Note. If you want a pageviews link in the tools menu see here. For a pageviews link below all article and talk page titles turn on Xtools at the bottom of the appearance section of these gadget preferences.
User talk here is not archived. Old talk is deleted. Users are allowed to remove anything from their talk pages, or to ask others not to comment on their talk pages. See WP:OWNTALK and WP:USERTALKSTOP. and other wikipedia guidelines/policies. Like Wikipedia articles over time, people change, and there is little point in referring to past stale arguments and discussions.
To keep the discussion in one thread some comments added here are moved to the user talk page of the author. I reply there. I also watchlist that talk page for awhile in order to note when the user there replies. Harassing comments are also sometimes moved off this talk page. Sometimes the original author is offended by their own harassing comments, and my reply, on their user talk page. They then remove both from their talk page. I guess the light from their own verbal reflection offends them. One can find removed comments by using the history link on a talk page. Inappropriately-applied warning templates, etc.. are also removed from this talk page. Sometimes I remove stuff from my talk page for no particular reason, or for many varied reasons. Removal of comments from my talk page implies nothing. Don't take it personally. Unless I have requested otherwise, feel free to leave new messages on my talk page.
Latest comment: 13 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
I had an image from Flickr from a photographer I just dealt with. He made the mistake of changing his copyright license to a Creative Commons one--but not one we accept. I took his word for it that he removed copyright in favor of Creative Commons, but since I'd just uploaded two of his photos with a correct one we accept, it was my oversight that he made a mistake and I didn't check it. The result of this was that the photo was not accepted in Commons for upload. Fine. But now I can't get the damned thing to upload it now that the license is correct! How RUDE. I've been uploading photos for years- more than any other editor I know of on the en.wikipedia. It is for this photo: . How can I fix this? --Leahtwosaints (talk) 14:38, 16 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
You have GOT to be the coolest Wikisloth with super-powers that I ever met!! For a Sloth, you sure move at a quick pace!!:) Do you wear a "super cape", I wonder? That would really complete the whole outfit and mystique.. I keep trying to think of things I could maybe do for you since you are such a blessing and a help... Hmmm. Did you ever contact Roger Ebert before his untimely demise? Is there perhaps a photo of someone that I can search for on your behalf? Just say the words. I feel a great debt to you for your help over these years. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 12:00, 17 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments1 person in discussion
Could you believe the dark hearts won in deleting this entry? And now an article I started is also up for deletion by some nobody called LuckyLouie. --HafizHanif (talk) 21:24, 19 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Timeshifter, would you be able to give your honest opinion regarding the deletion of Boyd's page? I think my suggestions at the discussion are fair and at least his memory as a scientist should be in wiki, regardless of the mention of any alien stuff. --HafizHanif (talk) 20:19, 21 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
It is interesting how other deleted pages usually have a trail of information, but Boyd's has nothing. I didn't get to read what the final verdict was ( other than obvious deletion ). --HafizHanif (talk) 21:38, 30 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I might have been buzzing through the disambig. page for the Van Morrison/Robbie Robertson song, "Caravan", seen here: Caravan (Van Morrison song) which they played during the filmed final concert "The Last Waltz" - if it's just my need for glasses please forgive me. Hopefully I'll have a computer soon. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 11:10, 22 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
What you saw was Flow.
The WMF has been eliminating most of their talk pages (user pages and some major mainspace pages), so you're forced to use Flow if you want to contact them to discuss problems with their projects. A particular problem is that they switched over all official contacts points related to Flow itself! That is particular problem for discussing Flow bugs. (Writing about the bug *in* Flow triggers the problem!)
You've only seen the tip of the iceberg. The list of problems with Flow is 142 feet long. Copy-paste is broken. A simple revert destroyed my original comment. Problems with templates. History is a disaster. The reply-threading turns modest-size discussions into unreadable spaghetti. You can't delete your own comments, much less someone else's. (You "hide" it, which leaves a link for it on the board.) IMO the biggest issue is that Flow does not store an accurate stable copy of what you write! Flow can randomly rewrite your formatting codes and nowikis etc. The way Flow works is kind of like translating your text into Russian, then translating it from Russian back to English when someone views or edits it. Sometimes those bugs can mangle your entire post into garbage during the rewrite. In fact Flow preforms that round-trip translation every time you try to preview what you wrote. So you preview, return to editing your wikitext, and Flow has REWRITTEN your wikitext! It's like editing on quicksand. There's no "truetext", everything Flow shows you is an illusion created on the fly.
It seems the WMF still wants to eventually get Flow deployed, but the good news is that they've realized that there are serious objections here. They have been *trying* to improve their relations with the community ever since the superprotect incident, with limited success. Putting Flow on hold has been one of the successes. The current official policy is that no Flow pages will be deployed without local consensus requesting it. I think they are hoping the tiny wikis start accepting it, and that eventually all the 'obstructionist-change-averse editors' get dragged along into the wonderful future. BTW there's a doc page where "Admins" and the most "Experienced" editors are defined as the change-averse groups. Lols.
