User talk:TheSandDoctor

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Article policies

This user talk page might be watched by friendly talk page stalkers, which means that someone other than me might reply to your query. Their input is welcome and their help with messages that I cannot reply to quickly is appreciated.

Archives

If you feel that I have reverted an edit or issued a warning in error, please let me know. I am human, and I do make mistakes. Please don't interpret an error on my part as a personal attack on you. It's not, I promise. I ask you to simply bring it to my attention; I am always open to civil discussion. Thank you. TheSandDoctor (talk) 04:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)]][reply]

If I see something such as a box, template, image, etc., on another user/user talk page that catches my eye, I will "borrow" it. More than likely without asking. ;) TheSandDoctor (talk) 04:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)]][reply]

Question from CometOfLilith (17:03, 20 January 2026)

Hello! When encountering information in an article without a source, if I can't find a reliable source for it after diligent searching, is it better to add a citation request or remove it entirely? --Lilith's Comet (talk) 17:03, 20 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@CometOfLilith: Do you have an example in mind? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:19, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For example, content in a video game. A game references a certain book or real life event, and someone adds it to Wikipedia without a source. I go looking for a source, but despite the fact that independent forums and dozens of playthroughs show it to be true, none of them meet RS conditions.

In this case, is it better to remove it altogether, add one of the less-than-reliable sources, or leave it without a source? Lilith's Comet (talk) 06:27, 23 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@CometOfLilith: Apologies for the delayed response. In that scenario it might be acceptable to cite the video game itself using Template:Cite video game if it is content within the game itself. But we also need to consider whether it is worthy of inclusion (see: WP:DUE). Another option is indeed removal per WP:BURDEN, and adding Template:Citation needed is also an option. If you have any particular (real) examples in mind please let me know and I will try and assist with more tailored guidance.

TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:15, 30 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake on the ping. Please see the above CometOfLilith. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:34, 30 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I don't really have any examples right now, but your advice is very clear! Thank you!! Lilith's Comet (talk) 18:15, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Lilith's Comet: You're welcome! Please feel free to drop by here any time if you come across an example etc. and have questions. (Depending how long it is from now, you may have to remind me of this conversation for context but that isn't a big deal.) TheSandDoctor ^Talk 19:45, 7 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@CometOfLilith: I did the thing again. See above. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 20:32, 7 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Light0o*99 (09:54, 24 January 2026)

How can I cite a website in an episode list template? --Light0o*99 (talk) 09:54, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Light0o*99: What site are you hoping to cite and in which article? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 00:11, 30 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Nijū Mensō no Musume this site but I would like to cite in the Episodes section Light0o*99 (talk) 10:24, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Light0o*99: What website are you hoping to cite on the page Nijū Mensō no Musume? What does the reference back up? Just so we're clear, we can't cite Wikipedia for Wikipedia articles. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:47, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I found it from the external sites listed on the page, so I can't cite those? Light0o*99 (talk) 15:05, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Light0o*99: Just please link me what you are referring to. What external sites? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 19:45, 7 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

These are the external sites

It's at the bottom of the page

https://web.archive.org/web/20130825080943/http://www.chico-tv.com/

https://www.fujicreative.co.jp/for_buyers/more_info/tabid/106/pdid/44/Default.aspx

https://web.archive.org/web/20160611013757/http://www.telecom-anime.com/?works=page12

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/manga.php?id=9162 Light0o*99 (talk) 15:20, 10 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Light0o*99: I think you might be wanting to edit List of Nijū Mensō no Musume episodes, which has a list of episodes. Is that correct? Please see this guide to referencing for beginners. Please let me know if you have any further questions. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 08:34, 14 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, and yes, I want to edit that list.

I'll read the article first Light0o*99 (talk) 13:39, 15 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from வை.ப.வே.சாமிப்பிள்ளை (11:27, 2 February 2026)

Hi, Good evening ! Please let me know that I can continue my new tamil creative uploads at here or need a separate account. --வை.ப.வே.சாமிப்பிள்ளை (talk) 11:27, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) Hi there @வை.ப.வே.சாமிப்பிள்ளை,

I recommend that if you want to contribute in Tamil that you do so at the Tamil Wikipedia, as we can only accept English-langauge content here. All Wikimedia Foundation projects use a single account so you don't need to create a new one. Hope this helps. Aydo h8^{[what have I done now?]} 11:32, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! வை.ப.வே.சாமிப்பிள்ளை (talk) 11:33, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2026-06

