Mayur-WMF

Sunday September 26 SWANniversary Party and All-Affiliates Strategic Meeting

Celebrate our first anniversary with SWAN-shaped desserts!

Join the SWANniversary on September 26 as we mark the first year of the Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network!

We will have the regular All-Affiliates Strategic Meeting, to be followed by a SWANniversary Party in the after hours session, likely through spatialized chat on WorkAdventure.

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

Following up on the August, September, October, November, January, February, March, April, June, and July SWAN meetings, as well as last June's All-Affiliates Brand Meeting, we'll look together at strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including Movement Charter + Drafting Committee, WMF Board elections, Wikimania 2021, and Grants Regional Committees.

This month we are meeting on Sunday September 26, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

(UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC.)--Pharos (talk) 18:10, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Tools of the trade!

Please help translate to your language

Tools of the trade!

Thank you for learning about MassMessage and CentralNotice in today's session. Here is your certificate of completion!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:36, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Campaigns Product Update #2

Hello Campaigns Product Newsletter subscribers! We are excited to share our updates:

• Request for Feedback: We have shared our project principles, wireframes for the desktop version, and open questions for you about the team’s event registration project. See the latest status updates here.

Wireframes are design tools that imagine the future interface of the software. We haven’t built anything yet. We need your feedback on these designs so that we can make better product decisions. You can give feedback on the talk page regarding the design and features of the wireframes. We would love to hear your comments to help us establish the next necessary steps for the project.

Please share with us your feedback!

• Presentations: The Campaign Product team participated in WikiArabia 2021 and WikiConference North America 2021 to give a brief introduction on how the team works. Senior Program Strategist Alex Stinson gave an overview about campaigns and how we can scale the organizing experience within the Movement. Senior Product Manager Ilana Fried gave an introduction about the Product Team and the project wireframes of the first campaign software solution: the on-wiki registration tool. View the recorded presentation here.

• Team update: We have hired our first team engineer, JCarvalho and our campaign organizing fellow, IBrazal. Newsletter updates will be done by IBrazal and she will be coordinating with you! We hope to have the rest of the engineering team onboard soon! For those of who missed the last Campaign Office Hour, you may watch the recording to know more about the Campaign Product Team.

What is next?

Testers Needed! We will be partnering with YUX, a design research agency, to learn how our team can improve the experience of Wikimedia campaign organizers and participants in Africa. For this reason, we are looking for community members who are willing to be part of the rapid testing sessions. Preferably, we want organizers and editors who have worked in an African context. If you would like to participate in testing, please email ibrazal-ctrwikimediaorg.

Upcoming Conferences. Wiki Indaba 2021. This year, the conference will be held virtually on November 5-7, 2021 with the theme "Rethink + Reset : Visions of the future". Read more about the conference here or register to join the event. We will be presenting the registration features on Sunday November 7.

We will also be attending Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021, which will be held virtually again this year on November 5-7, 2021. We will be presenting the registration tool on November 6 as part of our communication and sharing process.

Translation Support. We are also beginning to translate the updates on Registration. If you think your language community would benefit from updates, please translate here.

Invite other organizers to subscribe to this newsletter for updates!

The Campaign Product Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:26, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Sunday October 31 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting

A swan reflects.

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

Following up on the August, September, October, November, January, February, March, April, and June, July, and September SWAN meetings, as well as last June's All-Affiliates Brand Meeting, as well as strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including Movement Charter Drafting Committee Set Up Process, Next Steps for Brand Work, 2021, Wikipedia Asian Month 2021, and other ongoing activities.

This month we are meeting on Sunday October 31, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

(UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 18:30 UTC – *Note that we have shifted the second call a half-hour later in UTC time due to WikidataCon*.)--Pharos (talk) 01:42, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

On-wiki Registration Wireframes (Request for Feedback)

Hello!
We are very excited to share with you the wireframes for the desktop version of the On-Wiki Registration Tool. Feel free to share your feedback on this update. Results of these feedback will help determine the next steps we take. Thank you in advance!

Creating registration for event


View full Registration Form

---

First-Version Features

Viewing, deleting, and messaging participants	Managing Registrations
Participants Registration

Access full project principles and wireframes documentation here.

---

Feel free to share your feedback!

	Feedback
Do you see any advantage or disadvantage of any sort of our proposed event registration system?
Will it provide ease of access and use to you as a campaign organizer?
Does the proposed event registration provide convenience for registering participants?
What are the essential features this first version needs to have so that you can use it?
When you are running a campaign, what information do you typically send to participants, and where do you usually send it (e.g., talk page, email, social media, etc)?
Do you prefer that we build the desktop version first or the mobile version of the registration system first?
Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thank you!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:51, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

On-wiki Registration Wireframes (Request for Feedback)

Hello!
We are very excited to share with you the wireframes for the desktop version of the On-Wiki Registration Tool. Feel free to share your feedback on this update. Results of these feedback will help determine the next steps we take. Thank you in advance!

Creating registration for event


View full Registration Form

---

First-Version Features

Viewing, deleting, and messaging participants	Managing Registrations
Participants Registration

Access full project principles and wireframes documentation here.

---

Feel free to share your feedback!

	Feedback
Do you see any advantage or disadvantage of any sort of our proposed event registration system?
Will it provide ease of access and use to you as a campaign organizer?
Does the proposed event registration provide convenience for registering participants?
What are the essential features this first version needs to have so that you can use it?
When you are running a campaign, what information do you typically send to participants, and where do you usually send it (e.g., talk page, email, social media, etc)?
Do you prefer that we build the desktop version first or the mobile version of the registration system first?
Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thank you!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:15, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Sunday November 28 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting

Chart a new course on the swan ferry.

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

We'll focus on strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including Hubs+Hubs Workshop, Movement Charter+Drafting Committee, WMDE's 'Future of Wikimedia Governance' proposal, Wikipedia Asian Month 2021, and other ongoing activities.

This month we are meeting on Sunday November 28, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

(UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC, note that some areas recently experienced daylight savings time changes).--Pharos (talk) 15:56, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Sunday February 27 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting

To dance is to fly.

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

We'll focus on strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including Hubs+Dialogue, Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct+Enforcement Voting, Brand, International Women's Day+Gender Gap and WikiForHumanRights campaigns, and other ongoing activities.

This month we are meeting on Sunday February 27, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

(UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC).----Pharos (talk) 03:17, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Campaigns Product Update #3

Hello Campaigns Product Newsletter subscribers!

We are excited to share our updates:

• Proposal to create new namespaces: We have proposed to create two namespaces, which are “Event” and “Event talk.” This way, we can easily create an Event Center that pulls data from event pages. This Event Center may include tools to create event pages with registration support, a calendar of events, and event statistics, among other features. More importantly, the Event Center will highlight organizing as an essential part of the Wikimedia movement. Please give us feedback on Phabricator or Meta about our proposal to create two new namespaces.

• Engineering updates: We are excited that we have finished hiring for our engineering team! Three engineers and an engineering manager have joined our team since our last update. In the last few months, they have conducted technical planning and launched the building phase of the project. They are now building the registration tool. You can see the updated team on meta.

• Design updates: We conducted usability tests with a small group of testers for early feedback on the desktop wireframes. After collecting this feedback, we have developed a new version for desktop wireframes, which will be ready to share in the next few weeks. These desktop wireframes display the user flow of two experiences: one for organizers who want to add registration to their event pages, and another for participants who want to register for an event. Additionally, the design team is also currently working on the first version of mobile wireframes, which will be shared during the next office hour.

1. View the latest desktop wireframes in Figma for Campaign Organizer Prototype and Participant Registration Prototype.

2. Leave us some feedback on the desktop wireframes. Note that we haven’t posted the newest version of the desktop wireframes on the project page yet, but we will soon (and you can feel free to add feedback on any version you have seen).

• Ambassador updates: Three product ambassadors for the Arabic, French and Swahili communities have now joined our team! They will help us collect feedback from Wikimedia communities about the project and understand the needs of organizers, through gathering first-hand information. These ambassadors are immersed as actual members of these communities, so they will also help us identify the needs of the organizers in our pilot communities. The ambassadors are: M. Bachounda for Arabic communities, Georges Fodouop for French communities, and Antoni Mtavangu for Swahili communities.

What is next?

Next Office Hour: We will be holding an office hour on March 31, 2022 at 15:00 UTC, which will be conducted via Zoom. We invite everyone to attend, and we really hope to see you! The focus will be on the Registration Tool. The team will also be providing community updates on the usability test findings and design highlights for the wireframes. We will also share our current Project timeline and answer any questions you may have. Join us and share your thoughts on these developments!

In a few months, we are expecting to have the early testable version of the tool. By then, the team will be doing the first round of general testing and gathering feedback. We are looking forward to adding more features on the tool such as communication support, potentially by the end of this year. If you know other organizers that might be interested in following these developments, please recommend that they subscribe to the newsletter. We want to receive as much feedback as we can.

Thank you!

The Campaign Product Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Sunday April 3 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting

Bots in precious metals are part of our community too.

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

We'll focus on strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including UCoC Voting, Hubs Global Conversation held + CEE Hub update, Movement Charter + Leadership Development Working Group, Desktop Improvements, Celebrate Women in March + International Women's Day, Wikimania 2022 survey concluded + Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 May 20-22 + local events, and other ongoing activities.

This month we are meeting on Sunday April 3, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

(UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC, note that some areas recently experienced daylight savings time changes).--Pharos (talk) 12:44, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Campaign Product Team Office Hour - March 31, 2022

Hello Campaign Product Newsletter subscribers!

The Campaign Product Team will be hosting the next office hour to share exciting updates on the Registration Tool and new proposed namespaces for events. We will also be sharing community updates on the usability tests and design highlights of the latest mobile and desktop wireframes.

Join us and share your thoughts on these developments!

Date: March 31, 2022

Time: 15:00 UTC

Zoom Link: https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/82046580320

You may also watch Campaigns Office Hour: Introducing the Campaigns Product Team to learn more about the Team and the previous wireframes.

Feel free to send a message to ibrazal-ctr@wikimedia.org if you want to receive an email reminder for this meeting.

Thank you.

The Campaign Product Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:37, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Sunday May 8 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting

Swans are musical creatures.

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

We'll focus on strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including 2022 Board of Trustees Call for Candidates, Movement Charter/Content preliminary narrative, Human Rights Policy Community Conversations, Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan Feedback, IP blocking and Open Proxies discussion, Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 May 20-22 + local events, and other ongoing activities.

This month we are meeting on Sunday May 8, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

(UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC, note that some areas recently experienced daylight savings time changes).--Pharos (talk) 18:57, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Sunday June 5 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting

Swan impressions.

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

We'll focus on strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including Movement Charter, Hubs Global Conversation this June, WMF Proposal for Movement Strategy Forum, New rounds of WMF Conference Funds including in-person events, WMF Proposal for Sound Logo Contest, WMF Elections Analysis Committee selection, wikimania:Program submissions due June 10 (scholarship and local event grants due June 3) and other ongoing activities.

This month we are meeting on Sunday June 5, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

(UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC).--Pharos via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Sunday July 3 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting

Swan celestial.

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

We'll focus on strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including Movement Charter, Hubs Global Conversation last week, Affiliate voting period to shortlist WMF Board candidates (July 1-15), Wikimania updates, Desktop improvements, Wikimedia Enterprise first customers, Call for program submissions and updates for a global diversity of regional/linguistic Wiki-Conferences, Wikidata:Wiki Mentor Africa and other ongoing activities.

This month we are meeting on Sunday July 3, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

(UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC).--Pharos via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Event Registration Tool: Demo and Invitation to Test

Hello Subscribers!

The Campaigns Product Team from the Wikimedia Foundation will be hosting two office hours to demo the new Event Registration Tool, and train organizers how to use it. In these office hours, you will learn how to:

• Create an event page in the new event namespace (as an event organizer)
• Enable registration on your event page (as an event organizer)
• Collect data on who registered for your event (as an event organizer)
• Register for an event on the event page (as an event participant)

You can attend one office hour or both, depending on your availability on the following dates:

• Session 1: Thursday, July 21, 2022 at 5:00 PM UTC
• Session 2: Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 12:00 PM UTC

These events will be multilingual, with live interpretations in Arabic, English, French, Italian, and Portuguese, and Swahili. Note that Portuguese will be available on the 21st, but not the 23rd. We strongly encourage you to join and share your feedback on the tool. Your feedback will help us improve the tool so that Wikimedians can have a better event experience. To register, please reply to this email or sign-up to our page, by adding your signature.

Thank you!

IBrazal (WMF) (talk) 06:45, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Campaign Product Team Office Hour - July 21, 2022

Hello Campaign Product Newsletter subscribers!

The Campaign Product Team will be having an office hour today, July 21, 2022 at 17:00 UTC via Zoom to demo the first release of the Event Registration Tool.

You may join the office hour using this meeting link.

We look forward to your participation.

Thank you.

Best,

The Campaign Product Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:46, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Additional question

I found [1] on the etherpad. 71.204.166.188 16:37, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

Campaigns Product Update #4

Hello Campaigns Product Newsletter subscribers!

We are excited to share our updates:

• Event Registration v0

We have successfully launched Event Registration tool V0 on beta cluster and collected feedback from the first batch of testers. This tool is part of a more comprehensive organizing solution, the Event Center, which hopes to support movement organizers. Through this registration solution, organizers can collect useful data on campaign participants and their needs while respecting participant privacy.

Testing update. In our first round of feedback collection, testers were composed of different types of organizers around the movement with a language focus on Arabic, French, English, and Swahili communities. Most of the testers successfully created their test event registrations and signed up for a test event registration created by other organizers. Simple, easy to use, and aids in managing event participants were the common feedback we received from first-time users. In contrast, access and proper localization of the tool were the points for improvement identified. We are working on V1, which will include communication support and integration with the Programs and Event Dashboard. This will be released on Meta-Wiki soon. We hope to address accessibility during this launch and improve localization problems once the tool has been deployed in local wikiprojects.

The tool is still available for testing on the beta cluster. Feel free to leave feedback on our project talk page or this form.

• Organizer Lab
  Looking for a way to learn how to effectively organize around sustainability? Join the beta version of the Organizer Lab on WikiLearn to understand how to effectively organize a global campaign around sustainability and climate change! Applications are open from September 22 - October 19, 2022. The Organizer Lab will be a 9-week online learning experience from the end of October until mid December that prepares participants to obtain knowledge about the topics that they wish to create, a call to action for strategic knowledge gaps, as well as more generalized Wikimedia organizing and campaign/event design skills.

Read more about the program!

What's Next:

• Organizer Lab Information Session. We invite you to join our information session for the Organizer Lab on September 30, 2022 at 14:00 UTC via Zoom. Join this session!
  

• Organizer User Rights. We are reaching out to a pool of administrators from Arabic, French and Swahili communities to collect feedback on what is the best way to define organizer user rights, what privileges to give to community organizers, and what are the limitations of these privileges. Feel free to reach out to our product ambassadors or send an email to ibrazal-ctr@wikimedia.org if you are interested to be part of these conversations.

---

Community Feedback:

"Participants have been always asking the organizers are asked by participants whether they are registered, now participants will just look directly if they are registered, Thank you for creating the system"
- French Organizer

“I think that the platform will facilitate the process of promoting events and searching for participants”
- Arabic Organizer

---

Thank you!

The Campaigns Product Team

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:30, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Open letter to the WMF

Hi Mayur,

We have posted an open letter to the Foundation and Board of Trustees. It concerns the development of MediaWiki extensions and needs the personal attention of all concerned developers and managers. Please see it at:

meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_letter_from_English_Wikipedia_New_Page_Reviewers and en.Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Coordination/2022_WMF_letter

Your comments are welcome. Many thanks.

Kind regards, On behalf of the English Wikipedia Community MB (talk) 02:50, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Sunday November 13 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting

bestiary (Q830560)⊆compendium (Q1459574)⊆reference work (Q13136).

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

We'll focus on strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including Wikimedia Research Fund, 2023 Ombuds commission and Case Review Committee appointments process, feedback on consultation and community session of the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, various Wikimania topics: (ideas/suggestions for Wikimania 2023, expressions of interest for Wikimania 2024 and beyond, expressions of interest to join Wikimania Steering Committee), and other ongoing activities.

This month we are meeting on Sunday November 13, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

(UTC meeting times are 02:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC
UTC times are different from before, and also note that some areas may have recently experienced daylight savings time changes.).--Pharos via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:59, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Campaigns Product Team Office Hour - December 2022

Hello Campaigns Product Newsletter subscribers!

The Wikimedia Foundation Campaigns Team invites you to join our upcoming office hours. In each session, we will introduce V1 of Event Registration Tool, so you can begin using it for real events on Meta-wiki.

In V1, the following new features will be includedː

• Support for the organizer to specify an event timezone
• Automatic confirmation emails after participants have registered
• Private registration: the option for participants to register and only display their registered username to organizers of the event and we will teach you how you can use it yourself.

Office Hour Sessions:

• 1st Session: December 5, 2022 @ 18:00 UTC via Zoom
• 2nd Session: December 10, 2022 @ 12:00 UTC via Zoom

Join us and share your thoughts on these developments!

These office hours will be multilingual, with live interpretations in Arabic, English, French, and Swahili. Email us @ ibrazal-ctr@wikimedia.org or sign-up here if you want to receive a reminder for this meeting.

Thank you.

The Campaigns Product Team

We need your feedback on a tool from the Wikimedia Summit

Reminder: the guide to using Baserow, presented during the Wikimedia Summit.

Hi! I'm contacting you as one of the participants in the Wikimedia Summit 2022, to kindly ask for your feedback through a 5-10 minute survey to evaluate 'Baserow' (note: the survey is on a Google form).

