User talk:DMacks/Archive 68
| This is an archive of past discussions with User:DMacks. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
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A barnstar for you!
| The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar | |
| Ok, thanks for noting about "CeraVe" Rafael! (He, him) • talk • guestbook • projects 23:54, 12 July 2025 (UTC) |
- By the way, you usually mention me in your edits. Rafael! (He, him) • talk • guestbook • projects 00:00, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, I usually tag whomever's comment or edit I'm discussing. They might want to respond, provide additional ideas, learn a guideline for future reference, or use the idea in other places themselves. Wikipedia works best when people collaborate, rather than just doing something each on their own. DMacks (talk) 00:14, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-29
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
- Featured templates, a new feature related to Template Recall and Discovery will be deployed this week to all Wikimedia projects: With this feature, editors will be able to quickly access a list of templates that are likely to be useful. These templates will be displayed in a list, under the "featured" tab of the template discovery interface. Administrators can define the list via the Community Configuration interface. The feature fulfills a request by the community through the Community Wishlist. [1][2]
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the request to add Malayalam fonts in the Wikisource Book Export Tool was resolved and now, the rendering of Malayalam letters in exported Wikisource books are accurate. [3]
Updates for technical contributors
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- Developers, designers, and all Wikimedians are invited to submit a project idea for the Wikimania Hackathon 2025. Read this Diff blog post for more details.
Meetings and events
- WikiIndaba 2025 scholarship application and program submission is open until 23:59 GMT on July 20. WikiIndaba is a regional conference for African Wikimedians both on the continent and in the diaspora to unite and grow together. Submit your scholarship application and program proposal now!
- WikiCon Brasil 2025 will take place on July 19-20 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The Brazilian community members are encouraged to register and attend!
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:05, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
Hi DMacks, it's been 13 years since you placed this article under semi-protection due to BLP violations, and I think it's time to unprotect it. Now that Coleman's been dead for almost three years, the reason for the protection no longer applies here. BriDash9000 (talk) 17:30, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Sounds reasonable. I unprotected it but will watchlist it for a while. DMacks (talk) 00:44, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-30
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 Translation Suggestions feature in the Content Translation tool now has another level of article filters added to the "... More" category. Translators who use the Suggestions feature can now select and receive article suggestions that are customized to geographical locations of their interest using the new "Regions" filter. [4]
- Administrators can now limit "Add a Link" to newcomers. The "Add a Link" Structured Task helps new account holders start editing, but some communities have requested the ability to restrict it to its intended audience: newcomers. Administrators can configure this setting within the Community Configuration feature.
View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- For AbuseFilter editors on some wikis, it is now possible to filter edits based on the RevertRisk score of the edit being attempted. It is only populated if the action being evaluated is an edit. For more information, please see the ORES/AbuseFilter variables documentation.
- The Beta Cluster wikis have been moved from
beta.wmflabs.orgtobeta.wmcloud.org. Users may need to update URLs in any tools, or in their password managers. Any related issues can be reported in the task.
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- WikiCite 2025 will take place from 29–31 August, both online and in-person in Bern, Switzerland. The event's goals are to reconnect communities, institutions, and individuals working with open citations, bibliographic data, and the Wikidata/Wikibase ecosystem. Registration is open and the call for proposals will be announced soon. [5]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:38, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
Deletion review for Shyamambaram
An editor has asked for a deletion review of Shyamambaram. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Owen× ☎ 22:58, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ping, OwenX. I responded there. DMacks (talk) 00:05, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
Blocked
Hello DMacks
I apologize in advance if this is not the correct way to do this but I have never had this issue before. My phone is telling me I have been blocked from editing Wikipedia until October 21 2025 it also says that you are the one whom has blocked me. Because I have made a disruptive edit to an article. I only make occasional, minor edits and the last edit I made was 4 months ago. I have gone on to my computer to get into contact with you not to evade an block or ban. The Q&A post said under these circumstances to reach out to the admin for further assistance. Can you please inform me about what exactly I have done wrong as I don't even know what prompted my block. Thank you for you help. 173.68.199.192 (talk) 03:52, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Hi! I would need to know the exact Wikipedia account-name in order to check what its situation is. DMacks (talk) 03:56, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Hello I believe my username IP. Address is one of these things
- ipv6:
- 2600:387:15:3d 1a::3
- ipv4
- 206.171.36.123
- I've also noticed a number an block number.
