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Question from Oogly2 (04:04, 12 August 2025)

I just loaded a new article on the Songs of Love Foundation into my sandbox. My understanding is that someone is going to read this before posting. Is this correct?

What are my next steps?

Many thanks, Sharon --Oogly2 (talk) 04:04, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

@Oogly2 I have inserted the Articles for Creation template for draft submission. A reviewer will read and review the draft. A couple of things though:
  • WP:INLINE inline citation is preferred.
  • A quick read, the draft seems promotional
  • Are you writing about the person or the organisation? Choose one and focus on the topic.
  • The references though without links seems to be of primary sources, i.e. interviews.
– robertsky (talk) 05:36, 12 August 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for responding! Sorry if I am asking so many questions. I'm new at this. So this has been submitted?
Also, what is WP: INLINE? How does it sound promotional?
I guess I can focus on the Songs of Love Foundation. I was trying to explain how it came to be through the efforts of John Beltzer who single-handed created the organization. I thought his back story was interesting.
Finally, can you explain what you mean about the references without links. I'm confused.
Again thanks very much for your help. Oogly2 (talk) 02:27, 13 August 2025 (UTC)
@Oogly2,
Yes, I have submitted for you, but unforunately, a reviewer has gotten back with exactly what I thought would be the response.
  • WP:INLINE - this is an essay about having inline citations. Rather than having the reference at the end of the article, place the reference at the end of the paragraph or sentence that the reference is supporting with, <ref>your reference here</ref>.
  • It sounds promotional because it contains words or phrases that are frivolous and statements that may be contentious, i.e. Songs of Love Foundation has grown remarkably in scope and impact. Remarkable? How so? Who said so? Families and hospital staff have reported that these songs help alleviate fear, pain, and anxiety during medical treatments. Any sources to support this assertion? (This is where inline citations would help to clarify). Media Coverage and Public Recognition section is entirely promotional. For a highly profiled organisation, the articles written in the mentioned publications would be more useful as a source. The Music Industry Support paragraph can be utilised to show that it enjoyed support from the musicians in general, of course with sources.
It also sounds promotional because you try to cramp in two subjects into one article. On biography vs organisation profile, if the organisation has a more notable presence than Beltzer, a short paragraph summarising the genesis or reasoning by Beltzer is sufficient.
  • As for references, while not compulsory, but it is preferred that there are links to the sources where possible, i.e. “Songs of Love: Non-profit Helping Sick Kids Cope Through Personalized Songs,” Henriquez, Gloria. Global News Canada (April 25, 2017) (Canadian video segment and article featuring John Beltzer and a patient working on a song of love together.) can be found at https://globalnews.ca/news/3404026/songs-of-love-non-profit-helping-sick-kids-cope-through-personalized-songs/. This makes verifications of the content by other editors and readers easier.
– robertsky (talk) 03:58, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

Question from Monu Jayram Mandal (10:15, 13 August 2025)

I am interested in topics related to domestic workers, housekeeping services, and labour laws in India. --Monu Jayram Mandal (talk) 10:15, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

Invitation to Singapore August 2025 meetup

Hello,

It is August 2025!

At Wikimania 2025 in Nairobi, Kenya, User:Robertsky was recognised as the Wikimedian of the Year. Known for his kindness, dedication and willingness to help others, Robert embodies the spirit of the Wikimedia movement. Read more at diff blog about his journey as an editor and seven other Wikimedians identified for their contributions to the movement.

Our next meetup is taking place at Bistro8@Foch Road on 16 August 2025, 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM. It will be a lunch meetup. Full details and the registration form can be found at Event:Singapore Meetup August 2025. Some topics of discussion will be Wikimania 2025, and future plans for Wikimedia Singapore. We’d love to see you there!

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page.

Warm regards,

– robertsky (talk) 02:05, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

Page move grammar

Hello, I believe this new title you implemented [1] is ungrammatical.

If the family name was Smith, the article wouldn't be titled "Killing of Smith children".

"Al-Najjar family bombing/killing" would be better I think. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:18, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

Information icon Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unknown152438 (talk • contribs)

Question from Amyshumann1893226 (22:13, 25 July 2025)

Amyshumann1893226 (talk) 22:13, 25 July 2025 ()

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. [2]
  • 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. [3]
  • 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. [4]
  • Five new wikis have been created:
  • Recurrent item View all 46 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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)

A barnstar for you!

The Diligent Librarian Barnstar
For exemplary service at the Resource Exchange, tirelessly delivering the reliable sources on which this encyclopedia depends, please accept this award. :) Thank you for your help in accessing The Story of Tun Perak. There's no doubt you deserve the Wikimedian of the Year award! —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:17, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

Question from JamesOB12 (20:57, 19 August 2025)

Hi Robert, I am new to this so have started with a couple of articles where I’ve found a gap on things I know about. One is on native North America - a renowned anthropologist and the other fly fishing - an iconic reel. The one on the fishing reel I published directly but the other on the anthropologist is going through review (it’s been 5 weeks). Would you recommend one route over the other for future articles? Many thanks --JamesOB12 (talk) 20:57, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

New pages patrol September 2025 Backlog drive

September 2025 Backlog Drive | New pages patrol
  • On 1 September 2025, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled.
  • Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:32, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

Question from CookieMonster135 on Igor Rybakov (20:06, 24 August 2025)

Hi, How do I create a citation? And what are they for? --CookieMonster135 (talk) 20:07, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

@CookieMonster135, please see this help page for the instructions on how to create a citation. Citations are to help other editors and readers to verify that the statements you write are supported with sources of information. – robertsky (talk) 20:14, 24 August 2025 (UTC)
thank you! CookieMonster135 (talk) 20:18, 24 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

  • Wishlist item Advanced item 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 as lh; and custom strings in list-style-type. These improvements are a Community Wishlist wish. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]
  • 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. [20]
  • Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find. [21]
  • 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. [22][23]
  • One new wiki has been created: a Wiktionary in Betawi (wikt:bew:) [24]
  • Recurrent item 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_new and rc_type are being removed in favor of rc_source. Queries to these older fields will start to fail starting this week and developers should use rc_source instead. 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. [25]
  • Recurrent item 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 00:09, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Question from Zimbatech6213ports62 (15:21, 26 August 2025)

Hello how do I create and upload information in Wikipedia --Zimbatech6213ports62 (talk) 15:21, 26 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. [26]
  • 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. [27]
  • On September 3rd, 2025 we will increase the sampling percentages of our group by toggle experiment of the Special:RecentChanges, Special:Watchlist, and Special:RelatedChanges pages 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. [28][29]
  • 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.
  • Recurrent item View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:46, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2025

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2025).