There used to be 7 Flow pages on EnWiki. Activity has dropped to zero on every board where Flow gets deployed. One board was the Flow testing board: it died and was never fixed after an admin tried testing admin tools on it. I had a pair of abandoned boards deleted at MFD. I have another abandoned board at MFD with unanimous deletes so far. I have an open RFC at a dead wikiproject to roll back Flow - I *think* its passing but running an RFC inside Flow is a disaster. We can't move the discussion posts down to a separate discussion area, it's almost impossible to tell who is replying to who, and it is difficult to figure out which posts are !votes. Anyway, assuming it passes, that will leave us with two dead Flow pages. It's possible that EnWiki will be Flow-free in a month or two. I need to contact some of the other language Wikis with Flow to see if they want to move forward with Flow or start rolling it back. Alsee (talk) 17:28, 24 December 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Alsee: Thanks for all the info on Flow! I had to look up MFD. I see that it is Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. Are there any wikis using LiquidThreads still? The WMF or the devs or whoever is in charge (I have no clue), take simple requests for improvement (such as watchlisting sections of talk pages) and then go crazy with complete rewrites of all the code. Same for the request for a WYSIWYG editor. I just wanted a simple WYSIWYG editor that did the simple stuff, and did it in article sections. But they went crazy and created this monster VE that edits the whole page, and tries to do everything the wikitext editor does and more. I just want VE lite for section editing. Bold, italic, links. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:01, 26 December 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, I’m Chris, a community liaison in the Discovery department at the Wikimedia Foundation. One of the projects we’re working on is to bring interactive maps to Wikipedia. If you are interested, I’d like to have an informal conversation with you about your work with WikiProject Maps, and the conventions you all have created. I'd like to learn more about your work and how that might influence the design of interactive maps.
Please let me know of some good times to chat via email and I can setup a meeting for us. I can be reached at ckoernerwikimedia.org.
If you’re not interested, that’s fine. I would appreciate any direction to other editors that have been involved and might be interested.
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hi, I don't know if there is a procedure to let people know when an editor quits to place a semi-retired placard on their talk page. In the case of Catfish Jim, one of my closest editing friends from the past, his talk page is looking like he's here, when it's just Admin and other bots that deposit info on timed intervals. To my knowledge, he hasn't been working since before I went into a coma three years ago. I think it's March 2012: . I'll leave this to you as an Admin. I'm only doing little edits and am still not healed so, if you don't do something with this, I hope you'll pass it to someone who will. Thanks. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 13:09, 27 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
As a member of WikiProject Cannabis, you are invited to help organize the project's upcoming "420" collaboration, which is scheduled for April 2017. Yes, we're a few months away, but we're hoping to get the ball rolling by getting buy-in from experienced Wikipedia editors and seek help fleshing out some goals and ideas for a successful campaign. We also plan to conduct both on-wiki and offlline outreach so non-Wikipedias can also contribute. If you are interested in participating, please sign up and contribute to the ongoing discussions. All editors are welcome! ---Another Believer(Talk)16:55, 10 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Dudley Miles. Thanks. Looks good. I adjusted and clarified a few things. Check history for explanations. I don't have MS Word. So I can't help there. I use freeware LibreOffice. Of that free office suite I only use Calc. And I am a beginner with it. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:02, 5 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 years ago9 comments2 people in discussion
First I noticed that you undid the revision at Template:COVID-19 pandemic death rates by country/styles.css however it doesn't seem you have implemented the changes from User:Timeshifter/Sandbox119 there yet so the table is now no longer scrolling with sticky headers. Are you still planning to re-add those features? If yes is there a reason you're waiting to implement them?
Secondly, are you looking to create a table stylesheet that can be used to implement any of these features more generally, it seems to me this might be a good idea going forward if you are aware of any feature requests that have or are likely to recur.
Apologies if this has been asked and answered elsewhere I don't really have time to read through any of those discussions in full at the moment; thanks for your help. (please ping on reply)
Update: OK I just noticed the link to Template:COVID-19 pandemic death rates on the help talk page; I presume then that this supersedes Template:COVID-19 pandemic death rates by country? If so it should probably be redirected to the new table. Second question still stands; although as I mentioned earlier it will have to be a bit before I can start on it, thanks. (please ping on reply)
Thanks for clearing that up. Well if things are moving fast I probably won't be much help. I may drop in briefly every now and then for the next 2-3 weeks but substantive projects will have to wait until towards the end of the month at least. So I'm about to log-out in a few minutes but if you hit me with a ping I'll see it sooner or later.𝒬𝔔01:11, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Quantocius_Quantotius. I am assuming that the non-scrollable table template does not need the changes you made to it. Since those changes assumed it was a scrollable table. So I will revert your changes. Feel free to add back whatever you think is useful for a non-scrollable table. I haven't been working on that article and its template. Feel free to edit its CSS style sheet now that you know it is for a non-scrollable table.
