User talk:Mike Peel
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Tech News: 2026-42
[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
- Starting October 13, wikis can change the default pattern for auto-generated reference names in VisualEditor (currently
<ref name=":1" />). They will be able to use human-readable, content-based reference names that are more helpful to contributors using the source editor (e.g.<ref name="Miller2026-1" />). VisualEditor reference name patterns can be defined using MediaWiki system messages, JSON, templates and modules (more information). Admins can enable these changes via community configuration. This is a community wish implemented by WMDE Technical Wishes. - Sub-referencing is a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details. It will be deployed to English Wikipedia on October 14 and to remaining Wikimedia Foundation wikis by end of October (likely October 21). The FAQ lists possible actions to take on your wiki to support the deployment. This is a long-standing community wish implemented by WMDE Technical Wishes.
Updates for editors
- Moderator Tools will be removing the list view of the Watchlist and defaulting everyone to the changelog view. Previously, there were two versions of how the Watchlist is shown to mobile web users: the list view, where editors could see watched articles in a list format, and the changelog view, where editors could see changes to watched articles in a log format, controlled by a user's Advanced Mobile Control settings. This has created issues for code-base maintenance: two different displays means two sets of code to manage. By defaulting to the changelog view, we are simplifying the codebase and avoiding the likelihood of missing bugs.
- The Wikipedia Android app is testing a way to listen to article introductions in the “For you” feed. A text-to-speech model reads the existing article text aloud without rewriting it or adding any content. The 30-day experiment will begin in the Wikipedia Beta app during the third week of September, then move to the regular Wikipedia Android app in October for a limited group of eligible users. A small portion of app users (those with English feeds and at least one topic interest) will have access to the feature. This experiment is part of broader efforts to give app readers options in how they consume content in order to deepen engagement and user retention. Learn more and share feedback.
- CodeMirror syntax highlighting was enabled by default for all logged out and newly registered users on the English Wikipedia on September 14. With no signs of adverse effects, the same change is being proposed to be made globally across all wikis in a few weeks. If you have concerns or feedback, or if your wiki would like to opt out, please see the help page.
- Wikidata mobile statement editing of all datatypes will be officially launched on October 13, when it will be removed from Wikidata beta features and become available to all editors. Users can report bugs and share feedback.
- Last week, language link changes were removed from Recent Changes and Watchlist feeds on Wikivoyage, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikiquote and Wiktionary. As no adverse effects have been observed, the Wikidata For Wikimedia Projects plans to roll out this change globally to all Wikipedias. This is scheduled for October 13 at 07:00 UTC, after which editors will no longer see when a link to another language version of a page is added, removed, or changed in its Wikidata item. Editors who rely on these notifications can read more on the project page and share feedback or ask to opt out their wiki on the talk page.
View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where accidentally touching the graph while scrolling on the Pageviews tool on mobile could unintentionally zoom in has now been fixed. Click-and-drag zoom is now disabled on touch devices.
Updates for technical contributors
- There are three major changes coming to dumps: the legacy content dumps deprecated in January 2026 will now be sunset, the replacement MediaWiki Content File Exports will be delayed to implement a “safety buffer”, and they are now also available as 7zip-compressed files. Users will need to switch the URL they download their dump from. For more information, timeline and migration instructions, see Legacy content dumps sunset.
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- The Wikimedia Foundation discovered unauthorized activity by OpenAI agents on Wikimedia projects, including edits to wikis, attempts to exploit a public note-taking tool, and heavy automated traffic. Read the blog post on Diff for more details about the activity and the Foundation’s response.
Meetings and events
- Save the date for the next Wikimedia Hackathon! We’ll be meeting in lovely Tirana, Albania for the 2027 Wikimedia Hackathon from April 9–11, 2027. Scholarship and staff sponsorship applications are currently being accepted through Pretix and will close on October 30, 2026. General registration will open in January 2027.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 19
[edit]
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on September 25. Please help translate.