Administrator changes

readded Euryalus
removed

Interface administrator changes

readded Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

readded AmandaNP
removed SQL

Oversight changes

readded AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

  • 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.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • 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.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:16, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Barnstar of Diligence
A belated congratulations on your Wikimedian of the Year 2025 award! Optakeover(U)(T)(C) 11:16, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

The Signpost: 9 September 2025

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:06, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

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

  • Advanced item 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. [30]
  • Advanced item 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 (like en.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. [31]
  • 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. [32]
  • 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. [33][34]
  • 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. [35]
  • Recurrent item View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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 01:11, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from AkinUgurAktas (23:26, 11 September 2025)

how to do citation good --AkinUgurAktas (talk) 23:26, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from STEMSupport (00:52, 14 September 2025)

I created a user name that is not the name of the article of information. Does the user name have to be what anyone interested in this has to use? --STEMSupport (talk) 00:52, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

@STEMSupport username does not matter to the content. – robertsky (talk) 00:44, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from STEMSupport (19:29, 14 September 2025)

Hi Rober, I uploaded an article about Broadcom Foundation and want to know when to expect it to publiish? --STEMSupport (talk) 19:29, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

@STEMSupport I have moved your article to Draft:Broadcom Foundation where it is better placed for improvements and reviews to be made. Third party references are required to establish the notability of subject. Submitting it as it is would be declined by reviewers. – robertsky (talk) 00:47, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-38

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

Updates for editors

  • References lists that are made using the <references/> tag will now automatically display with columns in Vector 2022 when readers are using its 'standard' settings for text-size and page-width. [36]
  • Starting in the week of October 6, on small wikis and medium wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled, all autoconfirmed users will be able to use Event Registration as an organizer. No changes will be made for large wikis unless requested in Phabricator. This change is being made to make it easier for more people to use Event Registration, especially on wikis that are less likely to have policies related to the Event Organizer right. Learn more.
  • Users that search using regular expressions (regex) can now use additional features including:
    • for the intitle: keyword: metacharacters for start-of-line (^) and end-of-line ($) anchors [37]
    • for both intitle: and insource: keywords: shorthand character classes for digits (\d), whitespace (\s), and word characters (\w); and escape codes for line feed (\r), newline (\n), tab (\t), and unicode (e.g. \uHHHH). [38]
  • When you search for text that looks like an IP, the system will now show search results. It used to take you to the contributions for that IP instead of showing search results. [39]
  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 24. This is planned at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests which happen twice a year. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog.
  • Recurrent item View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that affected users who used the page-tabs to switch from wikitext editing of a section into the visualeditor. [40]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The MediaWiki Interfaces team is redesigning the Wikimedia REST API Sandbox with Codex. If you have feedback on improvements for the API documentation or what makes developer experiences smooth (or frustrating), you’re invited to join an upcoming discovery interview, or leave feedback onwiki. Learn more.
  • Edits to Wikidata aliases (an alternative name for an item or a property) will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. Learn more. [41]
  • The new Unicode 17.0 version has been released. The datasets on Commons for the Module:Unicode data have been updated. Wikipedias that do not use the Commons datasets should either update their own data or switch to the Commons datasets.
  • Users of the Wikimedia Enterprise Structured Contents endpoints can now access Parsed Tables. The new Parsed Tables feature extracts and represents Wikipedia tables in structured JSON. This improves machine accessibility as part of the Structured Contents initiative. Structured Contents output is freely available through the On-demand API, or through Wikimedia Cloud Services.
  • A dataset of English Wikipedia biographical information from Wikimedia Enterprise has been published on Kaggle, for evaluation and research. This provides structured data from more than 1.5 million biographies, including birth and death dates, education, affiliations, careers, awards, and more (from a June 2024 snapshot).
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

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MediaWiki message delivery 17:03, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Question for new user

Hi, I am a fairly new user and was wondering how I can easily identify and revert vandalism? ie. how to find it

Thanks, Pr0m37h3u$ 11:48, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Re: Singapore August 2025 Invite

Congratulations on your well earned Wikimedian of the Year award and I'm really sorry for the tardy response. Getting Wikimania 2023 organised was such a massive effort that I don't know how I'd manage if I had to do it myself! If there's anything about Wikimedia Singapore you'd like to discuss, please free free to send me an email. Congratulations again, - Mailer Diablo 02:45, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 70

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 70, July–August 2025
  • New collections:
    • Times of Malta
    • Africa Intelligence
    • Intelligence Online
    • La Lettre
    • Glitz
  • Spotlight: Wikimania
Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 13:16, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

(This message was sent to User:Robertsky and is being posted here due to a redirect.)

Question from SGI Education (16:59, 21 September 2025)

How ca i edit --SGI Education (talk) 16:59, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from SGI Education (16:59, 21 September 2025) (2)

How can i edit --SGI Education (talk) 16:59, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from BarbaraGilleran (17:47, 21 September 2025)

Hi Robert Nice to virtually meet you. I'm a total novice but I'd love to continue to update the page about my home parish of Kilteevan. I've got some additional information I can add to the existing Kilteevan page about the locality and history. I have access to a book that has been published about the area and know the author of the book. Can I add in information based on that but ensuring I cite the book/author. Thank you! Barbara --BarbaraGilleran (talk) 17:47, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-39

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

  • On September 24th at 15:00 UTC, all Wikimedia sites users will experience a brief read-only period due to a scheduled datacenter server switchover. The Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team will redirect all traffic from one primary server to its backup. You can listen to the switchover using the "Listen to Wikipedia" tool, where you will hear edits stop for a few minutes during the read-only phase, then resume. This twice-yearly datacenter server switchover ensures reliability by testing the backup datacenter, so that our sites can stay online even if the primary datacenter fails. You can read more about the process on the Diff blog.