I have been concentrating on the scrollable tables. Feel free to work on the CSS for those scrollable tables. I am a newb at CSS. I wish there was a collapse button to collapse the scrollable tables back to scrollbox size after they have been fully expanded by the "show all" button. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:27, 7 September 2020 (UTC)Reply
Belatedly Done please see Template:COVID-19 pandemic data. Let me know if there are any issues or if there are any other templates you would like this feature added to.Sorry for the delay, had a lot more IRL stuff to attend to than I anticipated. If I do get a bit of extra time I was planning on setting up a workspace on testWP so we can try to work on some additional css features of general applicability, but I do ask for your patience. I'm already a bit overcommitted to stuff here considering the volunteer time I have available.𝒬𝔔16:16, 25 October 2020 (UTC)Reply
(unindent). Thanks Quantocius Quantotius! There is a problem though. The collapse button only works on the template page. I just noticed this concerning "Show all" too. It works fine on the template pages. But when the 3 templates are together on COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory the buttons only work on the top template. So I guess the classes below are not specific enough. I copied the wikitext below from your recent addition to Template:COVID-19 pandemic data.
It works great on the template pages. But in the article with the 3 templates clicking any of the "show all" buttons in any table other than the top one does nothing. So the collapse buttons do not show up on the lower tables. Since they don't expand.
I created a sandbox just for you where you can experiment:
Izno. I believe you are mistaken. Mediawiki software converts everything it sees into what it puts on the page. The browser sees none of what is in the wikitext until Mediawiki converts it to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc..
<ul> in the wikitext in the case of side-by-side tables and/or images contributes nothing to accessibility.
Side-by-side tables and/or images look exactly the same with or without <ul> in the wikitext.
I am not mistaken. HTML text in wikitext passes straight through the parser as HTML (both Parser.php and Parsoid) in all cases (with some HTML causing additional changes to how the parser deals with the contained text; <pre> is a notable example). That is why we have an allowed list of HTML and CSS directly in the parser as part of Sanitizer.php: we do not want bad-faith actors to use HTML elements in malevolent ways.
Subsequently, to provide valid HTML per the HTML standard, <li> must be placed inside either <ol> or <ul>, whether in an actual HTML document or a MediaWiki wikitext document. Perhaps you did not understand the point that John was making.
(N.b. I am not speaking to wikitext as wikitext just to be clear e.g. * at the beginning of a line.)
If I may butt in: if y'all are talking about this edit vs. this one, then I can definitely see a difference, in both the HTML output and the rendered output of the page. Timeshifter's edit is missing the surrounding <ul></ul> in the browser HTML, and in the rendered output (at least in my browser), the images are placed closer to the left margin. So it seems that John and Izno are correct. WritKeeper⚇♔21:04, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Writ Keeper. See my reply to Izno. Also, John like Izno was talking about inaccessibility problems, not the left margin. John and I discussed this elsewhere. And he did not show any inaccessibility problems. He just suspected there might be some. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:25, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Izno. As you said everything has to go through the parser, sanitizer, etc.. And in some cases the HTML is not allowed to be used. Some deprecated HTML for example. Some works. Some doesn't.
In the case of side-by-side tables I am not seeing any inaccessibility problem. See:
In this case <ul> serves no purpose except to mess up the left margin. Someone complained about this elsewhere. Removing <ul> fixes that problem, and it is more efficient code. Less to remember.
It allows tables to fit in narrower screens too. Since there is no left margin. Narrow your browser window on the sandbox page to see. The horizontal scrollbar shows up sooner on the lower set of side-by-side tables that have <ul>
What inaccessibility problem are you seeing? I see none when doing without <ul> in this sandbox case.
Yeah, no. Bold text that indicates an argument on how your device provides you content isn't how accessibility works. "I like less code" also isn't how we make decisions where accessibility is relevant. Much less conformant HTML. If you personally cannot remember that list item elements must be inside o/ul elements, then you specifically should not revert an editor correcting that issue; if you want to fix any particular display that you do not like, you need to ask how to do that, not revert. In this case, if you want to "fix" the left margin, the way to fix that is to set margin-left: 0 on the list item elements. Izno (talk) 21:33, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Izno. If you google style=display:inline-table you will see it used in many different ways. Many different ways without <ul>. I already knew about margin-left:0
I also already knew how to fix the problem without it. So I fixed it. You have yet to show me why my fix is incorrect. As in how it is inaccessible. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:44, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
You are barking up a totally weird tree if you think my concern has anything remotely to do with CSS display. I am strictly concerned about outputting both valid and accessible HTML, for which you must include ol/ul elements.
