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Archive of news items over 5 years old
The Signpost: 22 May 2026
- News and notes: Offline: Osama Khalid still in prison
He has been imprisoned since 2020 for his Wikipedia edits. A fresh campaign is calling for his release.
- In the media: Indonesian editors, you shall return!
And lawspam, may you be away.
- Disinformation report: Who is a typical paid editor? Who are their typical clients?
Remember the golden rule!
- Recent research: WikiLambda the Ultimate
Does Abstract Wikipedia help fight "One ring to rule them all" solutions for knowledge access - or does it implement one itself?
- Traffic report: This is where I'll be, so heavenly, so come and dance with me Michael!
A real off the wall thriller, invincible, can't beat it, or is it dangerous and just bad?
- Forum: WikiAnnotate: help us build a dataset of article quality evaluations
A research project to build better automated article assessment tools.
- In focus: Demystifying the 2026-27 Annual Plan
A guide to WMF's Tech Annual Plan for the next year.
- Opinion: Wikipedia isn't a battleground. So why does it feel like one?
Do we really have to fight?
- Serendipity: Wikinews: Into the Wikiverse
The early suggestions for what the wiki could have been.
- Special report: Wikimedia Foundation closes Wikinews after 21 years
Displaces 700 active editors among 31 language editions.
- Community view: Wikipedia's traffic drop: more on languages and freshness
Which topics are dropping, and is the pattern the same everywhere?
- Gallery: Earth Day and Mother's Day
Earth Day was on 22 April, and Mother's Day was on 10 May (in the US and many other countries).
- Comix: Brother, can you spare a page?
What would you say?
Draftification
Hi there! I wanted to reach out because I noticed your recent draftification of Draft:The News-Enterprise. Don't worry -- it was a good draftification. However, I wanted to recommend that you install the MoveToDraft script. The script will take care of several things as once, including notifying editors of draftication, tagging the page for R2 speedy deletion, and tagging the draft article for AfC. Overall, it makes the draftification process a lot easier. :) Let me know if you have any questions. Take care, Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 00:22, 23 May 2026 (UTC)
- Thank you for the tip. It did seem that the move process by itself was somewhat incomplete. I will install the script shortly. .Cheers! the Stefen 𝕋ower 00:24, 23 May 2026 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 22, 2026)
Hello, StefenTower. The article for improvement of the week is:
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Harbor • Wings of Fire (novel series) Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 25 May 2026 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
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Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #249 is out: Annual plan 2026-2027
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we present you the current draft of objectives for Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia in the WMF Annual Plan 2026-2027, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 09:48, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-22
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
- Following a successful account creation experiment, an improved logged-out edit warning message will be deployed to all Wikimedia wikis in the first week of June. The change will only affect logged-out users on mobile web who open an editing session. The updated experience is designed to encourage account creation more clearly, while still allowing users to edit with temporary accounts. Results from the experiment showed a significant increase in account creation, with a 27% relative lift among users shown the updated message. As expected, as more people funnel into account creation, temporary accounts decreased by a relative 16%. The experiment did not show any significant changes in constructive edit rates or other monitored contributor metrics. [1]
Updates for editors
- For security reasons, members of certain user groups are required to have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled. Members of these groups will be unable to disable the last 2FA method on their account, and it will be impossible to add users without 2FA to these groups. Users will still be able to add new authentication methods or remove them, as long as at least one method is continuously enabled. In the next few weeks, users without 2FA will be removed from these groups. Notably, this applies to bureaucrats. See the linked tasks for deployment schedules. [2][3]
- WMDE Technical Wishes will run an A/B test on 10 wikis, testing potential improvements for Reference Previews. The experiment will run for ~2 weeks at the end of May / beginning of June and will affect 10% of desktop readers on the participating wikis.
- After two successful experiments, the Reader Growth team is rolling out an Image Browsing beta feature for all Wikipedias on mobile on May 25. This means that anyone who has all beta features on by default will start to see this feature, and others can check the box to turn it on in their preferences. The beta feature will include a carousel of all an article's images at the top of the article, with controls for editors to exclude images from the article's carousel or to exclude an article from the feature entirely.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, three dimensional STL files were being rendered incorrectly by the media viewer 3D extension which is now fixed. [4]
Updates for technical contributors
- The legacy CSS classes
tleftandtrighthave been replaced withfloatleftandfloatrightas the former do not work consistently across all MediaWiki platforms, notably mobile web and mobile apps. Projects relying on these classes are encouraged to review related usage and plan for migration. Please note thatfloatleftandfloatrightmay also be deprecated in future, although there are currently no plans to do so. Read more. - 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 21:51, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
Backlogged due to internet outage
My internet was out since 1am ET (US) and just came back on. Gee, thanks, Spectrum. Anyways, this means my work here will be backlogged for a while. the Stefen 𝕋ower 22:14, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
Thomas Massie
Thanks for cleaning this up. No coffee needed; I used the xfd participation tool, which must have glitched and sent the !vote to the wrong spot. I couldn't figure out where my !vote had ended up because it didn't end up in the xfd nom. Dclemens1971 (talk) 00:36, 29 May 2026 (UTC)
Black excellence
I as a promoter of Black excellence for decades by my work as the second-most editor on Muhammad Ali (a great man and personal hero) and work on various other articles covering Black people and related subjects apparently doesn't figure in to the fleeting, fly-by-night needs for some wiki-newbies so they engage in sour discourse that attacks the intentions of myself and many other editors who have done the work they have no intention of ever doing. Just needed to get that off my chest. the Stefen 𝕋ower 12:12, 31 May 2026 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 23, 2026)
Hello, StefenTower. The article for improvement of the week is:
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Partnership for Peace • Harbor Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 1 June 2026 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
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Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #250 is out: Looking back and forward
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we present you a recollection of our work so far, now that we celebrate our 250th newsletter, we share with you a summary of our latest outreach activities, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:04, 1 June 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-23
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- The Reader Experience team is conducting an experiment to show the reading lists feature, which is still in development, to logged-out mobile readers to test whether it encourages account creation at a higher rate compared to the watchstar button. The experiment was launched on May 18th on German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu wikis, and it will run for a month.
- The Wikimedia Apps team released Phase 1 of the redesigned Home Feed to the Android Beta app. The new Home Feed includes a refreshed "Community" tab and a personalized "For You" tab featuring daily updated reading recommendations. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve content discovery and create more engaging learning experiences in the Wikipedia apps.
- View all 18 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where images could fail to load for some suggested edits on Special:Homepage, leaving the thumbnail stuck in a loading state, has now been fixed. [5]
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 21:07, 1 June 2026 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 74
Issue 74, March–April 2026
- New partnership: Swissdox
- User survey results
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 10:34, 2 June 2026 (UTC)
(This message was sent to User:StefenTower and is being posted here due to a redirect.)