Updates for editors

  • Editors of 60 more Wiktionaries will soon be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them into their pages. A function takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, like adding numbers, converting miles to meters, calculating elapsed time, or declining a word into a case. They will join the other 65 Wiktionary language editions, which already have access to embedded Wikifunctions calls. Later this year, plans are in place to expand to more Wiktionaries and the Incubator.
  • A new parser function has been added: {{#contentmodel}}. Template editors and admins can use it to get the localized or canonical name of the content model of a specific page. The function makes it easier to create and edit system messages, such as MediaWiki:editinginterface, even when you switch types of pages, like wiki, JavaScript, CSS or JSON page. [42]
  • Adding or editing a DISPLAYTITLE for an article using VisualEditor will no longer be broken. Editors who use VisualEditor mode to modify the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} would no longer have the literal text "DISPLAYTITLE" or its localized variant added to their articles. A list of pages that may have been affected and might need cleanup is documented in this ticket.
  • Beta users of the Wikipedia Android app can now try the redesigned Activity tab, which replaces the Edits tab. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.
  • Recurrent item View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • Wikifunctions users can now import many essential facts involving geo-coordinates, quantities and time values from Wikidata. This is made possible by the creation of Wikifunctions types for these values, which makes them available for use by functions in Wikifunctions. Learn more about how this works in this video and Wikifunctions' August 1 newsletter (for quantities) and August 22 newsletter (for geo-coordinates).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:52, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Pogue Canuck on 4 × 100 metres relay (06:01, 21 September 2025)

Hello. I believe the list of the top 10 fastest 4x100 m men's relay times is incorrect. Didn't Canada win Olympic Gold in Paris with a time of 37.50s? --Pogue Canuck (talk) 06:01, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

@Pogue Canuck, Is there a source for this? – robertsky (talk) 17:02, 21 September 2025 (UTC)
here is the link to the official Olympic results page for the 2024 Paris final:
There are many other omissions & mistakes in the wikipedia top 10 list & it is bad need for updating & corrections.
With the redults of Sunday's world championship final & the US claiming gold in 37.29s & Canada the silver in 37.55s, here are 2 more times to include in the list.
Finally, why is a time b the US team subsequently negated by a doping violation included in the list at all?
King regards Pogue Canuck (talk) 23:39, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
www.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/paris-2024/results/athletics/men-4-x-100m-relay&ved=2ahUKEwiRqvOKg_CPAxVuCnkGHSr0IjEQFnoECBsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3GRahFIECUL3bGo10j7OpQ Pogue Canuck (talk) 23:40, 23 September 2025 (UTC)
here is the official site for World Athletics where you can find the official top lists all-time for each event:
https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/ Pogue Canuck (talk) 23:55, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Chili cat23 (07:34, 27 September 2025)

Hello! I was wondering if you knew how to create a Wikipedia page or can I not do that because i'm new? --Chili cat23 (talk) 07:34, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

@Chili cat23 you need to have 10 edits and be here for 4 days to create pages. See WP:AUTOCONFIRM. I have added a talk page message with links to tutorials and stuff to get you started and familiarized with editing on Wikipedia. – robertsky (talk) 08:06, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-40

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

Weekly highlight

  • A major software upgrade has been made to Phabricator. The update introduces performance improvements, a refreshed search interface, enhancements to Maniphest task search, updates to user profile pages and project workboards, new Herald automation features, as well as general text input, mobile experience improvements and more. [43]

Updates for editors

  • The Community Tech team will release the new Community Wishlist extension on October 1, that will improve the way wishes will be submitted. The new extension will allow users to add tags to their wishes to better categorise them, and (in a future iteration) to filter them by status, tags and focus areas. It will also be possible to support individual wishes again, as requested by the community in many instances. The old system will be retired. There will be a brief period of downtime while the extension is deployed and wishes are migrated to the new system. You can read more about this in the latest update or you can consult the current documentation on MediaWiki.
  • As announced on Diff blog, the production trial of the hCaptcha service for bot detection has begun. The trial is currently using hCaptcha to protect account creation on Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Turkish Wikipedias, where it will replace our existing CAPTCHA (FancyCaptcha). The goal with the trial is to better block bots while also improving usability and accessibility for users who encounter CAPTCHA challenges.
  • The CampaignEvents extension has been deployed to Wikimedia Commons. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. On Commons, anyone who is a registered user can use it as an event participant. To use it as an organizer, someone needs to have the event organizer right.
  • Sub-referencing, a new feature to re-use references with different details has been released to German Wikipedia. You can test the feature on testwiki or on betawiki as well. Please share your thoughts on using templates in sub-references or volunteer to become a pilot wiki.
  • On wikis using the Mentorship system, communities can now opt experienced editors out of Mentorship through Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship. Within this setting, communities may define thresholds, based on edit count and account age, to decide when an editor is considered experienced enough to no longer receive Mentorship. [44]
  • The Editing Team and the Machine Learning Team are working on a new check for newcomers: Tone check. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits, using artificial intelligence. We invite volunteers to review the first version of the Tone language model for the following languages: Arabic, Czech, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Farsi, Italian, Norwegian, Romanian and Latvian. Users from these wikis interested in reviewing this model are invited to sign up at MediaWiki.org. The deadline to sign up is on October 3, which will be the start date of the test.
  • The rollout of multiblocks had the side effect that non-active block logs may have been shown on Special:Contributions and on blocked users' user and user_talk pages. This issue will be fully resolved in a few days. As part of the fix, messages prefixed with sp-contributions-blocked-notice will be removed and replaced with those prefixed with blocked-notice-logextract in a few weeks. Please help translate the new messages and update any local overrides if needed.
  • There was a bug with links added using visual editor if they included characters such as [ ] | after the fragment identifier (#). They were not encoded properly creating an incorrect link. This has been fixed. [45]
  • One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote in Malay (q:ms:) [46]
  • Recurrent item View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the User Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks. [47]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Later this week, editors using Lua modules will be able to use the mw.title.newBatch function to look up the existence of up to 25 pages at once, in a way that only increases the expensive function count once.
  • A new Unsupported Tools Working Group has been formed as part of ongoing efforts to collectively determine technical work priorities, similar to the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). The working group will help prioritize and review requests for support of unmaintained extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. For the first cycle, the group will be prioritizing an unsupported Wikimedia Commons tool.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:48, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Ai666794 (23:53, 29 September 2025)

i LOVE dinosaurs so i want to edit innacurate pages pls help --Ai666794 (talk) 23:53, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

