Latest comment: 13 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we talk about two new capabilities addressing the issues of caching and freshness of function call results, we introduce our groundwork to support the first pilot communities for Abstract Wikipedia, we discuss news in Types, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Following an RfC, late signatures added to administrator recall petitions after 720 hours from opening are reverted or struck and do not count towards the threshold, even if the petition has not yet been formally closed.
The post-May 2026 administrator elections RfCs concluded with consensus for election monitors to curate blatantly inappropriate questions after posting, and to remove or merge true duplicates, clearly marking merged questions. Calls for candidates will include advisory guidance that users with less than one year’s experience or 5,000 edits generally lack a realistic chance of success.
Technical news
Interface administrators no longer need to specify the ResourceLoader option in the definitions for gadgets on MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition as gadgets are always loaded through ResourceLoader. (T298199)
The list=abusefilters API module now supports formatversion=2 and includes breaking changes to its responses. In particular, the actions property is now a JSON array rather than a string, regardless of the format version. Maintainers of user scripts and other code using this module should check compatibility and update their code as needed. (T435828)
Doug Weller passed away on 30 September 2026. Doug Weller began editing Wikipedia in 2006 and became an administrator in 2008, making nearly 275,000 edits over two decades. He served on the Arbitration Committee from 2015 through 2018 and was also a longtime CheckUser and Oversighter.
Latest comment: 10 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2026-10-05. Missed the previous one? See issue #751.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot:
SaadBot - Task/s: A read-only (no edits) entity lookups for an academic research project building a relation triplet extraction (RTE) dataset from web text.
OKA bot - Tasks: Improve Wikidata items using authoritative open datasets, e.g., national mapping data and reference works: add sources, fill gaps, create missing items and report conflicts from the Swisstopo dataset and its subsets.
FoxfindingBot - Task/s: Passively enrich existing Wikidata games with gog.com metadata
Wahl.de Bot - Task/s: Keep mandate data of German parliamentary members current. Edits to end date (P582), successor/replaced by (P1366), start time (P580), parliamentary term (P2937)retrieved and sourced from official sources.
(Deutsch) Wikidata Writing Workshop, takes place Saturday, 31 October, 10:00 to 13:00 CEST at the Aargauer Kantonsbibliothek, Obere Vorstadt 6, 5000 Aarau.
RLUK DSF | Linked data and the research library - explores how libraries are engaging with linked data (including Wikidata) and what this means for metadata creation, management, and discovery.
Mergers & Acquisitions: A Wikidata Merge Assistant, a new web app that surfaces possible duplicate items from Wikidata and provides a simple interface for evaluating the candidate pairs and merging them together or marking them as different.
has language or spelling variant (the (multilingual) label of the linked item is a a language, spelling or etymological variation of the label of this item)
REST API: Continuing the work on adding support for lexicographical data, specifically creating a statement, Form and Sense on a Lexeme
Wikidata integration in the Wikimedia projects: We are continuing to look into raising the entity usage limit. We are setting up monitoring to see how much it can reduce the amount of Recent Changes entries triggered from Wikidata.
Mobile editing of statements: We continued addressing the remaining UX issues, including RTL and Kartographer issues
hCaptcha: We are planning the support for it to Wikibase-specific pages like Special:New Item
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 process for this year’s Community Wishlist has been published, incorporating community feedback. The wish submission process will end on November 8. This year, a working group (open for volunteering) that includes community members familiar with the technical aspect of our wikis alongside Wikimedia Foundation staff, will take care of the triage process. The triage is expected to be completed by late November. Votes for wishes will start in January.
Updates for editors
Editors using the visual editor will now see a warning when they paste text that is likely to have initially been copied from one of five external generative AI chatbots into Wikipedia. This feature is known as LLM Paste Check. It is a type of Edit Check that is community configurable. The check looks for markers in the copied HTML and is not using content watermark detection. Edits will also be tagged so that patrollers can review them more closely. The feature helps newcomers add content that respects Wikipedia’s policies and makes it easier for experienced editors to identify problematic edits. Communities with local policies about LLM usage can adjust the wording and policy that is linked. The team apologizes that this was rolled out without a delay for translations.