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 "Page information" feature, which gives validating information about a page (example), now automatically includes a table of contents. If there is a local MediaWiki:Pageinfo-header page created by individual users, it can now be removed. [1]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, VisualEditor previously added bold or italic formatting inside link descriptions, making the wikicode complex. This has now been fixed. [2]

Updates for technical contributors

There was no XML dump on 20 January. Additionally, from now on, dumps will be generated once per month only. [3]
The MediaWiki Interfaces team removed support for all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from the MediaWiki REST API. All API users currently calling those endpoints are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in phabricator to the #MW-Interfaces-Team board.
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Weekly highlight

Users are reminded that the Wikimedia Foundation has shared some guiding questions for the July 2026–June 2027 Annual Plan on Meta and Diff. These focus on global trends, faster and healthier experimentation, better support for newcomers, strengthening editors and advanced users, improving collaboration across projects, and growing and retaining readership. Feedback and ideas are welcome on the talk page.

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MediaWiki message delivery 17:42, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from MrShmort (05:35, 5 February 2026)

mr. sand doctor there are two articles and both are on the same topic what should i do ? and how should i report it? There are two articles both titled crayon shin-chan(one is titled crayon shin-chan other just crayon shinchan[no hyphen]) the first one with a hyphen has more valuable info and seems much more complete and longer, even if the second one has a little bit of unique info it doesn't seem like the page in necessary so would you please look into it and or help me with it? --MrShmort (talk) 05:35, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@MrShmort: Crayon Shin-chan is the actual article and Crayon Shinchan just redirects there, so there is nothing to do and everything is as it should be. But given your description, it sounds like we aren't looking at the same pages. Can you please link me to both of these ones you're discussing? You can just copy and paste the URLs from your address bar when you visit both. Just so that I can be sure we're talking about the same things. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:54, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

okay so the one you mentioned is the one that i was mentioning as being the legit one and so i went back and realized that the other one is this one https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%AF%E0%A5%8C%E0%A4%A8_%E0%A4%B6%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%9A%E0%A5%88%E0%A4%A8

(the shorter one)(sorry for replying this late) MrShmort (talk) 13:45, 14 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@MrShmort: That explains it, thank you! The one that you just linked is on the Hindi Wikipedia. Different language Wikipedias (hi, fr etc.) are entirely different projects in different languages with their own communities, policies, norms etc. I can only help you with the English Wikipedia (here) and, to a lesser extent, somewhere like Wikimedia Commons (where images are uploaded) and Meta-Wiki. I only speak English fluently. Do you speak Hindi? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 17:00, 14 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

yes i do speak hindi and soooo should i just let it be for now or what? MrShmort (talk) 04:47, 15 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from FPWikiGuy on 50–40–90 club (16:14, 5 February 2026)

Hello,

Quinn Cook is not part of the 50-40-90 Club. --FPWikiGuy (talk) 16:14, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@FPWikiGuy: Do you have a source that backs this up? Verifiability is paramount. That article currently cites SF Gate as verifying Quinn's inclusion, and I can confirm that the SF Gate article does back up his inclusion. I can take it a step further, actually, and confirm that the NBA itself states he is "the first player in G League history to post a 50/40/90 season." This appears to back up the facts as currently displayed. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:51, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Kartik lal on Wikipedia:Project namespace (14:25, 7 February 2026)

Note: Kartik lal's mentor Ultraodan is away.

Alll --Kartik lal (talk) 14:25, 7 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Kartik lal: Hi there! Do you have a question? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 19:44, 7 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from FlorinPotor (14:50, 7 February 2026)

Hello! Can you please help me publish the article i made for Marius Antonietti? --FlorinPotor (talk) 14:50, 7 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@FlorinPotor: The draft has no references whatsoever included. In order to demonstrate notability you need to back up information within the draft/article with multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject of the article and cover the subject in some detail. In practice, these are peer reviewed academic articles, news reports, non-fiction books etc. They don't need to be entirely dedicated to the subject/person but they need to cover them in detail (not just trivial passing mentions). Please see this beginner's guide to referencing and come back with at least 3 of your best sources.