@Ai666794 I have seen your edits. They are not ok in the sense that those remove sourced content and are likely your personal opinion, and may be seen as vandalistic or disruptive edits. Wikipedia is not for you to telling your opinions. If you have any content that are backed by third party, independent, and reliable sources, go ahead and edit. I have dropped some links on your talk page. Hopefully those can get you started on editing on Wikipedia correctly. – robertsky (talk) 02:48, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Okay

That was stupid of me. As in reality I do want edit inaccurate pop culture pages Ai666794 (talk) 10:20, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 October 2025

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:52, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Survey

Hi and thanks for your recent participation in AfD. I would like to hear your thoughts about the process. Please check this survey if you are willing to respond.Czarking0 (talk) 02:19, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-41

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

  • Paste Check is a new Edit Check feature to help avoid and fight copyright violations. When editors paste text into an article, Paste Check prompts them to confirm the origin and licensing of the content. Starting Wednesday, 8 October, 22 wikis will test Paste Check. Paste Check will help new volunteers understand and follow the policies and guidelines necessary to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia projects.

Updates for editors

  • Mobile devices will receive mobile articles directly on the standard domain (like en.wikipedia.org), instead of via a redirect to an "m" domain (like en.m.wikipedia.org). This change improves performance. This week it will be enabled on Wikipedias. The existing mobile URLs and the "Desktop view" opt-out remain available. Learn more. [48]
  • New date filters, creationdate: and lasteditdate:, are now available in the wiki search engine. This allows users to filter search results by a page's first or last revision date. The filters support comparison operators (e.g. >2024) and relative dates (e.g. today-1d), making it easier to find recently updated content or pages within specific age ranges. [49]
  • Wikifunctions now supports rich text in embedded calls across the 150 wikis where it's enabled. To showcase this, the team created a Latin declination table that Wiktionary editors can use to automatically generate noun forms, producing clear, formatted results — see an example output. If you need any help or have any feedback, please contact the Wikifunctions Team. [50]
  • An edit link will now appear inside the categories box on article pages for logged in users, which will directly launch the VisualEditor category dialog. [51]
  • Recurrent item View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a problem downloading pdf files last week and that has been resolved. [52]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The field rev_sha1 in the revision database table is being removed in favor of content_sha1 in the content database table. See the announcement for more information.
  • The Reader Experience team will roll out Dark Mode user interface on all Wikimedia sites on October 29, 2025. All anonymous users of Wikimedia sites will have the option to activate a color scheme that features light-colored text on a dark background. This is designed to provide a more comfortable reading experience, especially in low-light situations. Template authors and technical contributors are encouraged to learn how to make pages ready for Dark mode and address any compatibility issues found in templates in their wiki before the enablement. Please contact the Web team for questions or any support on this talk page before the enablement. [53]
  • Starting on Monday, October 6, API endpoints under the rest.php path will be rerouted through a new internal API Gateway. Individual wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board. [54]
  • Recurrent item 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 17:19, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

ITN recognition for Tang Liang Hong

On 7 October 2025, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Tang Liang Hong, which you nominated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Schwede66 04:24, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2025

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2025).

Administrator changes

removed

CheckUser changes

removed Vanamonde93

Arbitration

  • After a motion, arbitration enforcement page protections no longer need to be logged in the AELOG. A bot now automatically posts protections at WP:AELOG/P. To facilitate this bot, protection summaries must include a link to the relevant CT page (e.g. [[WP:CT/BLP]]), and you will receive talk page reminders if you forget to specify the contentious topic but otherwise indicate it is an AE action.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:58, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Protect Bigg Boss (Tamil TV series) season 9 page

Hello, is it possible to please protect the page for at least a month or till the completion of the show. There has been many disruptive edits since the protection ended. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.160.131.74 (talk) 11:07, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Generally the protection period is incremental. I am not familiar with Bigg Boss seasons to determine outright if a long protection is required. I suggest putting the request at WP:RFPP for other admins to determine as well. – robertsky (talk) 16:45, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Question from Jackal Walker (14:28, 9 October 2025)

how do i create a citation or notes and make it able to be searched in browsers --Jackal Walker (talk) 14:28, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Question from Jackal Walker (14:26, 9 October 2025)

hello --Jackal Walker (talk) 14:26, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

@Jackal Walker hello. I have drop some information on your talk page! Welcome to Wikipedia, if you further questions feel free to ask. – robertsky (talk) 14:29, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-42

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

  • Last week, improvements to account security and two-factor authentication (2FA) features were enabled across all wikis. These changes include user interface improvements for Special:AccountSecurity, the support of multiple 2FA methods via authenticator apps and portable security keys (previously users could only enable one method), and a new Recovery Codes module which facilitates fewer account lockouts due to lost two-factor apps and devices. As part of the Account Security project, work is continuing through the rest of 2025 on further user experience improvements, and support for passkeys as an alternate second factor.