Highlights
- Community Wishlist: Community Wishlist is looking for volunteers to join their working group. You can find details on the goal of the group, roles and expectations, norms we'll follow, and how to sign up on this Meta-Wiki page.
- Human knowledge at stake: Wikimedia Foundation makes the case for human knowledge at the UN General Assembly and how scrapers are straining our infrastructure and the larger human knowledge ecosystem online.
- Joy of contributing: How a simple thanks fuelled one of our Wikimedians of the Year as they connect the community.
- PTAC technical topics: The Product and Technology Advisory Council calls for the community to suggest topics that it should consider and discuss with the Wikimedia Foundation. Submit your topic on the council’s talk page.
- Wikimania scholarship deadline extended: The deadline for Wikimania 2027 scholarship applications has been extended through the end of day on November 4, 2026 (Anywhere on Earth). This is to compensate for a pause in the application window on October 15, 2026 from 1pm to 6pm UTC, to allow for an upgrade to the LimeSurvey platform.
Annual Goals Progress on Engage
See also: Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia
- OpenAI agent activities on Wikimedia projects: The Wikimedia Foundation have discovered some activity by “rogue” OpenAI agents on Wikimedia platforms. These unauthorized bot activities included edits to our wikis, some unsuccessful attempts to exploit a public note-taking tool we host, and heavy traffic.
- Listening to Wikipedia: The Phase 1 experiment for Listening to Article intros within the Android app’s “For you” feed has been released into the Wikipedia Beta App. This experiment tests whether adding a listening format into the "For you" feed has the potential to deliver improvements in reader retention.
- Wikimedia Hackathon: The 2027 Wikimedia Hackathon will be taking place in person April 9-11, 2027 in Tirana, Albania. Scholarship applications are open until October 30.
- Bookmark button on mobile web: Logged-out Wikipedia users on mobile web will begin to see a bookmark button for saving articles to their reading lists instead of the current Watchstar button. When clicked, the bookmark button prompts users to log in or create an account to save an article for later, to encourage more readers to become account holders.
- Abstract Wikipedia piloting showing articles to readers: Three initial pilot communities are currently working with the team to explore using abstract articles on their Wikipedias: Malayalam, Dagbani, and Igbo.
- Simplifying account creation: An experiment has begun on Spanish, Arabic, English, and French Wikipedias to simplify the experience users encounter immediately after account creation. The test will explore whether removing friction from the current Welcome Survey helps new users understand what to do next more easily.
- Suggestions mode: It is now possible for communities to configure Edit Checks and Suggestions so that they are shown within additional namespaces, such as a
Draft:namespace. Feedback is welcome. - Latest experiments: An upcoming experiment is testing a personalised module, called 'Review Changes', for Home which aims to introduce newer editors to the concept of reviewing the edits that other users are making. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
- Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 40 and 41 include users of default skins on desktop and mobile web will now be informed if the search results displayed come from page redirects. See also the 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Annual Goals Progress on Enable
See also: Research newsletter · WikiLearn News · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org
- Wikimedia Enterprise: Mantic Uses Wikimedia Enterprise to Power AI Forecasting.
- Improving developers experience: Two new features has been shipped to improve developer experience: Spiderpig (deployment web interface) which allows developers to leave notes for each other about errors they see in the logs and Patchdemo, which now supports in-browser code editing, so developers can make quick changes without needing to push a new patch and recreate the demo.
- Strengthening infrastructure: To reduce the workload from non-pageview requests, the overall number of database queries per logged-out pageview has been reduced by 52%, from a baseline of 23 queries/pageview in August, to 11 queries/pageview today. Read more.
- Increasing test reliability: To reduce friction in post-merge validation and ultimately improve confidence in release decisions: Catalyst was proven to be a much more reliable environment to run daily Selenium tests (95.7% eventually green) compared with the beta cluster (79.1% over the same 10 suites). This gives confidence to automatically catch issues before they reach production.
