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I got a notification that my email was disabled due to repeated delivery failures(a vandal was repeatedly emailing me, that may have been the trigger) and that I need to reconfirm my email; it sends me a code, but when I click the link it tells me the code that it just sent is invalid.331dot (talk)09:45, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is likely hitting a throttle, if it is still happening after 24 hours we can start a bug track on it. You may want to temporarily remove the ability for others to send you wikimail to stop the spam in the interim. —xaosfluxTalk10:54, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Usually I am only notified of a discussion if it occurs within a thread I have started or participated in. This usually excluded comments that aren't a response to mine in most of the noticeboards. Lately though, I have begun to be notifiedwhenever an edit is made to any of these threads I have edited (e.g.WP:AIV orWP:UAA), meaning I basically get a notification every couple minutes about an admin responding to a completely unrelated report, or to someone making a new post. Worse, this also affects talk pages, so I get notified whenever someone I warned gets blocked or warned again. Was this intentional, or is this a mistake/bug? Aside from being annoying, it also gets confusing to repeatedly get notifications saying "You have been blocked indefinitely", or similar.Lynch4402:44, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Lynch44 It looks like this problem is occurring via Twinkle usage. I.e. From a glance at your contribs, I'd guess that you got notified from the subsequent edit atThe Oneeeeeee's talkpage because Twinkle is re-using the==December 2025== section header, and similarly Twinkle isadding entries to the single==section== at UAA. Context: As Izno noted, the change is coming fromphab:T290778 (as announced in the 2nd entry inm:Tech/News/2025/45, but deployed late, this week). The Editing team devs will talk to the Twinkle devs to see how we can make Twinkle not auto-subscribe (which might require changes in the Extension, and/or just in the Gadget. TBD.). Sorry for the noise in the meantime, or, you may wish to temporarily unset the preference noted above. I hope that helps,Quiddity (WMF) (talk)20:07, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It'll probably be something that tools will need to adapt to -- like the existingwatchlist parameter for edits, where it defaults to "respect the user's preference" but where you can explicitly set it to override that behavior.DLynch (WMF) (talk)21:02, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
[2]NZ-non-WANZ-members is placed in the main namespace, and is listed in e.g. the newpages feed, but is not editable (is some mass-message list?). I suppose this shouldn't be possible, but as it needs deletion an admin is needed.@Schwede66: you created this, perhaps you can explain what is happening?Fram (talk) 14:45, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
Yep. Probably not the right location either (should be with some project, and when editing is listed suddenly as a "special" page). In any case, such pages shouldn't be creatable in the mainspace, serve no purpose there.Fram (talk) 15:23, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
I think there's definitely a valid task to restrict MassMessage to operating in certain namespaces.Izno (talk) 18:39, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
Nothing there indicates that you must move the list to a particular namespace after creating it.
Once you've stuffed it up, you'll probably remember for next time. But it would obviously be better for the form to be set up so that the list gets created in the correct namespace.Schwede66 23:41, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
You can consider trying it right now, but I'm guessing the page title input there is for a {{FULLPAGENAME}} and not the {{PAGENAME}}.Izno (talk) 00:03, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Is there anything we can do (without waiting for the Phabricator ticket to be resolved) that would prevent this tool from creating pages in mainspace, or at least add a big warning so that people don't leave it in mainspace accidentally? We can't edit the Special namespace, but perhaps an edit to the relevant message names would help with the warning. Could we create an edit filter preventing anyone from putting this kind of page in mainspace? I don't understand how the tool works (perhaps my requests aren't possible), because I don't want to go testing and make a mess.Nyttend (talk)05:44, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This should have been discussed atWP:EFN. Every edit filter has a cost and we have generally avoided using it as a guardrail for a niche mistake that occurs once in a blue moon. –SD0001 (talk)14:12, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Searching the Wikipedia namespace without discussion pages
Over time, I have found searching the Wikipedia namespace more and more difficult as the results are increasingly discussion pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Is there an easy way to omit these?For example, of the first 20 search results for"talk header cruft", 12 are AFD, TFD, and RFD pages, 3 are peer review discussions, and 3 are featured candidate discussions. That leaves only two of twenty pages that are not obviously discussion pages.Is there a way to do a search query of the Wikipedia namespace that will omit most discussion pages?