Baserow was a tool through which participants in the Summit co-created a database of Movement Strategy activities. We hope to learn from you how useful it may be to keep using it in the future to help document and connect on Movement Strategy work.

You are welcome and encouraged to fill out the survey in any language. Your feedback would be very appreciated --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 15:37, 16 February 2023 (UTC).

Well played, the Sound Logo barnstar

🎶 Thank you! 🎶

Your support and participation were instrumental to the Wikimedia Sound Logo contest. Thank you for playing a major role in the global call for the Sound of all Human Knowledge!

The Sound Logo Team

MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia apps newsletter-June 2023

Introducing the Second Issue of the Wikipedia Mobile Apps Newsletter!

Discover the latest updates, features, and improvements in our newsletter. Stay informed and enhance your mobile Wikipedia experience. Enjoy the read!

iOS

From April. to June 2023:

Significant progress was made on the iOS platform. Version 7.2.2 was released on May 10, and version 7.3.0 was released on June 1.

These updates included various improvements, such as simplified state restoration, which improved many of the performance issues we heard about through our support email and app store. We also worked to release a page protection notice on the editor, enhanced reliability of widget data fetching, color updates, and bug fixes. Additionally, we continue to make progress on a native watchlist functionality, Talk page image support, full page editing and enhancements to our native source editor, and language updates.

Android

From April. to June 2023:

We focused on completing our work on our updated design component library, bringing it up to date with the latest Material Design 3 guidelines. You can now view images on talk pages.

We have successfully concluded the experiment on machine-assisted article descriptions and would like to highlight our gratitude to our dedicated volunteers. We are excited to announce that we will be sharing the outcomes of the experiment next month.

Community meetings

• In May, our team member Marina Azevedo participated in the Wikimedia Hackathon, a yearly event held this year in Athens, Greece, aimed at fostering connections among the global technical community. The event provided opportunities for hacking, engaging in technical discussions, and discovering innovative ideas.

• The upcoming meeting between the Wiki Mentor Africa Initiative and the Wikipedia Mobile Apps Team will be an important event covering several key aspects. These include exploring the history of the apps, discussing the roadmap for future development, addressing open questions, conducting comprehensive feature reviews, and providing clarity on frequently asked questions (FAQs).

This meeting promises to be a valuable opportunity for collaboration and innovation, with the shared objective of improving the mobile Wikipedia experience.

We are excited and willing to arrange meetings with other community members who are interested. You may also contact us at aramadan@wikimedia.org to arrange such gatherings.

Existing news

There are upcoming opportunities to provide feedback on various tasks related to patrolling. These include offering input on image recommendations, specifically on Android, as well as providing feedback on new diffs in iOS and answering questions about updated watchlist designs; if you are interested in participating, please reach out to me.

You can subscribe to this newsletter from here.

--ARamadan17:45, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Sunday July 16 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting (Global Council focus, now available in ar, es, fr!)

SWAN: The Next Generation

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas on the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for a future Global Council.

We'll focus on strategic and outreach topics of mutual concern to all affiliates including Wikimania Singapore, Future of SWAN, Movement Charter/Content new sections (particularly Movement Charter/Content/Global Council), other activities you submit, and we will top it all off with a grand finale AI Happy Hour / Doom Hour!

This month we are meeting on Sunday July 16, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

UTC meeting times are 02:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC
Note that we are now meeting on Zoom, with interpretation in the 2nd session in (Arabic) (Spanish) (French)--Pharos (talk) 02:44, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia apps newsletter-August 2023

Presenting the Third Edition of the Wikipedia Mobile Apps Newsletter!

Explore the freshest news, enhancements, and additions in our newsletter, keeping you in the loop for an enriched mobile Wikipedia journey. Dive into the content and make the most of your reading!

iOS

From June to August 2023

• We released version 7.3.1 on July 12, with highlights:
  • Fixed character counter in article description editor.
  • Added Gurene, Wayuu, and Angika languages to our language list.
  • Addressed automatic theme switching bug and performed cleanup for performance fixes.
• We're progressing on upcoming features:
  • Redesigning diff view: The "Diff View" displays changes in a Wikipedia article over time, showing additions, deletions, and edits for easy comparison between different versions helping you track content evolution and updates.
  • Coming in 7.4.0:
    1. Unleash the power of "Undo" and "Rollback" with updated diff pages!They let you revert changes made to an article back to a previous version, helping you fix mistakes or unwanted edits quickly.
       As we move one step closer to bringing Watchlist to the iOS app we are aiming to release it in September. We've refreshed our diff pages and added the option for experienced editors to roll back destructive edits. You can check out the updated diff page by tapping "View Edit History" in any article.
    2. A warm welcome to the Tachelhit language Wikipedia!
    3. Connect across language variants with updated codes! When you venture into articles of different language variants, particularly Chinese and Serbian, you should find a smoother experience when using variant codes.

Remember, your feedback powers our journey. You can be a part of our quest to create the ultimate Wikipedia experience by reporting bugs, quirks, or even your magical moments. Reach out through iOS-support@wikimedia.org.

Thank you for being a vital part of our community... Happy exploring!

Android

From June to August 2023:

• We've been finishing up our work on Image Recommendations (a new Suggested Edits task where you'll be able to add images to articles that are currently unillustrated). We plan to release the feature by September.
• We are beginning development on Patroller Tasks (a new Suggested Edits task for patrolling recent edits for vandalism). You can read about the usability testing we’ve conducted for the feature on the project page on MediaWiki.
• On a note of gratitude, we extend our heartfelt appreciation to the dedicated individuals who participated as graders for Machine Assisted Article Descriptions. Your invaluable contributions have significantly contributed to the advancement of our projects, and we look forward to your continued collaboration as we push the boundaries of Wikipedia's capabilities.

Community meetings

On July 30, 2023, the Wikimedia Apps Team had a fruitful meeting with the group behind the Wiki Mentor Africa Initiative. Over 100 participants joined on Zoom, with others watching the YouTube live stream. The presentation covered the Apps' history, roadmap, open questions, feature reviews, and FAQs. Valuable feedback was shared, enhancing the apps' development and user experience. These collaborative engagements are vital to building a more inclusive Wikimedia platform. I am enthusiastic about recreating this experience with other communities; please navigate to the last paragraph to know how to initiate such engagements.

On August 17, the spotlight was on the Apps Team at Wikimania as we presented "There’s an App for that: a mobile-native way to interact with the movement". We appreciate everyone who tuned in virtually to explore the future of interaction with the Wikimedia movement through our innovative mobile app. If you missed it or want to revisit the content, you can find the presentation slides at this link.

We're excited to share that Jazmin Tanner, the Apps Lead Product Manager, contributed to the session titled "Supporting Moderators at the Wikimedia Foundation." As we diligently worked on refining the patroller feature on the apps, Jazmin provided valuable insights that contributed to discussions on enhancing the experience for both moderators and users.

The next office hour

Our upcoming office hour is scheduled for October. Further information regarding the specific date and time will be provided in our forthcoming newsletter.

We are excited and willing to arrange meetings with interested community members.

You may also contact us at aramadan@wikimedia.org to arrange such gatherings.

And you can subscribe to this newsletter from this link.

~~ ARamadan-WMF10:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Organizer Tools Office Hours & Event Discovery Project

(Lire ce message en français); (Ver este mensaje en español); (Angalia ujumbe huu kwa Kiswahili); (إقرأ هذه الرسالة بالعربي) Please help translate to your language .

The Campaigns team at the Wikimedia Foundation has some updates to share with you, which are:

We invite you to attend our upcoming community office hours to learn about organizer tools, including the Event registration tool (which has new and upcoming features). The office hours are on the following dates, and you can join one or both of them:

• Saturday, October 7 at 12:00 UTC (Register here)
  • Languages available: Arabic, English, French, Swahili
• Tuesday, October 10 at 18:00 UTC (Register here).
  • Languages available: Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili

We have launched a new project: Event Discovery. This project aims to make it easier for editors to learn about campaign events. We need your help to understand how you would like to discover events on the wikis, so that we can create a useful solution. Please share your feedback on our project talk page.

Thank you, and we hope to see you at the upcoming office hours!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:54, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

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Wikimedia apps newsletter – October 2023

Revealing What's Inside the Fourth Edition of the Wikipedia Mobile Apps Newsletter!

Discover the latest updates, improvements, and new content in our newsletter, ensuring you stay informed for an enhanced mobile Wikipedia experience.

iOS

From the end of August to October 2023

• The iOS suggested edits feature, originally successful on Android, is now being developed for iOS. This expansion aligns with the Product & Technology organization's goals for the 2023–2024 fiscal year, with a specific target of increasing mobile contributions by 10% without reversion. This move responds to the growing demand for a similar content creation and maintenance tool on Apple devices.
• The team released 7.4.1 in August, which included:
  • The ability to Undo and Rollback edits on Diff Pages!
  • The addition of Tachelhit Language Wiki.
  • We also improved language variants for Chinese and Serbian languages.
• In October, 7.4.2 was released, which included the following:
  • Watchlist on iOS: We've heard your requests! You can now access your Watchlist through Settings → Account → Watchlist. Add new items to your Watchlist via the new overflow menu in the Article View. Take actions on edits by clicking a username on the Watchlist view, or take actions like "Thank" on the diff screen of an edit in your list.
  • Article Section Sharing: Want to send someone to a specific section in an article? Click a section in the table of contents and then click "Share" via the article overflow menu.
  • Bug Fixes to ensure you can swipe without the app freezing and that the navigation bar doesn't shrink or disappear.

Thank you for volunteering developers Serguitar, jhsoby, agray, Nikki, TiagoLubiana.dijkstra.and revolter for their contributions to this release.

Android

From the end of August to October 2023

• The team is actively working on reinstating the nearby feature due to the high volume of requests we've received. You can find comprehensive tracking details for this effort on Phabricator T347201.
• We have released the Image Recommendation feature to the Wikipedia Beta.
• We have been working on developing the Patroller Tasks, and most of the screens have passed the design reviews.
• Bug fixes and minor improvements:
  • Fixed possible crashes on Android 14 devices.
  • Fixed some view styles related to the Material Design, which includes toolbar and dialog.
  • Introduced more text-highlighted features to the search results across the app.
  • Introduced the Wikitext keyboard support to the talk page interfaces.

Community meetings

We would like to invite you to an online meeting with the mobile apps team. It will take place on the 27th of October at 5 p.m. UTC (check your zone’s exact time).

The host will be Jazmin Tanner, the product manager of the apps team, with a number of our software engineers; you can join the meeting.

Feel free to share your questions and thoughts about Wikipedia’s mobile apps on the Wikimedia Apps/Office Hours page on mediawiki.org. We would love to hear from you. The last date to add your input will be on the 24th of October at 12:00 UTC. If you'd like a one-day reminder before the meeting, simply add your username on the same link, and we'll send you one.

We will be waiting for you all!

And you can subscribe to this newsletter.

-- ARamadan-WMF 09:46, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – First quarter of 2024

Hello, and welcome to the app’s first newsletter in 2024!

It has been a long year; we published four editions of our newsletter, which you can go through all of them. In this edition, we will cover our work for the last quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024!

Android

• Edit Patrol (also known as Patroller tasks on Android) has been released to Beta testers with rollback rights on Test Wiki and Indonesian Wikipedia. We had a productive meeting with Indonesian users to introduce and discuss the new patrolling tasks feature on the Android app, as we provided a detailed presentation on the feature, and collected valuable feedback from the Indonesian community to enhance the user experience.
  For those interested, a meeting recording is available.
  We conducted outreach to Spanish, and French Wikipedia communities during February 2024.
• We hosted two synchronous community consultations & recorded a third where we shared the Edit Patrol suggested edit workflow, and showed designs for Saved messages and templates:
  • French - 21 February 2024 from 16-17 UTC. Recording with translation, slides.
  • Spanish - 28 February 2024 from 16-17 UTC. Recording, and slides.
• Places feature is back to the Wikipedia Android app!
  Places is a feature that allows you to discover articles by location.
  The iOS app was able to maintain the feature via use of Apple Maps, but it was necessary for Android audiences that we continue using an open source map.

iOS

• Suggested Edits on iOS prototype is in the experimental build. Instructions to test the feature can be found on this FAQ page.
  Alt text is text associated with an image that serves the same purpose and conveys the same essential information as the image.
  The app's product manager presented our team's work and prototype (iOS suggested edits) to the GLAM conference audience. All details can be found in the presentation's deck.
• It is now possible to donate using Apple Pay directly from the app.
• IOS Native Editor Improvement Development is out!
  You will be able to edit, find and replace, and insert links and images directly from Commons without any performance issues!
  Additionally, it is now possible to edit a full article page and a talk page.

In the current quarter, we aim to engage with editors from LATAM, Spanish-speaking regions, North America, and the Caribbean to test Suggested edits and the new native editor features.

Community meetings

• We participated in the GLAM conference in November 2023. All the details are mentioned in the iOS section of this edition from the newsletter.
• On December 1st of 2023, The Wikipedia Android team met with Indonesian users to introduce and discuss the new patrolling tasks feature on the Android app. The team provided a detailed presentation on the feature and collected valuable feedback. A meeting recording is available.
• We joined the Wiki Editoras Lx editathon on December 16th to gather feedback about an alt-text Suggested Edit task on iOS.
  Attendees were generally positive about the prospect of the feature. Experienced editors thought it could be a good task for on-boarding new editors, but also a more casual way of contributing for new editors.

And you can subscribe to this newsletter.

~~ARamadan-WMF04:42, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to vote now to select members of the first U4C

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Dear Wikimedian,

You are receiving this message because you previously participated in the UCoC process.

This is a reminder that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) ends on May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 22:53, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Sunday June 23 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting (WMF BoT statement on Movement Charter ratification)

A group of SWANs heading to the meeting

Hello everyone!

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas about current developments in the Wikimedia Movement. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for further Wikimedia 2030 strategy process work.

At this meeting we will focus on the recent statement by the WMF Board of Trustees liaisons statement on the Movement Charter in which the liaisons stated that they will be recommending the Board of Trustees not to ratify the final draft of the Movement Charter. The community and affiliate votes on the ratification are supposed to start on Tuesday, 25 June. This meeting offers a venue to discuss the situation and formulate the "next steps".

This month, we are meeting on Sunday, June 23, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC

Nadzik (talk) 16:35, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin June Issue 2

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the second half of June 2024. Please help translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations

Wikimania Katowice

Talking: 2024 continues

• Register now for Wikimania Katowice (7–10 August 2024).
• Editing team community conversation - CopyVio Check and Real-time Checks (03 July 2024, in English)
• Growth team community conversation - New tasks for newcomers and patrollers' burden (16 July 2024, in Spanish)

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• Wikimedia Hackathon 2024: Good projects and good people!
• MediaWiki 1.42 general release.
• The Community Configuration extension is released to more Wikipedias.
• The Trust & Safety Product team published the Incident Reporting System MVP User Testing Summary and a project update on temporary accounts.
• Recent changes from the latest Tech News.
• Reference Check to be rolled out on all Wikipedias. Read the initial results from the Edit Check project.
• Concluded voting on Community Wishlist Survey renaming; new name now Community Wishlist.
• “Add an image” suggested edit was released to Wikipedia iOS app & Donation through native GPay is now available on the Wikipedia Android app.
• Talk pages permalinks are now available at all wikis.
• A new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graphs with more secure, easy to use, and extensible Charts.
• Wikimedia Enterprise Quarterly technical update focusing on machine readability, content integrity, and API usability.
• Proposal for a Product & Tech Advisory Council.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• Highlights and achievements & future plans from Wikisource Loves Manuscripts Project.
• Learn how to edit and upload to Wikimedia Commons with OpenRefine.
• Watch the recording of the 11th edition of Wiki Workshop where research sessions on topics like Disinformation, Reliability, Representation and Gender, Governance and Policy, were held.
• First edition of WikiLearn News released, highlighting opportunities and progress in the area of skills development.
• The WikiData tools everyone is talking about during the 2023 LD4 Conference on Linked Data.
• The Wikimedia Foundation has become a member of the Unicode Consortium.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Inclusion See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Evaluation of the U4C election results (ongoing)
• Building a public policy network from both sides of the Pacific: Lessons from the 1st Global Wiki Advocacy Meet-up.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness See also: quarterly Metrics Reports

• Thoughts on the Wikimedia Foundation's annual plan from the Japanese Wikipedia community.
• Where is Wikimedia in the Climate Crisis? – a recap of sustainability work across the movement and at the Foundation for 2023. Foundation Sustainability metrics for 2023 also available on Meta.
• The Wikimedia Foundation's revamped social media strategy is available on Meta.

Board and Board committee updates See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Wikimedia Foundation Board liaisons published reflections on final Movement Charter draft.
• June 27 Conversation with Trustees Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/2024-06-27 Conversation with Trustees: notes & recording including outcomes of the 20 June Board meeting and a discussion of the movement charter.
• Ratification vote on Movement Charter until July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC
• 2024 Board Selection: Candidates have answered community questions selected by the Elections Committee.
• Affiliates strategy: Affiliate Health Criteria and changes to the User Group recognition process (feedback page)
• Feedback on Procedure for Sibling Project Lifecycle finished on June 23. The revised version was published. Updates in July

Foundation statements

• Wikimedia Foundation statement on volunteer processes on reliable sources

Other Movement curated newsletters & news See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 20:00, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-28

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

Recent changes

• At the Wikimedia Foundation a new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graph with more secure, easy to use, and extensible Chart. You can subscribe to the newsletter to get notified about new project updates and other news about Chart.
• The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on your wiki. This extension helps in managing and making events more visible, giving Event organizers the ability to use tools like the Event registration tool. To learn more about the deployment status and how to request this extension for your wiki, visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-wiki.
• Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
• Thank you to all of the authors who have contributed to MediaWiki Core. As a result of these contributions, the percentage of authors contributing more than 5 patches has increased by 25% since last year, which helps ensure the sustainability of the platform for the Wikimedia projects.