Annual Goals Progress on Protect
See also: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog
- Transparency Report: The latest Transparency Report has been published. Out of 953 requests for content alteration and takedown, only 2 requests were granted. The Foundation continues to prioritize the public interest and is guided by the content moderation policies the volunteer community has shaped over the past 25 years.
Annual Goals Progress on Reach
See also: Wikimedia Apps · Readers
- Grantmaking: Two reflections on transferring ownership of Rapid Funds to Wikimedia organizations.
Board and Board committee updates
See also: Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter
- Affiliations Committee: Wikimedia Affiliations Committee Has New Officers and Advisors. Read also the latest issue of the AffCom News to learn more about their work.
- Governance committees looking for volunteers: Ombuds Commission (OC) and Case Review Committee (CRC) welcome new volunteers to contribute to important work across the Wikimedia ecosystem. Applications will open until October 31. Learn more about the committees, the roles, and how to apply on the Metapage.
- Board of Trustees Elections Process: The Board has reviewed the feedback received since July on its elections process proposal, and thanks everyone who shared input on Wiki, in person, or directly with Trustees. Based on that feedback, the Governance Committee has moved away from the eligibility criteria approach and developed two new options for the 2027 selection process and beyond. We'd like your feedback again before deciding. Please read the proposal and share your feedback on the Meta-Wiki talk page by October 27.
Other Movement-curated newsletters & news
Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · The Headword (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l'actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · 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. If you have feedback or suggestions about the bulletin, let us know at foundationbulletin@wikimedia.org. For questions about the Wikimedia Foundation's work, contact us!
The Signpost: 13 October 2026
[edit]- News and notes: AELECT returns, Jimbo gives a union update, VisualEditor is now default
Plus a survey for North Americans, proposed changes to BoT elections, and developments in the Puerto Rican editing community.
- Serendipity: From a rare portrait of a female millionaire in Nancy to a Japanese painter in Lyon
Images from Leuven Libraries popular on Wiki.
- Obituary: Doug Weller
Twenty-year editor, long-term admin, dearly missed.
- In the media: A(I)pocalypses afoot
Cannibals, freeloaders, rogue agents, scams ... the usual.
- WikiConference Report: WikiConference 2026 & the importance of in-person community
Celebrating 12 years of WikiConference North America.
- By the numbers: Does the country of birth affect the likelihood of having a Wikipedia biography?
A cross-country and cross-wikipedia comparison of the likelihood of having a biography in Wikipedia.
- News from Diff: OpenAI "rogue" agent activities found on Wikimedia projects
CPO/CTO Selena Deckelmann explains the recent detection of AI agent activities on Wikimedia projects.
- On the bright side: Good people
Nice comments and real-life rescuers.
- Op-ed: Who are our readers?
The movement makes progress when we know what our scope is.
- Traffic report: This world is big and wild and half insane
Criminals, 9/11 25 years later, artists expelled for politics... we lived in troubled times.
- Comix: Fudging the numbers
Take 'em away, officers!
New cross-language page link: T. J. Thyne
[edit]A new page T. J. Thyne on the Czech Wikipedia has been linked to the page T. J. Thyne, which you created, via Wikidata (Q361158).
You will not be notified about future links to pages you created. To opt in to these notifications, follow the opt-in instructions.
Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #269: Changes in evaluator representations
[edit]There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we introduce our latest changes in evaluator representations, 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) 10:46, 17 October 2026 (UTC)
Affiliations Committee News (April-September 2026)
[edit]You can find this newsletter translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.
2026 is Wikimedia Affiliations Committee's 20th Anniversary
Affiliate Recognition and Derecognition: On August 26, the Affiliations Committee (AffCom) announced the extension of the pause on new affiliate recognition, which began in August 2025. The extension follows the Wikimedia Foundation's decision to extend the feedback period for the "Recognition and Funding for Movement Organizations" proposal, giving communities and affiliates more time to share input.
