Latesttech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
A major software upgrade has been made toPhabricator. The update introduces performance improvements, a refreshed search interface, enhancements to Maniphest task search, updates to user profile pages and project workboards, new Herald automation features, as well as general text input, mobile experience improvements and more.[1]
Updates for editors
The Community Tech team will release the new Community Wishlist extension on October 1, that will improve the way wishes will be submitted. The new extension will allow users to add tags to their wishes to better categorise them, and (in a future iteration) to filter them by status, tags and focus areas. It will also be possible to support individual wishes again, as requested by the community in many instances. The old system will be retired. There will be a brief period of downtime while the extension is deployed and wishes are migrated to the new system. You can read more about thisin the latest update or you can consult thecurrent documentation on MediaWiki.
As announcedon Diff blog, the production trial of thehCaptcha service for bot detection has begun. The trial is currently using hCaptcha to protect account creation on Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Turkish Wikipedias, where it will replace our existingCAPTCHA (FancyCaptcha). The goal with the trial is to better block bots while also improving usability and accessibility for users who encounter CAPTCHA challenges.
TheCampaignEvents extension has beendeployed to Wikimedia Commons. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. On Commons, anyone who is a registered user can use it as an event participant. To use it as an organizer, someone needs to have theevent organizer right.
On wikis using theMentorship system, communities can now opt experienced editors out of Mentorship throughSpecial:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship. Within this setting, communities may define thresholds, based on edit count and account age, to decide when an editor is considered experienced enough to no longer receive Mentorship.[2]
The Editing Team and the Machine Learning Team are working on a new check for newcomers:Tone check. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits, using artificial intelligence. We invite volunteers to review the first version of the Tone language model for the following languages: Arabic, Czech, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Farsi, Italian, Norwegian, Romanian and Latvian. Users from these wikis interested in reviewing this model areinvited to sign up at MediaWiki.org. The deadline to sign up is on October 3, which will be the start date of the test.
The rollout ofmultiblocks had the side effect that non-active block logs may have been shown on Special:Contributions and on blocked users' user and user_talk pages. This issue will be fully resolved in a few days. As part of the fix,messages prefixed withsp-contributions-blocked-notice will be removed and replaced withthose prefixed withblocked-notice-logextract in a few weeks. Please help translate the new messages and update any local overrides if needed.
There was a bug with links added using visual editor if they included characters such as[ ] | after the fragment identifier (#). They were not encoded properly creating an incorrect link. This has been fixed.[3]
One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote inMalay (q:ms:)[4]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, theUser Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks.[5]
Updates for technical contributors
Later this week, editors using Lua modules will be able to use themw.title.newBatch function to look up the existence of up to 25 pages at once, in a way that only increases theexpensive function count once.
A newUnsupported Tools Working Group has been formed as part of ongoing efforts to collectively determine technical work priorities, similar to theProduct & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). The working group will help prioritize and review requests for support of unmaintained extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. For the first cycle, the group will be prioritizing an unsupported Wikimedia Commons tool.
Latesttech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Paste Check is a new Edit Check feature to help avoid and fight copyright violations. When editors paste text into an article, Paste Check prompts them to confirm the origin and licensing of the content. Starting Wednesday, 8 October,22 wikis will test Paste Check. Paste Check will help new volunteers understand and follow the policies and guidelines necessary to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia projects.
Updates for editors
Mobile devices will receive mobile articles directly on the standard domain (likeen.wikipedia.org), instead of via a redirect to an "m" domain (likeen.m.wikipedia.org). This change improves performance. This week it will be enabled on Wikipedias. The existing mobile URLs and the "Desktop view" opt-out remain available.Learn more.[6]
Newdate filters,creationdate: andlasteditdate:, are now available in the wiki search engine. This allows users to filter search results by a page's first or last revision date. The filters support comparison operators (e.g.>2024) and relative dates (e.g.today-1d), making it easier to find recently updated content or pages within specific age ranges.[7]
Wikifunctions now supports rich text in embedded calls across the 150 wikis where it's enabled. To showcase this, the team created aLatin declination table that Wiktionary editors can use to automatically generate noun forms, producing clear, formatted results — see anexample output. If you need any help or have any feedback, pleasecontact the Wikifunctions Team.[8]
An edit link will now appear inside the categories box on article pages for logged in users, which will directly launch the VisualEditor category dialog.[9]
View all 34 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, there was a problem downloading pdf files last week and that has been resolved.[10]
Updates for technical contributors
The fieldrev_sha1 in the revision database table is being removed in favor ofcontent_sha1 in the content database table. Seethe announcement for more information.