- #25201847 173.68.199.192 (talk) 04:16, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- 173.68.199.192, I think that what you are describing are range blocks. The answer to your problem is to create an account, and then edit logged in, instead of logging as an IP editor.-- Toddy1 (talk) 08:09, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for jumping in, Toddy1. Indeed, it's a case of collateral damage because 2600:387:15:3d1a::3 is part of a range that has been abused several different of our fairly active and disruptive trolls and other abusive editors. They were even still abusing our services and harrassing our editors despite several less stringent measures. I wish we didn't have to deal with those sorts of situations, but some people just suck. And I wish, given the ways we have to deal with them, there wasn't collateral damage from uninvolved persons who wish to help grow the encyclopedia. DMacks (talk) 11:48, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- 173.68.199.192, I think that what you are describing are range blocks. The answer to your problem is to create an account, and then edit logged in, instead of logging as an IP editor.-- Toddy1 (talk) 08:09, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- This has also happened to me too. It was the first edit I have ever made on Wikipedia as an IP editor, and all I changed was one word.
- If I remember correctly, the ban note said I was restricted from making an account. I will double check once I post this. 2600:1702:65C3:2900:C862:2390:CD79:CE5B (talk) 20:56, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- Update:
- The following is what the ban note says:
- Block parameters
- anon. only
- account creation disabled
- email disabled
- cannot edit own talk page 2600:1702:65C3:2900:C862:2390:CD79:CE5B (talk) 20:59, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-31
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- The Community Tech team will be focusing on wishes related to Watchlists and Recent Changes pages, over the next few months. They are looking for feedback. Please read the latest update, and if you have ideas, please submit a wish on the topic.
Updates for editors
- The Wikimedia Commons community has decided to block cross-wiki uploads to Wikimedia Commons, for all users without autoconfirmed rights on that wiki, starting on August 16. This is because of widespread problems related to files that are uploaded by newcomers. Users who are affected by this will get an error message with a link to the less restrictive UploadWizard on Commons. Please help translating the message or give feedback on the message text. Please also update your local help pages to explain this restriction. [6]
- On wikis with temporary accounts enabled and Meta-Wiki, administrators may now set up a footer for the Special:Contributions pages of temporary accounts, similar to those which can be shown on IP and user-account pages. They may do it by creating the page named
MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-temp. [7]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
- The MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Fall 2025 will be held 28–30 October 2025 in Hanover, Germany. This event is organized by and for the third-party MediaWiki community. You can propose sessions and register to attend.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:23, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
This Month in Education: July 2025
This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 7 • July 2025
- Crafting Impactful Education Newsletters: Shared Insights from EduWiki 2025
- Educational Outreach with Youth Centers in Albania
- Discussing educational resources at WikiCon Brasil 2025
- Enhancing Mobile-Friendly Contribution in Wikimedia Education Programs
- The second semester of Leamos Wikipedia begins in Bolivia with challenges and learning
- When Travel Fails, Learning Continues: A Reflection from EduWiki 2025
- Wiki club in Kumanovo - the newest Wiki club of Wikimedia MKD
- Jaroslav Mašek: How KISK FF MU students used AI to write Wikipedia
- Various programmes up and rolling with Charles University Prague
Tech News: 2025-32
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
- Editors can now enable the User Info card. This feature adds an icon next to usernames on history pages and similar user-contribution log pages. When you tap or click on the icon, it displays data related to that user account such as the number of edits, reverted edits, blocks, and more. It's part of a broader project to make it easier for moderators to evaluate account trustworthiness. The feature can be enabled in your global preferences, and later this week it will be available in local preferences. [8]
- Everybody is invited to share comments on Collaborative Contributions, a project recently launched by the Connection team. The project aims to create a new way to display the impact of collaborative editing activities (such as edit-a-thons, backlog drives, and WikiProjects) on the wikis. Post your comments on the project talk page. [9]