Problems

• A problem with the color of the talkpage tabs always showing as blue, even for non-existent pages which should have been red, affecting the Vector 2022 skin, has been fixed.

Future changes

• The Trust and Safety Product team wants to introduce temporary accounts with as little disruption to tools and workflows as possible. Volunteer developers, including gadget and user-script maintainers, are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. The team has created documentation explaining how to do the update. Learn more.

Tech News survey

• Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 1 more week. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:32, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-29

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

Tech News survey

• Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 3 more days. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

Recent changes

• Wikimedia developers can now officially continue to use both Gerrit and GitLab, due to a June 24 decision by the Wikimedia Foundation to support software development on both platforms. Gerrit and GitLab are both code repositories used by developers to write, review, and deploy the software code that supports the MediaWiki software that the wiki projects are built on, as well as the tools used by editors to create and improve content. This decision will safeguard the productivity of our developers and prevent problems in code review from affecting our users. More details are available in the Migration status page.
• The Wikimedia Foundation seeks applicants for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). This group will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. Council members will evaluate and consult on the movement's product and technical activities, so that we develop multi-generational projects. We are looking for a range of technical contributors across the globe, from a variety of Wikimedia projects. Please apply here by August 10.
• Editors with rollback user-rights who use the Wikipedia App for Android can use the new Edit Patrol features. These features include a new feed of Recent Changes, related links such as Undo and Rollback, and the ability to create and save a personal library of user talk messages to use while patrolling. If your wiki wants to make these features available to users who do not have rollback rights but have reached a certain edit threshold, you can contact the team. You can read more about this project on Diff blog.
• Editors who have access to The Wikipedia Library can once again use non-open access content in SpringerLinks, after the Foundation contacted them to restore access. You can read more about this and 21 other community-submitted tasks that were completed last week.

Changes later this week

• This week, dark mode will be available on a number of Wikipedias, both desktop and mobile, for logged-in and logged-out users. Interface admins and user script maintainers are encouraged to check gadgets and user scripts in the dark mode, to find any hard-coded colors and fix them. There are some recommendations for dark mode compatibility to help.

Future changes

• Next week, functionaries, volunteers maintaining tools, and software development teams are invited to test the temporary accounts feature on testwiki. Temporary accounts is a feature that will help improve privacy on the wikis. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page. [2]
• Editors who upload files cross-wiki, or teach other people how to do so, may wish to join a Wikimedia Commons discussion. The Commons community is discussing limiting who can upload files through the cross-wiki upload/Upload dialog feature to users auto-confirmed on Wikimedia Commons. This is due to the large amount of copyright violations uploaded this way. There is a short summary at Commons:Cross-wiki upload and discussion at Commons:Village Pump.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.

MediaWiki message delivery 01:31, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Second quarter of 2024

Hello, and welcome to the app's second newsletter in 2024! In this edition, we will review our achievements and progress from the first half of 2024!

Android

• Edit Patrol is now available on production for all Wikis!
• Donation through G-Pay is now available within the app.

iOS

• "Add an image" suggested edit is available for all Wikis! It is available to all users with more than 50 edits.
• We now support full-page editing on Talk pages.

And you can subscribe to this newsletter.

~~ARamadan-WMF11:53, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Sunday July 28 Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network meeting (Results of Movement Charter ratification)

SWANs gathering for a conversation

Hello everyone!

The Strategic Wikimedia Affiliates Network (SWAN) is a developing forum for all Wikimedia movement affiliates to share ideas about current developments in the Wikimedia Movement. It expands on the model of the All-Affiliates Brand Meeting to help lay some of the groundwork for further Wikimedia 2030 strategy process work.

At this meeting we will focus on the results of the Movement Charter ratification. We will also discuss the aftermath of the Board of Trustees' decision to veto the Movement Charter, including their recent proposals. We will also cover updates about upcoming Wikimania 2024.

This month, we are meeting on Sunday, July 28, and you are all invited to RSVP here.

UTC meeting times are 03:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC

Nadzik (talk) 19:55, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin July Issue 1

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the first half of July 2024. Please help Translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations

Wikimania Katowice

Talking: 2024 continues

• Registration for Wikimania Katowice (7–10 August 2024) is still open. Register to attend in-person or virtually until 26 July.
• The call for presentation submissions for the WikiArabia 2024 is open (until July 28).

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• The Community Tech team launched a new, continuous Community Wishlist. Wish submission is now open and can be filled at any time.
• Join the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) as technical volunteers. Applications are open until August 10.
• A new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graph with more secure, easy to use, and extendible Chart. You can subscribe to the newsletter to get notified about new project updates and other news about Chart.
• CampaignEvents extension, add an Image feature on iOS Wikipedia app and more recent changes from the Tech News. Read also other news in the previous edition.
• Dark mode - one of the most requested features will transform Wikipedia’s accessibility and is now available on select wikis, on mobile and desktop, in both reading and editing mode!
• MediaWiki insights into work done to improve security, ease of use, maintainability and overall code health. Also, a 25% increase in the number of authors who have committed more than 5 patches!
• Have you ever wished monitoring and fighting vandalism was easier from your mobile device? Edit Patrol is here to help.
• On the value of experimentation – a Future Audiences perspective.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• Wikicelebrate Ellie from El Salvador, a passionate Wikipedia trainer, event organizer and someone who finds joy in seeing others grow.
• Growing visual knowledge on the Wikimedia projects – the experiences of the Image Description Month.
• Enhancing Learning with Ancient Manuscripts – Wikisource Loves Manuscripts pilot project in Indonesia.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• The call for candidates for the special election of the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now until July 19.
• Protecting the Wikimedia model, its people, and its values – highlights from the Global Advocacy Team.
• Reflections from the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum 2024 (DRIF24).

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness See also: quarterly Metrics Reports

• Key Takeaways, Trends, and Lessons from FY23/24 Community Fund Grants

Board and Board committee updates See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees published its decision not to ratify the draft Movement Charter along with proposed next steps (minutes, resolution, appendix).
• Movement Charter voting is closed. At the time of drafting, the scrutineers are working to ensure that all votes on the ballot are valid.

Foundation statements

• Wikimedia Foundation’s Accreditation to the World Intellectual Property Organization was blocked for a fourth time by China.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 21:19, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-30

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

Feature News

• Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
• Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [3]
• Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [4]
• Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone.
• Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [5]

Project Updates

• Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.

Learn more

• Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff.
• How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin and Add a Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:04, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-31

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

Feature news

• Editors using the Visual Editor in languages that use non-Latin characters for numbers, such as Hindi, Manipuri and Eastern Arabic, may notice some changes in the formatting of reference numbers. This is a side effect of preparing a new sub-referencing feature, and will also allow fixing some general numbering issues in Visual Editor. If you notice any related problems on your wiki, please share details at the project talkpage.

Bugs status

• Some logged-in editors were briefly unable to edit or load pages last week. These errors were mainly due to the addition of new linter rules which led to caching problems. Fixes have been applied and investigations are continuing.
• Editors can use the IP Information tool to get information about IP addresses. This tool is available as a Beta Feature in your preferences. The tool was not available for a few days last week, but is now working again. Thank you to Shizhao for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• There are new features and improvements to Phabricator from the Release Engineering and Collaboration Services teams, and some volunteers, including: the search systems, the new task creation system, the login systems, the translation setup which has resulted in support for more languages (thanks to Pppery), and fixes for many edge-case errors. You can read details about these and other improvements in this summary.
• There is an update on the Charts project. The team has decided which visualization library to use, which chart types to start focusing on, and where to store chart definitions.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Czech (voy:cs:) [6]

Learn more

• There is a new Wikimedia Foundation data center in São Paulo, Brazil which helps to reduce load times.
• There is new user research on problems with the process of uploading images.
• Commons Impact Metrics are now available via data dumps and API.
• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:11, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin July Issue 2

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the second half of July 2024. Please help translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations

Wikimania Katowice

Talking: 2024 continues

• Where to from here? A message from Wikimedia Foundation CEO, Maryana Iskander.
• The program for Wikimania Katowice (7–10 August 2024) is now live! Register now to attend virtually!
• Are you speaking at Wikimania? Here are some resources for speakers.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• The Foundation recently opened our first data center in South America. Read about how it is already lowering load times.
• Feature updates from the Tech News: Stewards can now globally block accounts; Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest; and interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as “Pending Changes”) is improved.
• Dark mode will transform Wikipedia's accessibility. Interface admins and user script maintainers are encouraged to check gadgets and user scripts in the dark mode, to find any hard-coded colors and fix them.
• Measure the impact of Wikimedia Commons with Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard, now available via data dumps and API.
• Key findings from user research about confusion in uploading images to Wikipedia.
• This month’s Wikimedia Research Showcase highlighted the impact machine translation has on both content and readers of Wikipedia and provided interesting insights on how to overcome related challenges. Watch the recording.
• The Charts project officially kicked off. The goal of this new initiative is to restore basic data visualization capabilities to the wikis. Check out the project page and follow our progress on Phabricator.
• The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on other wikis. This extension helps manage and make events more visible. Learn about how to request this extension.
• The Campaigns Product & Programs teams have launched a consultation on WikiProjects and other forms of collaboration on the wikis. They want to understand why they work (or don’t work) for some Wikimedia communities, and they want to learn what can be done to improve the experience. Everyone is encouraged to share their feedback.
• Are you a technical contributor? Check out the latest Technical Community Newsletter.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• The Wikimania Core Organizing Team (COT) for 2025 is delighted to announce that the 20th Wikimania will be hosted in Nairobi, Kenya.
• The Wikipedia Library secured new partnerships with Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Central European University Press, and l’Informé and is adding more content collections in the library.
• Three new A Wiki Minute videos have been released which address reader privacy and content management on Wikipedia, as well as how Wikipedia differs from social media platforms. Learn how A Wiki Minute videos have helped increase awareness about our work.
• The Committee Support Team year-in-review and reflections.
• A new 20-minute audio interview about the WikiLearn platform with Asaf Bartov, in an episode of the WikipediaPodden podcast.
• More of the Wikipedia core policies curriculum developed for the Africa Growth Pilot is available for review. After edits and improvements by the community, recorded videos would become a permanent core policies course on WikiLearn.
• One new wiki has been created: Wikivoyage in Czech.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now until August 10. Learn more about voting and voter eligibility.
• US Supreme Court ruling on NetChoice cases: What does it mean for Wikipedia?

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness See also: quarterly Metrics Reports

• Announcing the 2023-2024 Research Fund Grantees and their funded projects.

Board and Board committee updates See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• The outcomes of the June Board meeting are published on Meta. Agenda for the August meeting is here.
• Welcoming new affiliates: Recognition of Wikimedistas Wayuu User Group, Wikimedia Community of Togo User Group, and Wikimedians of Singapore User Group.
• The Board of Trustees selection pre-onboarding and campaign period is open from July 25 to August 26.
• Foundation Trustee Dariusz Jemelniak was appointed to the Governing Board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, established as part of the EU’s key funding program for research and innovation.
• Movement Charter voter feedback: All comments are now on Meta-wiki (65 comments from the affiliates voters and 447 comments from the individual voters).

Other Movement curated newsletters & news See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:48, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-32

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

Feature news

• Two new parser functions will be available this week: {{#dir}} and {{#bcp47}}. These will reduce the need for Template:Dir and Template:BCP47 on Commons and allow us to drop 100 million rows from the "what links here" database. Editors at any wiki that use these templates, can help by replacing the templates with these new functions. The templates at Commons will be updated during the Hackathon at Wikimania. [7][8]
• Communities can request the activation of the visual editor on entire namespaces where discussions sometimes happen (for instance Wikipedia: or Wikisource: namespaces) if they understand the known limitations. For discussions, users can already use DiscussionTools in these namespaces.
• The tracking category "Pages using Timeline" has been renamed to "Pages using the EasyTimeline extension" in TranslateWiki. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match.

Project updates

• Editors who help to organize WikiProjects and similar on-wiki collaborations, are invited to share ideas and examples of successful collaborations with the Campaigns and Programs teams. You can fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage. The teams are particularly looking for details about successful collaborations on non-English wikis.
• The new parser is being rolled out on Wikivoyage wikis over the next few months. The English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikivoyage were switched to Parsoid last week. For more information, see Parsoid/Parser Unification.

Learn more

• There will be more than 200 sessions at Wikimania this week. Here is a summary of some of the key sessions related to the product and technology area.
• The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available.
• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New design previews for Translatable pages; Updates about MinT for Wiki Readers; the release of Translation dumps; and more.
• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available.
• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-33

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

Feature news

• AbuseFilter editors and maintainers can now make a CAPTCHA show if a filter matches an edit. This allows communities to quickly respond to spamming by automated bots. [9]
• Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change by the Trust and Safety Product Team, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.

Project updates

• Nominations are open on Wikitech for new members to refresh the Toolforge standards committee. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open until at least 2024-08-26.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in West Coast Bajau (w:bdr:) [10]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:22, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin August Issue 1

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the first half of August 2024. Please help Translate.

---

Special Wikimania issue This is a special Wikimania issue of the Bulletin. We'll be back to our regular format in the next issue

Hannah Clover (User:Clovermoss), Wikimedian of the Year 2024.

• Catch up on missed sessions of Wikimania Katowice or revisit your favourites directly from the program, or review the day-long streams on YouTube: Day 1 streams, Day 2 streams, Day 3 streams, Day 4 streams.
• The Wikimedian of the Year Awards at Wikimania paid tribute to amazing Wikimedians who have made significant contributions to the movement. Learn about all of this year's winners.
• Daily highlights from Wikimania: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.
• Winners of the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award was announced at Wikimania.
• Highlights of product and tech sessions on Wikimania with links to description and recording.
• The Open Conversation with the Trustees at Wikimania hosted breakout discussions about the Movement Charter, affiliate strategy and hubs, the proposal for a Global Resource Distribution Committee (hybrid table--had streaming and is available to watch back online), the Product/Tech Advisory Council & Product/Tech priorities, building a sustainable revenue strategy for the movement: online fundraising, Wikimedia Enterprise and the Wikimedia Endowment, and responding to emerging threats to free knowledge: litigation, censorship, disinformation, and trust in an election year.
• Catch up on Foundation-led sessions from Wikimania on safety and information integrity: Protecting Children on-Wiki: a Child Rights Solutions Workshop, Information Integrity during Elections: Collective effort to address mis and disinformation, Policy Advocacy Showcase: Stories of policy advocacy work in the movement and future trends.
• Wikimania 2024 in Poland celebrates global volunteers who make Wikipedia and sister projects possible.

Upcoming and current events and conversations Talking: 2024 continues

Wikimania Katowice

• Language Community Meeting: Have topics to share or discuss? Add agenda here. (August 30 at 15:00 UTC.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• Two new parser functions and more recent changes on Tech News.
• Help us better understand WikiProjects or similar online collaboration spaces. Fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage.
• Parsoid deployed on first production wikis and more updates on MediaWiki Product Insights.
• Applications to join the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) are extended until September 16.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• The 4th edition of the Language & Internationalization newsletter (Aug 2024) is available.
• Reviving history and spreading the Spirit of Wikisource Loves Manuscripts (WILMA) in Naga City, the Philippines and Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum, Global Digital Compact, and Anti-Disinformation Repository: Highlights from the Global Advocacy Team.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:32, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-34

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

Feature news

• Editors who want to re-use references but with different details such as page numbers, will be able to do so by the end of 2024, using a new sub-referencing feature. You can read more about the project and how to test the prototype.
• Editors using tracking categories to identify which pages use specific extensions may notice that six of the categories have been renamed to make them more easily understood and consistent. These categories are automatically added to pages that use specialized MediaWiki extensions. The affected names are for: DynamicPageList, Kartographer, Phonos, RSS, Score, WikiHiero. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match. Thanks to Pppery for these improvements. [11]
• Technical volunteers who edit modules and want to get a list of the categories used on a page, can now do so using the categories property of mw.title objects. This enables wikis to configure workflows such as category-specific edit notices. Thanks to SD001 for these improvements. [12][13]

Bugs status

• Your help is needed to check if any pages need to be moved or deleted. A maintenance script was run to clean up unreachable pages (due to Unicode issues or introduction of new namespaces/namespace aliases). The script tried to find appropriate names for the pages (e.g. by following the Unicode changes or by moving pages whose titles on Wikipedia start with Talk:WP: so that their titles start with Wikipedia talk:), but it may have failed for some pages, and moved them to Special:PrefixIndex/T195546/ instead. Your community should check if any pages are listed there, and move them to the correct titles, or delete them if they are no longer needed. A full log (including pages for which appropriate names could be found) is available in phab:P67388.
• Editors who volunteer as mentors to newcomers on their wiki are once again able to access lists of potential mentees who they can connect with to offer help and guidance. This functionality was restored thanks to a bug fix. Thank you to Mbch331 for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 18 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• The application deadline for the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has been extended to September 16. Members will help by providing advice to Foundation Product and Technology leadership on short and long term plans, on complex strategic problems, and help to get feedback from more contributors and technical communities. Selected members should expect to spend roughly 5 hours per month for the Council, during the one year pilot. Please consider applying, and spread the word to volunteers you think would make a positive contribution to the committee.

Learn more

• The 2024 Coolest Tool Awards were awarded at Wikimania, in seven categories. For example, one award went to the ISA Tool, used for adding structured data to files on Commons, which was recently improved during the Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon. You can see video demonstrations of each tool at the awards page. Congratulations to this year's recipients, and thank you to all tool creators and maintainers.
• The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available, and includes some highlights from Wikimania, an upcoming Language community meeting, and other news from the movement.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:54, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-35

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

Feature news

• Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
• Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [14]

Bugs status

• Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
• Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.