Perhaps due to poor search terms, the most relevant pages for my query did not appear. These are:
I suppose I can create a customsearch box with-intitle:"Articles for deletion" as you suggest. However, I thought this was likely a common problem that others have experienced and thought perhaps there was a common solution.Daask (talk)16:22, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're most definitely not the only one. I have a browser shortcut to use google to search wikipedia when I want to actually find something in project or template space, because the SERP here are so frustrating. --Avocado (talk)15:57, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Adding a -UTC will get rid of pages with signed comments, and it's unlikely that much baby will go out with the bathwater. Unfortunately, there's no clean way to do this, and it would probably be a better system if we had projectspace split into a place for policy/guideline/information/essays and a place for project-wide discussions.Firefangledfeathers (talk /contribs)22:53, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I wish we had something like-hasmagicword:NEWSECTIONLINK -hasmagicword:NOEDITSECTION, which would work for this use case.Nardog (talk)16:05, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just today, I noticed that a few noticeboards, ANI and VPT, were appearing strangely formatted. No horizontal menu at the top of the page, at the bottom of the page were a lot of links. I posted about this at WT:AN but only got the suggestion to change my skin in my Preferences so that's what I've done but I don't care for other features that came with it. Has there been any system-wide changes to noticeboards which are transcluded? I feel odd that I'm the only one noticing a change.LizRead!Talk!02:20, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Piñanana I think the question here is whether a bot can change the tcmdb template so that instead of hitting a redirect at tcm, that it goes to the page at catalog.afi.com . A note has been added toTemplate talk:TCMDb title about something that may be similar, but I am not sure.Naraht (talk)18:30, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell, the TCMdb family of templates are hopelessly broken. I have tried to contact TCM a couple of times for help, but I have never received a response. –Jonesey95 (talk)01:30, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
AlsoTemplate:Screenonline nameTemplate:Screenonline titleTemplate:Screenonline TV title:
Any special magic to getting transparency to work for WebP images? I was uploading some images of the Omega penny that were auctioned off in the past 24 hours, and midway through I had the wild idea to see how much smaller WebP could get the images. It seemed to produce good results (even at 100% / Lossless, which ought to line up well with the PNG I had intended to upload) and on the file description page you can see the transparency works when you hover your cursor over the image. But when I used it in an article, it has a white background. See the gallery above. Is this a known issue, is there a phab ticket, is there a workaround? =) —Locke Cole •t •c •b06:55, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the gallery above, I see the gold coin with a transparent/checkerboard background, and the other one with a white background. Looking at the PNG previews generated by the server, I see that the original-size one (i.e. the 2000x2000 PNG) has a grey background (which I assume is Chrome's way of rendering a transparent background), and the smaller ones have a white background. Looks like this might beT283646? --rchard2scout (talk)08:50, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
TM:Convert andTM:Convert abbreviated have different docs, but the doc of the latter is basically just one sentence pointing toTM:Convert/doc and noting that the difference that the abbr parameter is prefilled.
However, some editors raised concerns that this was not the right procedure. The tutorial seems to be outdated, asthis method is no longer preferred forTM:Collapse top for example. There seems to be a preference to include the TemplateData on the doc subpages directly rather than transcluding a dedicated subpage. I also foundthis TfD, where consensus was to keep a bunch of TemplateData subpages (at least for those that have to be transcluded on shared docs), but this was 8 years ago.
