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Tech News: 2026-14
[edit]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 Beta version of Abstract Wikipedia a new Wikimedia project which is language-independent, was launched last week. The project allows communities to build Wikipedia articles in their native language, which can be readily accessed by other users in their own languages. The wiki is powered by instructions from Wikifunctions and also based on structured content from Wikidata. Read more.
Updates for editors
- The Growth team is running an A/B test to evaluate a clearer, more user-friendly message that promotes account creation on wikis. Currently when logged-out mobile users begin editing, they see a jarring warning message that can feel abrupt and discouraging. This also presents temporary account editing as the default rather than encouraging account creation. The test is running on ten Wikipedias, including Arabic, French, Spanish and German. Read more.
- The Wikimedia Apps team is inviting feedback on how editing should work on the Wikipedia mobile apps. The discussion focuses on improving how users access editing tools when they tap "Edit". This is part of a broader effort to convert readers who develop an interest in editing, to access a more user-friendly pathway to start contributing.
View all 45 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where citation fetching from the large newspaper archive Newspapers.com was no longer working, due to a block in Citoid requests, has now been fixed. [1]
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 19:24, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 March 2026
[edit]- News and notes: Entirety of Wikinews to be shut down
All languages to be shut down in May; first AI agent blocked; new name for AfD?
- In the media: AI ban, newspapers disrupt archiving; and antisemitism complaints
Perennial challenges with AI, demographic representation, and attacks from people buying media influence.
- Community view: Videos from WikiConference North America 2025 in NYC
In attendees' own words.
- Disinformation report: Cleaning up after Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Nygard, and Mohamed Al-Fayed
Countering the edits of the rich and dangerous.
- WikiConference report: WikiConference North America 2025 in NYC review
About the conference series, and this conference particularly.
- Obituary: Dr. Subas Chandra Rout
Rest in peace.
- Traffic report: Call in the dogs of war, soldier of fortune
Though of course the picture needs to be Chuck Norris...
- Gallery: Canadian Rangers participate in Operation Enduring Encyclopedia
Analogies between how Wikipedia works and how Canada works.
- Comix: n00bsitting
...!
Question from Geminitoast (23:03, 2 April 2026)
[edit]hello! Glad to have you as a mentor :) I was looking at an article on Crawford Power Station which needed more references, and I found a good source for it. However, the entire article was literally just copied and pasted from that website. Not a single change - even the citations were the same. But did the wiki article or did the outside article come first? And if the other article came first, can I use that as a citation? https://everything.explained.today/Crawford_Station/ thats the outside reference. --Geminitoast (talk) 23:03, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- @Geminitoast: It looks like the Wikipedia article Crawford Station came first. At the bottom of the other article, it says:
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Crawford Station".
- (they're allowed to use our article as long as they use the proper license and give credit.) ~ rusty meow ~ 23:17, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
CS1 error on Ravenpaw's Path
[edit]
Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Ravenpaw's Path, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:
- A dates error. References show this error when one of the date-containing parameters is incorrectly formatted. Please edit the article to correct the date and ensure it is formatted to follow the Wikipedia Manual of Style's guidance on dates. (Fix | Ask for help)
Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 02:38, 3 April 2026 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – April 2026
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2026).

- The content of Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models has been updated following a request for comment. It now prohibits using LLMs to generate content, with exceptions for translation and copy-editing.
- Following a motion, the GSCASTE extended-confirmed restriction in the Indian military history case has been narrowed. It now applies to caste-related topics in South Asia, and the preemptive protection remedy has been amended accordingly.
- The arbitration case Pbsouthwood has been closed.
- The arbitration case Maghreb has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 7 April.
Tech News: 2026-15
[edit]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 CampaignEvents extension now includes a new group goal-setting feature, enabling organizers to set and track event goals such as the number of articles created and participating contributors in real time. Similarly, participants can work toward shared targets and see their collective impact as the event unfolds. The feature is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. Learn more in the documentation.
The new watchlist labels feature (announced in Tech News 2026-07) is now available via VisualEditor, the source editor, and the 'watchstar' (or watch link, for skins that don't have a star icon). Previously it was only possible to assign labels via EditWatchlist. In all three places it is a new field following the expiry field.
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where talk pages on mobile with Parsoid are unusable after empty section headers, has now been fixed. [2]
Updates for technical contributors
- The sub-referencing feature, which lets editors add details to an existing reference without duplicating it, will be gradually rolled out to more wikis later this year. Wikis using the Reference Tooltips gadget are encouraged to update their version (typically at MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js as shown here) to ensure compatibility. Other reference-related gadgets may also be affected. [3]
- All Wikinews editions will be closed and switched to read-only mode on 4 May 2026. Content will remain accessible, but no new edits or articles can be added. This closure was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation following extended discussions. Read more.