Editors can now easily access the web visual editor directly from the iOS and Android apps. When opening the editor, users will be given a choice between visual editing and source editing. If they choose visual editing, they will be sent to a mobile web window in their phone's browser. After completing their edit, a banner will give them the option to return to the app. This enables readers to make quick contributions while casually reading.
Users of the Wikipedia Android and iOS apps will now see a one-time account creation prompt after they have used the app for two consecutive weeks. This prompt explains the benefits of having an account. It is intended to help more casual readers become logged-in users who return to the apps regularly.
Editors on group1 wikis, including Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource, will no longer see notifications on Recent Changes and Watchlist when a link to another language version of a page is added, removed, or changed in its Wikidata item. This change will begin on October 5 at 07:00 UTC as a two-week trial to reduce high-volume, low-value notifications and make important changes easier to identify. Editors who rely on these notifications can read more on the project page and share feedback or concerns on the talk page.
View all 36 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where mentors who removed themselves from the mentorship program could still have mentees assigned to them and receive questions, has now been fixed. Mentees will now be reassigned when a mentor leaves the program.
Updates for technical contributors
Wikimedia Brasil has published its Development Best Practices Framework (ABPD). It is a guide for staff, contractors and volunteers building technical tools and projects. It covers the project lifecycle, security, accessibility, personal data protection and responsible AI use, and explains how movement-wide guidelines were adapted to a local context. They encourage other affiliates to reuse it and adapt it. Read more in the Diff post.
A new, canonical base URL for Wikimedia APIs will soon be introduced. The new canonical route follows a {projectName}/api/ pattern and will act as an alternative path for current REST APIs (for example: {projectName}/w/rest.php/). Both versions will be callable for all existing APIs, but the new structure will be the preferred path for newly created API modules. This change will be non-breaking for most users. The existing pathways will remain available for all existing endpoint requests. However, some endpoints may return URLs following the new pattern in response bodies. Changes will be available on test wiki first, with the rollout expected to cover all wikis by the end of October.
On 13 Oct, we will start the voting phase. The candidate subpages will close to public questions and discussion, and everyone will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for.
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
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Latest comment: 5 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we discuss the work we have planned for this quarter (October-December 2026), we introduce news in Types, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
Latest comment: 3 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2026-10-12. Missed the previous one? See issue #752.
Discussions
Open request for adminship:
DERDAKI ILIAS - RfP scheduled to end after 13 October 2026 11:19 (UTC)
Aue Nai - RfP scheduled to end after 15 October 2026 02:58 (UTC)
New requests for permissions/Bot:
OKA bot 2 - Tasks: Two additional datasets for the (already approved task of OKA bot). For each entry, the bot finds the matching item, adds the identifier if it is missing, and adds the facts the entry states, each referenced to the entry.
MisovalkoProfileBot - Task: A narrowly scoped source-verification and, only if approved, existing-item update process for Q97454550.
RegularBot 4 - Task/s: Create new items from Wikipedias.
GZWDer (flood) 8 - Task/s: Adding mul labels and aliases; cleanup existing labels in certain cases. No edits to other people's biographies, invented conference items, undocumented private engagements, unsupported future appearances, or promotional link dumps.
See the full program, sessions will repeat for different timezones
Wikidata's 14th Birthday is coming, 29 October. Join the Birthday call and see what presents have been prepared, and see what community events are happening near you.
Wikidata Reference Validator - A tool which helps validate external references of Wikidata items to check if their links are still accessible or now offline. This matters because we want to ensure that we have solid references for statements in Wikidata, so we can demonstrate how we know what we know
October 13–19: SecurePoll voting phase (we are here)
Scrutineering phase
In the voting phase, the candidate subpages close to public questions and discussion, and everyone who qualifies to vote has a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's vote total during the election. The suffrage requirements are similar to those at RFA.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for a few days, perhaps longer. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (this is a good page to watchlist), and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a non-recall candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and a minimum of 20 support votes. Recall candidates must achieve 55.0% support. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
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Latest comment: 2 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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 <refname=":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. <refname="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.
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.
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.
Latest comment: 2 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on September 25. Please help translate.
Screenshot of the Thanks feature.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
