User Talk:Matthewrb

Tech News: 2025-52

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

• From January, edit filters can be set to automatically suppress their details such as rules and list of attempted edits and actions. This will help oversighters use edit filters to prevent doxxing or other suppressible material. [1]
• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 12 January 2026 because of the end of year holidays. Thank you to all of the translators, and people who submitted content or feedback, this year.
• View all 16 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the crash that occurred when tapping "First Steps" in the Wikipedia Android Year in Review has now been fixed, and the feature opens as expected. [2]

Updates for technical contributors

• Interface elements such as diffs and categories generated by MediaWiki used to have the attribute data-mw="interface" to distinguish from wiki content. The attribute has been replaced with data-mw-interface="", to avoid potential conflicts with other data-mw attributes, which are generated by Parsoid. [3]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Meetings and events

• The Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026 will take place on 13-14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Applications just opened mid-December and will close in mid-January or earlier if capacity is reached. With space for approximately 100 participants, early application is encouraged.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:43, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

V V V - Reviving wikiproject Amateur radio! - V V V

In an attempt to revive the Wikipedia:WikiProject Amateur radio, I'm posting a message on the talk pages of the partecipants asking them to update their status and include ways they can contribute (as The Signpost says, the first step is updating the list of active members).

We've already started, come see! Check out the new navigational Template:Amateur radio topics!

Feel free to invite new members personally or through public postings! Sinucep (talk) 23:52, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

The Downlink Volume 3, Issue 10

	The Downlink	The WikiProject Spaceflight Newsletter
		2025 1 October — 30 November

Volume 3 — Issue 10
Spaceflight Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Open tasks • Popular pages • The Downlink
In the News On 13 November, the ESCAPADE spacecraft SIMPLEx-4A (Blue) and SIMPLEx-4B (Gold) were launched on board a New Glenn rocket. They will orbit Earth at its L2 point until the Mars transfer window opens in late 2026. On the second flight of New Glenn, the first stage, "Never Tell Me the Odds," landed on the drone ship Jacklyn on 13 November. This made New Glenn the first orbital-class booster capable of landing propulsively not manufactured by SpaceX. As a result of damage caused by space debris, China's Shenzhou 20 was rendered unusable for returning its crew back to Earth. The crew instead returned on board the Shenzhou 21 craft on 14 November, with Shenzhou 22 being launched uncrewed on 25 November to serve as a return vessel for the crew of Shenzhou 21. On 27 November, Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 31, the only launch site used by Russia to reach the ISS, was significantly damaged during the launch of Soyuz MS-28.
Featured Content The image "NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars" was promoted to Featured Media status on 23 October. It was nominated by WhatADrag07.
Article of the month Zond 6 Zond 6 was a formal member of the Soviet Zond program, and an unpiloted version of the Soyuz 7K-L1 crewed Moon-flyby spacecraft. It was launched on a lunar flyby mission on November 10, 1968, from a parent satellite (68-101B) in Earth parking orbit. The spacecraft carried a biological payload of turtles, flies, and bacteria. It also carried scientific probes including cosmic ray, micrometeoroid detectors, and photographic equipment. The mission was a precursor to a crewed circumlunar flight which the Soviets hoped could occur in December 1968, thus beating the American Apollo 8. However, after rounding the Moon on November 14, Zond 6 crashed on its return to Earth, due to a parachute failure when the parachute was detached from the capsule too early.	Image of the month Explosion on the Cygnus CRS Orb-3 On 28 October, 2014, Cygnus Orb-3 was launched at 22:22:38 UTC. 15 seconds after liftoff, one of the launch vehicle's AJ26 (modified NK-33s) ruptured, resulting in the craft falling. The mission was scrubbed eight seconds later at 22:23:01 UTC. The subsequent investigation found that the liquid oxygen turbopump exploded, severing nearby propellant lines. This resulted in a fire that damaged various engine components. The cause of the LOX turbopump's failure remains unknown.
Members New Members: Hal Nordmann (1 October) R-Beepy (3 November) Number of active members: 217. Total number of members: 444. October–November Launches All times stated here are in UTC. See a current list here. Long March 8A — 9 Guowang (16 Oct. at 01:33:00) (success) H3-24W — HTV-X1, various cubeSats (26 Oct. at 00:00:15) (success) Long March 2F/G — Shenzhou 21 (31 Oct. at 15:44:00) (success) LVM3 — GSAT-7R (2 Nov. at 11:56:00) (success) New Glenn — ESCAPADE Blue and Gold (13 Nov. at 20:55:01) (success) Atlas V 551 — Viasat 3 EMEA (14 Nov. at 03:04:00) (success) Soyuz-2.1a — Soyuz MS-28 (27 Nov. at 09:27:57) (successful launch; spaceport damaged)	Article Statistics This data reflects values from 30 November 2025. Spaceflight articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 7 28 15 8 58 FL 3 4 4 11 FM 124 124 A 1 2 1 4 GA 12 27 33 57 2 131 B 16 77 196 234 5 528 C 45 170 606 834 1 56 1,712 Start 15 134 1,025 2,690 480 4,344 Stub 5 196 1,981 278 2,460 List 11 119 108 236 1 42 517 Category 1,280 1,280 Disambig 48 48 File 262 262 Portal 55 55 Project 109 109 Redirect 2 43 143 1,246 1,434 Template 532 532 NA 2 2 Other 1 31 32 Assessed 107 565 2,229 6,188 3,691 863 13,643 Unassessed 9 118 127 Total 107 565 2,229 6,197 3,691 981 13,770 Monthly Changes Since September 2025, there are one more high-importance, three more mid-importance, 56 more low-importance, eleven more eight NA-importance, and 42 more unknown-importance articles, for a total of 113 more articles. There are also eight more B-class articles, 43 more C-class articles, 28 more Start-class articles, 25 more Stub-class articles, and three more lists.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list. Newsletter contributors: Ships&Space