AffCom Movement Contributions: Throughout the past quarter, AffCom continued to engage in conversations across the Wikimedia Movement, particularly where discussions touched on the pause on recognition or where the committee’s experience could contribute to broader Movement conversations.
AffCom Administration: The Wikimedia Affiliations Committee has new Officers and Advisors
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:30, 17 October 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-43
[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
- To measure the impact of incorporating some community-requested features on logged-out reader retention, a test for Image Carousel will be pushed to logged-out readers. With the Image Carousel feature, readers browse community-uploaded images, selected by editors as relevant to specific articles. The test starts on November 20.
- An experimental notice will be pushed to 0.5% of logged-out mobile readers who come to English Wikipedia from Google, asking them to add Wikipedia as a Google Preferred Source. The test is to see if this notice increases reader retention and encourages people who use Google Search to visit Wikipedia more often. It will run from October 15–29 and will be assessed for its impact on retention and referrals.
- View all 26 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where Quarry returned an “Access denied” error when users tried to run SQL queries, preventing queries from running normally, has now been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
Due to a long-standing bug, applications that use the OAuth 2 client credentials flow to act on their owners’ behalf are treated as if they are logged out. This will be fixed for new applications registered on or after Monday, October 19. Some affected applications need to re-register. - Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- A proposal to hold the Wikimedia Hackathon every three years, with regional hackathons in between, has been shared. It explores making the event more accessible to technical communities in different regions. Share your feedback on the proposal’s talk page before November 6.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Brighton meetup, 31 October
[edit]Hi Mike, apologies for the short-ish notice. The next Brighton meetup is on 31 October. Would be great to see you if you can make it! Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:11, 19 October 2026 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #754
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Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-10-19. Missed the previous one? See issue #753.
week leading up to 2026-10-19. Missed the previous one? See issue #753.
Discussions
- New requests for permissions/Bot:
- OKA Bot 3 - Task/s: Reference works and registers, like Task 2 (Historical Dictionary of Switzerland and Store norske leksikon). Each item-linked entry, adds statements, references, sources where value is same and missing identifiers.
- UBZH Videothek Bot - Task/s: Add external identifiers of films and film directors/people to existing items (from film catalogue of the University Library of Zurich: UZH, Videothek database).
- EZBIDsBot - Task/s: Adding EZB ID, ZDB ID, website URL, Print ISSN, and Online ISSN from EZB dataset where they are missing in Wikidata.
- Closed request for comments: Schema Virtual tour - the RfC has been inactive since 2025, but discussion can continue on a dedicated page: Schema Proposals/Virtual Tour
Events
- Upcoming events:
- The Query Service Days is currently ongoing! We still have many great sessions left so don't miss out, especially if you use SPARQL, {{Wikidata List}} or the query service (WDQS) in anyway...here's some helpful links:
- Register to get access to the live-sessions
- See the full program, including links to the previous sessions and recordings.
- Wikidata's 14th Birthday is approaching soon...see what events are planned on the Calendar or near you on the Map.
- Rutgers University is holding 2 Wikidata Edit-A-Thons, open to all students, faculty, staff and community members. No Wikidata experience is required.
- Newark Activists, Artists, Academics edit-a-thon, Oct 19, 12:00 - 14:00 EDT
- Black Bibliograohy edit-A-Thon, Oct 21, 12:00 - 16:00 EDT
- Drop in and Wikidata (Oct), a community call and live session will take place 29 Oct, 19:00 pm – 20:30 pm AEDT
- The Query Service Days is currently ongoing! We still have many great sessions left so don't miss out, especially if you use SPARQL, {{Wikidata List}} or the query service (WDQS) in anyway...here's some helpful links:
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Blogs:
- Papers:
- Does the country of birth affect the likelihood of having a Wikipedia biography?, The Signpost, October 13, 2026
- Using Wikidata to find duplicates in the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF) - Librarians used Wikidata queries to identify and resolve duplicate records in the Library of Congress Name Authority File, improving 1,559 Wikidata items and reporting 166 duplicate records for deletion over six months. By Muratsubaki, (2026).