Izno. In my first reply to you, I mentioned screenreaders. You have yet to show me a problem with accessibility. There are many cases in wikitext that don't use the same full HTML that one would use as a webmaster. Long ago I did my share of basic web pages on Tripod, Angelfire, Geocities, etc.. So I know the difference. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:00, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Some people use screenreaders even though they have perfect eyesight. Some developers for example. But I take your point, and I ask everybody: What accessibility problems are you claiming? If you don't have a screenreader how can you claim anything unless someone with a screenreader tells you something? Send them to User:Timeshifter/Sandbox153. Ask them if their screenreader detects any difference other than the left margin. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:06, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Okay, first of all, it is not the responsibility of people who need accessibility aids to analyze a page for accessibility issues; it is our responsibility as editors (and as coders) to anticipate and address all such issues proactively. Second of all, look at this: : specifically errors 11 and 12 (further errors suppressed). li tags are invalid HTML when used the way they are. (Granted, there are a ton of other errors, too, but that doesn't mean it's okay for us to throw a bunch more onto the pile; an analogy to WP:OTHERSTUFF comes to mind.) As Izno points out, screen readers parse the HTML structure of a page to present it to their users, and any invalid HTML can cause problems for screen readers; thus, it is incumbent on us as editors to avoid invalid HTML wherever possible, because being proactive about avoiding accessibility issues is our responsibility as editors. We should not wait until a person who depends on a screen reader to complain; if they complain, we have already failed. I don't think "I like the margin padding better" is reasonable as an excuse to use invalid HTML, especially when the same effect can be accomplished with valid HTML, and "I think the HTML looks better" is certainly not a reasonable excuse. Do better. WritKeeper⚇♔22:30, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
I think you are making my case. There are 597 errors on that page. And additional warnings. HTML always has this problem. That is why we have transitional HTML versions, and so on. There will never be perfection.
Until we get someone with a screenreader to check out the sandbox (User:Timeshifter/Sandbox153), we are talking in circles. Mediawiki would be paralyzed if it held up everything until every single change in the mediawiki code was run by someone with a screenreader. And I have heard from someone with a screenreader who pointed out that a Mediawiki problem he experienced was annoying, but that the alternative was worse because it only helped him, but made things seriously worse for far more people. So everything is a balance. I find it annoying that you, John, and Izno are all going on strictly your suspicions, but without any evidence of a problem. I don't think there will be a problem. Screenreaders have no problem with basic tables with a single row of headers. As long as they have captions. That is what we have at User:Timeshifter/Sandbox153. See if you can round up someone with a screenreader. I will too. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:00, 15 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Okay, so this conversation is indeed going around in circles, but I think it's for different reasons than the ones you're thinking. You started out by saying there was no difference in the page between your version and JohnFromPinckney's version: Side-by-side tables and/or images look exactly the same with or without <ul> in the wikitext. That is demonstrably false, though; there is both a visible difference and a difference in the HTML output. When this was pointed out to you, you said In this case <ul> serves no purpose except to mess up the left margin. Someone complained about this elsewhere. Removing <ul> fixes that problem. So, now, you're saying that you see the difference (in the left margin), and are remivng UL tags deliberately to fix that. But you see how that does not correspond with what you said forty minutes earlier and ten lines above, right? You're moving the goalposts. Now, you're demanding that a person who uses a screen reader come in and prove to you that there's an accessibility issue. But it should not take a blind person with a screenreader to tell you that you're messing up the page to convince you to stop inserting invalid HTML into a page. If there are hundreds of HTML problems with a page, we don't fix it by adding ten more. And honestly, the rules of how HTML works should be the baseline for any conversation about HTML in Wikipedia, even before we get into any questions about accessibility. The burden of proof is on you to justify why you're breaking the rules of HTML, and "I don't like the margin (which can be fixed with valid HTML)" and "it's nine bytes less code" does not cut it. WritKeeper⚇♔00:42, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
(unindent). I have been clear all along that other than the left margin, the visible output is the same. Both versions are side by side tables that wrap. Someone else on the Help:Table talk page complained about the left margin. They did not like all the clutter of using <ul style="margin-left:0px;"> to get rid of the left margin. I experimented and noticed that getting rid of <ul> altogether got rid of the left margin. This allowed side by side tables to work in narrower screens with simpler wikitext. It is all on the talk page. You keep thinking that HTML in wikitext has to follow all the rules of HTML elsewhere. According to this w3schools page<p> without </p> is malformed HTML. But Help:HTML in wikitext says: "Note that the closing tag </p> is not strictly necessary for MediaWiki installations that output HTML 5 (such as Wikipedia)." There are many other examples of allowed HTML use in wikitext that does not follow the HTML rules elsewhere.--Timeshifter (talk) 02:00, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
...Okay, I'm not sure how this isn't clear yet, but none of us are concerned about what the HTML looks like in the wikitext (i.e. in the edit box, when you're editing the page). Of course that doesn't have to be valid HTML, because it hasn't gone through the Mediawiki parser to become true HTML yet. What we're all talking about is the output HTML of the rendered page (i.e. what you see if you view the page like a reader would and right-click to view source). The edits you're making are causing errors in the output HTML, *not* the wikitext. As I explained on VPT, the example you give eith the <p> tag is not a relevant comparison. The reason the page says that the closing p tag is optional is because, when the wikitext containing an unclosed p tag goes through the Mediawiki parser, the parser will automatically close the p tag for you. So, while there is an unclosed p tag in the wikitext, there is no unclosed p tag in the output HTML, because the parser fixes it for you. But the parser does not fix orphaned li tags in the same way, so using li tags without an enclosing ul tag will lead to invalid HTML in the output HTML, not just the wikitext. You can see this in action here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=parse&page=User:Writ_Keeper/sandbox . Notice how, although there is an unclosed p tag in the wikitext, the p tag is properly closed, and thus valid HTML, in the HTML code that the parser outputs. They're not the same thing. WritKeeper⚇♔02:20, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
There is lots of other stuff that ends up in the output HTML that is not perfect HTML. Deprecated HTML, etc.. Others in the VPT thread have pointed out various examples. As I have said several times, if it doesn't effect anything then it doesn't matter. You have yet to show that this lack of <ul> here effects anything in a negative way. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:30, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Both JAWS and NVDA detect the version with ul as containing HTML lists but do not detect the HTML lists in the version without ul. Please do not use the latter version. Also, screen readers don't normally detect margins. Graham8702:42, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks Graham. I am confused though since technically there are no lists at all in either section. There are just 2 side by side tables in each of the 2 sections.