Learn more

• If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
• To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
  • Community Configuration - Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together (55 mins) - about the Community Configuration project.
  • Future of MediaWiki. A sustainable platform to support a collaborative user base and billions of page views (30 mins) - an overview for both technical and non technical audiences, covering some of the challenges and open questions, related to the platform evolution, stewardship and developer experiences research.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:33, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin August Issue 2

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the second half of August 2024. Please help translate

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Upcoming and current events and conversations Talking: 2024 continues

• Language Community meeting (August 30 at 15:00 UTC).
• Cross-Regional Grantee Partner Learning Conversation Part 1 (August 31 at 07:00 UTC, in English, French, and Chinese Mandarin).
• The Wikimedia+Libraries Convention 2025 will take place in Mexico City from January 15-17, 2025. The scholarship application deadline is August 31.
• ESEAP Community Call (September 8 at 07:00 UTC).

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• Highlights of the Product & Technology department's recent work in improving the user experience.
• Editor tools related to references & categories and more tech updates on the latest Tech News.
• Outreachy (a paid, remote three-month internship to support underrepresented groups in tech) is open. Mentors should submit projects before September 11 at 16:00 UTC (more info).
• The Campaign Events extension is now available on Meta-Wiki, Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested in other language wikis.
• The Campaigns teams would like to learn more about how your communities do online collaboration such as WikiProjects, please take this Google Form survey or share examples of successful collaborations on Meta Wiki.
• Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
• Applications for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) are still open until September 16.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• Central Asian community members share their thoughts on Wikimania 2024.
• Take a look at updates on new feature developments and improvements in various language-related technical projects in the July 2024 edition of the Language and internationalization newsletter.
• The Conference and Events Fund is open for submission until September 2.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Meet the Wikimedia Foundation Global Advocacy Team.

Board and Board committee updates See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Some next steps on a movement charter: A message from Wikimedia Foundation CEO, Maryana Iskander, Chair of Board of Trustees, Nataliia Tymkiv, and Chair of Governance Committee, Dariusz Jemielniak.
• Elections for four community-and-affiliate elected seats on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation will be held from September 3 to September 17. To learn more about the candidates, watch this short "Meet the Candidates" presentations.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-36

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

• Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualisation can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help to test the charts.

Feature news

• Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__ to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [15]
• Editors who use the New Topic tool on discussion pages, will now be reminded to add a section header, which should help reduce the quantity of newcomers who add sections without a header. You can read more about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
• Last week, some Toolforge tools had occasional connection problems. The cause is still being investigated, but the problems have been resolved for now. [16]
• Translation administrators at multilingual wikis, when editing multiple translation units, can now easily mark which changes require updates to the translation. This is possible with the new dropdown menu.

Project updates

• A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia's APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.

Learn more

• To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
  • Charts, the successor of Graphs - A secure and extensible tool for data visualization (25 mins) – about the above-mentioned Charts project.
  • State of Language Technology and Onboarding at Wikimedia (90 mins) – about some of the language tools that support Wikimedia sites, such as Content/Section Translation, MinT, and LanguageConverter; also the current state and future of languages onboarding. [17]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:07, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-37

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

Feature news

• Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [18][19]
• Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions entity:getSitelink() and mw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid) will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [20]

Project updates

• Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [21]
• Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new MOS namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning with MOS: (usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language code mos). [22]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:53, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin September Issue 1

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the first half of September 2024. Please help Translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations Talking: 2024 continues

• The Voting period for the 2024 Board of Trustees election is open until September 17. Go to the SecurePoll voting page to vote.
• Scholarship application for Wikisource Conference 2025 in Bali, Indonesia is open until September 20.
• WikiConference Nigeria 2024 will be held in Abuja, Nigeria from September 12–14.
• Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 will take place in Istanbul, Türkiye on September 20–22.
• Celtic Knot Wikimedia Languages Conference will take place in Waterford City, Ireland on September 25–27.
• Italian WikiConference will be held in Padua, Italy on September 27–29.
• Join Wiki Loves Onam, a photo campaign dedicated to documenting the vibrant and colorful festival of Onam on Wikimedia Commons. The campaign runs until September 30.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes.
• The Alternative Text suggested edits feature has now been fully deployed to production on the iOS App for Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and French Wikipedias! This feature, part of WE1.2, is designed to enhance how newcomers add alt text to images, aiming to improve accessibility and engagement. For more details, visit the project page and explore the new feature in the app!
• Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualization can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help test the charts.
• A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia’s APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.
• More recent tech updates from Tech News.
• The latest status updates from Wikifunctions.
• Help us find WikiProjects or other online collaboration spaces!

Annual Goals Progress on Equity See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• Revamping Movement Strategy Grants with Hub Focus.
• Watch the recordings of Let's Connect Grantee Partner Learning Conversation: Conversation #1 with Wiki in Africa, Wiki Advocates Philippines, and Indic MediaWiki Developers UG and Conversation #2 with Wikimedia Community UG Malta, Wikimedia MA UG, and Wikimedia Canada.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Wikimedia Foundation defeats gambling magnate’s lawsuit in Germany.
• Wikimedia Indonesia and UNESCO Jakarta Team Up Against Harmful Content Online.
• Child Rights Impact Assessment at EduWiki Knowledge Showcase and more: Latest updates from the Global Advocacy team.
• Protecting the people: Some recommendations for safety while contributing to Wikimedia projects.

Board and Board committee updates See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• The Movement Charter Drafting Committee published their recommendations and bid farewell.
• Read updates from the July 2024 Wikimedia Endowment Board Meeting.
• Learn more about 12 candidates running for 4 seats on the Board by reading their statements and their answers to community questions.
• See the new members of the U4C following the results of the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) special election, a new decision making group that will enforce the UCoC in specific circumstances.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:40, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-38

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

Improvements and Maintenance

• Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
• The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [23]
• References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [24]
• It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [25]
• Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
• Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes mw-message-box need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newer cdx-message group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [26]

Technical project updates

• Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [27]

Tech in depth

• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
• To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
  • Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
  • Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:03, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-39

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

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.

Updates for editors

A screenshot of the interface for the Alt Text suggested-edit feature

• Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
• The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
• It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within <syntaxhighlight> tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax {{…}} are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [28]
• Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [29][30]
• View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• From Wikimedia Enterprise:
  • The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
  • The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.

In depth

• The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:37, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin September Issue 2

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the second half of September 2024. Please help Translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations

Wikimedia event at the United Nations

Talking: 2024 continues

• "Wikimania Katowice coverage travels around the world" – a curated list of community and media coverage of Wikimania 2024. Over 100 pieces so far have been published about the event.
• WikiForHumanRights will lead a conversation about the future of the campaign with the Africa region on September 25 at 15:00 UTC.
• Let’s Connect: “Technology for Language Diversity in Wikimedia” will take place on September 26 at 15:00 UTC.
• Wikisource Conference 2025, the deadline for scholarship applications  has been extended to September 29.
• Big Fat Brussels Meeting 9 will be held in Brussels, Belgium from September 29–30.
• WikiConference North America will be held in Indianapolis, USA from October 3–6.
• WikiIndaba Conference 2024 will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa from October 4–6.
• Wikimedia Technology Summit (WTS 2024): will be held in Hyderabad, India from October 4–5.
• ESEAP Community Call will be held on October 6 at 07:00 UTC.
• Wikimedia+Libraries International Convention 2025 is accepting submissions until October 6.
• The Language and Product Localisation team is hosting two office hours to discuss this year's plans and gather feedback from event organizers. The first session is October 5 at 16:00 UTC (Europe-Africa-Americas friendly), and the second is on October 6 at 03:00 UTC (Asia-Pacific friendly).

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• MediaWiki Product Insights: The latest edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
• Tech News: Find out about the new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page, the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and more recent tech updates.
• Wikidata Query Service: A new change to Wikidata Query Service will impact certain uses. The project will enter a transition period until the end of February 2025. For more details, visit the announcement page.
• Wikimedia Enterprise: Enhanced Free API Accounts: Recurring Credits and More Frequent Updates, early beta release of Structured Contents in Snapshot API, and early beta dataset release to Hugging Face.
• Wikifunctions: Status updates from September 20.
• Wikipedia Mobile Apps: Over 20,000 images have been added via the "Add an Image" feature on both iOS and Android (T372954)!
• Knowledge is Human: Read about ongoing work on the 2024 iteration of the "Knowledge is Human" public awareness campaign
• Server Switch: A server switch was completed successfully on September 25 with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 45 seconds.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• Wikimedia Research Showcase: Watch the latest showcase with the theme of Curation of Wikimedia AI Datasets.
• Conference and Event Fund: Updates and changes to the Conference and Event Fund program beginning in September 2024.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• UN Summit of the Future Action Days: Watch the Wikimedia event titled "The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a more secure, inclusive, and resilient world" at The Summit of the Future. This is expected to result in a negotiated Global Digital Compact, which represents the final phase of our movement-wide campaign to impact the text of the Global Digital Compact.
• Wikipedia and the Digital Services Act: Lessons on the strength of community and the future of internet regulation.

Foundation statements

• Ahead of UN General Assembly, Wikimedia Foundation calls on governments to ensure the future internet is shaped by communities for the public interest.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

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Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 17:10, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-40

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

Updates for editors

• Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
• Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [31]
• For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [32]
• The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
• View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.

In depth

• The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [33]

Meetings and events

• October 4–6: WikiIndaba Conference's Hackathon in Johannesburg, South Africa
• November 4–6: MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 in Vienna, Austria

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:20, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Third quarter of 2024

Hello, and welcome to the app's third newsletter of 2024! In this edition, we will highlight the accomplishments and progress made during July, August, and September 2024!

iOS Updates

• iOS Suggested edits project

Over 20,000 images have been added via the "Add an Image" feature across both iOS and Android! (T372954), good opportunity to try it yourself ;) This tool allows users to enhance Wikipedia articles by adding relevant images. It’s a great way to contribute and improve the visual experience for readers.

• Alt Text Experiment

The iOS team kicked off the Alt Text experiment to improve image descriptions for accessibility. This feature helps ensure that visually impaired users can better understand the content of images through descriptive text.

App screen for iOS App project page

• Navigation Refresh

The iOS App has been transitioning from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports both reading and editing. After adding a number of editing features, the navigation system of the app needs to grow and change to support them and future additions. Improving our navigation will allow for more app users to discover editing features, and allow experienced users quicker access to their most-used tools. This refresh incorporates findings from usability testing with multiple variants of the App's navigation. The team is currently planning phased rollouts over the coming year to improve user experience. (Phase 1: T373714)

Android Updates

• Places

Improvements were made to the Places feature in response to user feedback, including larger cluster icons and a Wikipedia logo for articles without images (T371067, T370094). Also, the team is exploring designs to allow users to explore articles from multiple language wikis simultaneously and will adjust the zoom logic to show nearby locations upon launch (T352757, T368792).

• WikiTrivia Game

The team prepared for the WikiTrivia Game during a hackathon, selecting a data source and creating initial designs (T371508, T371510).

• Recommended Content

Work began on adding Recommended Content to search, iterating on design concepts and testing performance (T371613).

• Machine-Assisted Article Descriptions

The team is now engaging with several wikis to implement Machine-Assisted Article Descriptions based on prior experimental results.

• Sharing reading lists

Android users can now share reading lists with others, expanding community collaboration (T370703).

And some performance enhancements: Revision tags for app edits were successfully implemented (T366731, T366732).

The app now supports URL sharing on Pixel devices, thanks to volunteer developer contributions (T370020).

Stay tuned for future updates as we continue to enhance your Wikipedia experience! And you can subscribe to this newsletter.

--17:17, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-41

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

• Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [34]

Updates for editors

• Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [35]
• View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• It is now possible for <syntaxhighlight> code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if the copy=1 attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [36]
• Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [37]
• Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
• Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
• Five new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Komering (w:kge:) [38]
  • a Wikipedia in Mooré (m:mos:) [39]
  • a Wiktionary in Madurese (wikt:mad:) [40]
  • a Wikiquote in Gorontalo (q:gor:) [41]
  • a Wikinews in Shan (n:shn:) [42]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:42, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin October Issue 1

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the first half of October 2024. Please help Translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations

WikiArabia 2024

Talking: 2024 continues

• WikiArabia Conference 2024 will be held in Muscat, Oman, from October 25 to 27.
• WikiConvention francophone 2024 will be held in Québec, Canada, from November 2 to 3.
• AffCom, Case Review Committee (CRC) and the Ombuds commission (OC) are seeking new member applications from October 14.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure

See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• Tech News: Updates on Dark Mode, Vector 2022 skin, CampaignEvents extension, and more on tech news.
• Translation suggestion: Sign up to participate in the test project, Translation suggestions: Topic-based & Community-defined lists, which will help organisers identify and add relevant content based on high-impact topics to their Wikipedia.
• Wikifunctions: Status updates from September 26.
• Wikipedia Apps: Check out the latest issue of the Apps Quarterly Newsletter!

Annual Goals Progress on Equity

See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• WikiWomen Summit: Event summary at Wikimania 2024.
• Let's Connect: Watch recordings of the session Technology for Language Diversity in Wikimedia.
• WikiLearn: The latest online learning opportunities created by Wikimedians for Wikimedians.
• Indonesia: Training for Indonesian Wikipedia Administrators to Safeguard Knowledge Integrity Ahead of the Regional Elections

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity

See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Mexico: Wikimedia Foundation files amicus brief in Mexico urging continued use of intermediary liability protections for user-generated content in Richter v. Google.
• Paraguay: Wikimedia Foundation to Paraguayan Supreme Court: Do not allow people to abuse the law to suppress legitimate information
• Global: Celebrating a legal victory in Germany against censorship, reflections on Open Culture strategic workshop, and more global advocacy updates.

Board and Board committee updates

See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Board Governance: Update from Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee, a proposal to ask for help and co-creation in Movement Charter Mapping Exercise.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news

See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 23:31, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-42

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

Updates for editors

• The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [43][44]
• WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [45]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.

Updates for technical contributors

• Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [46]
• Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [47]
• Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [48]

In depth

• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:21, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-43

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

Weekly highlight

• The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app's navigation, and it is now available in the latest App store version. The team added a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view, and brings the "Donate" button into a more accessible place for users who are reading an article. This is the first phase of a larger planned navigation refresh to help the iOS app transition from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports reading and editing. The Wikimedia Foundation has added more editing features and support for on-wiki communication based on volunteer requests in recent years.

iOS Wikipedia App's profile menu and contents

Updates for editors

• Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
• Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
• View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the South Ndebele, Pannonian Rusyn, Obolo, Iban and Tai Nüa Wikipedia languages were created last week. [49][50][51][52][53]
• It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.

Updates for technical contributors

• Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new {{#timef:…}} parser function. For example, {{#timef:now|date|en}} will show as "21 April 2025". Previously, {{#time:…}} could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation. #timef (or #timefl for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [54][55]
• Commons and Meta users can now efficiently retrieve the user's language using {{USERLANGUAGE}} instead of using {{int:lang}}. [56]
• The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [57]

In depth

• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: an upcoming Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module, new Community Configuration options, and details on new projects.
• The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official partner of the CVE program, which is an international effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This partnership will allow the Security Team to instantly publish common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) records that are affecting MediaWiki core, extensions, and skins, along with any other code the Foundation is a steward of.
• The Community Wishlist is now testing machine translations for Wishlist content. Volunteers can now read machine-translated versions of wishes and dive into discussions even before translators arrive to translate content.

Meetings and events

• 24 October - Wiki Education Speaker Series Webinar - Open Source Tech: Building the Wiki Education Dashboard, featuring Wikimedia interns and a Web developer in the panel.
• 20–22 December 2024 - Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Bhubaneswar 2024 in Odisha, India. A hackathon for community members, including developers, designers and content editors, to build technical solutions that improve contributors' experiences.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:52, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin October Issue 2

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the second half of October 2024. Please help translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues

WikiForHumanRights

• How Wikipedia is staying relevant in the AI era: Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander talks about Wikipedia and AI in an interview with the ‘Rapid Response’ podcast.
• Wiki for Human Rights is organizing a call for South Asia, East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific communities to discuss the Future of WikiForHumanRights on October 24 at 10 UTC.
• Campaign Events tool: a call with the Indonesian communities will be hosted on October 25.
• Translation suggestions: Topic-based & Community-defined lists project: an office hour with event/campaign organisers and contributors who use Content Translation tool will be hosted on October 26th. Visit this page for more details.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Tech News: In issue 2024/42, read about the removal of the Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow), work on making text searches easier, and more. In issue 2024/43, read about improvements to mobile app navigation, temporary accounts pilot details, the Content Discovery Experiments, and more updates.
• MediaWiki: The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available and include updates on Wikimedia’s authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, and more.
• CampaignEvents extension: The CampaignEvents extension provides tools to create, manage, and promote collaborative activities on the wikis, such as edit-a-thons, meetups, and more. You can visit the Deployment page to learn how to get the extension on your wiki.
• Research: The Research team and collaborators are launching new research on editors with extended rights.
• New Content Translation feature: Translators using Content Translation on wikis with mobile support can now customize their article suggestions with 41 filtering options. This feature helps translators find relevant articles based on their interests for translation.
• Wikifunctions: We are collecting feedback on the "About" widget that shows more info about the functions. Also, status updates from October 11 and October 17.
• Temporary Accounts: Temporary accounts will begin rolling out on October 29 to production wikis with an aim to do a complete deployment by May 2025. You can see the deployment plan and timeline on the project page. As we rollout this change, it is likely that some tools (gadgets, user scripts, templates and bots) will be impacted by it. We have a developer FAQ to help developers with making necessary changes to their maintained tool(s). Please let us know on our talk page if you have any tool in mind that may need updating or if you need help with updating your maintained tools.
• Knowledge is Human campaign: The Communications department has just launched a public awareness campaign (landing page) to showcase how real articles are edited and highlight Wikipedia as a source of information ahead of the 2024 “Big English” fundraising drive.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• Grants: Announcing the newest round of Knowledge Equity Fund grantees.
• Wikimedia Research Showcase: Watch the latest showcase with the theme of Wikipedia for Political and Election Analysis.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Latest transparency report: The latest Transparency Report, covering the period from January to June 2024, is now live on the Foundation website. View also highlights from the report.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Board Elections: Preliminary results of the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections has been announced.
• Affiliates Strategy: Implementation status of a new affiliate health criteria and changes to User Groups recognition process.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-44

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

• Later in November, the Charts extension will be deployed to the test wikis in order to help identify and fix any issue. A security review is underway to then enable deployment to pilot wikis for broader testing. You can read the October project update and see the latest documentation and examples on Beta Wikipedia.
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pediapress.com, an external service that creates books from Wikipedia, can now use Wikimedia Maps to include existing pre-rendered infobox map images in their printed books on Wikipedia. [58]

Updates for technical contributors

• Wikis can use the Guided Tour extension to help newcomers understand how to edit. The Guided Tours extension now works with dark mode. Guided Tour maintainers can check their tours to see that nothing looks odd. They can also set emitTransitionOnStep to true to fix an old bug. They can use the new flag allowAutomaticBack to avoid back-buttons they don't want. [59]
• Administrators in the Wikimedia projects who use the Nuke Extension will notice that mass deletions done with this tool have the "Nuke" tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. [60]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-45

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

• Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [61]
• Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
• The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [62]
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.

