mode. Obviously this only happens while logged in, so what could be the issue? Could very well be some issue on MediaWiki 1.47/wmf.20's changelog. — SimpleObjects-9ei 🍂/🌰/🤗 (see talk) 00:02, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

The bug in action

In the infobox? Not in a sidebar? Odd.

I've seen black links in sidebar templates when used within articles, and I always assumed the black links were intentional as so many sidebars have background colour formatting that makes normal blue links unreadable in dark mode. I've never seen black links in an infobox. When I look at Lionel Messi, all the links are blue regardless of whether I've clicked on them before and regardless of whether I'm logged in or not.

Are you using the default dark mode or the dark mode gadget? – Scyrme (talk/solidarity) 00:16, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

As an example of where I see black links in a sidebar, see History of China where {{History of China}} has black links after being transcluded into an article. There links there appear black and underlined.

Is this what you're seeing in the Infobox at Lionel Messi? – Scyrme (talk/solidarity) 00:22, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

...Yes. — SimpleObjects-9ei 🍂/🌰/🤗 (see talk) 00:31, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

I made a small adjustment to {{Infobox medal templates}} that appears to fix the problem. There may be negative effects elsewhere; I checked half a dozen non-football sportspeople, and their infoboxes looked fine in both light and dark modes. The fix is not as fancy as edits that use the design tokens, so there is probably a better fix. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:47, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

AFAIK, default dark mode behavior is to set link color to black on elements with custom backgrounds. However, I thought this was disabled on enwiki. Very strange. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 05:18, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Some files are unable to be viewed from certain IP

File:Vuilnis_bij_Essent_Milieu.jpg crashes and display a too many requests wikimedia page when viewing this image alone. IP is 47.86.229.97 (using another proxy and the problem disappears) ibicdlcod (talk) 09:21, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

If you're getting a "429, Too many requests" error from a non-proxied IP, you can report the issue via a private Phabricator ticket or by sending an email to bot-trafficwikimedia.org. Please make sure to include the full error in the report, from "Request served via ..." till the timestamp at the end. —⁠andrybak (talk) 22:19, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

It appears that there is an error with a CSD template

I was tagging Template:Infolazac biografija for speedy deletion when I realised that the rationale that I placed in G15 appears twice. This is a screenshot of the bug. Now, this could be an issue with the {{db-multiple}} template, or otherwise could be a possible issue involving their separate templates ({{db-g11}} and {{db-g15}}), since you cannot place a G11 rationale while CSD'ing an article using Twinkle. — SimpleObjects-9ei 🍂/🌰/🤗 (see talk) 20:15, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

The page has been deleted. The tag said:

{{db-multiple|G11|G15|communication=yes|reason={{tq|Suggested categories (for English Wikipedia): You can copy the article text and the sections above directly. Note that English Wikipedia requires independent, reliable secondary sources for notability and verification; the listed links should be checked and properly formatted with full URLs and access dates before submission.}}}}

Simplified example showing the issue with REASON displayed twice, at both G11 and G15:

{{db-multiple|G11|G15|reason=REASON}}

PrimeHunter (talk) 22:07, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Mess with reference scrolling

My comparative testing suggests Template:sticky header is messing with reverse reference scrolling where, for example, List_of_standalone_war_memorials_to_the_enemy#cite_ref-28 doesn't lead to the corresponding statement but to some random place above (while clicking the ref via statement works normally). This looks like an odd behavior because both properties should be compatible, I think (running Mozilla Firefox on Windows). Brandmeister ^talk 21:03, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Hello, I'm pretty link you looking for is List_of_standalone_war_memorials_to_the_enemy#cite_note-30, not #cite_ref-28. The difference in numbering is due to the two footnotes, and the url ending in #cite_ref-28 leads to the place on the page where the ref is used. Have a nice day! —Leaf.Sheap ⇖ /.°°.\ ⇗ (They•Them) 01:25, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

The ref number doesn't matter, it's just an example. I now see the refs do point to the relevant places. But at least in my browser the relevant places are underscrolled, being slightly above the address bar so aren't immediately visible (zoom is at standard 100%) and I have to scroll slightly higher to see. Perhaps not a big issue, but anyway. Brandmeister ^talk 09:53, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

Template:Infobox U.S. county

"Template:Infobox U.S. county" has a field to place the County's official website (if it has one). Articles recently stopped displaying the websites, even when they are in the Infobox source code. Can anyone point me to someplace that has information about this change? BillBasirLeslie (talk) 00:35, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

Please do not multipost. Your question has an answer now at Template talk:Infobox U.S. county#County website. Izno (talk) 01:11, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

