10 November 2025
News and notes:Temporary accounts go live and WMF board member self-suspends ArbCom elections draw close, and Wikimania '27 in Santiago. Community view:Six Wikipedians' thoughts on Grokipedia, and the humanity of it all It ain't a five course meal, according to one of our interviewees. Wikicup report:BeanieFan11, WikiCup victor of 2025, covers the results Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. In the media:Jimbo's book, an argument about genocide, and a train of shame Wikipedia's new rival, political controversy in Italy and other Wiki-reports. Recent research:Taking stock of the 2024–2025 research grants $400,000 USD in total funding: what did we get? Opinion:With Grokipedia, top-down control of knowledge is new again Does it shed any light on particular topics that are better suited to LLM-generation than others? Obituary:Struway Rest in peace. Traffic report:The documentaried, the disowned, the deceased, Diwali and the Dodgers You know your man is working hard, he's worth a deuce. Comix:Head of steam 'Sblood!
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Reference links for myself

• http://www.oclc.org/research/people/proffitt.html
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/A_Wikipedian-in-Residence_to_Engage_500_Librarians_and_their_Communities

Hello, LadyofShalott. 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?

• 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

• 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.
• Administrators willautomatically be able to see temporary account IP information once they have accepted theAccess to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy viaSpecial:Preferences or via the onboarding dialog which comes up after temporary accounts are deployed.

Impact for administrators

• 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)
• SeeWikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer § What can and can't be said for more detailed guidelines.

Useful tools for patrollers

• It is possible to view if a user has opted-in to view temporary account IPs via theUser Info card, available inPreferences →Appearance →Advanced options →Enable theuser info card
  • This feature also makes it possible for anyone to see the approximate count of temporary accounts active on the same IP address range.
• Special:IPContributions allows viewing all edits and temporary accounts connected to a specific IP address or IP range.
• Similarly,Special:GlobalContributions supports global search for a given temporary account's activity.
• The auto-reveal feature (see video below) allows users with the right permissions to automatically reveal all IP addresses for a limited time window.

Videos

• How to use Special:IPContributions
• How automatic IP reveal works
• How to use IP Info
• How to use User Info

Further information and discussion

• For more information and discussion regarding this change, please see the announcement from the Wikimedia Foundation atWikipedia:Village pump (WMF) § Temporary accounts rollout.

Most of this message was written byMz7 (source). Thanks, 🎃SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk)02:48, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2025).

Administrator changes

Toadspike

• Elahrairah
• Juliancolton
• Magnus Manske

CheckUser changes

asilvering

Guideline and policy news

• The speedy deletion criteriaU5 has been repealed, withU6 andU7 replacing it. See theFAQ for more clarifications.
• Community-designated contentious topics may now be enforced and appealed at thearbitration enforcement noticeboard (AE) as a result ofan RfC.

Technical news

• You can enable a handyuser info card next to usernames, which when clicked displays edit count, blocks, thanks, and other information. To enable this feature, visitPreferences →Appearance →Advanced options →Enable theuser info card

Arbitration

• The arbitration caseTransgender healthcare and people has been closed
  • Uninvolved administrators may impose anAE participation restriction on any thread at theArbitration Enforcement noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

• Anunreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2025 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with{{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles.Sign up to participate!

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.

If you wish to participate in the 2025 election, please reviewthe candidates and submit your choices on thevoting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add{{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page.MediaWiki message delivery (talk)00:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]