I hope that helps. If you have further questions, please let me know. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 19:52, 7 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback requests from the Feedback Request Service

Your feedback is requested at Talk:North Africa and Talk:Barry Keoghan on "All RFCs" request for comments. Thank you for helping out!
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Question from Xenogeist101 (12:20, 8 February 2026)

Hello! i am a direct descendent of Saiyed Bukhari mohammad sirajuddin and I wanted to add to the total photos presented on the wiki page. Do you know how i could do so? --Xenogeist101 (talk) 12:20, 8 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Xenogeist101: Can you link me to the article you are discussing (e.g., from the address bar of your web browser)? Since you mention pictures specifically, a good place to start would be Wikipedia:Images. In short, images of people must be either provably in the public domain in their country of origin and the United States or released under a compatible license by the rights holder (usually the photographer) before they can be used on Wikipedia. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 08:14, 14 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Mistralguerreiro201 (17:26, 8 February 2026)

Hi TheSandDoctor! Good to meet you!

I worked on drafting my first article the other day after getting accustomed to the Wikipedia editing system. Sadly it was rejected, but I tried to take the feedback to heart and updated it. I believe it's pending review again, but wondered if you had any tips to getting new articles approved for publication. --Mistralguerreiro201 (talk) 17:26, 8 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Mistralguerreiro201: Apologies for the delayed response. What draft are you discussing? Is it Draft:Guys (Podcast)]? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 08:18, 14 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No problem at all. Yes that's the one! Mistralguerreiro201 (talk) 10:34, 15 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2026-07

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

Logged-in contributors who manage large or complex watchlists can now organise and filter watched pages in ways that improve their workflows with the new Watchlist labels feature. By adding custom labels (for example: pages you created, pages being monitored for vandalism, or discussion pages) users can more quickly identify what needs attention, reduce cognitive load, and respond more efficiently. This improves watchlist usability, especially for highly active editors.
A new feature available on Special:Contributions shows temporary accounts that are likely operated by the same person, and so makes patrolling less time-consuming. Upon checking contributions of a temporary account, users with access to temporary account IP addresses can now see a view of contributions from the related temporary accounts. The feature looks up all the IPs associated with a given temporary account within the data retention period and shows all the contributions of all temporary accounts that have used these IPs. Learn more. [4]
When editors preview a wikitext edit, the reminder box that they are only seeing a preview (which is shown at the top), now has a grey/neutral background instead of a yellow/warning background. This makes it easier to distinguish preview notes from actual warnings (for example, edit conflicts or problematic redirect targets), which will now be shown in separate warning or error boxes. [5]
The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension continues to improve — it now properly supports more than one Wikibase site, for example both Wikidata and testwikidata. In addition, issues regarding text direction have been fixed for users who prefer Wikidata or other Wikibase sites in right-to-left (RTL) languages. [6][7]
The automatic "magic links" for ISBN, RFC, and PMID numbers have been deprecated in wikitext since 2021 due to inflexibility and difficulties with localization. Several wikis have successfully replaced RFC and PMID magic links with equivalent external links, but a template was often required to replace the functionality of the ISBN magic link. There is now a new built-in parser function {{#isbn}} available to replace the basic functionality of the ISBN magic link. This makes it easier for wikis who wish to migrate off of the deprecated magic link functionality to do so. [8]
Two new wikis have been created:
- a Wikipedia in Jju (w:kaj:) [9]
- a Wikipedia in Nawat (w:ppl:) [10]
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

A new global user group has been created: Local bots. It will be used internally by the software to allow community bots to bypass rate limits that are applied to abusive web scrapers. Accounts that are approved as bots on at least one Wikimedia wiki will be automatically added to this group. It will not change what user permissions the bot has. [11]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

The MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Spring 2026 will be held March 25–27 in Salt Lake City, USA. This event is organized by and for the third-party MediaWiki community. You can propose sessions and register to attend. [12]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:28, 9 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2026

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

Administrator changes

Vacant0

Crisco 1492

CheckUser changes

Daniel Quinlan

Vanamonde93

Mkdw

Oversight changes

Daniel Quinlan

Arbitration

Due to the result of a recent motion, a rough consensus of administrators at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard may impose an expanded topic ban on Israel, Israelis, Jews, Judaism, Palestine, Palestinians, Islam, and/or Arabs, if an editor's Arab-Israeli conflict topic ban is determined to be insufficient to prevent disruption. At least one diff per area expanded into should be cited.