Loss of session data

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T423206

I am getting a lot of Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try saving your changes again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in error messages, with seemingly no rhyme or reason to which edits they apply - any guidance? GiantSnowman 18:42, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

Annoyingly all the time. See phab T423206. KylieTastic (talk) 18:49, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

Eurgh, great, thanks! GiantSnowman 19:00, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

Me too and for me it has been going on for a while, like a a year. It is getting to the point I don't edit anymore because I constantly have to long back in. S0091 (talk) 19:46, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't have to log back in, I just have to try to publish two or more times till it works. Mostly it's when editing on multiple tabs at once. It's not just this issue though, in general editing is just slower and more problematic and keeps making me stop trying. It used to be the limit on the editing was me the human in the loop, but now it is the slow and buggy tech. KylieTastic (talk) 20:37, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

So damn annoying and yes, It's most often when I have multiple tabs open. Had one page last night that took well over 5 submits to take. Firefox (up to date), Windows 11. Zinnober9 (talk) 15:30, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

I've no guidance, but it's not just you. It's been particularly bad for me today, with about half my save attempts getting that error. Certes (talk) 20:00, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

Same here Οἶδα (talk) 02:59, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm having the same issue today, for the first time ever. -- Brad (talk) 04:43, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

FYI

 – Merged consecutive sections —ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email)

I am constantly getting the error "Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try saving your changes again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in." I have tried logging out and back in and nothing doing... Anyone seeing this issue? Any suggestions? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 03:29, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, in the thread immediately above yours (I'll merge them now to keep this tidy). —ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email) 03:38, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Facepalm wow... Way for me to not read, at all.... Thanks ClaudineChionh! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 03:41, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

As I've commented in threads before, I've had occasional log-outs of the "page loads not logged in, with a popup saying 'you are now logged in, refresh to fix it' variety. That's been stepping up the pace yesterday and today (a "normal" pace was once per day; it's happened twice in the last hour), and yesterday I was also getting the mentioned 'loss of session data' a few times while trying to save edits. Good to know it's not just me. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 07:34, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

This has not been a regular/constant issue for me, just the last few days. GiantSnowman 12:09, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Had it happen fourfivesix times over the last hour (once on Commons, once on Wikidata, twicethricefour times on en.Wiki) where loading a page had me logged out. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:00, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

...and again. This is becoming functionally unusable. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:08, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Just adding my own report to the list. It happened very frequently to me yesterday. Suðurhafsljósæta (talk) 05:46, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Agree Wikipedia is becoming functionally unusable that this point and now for past couple days I am getting logged out even navigating from one page to another. I have now been logged out over 10 times in the last hour (and logged out trying to post this). S0091 (talk) 18:14, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

My account is automatically logout

On the Recent Changes Page and Pending Changes page, I'm automatically logged out and then logged back in a few seconds. Is there an issue my account? Thanks. ~🌀Ampil ^{「💬 / 📝」} 08:37, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

merged thread NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 14:32, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

New TA randomly created in between one edit and another?

I was editing as ~2026-50825-19 and upon undoing a seemingly hoax edit Wikipedia randomly created a new Temporary Account (this current one).

Is it normal behaviour for a new TA to be created even when you already have one assigned? ~2026-50785-44 (talk) 23:31, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Probably the same thing as the other session loss issues discussed above. Anomie⚔ 23:42, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Adding a template to multiple articles

I have a template that needs to be added to about 250 articles. Is there a gadget or something similar that will allow me do this relatively quickly? I do have AWB but even this requires manual input on each article. Obi2canibe (talk) 10:53, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

I recommend asking at WP:AWBREQ for help with automating editing via AWB. When describing the desired results, make sure to avoid the XY problem. —⁠andrybak (talk) 15:22, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Bit cryptic, but I'll give it a try :) Obi2canibe (talk) 20:55, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

hCaptcha not working after new CSP changes?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T419684

Moved from Wikipedia:Teahouse § hCaptcha not working after new CSP changes?

 – NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 15:43, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm using an outdated browser (sorry) Firefox 102, and I don't have an account (sorry), so when editing an article using the new editor UI, the process freezes on the "Save your changes" / "Publish changes" modal dialog step. Fortunately the traditional editor still works. If I look in the browser's Console during the frozen new editor attempt, I see:

Content Security Policy: The page's settings blocked the loading of a resource at inline ("script-src"). 3 hcaptcha-enclave.html:11:1

This could be related to a recent change Add restrictive CSP to auth.wikimedia.org, which claims "CSP blocks are up, but nothing strange". ~2026-38760-49 (talk) 15:32, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-38760-49: I have moved this comment to WP:VPT, a forum for techincal questions and proposals. This should hopefully get your question answered quicker. NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 15:47, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Good idea, thank you. ~2026-38760-49 (talk) 16:03, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Firefox 102 is supported. I don't know enough about CSP to respond further, but it's probably worth filing on phab. LittlePuppers (talk) 16:28, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

