User talk:Rusty Cat

nest

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den

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patrol

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litterbox

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pawprint gallery🐾

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The Signpost: 9 September 2025

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Tech News: 2025-37

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 Editing team is working on a new check: Paste check. This check informs newcomers who paste text into Wikipedia that the content might not be accepted. This check is an effort to increase the likelihood that the new content people are adding to Wikipedia is aligned with the Movement's commitment to offering information under a free content license. This check will soon be tested at a few wikis. If your community is interested in this test, please tell us in this task, or contact the team.

Updates for editors

• Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will be able to use a linting tool to see errors or other potential problems in wikitext in real time. See the help page for more information. [1]
• When browsing a wiki (like en.wikipedia.org), the software responds in one of two ways: a desktop page, or a redirect to a mobile version on an "m" domain (like en.m.wikipedia.org). Over the next three weeks, MediaWiki will start displaying the mobile version to mobile devices directly on the standard domain, without this redirect. This change does not affect existing m-dot URLs, or the "Desktop view" opt-out. Learn more. [2]
• When an edit changes the categories of a page, the changes to the category membership counts are now happening asynchronously. This improves the speed of saving edits, especially when moving many pages to or from the same category, and reduces the risk of site outages, but it means that the counts can show outdated information for a few minutes. [3]
• Edits on Wikidata to qualifiers (properties and values) and references (properties and values) in a Wikidata item statement will now not add entries to the RecentChanges or Watchlist pages on all other Wikis. This is a temporary change to improve performance while other solutions are created. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. Learn more. [4][5]
• Japanese-language wikis have had a major upgrade to the way that search works. The new search should generally give more accurate and more relevant search results. [6]
• View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

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 01:11, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Eruditti& on Wikipedia:Contact us/Article subjects (17:47, 9 September 2025)

Hi, I’m wondering why my Wikipedia article “Fred Bendheim” is still not listed on Google. It’s been over 90 days since it was published. Thank you. --Eruditti& (talk) 17:47, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

@Eruditti&: Wikipedia does not have control over external search engines, such as Google. It may be possible that Google just hasn't seen the page yet. However, as previously stated this is not in our control.

Thanks, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 21:16, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, but your response contradicts what I have been told by other sources. They said new articles are reviewed before allowing Google to include them, and this process can take up to 90 days.

Also Google apparently scans new web pages all the time, so not sure why they wouldn’t see this page.

Any other help would be appreciated 2600:4041:5BEE:6600:900F:CDD0:CE0C:6930 (talk) 23:00, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

@Eruditti&: The portion of the process that takes up to 90 days is the allowing of Google to index the pages. Otherwise, I unfortunately don't know why Google isn't indexing the page.

Thanks, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 23:05, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from MostlySpellingErrors (22:54, 9 September 2025)

Hello. I've given money for years and did mild editing. Mostly spelling really. I only joined because I got a rude message for apparently misspelling someone's name and was accused of vandalism. Now I was on the verge of just leaving the site (and never giving another dollar) when I thought that maybe joining the site would lead to more civil responses to my own errors. I'm not giving any money until I see how this works out. (Of course, I have to wait until I make another error to find out). I'm sorry, but I am just in a foul mood after today's events and it's not the first time. Can't moderators be corrected for being unprofessional? --MostlySpellingErrors (talk) 22:54, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

@MostlySpellingErrors:

Wikipedia is entirely volunteer-run; I do not receive any monetary compensation whatsoever for any of my contributions to Wikipedia. In fact, we have no knowledge of your donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, which help to maintain servers and fund the Foundation.

Regarding your edit: The user who warned your for vandalism was not necessarily a "moderator" as you say. Many ordinary users help out with anti-vandalism efforts on a daily basis. My recommendation is to reply to the user's message, asking them how that was vandalism.

Happy editing, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 22:52, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from LRedPosion (14:46, 10 September 2025)

Hi I wish to make an article for the deceased musician called Kai Wesener of Fremont, CA, USA. He died by suicide on October 30th 2023. Though not very popular I wish to put his name on the internet forever so new people can discover him and his music. --LRedPosion (talk) 14:46, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

I am willing to edit the whole page but I am new to editing here I am sorry could you make a page and also redirect his artist name back to him he was called bl4ck m4rket c4rt

he was only seventeen LRedPosion (talk) 15:36, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

@LRedPosion: I gave his name a quick Google search. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there are enough reliable sources to establish notability.

Additionally, Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion.

I hope you understand.

Happy editing, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 21:15, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi it makes sense. But I wanted to not do it necessarily for personal reasons. More that his tragic story is still relevant today as his album "Today I Laid Down" is posthumously pressed on vinyl. While not a celebrity in the true sense he did leave a mark on the younger community. The vinyl profits are handled by the parents and donated to Sweet Relief. All of whom has sources as well as where he is buried. I just wanted to give this young man a chance to reach a wider audience through the power of the Internet. It's all he ever wished for. Thanks for taking your time to read LRedPosion (talk) 21:34, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

it doesn't have to be much. Just a basic page with his picture and information. As now with the vinyl pressing his story came to a fitting resolution despite the sad situation. I already made a short summary for it. LRedPosion (talk) 22:26, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

@LRedPosion: As I said previously, Wikipedia would not be the right place for this. We have articles on subjects because they are notable under our guidelines. You may wish to look towards other sites.