- Administrators can now define the default block duration for temporary accounts. To do that, they need to create a page named
MediaWiki:Ipb-default-expiry-temporary-accountand use a value defined inMediaWiki:Ipboptions. This allows administrators to easily block temporary accounts for 90 days, which is functionally equivalent to an indefinite block. The advantage of this solution is that it does not clutter Special:BlockList. More documentation is available. [10]
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Gadgets can now include
.vuefiles. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons can be loaded through the gadget definition. The documentation has examples. For user scripts that use Vue.js, an API module now exists to load Codex icons. [11][12] - Module developers can now use a Lua interface to simplify the preparation of Lua modules for translation on Meta-Wiki. This improvement makes it easier for translators to find and edit module strings without dealing with raw Lua code. It helps prevent mistakes that could break the module during translation. Module developers and translators are invited to watch the demo video, read more about translatable modules to understand how it works, refer to Meta-Wiki's Module:User Wikimedia project for example usage, and share their feedback on how well it addresses the challenges in their workflow. The interface still has some performance issues, so it should not be used in widely used modules yet. [13]
- Developers of external tools that connect to Wikimedia pages must set a user-agent that complies with the user-agent policy. This policy will start to be more strongly enforced in August because of external crawlers that are overusing Wikimedia's resources. Tools that are hosted on Wikimedia's Toolforge or Cloud VPS will not be affected by this for now, but should still set a user-agent. More technical details are available, and related questions are welcome in that task.
- Parsoid Read Views is going to be rolling out to some smaller Wikipedias over the next few weeks, following the successful transition of Wikivoyages and Wiktionaries to Parsoid Read Views. For more information, see the Parsoid/Parser Unification project page. [14]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 03:36, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
| Poutine | |
| In Canada, where I live, poutine is very common and tasty. ~Rafael! (He, him) • talk • guestbook • projects |
Ketone Edit: My mistake - many thanks.
Restored revision 1300083225 by Citation bot (talk): Confirming the image is correct. Carbons are often not explicitly labeled "C" in skeletal diagrams.
Sorry that was my misunderstanding. As you say, the diagram is correct. From your input I now know that bond-line (or skeletal) notation simplifies the representation of organic molecules by using lines to show bonds and "corners/ends to represent carbon atoms". Each corner/end of a line segment represents a carbon atom and is not explicitly drawn. Each carbon atom is assumed to form four bonds. If a carbon atom has fewer than four bonds shown, the remaining bonds are assumed to be with hydrogen atoms. So it was correct after all! 🥴
I love Wikipedia, I learn something new everyday (if only I could remember it all 😁) and I am very grateful that knowledgeable people like yourself put in the effort to make this possible. Thank you so much. PhilC 212.159.119.112 (talk) 10:47, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- You're welcome! DMacks (talk) 10:55, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2025
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2025).
- Following a request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion, G15, has been enacted. It applies to pages generated by a large language model (LLM) without human review.
- Following a request for comment, there is a new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses of temporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors can request access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.
- Administrators can now restrict the "Add a Link" feature to newcomers. The "Add a Link" Structured Task helps new account holders get started with editing. Administrators can configure this setting in the Community Configuration page.
- The arbitration case Indian military history has been closed.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
- The contentious topic designations for Sri Lanka (SL) and India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (IPA) are folded into this new contentious topic.
- The community-authorized general sanctions regarding South Asian social groups (GS/CASTE) are rescinded and folded into this new contentious topic.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
- The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case closed on 31 July.
