User talk:GhostInTheMachine

This user knows that it can be a challenge to keep AGF in mind.

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Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #249 is out: Annual plan 2026-2027

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we present you the current draft of objectives for Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia in the WMF Annual Plan 2026-2027, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 09:48, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Sincere Thank you :D

For the United States strikes on alleged drug traffickers during Operation Southern Spear, thank you for moving the video and not deleting it. I know you do not like these videos as much, and personally I do not mind them being left out of the infobox as long as they are included. Thank you for remembering and being so considerate. (: Historyguy1138 (talk) 13:07, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-22

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• Following a successful account creation experiment, an improved logged-out edit warning message will be deployed to all Wikimedia wikis in the first week of June. The change will only affect logged-out users on mobile web who open an editing session. The updated experience is designed to encourage account creation more clearly, while still allowing users to edit with temporary accounts. Results from the experiment showed a significant increase in account creation, with a 27% relative lift among users shown the updated message. As expected, as more people funnel into account creation, temporary accounts decreased by a relative 16%. The experiment did not show any significant changes in constructive edit rates or other monitored contributor metrics. [1]

Updates for editors

• For security reasons, members of certain user groups are required to have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled. Members of these groups will be unable to disable the last 2FA method on their account, and it will be impossible to add users without 2FA to these groups. Users will still be able to add new authentication methods or remove them, as long as at least one method is continuously enabled. In the next few weeks, users without 2FA will be removed from these groups. Notably, this applies to bureaucrats. See the linked tasks for deployment schedules. [2][3]
• WMDE Technical Wishes will run an A/B test on 10 wikis, testing potential improvements for Reference Previews. The experiment will run for ~2 weeks at the end of May / beginning of June and will affect 10% of desktop readers on the participating wikis.
• After two successful experiments, the Reader Growth team is rolling out an Image Browsing beta feature for all Wikipedias on mobile on May 25. This means that anyone who has all beta features on by default will start to see this feature, and others can check the box to turn it on in their preferences. The beta feature will include a carousel of all an article's images at the top of the article, with controls for editors to exclude images from the article's carousel or to exclude an article from the feature entirely.
• View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, three dimensional STL files were being rendered incorrectly by the media viewer 3D extension which is now fixed. [4]

Updates for technical contributors

• The legacy CSS classes tleft and tright have been replaced with floatleft and floatright as the former do not work consistently across all MediaWiki platforms, notably mobile web and mobile apps. Projects relying on these classes are encouraged to review related usage and plan for migration. Please note that floatleft and floatright may also be deprecated in future, although there are currently no plans to do so. Read more.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:50, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Changes to List of NAE members (electronics)

I noticed that you made a few changes to the List of members of the National Academy of Engineering (electronics) page in the last week or so, first moving the "Year Elected" column to the left side, and then most recently changing the "d." for death year into "Died" throughout the page. I'm not sure if you're aware, but this is one list of ~43 pages that comprise the lists of the members of the NAE and the NAS. I've been systematically updating all 43 pages with the ~10,000 names (living and deceased), pulling them from the online directories, checking and integrating with the existing Wikipedia information, etc. These pages were terribly out of date, and had a lot of incorrect information that had been added in an ad hoc manner over the years.

I believe that all 43 pages should have the same format, and I've been using the format that was set with the NAS pages, which dates back more than 12 years. This includes the "Year Elected" on the right and the indication of the death as "(d. ####)". I inadvertently overwrote your recent change of moving the "Year Elected" column because you moved it when I was in the process of updating that page with the new information between my first minor cleanup and then the full rebuild.

So, if you don't too strenuously object, I would like to revert your change of "d." -> "died" on this page, just so that all ~43 pages are a consistent format. But let me know what you think. LocusAndLeaf (talk) 12:11, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I see two (unrelated) aspects:

• Column ordering — The lists could be seen as either:
  1. "lists of people" (ordered by surname, so having the name in the first column) or
  2. "lists of elected people" (ordered by the year that they were elected, so having the year in the first column)

  The lists are currently #1 and I currently prefer #2 (chronological lists just make more sense to me). However, since the tables can be sorted, the choice is not very important.

• Died — MOS:DOB advises the use of the whole word rather than just d. – space would need to be very tight to require the saving of just two characters.

To ensure consistency, I am willing to change "d." to "died" in all 43 of the articles.

Of course, there is also an argument for not saying "d." or "died" at all – it should really include DOB as well: M. Robert Aaron (1922–2007), but that is probably a step too far ... — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 11:15, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

On the column order, I think I would more strongly prefer to keep the name as the first column. These pages are "Lists of members...", not timelines of elections, and the primary entity in each row is the person. The election year is essentially a secondary attribute, and as you say, it is already an easily sortable table.

On d. vs died, I see your point about MOS. My reading is that “d.” is permitted where space is limited. I was more focused on consistency, and since d. was used historically in these tables, I had kept it that way when updating them. I am fine with either, but generally I had preferred the compactness of "d." over "died" since there are some longer names and institution names that make the table wide.