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:46, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

New pages patrol January–February 2026 Backlog drive

January–February 2026 Backlog Drive | New pages patrol
New Pages Patrol is hosting a one-time, two-month experimental backlog drive aimed at reducing the backlog. This will be a combo drive: both articles and redirects will earn points. The drive will run from 1 January to 28 February 2026. The drive is divided into two phases. Participants may take part in either phase or across both phases, depending on availability. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled during the drive. Two-month drive-exclusive barnstars will be awarded to eligible participants. Each article review earns 1 point, while each redirect review earns 0.2 points. Streak awards will be granted based on consistently meeting weekly point thresholds. Barnstars will also be awarded for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Interested in participating? Sign up here.
You are receiving this message because you are a New Pages Patrol reviewer. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself from here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:22, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #712

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2025-12-29. Missed the previous one? See issue #711.

Discussions

• Open request for adminship: Ppolar bear - RfP scheduled to end after 3 January 2026 13:40 (UTC)
  • QubeCubeBot - Task/s: Continue import of Swedish Parliament documents inline with the modeling work in Wikidata:WikiProject Sweden/Swedish Riksdag documents.
  • AinaliBot 3 - Task/s: Continue import of Swedish Parliament documents inline with the modeling work in Wikidata:WikiProject Sweden/Swedish Riksdag documents.

Events

• This month's Scholia hackathon has moved Scholia closer to its planned switch to a QLever backend. Beta testers can assist by exploring the interim QLever-backed Scholia instance and reporting any issues.
• Upcoming events:
  • SWAT4HCLS 2026. Amsterdam, March 23-26, with a "Wikidata in healthcare and life sciences" session and Prof. Hannah Bast as one of the keynotes

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Videos:
  • (Indonesian) Introduction to Wikifunctions presented by NikolasKHF (Niko). In this session, Niko introduced Wikifunctions project, how to edit a function, how to add an implementation and test, and demonstrated them. This is the first Wikifunctions training in Indonesian. Slides are available on Commons.
  • (Indonesian) Wikidata for Academician presented by Wikimedia Indonesia's Data and Technology team. They introduced Wikimedia Indonesia, and then explained Wikidata, its underlying concepts and a glance to its history, how to add statements and references, how to query with Wikidata Query Services, Wikidata and its potential in research fields, Wikiprojects and Wikidata:For development resources. Slides are available on Commons.

Tool of the week

• WD-NearbyItems : browse Wikidata Items nearby
• Quizicle is a daily quiz/puzzle game that's not really a quiz and not really a puzzle. Deduce the answer from crossword-style clues with hot/cold feedback.