- The arbitration case Transgender healthcare and people has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 11 August.
- Wikimania 2025 is happening in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years of Wikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You can register here now.
Tech News: 2025-33
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
- The WikiEditor toolbar now includes its keyboard shortcuts in the tooltips for its buttons. This will help to improve the discoverability of this feature. [15]
- The Product and Technology Advisory Council published a set of proposed experiments the Wikimedia Foundation can try to improve communication with community. Feedback on the proposals are welcomed until August 22 on this talk page.
- The search bar on the Minerva skin (mobile) has been updated to use the same type-ahead search component that is used on the Vector 2022 skin. There are no changes in search functionality but there are minor visual changes. Specifically, the close-search button has been changed from an "X" to a back arrow. This helps to distinguish it from the other "X" button that is used to clear any text. [16]
- Editors on some wikis will see a new toggle for "Group results by page" on watchlist, related changes, and recent changes pages. This is an A/B experiment that is planned to start on August 11, and will run for 3–6 weeks on the Bengali, Chinese, Czech, French, Greek, Portuguese, and Urdu Wikipedias. The experiment will examine how making this feature more discoverable might affect editors' ability to find the edits they are looking for. [17]
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- The multiwiki datasets of Unicode data have been moved to Category:Unicode Module Datasets on Wikimedia Commons, to follow the idea of "One common data source, multiple local wikis". Most wikis have been updated to use the Commons version. You can ask questions at the talkpage. [18]
- Lua code can add warnings when something is wrong, by using the
mw.addWarning()function. It is now possible to add more than one warning, instead of new warnings replacing old ones. If you maintain a Lua module that used warnings, you should check it still works as expected. [19]
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 23:25, 11 August 2025 (UTC)
Hey
I haven't edited much, I just want to know what I did to be blocked from editing. Lammccullars8307 (talk) 15:29, 16 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hi User:Lammccullars8307. I don't see any evidence of a block of this account.[20] If you are talking about a different account-name, please say what it is. If you are seeing a block that refers to an IP address or some other block-message, likewise I'd need to know those specific details in order to have any chance of understanding the situation. DMacks (talk) 18:05, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Semi-protection of demographics- and ethnicity-related pages about Afghanistan
Hello DMacks,
thank you for semi-protecting the page Ethnic groups in Afghanistan. However, I think we should go further as there have been many cases of sockpuppetry and edit wars in related pages such as Demographics of Afghanistan, Cabinet of Afghanistan and Districts of Afghanistan which include ethnic information, Languages of Afghanistan, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks etc. since all of these are highly controversial topics in Afghanistan and lead to the desire of changing things in favor of their own claimed side. I think all of these pages should be extended-confirmed-protected just like the Hazaras page which also had multiple cases of sockpuppetry, edit wars and unsourced claims. Where can I request a change of protection status? Thank you. -- SdHb (talk) 09:26, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hi User:SdHb. I'm seeing two different situations here. For Ethnic groups in Afghanistan, it's a current edit-war (that's bad) but the involved editors are all extended-confirmed. Therefore, EC-protection won't have any effect. None of the other specific pages you identified have current edit-wars (some don't even have any recent edits at all?). Standard protection-policy says that protection is usually not applied pre-emptively. The general topic-area could be covered by Wikipedia:Contentious topics/South Asia, which means we can take some additional measures that might solve edit-warring. I'll take a closer look later today (just got back from a few days' traveling with limited internet access). DMacks (talk) 18:20, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Request for help creating an iceDQ Wikipedia page
Hello DMacks,
I hope you are doing well. I noticed your edits on Wikipedia and wanted to ask if you might be open to helping create a page for a company called iceDQ, which works in the data validation.
I understand that Wikipedia has strict guidelines for neutrality, verifiability, and notability, and I’m happy to provide reliable, independent sources for the content.