TheReader Experience team will roll outDark Mode user interface on all Wikimedia sites on October 29, 2025. All anonymous users of Wikimedia sites will have the option to activate a color scheme that features light-colored text on a dark background. This is designed to provide a more comfortable reading experience, especially in low-light situations. Template authors and technical contributors are encouraged tolearn how to make pages ready for Dark mode and address any compatibility issues found in templates in their wiki before the enablement. Please contact the Web team for questions or any support onthis talk page before the enablement.[11]
Starting on Monday, October 6, API endpoints under therest.php path will be rerouted through a new internal API Gateway. Individual wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator ticket to theService Ops team board.[12]
Aftera motion, arbitration enforcement page protections no longer need to be logged in the AELOG. A bot now automatically posts protections atWP:AELOG/P. To facilitate this bot, protection summaries must include a link to the relevant CT page (e.g.[[WP:CT/BLP]]), and you will receive talk page reminders if you forget to specify the contentious topic but otherwise indicate it is an AE action.
Latesttech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Last week, improvements to account security and two-factor authentication (2FA) features were enabled across all wikis. These changes include user interface improvements forSpecial:AccountSecurity, the support of multiple 2FA methods via authenticator apps and portable security keys (previously users could only enable one method), and a new Recovery Codes module which facilitates fewer account lockouts due to lost two-factor apps and devices. As part of theAccount Security project, work is continuing through the rest of 2025 on further user experience improvements, and support for passkeys as an alternate second factor.
Updates for editors
Another part of the Account security project is making 2FA generally available to all users. Along with editors with advanced privileges, such as administrators and bureaucrats, 40% of editors now have access to 2FA. You can check if you have access atSpecial:AccountSecurity. Instructions for activation are on the linked page. The plan is to continue increasing availability if it is determined that the user support capabilities are able to support global usage.[13]
This week, users at wikis where talk pageUsability Improvements are already available by default (everywhereexcept the 12 wikis listed inT379264) will gain the ability to Thank a comment directly from the talk page it appears on. Before this change, Thanking could only be done by visiting the revision history of the talk page. You canlearn more about this change.[14]
Users who have notverified their email address will soon be receiving monthly Notification reminders to do so. This is because users who have verified their email can more easily recover their account. These reminders will not be sent if the user is inactive or removes the unverified email from their account.[15][16]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, a fix was made for an occasional error with saving translated paragraphs in the Content Translation tool, and the related error messages are now easier to see.[17]
Updates for technical contributors
The Unsupported Tools Working Group has chosenVideo2Commons as the first tool for its pilot cycle. The group will explore ways to improve and sustain the tool over the coming months.Learn more on Meta.
Hey @Dbeef. Your wiki edit anniversary was 2 days ago, marking 5 years of dedicated contributions to this Wikimedia project. Your passion for sharing knowledge and your remarkable contributions have not only enriched the project, but also inspired countless others to contribute. Thank you for your amazing contributions. Wishing you all the best for the year ahead :) -❙❚❚❙❙ GnOeee❚❙❚❙❙✉07:08, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Latesttech 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 optimize how user data is stored in our databases, the saved preferences of users who haven't logged in for over five years and have fewer than 100 edits will be cleared. When those users return, default settings will apply.[19]
View all 20 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, there was a broken link from the GlobalContributions interface message to the XTools GlobalContributions page which has now been fixed.[20]
Updates for technical contributors
The work to reroute all traffic to API endpoints under therest.php route through a common API gateway is now complete. If any issues are observed, please file a phabricator ticket to theService Ops team board.
Edits to Wikidata references or qualifiers will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged.[21]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, theUser Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks.[5]
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Arbitration
View all 20 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, there was a broken link from the GlobalContributions interface message to the XTools GlobalContributions page which has now been fixed.[20]