- Videos:
- Datasets: A dataset comparing Wikipedia biographies count to UN birth estimates by country, gender, and language edition". Codeberg, 2026-07-12, https://codeberg.org/pac2/biographies-vs-births
Tool of the week
- Script newentity.js Generates new items (including lexemes) from the given JSON object. The tool was created by User:GZWDer
Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Upcoming changes to XML dumps
- Mobile statement editing, now available to all editors
- Wikimania scholarships
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- Newest properties:
- General datatypes:
- European Legislation Identifier (EU) (EU legislation identifier for documents published by the EU, its member states and other (non-EU) countries)
- External identifiers: YouSaid person ID, StoryGraph book ID, Scholastica scholar ID, Ohio Entity Number, Lrytas.lt topic ID, ISDCF studio identifier, ISDCF facility identifier, Calames archives ID, Hannah Arendt edition person ID, Climate Policy Radar Topics, E-CRIS.SR ID, Demko ID, Delfi.lt topic ID, Beeld & Geluid program ID, Baza osób polskich ID, BallotReady person ID, swissNAMES3D ID
- General datatypes:
- New property proposals to review:
- General datatypes:
- National Encyclopedia of Uzbekistan article (A reference to an article in the printed National Encyclopedia of Uzbekistan, identified by its volume and page number.)
- juvenile form of (taxon (or taxa) of which instances of this item may be juveniles)
- development code (code assigned by a company or research organisation to a drug substance or product during development, before or alongside its nonproprietary name)
- part of the observance of (holiday or observation on which this tradition is observed, this item is used, or with which this character is associated)
- External identifiers: ID závodiště podle českého Jockey Clubu, German War Memorial Website ID, ERef Bayreuth ID, EPub Bayreuth ID, Kansallinen Liiga player ID, SPL person ID, Weilbachs Kunstnerleksikon, Inscriptions of Aphrodisias ID, The Session composer ID, Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania 2021 ID, Filmoteket, Ecocard ID, Kanalregister, IBA cocktail ID
- General datatypes:
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Did you know?
- Query examples:
- Schema examples: (E208) SPARQL endpoint - entity schema of entities with SPARQL endpoint.
- Newest WikiProjects: Project Lukion taulukot - aims to develop a source-based, mul vocabulary of secondary-school science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) (uses Finnish reference work Lukion taulukot as its starting corpus).
- WikiProject Highlights:
- Project GovDirectory have added an Estonian subpage.
- Project Library and Information Services added a Statistics subpage.
- Project Ethnomusicological descriptors from the University of Turin added an Instruments subpage.
- Newest database reports: Wikidata Query Help - with many database reports using the Query Service as a source, this will be a helpful page for the planned migration.
Development
- Mobile editing of statements: We set the new mobile statement editing UI live for all mobile users
- REST API: We are finishing the work on being able to add Senses to existing Lexemes (phab:T432569)
- Wikidata integration in the other Wikimedia projects:
- Wikidata entities used in this page in the Page Information (example) and Edit source views will now render with their local-language labels (in addition to their QID/PIDs) so it is easier to understand which Items, Properties, etc are used in an article (phab:T440430)
- We are continuing to investigate the impacts of raising the entity usage limit (phab:T441306)
- We are protyping wireframe versions of a new filter on Recent changes and Watchlist for Language Links under "Wikidata Edits" in Active Filters (phab:T441388)
- hCaptcha: We started implementation work for hCaptcha on Wikidata.org (phab:T426089)
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.
Weekly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
- Govdirectory weekly focus country:
- Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