So, forTM:Convert andTM:Convert abbreviated, is it now best to have the TemplateData on a dedicated subpage and transclude it on both docs, like how I did it now? Or should the same TemplateData be defined twice locally, forTM:Convert/doc andTM:Convert abbreviated/doc each? Or is it better to merge the entire documentation (thus making a dedicated TemplateData subpage no longer necessary) and transclude that on both template docs?YuniToumei (talk)09:55, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Where have "some editors raised concerns"? The last option above (duplicate the docs) is a very ugly idea. That makes people who encounter{{cvt}} wonder how it is different from{{convert}}. The current situation (where cvt has just a few words stating what it is) is best.Johnuniq (talk)10:06, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The transcluded documentation looks right to me. It's an elegant solution. I don't see any editors complaining at the templates' talk pages. –Jonesey95 (talk)15:50, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all! I wanted to quickly share that the WMF Growth team is planning to release an updated version of the email new users receive to confirm their email address. The new version introduces clearer and more welcoming language that we hope will result in more new users confirming their email and continuing on their journey to becoming editors. You can read more inthis Growth team update, and feel free to let us know if you have any questions or feedback!Sdkb‑WMFtalk00:07, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I hate obfuscated boxes which, when clicked, do who-knows-what. Aren't prospective editors assumed to be clever enough to understand a simple sentence saying what clicking the box will do?Johnuniq (talk)04:00, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you provide an email, but don't confirm it, then you won't be able to use almost any of the email features, including email notifications or emails from other users. (I think we only use non-confirmed email addresses for password resets.)
This is because until you prove that you can receive emails (by clicking that button), we don't know that the email you provided is really yours, and we don't want to let you spam someone else with notification emails etc.
I think this email confirmation workflow is common enough across websites that it doesn't require explanation. Many don't even let you use your account at all without confirming the email (although on Wikipedia, it is only recommended, not required).Matma Rextalk21:35, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On mobile, you can long-press the “Confirm your email” button, or on desktop, hover over the link, to preview the destination URL. The link points to the wiki’s local Special:ConfirmEmail page.
For users whose email accounts are configured to display messages in plain text, a plain text version is also available and displays the full URL directly. -KStoller-WMF (talk)19:26, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I knew about hovering, but this is the first time I heard that long-pressing works. Thanks! (Doesn't mean I don't still think you should show the URL clearly instead of obscuring it.)SarekOfVulcan (talk)23:18, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is no link to modify an editnotice if a page has an existing default BLP editnotice
I noticed this when attempting to add{{BLPCRIME editnotice}} to an existingWP:BLP, and found there was no link to actually do this because instead of the "Page Notice" redlink there was a bluelink to{{BLP_editnotice}}. Choosing a random example, you can see onthis edit page, there is no link to add a manual edit notice, whereas onthis page there is a redlink to add a Page Notice, and onthis page which has both a default BLP edit notice and a manual one, the edit link is visible.RunningOnBrains(talk)19:46, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Page notices are always in the same place,[[Template:Editnotices/Page/{{FULLPAGENAME}}]], so you can still add one even if the module didn't make a link for you. Those links all come out ofTemplate:Editnotice load though, so if you have an improvement to add, that is where to do it. —xaosfluxTalk20:44, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In 2013, I createdWikipedia:Wikidata/Wikidata Sandbox, which links tod:Q4115189, Wikidata's sandbox item. A few months after that,mw:Extension:Echo went live, and for the 12 years since, I have gotten a notification every time someone adds or removes that page from the sandbox on Wikidata. I added the page to the mute list atSpecial:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo, but that appears not to apply to Wikidata updates. This has been getting mildly on my nerves over time, and so I thought I'd ask if an admin couldIAR-revdel my username from the first revision, but I just tested that on testwiki (creatingtestwiki:Page creation test and then using my alt to link it totestwikidata:Q243049 since you don't get notified if you're the linker), and I still got notified after revdelling my own username. I'm not sure whether it's that Wikibase "sees through" the revdel or just looks for the second username (also mine), but either way, I still get notified. If it's the latter, I guess this could be fixed by revdelling by username from all of the first three edits to the local Wikidata sandbox page, but that'd just pass the problem on to the second editor, which would be unfair.
Is there anything that can be done here? I can only think of two things, both kind of ugly:
Find a random empty edit by an IP from before 21 February 2013 and merge it into the page history, making that IP the page's "creator".
Have someone, using an account that they don't mind getting all these pings on, move the current page toWikipedia:Wikidata/Wikidata Sandbox/old and then copy that page's contents over the resulting redirect.
