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Hello, Callanecc. This message is being sent to remind you of significant upcoming changes regarding logged-out editing.
Starting 4 November, logged-out editors will no longer have their IP address publicly displayed. Instead, they will have atemporary account (TA) associated with their edits. Users with some extended rights like administrators and CheckUsers, as well as users with thetemporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will still be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range.
How do temporary accounts work?
Editing from a temporary account
When a logged-out user completes an edit or a logged action for the first time, a cookie will be set in this user's browser and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created for them. This account's name will follow the pattern:~2025-12345-67 (a tilde, year of creation, a number split into units of 5).
All subsequent actions by the temporary account user will be attributed to this username. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser.
A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Users with thetemporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will be able to see the underlying IP addresses.
As a measure against vandalism, there are two limitations on the creation of temporary accounts:
There has to be a minimum of 10 minutes between subsequent temporary account creations from the same IP (or /64 range in case of IPv6).
There can be a maximum of 6 temporary accounts created from an IP (or /64 range) within a period of 24 hours.
Temporary account IP viewer user right
How to enable IP Reveal
Administrators may grant thetemporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right to non-administrators who meet thecriteria for granting. Importantly, an editor must make an explicit request for the permission (e.g. atWP:PERM/TAIV)—administrators arenot permitted to assign the right without a request.
It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects theautoblock option.
It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. OnSpecial:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should useSpecial:IPContributions for this (see a video about IPContributions in a gallery below).
Rules about IP information disclosure
Publicizing an IP address gained through TAIV access isgenerally not allowed (e.g.~2025-12345-67 previously edited as 192.0.2.1 or~2025-12345-67's IP address is 192.0.2.1).
Publicly linking a TA to another TA is allowed if "reasonably believed to be necessary". (e.g.~2025-12345-67 and ~2025-12345-68 are likely the same person, so I am counting their reverts together toward3RR, but notHey ~2025-12345-68, you did some good editing as ~2025-12345-67)
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
Administrators will now find thatSpecial:MergeHistory is now significantly more flexible about what it can merge. It can now merge sections taken from the middle of the history of the source (rather than only the start) and insert revisions anywhere in the history of the destination page (rather than only the start).[1]
For users with "Automatically subscribe to topics"enabled in their preferences, starting a new topic or adding a reply to an existing topic will now subscribe them to replies to that topic. Previously, this would only happen if the DiscussionTools "Add topic" or "Reply" widgets were used. When DiscussionTools was originally launched existing accounts were not opted in to automatic topic subscriptions, so this change should primarily affect newer accounts and users who have deliberately changed their preferences since that time.[2]
Scribunto modules can now be used togenerate SVG images. This can be used to build charts, graphics and other visualizations dynamically through Lua, reducing the need to compose them externally and upload them as files.[3]
Wikimedia sites now provide all anonymous users with the option to enable a dark mode color scheme, featuring light-colored text on a dark background. This enhancement aims to deliver a more enjoyable reading experience, especially in dimly lit environments.[4]
Users with large watchlists have long faced timeouts when editingSpecial:EditWatchlist. The page now loads entries in smaller sections instead of all at once due to a paging update, allowing everyone to edit their watchlists smoothly. As part of the database update, sorting by expiry has been removed because it was over 100× slower than sorting by title. Acommunity wish has been created to explore alternative ways to restore sort-by-expiry. If this feature is important to you, please support the wish![5]
View all 31 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, the fixing of the persisting highlighting when using VisualEditor find and replace during a query.[6]
Updates for technical contributors
Since 2019 theWikimedia URL Shortener athttps://w.wiki is available for all Wikimedia wikis to create short links to articles, permalinks, diffs, etc. It is available in the sidebar as "Get shortened URL". There are 30 wikis that also install an older "ShortUrl" extension. The old extension will soon be removed. This means/s/ URLs will not be advertised under article titles via HTMLclass="title-shortlink". The/s/ URLs will keep working.[7]
On Thursday, October 30, theMediaWiki Interfaces andSRE Service Operations teams began rerouting Action API traffic through a common 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.