Updates for editors

  • Another part of the Account security project is making 2FA generally available to all users. Along with editors with advanced privileges, such as administrators and bureaucrats, 40% of editors now have access to 2FA. You can check if you have access at Special:AccountSecurity. Instructions for activation are on the linked page. The plan is to continue increasing availability if it is determined that the user support capabilities are able to support global usage. [55]
  • This week, users at wikis where talk page Usability Improvements are already available by default (everywhere except the 12 wikis listed in T379264) will gain the ability to Thank a comment directly from the talk page it appears on. Before this change, Thanking could only be done by visiting the revision history of the talk page. You can learn more about this change. [56]
  • Users who have not verified their email address will soon be receiving monthly Notification reminders to do so. This is because users who have verified their email can more easily recover their account. These reminders will not be sent if the user is inactive or removes the unverified email from their account. [57][58]
  • Recurrent item View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a fix was made for an occasional error with saving translated paragraphs in the Content Translation tool, and the related error messages are now easier to see. [59]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The Unsupported Tools Working Group has chosen Video2Commons as the first tool for its pilot cycle. The group will explore ways to improve and sustain the tool over the coming months. Learn more on Meta.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:56, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Question from FootballerTalentID (11:02, 15 October 2025)

How can I write a biography about young up and coming african footballers? --FootballerTalentID (talk) 11:02, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

@FootballerTalentID, As long as they are considered notable per Wikipedia's standards, you can write about them. See WP:NSPORTS for details. – robertsky (talk) 11:06, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Question about a double standard

Hi Robertsky, Wikipedia has assigned you as my mentor and I would greatly appreciate your advice on this dicussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Trevor_Chan_(2nd_nomination)

Thank you very much! Fact2Hound (talk) 20:12, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

@Fact2Hound Thank you for reaching out.
AfD discussions are about the subject and whether the subject has met the notability standards by itself. While there may appear to be a double standard when other similarly written articles exists, it is not really that.
Articles that do not meet notability standards may slip through the review cycles over time as we constantly have backlogs of new articles created (think in thousands article in the backlog each day), or that they were created when the notability standards for the subjects were not as stringent when they were written on as now and have been grandfathered in. Either way, when such articles are brought to attention to active volunteer editors, they may be nominated for deletion as well. Every subject has to be evaluated on its own notabtility. Hence, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, as an advice, dissuades you from comparing with other articles.
For an effective discussion, I would suggest that you state your points and leave the discussion as it is without replying to other comments individually unless a reply is warranted in the sense that there are new points to be raised. If the article is eventually deleted, it does not mean that the subject will be removed and not allowed ever to have an article here. Over time, there maybe more significant coverage of the subject which may substantiate their notability. – robertsky (talk) 02:21, 18 October 2025 (UTC)
Thank you so much for your detailed explanation!
I have another question if you don't mind answering it as well:
I noticed that this is the second time the article received AfD. The first instance is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Trevor_Chan
If someone submits a request for "article for deletion" for a wikipedia article with the reason of not being notable, and it was declined, can that person or someone else submit another request for "article for deletion" for the same reason again and again, trying their luck, wishing that the ones joining the discussion will favor their stand next time?
Are there any Wikipedia policies governing this?
Also, would you please provide a link to the Wikipedia guideline about "If the article is eventually deleted, it does not mean that the subject will be removed and not allowed ever to have an article here."
Thanks a lot for your help! Fact2Hound (talk) 13:14, 18 October 2025 (UTC)
@Fact2Hound there is nothing against having succssive nominations, especially if the earlier one(s) end with no consensus as it usually means that the notability of the subject is a borderline yes/no case. If you are suggesting that the second nomination here is made in bad faith, I don't see that happening. The second nomination comes years after the first and as I have said, the notability question was unresolved in the first.
As for my statement above, what I meant to say is that if the article is removed, there is no issue in the future if another one is written in the future as one may still be able to gain sufficient notability over time. However, do not recreate if there is not much of a substantial activity from the subject. If it is determined that there is no material change or improvement from the deleted article, the replacement article maybe speedily deleted and eventually the title may be salted. – robertsky (talk) 13:40, 18 October 2025 (UTC)
Got it. Thanks! Fact2Hound (talk) 13:51, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-43

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

  • To optimize how user data is stored in our databases, the saved preferences of users who haven't logged in for over five years and have fewer than 100 edits will be cleared. When those users return, default settings will apply. [60]
  • Recurrent item View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a broken link from the GlobalContributions interface message to the XTools GlobalContributions page which has now been fixed. [61]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The work to reroute all traffic to API endpoints under the rest.php route through a common API gateway is now complete. If any issues are observed, please file a phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
  • Edits to Wikidata references or qualifiers will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. [62]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:32, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 October 2025

  • Traffic report: One click after another
    Serial-killer miniseries, deceased scientist, government shutdowns and Sandalwood hit "Kantara" crowd the tubes.
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:43, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Question from Athleticgenius 123 (17:10, 24 October 2025)

Greetings,

Hope you're doing well! I'm quite a young person on wikipedia.Will this site help me prepare for tests and all? Also, could I like prepare an article or something on this site since I am signing up for the School Newspaper?

Regards, Athleticgenius(not my real name) --Athleticgenius 123 (talk) 17:10, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Athleticgenius 123 The resources on Wikipedia should be used with a pinch of salt as anyone can edit here. Not everyone is a subject matter expert here. However, you can always make use of ther references in the subjects to further read into the subjects you are interested. If you would like to contribute on Wikipedia, I suggest that you start with the suggested edits module on your Homepage, with small edits such as adding references or linking pages together, then progressively more complex edits. When you are comfortable editing and are more familiar with the community here, you can start writing new articles that meets Wikipedia's notability standards. I have dropped some links on your user talk page to tutorials and resources as well for you to go through. – robertsky (talk) 17:29, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Nomination of Everybody (Britney Spears song) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Everybody (Britney Spears song), which you previously marked as reviewed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted. The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Everybody (Britney Spears song) until a consensus is reached, and you are welcomed to contribute to the discussion.SodiumBot (botop|talk) 13:45, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

These updates are delivered by SodiumBot. To opt out of these messages, add {{User:SodiumBot/NoNPPDelivery}} to your talk page.