Miscellaneous

Voting in the 2026 Steward elections started on 06 February 2026 at 14:00 (UTC) and will end on 27 February 2026 at 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process for current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:10, 10 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Notify me

@hadi.jb1111 Hadi.jb1111 (talk) 05:08, 12 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Hadi.jb1111 (05:10, 12 February 2026)

My name is fee and? --Hadi.jb1111 (talk) 05:10, 12 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@hadi.jb1111 Hadi.jb1111 (talk) 05:11, 12 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Hadi.jb1111: Please don't paste LLM instructions on my talk page like you did. Don't do that anywhere on Wikipedia. I don't understand why you did that or what you are asking. What is it that you need help with? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 08:17, 14 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Shenyang on a "All RFCs" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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ITN recognition for Jim Robson

On 13 February 2026, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Jim Robson, which you nominated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Spencer^T•C 23:02, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2026-08

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

The SRE Team will be performing a cleanup of Wikimedia's Etherpad instance, the web-based editor for real-time collaborative document editing. All pads will be permanently deleted after 30 April, 2026 – if there are still migration projects in progress at that point the team can revisit the date on a case by case basis. Please create local backups of any content you wish to keep, as deleted data cannot be recovered. This cleanup helps reduce database size and minimize infrastructure footprint. Etherpad will continue to support real-time collaboration, but long-term storage should not be expected. Additional cleanups may occur in the future without prior notice. [13]

Updates for editors

The Information Retrieval team will be launching an Android mobile app experiment that tests hybrid search capabilities which can handle both semantic and keyword queries. The improvement of on-platform search will enable readers to find what they’re looking for directly on Wikipedia more easily. The experiment will first be launched on Greek Wikipedia in late February, followed by English, French, and Portuguese in March. Read more on Diff blog. [14]
The Reader Growth team will run an experiment for mobile web users, that adds a table of contents and automatically expands all article sections, to learn more about navigation issues they face. The test will be available on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
Previously, site notices (MediaWiki:Sitenotice and MediaWiki:Anonnotice) would only render on the desktop site. Now, they will render on all platforms. Users on mobile web will now see these notices and be informed. Site administrators should be prepared to test and fix notices on mobile devices to avoid interference with articles. To opt out, interface admins can add #siteNotice { display: none; } to MediaWiki:Minerva.css. [15][16]
View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue on Special:RecentChanges has been fixed. Previously, clicking hide in the active filters caused the "view new changes since…" button to disappear, though it should have remained visible. The button now behaves as expected. [17]

Updates for technical contributors

New documentation is now available to help editors debug on-site search features. It supports troubleshooting when pages do not appear in results, when ranking seems unexpected, and when you need to inspect what content is being indexed, helping make search behavior easier to understand and analyze. Learn more. [18]
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 19:15, 16 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Jaccsac on Wikipedia:Contact us (05:50, 17 February 2026)

please help me to know my mikipedia email and the password --Jaccsac (talk) 05:50, 17 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Jaccsac: If you have forgotten your password and did set an email in your Special:Preferences then you can reset it at Special:PasswordReset. If you have lost both or didn't have an email address set in preferences on that account, you are sadly out of luck. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:17, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Cee2h6o (18:54, 18 February 2026)

Hello Mentor, I am in the process of writing an article for an MMA fighter. He meets the criteria for an entry (ranking in his promotion). I started in my sample page as I began learning how to edit. Although my article is not yet ready for review, how do I move that from my sample page to an actual article? Here is my article, in case it is visible to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Cee2h6o/Sample_page&oldid=1339048546

Thank you! --Cee2h6o (talk) 18:54, 18 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Cee2h6o: I would recommend submitting it for review through Articles for Creation process. To help you out I have moved it to the draft namespace with a proper name and it's now at Draft:Archibald Colgan. I also submitted it for review for you. However, I would say that Citing Wikipedia on Wikipedia as you did for PFL rankings isn't appropriate; you were meaning to cite pflmma.com/rankings and I fixed that for you just now as well. I will leave the review to someone else with more experience in that area but I will always recommend checking out this guide to creating your first article. Speaking from experience, just know that it can take a couple of attempts to get it right and learn the format etc. for Wikipedia and how to demonstrate notability. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:26, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Dogfiter1 on Nikhil Paul George (16:10, 20 February 2026)