But no problem. We no longer need that method that uses the list HTML of li and ul.
isaacl found a simpler solution that only uses divs. It is elegant, legal, and simpler. I pasted it in as a third section on that sandbox page:
Sounds good re divs. Technically there are lists in the section that contains ul ... that is exactly what the ul tag does; it creates an unordered list. Whether it's *semantically* appropriate is another thing entirely ... but a list should be marked up properly in any case. Graham8703:02, 16 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
(unindent). Graham. So your screen readers read the divs option OK at sandbox 153? Or below? I pasted it below so that others reading this thread can check it out too.
Total number of matches played in official competitions only.
Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello:)
I am writing my MA dissertation on Wikipedia Wars and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I noticed that you have contributed to those pages. My dissertation will look at the process of collaborative knowledge production on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the effect it has on bias in the articles. This will involve understanding the profiles and motivations of editors, contention/controversy and dispute resolution in the talk pages, and bias in the final article.
For more information, you can check out my meta-wiki research page or my user page, where I will be posting my findings when I am done.
I would greatly appreciate if you could take 5 minutes to fill out this quick surveybefore 8 August 2021.
Participation in this survey is entirely voluntary and anonymous. There are no foreseeable risks nor benefits to you associated with this project.
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I realize we have been butting heads (in good faith!) a bunch recently. But I wanted to stop by and just say I appreciate the work you do maintaining tables across the website, ensuring text-citation integrity, and helping others understand how to maintain the encyclopedia. Thank you, and happy new year! Enjoy this stroopwafel – I saw "stroopwafel" in the WikiLove menu and needed to see what one is. They look delicious, but I can't say I've heard of one before, much less tried one:)
Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello everyone, and welcome to the 27th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 2025! Boy, does it feel good to kick off the year with an issue. Yep, it's been a year since we cleared out the 2022-2024 backlog with issues 23 and 24! Good times. Though in this case "a year" just means... 6 months? 😯 The salience of whatever joke I was planning to make here has vanished speedily. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:00, 31 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
WikiTextExpander by Polygnotus, is this edition's featured script. At the click of a configurable hotkey, this script will find and replace or link a configurable list of phrases within the selected text in all source editors (even in the comment/reply field!). Besides allowing the quick insertion of templated messages, this script greatly mitigates the WP:WTF? problem by providing both the legibility of familiar words and the convenience of shortcuts. And to those asking, the capitalization of "Wikitext" as "WikiText" was a necessary sacrifice for far-more-memorable acronymy.
CanonNi: AlertAssistant has been fixed and rewritten using OOUI instead of Twinkle's Morebits. Such modern, very tool. (Do note that the maintainer has since become inactive.)
NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh/AjaxLoader has been updated to use modern JS APIs that replace the browser's URL bar with the link you clicked on to load in place. The "back" (and "forward") buttons also work now. Cool, innit?
andrybak: Unsigned helper no longer shows an error when the message to sign was added in the earliest 50 revisions of a page's history. This is especially relevant to pages with short histories.
BilledMammal/Move+ needs updating to order list of pages handle lists of pages to move correctly regardless of the discussion's page, so that we may avoid repeating fiasco history.
In breaking m:Tech/News, Gadgets can now include .vue files. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons are now also available. The documentation has examples.
Appo/Globstory integrates OpenHistoryMap, updating the map whenever hovering/clicking on a location or year, the latter of which changes the map to be (hopefully) accurate to the year selected. It's pretty interesting.
linkinfo Somewhat similar to WP:NavPops, Awesome Aasim/linkinfo(pictured) provides a collection of links to replace the right-click context menu, presented beautifully.
PreviousDiscussions provides a link to search for your username on subpages of another user's userpage and talkpage conveniently.