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • random page URL (link to random page or item on website)
  • specimen classifier (person who assigned the identification to a specimen)
  • collection date (date-time or interval during which a specimen or object was collected in the field)
  • land degradation (amount of land that is degraded by an object, mainly for infrastructure projects)
  • Hong Kong fire alarm level (Hong Kong fire alarm levels classification system)
  • page offset (difference between external page number printed on the work (P304) and the actual page in digital file (P7668))
  • logical implication (axiom or conjecture that this axiom or conjecture implies)
• Newest External identifiers: ‎survivalhorrors.com ID, ‎VGChartz ID, ‎Adventure Game Hotspot game ID, ‎BoomerShooterDB game ID, ‎Vandal game ID, GoFundMe fundraising ID, Adult Film Database director ID, S1 No.1 Style actress ID, ‎MetroidvaniaDB game ID, EAGER game ID, EAGER developer ID, ‎Games.cz game ID, ‎4gamer.net game ID, ‎GOG tag ID, ‎Yaba Sanshiro ID, ‎Games for Change directory ID, DLSite work ID, ‎DLSite person ID, ‎DLSite doujin circle ID, ‎Fight-A-Base game ID, ‎DeVuego game ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review: Erdős Problem number (Erdős Problem number)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: PixelatedArcade genre ID, BRAHMS identifier, LegiStorm person ID, Game Boy Database game ID, NHK Archives Program ID, Wendingen object ID, Wendingen person ID, RetroCollect games ID, FIP.IT basketball player ID, Lenta.ru person ID, Polski Petersburg encyclopedia ID (Polish version)., Télérama film ID., Bercail ID, Panoramax picture ID, InterSportStats athlete ID, Before I Play game ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Showcase Lexemes: turn (L3568) - English verb (tɜːrn) meaning "to rotate", "to change direction", or "to transform"

Development

• No development happened in the past week as the team are on holidays. Happy new year everyone!

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Govdirectory weekly focus country: Czech Republic
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue · Full report · Unsubscribe . JosefAnthony talk ·MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:12, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2026 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2026 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor, we hope the WikiCup will give you a chance to improve your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here, and a bot will set up your submissions page within one day, ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page.

For the 2026 WikiCup, the highest-ranking contestants will receive tournament points at the end of each round, and final rankings are decided by the number of tournament points each contestant has. This is the same scoring system that we had last year. If you're busy and can't sign up in January, don't worry: Signups are open throughout the year. To make things fairer for latecomers, the lowest-scoring contestants are no longer eliminated at the end of each round.

The first round will end on 26 February. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), Frostly (talk · contribs · email), Guerillero (talk · contribs · email) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:38, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #713

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-01-05. Missed the previous one? See issue #712.

Discussions

• Open request for adminship: Morne06 - RfP scheduled to end after 8 January 2026 20:35 (UTC)
• Closed request for adminship: Ppolar bear - general consensus is to reapply after gaining more experience.
• New request for comments: Notability policy reform: first drafted in 2013, Wikidata has grown vastly since the original Notability policy was created. This first-round discussion is intended to collect ideas, comments, and reflections on how to improve the Notability Policy for what Wikidata currently is and will become.

Events

• Upcoming events:
  • OpenStreetMap X Wikidata Meetup #84 January 12 Time: 19:30-21:00 UTC+8 at Mozilla Community Space Taipei (Q61752245).
  • Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026: a two-day event that will take place from 13 to 14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Apply for a grant and join the event.
  • The next Wikidata+Wikibase office hours will take place on Wednesday, 18:00 CEST, 14th January 2026 in the Wikidata Telegram group. The Wikidata and Wikibase office hours are online events where the development team presents what they have been working on over the past quarter, and the community is welcome to ask questions and discuss important issues related to the development of Wikidata and Wikibase.