Tech News: 2025-44

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 Wikipedia iOS app has launched an A/B/C test of improvements made to the tabbed browsing feature for select regions and languages. The test, named “More dynamic tabs”, explores new tab experiences and includes “Did you know” and “Because you read” article recommendations. You can read more on the project page.
  • Autoconfirmed users on small and medium wikis with the CampaignEvents extension can now use Event Registration without the Event Organizer right. This feature lets organizers enable registration, manage participants, and lets users register with one click instead of signing event pages.
  • Recurrent item View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue of flashing colors when holding or pressing the arrow keys under the dark mode settings in Vector 2022 has been fixed. [63]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The CampaignEvents extension will be deployed to all remaining wikis during the week of 17 November 2025. The extension currently includes three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. For this rollout, Invitation List will not be enabled on Wikifunctions and MediaWiki unless requested by those communities. Visit the deployment page to learn more.
  • The SwaggerUI-based REST sandbox experience is now live on all wiki projects. The sandbox can be accessed through the Special:RestSandbox page. Please report any issues to the MediaWiki Interfaces team board, or join the discussion on the project launch page. [64]
  • Transform endpoints with a trailing slash path in the MediaWiki REST API are now marked as deprecated. They will remain functional during this time, but removal is expected by the end of January 2026. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found and tested using the REST Sandbox. See the MediaWiki REST API Deprecation page for more detailed information about the API deprecation policies and procedures.
  • A dedicated changelog now exists for the MediaWiki REST API. The changelog provides an overview of these changes, making it easier for developers to keep track of improvements and iterations. Announcements will also continue to flow through the standard communication channels, including Tech News and email distribution lists, but can now be more easily referenced from a central location. If you have feedback about the style, structure, or content of this changelog, please join the discussion.
  • Administrators can delete the tracking category which was previously added by the JsonConfig extension, as it is no longer used. See the categories linked from Q130635582. It is OK if there are still pages listed in the category as that is just a caching issue, and they will be automatically cleared out the next time each page is edited. [65]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:28, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Jagaddhatri (disambiguation)

Notice

The article Jagaddhatri (disambiguation) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

WP:TWODABS

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.

This is an automated notification. Please refer to the page's history for further information. DatBot (talk) 00:30, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

"Next Israeli election" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Next Israeli election has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 30 § Next Israeli election redirects until a consensus is reached. Information Note: Multiple related redirects are bundled in this discussion. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 23:25, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Guide to temporary accounts

Hello, Robertsky. This message is being sent to remind you of significant upcoming changes regarding logged-out editing.

Starting 4 November, logged-out editors will no longer have their IP address publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account (TA) associated with their edits. Users with some extended rights like administrators and CheckUsers, as well as users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will still be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range.

How do temporary accounts work?

Editing from a temporary account
  • When a logged-out user completes an edit or a logged action for the first time, a cookie will be set in this user's browser and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created for them. This account's name will follow the pattern: ~2025-12345-67 (a tilde, year of creation, a number split into units of 5).
  • All subsequent actions by the temporary account user will be attributed to this username. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser.
  • A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will be able to see the underlying IP addresses.
  • As a measure against vandalism, there are two limitations on the creation of temporary accounts:
    • There has to be a minimum of 10 minutes between subsequent temporary account creations from the same IP (or /64 range in case of IPv6).
    • There can be a maximum of 6 temporary accounts created from an IP (or /64 range) within a period of 24 hours.

Temporary account IP viewer user right

How to enable IP Reveal

Impact for administrators

  • It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
  • It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
  • Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this (see a video about IPContributions in a gallery below).

Rules about IP information disclosure

  • Publicizing an IP address gained through TAIV access is generally not allowed (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 previously edited as 192.0.2.1 or ~2025-12345-67's IP address is 192.0.2.1).
  • Publicly linking a TA to another TA is allowed if "reasonably believed to be necessary". (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 and ~2025-12345-68 are likely the same person, so I am counting their reverts together toward 3RR, but not Hey ~2025-12345-68, you did some good editing as ~2025-12345-67)
  • See Wikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer § What can and can't be said for more detailed guidelines.

Useful tools for patrollers

  • It is possible to view if a user has opted-in to view temporary account IPs via the User Info card, available in Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options → Tick Enable the user info card
    • This feature also makes it possible for anyone to see the approximate count of temporary accounts active on the same IP address range.
  • Special:IPContributions allows viewing all edits and temporary accounts connected to a specific IP address or IP range.
  • Similarly, Special:GlobalContributions supports global search for a given temporary account's activity.
  • The auto-reveal feature (see video below) allows users with the right permissions to automatically reveal all IP addresses for a limited time window.

Videos

  • How to use Special:IPContributions
  • How automatic IP reveal works
  • How to use IP Info
  • How to use User Info

Further information and discussion

Most of this message was written by Mz7 (source). Thanks, 🎃 SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:47, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Anniversary Robertsky 🎉

Hey @Robertsky. Your wiki edit anniversary is today, marking 19 years of dedicated contributions to English Wikipedia. Your passion for sharing knowledge and your remarkable contributions have not only enriched the project, but also inspired countless others to contribute. Thank you for your amazing contributions. Wishing you many more wonderful years ahead in the Wiki journey. :) -❙❚❚❙❙ GnOeee ❚❙❚❙❙ ✉ 07:51, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Question from Loula ama on NotebookLM (21:21, 31 October 2025)

مرحبا --Loula ama (talk) 21:21, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-45

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

  • Administrators will now find that Special:MergeHistory is now significantly more flexible about what it can merge. It can now merge sections taken from the middle of the history of the source (rather than only the start) and insert revisions anywhere in the history of the destination page (rather than only the start). [66]
  • For users with "Automatically subscribe to topics" enabled in their preferences, starting a new topic or adding a reply to an existing topic will now subscribe them to replies to that topic. Previously, this would only happen if the DiscussionTools "Add topic" or "Reply" widgets were used. When DiscussionTools was originally launched existing accounts were not opted in to automatic topic subscriptions, so this change should primarily affect newer accounts and users who have deliberately changed their preferences since that time. [67]
  • Scribunto modules can now be used to generate SVG images. This can be used to build charts, graphics and other visualizations dynamically through Lua, reducing the need to compose them externally and upload them as files. [68]
  • Wikimedia sites now provide all anonymous users with the option to enable a dark mode color scheme, featuring light-colored text on a dark background. This enhancement aims to deliver a more enjoyable reading experience, especially in dimly lit environments. [69]
  • Users with large watchlists have long faced timeouts when editing Special:EditWatchlist. The page now loads entries in smaller sections instead of all at once due to a paging update, allowing everyone to edit their watchlists smoothly. As part of the database update, sorting by expiry has been removed because it was over 100× slower than sorting by title. A community wish has been created to explore alternative ways to restore sort-by-expiry. If this feature is important to you, please support the wish! [70]
  • Recurrent item View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the fixing of the persisting highlighting when using VisualEditor find and replace during a query. [71]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Since 2019 the Wikimedia URL Shortener at https://w.wiki is available for all Wikimedia wikis to create short links to articles, permalinks, diffs, etc. It is available in the sidebar as "Get shortened URL". There are 30 wikis that also install an older "ShortUrl" extension. The old extension will soon be removed. This means /s/ URLs will not be advertised under article titles via HTML class="title-shortlink". The /s/ URLs will keep working. [72]
  • On Thursday, October 30, the MediaWiki Interfaces and SRE Service Operations teams began rerouting Action API traffic through a common API gateway. Individual wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
  • MediaWiki Train deployments will pause for the final two weeks of 2025: 22 December and 29 December. Backport windows will also pause between Monday, 22 December 2025 and Thursday, 2 January 2026. A backport window is a scheduled time to add things like bug fixes and configuration changes. There are seven deployment trains remaining for 2025. [73]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • In 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation reported that AI systems and search engines increasingly use Wikipedia content without driving users to the site, contributing to an 8% drop in human pageviews compared to 2024. After detecting bots disguised as humans, Wikimedia updated its traffic data to reflect this shift. Read more about current user trends on Wikipedia in a Diff blog post.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2025