It's great to hear that my browser is still supposed to be supported. Would someone with an account on Phab be willing to file this for me? Anyway, thanks for the insight and endorsement. ~2026-38760-49 (talk) 16:36, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

And you never experienced this (while doing the exact same thing), up until this week? Kind of strange as no significant changes have been made for a while now as far as i can tell —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:15, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

For all previous edits, I used the classic editing interface, so I suppose it is possible that the new interface has never been compatible with my browser. However, the log message in the console is pretty clear about the hCaptcha functionality being blocked by CSP rules, and T419684 (Add restrictive CSP to auth.wikimedia.org) was only deployed last week, so I don't understand your claim of "no significant changes have been made for a while now". Let me know if I'm misunderstanding or misreading something. ~2026-38760-49 (talk) 14:34, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

FYI, I have asked on Commons whether we can emulate playable public domain video games there, transcludable here

See Commons:Village pump#Can we emulate playable public domain video games?. Cheers! BD2412 T 01:46, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

You may want to discuss SDL (Commons' village pump is protected, so I cannot help you there). ~2026-50419-70 (talk) 12:19, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

"Music without power"

I was just presented with a Captcha that required me to say what devices would make music without power (yes, "power", not "electrical power"). Creating soundwaves takes energy, so power is always involved, and definitely in all of the examples displayed (laptop, violin, trumpet, refrigerator). So the correct answer would have been, none. However, skipping without making any selection was apparently not the correct answer.

So the Captcha makes no sense. How, as an encyclopaedia, can we avoid depending on Captchas with factual errors?

~2026-50419-70 (talk) 06:45, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-50419-70: Electric power is usually just called power and is clearly the intention here. Did you really think the wanted answer was none of them (no matter what the options had been), or did you choose it to make a point? I think the question is good enough for a captcha. There should be numerous questions so a program cannot learn them with human help but that limits how much care you can give to them, and they should be difficult for a program. Spelling out "electric power" sounds too easy. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:27, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

My point is about teaching kids or unlearned people the facts wrong. My ability to figure out that the captcha works incorrectly and solve it is not the point of this discussion. ~2026-50419-70 (talk) 21:58, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

If people are treating CAPTCHAs as a learning feature I weep. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:13, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

But it's not wrong to use the word power to represent electrical power. It's more like a norm, isn't it, the kind of language transformation people do unconsciously. Apparently, there is utility in using lossy compression in English even though it can make it resemble a degenerate code at times. Maybe the idea is that more literal LLMs might be slightly more likely to stumble over it because of differences between human and machine embeddings...although I find the idea that a modern LLM wouldn't pass that Captcha a bit implausible. Sean.hoyland (talk) 02:31, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

The idea that musical instruments can work without work being performed is definitely wrong. The idea that a click worker couldn't feed an LLM the correct idea on this particular prompt, which came up twice in quick succession for me is not particularly sanguine, either. Thirdly, you do not get a captcha on every edit, so it's not an effective protection against LLMs anyway. ~2026-50419-70 (talk) 05:45, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

You can click on the vertical ellipsis ⋮ > Information > Provide Feedback to provide feedback to hCaptcha. OutsideNormality (talk) 02:34, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

You're being way too pedantic. If someone says a trumpet doesn't use power, everyone understands what that means. Do you insist the term power cut is wrong because it's only a loss of electrical power? TheLegendofGanon (talk) 15:41, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Explain how "power cut" would be generalised to power (physics). ~2026-50419-70 (talk) 16:16, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Help moving an article to mainspace

A few editors have been working on Draft:Fairmont Junior/Senior High School, and I think it's ready for prime time. Can someone move it to mainspace for me (I always mess up page moves). Thank you very much for you help! Magnolia677 (talk) 14:35, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

@Magnolia677 Requests like this should be posted to Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests, not here. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:04, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

c:MediaWiki talk:Gadget-ImageStack.js#NaN on Chrome while mouse scroll

Could you fix the script (or say it's a browser bug) to solve the problem described on link? MBH (talk) 17:22, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

@MBH This page is for technical issues on the English Wikipedia. A bug in a Commons gadget that affects the Russian Wikipedia is out of scope. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:03, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Redlinked categories, again

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories again features a small cluster of redlinks I cannot fix myself.