If you’re interested, I can share more details and references so the article can be built in line with Wikipedia’s standards.
Thank you,
iceDQ Team Icedq (talk) 13:39, 13 August 2025 (UTC)
- No, that would make me a proxy for a COI. DMacks (talk) 18:22, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Recent Temp-Ban
Good afternoon DMacks,
I’m writing due to some confusion with a recent editing ban I received. The reasoning was for “disruptive editing”, which I’m assuming may have happened accidentally. I was creating infoboxes in my personal sandbox, and copying current ones from their articles into my sandbox. Whatever editing that may have been disruptive was certainly accidental, and the article concerning disruptive editing (here) specifies that, when a mistake such as this happens, a friendly reminder may be better. I apologize for any unintended disruptive editing, but, with all due respect, a 3 month ban for a mistake seems extreme. Could you provide any insight on this? Philninja99 (talk) 20:10, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hi User:Philninja99. I don't see any evidence of a block of this account.[21] If you are talking about a different account-name, please say what it is. If you are seeing a block that refers to an IP address or some other block-message, likewise I'd need to know those specific details in order to have any chance of understanding the situation. DMacks (talk) 18:07, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hi @DMacks. After I published this comment, the ban was no longer there. I was really confused as to why I was banned, and am equally confused as to what mistake was made and quickly fixed. Not sure, but I am no longer banned, so I'll take it. Philninja99 (talk) 19:01, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
- The Wiki works in mysterious ways! Feel free to reach out again if you have problems in the future, being sure to copy-paste whatever actual error message you get. DMacks (talk) 21:39, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hi @DMacks. After I published this comment, the ban was no longer there. I was really confused as to why I was banned, and am equally confused as to what mistake was made and quickly fixed. Not sure, but I am no longer banned, so I'll take it. Philninja99 (talk) 19:01, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-34
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Later this week, people who are logged-in and have the "Discussion tools" Beta Feature enabled will gain the ability to "Thank" individual comments directly from talk pages, rather than needing to navigate to page history. Learn more about this feature. [22]
- An A/B test comparing two versions of the desktop donate link launched on testwiki on 12 August and on English Wikipedia 14 August for 0.1% of logged out users on the desktop site. The experiment will run for three weeks, ending on 12 September. [23]
- An A/A test to measure the baseline for reader retention was launched 12 August using Experimentation Lab. This measures the percentage of users who revisit a wiki after their initial visit over a 14-day period. No visual changes are expected. The experiment will run through 31 August. [24]
- Five new wikis have been created:
View all 46 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
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 00:34, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for August 22
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Bonded Vault heist, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page East Providence.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 18:09, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-35
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
Template authors can now use additional CSS properties, since the CSS sanitizer used by TemplateStyles was updated. For example: width: fit-content;ruby-align; relative units such aslh; and custom strings inlist-style-type. These improvements are a Community Wishlist wish. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]- On large wikis, the default time period to display edits from, within the Special:RecentChanges page, has been changed from 7 days to 1 day. This is part of a performance improvement project. This should have no user-facing impact due to the quantity of edits on these wikis. [40]
- Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find. [41]
- Wikimedia Commons videos were not shown in the Videos tab in Google Search. The problem was investigated and reported to Google who have now fixed the issue. [42][43]
- One new wiki has been created: a Wiktionary in Betawi (
wikt:bew:) [44]
View all 39 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Two fields of the recentchanges database table are being removed.
rc_newandrc_typeare being removed in favor ofrc_source. Queries to these older fields will start to fail starting this week and developers should userc_sourceinstead. These older fields were deprecated over 10 years ago and should not be in use. This is part of work to improve the performance and stability of queries to the recentchanges table. [45]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: support for new languages in MediaWiki and translatewiki; the start of the Language Onboarding and Development project to help support the growth of new and small wikis; updates on research projects; and more.