MediaWiki Train deployments will pause for the final two weeks of 2025: 22 December and 29 December. Backport windows will also pause between Monday, 22 December 2025 and Thursday, 2 January 2026. A backport window is a scheduled time to add things like bug fixes and configuration changes. There are seven deployment trains remaining for 2025.[8]
In 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation reported that AI systems and search engines increasingly use Wikipedia content without driving users to the site, contributing to an 8% drop in human pageviews compared to 2024. After detecting bots disguised as humans, Wikimedia updated its traffic data to reflect this shift. Read more about current user trends on Wikipedia ina Diff blog post.
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
Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.
MediaWiki can now display apage indicator automatically while a page is protected. This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled bycommunity request.[10]
Using the "Show preview" or "Show changes" buttons in the wikitext editor will now carry over certain URL parameters like 'useskin', 'uselang' and 'section'. This update also fixes an issue where, if the browser crashed while previewing an edit to a single section, saving this edit could overwrite the entire page with just that section’s content.[11][12][13]
Wikivoyage wikis can usecolored map markers in the article text. The text of these markers will now be shown in contrasting black or white color, instead of always being white. Local workarounds for the problem can be removed.[14]
The Activity tab in the Wikipedia Android app is now available for all users. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.[15]
The Reader Growth team is launching an experiment called "Image browsing" to test how to make it easier for readers to browse and discover images on Wikipedia articles. This experiment, a mobile-only A/B test, will go live on English Wikipedia in the week of November 17 and will run for four weeks, affecting 0.05% of users on English wiki. The test launched on November 3 on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese wikis, affecting up to 10% of users on those wikis.[16]
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example the inability to lock accounts on mobile sites has been fixed.[17]
TheJWT subject field inOAuth 2 access tokens will soon change from<user id> tomw:<identity type>:<user id>, where<identity type> is typicallyCentralAuth: (forSUL wikis) orlocal:<wiki id> (for other wikis). This is to avoid conflicts between different user ID types, and to make OAuth 2 access tokens and thesessionJwt cookie more similar. Old access tokens will still work.[19]
AREL1_45 branch for MediaWiki core and each of the extensions and skins in Wikimedia git has been created. This is the first step in the release process for MediaWiki 1.45.0, scheduled for late November 2025. If you are working on a critical bug fix or working on a new feature, you may need to take note of this change.[21]
The process for generating CirrusSearch dumps has been updated due to slowing performance. If you encounter any issues migrating to the replacement dumps, please contact the Search Platform Team for support.[22][23]
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
TheReader Experience team is experimenting withreading lists on mobile web, allowing logged-in readers with no edits to save private lists of articles for later. The experiment is running on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias since the week of 10 November, and will begin on English Wikipedia the week of 17 November.
Users who can’t receive their email verification code during login can now get help by submitting a form on a new special page. This update is part of theAccount Security initiative. If your account has an email address, please make sure you still have access to it. When logging in from a new device or location without 2FA, you may be asked to enter a 6-digit code sent by email to finish logging in. Learn more.
As part of theParser Unification project, the Content Transform Team rolled out Parsoid as the default parser to many low-traffic Wikipedias and is preparing the next step to high traffic ones. This message is an invitation for you to opt-in to Parsoid, as described in theExtension:ParserMigration documentation, and identify any issues you might encounter with your own workflow using bots, gadgets, or user scripts. Please, let us know through the"Report Visual Bug" link in the Tools sidebar or create a phab ticket and tag theContent Transform Team in Phabricator.
Unsupported Tools: Several issues withVideo2Commons have been fixed, including filename-related upload failures, black-video imports, and retry handling. AV1 support has also been added. Ongoing work focuses on backend stability, ffmpeg errors, subtitle imports, metadata handling, and playlist uploads. To track specific tasks, check thePhabricator board.
Save the date for the next Wikimedia Hackathon happening in Milan, Italy from May 1–3, 2026. Registration will open in January 2026.Scholarship applications are currently open, and will close on November 28, 2025. If you have any questions, please emailhackathon@wikimedia.org.