Press, articles, blog posts, videos

• Blogs:
  • Rescuing Scholia #2: getting closer
  • African Literary Metadata (ALMEDA)
  • Wikontic: Ontology-Aware KG Pipeline - this article introduces Wikontic, a pipeline that builds knowledge graphs from text by enforcing Wikidata's ontological rules and merging duplicate entities.
• Papers:
  • Using Wikidata’s Ontology in Practice: A Neuro-Symbolic, Community-Centred Workflow for Integrating and Reusing Humanities Datasets - This article introduces an ontology-first, community-driven workflow that aligns humanities datasets with Wikidata to address data silos and gender inequities, offering reusable modelling patterns, SPARQL-based analysis, and a neuro-symbolic AI framework that reduces bias and supports reproducible, ontology-backed knowledge graph practices. By Velilla & Ferran-Ferrer (2025).
  • A Semantic Wiki for Language Learning: The Case of the Baoulé Language - The BAOULE-WIKI project introduces a semantic wiki and homograph-detection model to preserve and teach the endangered Baoulé language, achieving high accuracy while paving the way for broader digital preservation of African languages through community collaboration and integration with knowledge bases like Wikidata and DBpedia. By Kra et al., (2026).
  • Transforming the Digital Landscape: Towards a Medieval Knowledge Graph - Digitization has transformed medieval studies by expanding access and enabling new research methods, with future progress hinging on Linked Open Data, shareable identifiers, and collaborative knowledge graphs to truly democratize and enrich scholarship. By Burrows, (2026).
  • Towards a Linked Open Index: Reconciling Museum Records to Wikidata for Index of American Design Constituents - The Index of American Design project’s reconciliation of thousands of records with Wikidata reveals both challenges and strategies for improving data alignment, while a linked Power BI tool supports ongoing monitoring of quality, access, and representation in humanities research. By Foster et al., (2026).
  • The “Dizionario Degli Scrittori Italiani Contemporanei Pseudonimi” in Wikidata. Pseudonymous Authors in Wikidata: Dataset and Queries - The dataset from the MA thesis structures biographical data on 19th–20th century pseudonymous Italian authors in Wikidata, including corpus items, SPARQL queries, and analysis documents, and is reusable for further research or case studies. By De Monaco, (2025).

Tool of the week

• Broomstick is a tool by Wikicollabs it uncover Lexemes that can be improved on Wikidata.
• Explore your Wikimedia activity year in review with Wiki Year in Review
• Wikilokal (Android version): explore the world within a 3 km radius by Affandy Murad

Other Noteworthy Stuff

• New project: Dissemination of polymer science through Wikipedia and Wikidata (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (Q33438))

Newest properties and property proposals to review

• Newest General datatypes:
  • crowdfunding target (target goal of this crowdfunding campaign)
  • free height (vertical distance from the floor level to the lowest obstruction in the ceiling of an indoor or outdoor space)
• Newest External identifiers: ‎PixelatedArcade genre ID, ‎Game Boy Database game ID, ‎RetroCollect games ID, MyWaifuList work ID, Nonbinary Wiki ID, Diccionari de la llengua catalana entry ID, DVIDS video ID, FIP.IT basketball player ID, Card Player ID, Télérama film ID, Boosty author ID, ‎Before I Play game ID
• New General datatypes property proposals to review:
  • Fungal Names taxon ID (ID number in the [[:w:Fungal Names]] database.)
  • Braille transcription (transcription in Braille)
  • Braille represents (graphene or phone that the Braille cell represents)
• New External identifier property proposals to review: CNVD-ID, Trismegistos editor ID, woordenlijst lemma ID, European Vehicle Number, CourtListener person ID, Norwegian railway station code, Australian National Kennel Council ID, Museo del Marchio Italiano ID

You can comment on all open property proposals!

Did you know?

• Schema examples: (E498) district electoral division: Schema to describe an electoral division (small political division of Ireland).
• Newest WikiProjects:
  • Project IrishForges: Describing forges and forge buildings of Ireland using Wikidata, Wikimedia and other sources.
  • Project Ireland: A hub for all Ireland-related Wikidata activities including cross-Wikiproject tasks.
  • Project Historic Irish Placenames: focusing on County Kilkenny, connect historic placenames with their modern counterparts or create new items for "lost places".
  • Svenska psalmodikon: A sub-project for the psalmodikon (Q3354977), a stringed-instrument popular in Sweden.
• WikiProject Highlights: WikiPojects as decentralized governance - this sub-page of the Limits of Wikidata project proposes WikiProjects become caretakers of collections or subgraphs of relevant items.
• Showcase Items: Venezuela (Q717) - country in South America
• Showcase Lexemes: размах (L155644) - Russian noun (rɐzˈmax) meaning "amplitude (of a swing)", "physical span or width", or "scale/scope (of an activity)"

Development

• No development happened in the past week as the team are just returning from the holidays.

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Weekly Tasks

• Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
• Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
• Govdirectory weekly focus country:
• Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
• Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
• Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
• Help write the next summary!

· Previous issue · Full report · Unsubscribe . JosefAnthony talk ·MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:21, 5 January 2026 (UTC)