I'm not in favor of adding the date of birth, as that is more biographic than membership-relevant information, and it's not information supplied by the NAS/NAE directories, so there would be loads of incomplete entries.

Thanks for fixing the short descriptions (I saw that adding those had created redundancy at the top), and for the discussion. LocusAndLeaf (talk) 14:17, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

Y — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:32, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

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@LocusAndLeaf: An aside: should the articles be named with an upper case suffix or a lower case one? List of members of the National Academy of Engineering (aerospace) vs List of members of the National Academy of Engineering (Bioengineering). There seems to be a fairly even split... — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:01, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

If it were up to me, I would have them all capitalized, because those are the titles of the NAS and NAE sections. But, there was a discussion about this (somewhat buried) in the talk page for the NAE Aerospace page before I came onto the scene as an editor. An editor decided that these were common descriptive titles and not proper nouns, and there was one supporting vote, so proceeded to change all of them to lowercase. Perhaps they missed a few, like Bioengineering - and I am in favor of consistency, even if lowercase was not my preference, so I would vote in favor of switching to lowercase; it seemed like the time to debate upper vs lower had passed. LocusAndLeaf (talk) 14:18, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I also thought that UC was better ... Done them all anyway — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:39, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. This reminded me that another change that I was considering was adding the official section number in the header at the top of each table, because the section numbers are designated by NAS and NAE, but are not currently in these tables or even clearly described in the main articles about the NAS and NAE. It would look something like:

== Section 1: Aerospace ==

and so forth for all the pages. This might reduce the redundancy of the table header with the page header. I haven't gotten around to this, obviously, but let me know if you think that's a good idea, bad idea, or are indifferent. LocusAndLeaf (talk) 15:43, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

No-ish. When reading an article, the numbers would have no significance. The article should not aim to reproduce all aspects of the source — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 08:24, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Okay; it sounds like the main article on the NAE would be a better place to describe the organization into sections, perhaps with a table listing the 12 sections in the membership section. The NAS has a separate page on membership and a section describing the major disciplines, but nothing on the 31 named sections within those disciplines (which is how the lists of members are organized). So maybe a table there would be appropriate? LocusAndLeaf (talk) 13:40, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Just a note that I made these two changes, adding brief tables to each page to list the formal sections and classes (for NAS). LocusAndLeaf (talk) 15:47, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #250 is out: Looking back and forward

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we present you a recollection of our work so far, now that we celebrate our 250th newsletter, we share with you a summary of our latest outreach activities, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:04, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2026).

Administrator changes

• Asukite
• Bobby Cohn
• Bonadea
• Ca
• Drm310
• Reconrabbit
• Sammi Brie

• Tamzin
• TonyBallioni

• Ezhiki
• Queen of Hearts

Bureaucrat changes

• WereSpielChequers

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the "persistent usage of large language models" has been included as a common reason for a block.

Technical news

• Mandatory 2FA for bureaucrats: Bureaucrats without two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled have already lost access to their advanced rights on 26 May. Those who do not enable 2FA may be automatically removed from the groups in mid-June 2026, and from that point onward, new members must have 2FA enabled before they can be added. (T423119, T423120)

Arbitration

• The arbitration case SchroCat has been closed.
• The arbitration case Michael Jackson has opened. Evidence submissions in this case closes on 1 June.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the 2026 Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election closes on 1 June.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:14, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

George Floyd

Hello there. You reverted my insertion of a map showing xenophobia protests in Durban. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_and_March Not sure why. Wikipedia made a wonderful map of protests in the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:George_Floyd_protests_map. The same is needed here. Derek J Moore (talk) 19:51, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

The March and March article is about an organization. A map of protests in Durban might be appropriate in an article about protests in Durban — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:09, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

March and March are a national organisation. They have organised protests in Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria. Derek J Moore (talk) 13:14, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-23

Latest tech 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

• The Reader Experience team is conducting an experiment to show the reading lists feature, which is still in development, to logged-out mobile readers to test whether it encourages account creation at a higher rate compared to the watchstar button. The experiment was launched on May 18th on German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu wikis, and it will run for a month.
• The Wikimedia Apps team released Phase 1 of the redesigned Home Feed to the Android Beta app. The new Home Feed includes a refreshed "Community" tab and a personalized "For You" tab featuring daily updated reading recommendations. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve content discovery and create more engaging learning experiences in the Wikipedia apps.
• View all 18 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where images could fail to load for some suggested edits on Special:Homepage, leaving the thumbnail stuck in a loading state, has now been fixed. [5]

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Died vs. "d." in tables?