- The Action API has had several formats for requested output. One of them,
format=php, is being removed soon. Please ensure your scripts or bots use the JSON format. This removal should affect very few scripts and bots. [4] - The Special:NamespaceInfo page now includes namespace aliases. For example "WP" for the "Project" ("Wikipedia") namespace on the German Wikipedia. [5]
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 16:17, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
Question from Katie Hilborn on Wikipedia:IRC help disclaimer (18:46, 8 April 2026)
[edit]Hi and good day! We added articles by Katie to this Wikipedia page. I would like to know why it says the reason it was declined is that it is not adequately supported by reliable sources. I have added the newspaper and magazine interviews. Thanks. --Katie Hilborn (talk) 18:46, 8 April 2026 (UTC)
- @Katie Hilborn: Hello and welcome to Wikipedia!
- The reason that the article was declined is because it did not have enough of what we consider reliable sources; the notability guidelines, or standards of inclusion, for articles about people. Basically, a person is notable if they are have significant coverage in multiple independent, reliable sources.
- As an example from your draft, I would say that the Anthem Awards source does not go in-depth enough about Hilborn.
- The other references don't seem to mention Hilborn at all, with the exception of the Speakers Associates source, though that is not considered an independent source.
- Some of your links in the "External Links" section do provide significant coverage; though they're local news (newspapers covering a wider area would demonstrate more notability), they may be able to contribute.
- Finally, I want to let you know about Wikipedia's guideline on autobiographies and conflict-of-interest editing. Although the draft reviewer didn't mention this, I did notice that your username is the same as the name of the person you're writing about. It is strongly discouraged to write about yourself, or someone you know personally; if someone is truly notable, they usually will have an article written on them sooner or later. Note that Wikipedia shouldn't be used as a tool to promote yourself, or "put yourself out there." I hope you understand.
- Thanks, ~ rusty meow ~ 00:39, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Speedy deletion declined: User:CalebandJESUS/sandbox
[edit]Hello Rusty Cat. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of User:CalebandJESUS/sandbox, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Not U7 elegible as it is not more than 6 months old. Thank you. Whpq (talk) 00:33, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
- @Whpq: Thanks for letting me know! ~ rusty meow ~ 17:48, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Question from Ilovemycatmouse (20:40, 10 April 2026)
[edit]Hey Rusty Cat I need some Help How do I make a title?? I can't figure it out If you could help would do? --Ilovemycatmouse (talk) 20:40, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
- @Ilovemycatmouse: Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! I don't know what you mean by making a title. Do you mean creating a page? Or changing the title of an article? If you give me more details, I might know what you mean and be able to help you. ~ rusty meow ~ 21:33, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Question from Ilovemycatmouse (17:34, 11 April 2026)
[edit]I am trying to change the title of the article but I believe I have found the answer to my question thanks a lot anyway though! --Ilovemycatmouse (talk) 17:34, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
- You're welcome and happy editing! ~ rusty meow ~ 23:18, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

If this was the first article that you created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.
You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.
The page Draft:Roblox Plus has been speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This was done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seemed to be unambiguous advertising which only promoted a company, group, product, service, person, or point of view and would need to have been fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations for more information.
Please do not recreate the material without addressing these concerns, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If you think this page should not have been deleted for this reason, or you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 18:55, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
- @Rsjaffe: should post this on User talk:Wlfqa, article was created on their behalf ~ rusty meow ~ 21:43, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
- Sorry, automated tools strike again. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 21:52, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
- No worries! ~ rusty meow ~ 23:18, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
- Sorry, automated tools strike again. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 21:52, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-16
[edit]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
- Experienced editors are invited to test the Article guidance feature, designed to help less-experienced editors create well-structured, policy-compliant Wikipedia articles. Testing instructions are available. Also, after reviewing the outlines, please provide feedback on the project talk page. Based on your input, the feature will be refined and transferred to the pilot Wikipedias to translate and adapt. Check out the video explaining the feature.