Hello! Voting in the2025 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 1 December 2025. Alleligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
TheArbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting theWikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to imposesite bans,topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. Thearbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
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
Last week, theWikimedia Search Team recreated the "DWIM" (Do What I Mean) gadget functionality server-side, for Russian and Hebrew Wikipedias. This feature adds cross-keyboard suggestions to the standard search-box suggestions. For example, searching forcxfcnmt on Russian Wikipedia will now add suggestions forсчастье ("happiness") that the user probably intended. They plan to enable this feature for other Russian and Hebrew wikis this week.[25]
Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting"beta feature will have syntax highlighting available inDiscussionTools. This requires that the "Enable editing tools in source mode" preference be set.[26]
Campaign events extension – the set of tools for coordinating events and other on-wiki collaborations has now been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. A new feature known asCollaborative contribution to help organizers and participants see the impact of activities has also been added. Join the upcominglearning session to see the new feature in action and share your feedback.
View all 24 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, the bug which stopped CodeReviewBot from working, has now been fixed.[27]
Updates for technical contributors
Users of Wikimedia API can join a usability study to help validate the new design of Wikimedia REST API sandboxes. Interested participants should fill therecruitment survey.[28]
The MediaWiki Interfaces team is deprecating XSLT stylesheets within the Action API. Support forformat=xml&xlst={stylesheet} will be removed from Wikimedia projects by the end of November, 2025. In addition, it will soon be disabled by default in MediaWiki release versions: v1.43 (LTS), v1.44, and v1.45. Support for XSLT stylesheets will be fully removed from MediaWiki v1.46 (expected to release between April and May 2026).[29]
The WDQS legacy endpoint (query-legacy-full.wikidata.org) will be decommissioned at the end of December 2025, and finally closed down on 7th January 2026. After this date, users should expect requests to query.wikidata.org that require the full graph to fail or return invalid results if they are not rewritten to use SPARQL federation. The team encourages users to ensure that tools and workflows use the supported WDQS endpoints (https://query.wikidata.org/ - Main graph orhttps://query-scholarly.wikidata.org/ - Scholarly graph). For support with migrating use cases, please review theData Access andRequest a Query pages for details and assistance on alternative access methods.
The process will have a seven day call for candidates phase, a two day pause, a five day discussion phase, and a seven day private vote using SecurePoll. Discussion and questions are only allowed on the candidate pages during the discussion phase.
The outcome of this process is identical to making a request for adminship. There isno official difference between an administrator appointed through RFA versus administrator elections.
Ask any questions about the process at thetalk page. Later, a user talk message will be sent to official candidates with additional information about the process.
If you are interested in the process, please make sure to watchlist the appropriate pages. A watchlist notice will be added when the discussion phase opens, and again when the voting phase opens.
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Hi Callanecc, it's been six months since theBrunei article protection was downgraded from semi to pending changes. The article'srecent history shows that pending changes seems to be working well here; of the 64 edits since pending changes was applied, there have been constructive, accepted edits from IP users, but some of them have been reverted as eitherdisruptive editing orvandalism. I'm checking the article's history every so often to see whether significant disruption returns, though there hasn't been a reverted edit since August. I do have to note that just because the language edition article of that country's official language isn't protected (such as theMalay edition of Brunei) doesn't mean that the English edition article is safe from disruption. You were the last one who upgraded theSlovakia article protection from pending changes to semiback in May. This was sensible as pending changes wasn't stopping IP users fromchanging its name to "Death to the war criminal state Russia!" multiple times. Meanwhile, theSlovak edition of that article isn't protected. As two other European country articles (Lithuania andLuxembourg) are also seeing the same sort of vandalism whenever they are not protected ([30], [[31]), I don't think it would be safe to remove or downgrade Slovakia's protection for the time being. When you mentioned that theSingapore article is indefinitely semi-protected inthat discussion, I would understand that; unlike Brunei, a country which not many talk about, Singapore is one of the more popular countries out there, which is why I think it wouldn't be good to have its protection below semi.BriDash9000 (talk)15:00, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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