Twineeea/noRedLinks brings you to the "read" instead of the "create" tab when you visit a red link. Contemplate life's mysteries as you stare into the blank! Deeply.
No, this is not going to be the enduring tradition of S++ for the future. This was meant to be a joke for the special occasion on the first day of the fourth month but was delayed by four months because I'm lazy.
Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments2 people in discussion
@Timeshifter:, I noticed you provided only examples and a link to a talk pages as descriptions on the templates' talk pages {{Table TOC/doc}} and {{Table help/doc}}. I tagged them for improvement so you can a better more concrete description of the templates' usage. Listing the parameters and their purpose would be a good start. 8rz (talk) 03:25, 27 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
That is not how doc pages are written. At least provide more info on the template. I won't do it. I could but I choose not to. 8rz (talk) 03:53, 27 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I really enjoyed your userpage specifically the sentence: Earth explorers went on multi-year voyages around the world. The nearest star is only 4 light years away. Only 4 light years! I could do that in my sleep! Polygnotus (talk) 08:38, 1 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Polygnotus: Thanks! May The Force Be With You! And if your starship is approaching very close to the speed of light it may seem like a night's sleep timewise due to time dilation the faster you are moving. Google AI says: At 99% of the speed of light, the astronauts would experience a trip of a little over four months. At 99.9% of the speed of light, the trip would take only about two months. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:04, 1 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I'm contacting users who signed up as participants of the Wikipedia:Help Project, about a discussion on brainstorming and choosing the first help page to draft on editing Wikipedia pages assisted by AI.
Latest comment: 8 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Thanks for supporting and advocating for the topics you do such as single payer healthcare AND UAP transparency topics. Too often ufology is considered toxic and grouped with less reputable conspiracy theories or pseudo-science, and associated with right-wing adjacent culture war issues, so I'm grateful for anyone looking to make this more bi-partisan and apolitical. Even skeptics have their bias in how and when they apply skepticism.
An updated message shown to logged-out mobile users who try to edit produced a 27% relative increase in account creation and is being scaled to all wikis. (T424595)
A simpler post-edit dialog for temporary account holders increased permanent account creation by 87% (relative), converting more temp editors into registered ones. (T416418)The redesigned account creation form increases registration by a relative 24.4%
We also redesigned the account creation form itself (T409236): adding real-time username validation, a concise summary of the username policy, a "reveal password" option, and a simplified design aligned with Codex guidelines. In an A/B test on English Wikipedia mobile, users who saw the redesigned form created permanent accounts at a rate of 20.4%, compared to 16.4% for the control group (a 24.4% relative increase).
Revise Tone helps newcomers identify passages that may contain non-encyclopedic language and guides them through revising the tone.
In A/B testing on Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias, newcomer task completion rates were 38.7% higher than the default Copyedit task, with no decrease in edit quality.
The test ended July 9, and the feature is now available to everyone on these wikis, configurable via Community Configuration.
We plan to release Revise Tone to more wikis.
Growth features are now available at Wikidata, including a simplified Newcomer Homepage, Mentorship, the Impact module, Community Updates and the Help Panel.
The Growth and Moderator Tools teams are developing Home (T419358): a unified, personalized landing page intended to replace the Newcomer Homepage.
Rather than remaining a newcomer-only feature, Home will evolve with users as they gain experience, surfacing Suggested Edits, edits to review, and moderation workflows at the right moment.
The Wikimedia Research team, in partnership with the Growth Team, published findings from two projects on how new editors learn and integrate into the community:
Latest comment: 1 month ago6 comments2 people in discussion
Have been working on a collaboration and they have agreed to give us accounts via the Wikipedia library. You can create data visualizations and than download them as svgs. Let me know if you’re interested.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:39, 1 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on 15 September. Please help translate.
Starter Kit dashboard overview.
Highlights
Introducing the Wikipedia Starter Kit: The Foundation has launched a new Toolforge-hosted tool giving new and small language Wikipedia communities a guided pathway through essential onboarding tasks, activity indicators, and connections to the wider movement.
Apply for a scholarship to Wikimania 2027: Scholarship applications are now open to attend Wikimania 2027 in Santiago. To help with preparing submissions, orientation sessions in Spanish, Portuguese, and English will be held starting the week of October 5. The final deadline is October 31.
Reading Lists rolling out to all Wikipedias: Starting September 28, logged-in users on every Wikipedia will be able to save articles to a "read later" list using the bookmark icon, following successful rollouts on Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
WikiCelebrate: WikiCelebrating Juan "BugWarp" Kulichevsky, who has contributed to Wikimedia projects since childhood and is passionate about sports photography and community building in Argentina and beyond.
The 2026 appointment cycle is open now through 31 October 2026 for the Ombuds Commission (OC) and the Case Review Committee (CRC). You can learn more about the committees, the roles, and how to apply on the Committee Appointments page on Meta-wiki.