Updates for editors
- On most wikis, all autoconfirmed users can now use Special:ChangeContentModel page to create new pages with custom content models, such as mass message lists, making custom page formats more accessible. Check Special:ListGroupRights for the status of your wiki. [6]
- The Growth team has launched an account creation experiment to evaluate whether adding an account creation button to the mobile web header increases new account registrations and encourages more mobile users to contribute to the wikis. The experiment is currently live on Hindi, Indonesian, Bengali, Thai, and Hebrew Wikipedia, and targets 10% of logged-out mobile web users.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where VisualEditor could get stuck loading on Windows devices with animations turned off, has now been fixed. [7]
Updates for technical contributors
- Starting later this week, Edit filter managers who have the Improved Syntax Highlighting beta feature enabled will have CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor as the editor at Special:AbuseFilter. This is part of the broader effort to make the user experience more consistent across all editors. [8][9]
- Tools and bots that access the Notifications API (
action=query&meta=notifications) will need to update their OAuth or BotPassword grants to also include access to private notifications. [10] - Due to a library upgrade, listings on category pages may be displayed out of order starting on Monday, 20th April. A migration script will be run to correct this, and will take hours to days depending on the size of the wiki (up to a week for English Wikipedia). [11]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 15:17, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
Updates
[edit]Hi Rusty Cat,
Hope all is well. I want to add some recent news to the article Truly Adams. Is it simply adding a new references to the page? Also I need to add a profile pic. What is the best option for the different Common choices? It's a little confusing. Thanks! Karmel Humphrey (talk) 22:21, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
- @Karmel Humphrey:
- To add the news, you should just be able to add some content and a source and be good to go.
- To upload to image to Commons, I'll first want to know where the image came from.
- If it's taken by you, you can go ahead and upload it. Choosing any of the three license options CC0, CC BY 4.0, or CC BY-SA 4.0 should be fine.
- If it's taken by someone else, they need to release it under a license that gives everyone the right to use the image freely (e.g. Public Domain, CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA).
- Feel free to follow up if you have any questions. ~ rusty meow ~ 22:38, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
- Awesome. Thank you Rusty! Karmel Humphrey (talk) 00:04, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
Hello! Ok. --MatrxCN (talk) 13:16, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
About the draft "Konankeri, Belagavi"
[edit]The article I made, "Konankeri, Belagavi" was moved to draftspace. Then I realized an article "Konankeri" is about the same topic so I want to turn the page a redirect to the "Konankeri" page, but when I tried that, you declined the submission. So I'm asking how can I make the page a redirect and should I? 𝕷𝖆𝖛𝖆𝕾𝖆𝖑𝖙𝕬𝕺𝖅 - 𝖑 (talk) 18:14, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
- @LavaSalt402: According to my decline message you should use Wikipedia:Article_wizard/Redirects for redirects.
- Thanks, ~ rusty meow ~ 19:06, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Question from Billy bishop1 (21:59, 16 April 2026)
[edit]Hi Mentor, I’m new to Wikipedia and would like to contribute and post my personal article on here some day. How do you recommend I best start contributing to the community? and what are some guidelines you can provide for editing and posting articles.
Also I would like some guidance on editing using sandbox.
Thank you
Looking forward to hearing from you. --Billy bishop1 (talk) 21:59, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
- @Billy bishop1: Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! You could check out your homepage and the Task Center for some beginner-friendly tasks to do.
- If you're looking to create an article, check out Help:Your first article for some helpful resources on writing an article, including--most importantly--whether the subject is notable, or warrants an article in the first place.
- The sandbox is a place to practice editing. There are two types of sandboxes--the community sandbox (at Wikipedia:Sandbox) and your personal sandbox (accessible via the user dropdown in the top right, then "Sandbox"). If you want to write an article, you could either start it in your personal sandbox, or create a draft article (through Articles for Creation)--but the review/publishing process will be the same either day.
- Happy editing, ~ rusty meow ~ 20:53, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Dave Horrigan’ wiki article
[edit]RC,Billy Bishop you are correct in that I wrote the article myself. Apologies for the delay in responding. I am preparing for the Sea Air and Space military conference next week. I was selected to speak there two years ago. One hundred applicants, six selected to present. Therein lies the issue. There is no easily accessible public reference other than email or texts. Even the Inventor of the Year awards from the San Diego Inventors Forum failed to publish those awards to the general public. The books - one published by Home Planet Books (HPB has since closed), the other is available on Apple Books. The South China Morning Post has all my articles online, but I believe you must register to view them. The San Diego Union-Tribune was caught selling my articles to other newspapers and, as a result of losing the lawsuit, removed all my columns from their website.
My patents are available in the public domain and they are a big deal but I am not seeking glory. Aside from the fact that no one else knows of all these events, I have people asking. I have a BLOG site (futureinsights.blob) it only briefly covers my accomplishments through my nonfiction postings.