Meetings and events
- The next Language Community Meeting is happening soon, August 29th at 15:00 UTC. This week's meeting will cover: the Avro keyboard developers from Wikimedia Bangladesh, who were recently awarded a national award for their contributions to this keyboard; and other topics.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:08, 26 August 2025 (UTC)
Carbon-carbon ylides
Hi DMacks, I might be unaware of certain rules in Wikipedia as I just made an account. Could you please let me know why did you remove my addition? The text had a link to a newly published peer-reviewed work in Angewandte Chemie, one of the most credible chemistry journals. Cina-foroutan (talk) 14:29, 27 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Cina-foroutan As DMacks said in his edit summary, yours is a primary source and for a general article like ylide Wikipedia uses almost exclusively secondary sources. You have an obvious conflict of interest in adding that citation to your own work, which is in any case only a theoretical proposal at this point: we need to see what other experts/reviewers say about it. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:55, 27 August 2025 (UTC)
I have sent you a note about a page you started
Hi DMacks. Thank you for your work on Omandur Tiruchirappalli. Another editor, MPGuy2824, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:
Please add a ref for the population from the official indian census site
To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|MPGuy2824}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)
-MPGuy2824 (talk) 07:43, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hi MPGuy2824. Thanks for the note (and NPP in general!). Unfortunately, the reviewer-scripts are often confused by multiple editors and by redirects, with a side helping of LTA. DMacks (talk) 14:12, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hehe, yep. The same message also went on the article's talk page where hopefully some future interested editor can notice it. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 04:36, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-36
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
- The Editing team wants to compile a list of templates, jargon terms, and policies used in edit summaries when a copyright violation is removed. This will help them identify the number of edits reverted due to copyright issues. We invite community members from the following Wikis to list these terms in T402601, or to share their list with Trizek_(WMF): Arabic Wikipedia, Czech Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. This project is open until September 9th 2025.
Updates for editors
- The CampaignEvents extension has been enabled for all Wikisources. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. The extension has three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. To request the extension for your wiki, visit the Deployment information page. [46]
- The lists in the footer of the editing interface, such as "Templates used on this page," will now be organized into columns when there is enough space. This enhancement minimizes scrolling when editing lengthy articles on Wikipedia. [47]
- On September 3rd, 2025 we will increase the sampling percentages of our group by toggle experiment of the
Special:RecentChanges,Special:Watchlist, andSpecial:RelatedChangespages on the Chinese, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias to 100 percent, allowing more editors to be part of this experiment. This adjustment is intended to ensure we have sufficient data to make informed decisions when evaluating the experiment results. [48][49] - Upon clicking an empty search bar, logged-out users will see suggestions of articles for further reading on English Wikipedia beginning the week of September 22. The feature will be available on both desktop and mobile. All non-English wikis received this change in June and July. The goal is to make it easier for users to find articles. Learn more.
View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- Wikifunctions now has a new capability called "lightweight enumeration types", an enumeration type is simply a fixed set of values that's in the type's definition. This capability makes it quick and easy to define such a type, and allows for the reuse of values that are already present in Wikidata. Here is a newsletter to learn more.
- The latest Readers Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: the formation of two new teams — Reader Growth and Reader Experience; insights into declining pageviews and account creations; highlights from the Wikimania Nairobi panel on improving the reading experience; upcoming experiments to engage new and existing readers; and more.
Meetings and events
- Spotlight on some Wikimania 2025 Sessions:
- Identifying AI-generated text by searching for ISBNs whose checksums fail: Mathias Schindler of WMDE shared tools to help communities search for these.