Community Wishlist 2027: The Community Wishlist Process is now updated, taking into account the feedback received. Look out for the call for wish submissions towards the end of October.
Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2026: From Sep 18-20, Wikimedians, open-knowledge researchers, and free-culture advocates from Central and Eastern Europe gathered for the first time in Romania. Take a look at the novelties and history behind CEE Meeting.
Increasing account creation: To convert more casual users into logged-in daily users, the evergreen account creation prompt is released into Beta / TestFlight for iOS and Android. Also, a new post-edit notice designed to encourage Temporary Account holders to register for a permanent account will now be released to all wikis. The new notice has proven to increase permanent account creation from 1.94% to 3.66%.
VisualEditoris now the default at English Wikipedia: this wiki has now adopted VisualEditor as the default editor on both desktop and mobile web, following a sitewide discussion that found overwhelming consensus to make the change.
Retesting image carousel: The image carousel experiment will be retested using three new versions of the design, updated based on community feedback. The team will assess results and determine with communities whether or not to proceed with the feature.
Wikifunctions: Your code can now call back to the Wikidata fetch functions. Wikifunctions have deployed an initial capability by which a code Implementation (in JavaScript or Python) can call certain other Wikifunctions Functions, get back the result, and have it available for further processing.
Latest experiments: A current experiment is testing whether offering a "generic guidance" path for Article Guidance that does not depend on a Wikidata match would increase the chances of more article creation attempts. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 38 and 39 include a Reader Growth experiment testing whether showing only part of an article at first on mobile, with a “Read more” button to reveal the rest, encourages people to keep reading. See also the 56 community-submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Suggestions for Transliterated Search: If you regularly use two different writing systems (such as Hindi and Latin alphabet), sometimes you accidentally type with the wrong one and need to switch to the right keyboard. Now, this gadget will be able to suggest query based on what you typed.
LLM Paste Check rolling out to Wikipedia: A new Edit Check will prompt editors who paste text likely copied from an external AI chatbot to consider whether it aligns with movement AI-use policies and decide whether to keep or remove it. It goes live as a default-on feature at English Wikipedia on Sep 24 and at all Wikipedias on Oct 8.
Wikidata bulk downloads now free via Wikimedia Enterprise: New beta API endpoints let anyone download full Wikidata snapshots and pull hourly batch diffs at no cost, opening up bulk access that previously required a paid tier.
Accountability for Wikimedia production services: To ensure clear accountability for responding to incidents in Wikimedia production services, Wikimedia Foundation published the Service Catalog page. The page is the canonical source of service ownership for code deployed to the Wikimedia Foundation cluster. See also FAQ pages which contain more background details.
Datacenter switchover has been postponed:The equinox exercise revealed capacity issues, preventing the switch of all services to the other datacenter. The process has been paused, prioritizing investigating that issue, to ensure that we continue to be able to serve our users reliably. A new exercise will be scheduled. Meanwhile, all traffic and edits continue to work as usual.
Affiliates and grant funding: The conversations on the new proposed model, requirements and criteria continues until the end of next week with public calls on 1) Tuesday, September 29, 16:00-17:00 UTC on affiliate growth paths and Friday, October 2nd, 17:00-18:00 UTC on affiliate overlaps.
AI literacy program: A new regional initiative in ASEAN was launched to support training and conversations around AI literacy, accountability, and Indigenous self-determination.
Testing Google preferred sources: An experiment is proposed on English Wikipedia to run a temporary (2-week) notice asking readers who come from Google to set Wikipedia as a “preferred source” in Google. We would see if this causes people who use Google to visit Wikipedia more. If your language wiki is interested, please reach out on the project's talk page.
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!
Who are/were the leaders of national organizations in your field? How about national award winners? That's a great place to start looking for article subjects you'd be well-suited to work on.
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: 1 month 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!
Latest comment: 16 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on October 9. Please help translate.
Mobile users can now edit with visual editors
Highlights
Community Wishlist: The process for this year’s Community Wishlist has been published, incorporating community feedback. The wish submission process will end on November 8. The triage is expected to be completed by late November. Votes for wishes will start in January.
Behind the scenes: What happened on 25 August as hundreds of edits were made to Dolly Parton's article on English and German Wikipedia – and why code stewardship and the Service Catalog matter.
The new Image Carousel treatment experience that will be tested
Identifying LLM edits easily: LLM Paste Check is now available on all Wikipedias. The feature will notify editors using the visual editor when they paste text that is likely to have initially been copied from one of five external generative AI chatbots. Edits will also be tagged so that patrollers can review them more closely.
The Future of Wikimedia Hackathon: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.
Re-testing Image Carousel on readers: Starting November 20, a test for Image Carousel will run for logged-out readers. Readers will browse community-uploaded images, selected by editors as relevant to specific articles. It will measure the impact of incorporating some community-requested features on logged-out reader retention.
Changes to Watchlist view: Moderator Tools will be removing the list view of the Watchlist and defaulting everyone to the changelog view. By defaulting to the changelog view, we are simplifying the codebase and avoiding the likelihood of missing bugs.