Hi, copyedit shows that there are typos, but I think it is just romanized indian. What should I do to fix it? --Dogfiter1 (talk) 16:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Dogfiter1: Where do you see "copyedit"? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:29, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

the suggested edits page when I open my user page Dogfiter1 (talk) 16:03, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Dogfiter1: Thank you. I see what you are referring to now. I think that one got flagged because of the "This article has multiple issues." banner. I don't see typos to fix here. I would just pick another page and keep doing that until you see something to edit. That suggestion feed is automated and not always accurate as to the problem. Some are also more complex than others. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:32, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Ejrreyes65 (10:58, 21 February 2026)

Gusto ko po sana ng dark theme o kulay ng pahina dahil masyadong nakakasilaw at masakit sa mata 👀saan po ang settings ang susundin ko yun po bang sa Chrome o mismong Wikipedia app o sa Wikipedia website Ernesto Jr Reyes/Jhun Reyes Salamat po🤗👋❤️👍... --Ejrreyes65 (talk) 10:58, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Ejrreyes65: There is a "dark mode" toggle in Special:Preferences.

Mayroong toggle na "dark mode" sa Special:Preferences. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:27, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility) on a "All RFCs" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2026-09

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

Reference Check has been deployed to English Wikipedia, completing its rollout across all Wikipedias. The feature prompts newcomers to add a citation before publishing new content, helping reduce common citation-related reverts and improve verifiability. In A/B testing, the impact was substantial: newcomers shown Reference Check were approximately 2.2 times more likely to include a reference on desktop and about 17.5 times more likely on mobile web. [19]

Updates for editors

The InterwikiSorting extension, which allowed for the sorting of interwiki links, has been undeployed from Wikipedia. As a result, editors who had enabled interwiki link sorting in non-compact mode (full list format) will now see links reordered. The links moving forward will be listed in the alphabetical order of language code. [20]
Later this week, people who are editing a page-section using the mobile visual editor, will notice a new "Edit full page" button. When tapped, you will be able to edit the entire article. This helps when the change you want to make is outside the section you initially opened. [21][22]
The Reader Experience team is inviting editors to assess whether dark mode should still be considered "beta" on their wiki, based on their experience of how well it functions on desktop and mobile. If the feature is deemed mature, editors can update the interface messages in MediaWiki:skin-theme-description and MediaWiki:Vector-night-mode-beta-tag to indicate that dark mode is ready and no longer considered beta.
The improved Activity tab which displays user-insights is now available to all users of the Wikipedia iOS app (version 7.9.0 and later). Following earlier A/B testing that showed higher account creation among users with access to the feature, it has been rolled out to 100% of users along with some updates. The Activity tab now shows your edited articles in the timeline, offers editing impact insights like contribution counts and article view trends, and customization options to improve in-app experience for users.
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug that prevented DiscussionTools from working on mobile has now been fixed, restoring full functionality. [23]

Updates for technical contributors

The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension that makes this possible continues to improve. The latest upgrade is the inclusion of a new hook, ext.globalwatchlist.rebuild, which fires after each watchlist rebuild. This allows you to run gadgets and user scripts for the Special page. [24]
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 19:02, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2026

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

Administrator changes

CheckUser changes

Ks0stm

Oversight changes

Ks0stm

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, the web archival service archive.today has been deprecated; links to the site should be removed.
A request for comment is open to discuss retiring CSD criterion R3 in favour of handling such redirects through RfD.

Arbitration

Following a motion, remedy 9.1 of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been amended to limit TenPoundHammer to one XfD nomination or PROD per 24-hour period.
Following a motion, the Iskandar323 further POV pushing motion has been rescinded.
The Arbitration Committee has passed a housekeeping motion rescinding a number of outdated remedies and enforcement provisions across multiple legacy cases. In most instances, existing sanctions remain in force and continue to be appealable through the usual processes, while some case-specific remedies were amended or clarified.

Miscellaneous

Following the 2026 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: A09, AmandaNP, Barras, Count Count, M7, SHB2000, Teles and VIGNERON.
An Unreferenced articles backlog drive is taking place in March 2026 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!

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Tech News: 2026-10

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

Wikipedia 25 Birthday mode is now live on Betawi, Breton, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, Gorontalo, Indonesian, Italian, Luxembourgish, Madurese, Sicilian, Spanish, Thai, and Vietnamese Wikipedias! This limited-time campaign feature celebrates 25 years of Wikipedia with a birthday mascot, Baby Globe. When turned on, Baby Globe is shown on ~2,500 articles, waiting to be discovered by readers. Communities can choose to turn Birthday mode on by getting consensus from their community and asking an admin to enable the feature and customize it via community configuration on the local wiki.