Updates for technical contributors

• XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [63]

In depth

• Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.

Meetings and events

• MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin November Issue 1

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the first half of November 2024. Please help translate.

---

WikiCelebrate Mārtiņš Bruņenieks

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues

• Commons Community Call: The first community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year will take place on November 21. The theme of this call will be about how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. The call will be hosted by Chief Product and Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann.
• Conferencia Justicia climática Perú 2024: Conference on climate justice, indigenous voices and Wikimedia platform will be held in Huaraz, Peru from November 8 to 10.
• Affiliations Committee: Applications for joining the Affiliations Committee is open until November 18.
• Ombuds Commission and Case Review Committee: Applications for joining the Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee are open until December 2.
• Language community meeting: A language community meeting will be hosted on November 29, 16:00 UTC, discussing technical updates and problem-solving.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Advisory Council: The new Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) was announced. The PTAC will try to publish a set of community-validated recommendations that can serve as a potential 2-3 year blueprint for product and technical success.
• Wikifunctions: The Abstract Wikipedia team is working toward a rewrite of our backend services in a different programming language, likely Rust. More status updates.
• Tech News: The Guided Tour extension, which help newcomers understand how to edit, now works with dark mode; Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with potential features that making it easier for readers to discover information on the wikis. More tech updates from tech news 44 and 43.
• Temporary accounts: Logged-out editors on 12 wikis, including Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Danish, and Cantonese Wikipedia, receive temporary accounts now. This new account type enhances the privacy of logged-out editors and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. Read the new Diff post to learn more about temporary accounts.
• Mobile apps: The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app’s navigation, now available in the latest App store version.
• Campaign Events Extension: The Campaign Events extension is now live on two more wikis, Wikidata and the Spanish Wikipedia.
• Admin Retention: A survey on Wikipedia Administrator Recruitment, Retention, and Attrition is open until November 11. As part of the Foundation's 2024-2025 Annual Plan, the research team and collaborators are studying recruitment, retention, and attrition patterns among long-tenured community members in official moderation and administration roles.
• Knowledge is Human: The campaign web page, which educates visitors on Wikipedia’s model and why it’s trustworthy, has earned over 140,000 clicks. The campaign has increased pageviews on WikimediaFoundation.org by more than 50%.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• WikiCelebrate: From making a minor maintenance edit in 2005 to being one of the most appreciated Wikimedians in the Central Eastern European (CEE) region: this month we celebrate Mārtiņš Bruņenieks.
• Wiki Loves Earth: Mountains, Birds and Lakes – Central Asia Edition
• Future of Language Incubation: As part of a new Future of Language Incubation initiative to support language onboarding, Wikipedia is now live for five languages: Pannonian Rusyn, Tai Nüa, Iban, Obolo, and Southern Ndebele.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Global Advocacy: Reflecting on the anniversary of the EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA), Wikimedians share successes and public policy priorities at digital rights Global Gathering event, and more global advocacy updates.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports

• English Fundraising: The Road to Launch: Wikimedia’s 2024 English Fundraising Campaign.
• Fundraising Report: Our annual fundraising report for the 2023-2024 fiscal year is published. Last year, we had over 8 million donors giving an average donation of m:Fundraising/2023-24 Report0.58. We ran campaigns in 33 countries, 18 languages, and received donations from over 200 countries.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-46

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

• On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, users will notice that the FuzzyBot will now automatically create translated versions of categories used on translated pages. [64]
• View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the submitted task to use the SecurePoll extension for English Wikipedia's special administrator election was resolved on time. [65]

Updates for technical contributors

• In 1.44.0-wmf-2, the logic of Wikibase function getAllStatements changed to behave like getBestStatements. Invoking the function now returns a copy of values which are immutable. [66]
• Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. The API will be rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The impacted endpoints include getting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content. These changes will be available on testwiki later this week, with other projects to follow. This change should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints should verify behavior on testwiki, and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket.

In depth

• Admins and users of the Wikimedia projects where Automoderator is enabled can now monitor and evaluate important metrics related to Automoderator's actions. This Superset dashboard calculates and aggregates metrics about Automoderator's behaviour on the projects in which it is deployed. Thanks to the Moderator Tools team for this Dashboard; you can visit the documentation page for more information about this work. [67]

Meetings and events

• 21 November 2024 (8:00 UTC & 16:00 UTC) - Community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. The theme of this call is how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:07, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-47

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

• Users of Wikimedia sites will now be warned when they create a redirect to a page that doesn't exist. This will reduce the number of broken redirects to red links in our projects. [68]
• View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pywikibot, which automates work on MediaWiki sites, was upgraded to 9.5.0 on Toolforge. [69]

Updates for technical contributors

• On wikis that use the FlaggedRevs extension, pages created or moved by users with the appropriate permissions are marked as flagged automatically. This feature has not been working recently, and changes fixing it should be deployed this week. Thanks to Daniel and Wargo for working on this. [70][71]

In depth

• There is a new Diff post about Temporary Accounts, available in more than 15 languages. Read it to learn about what Temporary Accounts are, their impact on different groups of users, and the plan to introduce the change on all wikis.

Meetings and events

• Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10 2024. The registration for the event will close in mid-April 2025. The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual gathering that unites the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects and explore new ideas.
• Join the Wikimedia Commons community calls this week to help prioritize support for Commons which will be planned for 2025–2026. The theme will be how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. This is an opportunity for volunteers who work on different things to come together and talk about what matters for the future of the project. The calls will take place November 21, 2024, 8:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC.
• A Language community meeting will take place November 29, 16:00 UTC to discuss updates and technical problem-solving.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 02:00, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin November Issue 2

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation from November 7 to November 21, 2024. Please help translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues

Scholarships open for Wikimania 2025

• Conversation with the trustees: Speak directly with the Wikimedia Foundation trustees about their work at the next Conversation with the Trustees on 27 November from 12:00 – 13:30 UTC.
• Wikimedia Hackathon: Registration is now open for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon which will be held in Istanbul, Turkey, May 2–4, 2025.
• Language Community: The next language community meeting will be held on November 29 at 16:00 UTC.
• Wikimania 2025: Application for scholarship to attend Wikimania 2025 in Nairobi is open until the end of December 8.
• Central Asian WikiCon: The Central Asian WikiCon 2025 will take place on April 19–20, 2025, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Applications to be part of the Program and Scholarship Committee is open until November 30.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Tech News: Admins and users of the Wikimedia projects where Automoderator is enabled can now monitor and evaluate important metrics related to Automoderator's actions; Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. Learn about the latest tech updates from tech news 45, 46, and 47.
• Wikifunctions: Wikifunctions now has a new Type: rational numbers. They expand the ability to deal with numbers considerably, allowing us to work with fractions and decimals, and not just whole numbers anymore. More status updates.
• Temporary accounts: We are rolling out temporary accounts for unregistered (logged-out) editors for more wikis including Romanian, Serbian, Danish, and Norwegian Bokmål.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• Language & Internationalization: The fifth edition of the Language & Internationalization newsletter is available. Some key highlights: Mooré Wikipedia is live; Keyboard Layouts for Multiple Languages Added; New Projects Added to Translatewiki.net.
• Wikimedia Research Showcase: Watch the latest showcase which looked at external factors that help different language versions of Wikipedia thrive.
• Wikipedia Library: What's new in the Wikipedia Library?
• Tulu Wikisource: Welcoming Tulu Wikisource.
• CEE Meeting 2024: Highlights from Central Asian community members at the CEE Meeting 2024.
• Let's Connect: Let's Connect Learning clinic on Gender Sensitivity Training within Wikimedia communities was held on November 22.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports

• Audit reports 2023-24: Highlights from the fiscal year 2023–2024 Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Endowment audit reports.
• Wikimedia Enterprise: Financial report of Wikimedia Enterprise for the fiscal year 2023–2024.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Board Updates: The Board met in Katowice, Poland on August 5 and held its quarterly business meeting before Wikimania. Learn more about the outcomes of the meeting.
• AffCom: The Affiliates Committee has resumed User Group recognition work after a pause to improve the User Group recognition process.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

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MediaWiki message delivery 18:18, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-48

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

• A new version of the standard wikitext editor-mode syntax highlighter will be available as a beta feature later this week. This brings many new features and bug fixes, including right-to-left support, template folding, autocompletion, and an improved search panel. You can learn more on the help page.
• The 2010 wikitext editor now supports common keyboard shortcuts such Ctrl+B for bold and Ctrl+I for italics. A full list of all six shortcuts is available. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. [72]
• Starting November 28, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: bswiki, elwiki, euwiki, fawiki, fiwiki, frwikiquote, frwikisource, frwikiversity, frwikivoyage, idwiki, lvwiki, plwiki, ptwiki, urwiki, viwikisource, zhwikisource. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF).
• View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a user creating a new AbuseFilter can now only set the filter to "protected" if it includes a protected variable.

Updates for technical contributors

• The CodeEditor, which can be used in JavaScript, CSS, JSON, and Lua pages, now offers live autocompletion. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. The feature can be temporarily disabled on a page by pressing Ctrl+, and un-selecting "Live Autocompletion".
• Tool-maintainers who use the Graphite system for tracking metrics, need to migrate to the newer Prometheus system. They can check this dashboard and the list in the Description of the task T350592 to see if their tools are listed, and they should claim metrics and dashboards connected to their tools. They can then disable or migrate all existing metrics by following the instructions in the task. The Graphite service will become read-only in April. [73]
• The New PreProcessor parser performance report has been fixed to give an accurate count for the number of Wikibase entities accessed. It had previously been resetting after 400 entities. [74]

Meetings and events

• A Language community meeting will take place November 29 at 16:00 UTC. There will be presentations on topics like developing language keyboards, the creation of the Mooré Wikipedia, the language support track at Wiki Indaba, and a report from the Wayuunaiki community on their experiences with the Incubator and as a new community over the last 3 years. This meeting will be in English and will also have Spanish interpretation.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:42, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-49

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

• Two new parser functions were added this week. The {{#interwikilink}} function adds an interwiki link and the {{#interlanguagelink}} function adds an interlanguage link. These parser functions are useful on wikis where namespaces conflict with interwiki prefixes. For example, links beginning with MOS: on English Wikipedia conflict with the mos language code prefix of Mooré Wikipedia.
• Starting this week, Wikimedia wikis no longer support connections using old RSA-based HTTPS certificates, specifically rsa-2048. This change is to improve security for all users. Some older, unsupported browser or smartphone devices will be unable to connect; Instead, they will display a connectivity error. See the HTTPS Browser Recommendations page for more-detailed information. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [75]
• Starting December 16, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: arwiki, cawiki, frwiki, mediawikiwiki, orwiki, wawiki, wawiktionary, wikidatawiki, zhwiki. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF). [76]
• This month the Chart extension was deployed to production and is now available on Commons and Testwiki. With the security review complete, pilot wiki deployment is expected to start in the first week of December. You can see a working version on Testwiki and read the November project update for more details.
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug with the "Download as PDF" system was fixed. [77]

Updates for technical contributors

• In late February, temporary accounts will be rolled out on at least 10 large wikis. This deployment will have a significant effect on the community-maintained code. This is about Toolforge tools, bots, gadgets, and user scripts that use IP address data or that are available for logged-out users. The Trust and Safety Product team wants to identify this code, monitor it, and assist in updating it ahead of the deployment to minimize disruption to workflows. The team asks technical editors and volunteer developers to help identify such tools by adding them to this list. In addition, review the updated documentation to learn how to adjust the tools. Join the discussions on the project talk page or in the dedicated thread on the Wikimedia Community Discord server (in English) for support and to share feedback.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:23, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-50

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

• Technical documentation contributors can find updated resources, and new ways to connect with each other and the Wikimedia Technical Documentation Team, at the Documentation hub on MediaWiki.org. This page links to: resources for writing and improving documentation, a new #wikimedia-techdocs IRC channel on libera.chat, a listing of past and upcoming documentation events, and ways to request a documentation consultation or review. If you have any feedback or ideas for improvements to the documentation ecosystem, please contact the Technical Documentation Team.

Updates for editors

Layout change for the Edit Check feature

• Later this week, Edit Check will be relocated to a sidebar on desktop. Edit check is the feature for new editors to help them follow policies and guidelines. This layout change creates space to present people with new Checks that appear while they are typing. The initial results show newcomers encountering Edit Check are 2.2 times more likely to publish a new content edit that includes a reference and is not reverted.
• The Chart extension, which enables editors to create data visualizations, was successfully made available on MediaWiki.org and three pilot wikis (Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew Wikipedias). You can see a working examples on Testwiki and read the November project update for more details.
• Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now discover articles in Wikiproject campaigns of their interest from the "All collection" category in the articles suggestion feature. Wikiproject Campaign organizers can use this feature, to help translators to discover articles of interest, by adding the <page-collection> </page-collection> tag to their campaign article list page on Meta-wiki. This will make those articles discoverable in the Content Translation tool. For more detailed information on how to use the tool and tag, please refer to the step-by-step guide. [78]
• The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, now has a multiselect filter for namespace selection. This enables users to select multiple specific namespaces, instead of only one or all, when fetching pages for deletion.
• The Nuke feature also now provides links to the userpage of the user whose pages were deleted, and to the pages which were not selected for deletion, after page deletions are queued. This enables easier follow-up admin-actions. Thanks to Chlod and the Moderator Tools team for both of these improvements. [79]
• The Editing Team is working on making it easier to populate citations from archive.org using the Citoid tool, the auto-filled citation generator. They are asking communities to add two parameters preemptively, archiveUrl and archiveDate, within the TemplateData for each citation template using Citoid. You can see an example of a change in a template, and a list of all relevant templates. [80]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Indonesian (voy:id:) [81]
• Last week, all wikis had problems serving pages to logged-in users and some logged-out users for 30–45 minutes. This was caused by a database problem, and investigation is ongoing. [82]
• View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug in the Add Link feature has been fixed. Previously, the list of sections which are excluded from Add Link was partially ignored in certain cases. [83][84]

Updates for technical contributors

• Codex, the design system for Wikimedia, now has an early-stage implementation in PHP. It is available for general use in MediaWiki extensions and Toolforge apps through Composer, with use in MediaWiki core coming soon. More information is available in the documentation. Thanks to Doğu for the inspiration and many contributions to the library. [85]
• Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. On December 4, the MediaWiki Interfaces team began rerouting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content endpoints on testwiki from RESTbase to comparable MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The team encourages active users of these endpoints to verify their tool's behavior on testwiki and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket before the end of the year, as they intend to roll out the same change across all Wikimedia projects in early January. These changes are part of the work to replace the outdated RESTBase system.
• The 2024 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 3 January 2025, and has an associated privacy statement.
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [86]

Meetings and events

• The next meeting in the series of Wikimedia Foundation discussions with the Wikimedia Commons community will take place on December 12 at 8:00 UTC and at 16:00 UTC. The topic of this call is new media and new contributors. Contributors from all wikis are welcome to attend.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:16, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin December Issue

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our second November issue. This will be the final bulletin for 2024 and we'll be back in late January 2025 with the next issue. Please help translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues

Celebrating Chabota and his contributions to the movement.