Wikifunctions quarterly planning: For October–December 2026, Wikifunctions will focus on two main areas: working with pilot communities towards bringing abstract articles into their Wikipedias, and making it easier to create and edit articles on Abstract Wikipedia.
Suggestion Mode: To encourage newcomers to publish their first suggestion when using Suggestion Mode, implementation of the publish prompt on mobile has been completed.
Onboarding newcomers: To encourage new editors to make their first edit, the early onboarding A/B test went live.
Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 42 and 43 include CodeMirror syntax highlighting was enabled by default for all logged out and newly registered users on the English Wikipedia. See also the 54 community-submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
Open geospatial dataset now released: Wikimedia Enterprise has released an open geospatial dataset containing 17 million OpenStreetMap elements linked to Wikidata, Wikipedia, and Wikivoyage, as Parquet and GeoParquet files on Hugging Face and Kaggle.
Better bot detection: There is a new bot detection system for traffic to the Wikimedia wikis. There might be sudden changes to visitor statistics starting on 26 October and going back to 20 June. This is because we will now be better at finding automated traffic which is trying to hide that it is coming from bots.
The Wikipedia Library: Datawrapper is now available in The Wikipedia Library. This is a data visualisation platform to create and publish responsive charts, maps, and tables. If you're a contributor who qualifies for TWL, please feel free to apply for access and make use of this tool.
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!
Following an RfC, election to ArbCom now requires at least 60% support. Successful candidates normally serve two-year terms, with one-year terms retained for filling vacancies. Proposals to change the election rules may now be added throughout the year and discussed on the talk page; formal discussion remains in September.
Following an RfC, first-time reviewers’ reviews require an experienced reviewer’s check, and GA requirements now include alt text and accessible tables. Featured articles may receive GA status during removal discussions if they meet GA criteria. Backlog drives will run every five months, with a points leaderboard and awards for the top five participants.
Miscellaneous
Self-nominations for the Arbitration Committee are open until 11 November 2026.
Security update: Many Wikimedia tools were taken offline because of a security vulnerability in PHP. This affected many websites worldwide. Toolforge and Cloud VPS have been back up since October 22. Many important tools have been gradually restored. Some tools need the respective volunteer maintainers to restart them. Follow the work on Wikitech.
Wikipedia Year in Review 2026: This year's Wikipedia Apps Year in Review is in progress and you can help make it available in more languages to readers around the world by helping with translations. Here's how:
Around the Globe in ESEAP: Connecting 32 geographic areas and 64 language editions of Wikipedia across East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. See how the region is creating spaces for active editors to build relationships.
Notifications Experiment: In the coming weeks, the first of two notifications experiments on Android will be launched. The experiment will test whether personalized Discover reading list notifications will encourage them to return to the app. The three-week experiment will include English Wikipedia readers who have opted in to notifications. Learn more and share your feedback on the project page.
Reading recommendations: An ongoing experiment is testing article recommendations for new account holders who also identify as readers. This aims to encourage new account holders to read and return to the website regularly, with the goal of increasing internal referrals by 1%. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
New search experiment: The first of four experiments in Phase 2 of Semantic Search is running in the Wikipedia Android and iOS apps for Arabic, French, and Japanese Wikipedias. Participating readers can search inside articles and open quoted passages directly in their source articles, no answers or summaries are generated. Feedback is welcome on the project’s discussion page.
Share Cards: The Future Audiences team is planning to bring Share Cards to Wikipedia on mobile. This feature gives users the option to share a visually appealing card with friends, based on the article they are reading. The card contains the article’s title, image, opening text, and related attribution, and links back to the article for full reading.
Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 44 and 45 include the default renderer for math formulas has changed. See also the 59 community-submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.
New Toolforge features: As part of Tools Platform's work to improve the reliability of Toolforge-hosted tools, two new platform features are launched: (1) Toolforge alerts let tool maintainers receive email notifications when any of their tools is encountering a common error condition; (2) Toolforge extended logging capabilities let tool maintainers retrieve logs for events like job creation, deletion or deployment failure, with a new CLI toolforge logs, at the same time that they retrieve their job logs.
Work also continues to make sure Citoid does not get blocked by publishers who are starting to block bot traffic to manage the impact of scraping. In September, we worked with Reuters and the Library of Congress to allowlist Citoid. You can track our progress with other publishers on Phabricator.
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!
wikimedia.org.
Done please see Template:COVID-19 pandemic data. Let me know if there are any issues or if there are any other templates you would like this feature added to.Sorry for the delay, had a lot more IRL stuff to attend to than I anticipated. If I do get a bit of extra time I was planning on setting up a workspace on testWP so we can try to work on some additional css features of general applicability, but I do ask for your patience. I'm already a bit overcommitted to stuff here considering the volunteer time I have available.𝒬𝔔 16:16, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
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Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. ---Avatar317(talk) 05:28, 6 November 2026 (UTC)