- La durabilité du mouvement Wikimedia face aux défis actuels et futurs: This session explored how Wikimedia can stay a trusted source of knowledge in the age of generative AI, information overload, and disinformation.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:46, 1 September 2025 (UTC)
This Month in Education: August 2025
This Month in Education
Volume 14 • Issue 8 • August 2025
- Bootcamp Wikipedia in Classroom
- Brazil launches campaign about Open Science on Wiki
- Breaking Barriers: Yoruba Wikipedia Fan Club Offa's Historic Wins
- Emerging Voices in Free Knowledge: The Journey of Wiki Club SATI
- From a Curious Student to a Wikimedia Leader
- From webinars to conferences: Wikimedia Ukraine’s approach to events for educators
- Higher education with Wikipedia in Spain
- Scientific Contribution from Serbia: Wikipedia in Education Research Published in a Prestigious Journal
- Teachers with Wikipedia. What if we create a Spanish-speaking collaboration network
- The brains behind Wikipedia
- Why EduWiki Should Be Considered by Policymakers
- Wikimedia Chile in Visviri: Free knowledge and education at Chile’s starting point
- Wikipedia as a tool presented at Media Education Summer School for Teachers
- Wikipedia vs AI at La Trobe University
- St Aloysius University – Wikipedia training session for newcomers
- Wiki Loves Academics, WUGN Kaduna
- In Just 3 Minutes: The Power of Wiki Education
- Sensing Cebu: Fieldnotes of an Academic as a Wiki Volunteer
Gardenview25
You will never guess what this user is up to [50]. Esolo5002 (talk) 21:32, 2 September 2025 (UTC)
- Indef'ed. Thanks for tracking it. DMacks (talk) 21:37, 2 September 2025 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2025
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2025).
- An RfC is open on whether use of emojis with no encyclopedic value in mainspace and draftspace (e.g., at the start of paragraphs or in place of bullet points) should be added as a criterion under G15.
- Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find. T393240
- The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been closed.
- An RfC is in progress to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
Tech News: 2025-37
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- The Editing team is working on a new check: Paste check. This check informs newcomers who paste text into Wikipedia that the content might not be accepted. This check is an effort to increase the likelihood that the new content people are adding to Wikipedia is aligned with the Movement's commitment to offering information under a free content license. This check will soon be tested at a few wikis. If your community is interested in this test, please tell us in this task, or contact the team.
Updates for editors
Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will be able to use a linting tool to see errors or other potential problems in wikitext in real time. See the help page for more information. [51]
When browsing a wiki (like en.wikipedia.org), the software responds in one of two ways: a desktop page, or a redirect to a mobile version on an "m" domain (likeen.m.wikipedia.org). Over the next three weeks, MediaWiki will start displaying the mobile version to mobile devices directly on the standard domain, without this redirect. This change does not affect existing m-dot URLs, or the "Desktop view" opt-out. Learn more. [52]- When an edit changes the categories of a page, the changes to the category membership counts are now happening asynchronously. This improves the speed of saving edits, especially when moving many pages to or from the same category, and reduces the risk of site outages, but it means that the counts can show outdated information for a few minutes. [53]
- Edits on Wikidata to qualifiers (properties and values) and references (properties and values) in a Wikidata item statement will now not add entries to the RecentChanges or Watchlist pages on all other Wikis. This is a temporary change to improve performance while other solutions are created. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. Learn more. [54][55]
- Japanese-language wikis have had a major upgrade to the way that search works. The new search should generally give more accurate and more relevant search results. [56]
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
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 01:10, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Allentown Parking Authority logo.png

Thanks for uploading File:Allentown Parking Authority logo.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of non-free use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --Min☠︎rax«¦talk¦» 13:43, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Strongsville High School logo.jpg

Thanks for uploading File:Strongsville High School logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of non-free use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --Min☠︎rax«¦talk¦» 13:45, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
Jeffry Daniels
Would a Yearbook image be an acceptable source to use as citation for the name change? Tweegus (talk) 12:24, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
- No. That does not provide confirmation that it's the same person. "A was a person in the yearbook, B was a person later"—B could actually be someone else. It's a fallacy of performing original research, and it's one of the reasons that secondary reliable sources are required. DMacks (talk) 12:36, 10 September 2025 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for September 15
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Prostitution in Rhode Island, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Moot.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 07:54, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