Updates for editors

Sub-referencing, a new feature to re-use references with different details has been released to Swedish Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia and a couple of other wikis. You can try the feature on these projects or on testwiki and betawiki. Learnings from the first pilot wiki German Wikipedia have been published in a report. Reach out to the Wikimedia Deutschland team if you are interested in becoming a pilot wiki.
Paste Check will become available at all Wikipedias this week. The feature prompts newcomers who are pasting text they are not likely to have written into VisualEditor to consider whether doing so risks a copyright violation. Paste Check tags all edits where it is shown for potential review. Local administrators can configure various aspects of the feature via Special:EditChecks. Research across 22 wikis found that Paste Check resulted in an 18% decrease in relative reverted-edits compared to the control group. Translators can help to localize this and related features.
The Reader Experience team will be standardizing the user menu in the top right for all mobile users so that it is closer to the desktop experience. Currently this user menu is only visible to users with Advanced Mobile Controls (AMC) turned on. The only change is that a couple buttons previously in the left-side menu will move to the top right for users who do not have AMC turned on. This change is expected to go out March 9 and seeks to improve the user interface. [25]
Starting in the week of March 2, the emails sent out when an email address was added, removed, or changed for an account will switch to a substantially nicer and clearer HTML email from the prior plaintext one. [26]
Notifications are currently limited to 2,000 historic entries per user, and extend back to 2013 when the feature was released. This is going to be changed to only store Notifications from the last 5 years, but up to 10,000 of them. This will help with long-term infrastructure health and help to prevent more recent notifications from disappearing too soon. [27]
The Global Watchlist which lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on a single page continues to see improvements. The latest update improves label usage experience. The extension now allows activating the language fallback system for Wikidata items without labels in the viewed language, and showing those labels in the user’s preferred Wikidata language if no uselang= URL parameter is provided. [28][29]
The Wikipedia Android team has started a beta test of hybrid search on Greek Wikipedia. Hybrid search capabilities can handle both semantic and keyword queries enabling readers to find what they’re looking for directly on Wikipedia more easily.
For security reasons, members of certain user groups are required to have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled. Currently, 2FA is required to use the group, but not to be a member of it. Given that this model still has some vulnerabilities, the situation will gradually change in March. Members of these groups will be unable to disable 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 second half of March, users without 2FA will be removed from these groups. This applies to: CentralNotice administrators, checkusers, interface administrators, suppressors, Wikidata staff, Wikifunctions staff, WMF Office IT and WMF Trust & Safety. Nothing will change for other users. See the linked task for deployment schedule. [30]
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue preventing users from creating an instance in Wikibase.cloud has now been fixed. [31]

Updates for technical contributors

To help ensure fair use of infrastructure, over the next month the Wikimedia Foundation will implement global API rate limits across our APIs. In early March, stricter limits will be applied to unidentified requests from outside Toolforge/WMCS and API requests that are made from web browsers. In April, higher limits will be applied to identified traffic. These limits are intentionally set as high as possible to minimise impact on the community. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits.
The Wikidata Query Service Linked Data Fragment (LDF) endpoint will be decommissioned in February. This endpoint served limited traffic, which was successfully migrated to other data access methods that were better suited to support existing use cases. The hardware used to support the LDF endpoint will be reallocated to support the ongoing backend migration efforts. [32]
The new Parsoid parser continues to be deployed to additional wikis, improving platform sustainability and making it easier to introduce new reading and editing features. Parsoid is now the default parser on 488 WMF wikis (268 Wikipedias), now covering more than 10% of all Wikipedia page views.
The process and criteria for requesting exceptional access to the high volume feed of the Wikimedia Enterprise APIs (at no cost for mission-aligned usecases), have now been published. This is to provide more thorough and clearer documentation for users.
Tech Blog, the blog dedicated to the Wikimedia technical community will be migrating to Diff, the community news and event blog. The migration should be complete in April 2026, after which new posts will be accepted for publishing. Readers will be able to access posts – old and new – on the landing page at https://diff.wikimedia.org/techblog.
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 17:50, 2 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]