Given that this is a time-consuming project and it is, at best, a frail wisp of my accomplishments, I am going to let it go for now. My late wife, Bonnie Horrigan, who published in numerous peer-reviewed, indexed medical journals, always had trouble with ill-informed Wikipedia editors, and I don’t really have time for the dozens of little battles that would follow here. I am working with an agent for my books, and they will provide all the celebrity I can tolerate.
Thank you for your time and insight.
David Horrigan (talk) 17:10, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
- @David Horrigan: Sometimes, Wikipedia might not be the best place for something, and no amount of trying will get you there. I'm not trying to demotivate you, but as you said yourself, the problem lies in the lack of sources.
- If you'd like to contribute information from your topics of expertise to Wikipedia, that'd be excellent, but you don't have to.
- Finally, on ill-informed Wikipedia editors. Wikipedia revolves around its core policies and guidelines, which require sources (verifiability). If I accepted the draft, sooner or later it would get deleted by someone else (probably someone more experienced than me).
- However, it's not an uncommon occurrence for someone's article to be declined for the same reasons as yours. Also, know that it's not personal.
- Thanks, ~ rusty meow ~ 13:57, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Hi, I was looking for information on the Ford Model T transmission. I find that the paragraph is not clear, for example I suspect that the "lever mounted to the road side of the drivers seat" is the same as the "floor lever" but cannot be sure, and there are at least four more issues which I cannot fix because I do not have the information.
I would like to bring these questions to the attention of someone who does have detailed knowledge of the Model T. | did find a place to add comments before I had problems logging and now created a new account, but I seem to have lost it, and it miht not have been the best way to handle this, anyway.
Can you please give me advice?
Following this, I hope to create a page for "ordre des cols durs" which is a cycling organisation - I started to do that around 15 years ago!
Cheers, Rod --RDalitz (talk) 10:00, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-17
[edit]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
- After two years of development, Improved Syntax Highlighting, also known as CodeMirror 6, is to be promoted out of beta on Tuesday, April 21. It brings better code and wikitext readability, reduction in typing errors, and other benefits to all users of the standard syntax highlighter. A huge thank you to volunteer Bhsd who developed many of the new features, including code folding, autocompletion, and linting. [12]
- A major update to the Wikipedia app for iOS is now rolling out, redesigning the interface to align with Apple's latest "Liquid Glass" visual design. Download the latest version and explore the update.
Updates for editors
- Reading lists is a feature which allows readers to save articles to a list for reading later. This feature is now in beta on Arabic, French, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Chinese Wikipedias and by default for all new accounts on all Wikipedias.
- An experiment which explores extending Page Previews to mobile web will be launched in the week of April 20 on Arabic, English, French, Italian, Polish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Page Previews are pop-ups that display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and a link to open the full article of a blue link, thereby improving content discovery. The feature is already available on desktop and in the apps. Read more about this experiment and others.
- On several wikis, logged-in editors who haven't confirmed their email addresses can now see a banner encouraging them to do so. Having the email address confirmed allows a user to restore access to the account if they lose it. Learn more. [13]
View all 15 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where editing very large wiki pages in the 2017 wikitext editor caused slow loading, preview and scrolling lag, and performance issues when selecting, cutting, or pasting content, has now been fixed. [14]
Updates for technical contributors
- As part of the promotion of CodeMirror from a beta feature, all users will use CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor for syntax highlighting when editing JavaScript, CSS, JSON, Vue and Lua content pages. [15]
- The
mirrors.wikimedia.orgservice for Debian and Ubuntu users will sunset and stop working on May 15. The resources for the service will be replaced with new and better options. Some users may need to switch to a different server which should take about a minute. You can read more. [16] - The
imageandoldimagetable will be removed from wikireplicas. If your tools or queries accessimageoroldimagedirectly, please update them to use thefileandfilerevisiontable before 28 May. [17] - Following the recent implementation of global API rate limits on unidentified traffic, the Wikimedia Foundation will continue efforts to ensure fair use of infrastructure by applying global limits to identified API traffic beginning the last week of April. These limits are intentionally set as high as possible to minimise impact on the community. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
- The Attribution API is now available as a beta. The API fetches information for crediting Wikimedia articles and media files wherever they are used. Reference documentation is available through the REST Sandbox special page available on all Wikimedia wikis (such as the REST sandbox on English Wikipedia). Share your feedback on the project talk page.
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.