• Category:"+f+" and Category:"+x+", both on a user's .js settings page I cannot edit to remove them due to lacking the necessary privileges.
• Category:Cite Q - cites a work with an expression of concern notice, a category that's present only on private template testing pages and cannot be created for that purpose, and couldn't be named that way even if its creation were justifiable anyway, but which is being smuggled in via a template or module I can't find. (I found a template edit I thought was responsible for it, because it was made within the past three days by the same editor whose testing pages are popping up in the category, and reverted that only to find that the reversion failed to make the redlink go away, and then I got completely lost in the woods trying to find where else the problem lies.)

So could somebody with more knowledge and/or privilege in such matters clear these redlinks? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 07:23, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

The first two are only on User:Asukite/scripts/NPPTools.js and Asukite is an active administrator who can fix it. The last has now been created. Special:PrefixIndex/Category:Cite Q - shows eight categories (two are category redirects) so maybe Template:Cite Q#Tracking categories should be updated. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:43, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Category:Cite Q - cites a work with an expression of concern notice is due to all four rows at Template:Cite Q/testcases#Expression of concern notices. This must be due to some recent edits in Template:Cite Q. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:06, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, I've been inactive the last couple days. I just blanked the JS for now, I have a few other issues with that script, least of which is the fact that I never added any functionality to look for session loss before saving (JS is not a strength of mine and I've been trying to learn) - the issue wasn't present in my original source, that was an error introduced by a minifier I used. ASUKITE 23:32, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Strange banner message

I got this strange banner message maybe someone can explain:

• "Outdated configuration
• Deputy has detected a change in this wiki's configuration for all Deputy users. We've automatically downloaded the changes for you, but you have to reload to apply the changes."

Maybe I just haven't encountered it before but what is "Deputy"? Am I a "Deputy user"? Thanks. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:47, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

It looks like this isn't "one and done". This message is appearing on every open tab I have and, unfortunately, I keep many, many, many tabs open on my laptop for Wikipedia. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:55, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

You need to shut the Deputy. Coat, taxi? ~2026-50419-70 (talk) 20:20, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

In your common.js you have a link to User:Chlod/Scripts/Deputy.js so maybe it's related to that as it was updated by Chlod today. KylieTastic (talk) 19:58, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

@KylieTastic, @Liz: Correct, I made some changes yesterday to User:Chlod/Scripts/Deputy/configuration.json which would trigger this message on all users of Wikipedia:Deputy. This was to add support for warning users about adding duplicate {{copyvio}} notices on a page. The banner should very quickly dismiss itself after loading in once, unless multiple tabs were opened at the same time. In that case, all those tabs would have the banner, until they get refreshed. Chlod (say hi!) 03:20, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

I believe the potential issue at hand here might be that it doesn't have a dismiss button and that the "outdated configuration" banner activates on all open tabs. I'll be adding a dismiss button to the script so that the banner is closable, but this will require a reload of tabs anyway, which would also dismiss the banner. Luckily, this banner is not stuck to a part of the page so it's mostly in the background. The reason why this shows up on all tabs is that Deputy strongly uses cross-tab communication to facilitate work between a CCI case page and articles that are a subject of that case. Having different tabs on different configurations can cause unexpected behavior. Chlod (say hi!) 03:30, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

Hello, Chlod, I guess my question is I had never heard of "Deputy" before and didn't know whether or not I was a user of it. Is it deployed across the entire platform? Was there a general discussion about this somewhere? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:32, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

LLM Paste Check - live later this week

On Thursday this week, LLM Paste Check will be enabled here. It is an Edit check that will appear when someone pastes text into Wikipedia that has been copied directly from an external generative AI chatbot. It can be used to point them directly towards the local policy on AI use.

The initial implementation will activate when both of the following conditions are met:

1. Someone pastes ≥50 characters or at least 100 characters are entered at the same instant, consisting of at least 10 words
2. The pasted text is accompanied by metadata popular chatbots are known to add

Any edits that trigger an LLM Paste Check to be shown will apply an Edit tag to the revision (editcheck-llm-paste-shown), to enable community monitoring.

The wording shown in the description, and the default-link it uses, can and should be locally configured. The default wording and link can be found (after September 24) and overridden at MediaWiki:editcheck-copyvio-llm-description and MediaWiki:editcheck-copyvio-llm-policylink, and the defaults can be previewed at testwiki.

As with all edit checks, admins can configure who sees it (currently based on min/max editcounts) and where the Check is and is not shown. The default is showing it to all editors.

Feedback here or mw:Talk:Edit check is welcome and appreciated. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Why are categories forced small text?

Perhaps someone knows the answer or how to fix this. Take Category:East Asian religions or Category:Nationalist parties in Poland. Their text is...small. Now, many a reader might not notice that. But I read text at the "standard" size, and so was surprised to see that category text was small, and wouldn't let me adjust that. Is there a phab ticket about this? A reason this happens? It doesn't seem very accessible... CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 04:39, 23 September 2026 (UTC)