• Wikimania: Open call to host Wikimania 2027 and beyond is open until end of January 27 anywhere on earth.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Tech News: Chart extension is now available on Commons and Testwiki; a new version of the standard wikitext editor-mode syntax highlighter will be available as a beta feature; Edit Check will be relocated to a sidebar on desktop. More updates from tech news 50, 49, and 48.
• Wikifunctions: WordGraph dataset is released, which is particularly useful for abstract descriptions for people in Wikidata. More status updates.
• Wikipedia 2024 Year in Review: Wikipedia 2024 Year in Review launched, showcasing the collective impact of Wikipedia and Wikipedia contributors in the last calendar year. The iOS App also released a personalized Year in Review to Italy and Mexico, with insights based on reading, editing, and donation history.
• Wikipedia Android App: The Android team has launched the Rabbit Holes feature in the final release of the year as part of Wiki Experiences 3.1. Currently being tested in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, this feature suggests a search term and a reading list based on the user's last two visited articles. For more details or to share feedback, visit the project page.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• WikiCelebrate: From Challenges to Change-Making: We Wikicelebrate Chabota Isaac Kanguya, a passionate contributor from Zambia, whose journey through the Wikimedia movement embodies resilience, collaboration, and a commitment to representing underrepresented voices.
• Conference: Announcing Central Asian WikiCon 2025 which will be hosted at Diplomat International School on April 19–20, 2025, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
• Campaigns and topical collaboration: The Campaign Product and Programs teams published research on the needs of WikiProject and other topical collaborations.
• Wikisource: The journey so far and looking ahead with Wikisource Loves Manuscripts (WiLMa).
• CEE Meeting: Experiences and Highlights by Central Asian Community Members.
• Partnership: Wikimedia Indonesia and Google Join Forces for Wikipedia Content Enrichment in Indonesia.
• Wikimedia Research Showcase: Watch the latest showcase which discussed AI for Wikipedia.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Ongoing litigation: Update on litigation in India.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Board Elections: The Board’s Executive Committee shared some thoughts on the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections.

External media releases & coverage

• Most popular articles: Announcing English Wikipedia’s most popular articles of 2024.
• Interview: Jimmy Wales on Why Wikipedia Is Still So Good.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 18:03, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-51

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

• Interested in improving event management on your home wiki? The CampaignEvents extension offers organizers features like event registration management, event/wikiproject promotion, finding potential participants, and more - all directly on-wiki. If you are an organizer or think your community would benefit from this extension, start a discussion to enable it on your wiki today. To learn more about how to enable this extension on your wiki, visit the deployment status page.

Updates for editors

• Users of the iOS Wikipedia App in Italy and Mexico on the Italian, Spanish, and English Wikipedias, can see a personalized Year in Review with insights based on their reading and editing history.
• Users of the Android Wikipedia App in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia can see the new Rabbit Holes feature. This feature shows a suggested search term in the Search bar based on the current article being viewed, and a suggested reading list generated from the user’s last two visited articles.
• The global reminder bot is now active and running on nearly 800 wikis. This service reminds most users holding temporary rights when they are about to expire, so that they can renew should they want to. See the technical details page for more information.
• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 13 January 2025 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 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed in the Android Wikipedia App which had caused translatable SVG images to show the wrong language when they were tapped.

Updates for technical contributors

• There is no new MediaWiki version next week. The next deployments will start on 14 January. [87]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:25, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – Fourth quarter of 2024

Hello, and welcome to the app's final newsletter of 2024! In this edition, we’ll highlight the key updates and progress made during October and November 2024!

iOS Updates

Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review

In November, we released the first iteration of the Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review to users in Italy and Mexico, covering Italian, Spanish, and English Wikipedia! This experimental feature offers personalized insights based on reading, editing, and donation history for iOS app users for 2024. If this initial version is successful, we hope to improve upon it and make it available to everyone within the iOS app in January 2025. For more information on how your data is used and how to access your Year in Review, please visit the project page, or watch a short video demonstration of the feature.

Alt Text Experiment

The alternative text experiment concluded on November 4, and we are currently analyzing the results. The edits are being reviewed by accessibility experts and moderators active on the iOS app for additional feedback.

Preliminary results show that prompting users on an image they’ve just added leads to higher completion rates (18%) compared to unrelated images (6%). The overall revert rate for alt text edits was 3.4%, lower than the app’s average revert rate of 8.1%. We’ll decide next steps for this feature after completing the analysis.

Navigation Refresh

We completed the first phase of our Navigation refresh, and released a new profile menu into the production version of the app. Our work was coordinated in this Epic: T373714

Android Updates

Private Donor Recognition Experiment

We launched an experiment in France and the Netherlands, exploring the impact of private donor recognition on current and prospective donors. Users who donated through the app will see an active badge on the contributions page, while those who haven’t donated will see a prompt to do so. The experiment will run for 20 days, after which we will evaluate the results. This work was coordinated under Epic: T376303.

Rabbit Holes Experiment

The team began work on the "Rabbit Holes" experiment to increase retention among new readers. The experiment is designed to help users more easily discover and connect with content they are interested in. It is being coordinated under Epic: T378612.

Recommended Content in Search

The Recommended Content in Search experiment showed promising results. Personalized recommendations led to higher retention (86.5%) compared to non-personalized recommendations (64.9%), with positive feedback from users.

Places

We added a launcher shortcut for quicker access to the "Places" feature in the app. (T375367)

Looking Ahead

As we close out 2024, we’re excited about all the progress made and the work ahead in 2025. Keep an eye out for more updates and improvements we hope will enhance your Wikipedia experience!

Thank you for being part of this journey, and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

-- ARamadan-WMF 13:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-03

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 Single User Login system is being updated over the next few months. This is the system which allows users to fill out the login form on one Wikimedia site and get logged in on all others at the same time. It needs to be updated because of the ways that browsers are increasingly restricting cross-domain cookies. To accommodate these restrictions, login and account creation pages will move to a central domain, but it will still appear to the user as if they are on the originating wiki. The updated code will be enabled this week for users on test wikis. This change is planned to roll out to all users during February and March. See the SUL3 project page for more details and a timeline.

Updates for editors

• On wikis with PageAssessments installed, you can now filter search results to pages in a given WikiProject by using the inproject: keyword. (These wikis: Arabic Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage, French Wikipedia, Hungarian Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia) [88]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Tigre (w:tig:) [89]
• View all 35 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a bug with updating a user's edit-count after making a rollback edit, which is now fixed. [90]

Updates for technical contributors

• Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. Starting the week of January 13, we will begin rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints for all wiki projects. This change was previously available on testwiki and should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints may raise issues directly to the MediaWiki Interfaces Team in Phabricator if they arise.
• Toolforge tool maintainers can now share their feedback on Toolforge UI, an initiative to provide a web platform that allows creating and managing Toolforge tools through a graphic interface, in addition to existing command-line workflows. This project aims to streamline active maintainers’ tasks, as well as make registration and deployment processes more accessible for new tool creators. The initiative is still at a very early stage, and the Cloud Services team is in the process of collecting feedback from the Toolforge community to help shape the solution to their needs. Read more and share your thoughts about Toolforge UI.
• For tool and library developers who use the OAuth system: The identity endpoint used for OAuth 1 and OAuth 2 returned a JSON object with an integer in its sub field, which was incorrect (the field must always be a string). This has been fixed; the fix will be deployed to Wikimedia wikis on the week of January 13. [91]
• Many wikis currently use Cite CSS to render custom footnote markers in Parsoid output. Starting January 20 these rules will be disabled, but the developers ask you to not clean up your MediaWiki:Common.css until February 20 to avoid issues during the migration. Your wikis might experience some small changes to footnote markers in Visual Editor and when using experimental Parsoid read mode, but if there are changes these are expected to bring the rendering in line with the legacy parser output. [92]

Meetings and events

• The next meeting in the series of Wikimedia Foundation Community Conversations with the Wikimedia Commons community will take place on January 15 at 8:00 UTC and at 16:00 UTC. The topic of this call is defining the priorities in tool investment for Commons. Contributors from all wikis, especially users who are maintaining tools for Commons, are welcome to attend.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:42, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-04

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 can mass-delete multiple pages created by a user or IP address using Extension:Nuke. It previously only allowed deletion of pages created in the last 30 days. It can now delete pages from the last 90 days, provided it is targeting a specific user or IP address. [93]
• On wikis that use the Patrolled edits feature, when the rollback feature is used to revert an unpatrolled page revision, that revision will now be marked as "manually patrolled" instead of "autopatrolled", which is more accurate. Some editors that use filters on Recent Changes may need to update their filter settings. [94]
• View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the Visual Editor's "Insert link" feature did not always suggest existing pages properly when an editor started typing, which has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is being progressively removed from the wikis. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. The last group of wikis (Catalan Wikiquote, Wikimedia Finland, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikibooks, Wikimedia Sweden) will soon be contacted. If you have questions about this process, please ping Trizek (WMF) at your wiki. [95]
• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: updates about services from the Data Platform Engineering teams, information about Codex from the Design System team, and more.

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:37, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 1

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue in December 2024. Please help translate.

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Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

Ideas for Wikipedia @ 25 needed

• Conversation with the trustees: Speak directly with the Wikimedia Foundation trustees about their work at the next Conversation with the Trustees on January 30 at 14:30 UTC.
• Community Resilience and Sustainability: Join the conversation hour which will discuss Trust and Safety, the Universal Code of Conduct, Committee Support, and Human Rights on January 30 at 20:00 UTC.
• Annual Planning: Shaping Wikimedia Foundation’s 2025–2026 annual goals: Key questions for the Wikimedia movement.
• Central Asia Wikicon: Submission for sessions is open until March 22.
• Wikipedia is turning 25: We just celebrated Wikipedia's 24th birthday, and are already planning for next year's big milestone! Share your thoughts on what you have in mind to mark the silver jubilee of Wikipedia.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Wikipedia App: iOS App users worldwide can now access a personalized Year in Review feature, providing insights based on their reading and editing history on Wikipedia.
• Design System: Codex – Year 2024 in Review: Key Milestones and Innovations.
• Tech News: The CampaignEvents extension offers organizers features like event registration management directly on-wiki; The Single User Login system is being updated over the next few months; Administrators can mass-delete multiple pages created by a user or IP address using Extension:Nuke. More updates from tech news Dec 16, Jan 13, and Jan 21.
• Wikifunctions: Wikifunctions shares their Quarterly planning for January-March 2025.
• Admin Research Report: The Research Team published their final report on administrator recruitment, retention, and attrition patterns among long-tenure community members in moderation and administration roles.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• Distribution of Funds: Next steps toward the creation of the interim Global Resource Distribution Committee.
• Wikipedia Library: What’s new in The Wikipedia Library? (Oct-Dec 2024).
• Conferences: Your Sneak Peak into the 9 approved Wikimedia Conference Proposals for 2025.
• Wikimania: Road to Nairobi: Travel Essentials & Tips.
• Wikisource Loves Manuscripts: Meet-up in Bali: Strengthening the manuscript preservation ecosystem.
• Wikimedia Research Showcase: Watch the latest showcase which looked at Reader Attention and Curiosity.
• Resource Support Pilot: Join the discussion about shaping a pilot project on the English Wikipedia that would fund small resource requests (like books) to support editors in improving content.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Global Advocacy: Wikimedians will promote cultural preservation and knowledge diversity at RightsCon 2025. Tune in!
• Mis- and disinformation: Training on misinformation and disinformation prevention for communities in Indonesia: A recap.
• December's Global Advocacy Newsletter: For quarterly insights into the internet governance and policy work the Foundation is doing, subscribe to our Global Advocacy Newsletter. You can see our latest December edition here.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Board of Trustees: The Wikimedia Foundation welcomes community-and-affiliate selected trustees and the Board appoints Lorenzo Losa its Chair-Elect.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

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MediaWiki message delivery 16:58, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-05

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

• Patrollers and admins - what information or context about edits or users could help you to make patroller or admin decisions more quickly or easily? The Wikimedia Foundation wants to hear from you to help guide its upcoming annual plan. Please consider sharing your thoughts on this and 13 other questions to shape the technical direction for next year.

Updates for editors

• iOS Wikipedia App users worldwide can now access a personalized Year in Review feature, which provides insights based on their reading and editing history on Wikipedia. This project is part of a broader effort to help welcome new readers as they discover and interact with encyclopedic content.
• Edit patrollers now have a new feature available that can highlight potentially problematic new pages. When a page is created with the same title as a page which was previously deleted, a tag ('Recreated') will now be added, which users can filter for in Special:RecentChanges and Special:NewPages. [96]
• Later this week, there will be a new warning for editors if they attempt to create a redirect that links to another redirect (a double redirect). The feature will recommend that they link directly to the second redirect's target page. Thanks to the user SomeRandomDeveloper for this improvement. [97]
• Wikimedia wikis allow WebAuthn-based second factor checks (such as hardware tokens) during login, but the feature is fragile and has very few users. The MediaWiki Platform team is temporarily disabling adding new WebAuthn keys, to avoid interfering with the rollout of SUL3 (single user login version 3). Existing keys are unaffected. [98]
• View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• For developers that use the MediaWiki History dumps: The Data Platform Engineering team has added a couple of new fields to these dumps, to support the Temporary Accounts initiative. If you maintain software that reads those dumps, please review your code and the updated documentation, since the order of the fields in the row will change. There will also be one field rename: in the mediawiki_user_history dump, the anonymous field will be renamed to is_anonymous. The changes will take effect with the next release of the dumps in February. [99]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:14, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-06

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

Updates for editors

• Editors who use the "Special characters" editing-toolbar menu can now see the 32 special characters you have used most recently, across editing sessions on that wiki. This change should help make it easier to find the characters you use most often. The feature is in both the 2010 wikitext editor and VisualEditor. [100]
• Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor can now create sublists with correct indentation by selecting the line(s) you want to indent and then clicking the toolbar buttons.[101] You can now also insert <code> tags using a new toolbar button.[102] Thanks to user stjn for these improvements.
• Help is needed to ensure the citation generator works properly on each wiki.
  • (1) Administrators should update the local versions of the page MediaWiki:Citoid-template-type-map.json to include entries for preprint, standard, and dataset; Here are example diffs to replicate for 'preprint' and for 'standard' and 'dataset'.
  • (2.1) If the citoid map in the citation template used for these types of references is missing, one will need to be added. (2.2) If the citoid map does exist, the TemplateData will need to be updated to include new field names. Here are example updates for 'preprint' and for 'standard' and 'dataset'. The new fields that may need to be supported are archiveID, identifier, repository, organization, repositoryLocation, committee, and versionNumber. [103]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Central Kanuri (w:knc:) [104]
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the OCR (optical character recognition) tool used for Wikisource now supports a new language, Church Slavonic. [105]

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:09, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 2

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on 24 January. Please help translate.

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Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

• 2025 reflections: Reflections on 2025 from the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive team.
• Annual Planning: How can we help more contributors connect and collaborate?
• Let's Connect: The next Learning Clinic will be about WikiLearn Essentials for Course Creators: Building Community Skills Online Part 2 on February 13 at 16:30 UTC.
• WikiCredCon 2025 will take place on February 14–16 in San Francisco, USA.
• Wikisource Conference will take place on February 14–16 in Bali, Indonesia.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Future Audiences: Watch the recording for lessons from the short video experiments. A new Discord bot experiment as a way to interact with Wikipedia, the Future Audiences Discord server and future plans for experiments around how to use gamification.
• WikiProjects: Bridging Knowledge Gaps: Rethinking Collaboration through WikiProjects and Campaigns.
• Wikifunctions: The newest sister project now has 2000 functions.
• Tech News: Editors who use the “Special characters” editing-toolbar menu can now see the 32 special characters you have used most recently, across editing sessions on that wiki; The Data Platform Engineering team has added a couple of new fields to MediaWiki History dumps to support the Temporary Accounts initiative. More updates from tech news week 05 and 06.
• Product & Tech Advisory Council: The council looked at data, needs and trends to make a recommendation for the Foundation's annual plan. They recommended that improving mobile contribution experiences has the greatest potential to bring in new and unheard voices onto Wikipedia and sister projects, and improve the experience of readers and contributors most widely. They are requesting feedback and discussion.
• Structured Tasks: The "Add an Image" structured task is being tested on a representative sample of Wikipedias which allows users to add an image and an appropriate caption to a Wikipedia article.
• Talk page improvements: Usability improvements are being deployed on remaining wikis.

Annual Goals Progress on Knowledge Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• Language Preservation: Empowering the Next Generation to Preserve Indigenous Languages through WikiKata.
• Resource Distribution: Call for candidates for the interim Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC) is opened. Apply until Feb 25.
• WikiLearn: A new edition of WikiLearn News highlights how Wikimedia affiliates are leveraging this online learning platform to support the movement.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy Medium blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Diff policy articles

• Global Advocacy: The Wikimedia Foundation has officially joined the TAROCH (Towards an Open Cultural Heritage Recommendation) Coalition, a campaign run by Creative Commons that aims for UNESCO to release an official recommendation to improve open access to cultural heritage. The team also discussed how media freedom, Wikipedia, and AI connect at the United Nations (UN) Forum on Business and Human Rights; read more monthly updates from the Global Advocacy team.
• Banner & Logo Policies: Help us collect examples of community discussions to run banners or make temporary logo changes.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Welcoming new affiliates: Recognition of Inari Saami Wikimedians User Group.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

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For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 23:32, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-07

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 Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has published a draft of their recommendations for the Wikimedia Foundation's Product and Technology department. They have recommended focusing on mobile experiences, particularly contributions. They request community feedback at the talk page by 21 February.