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2025).

Administrator changes

added Toadspike
removed

CheckUser changes

added asilvering

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Barodaian (07:43, 9 November 2025)

Hello! I was just interested in asking if correcting grammar mistakes is okay. I have found an end quote without a defined start quote. --Barodaian (talk) 07:43, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

@Barodaian yes. correcting grammar mistakes is okay, and even expected. – robertsky (talk) 07:59, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Pending changes settings

Hello @Robertsky, do you know if the below listed messages could be removed / hidden in this article (they did not appear previously).

Desktop view (when hovered over)

Page version status
This is an accepted version of this page
This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 2 November 2025.

Mobile view (permanent)

This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 2 November 2025.

It now looks as if the page has become even more protected, although it is my understanding is the opposite has occurred. Perhaps the solution used in this article could be adopted: it produces a discrete padlock in the top right corner, instead of the check mark symbol, above mentioned messages and additional lock currently found here.

Thank you kindly for looking into this. Sincerely, Pinacotecus (talk) 17:52, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

@Pinacotecus This was changed awhile back in 2024, I believe with phab:T191156. The message when there are pending changes does give pause to anon mobile editing though as it states that there are changes to be approved. I think this is best discussed at WP:VPT. – robertsky (talk) 22:55, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

@Robertsky, thank you for your response. I believe the simplest solution to remove the undesired Page version status messages above the Arc de Triomphe article would be one of the options listed below:

  1. Changing the protection settings to semi-protected, like in this article: Eiffel Tower (this article only has one discrete padlock icon in the top right corner)
  2. Removing the protections settings, like in this article: Palace of Versailles (this article has no protection messages and icons; semi-protected settings could be added again if needed)

Please advise which one you would recommend. Sincerely, Pinacotecus (talk) 16:22, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

@Pinacotecus the current protection was put in place after a request to lower it from a indef semi protection put in place since 2011 at RFPP/D. I have yet to see edits from anon editors since the current protection measures. I am unwilling to go back to semi protection as such. However, the other option of full unprotection is more tenable for now. As such I will have this done. However, if there are vandalism happening thereafter and depending on the severity, pending changes protection will be back up as it still does give anon editors the opportunity to constructively contribute to the article. – robertsky (talk) 00:17, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

@Robertsky, thank you. This looks much better now. Sincerely, Pinacotecus (talk) 17:48, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 November 2025

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Tech News: 2025-46

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

Screenshot of the visual improvements made on talk pages
Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.
  • Starting November 12, users will see a change in the appearance of talk pages on some Wikipedias. Almost all wikis have received this design change; English Wikipedia will get these changes later. You can read more on Diff. Users can opt out of these changes in their user preferences in "Show discussion activity". [74]
  • MediaWiki can now display a page indicator automatically while a page is protected. This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled by community request. [75]
  • Using the "Show preview" or "Show changes" buttons in the wikitext editor will now carry over certain URL parameters like 'useskin', 'uselang' and 'section'. This update also fixes an issue where, if the browser crashed while previewing an edit to a single section, saving this edit could overwrite the entire page with just that section’s content. [76][77][78]
  • Wikivoyage wikis can use colored map markers in the article text. The text of these markers will now be shown in contrasting black or white color, instead of always being white. Local workarounds for the problem can be removed. [79]
  • The Activity tab in the Wikipedia Android app is now available for all users. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging. [80]
  • The Reader Growth team is launching an experiment called "Image browsing" to test how to make it easier for readers to browse and discover images on Wikipedia articles. This experiment, a mobile-only A/B test, will go live on English Wikipedia in the week of November 17 and will run for four weeks, affecting 0.05% of users on English wiki. The test launched on November 3 on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese wikis, affecting up to 10% of users on those wikis. [81]
  • Recurrent item View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example the inability to lock accounts on mobile sites has been fixed. [82]

Updates for technical contributors

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:36, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Annodomino23 on 2007–08 Segona Divisió (19:05, 14 November 2025)

How do I add a citation to the Final standings table? I am not sure how to interact with the template. I have found the following source: "https://globalsportsarchive.com/en/soccer/competition/segona-divisio-2007-2008/26439". --Annodomino23 (talk) 19:05, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

@Annodomino23 which article? – robertsky (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2025 (UTC)
This one: 2007–08 Segona Divisió Annodomino23 (talk) 19:14, 14 November 2025 (UTC)
@Annodomino23 Ah... what I suggest is to create the citation in your sandbox, switch to source editor after the citation is generated, and copy the formated string out. THen head back to the article, click on the [citation needed], a template interface will appear. Scroll down to there the input box reads "source=", change it to "source=<citation generated>. and then save the edits. – robertsky (talk) 19:27, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-47