Hi! I saw you recently updated the list of National Academy pages with died instead of 'd.' As I'm one of the main people (somewhat sporadically) updating those pages, I just wanted to say thank you for updating all of the pages and not just one, and ask for your thoughts behind using 'd.' when space is limited versus writing out 'died' in the tables? I'm fine with either option, as it was an arbitrary decision I made in the first place. I'm just curious on if there's a guideline beyond 'when space is limited' or anything beyond what's listed in MS:DDOT. Thanks! Cyanochic (talk) 16:45, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Geniologists often use d. or †, but WP has to assume a very general readership and so we should avoid abbreviations - especially where they are not explained. The words born and died are also only four letters, so a two character abbreviation saves very little space and is hard to justify — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 09:32, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! Makes plenty of sense to me. I'll make sure to keep with the new formatting. Cyanochic (talk) 17:35, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Kuwaiti companies established in 2012

A tag has been placed on Category:Kuwaiti companies established in 2012 indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and removing the speedy deletion tag. ✗plicit 14:01, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #251 is out: The illustrated encyclopaedia

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we introduce our first function to import images on Abstract Wikipedia, we present our Functions of the Week, and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Also, we remind you that if you have questions or ideas to discuss, the next Volunteers' Corner will be held on June 8, at 17:30 UTC (link to the meeting).

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:14, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-24

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• Wikimedia Enterprise has increased the free usage limits for its API offerings. The monthly request limit for the On-demand API has increased from 5,000 to 50,000 requests, while the Snapshot API limit has increased from 15 to 30 requests per month. In addition, Structured Contents snapshots are now available for free accounts. These changes expand access to Wikimedia Enterprise data for developers, researchers, and organizations using Wikimedia content. [6]

Updates for editors

• The refreshed Explore Feed, now called the Home Feed, is rolling out to 50% of users of the Wikipedia Android app. The Home Feed helps readers discover relevant content through two new tabs: Community and For You. The Community tab provides a scrollable feed of curated content and updates from the broader Wikimedia community and movement, while the For You tab offers a full-screen, swipeable experience that shows content tailored to a user's interests. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve discovery and enhance the learning experience in the Wikipedia app.
• The Which came first? daily trivia game is now available in the beta version of the Wikipedia iOS app in English, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish. The game uses historical events from Wikipedia's "On This Day" content and challenges readers to guess which of two events happened first. The game was previously released on Android. Communities interested in making the game available in their languages can read the instructions and requirements.
• Sub-referencing, a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details, will begin rolling out to Wikimedia wikis following a successful pilot phase. Deployment will start on 8 June for most Group 1 wikis and French Wikipedia, with additional Wikipedia language editions receiving the feature over the coming months. Communities are encouraged to prepare by checking for untranslated Cite extension messages in their language and reviewing any use of Reference Tooltips, which may require updates to support the new functionality. Wikis using Reference Previews do not need to take any action. Communities may also wish to create the cite-tracking-category-ref-details tracking category as a hidden category using __HIDDENCAT__ (or a dedicated template), and connect it to the corresponding Wikidata item d:Q129764848. [7]
• The Page Previews experiment on mobile web has concluded. The team decided not to roll out the feature after the results showed no statistically significant impact on reader retention, as the primary success metric was retention improvement. Page Previews, which are already available on desktop and in the apps, display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and link to the full article when readers tap a blue link. The experiment tested this experience on mobile web across six Wikipedias.
• The user interface icon library will be updated later this week or next week. Most of the ~300 icons have been slightly refined and ~30 new icons have been added. These changes improve the icons to make them more consistent and comprehensible, and provide more visual balance when they are used in groups.
• The Universal Language Selector (ULS) interface in MediaWiki, which helps users select content in other languages, has been updated. The new version improves speed and accessibility, and users of Wikimedia projects can now pin languages for quicker language switching. The deployment to Wikimedia sites will happen gradually in the coming weeks. You can test it now as a beta feature by selecting beta features in your profile preferences and share your feedback on the project page.
• View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the Pageviews Analysis dashboard on pageviews.wmcloud.org stopped updating graph data in May 2026, affecting all users, has been fixed. [8]

Updates for technical contributors

• The function signature for mw.util.addPortletLink() has been simplified. Developers can now pass a configuration object instead of a list of positional parameters when creating portlet links. The previous function signature remains supported for backwards compatibility. For example, instead of: mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', '#', 'Stub', 'ca-stubtag', 'Add a stub tag to this page'); use mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', { href: '#', text: 'Stub', id: 'ca-stubtag', tooltip: 'Add a stub tag to this page' });. Script maintainers are encouraged to review existing uses of addPortletLink() and update them where appropriate. This change will be available on all wikis from 11 June. Thanks to community volunteer Gerges for contributing this improvement. [9]
• Community Wishlist discussion: Product & Technology introduced changes meant to increase the number and complexity of wishes fulfilled, including the disbanding of the Community Tech team. They are engaging in discussions about a proposed direction for the wishlist from community members. Includes ways to structure annual voting, better tracking of wishes, removing focus areas, and staffing updates.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:28, 8 June 2026 (UTC)