Instead of "blaming" random IP users, maybe we couldimport a fake 2013 edit byUser:Maintenance script creating that page. Or maybe we could actually create that page by running a maintenance script (after deleting/moving the current version). Or maybe the Wikidata connections should respect that preference, it seems like a similar use case.Matma Rextalk23:52, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In theory I agree (in my opinion, rewriting a page's history works against one of the basic principles of a wiki and should be avoided). In practice, although it is a hack, for this specific case of a sandbox, if all of the editors of that page are amenable (without trying to sway their decision), it could be deleted and re-created, as suggested by Matma Rex. On the third hand, I don't really like putting a burden on the page editors that they might be seen as non-collaborative if they don't agree.
I am sympathetic about the desire not to see Wikidata notifications for a specific page, and that implementing a specific feature for it (particularly if editors would like to decouple it from the page link notification muting feature) may not happen anytime soon. Maybe someone is interested in writing a script to automatically acknowledge notifications meeting a configured criteria?isaacl (talk)18:06, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Tamzin If you can convince either ofthe two importers to importthis file, it will resolve your problem by inserting a fake page creation revision into that page. (No need to delete or move it.) I don't really know whether this is cool by the rules, but I haven't found a rule against it; I'm leaving it for you three to figure out.
If that turns out not to be cool, then I suggest filing a bug to make the mute preference apply to these notifications too. I can't promise that this will be prioritized though. You may be the only person facing this problem. :)Matma Rextalk21:55, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looking for something to do, I went to the maintenance reports onSpecial:SpecialPages . Unfortunately I find that many of the reports contain many pages that in my opinion shouldn't be included. For exampleSpecial:ShortPages includes redirects and set index articles, and while they are indeed short pages, they do not require maintenance. SimilarlySpecial:LonelyPages contains a lot of Soft redirect to Wiktionary pages. I'm not sure why these would even exist (i.e.At any rate) and again they don't need maintenance, other than perhaps deleting.
Looking at the associated talk pages, it seems like issues such as these are mostly ignored and unfixed. Is there a better place to bring these issues to the attention of someone who can address them?Derek Andrews (talk)22:09, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that ShortPages report, like many Special: pages that are effectively uneditable, is abandoned. See its talk page atWikipedia talk:Special:ShortPages, and that page's archives. Anomie is right; find a corresponding database report that sees active use and maintenance, or ask for one to be created. –Jonesey95 (talk)07:03, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Getting notified of replies when an AfD is added to a deletion sorting list
For some strange reason, I have sometimes been notified of replies in deletion sorting lists. On all 4 occasions, this has happened when someone added an AfD to a deletion sorting list. Since I, at present, have no involvement in those AfDs, I should not be notified of replies, especially considering the edits to those lists aren't even supposed to be replies to begin with. Unless someone is actually able to see the notifications I get, my only evidence of this is a series of e-mails that I refuse to publicize. Is someone here able to fix this, or should I take it to thePhabricator?JHD0919 (talk)23:12, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@JHD0919: Please give an example so we can see why you were notified. You can obviously leave out your email address but if you aren't willing to quote any part of the mail or reveal any of the edits then it's hard to help. Do not post such a vague report to Phabricator.PrimeHunter (talk)23:46, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, this is because the apps use Parsoid, and support for maps in Parsoid is not yet working. There is work happening on this problem for the last couple of weeks, but the mapimage generation is a complex process and the adaptations need to happen at multiple levels, so its a slow process. —TheDJ (talk •contribs)17:26, 15 December 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
View all 18 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, one of the fixes addressed an issue for temporary accounts adding an external URL, which triggered an hCaptcha request in more cases than intended, and did not display the required popup on the first attempt to publish the edit.[4]
Updates for technical contributors
To improve database and site performance, external links to Wikimedia projects will no longer be stored in the database. This means they will not be searchable inSpecial:LinkSearch, will not be checked by the Spam Blacklist or AbuseFilter as new links, and will not be in theexternallinks table on database replicas. In the future this may be extended to other highly-linked trusted websites on a per-wiki basis, such as Creative Commons links on Wikimedia Commons.[5]
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