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

Updates for editors

  • The Reader Experience team is experimenting with reading lists on mobile web, allowing logged-in readers with no edits to save private lists of articles for later. The experiment is running on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias since the week of 10 November, and will begin on English Wikipedia the week of 17 November.
  • Users who can’t receive their email verification code during login can now get help by submitting a form on a new special page. This update is part of the Account Security initiative. If your account has an email address, please make sure you still have access to it. When logging in from a new device or location without 2FA, you may be asked to enter a 6-digit code sent by email to finish logging in. Learn more.
  • One new wiki has been created: a Wikisource in Minangkabau (s:min:) [89]
  • Recurrent item View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • As part of the Parser Unification project, the Content Transform Team rolled out Parsoid as the default parser to many low-traffic Wikipedias and is preparing the next step to high traffic ones. This message is an invitation for you to opt-in to Parsoid, as described in the Extension:ParserMigration documentation, and identify any issues you might encounter with your own workflow using bots, gadgets, or user scripts. Please, let us know through the "Report Visual Bug" link in the Tools sidebar or create a phab ticket and tag the Content Transform Team in Phabricator.
  • Unsupported Tools: Several issues with Video2Commons have been fixed, including filename-related upload failures, black-video imports, and retry handling. AV1 support has also been added. Ongoing work focuses on backend stability, ffmpeg errors, subtitle imports, metadata handling, and playlist uploads. To track specific tasks, check the Phabricator board.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

  • Save the date for the next Wikimedia Hackathon happening in Milan, Italy from May 1–3, 2026. Registration will open in January 2026. Scholarship applications are currently open, and will close on November 28, 2025. If you have any questions, please email hackathon@wikimedia.org.

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MediaWiki message delivery 17:24, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

ArbCom 2025 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2025 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 1 December 2025. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2025 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:28, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 71

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 71, September–October 2025
  • Spotlight: 1Lib1Ref 2025 in Nigeria
  • Frankfurt Book Fair
  • Tech tip: Wikipedia Library access template
Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 15:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

(This message was sent to User:Robertsky and is being posted here due to a redirect.)

Nomination for discussion of Template:IDRConvert

Template:IDRConvert has been nominated for discussion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:24, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Hringhorni101 (21:04, 19 November 2025)

hello i made this page can you see if everything looks right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Vulture --Hringhorni101 (talk) 21:05, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@Hringhorni101 I am not into metal, but in general, there is a lack of independent third party sources. The only source of note is the album review. The rest cannot be use to sustain the notability of the subject. A quick search online does not reveal much about the band as well. You may see WP:NMUSIC for guidance. The article is not ready for the mainspace. I will have the article move to draftspace where you can take the time to develop the article further (as long as you make at least 1 edit every six months). As time progresses, hopefully there are more coverage of the band to establish their notability. – robertsky (talk) 21:21, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Articles for Creation backlog drive

Hello Robertsky:

WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive in December!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than half a month of outstanding reviews from the current 2+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 December 2025 through 31 December 2025.

You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.

Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.
There is a backlog of over 3000 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:07, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Sergeantpoop (15:00, 22 November 2025)

How do I give myself a userbox? --Sergeantpoop (talk) 15:00, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Nevermind. Sergeantpoop (talk) 08:05, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-48

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

  • Last week, the Wikimedia Search Team recreated the "DWIM" (Do What I Mean) gadget functionality server-side, for Russian and Hebrew Wikipedias. This feature adds cross-keyboard suggestions to the standard search-box suggestions. For example, searching for cxfcnmt on Russian Wikipedia will now add suggestions for счастье ("happiness") that the user probably intended. They plan to enable this feature for other Russian and Hebrew wikis this week. [90]
  • Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will have syntax highlighting available in DiscussionTools. This requires that the "Enable editing tools in source mode" preference be set. [91]
  • Campaign events extension – the set of tools for coordinating events and other on-wiki collaborations has now been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. A new feature known as Collaborative contribution to help organizers and participants see the impact of activities has also been added. Join the upcoming learning session to see the new feature in action and share your feedback.
  • Recurrent item View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug which stopped CodeReviewBot from working, has now been fixed. [92]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Users of Wikimedia API can join a usability study to help validate the new design of Wikimedia REST API sandboxes. Interested participants should fill the recruitment survey. [93]
  • The MediaWiki Interfaces team is deprecating XSLT stylesheets within the Action API. Support for format=xml&xlst={stylesheet} will be removed from Wikimedia projects by the end of November, 2025. In addition, it will soon be disabled by default in MediaWiki release versions: v1.43 (LTS), v1.44, and v1.45. Support for XSLT stylesheets will be fully removed from MediaWiki v1.46 (expected to release between April and May 2026). [94]
  • The WDQS legacy endpoint (query-legacy-full.wikidata.org) will be decommissioned at the end of December 2025, and finally closed down on 7th January 2026. After this date, users should expect requests to query.wikidata.org that require the full graph to fail or return invalid results if they are not rewritten to use SPARQL federation. The team encourages users to ensure that tools and workflows use the supported WDQS endpoints (https://query.wikidata.org/ - Main graph or https://query-scholarly.wikidata.org/ - Scholarly graph). For support with migrating use cases, please review the Data Access and Request a Query pages for details and assistance on alternative access methods.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 15:54, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Nerd-boi1234 (20:16, 28 November 2025)

Also, where is the button to make a new article? --Nerd-boi1234 (talk) 20:16, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Nerd-boi1234 (19:47, 28 November 2025)

How do I find and make citations? --Nerd-boi1234 (talk) 19:47, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

@Nerd-boi1234 I have added some links on your talk page to some tutorials! Check the referencing tuturial out. – robertsky (talk) 03:07, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Greetings

Hi Robertsky, I got a notification that you are my new mentor and wanted to reach out to say hi. One of my big goals this year was to contribute my first article to Wikipedia, since I got a little bit of experience with editing, so I'd love to stay in touch as I'm currently in the middle of the researching/drafting process. That's all for now. I'll let you know if any questions come up. Thank you! SimonMubarak (talk) 21:54, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

@SimonMubarak thanks for reaching out! hope you have a bountiful time here. – robertsky (talk) 03:07, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

CS1 error on Wang Fuk Court fire

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Wang Fuk Court fire, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

  • A missing title error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 04:32, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 December 2025

  • Comix: Madness
    It could happen to anyone.
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