Updates for editors

• The "Special pages" portlet link will be moved from the "Toolbox" into the "Navigation" section of the main menu's sidebar by default. This change is because the Toolbox is intended for tools relating to the current page, not tools relating to the site, so the link will be more logically and consistently located. To modify this behavior and update CSS styling, administrators can follow the instructions at T385346. [106]
• As part of this year's work around improving the ways readers discover content on the wikis, the Web team will be running an experiment with a small number of readers that displays some suggestions for related or interesting articles within the search bar. Please check out the project page for more information.
• Template editors who use TemplateStyles can now customize output for users with specific accessibility needs by using accessibility related media queries (prefers-reduced-motion, prefers-reduced-transparency, prefers-contrast, and forced-colors). Thanks to user Bawolff for these improvements. [107]
• View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the global blocks log will now be shown directly on the Special:CentralAuth page, similarly to global locks, to simplify the workflows for stewards. [108]

Updates for technical contributors

• Wikidata now supports a special language as a "default for all languages" for labels and aliases. This is to avoid excessive duplication of the same information across many languages. If your Wikidata queries use labels, you may need to update them as some existing labels are getting removed. [109]
• The function getDescription was invoked on every Wiki page read and accounts for ~2.5% of a page's total load time. The calculated value will now be cached, reducing load on Wikimedia servers. [110]
• As part of the RESTBase deprecation effort, the /page/related endpoint has been blocked as of February 6, 2025, and will be removed soon. This timeline was chosen to align with the deprecation schedules for older Android and iOS versions. The stable alternative is the "morelike" action API in MediaWiki, and a migration example is available. The MediaWiki Interfaces team can be contacted for any questions. [111]

In depth

• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: Updates about the "Contribute" menu; details on some of the newest language editions of Wikipedia; details on new languages supported by the MediaWiki interface; updates on the Community-defined lists feature; and more.
• The latest Chart Project newsletter is available. It includes updates on the progress towards bringing better visibility into global charts usage and support for categorizing pages in the Data namespace on Commons.

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:12, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-08

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

• Communities using growth tools can now showcase one event on the Special:Homepage for newcomers. This feature will help newcomers to be informed about editing activities they can participate in. Administrators can create a new event to showcase at Special:CommunityConfiguration. To learn more about this feature, please read the Diff post, have a look at the documentation, or contact the Growth team.

Updates for editors

Highlighted talk pages improvements

• Starting next week, talk pages at these wikis – Spanish Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia – will get a new design. This change was extensively tested as a Beta feature and is the last step of talk pages improvements. [112]
• You can now navigate to view a redirect page directly from its action pages, such as the history page. Previously, you were forced to first go to the redirect target. This change should help editors who work with redirects a lot. Thanks to user stjn for this improvement. [113]
• When a Cite reference is reused many times, wikis currently show either numbers like "1.23" or localized alphabetic markers like "a b c" in the reference list. Previously, if there were so many reuses that the alphabetic markers were all used, an error message was displayed. As part of the work to modernize Cite customization, these errors will no longer be shown and instead the backlinks will fall back to showing numeric markers like "1.23" once the alphabetic markers are all used.
• The log entries for each change to an editor's user-groups are now clearer by specifying exactly what has changed, instead of the plain before and after listings. Translators can help to update the localized versions. Thanks to user Msz2001 for these improvements.
• A new filter has been added to the Special:Nuke tool, which allows administrators to mass delete pages, to enable users to filter for pages in a range of page sizes (in bytes). This allows, for example, deleting pages only of a certain size or below. [114]
• Non-administrators can now check which pages are able to be deleted using the Special:Nuke tool. Thanks to user MolecularPilot for this and the previous improvements. [115]
• View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed in the configuration for the AV1 video file format, which enables these files to play again. [116]

Updates for technical contributors

• Parsoid Read Views is going to be rolling out to most Wiktionaries over the next few weeks, following the successful transition of Wikivoyage to Parsoid Read Views last year. For more information, see the Parsoid/Parser Unification project page. [117][118]
• Developers of tools that run on-wiki should note that mw.Uri is deprecated. Tools requiring mw.Uri must explicitly declare mediawiki.Uri as a ResourceLoader dependency, and should migrate to the browser native URL API soon. [119]

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:17, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 3

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on 10 February. Please help translate.

---

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

Wikipedia recognised as a digital public good.

• Wikipedia as a digital public good: Wikipedia has been recognized as a digital public good by the UN-endorsed Digital Public Goods Alliance.
• Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) Connect: The first edition of this regional community call for 2025 will be held on February 22.
• Wikimedia Research Showcase: The next showcase will be about "Wikipedia Administrator Recruitment, Retention, and Attrition" and will take place on February 26 at 17:30 UTC.
• Celebrate Women 2025: The Gender Organizing community in the Wikimedia Movement hosts an annual campaign every March called Celebrate Women. Conversation hours to learn about some exciting tools that can support your efforts at closing the gender gap will be held on February 25 at 14:00–16:00 UTC.
• Outreachy: Wikimedia Foundation is participating in Round 30 of the Outreachy program that runs from June – August 2025. The deadline to submit projects is March 4 at 16:00 UTC .

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Growth features: The new Community Updates module is a new feature to facilitate the connection between wiki editing initiatives and newcomers.
• Simple article summaries: The Web team at the Wikimedia Foundation has introduced Simple Article Summaries project on select Wikipedias. It aims to display article summaries that would be easy to digest for readers.
• Language and internationalization: Five new languages added to Wikipedia as part of the future of language incubation initiative. Read more on the latest edition of the Language and internationalization newsletter.
• Tech News: Communities using growth tools can now showcase one event on the Special:Homepage for newcomers. More updates from tech news week 07 and 08.

Annual Goals Progress on Knowledge Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• Community Insights: The Community Insights 2024 report captures new insights on newcomers (who are more likely to be younger), their motivations (97% liked that their contributions help others), and how for the first time, more than half of respondents (51%) agreed that the Wikimedia Foundation communicates well about its projects and initiatives.
• Let’s Connect Learning Clinic: Watch the recording of WikiLearn Essentials for Course Creators: Building Community Skills Online session 1.
• Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC): Are you interested in improving how funds are distributed across the Wikimedia Movement? Apply to be part of the interim GRDC by February 25.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Public Policy: How Wikimedia projects advance a positive vision for the internet's future through the public domain, the digital commons, and digital public goods.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports

• Wikimedia Enterprise: Wikimedia Enterprise has partnered with Ecosia, a Berlin-based search engine.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Wikimedia Brasil: Wikimedia Brasil becomes the newest Wikimedia Chapter!
• Wikimedia Community User Group South Sudan: Recognition of Wikimedia Community User Group South Sudan.
• Affiliations Committee: Insights about the future of the movement organization ecosystem from Affiliations Committee Strategy Retreat 2024.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

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For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 20:13, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-09

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 can now customize how the Babel feature creates categories using Special:CommunityConfiguration/Babel. They can rename language categories, choose whether they should be auto-created, and adjust other settings. [120]
• The wikimedia.org portal has been updated – and is receiving some ongoing improvements – to modernize and improve the accessibility of our portal pages. It now has better support for mobile layouts, updated wording and links, and better language support. Additionally, all of the Wikimedia project portals, such as wikibooks.org, now support dark mode when a reader is using that system setting. [121][122][123]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wiktionary in Santali (wikt:sat:) [124]
• View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that prevented clicking on search results in the web-interface for some Firefox for Android phone configurations. [125]

Meetings and events

• The next Language Community Meeting is happening soon, February 28th at 14:00 UTC. This week's meeting will cover: highlights and technical updates on keyboard and tools for the Sámi languages, Translatewiki.net contributions from the Bahasa Lampung community in Indonesia, and technical Q&A. If you'd like to join, simply sign up on the wiki page.

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:41, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-10

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

• All logged-in editors using the mobile view can now edit a full page. The "Edit full page" link is accessible from the "More" menu in the toolbar. This was previously only available to editors using the Advanced mobile contributions setting. [126]
• Interface administrators can now help to remove the deprecated Cite CSS code matching "mw-ref" from their local MediaWiki:Common.css. The list of wikis in need of cleanup, and the code to remove, can be found with this global search and in this example, and you can learn more about how to help on the CSS migration project page. The Cite footnote markers ("[1]") are now rendered by Parsoid, and the deprecated CSS is no longer needed. The CSS for backlinks ("mw:referencedBy") should remain in place for now. This cleanup is expected to cause no visible changes for readers. Please help to remove this code before March 20, after which the development team will do it for you.
• When editors embed a file (e.g. [[File:MediaWiki.png]]) on a page that is protected with cascading protection, the software will no longer restrict edits to the file description page, only to new file uploads.[127] In contrast, transcluding a file description page (e.g. {{:File:MediaWiki.png}}) will now restrict edits to the page.[128]
• When editors revert a file to an earlier version it will now require the same permissions as ordinarily uploading a new version of the file. The software now checks for 'reupload' or 'reupload-own' rights,[129] and respects cascading protection.[130]
• When administrators are listing pages for deletion with the Nuke tool, they can now also list associated talk pages and redirects for deletion, alongside pages created by the target, rather than needing to manually delete these pages afterwards. [131]
• The previously noted update to Single User Login, which will accommodate browser restrictions on cross-domain cookies by moving login and account creation to a central domain, will now roll out to all users during March and April. The team plans to enable it for all new account creation on Group0 wikis this week. See the SUL3 project page for more details and an updated timeline.
• Since last week there has been a bug that shows some interface icons as black squares until the page has fully loaded. It will be fixed this week. [132]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Sylheti (w:syl:) [133]
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed with loading images in very old versions of the Firefox browser on mobile. [134]

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 02:31, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 4

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on 24 February. Please help translate.

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Wikimania 2025 programming proposals are now open.

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

• Annual Planning: Help shape our early-stage thinking around our Product & Tech work and provide feedback before budgets and measurable targets are committed.
• Global Trends 2025: As part of annual planning, we identify a list of global trends that will impact the Wikimedia movement, such as changes in how and where people search for and contribute information online, the rise of misinformation and disinformation in online spaces, and evolving regulation of online information providers.
• Wikimania 2025: Apply now to speak at Wikimania 2025 whether to lead a workshop, host a panel, present a poster, or showcase a tool demonstration. Submit your session by March 31 anywhere on earth. If you're interested reviewing proposals for Wikimania 2025 and helping shape the program, you can fill out a short form to apply to be a program reviewer by 17 March.
• WikiConference North America 2025: Scholarship applications are now open until April 4. This conference will take place in New York City from October 16–19, 2025, under the theme “Wiki’s World Fair".
• Wikimedia Enterprise and Global Advocacy at SXSW 2025: Wikimedia Enterprise is coming together with Creative Commons on March 9 for a day of conversations and panel discussions at SXSW 2025 that tackles the challenges of AI and the preservation and ethical development of open data. Global Advocacy is participating on a panel on March 8, diving into conversations about the future of the internet.
• WikiCauserie: The online bi-monthly meeting aimed at bringing together the French-speaking member communities of WikiFranca will be held next on March 21 at 18:00 UTC.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Datacenter Switchover: All wikis will be in read-only mode for a few minutes for a datacenter server switchover on March 19 starting at 14:00 UTC for up to 30 minutes.
• Tech News: The wikimedia.org portal has been updated – and is receiving some ongoing improvements – to modernize and improve the accessibility of our portal pages. It now has better support for mobile layouts, updated wording and links, and better language support. More updates from tech news week 09 and 10.
• Wikimedia Recommendation API: We will be removing the recommendation API from the current offerings after March 31. This API is no longer used by newer versions of the Wikipedia Android Mobile application, which was its sole user.
• Wikifunctions: We deployed and tested one of our main milestones for this quarter: the ability to get the right Lexeme given a Wikidata Item, or, put simpler, to get the right word from a thing.
• Wikimedia Apps: We are inviting users to help improve Wikipedia mobile app's reading and editing experiences in offline or limited internet use. We will organize focus groups to discuss these experiences in more detail. Share your thoughts and help improve the app by joining the discussion.

Annual Goals Progress on Knowledge Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• Women’s History Month: Wikimedia Foundation is running a campaign to spotlight some of the Wikimedians working to close the gender gap on Wikimedia projects. The campaign, Knowledge is human. Knowledge is her., is aimed at reaching external audiences in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Wikimedia Research Showcase: "Gender Gaps" will be the featured theme for the next research showcase taking place on March 19 at 16:30 UTC.
• Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC): The call for candidates is being extended until March 31.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Privacy and Transparency: Finding the balance between privacy and openness to stay safe in an open movement.
• Legal Victory: The Wikimedia Foundation has won a legal victory in Germany’s courts that sets a legal precedent defending the Wikimedia projects and volunteers against "forum shopping", choosing a court in a jurisdiction whose laws might be more favorable to them.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports

• Wikimedia Enterprise: Wikimedia Enterprise and French AI startup Pleias have joined forces to show that structured, machine-readable knowledge can drive AI innovation while upholding openness, verifiability, and ethical development.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Ombuds Commission: Announcing the 2025 Ombuds Commission.
• Universal Code of Conduct: Wikimedia Foundation has chosen to appoint Jacob Rogers, Associate General Counsel, to the Foundation advisory seat on the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C).
• Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees: The Board met virtually on 11 December to hold its quarterly business. See the most recent corporate actions taken on the Board Noticeboard.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:55, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-11

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

Updates for editors

• Editors who use password managers at multiple wikis may notice changes in the future. The way that our wikis provide information to password managers about reusing passwords across domains has recently been updated, so some password managers might now offer you login credentials that you saved for a different Wikimedia site. Some password managers already did this, and are now doing it for more Wikimedia domains. This is part of the SUL3 project which aims to improve how our unified login works, and to keep it compatible with ongoing changes to the web-browsers we use. [135][136]
• The Wikipedia Apps Team is inviting interested users to help improve Wikipedia’s offline and limited internet use. After discussions in Afrika Baraza and the last ESEAP call, key challenges like search, editing, and offline access are being explored, with upcoming focus groups to dive deeper into these topics. All languages are welcome, and interpretation will be available. Want to share your thoughts? Join the discussion or email aramadan@wikimedia.org!
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 19. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: the launch of the Community Updates module, the most recent changes in Community Configuration, and the upcoming test of in-article suggestions for first-time editors.
• An old API that was previously used in the Android Wikipedia app is being removed at the end of March. There are no current software uses, but users of the app with a version that is older than 6 months by the time of removal (2025-03-31), will no longer have access to the Suggested Edits feature, until they update their app. You can read more details about this change.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:09, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-12

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

• Twice a year, around the equinoxes, the Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team performs a datacenter server switchover, redirecting all traffic from one primary server to its backup. This provides reliability in case of a crisis, as we can always fall back on the other datacenter. Thanks to the Listen to Wikipedia tool, you can hear the switchover take place: Before it begins, you'll hear the steady stream of edits; Then, as the system enters a brief read-only phase, the sound stops for a couple of minutes, before resuming after the switchover. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog. If you want to keep an ear out for the next server switchover, listen to the wikis on March 19 at 14:00 UTC.

Updates for editors

• The improved Content Translation tool dashboard is now available in 10 Wikipedias and will be available for all Wikipedias soon. With the unified dashboard, desktop users can now: Translate new sections of an article; Discover and access topic-based article suggestion filters (initially available only for mobile device users); Discover and access the Community-defined lists filter, also known as "Collections", from wiki-projects and campaigns.
• On Wikimedia Commons, a new system to select the appropriate file categories has been introduced: if a category has one or more subcategories, users will be able to click on an arrow that will open the subcategories directly within the form, and choose the correct one. The parent category name will always be shown on top, and it will always be possible to come back to it. This should decrease the amount of work for volunteers in fixing/creating new categories. The change is also available on mobile. These changes are part of planned improvements to the UploadWizard.
• The Community Tech team is seeking wikis to join a pilot for the Multiblocks feature and a refreshed Special:Block page in late March. Multiblocks enables administrators to impose multiple different types of blocks on the same user at the same time. If you are an admin or steward and would like us to discuss joining the pilot with your community, please leave a message on the project talk page.
• Starting March 25, the Editing team will test a new feature for Edit Check at 12 Wikipedias: Multi-Check. Half of the newcomers on these wikis will see all Reference Checks during their edit session, while the other half will continue seeing only one. The goal of this test is to see if users are confused or discouraged when shown multiple Reference Checks (when relevant) within a single editing session. At these wikis, the tags used on edits that show References Check will be simplified, as multiple tags could be shown within a single edit. Changes to the tags are documented on Phabricator. [137]
• The Global reminder bot, which is a service for notifying users that their temporary user-rights are about to expire, now supports using the localized name of the user-rights group in the message heading. Translators can see the listing of existing translations and documentation to check if their language needs updating or creation.
• The GlobalPreferences gender setting, which is used for how the software should refer to you in interface messages, now works as expected by overriding the local defaults. [138]
• View all 26 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the Wikipedia App for Android had a bug fixed for when a user is browsing and searching in multiple languages. [139]

Updates for technical contributors

• Later this week, the way that Codex styles are loaded will be changing. There is a small risk that this may result in unstyled interface message boxes on certain pages. User generated content (e.g. templates) is not impacted. Gadgets may be impacted. If you see any issues please report them. See the linked task for details, screenshots, and documentation on how to fix any affected gadgets.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 5

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on 10 March. Please help translate.

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Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

• Wikimania 2025: Program submission is still open until March 31. Apply now to speak at Wikimania 2025.
• Research Fund: The 2025 Wikimedia Research Fund is launching, inviting proposals from researchers aiming to advance free knowledge through Wikimedia projects. Submit your proposal before April 16.
• Central Notice Training: Learn more about updates to the Central Notice Guidelines by joining a Central Notice Requester training on March 26 at 14:00 UTC.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Design System: Learn more about Wikimedia’s Codex design system and how to use it while designing for Wikimedia projects.
• Tech News: The improved Content Translation tool dashboard is now available in 10 Wikipedias and will be available for all Wikipedias soon; on Wikimedia Commons, a new system to select the appropriate file categories has been introduced. More updates from tech news week 11 and 12.
• P&T Annual Planning: The Product & Technology department publishes its plans early in the annual planning process, which is on Meta-Wiki and open for feedback. These objectives and key results are not a list of projects, but instead, a set of directions for problems to solve and impacts to achieve over the course of the year. We look forward to engaging with the community on this plan.

Annual Goals Progress on Knowledge Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• Resource Support Pilot: The pilot project on English Wikipedia to fund small resource requests (like books) to support editors in improving content has moved to the next phases of the discussion.
• Wikisource Conference: Some highlights from the Wikisource Conference 2025 in Bali.
• ESEAP Hub: Future plans for the ESEAP Hub one-year pilot project.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Litigation review: Read key points of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal work last year to protect free and open knowledge broadly, and the Wikimedia volunteers and projects in particular.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Affiliations Committee: Announcement of the 2025 Affiliations Committee Appointments.
• Wikimedia MKD: Recognition of Wikimedia MKD User Group.
• Wikimedia Community User Group Burundi: Recognition of Wikimedia Community User Group Burundi.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

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For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 17:37, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-13

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 Wikimedia Foundation is seeking your feedback on the drafts of the objectives and key results that will shape the Foundation's Product and Technology priorities for the next fiscal year (starting in July). The objectives are broad high-level areas, and the key-results are measurable ways to track the success of their objectives. Please share your feedback on the talkpage, in any language, ideally before the end of April.

Updates for editors

• The CampaignEvents extension will be released to multiple wikis (see deployment plan for details) in April 2025, and the team has begun the process of engaging communities on the identified wikis. The extension provides tools to organize, manage, and promote collaborative activities (like events, edit-a-thons, and WikiProjects) on the wikis. The extension has three tools: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation Lists. It is currently on 13 Wikipedias, including English Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, and Spanish Wikipedia, as well as Wikidata. Questions or requests can be directed to the extension talk page or in Phabricator (with #campaigns-product-team tag).
• Starting the week of March 31st, wikis will be able to set which user groups can view private registrants in Event Registration, as part of the CampaignEvents extension. By default, event organizers and the local wiki admins will be able to see private registrants. This is a change from the current behavior, in which only event organizers can see private registrants. Wikis can change the default setup by requesting a configuration change in Phabricator (and adding the #campaigns-product-team tag). Participants of past events can cancel their registration at any time.
• Administrators at wikis that have a customized MediaWiki:Sidebar should check that it contains an entry for the Special pages listing. If it does not, they should add it using * specialpages-url|specialpages. Wikis with a default sidebar will see the link moved from the page toolbox into the sidebar menu in April. [140]
• The Minerva skin (mobile web) combines both Notice and Alert notifications within the bell icon (). There was a long-standing bug where an indication for new notifications was only shown if you had unseen Alerts. This bug is now fixed. In the future, Minerva users will notice a counter atop the bell icon when you have 1 or more unseen Notices and/or Alerts. [141]
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• VisualEditor has introduced a new client-side hook for developers to use when integrating with the VisualEditor target lifecycle. This hook should replace the existing lifecycle-related hooks, and be more consistent between different platforms. In addition, the new hook will apply to uses of VisualEditor outside of just full article editing, allowing gadgets to interact with the editor in DiscussionTools as well. The Editing Team intends to deprecate and eventually remove the old lifecycle hooks, so any use cases that this new hook does not cover would be of interest to them and can be shared in the task.
• Developers who use the mw.Api JavaScript library, can now identify the tool using it with the userAgent parameter: var api = new mw.Api( { userAgent: 'GadgetNameHere/1.0.1' } );. If you maintain a gadget or user script, please set a user agent, because it helps with library and server maintenance and with differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate traffic. [142][143]
• 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 22:43, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-14

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 Editing team is working on a new Edit check: Peacock check. This check's goal is to identify non-neutral terms while a user is editing a wikipage, so that they can be informed that their edit should perhaps be changed before they publish it. This project is at the early stages, and the team is looking for communities' input: in this Phabricator task, they are gathering on-wiki policies, templates used to tag non-neutral articles, and the terms (jargon and keywords) used in edit summaries for the languages they are currently researching. You can participate by editing the table on Phabricator, commenting on the task, or directly messaging Trizek (WMF).
• Single User Login has now been updated on all wikis to move login and account creation to a central domain. This makes user login compatible with browser restrictions on cross-domain cookies, which have prevented users of some browsers from staying logged in.
• View all 35 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Starting on March 31st, the MediaWiki Interfaces team will begin a limited release of generated OpenAPI specs and a SwaggerUI-based sandbox experience for MediaWiki REST APIs. They invite developers from a limited group of non-English Wikipedia communities (Arabic, German, French, Hebrew, Interlingua, Dutch, Chinese) to review the documentation and experiment with the sandbox in their preferred language. In addition to these specific Wikipedia projects, the sandbox and OpenAPI spec will be available on the on the test wiki REST Sandbox special page for developers with English as their preferred language. During the preview period, the MediaWiki Interfaces Team also invites developers to share feedback about your experience. The preview will last for approximately 2 weeks, after which the sandbox and OpenAPI specs will be made available across all wiki projects.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Sometimes a small, one line code change can have great significance: in this case, it means that for the first time in years we're able to run all of the stack serving maps.wikimedia.org - a host dedicated to serving our wikis and their multi-lingual maps needs - from a single core datacenter, something we test every time we perform a datacenter switchover. This is important because it means that in case one of our datacenters is affected by a catastrophe, we'll still be able to serve the site. This change is the result of extensive work by two developers on porting the last component of the maps stack over to kubernetes, where we can allocate resources more efficiently than before, thus we're able to withstand more traffic in a single datacenter. This work involved a lot of complicated steps because this software, and the software libraries it uses, required many long overdue upgrades. This type of work makes the Wikimedia infrastructure more sustainable.

Meetings and events

• MediaWiki Users and Developers Workshop Spring 2025 is happening in Sandusky, USA, and online, from 14–16 May 2025. The workshop will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users. Registration and presentation signup is now available at the workshop's website.

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:05, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 6

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on 21 March. Please help translate.

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Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

• Progress on the Annual Plan: Six-Month Snapshot.
• Global Trends: A message from Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees on global trends and strengthening Wikipedia’s neutral point of view.
• Wikimedia Hackathon: The registration to attend the Wikimedia Hackathon is still open until midnight April 13.
• Central Asia Wikicon: The Central Asian WikiCon 2025 will take place on April 19–20 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Infrastructure: How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects.
• Tech News: The CampaignEvents extension will be released to multiple wikis (see deployment plan for details) in April 2025; The Editing team is working on a new Edit check: Peacock check. This check’s goal is to identify non-neutral terms while a user is editing a wikipage. More updates from tech news week 13 and 14.
• Wikifunctions: Read the latest status updates.

Annual Goals Progress on Knowledge Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• Wikipedia Library: What’s new from January to March 2025.
• Let's Connect Learning Clinic: Missed the last Learning Clinic on "Safe Spaces, Strong Voices: Advancing Inclusion through the UCoC"? Recording is now available.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Transparency report: The Wikimedia Foundation’s publishes its latest Transparency Report covering the period from July to December 2024. View highlights from the report.
• Global Advocacy: Read the latest developments on public policy advocacy from Wikimedia Foundation's Global Advocacy team.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports

• Wikimedia Enterprise: Wikimedia Enterprise Partners with ProRata.ai to Champion Sustainable Search Engine Practices.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Elections Committee: Wikimedia Foundation Governance Committee has appointed a new Elections Committee.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

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For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 15:53, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-15

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 now on, interface admins and centralnotice admins are technically required to enable two-factor authentication before they can use their privileges. In the future this might be expanded to more groups with advanced user-rights. [144]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• The Design System Team is preparing to release the next major version of Codex (v2.0.0) on April 29. Editors and developers who use CSS from Codex should see the 2.0 overview documentation, which includes guidance related to a few of the breaking changes such as font-size, line-height, and size-icon.
• The results of the Developer Satisfaction Survey (2025)  are now available. Thank you to all participants. These results help the Foundation decide what to work on next and to review what they recently worked on.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• The 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, between 2–4 May. Registration for attending the in-person event will close on 13 April. Before registering, please note the potential need for a visa or e-visa to enter the country.

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MediaWiki message delivery 18:53, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-16

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

• Later this week, the default thumbnail size will be increased from 220px to 250px. This changes how pages are shown in all wikis and has been requested by some communities for many years, but wasn't previously possible due to technical limitations. [145]
• File thumbnails are now stored in discrete sizes. If a page specifies a thumbnail size that's not among the standard sizes (20, 40, 60, 120, 250, 330, 500, 960), then MediaWiki will pick the closest larger thumbnail size but will tell the browser to downscale it to the requested size. In these cases, nothing will change visually but users might load slightly larger images. If it doesn't matter which thumbnail size is used in a page, please pick one of the standard sizes to avoid the extra in-browser down-scaling step. [146][147]

Updates for editors

• The Wikimedia Foundation are working on a system called Edge Uniques which will enable A/B testing, help protect against Distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks), and make it easier to understand how many visitors the Wikimedia sites have. This is so that they can more efficiently build tools which help readers, and make it easier for readers to find what they are looking for.
• To improve security for users, a small percentage of logins will now require that the account owner input a one-time password emailed to their account. It is recommended that you check that the email address on your account is set correctly, and that it has been confirmed, and that you have an email set for this purpose. [148]
• "Are you interested in taking a short survey to improve tools used for reviewing or reverting edits on your Wiki?" This question will be asked at 7 wikis starting next week, on Recent Changes and Watchlist pages. The Moderator Tools team wants to know more about activities that involve looking at new edits made to your Wikimedia project, and determining whether they adhere to your project's policies.
• On April 15, the full Wikidata graph will no longer be supported on query.wikidata.org. After this date, scholarly articles will be available through query-scholarly.wikidata.org, while the rest of the data hosted on Wikidata will be available through the query.wikidata.org endpoint. This is part of the scheduled split of the Wikidata Graph, which was announced in September 2024. More information is available on Wikidata.
• The latest quarterly Wikimedia Apps Newsletter is now available. It covers updates, experiments, and improvements made to the Wikipedia mobile apps.
• View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: an invitation for tool maintainers to attend the Toolforge UI Community Feedback Session on April 15th; recent community metrics; and recent technical blog posts.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:24, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Apps newsletter – First quarter of 2025

Hello, and welcome to the first newsletter of 2025! In this edition, we’ll walk you through the exciting updates, experiments, and improvements made to the Wikipedia mobile apps during December, January, and February.

iOS

Personalized Wikipedia Year in Review

We released the improved version of the Year in Review to all users, now available in multiple languages and for both logged-in and logged-out users. While donation rates were lower than our goal, we saw great engagement with the feature & it brought in a higher share of first-time donors and a higher average donation compared to banner campaigns.

Notably:

• 97.4% of survey respondents rated the experience as neutral or better.
• We saw a 74% increase in new accounts, with 368 new editors actively contributing as a result.
• Most users asked for more personalized stats and a better summary of their reading journey.

We’re excited by the results and are already thinking ahead about how to improve it further next year. Want more details? You can check out the full analysis on the project page on MediaWiki.

Alt Text Experiment Wrap-Up

Our 60-day alternative text experiment has ended. While users showed interest in the task, quality was a challenge—especially for newcomers. The experiment helped us understand how we can guide editors better when writing alt text and which improvements to focus on next.

Some key takeaways:

• Completion rates were decent (28% for newer editors), but the quality of the alternative text needed improvement.
• Many users wanted clearer guidance and better context for writing alt text.
• Many users expressed interest in a dedicated feed for image-related tasks.

We’re not making the alternative text suggested edit permanent at this time. If we decided to focus on this task again, we would invest in improved guidance for writing alternative text, and make improvements to the user flow.

Navigation Refresh

We made significant progress in refreshing the app’s navigation. Highlights include:

• A more native iOS feel with system-standard navigation bars.
• New access points for the Profile menu across multiple screens.
• Ongoing A/B testing of a more prominent search bar in articles, available in Arabic, French, German, and Japanese.

We also began tracking where article views come from (e.g., from Places, History, or Explore), which will help us understand user behavior better.

Tabbed Browsing Begins

We kicked off discovery and design work for adding tabs to the iOS app—one of the most requested features! Based on user feedback and inspiration from other apps, we’ve created a prototype and started user testing. Stay tuned as this exciting feature continues to evolve!

Bug Fixes & Developer Contributions

Thanks to volunteer contributions and internal efforts, we fixed several bugs including:

• Search results overlapping with the status bar.
• Crashes while editing specific articles.
• Incorrect day shown in “In the News.”
• Improved handling of italics and language variants.

Android

WikiGames & WikiTrivia

We released the Wikipedia Game to production in German Wikipedia and began work on WikiTrivia using “On this day” content. User feedback from initial testing is helping shape both features.

Private Donor Recognition Experiment

We wrapped up our donor recognition experiment in France and the Netherlands. While overall donations were lower than expected, user feedback was clear:

• 81% of surveyed users want the dashboard to exist on multiple platforms.
• 39% of users who saw the donor icon feature chose to personalize their app icon.
• Many users prefer automatic updates to their donor stats without manual input.

Rabbit Holes

To improve reader retention, we tested two approaches: suggested articles in search and personalized reading lists. Results showed strong engagement:

• 93.3% of feedback was positive or neutral.
• Pageviews were significantly higher for users who engaged with the feature.
• Users preferred reading lists over suggested search results.

Jetpack Compose Migration

We've started migrating our Android layouts to Jetpack Compose to modernize the app and improve performance long-term.

Other Fixes & Enhancements

• Fixed bugs related to offline article loading, push notifications, and language variants.
• Enhanced language support in captions and local language display.

Looking Ahead

From improving editing tasks to adding new ways to discover content and expanding personalization—this quarter was packed with learning and progress. Your feedback continues to shape where we go next.

Make sure you’re subscribe to this newsletter to stay in the loop, and thank you for being a part of this journey with us!

~~ARamadan-WMF07:49, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2025 Issue 7

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on April 4. Please help translate.

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Upcoming and current events and conversations
Let's Talk continues

• Annual Planning and global trends: Join one of the many conversations happening over April and May about how Wikimedians around the world are responding to global trends and help shape the Foundation's annual plan.
• CEE Catchup: Join the upcoming global trends workshop for the CEE communities organized together with the CEE Hub on April 23 at 16:00 UTC, to discuss AI, NPOV, Wikimedia communities and more.
• Neutral point of view: More information and an update about the work to strengthen Wikipedia's neutral point of view.
• Wiki Workshop 2025: Register for the 12th annual Wiki Workshop taking place on May 21–22. It brings together researchers and scholars from around the globe who are interested in or actively engaged in research and development on Wikimedia projects.
• Learning Clinic: The upcoming Let’s Connect Learning Clinic is focusing on "Understanding and Navigating Conflict in Wikimedia Projects (Part 1)" and will take place on April 29 at 14:30 UTC.
• Community Resilience and Sustainability: Quarterly Conversation hour taking place on April 24 at 18:00 UTC to discuss Trust and Safety, the Universal Code of Conduct, Committee Support, and Human Rights.
• Wikimedia Hackathon: The Wikimedia Hackathon 2025 will take place on May 2–4.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Wikifunctions: Wikifunctions is now integrated with Dagbani Wikipedia. It is the first Wikimedia project that will be able to call and integrate functions directly into Wikipedia articles. Read more weekly updates on Wikifunctions.
• Edge Uniques: Introducing Edge Uniques, a technical approach which consists of privacy-preserving first-party cookies that will enable usability testing of features through A/B testing, more accurate counting of site visits, and a way to stop distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) with better precision.
• Tech News: The Design System Team is preparing to release the next major version of Codex (v2.0.0) on April 29; Last week, the default thumbnail size was increased from 220px to 250px. This changes how pages are shown in all wikis and has been requested by some communities for many years, but wasn’t previously possible due to technical limitations. More updates from Tech News week 15 and 16.
• Outreachy: Celebrating the excellent contributions from both interns and mentors in Round 29 of the Outreachy internship program.
• Developer Satisfaction Survey: The results of the Developer Satisfaction Survey (2025) are available. Thank you to all participants. These results help the Foundation decide what to work on next and to review what they recently worked on.

Annual Goals Progress on Knowledge Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki · WikiLearn

• Wiki Loves Monuments: Celebrating the winners of Wiki Loves Monuments 2024.
• Wikimedia Research Showcase: Watch the latest research showcase featuring the theme of "Motivation of Wikipedia Editors".

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Digital Rights: Wikimedians leading conversations at the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum 2025 (DRIF25).
• Community Resilience: To better support community members when they are facing challenges while contributing to Wikimedia projects, the Trust and Safety team worked with the Arbitration Committees to create Project Maps of communities.
• RightsCon 2025: Key takeaways on advocacy and inclusion.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 17:16, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-17

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

• Wikifunctions is now integrated with Dagbani Wikipedia since April 15. It is the first project that will be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them in articles. A function is something that takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, such as adding up two numbers, converting miles into metres, calculating how much time has passed since an event, or declining a word into a case. Wikifunctions will allow users to do that through a simple call of a stable and global function, rather than via a local template. [149]
• A new type of lint error has been created: Empty headings (documentation). The Linter extension's purpose is to identify wikitext patterns that must or can be fixed in pages and provide some guidance about what the problems are with those patterns and how to fix them. [150]
• View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Following its publication on HuggingFace, the "Structured Contents" dataset, developed by Wikimedia Enterprise, is now also available on Kaggle. This Beta initiative is focused on making Wikimedia data more machine-readable for high-volume reusers. They are releasing this beta version in a location that open dataset communities already use, in order to seek feedback, to help improve the product for a future wider release. You can read more about the overall Structured Contents project, and about the first release that's freely usable.
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings and events

• The Editing and Machine Learning Teams invite interested volunteers to a video meeting to discuss Peacock check, which is the latest Edit check that will detect "peacock" or "overly-promotional" or "non-neutral" language whilst an editor is typing. Editors who work with newcomers, or help to fix this kind of writing, or are interested in how we use artificial intelligence in our projects are encouraged to attend. The meeting will be on April 28, 2025 at 18:00–19:00 UTC and hosted on Zoom.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:00, 21 April 2025 (UTC)