Thanks, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 22:40, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Okay I'm sorry for asking but how popular does a person need to be in order to qualify for a Wikipedia page? That part is unclear as I sometimes see Wikipedia articles for artist and topics that are very obscure. I think his story is a good advocate for good mental health as the profits of his EP are donated to a charity doing that. I think it's an informative piece in that sense. I'm in a really bad place myself and I just want to honor the young bright man for saving my life. LRedPosion (talk) 22:58, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

additionally all his music is on major music platforms and on rate your music, album of the year among others. His death also has various sources. And his popularity was boosted by a popular YouTuber called Brad Taste In Music LRedPosion (talk) 23:11, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

so I hope you would reconsider your decision. thanks for reading LRedPosion (talk) 11:49, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

@LRedPosion: It's not my decision, it's what Wikipedia's guidelines and policies dictate.

Even if you do decide to write the article, it will most likely be declined and/or nominated for deletion.

Thank you, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 14:18, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

I won't write the article as I respect your advice and the guidelines of Wikipedia. And besides I'm fairly new to editing. Thanks for clarifying. Are there any sites like Wikipedia where this kind of page is allowed?

I want to make a page with just the basic information of him alongside pictures of his debut album and his location where he is buried. And how the albums posthumous vinyl pressing makes the story complete. LRedPosion (talk) 16:42, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

maybe something like Fandom dot com? LRedPosion (talk) 16:45, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

@LRedPosion: I'm not familiar with other sites, but you might want to look on the page Wikipedia:Alternative outlets.

Cheers, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 23:54, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

thank you that page means alot to me I'll try Fandom you're right Kai wasn't famous enough to go on the site. I hope you understand my reason it's above all to put his life on the Internet for informational purposes. I hope to contribute to this site in the future thank you for taking your time to talk to me LRedPosion (talk) 00:05, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

@LRedPosion: You're welcome! If you have any questions in the future, don't hesitate to ask! ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 01:22, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Ramyaamer77 (14:10, 11 September 2025)

Hi, i need your help in creating a page for my Boss in both English and Arabic --Ramyaamer77 (talk) 14:10, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

@Ramyaamer77: Creating an article for your boss is strongly discouraged and is a clear-cut example of conflict-of-interest editing (WP:COI). The article will most likely be deleted.

However, you are welcome to contribute to topics unrelated to your job, family, and any other connections you may have, including yourself. Thank you. ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 14:16, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

it seems i was not totally clear, i did read the COI and this the main reason for my ask, I'm doing it as part of his persona creation

he is a Egyptian public figure, Entrepreneur, our PR team suggested to have a Wiki page for him and i need to do it properly without compromising the Wiki rules and policies, i can share the source document of the article with you for verification and guidance Ramyaamer77 (talk) 14:51, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

@Ramyaamer77: I still strongly discourage you to create an article on your boss. If he really does meet our notability guidelines, some neutral, uninvolved editor should create an article, not someone with a conflict of interest. It is very hard for someone with a COI to write neutrally and adhere to our policies and guidelines. ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 23:52, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Hussientyfn (19:18, 14 September 2025)

مرحبا اريد أن ابحث عن الميكانيكيه الكلاسيكية --Hussientyfn (talk) 19:18, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

@Hussientyfn: Sorry, I don't speak Arabic. Please send your message in English. IF you prefer to contribute in Arabic, you may wish to checkout the Arabic Wikipedia (ويكيبيديا العربية). ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 20:39, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-38

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

• References lists that are made using the <references/> tag will now automatically display with columns in Vector 2022 when readers are using its 'standard' settings for text-size and page-width. [7]
• Starting in the week of October 6, on small wikis and medium wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled, all autoconfirmed users will be able to use Event Registration as an organizer. No changes will be made for large wikis unless requested in Phabricator. This change is being made to make it easier for more people to use Event Registration, especially on wikis that are less likely to have policies related to the Event Organizer right. Learn more.
• Users that search using regular expressions (regex) can now use additional features including:
  • for the intitle: keyword: metacharacters for start-of-line (^) and end-of-line ($) anchors [8]
  • for both intitle: and insource: keywords: shorthand character classes for digits (\d), whitespace (\s), and word characters (\w); and escape codes for line feed (\r), newline (\n), tab (\t), and unicode (e.g. \uHHHH). [9]
• When you search for text that looks like an IP, the system will now show search results. It used to take you to the contributions for that IP instead of showing search results. [10]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 24. This is planned at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests which happen twice a year. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog.
• View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that affected users who used the page-tabs to switch from wikitext editing of a section into the visualeditor. [11]

Updates for technical contributors

• The MediaWiki Interfaces team is redesigning the Wikimedia REST API Sandbox with Codex. If you have feedback on improvements for the API documentation or what makes developer experiences smooth (or frustrating), you’re invited to join an upcoming discovery interview, or leave feedback onwiki. Learn more.
• Edits to Wikidata aliases (an alternative name for an item or a property) will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. Learn more. [12]
• The new Unicode 17.0 version has been released. The datasets on Commons for the Module:Unicode data have been updated. Wikipedias that do not use the Commons datasets should either update their own data or switch to the Commons datasets.
• Users of the Wikimedia Enterprise Structured Contents endpoints can now access Parsed Tables. The new Parsed Tables feature extracts and represents Wikipedia tables in structured JSON. This improves machine accessibility as part of the Structured Contents initiative. Structured Contents output is freely available through the On-demand API, or through Wikimedia Cloud Services.
• A dataset of English Wikipedia biographical information from Wikimedia Enterprise has been published on Kaggle, for evaluation and research. This provides structured data from more than 1.5 million biographies, including birth and death dates, education, affiliations, careers, awards, and more (from a June 2024 snapshot).
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2026 in Paris, France, are open until October 31.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:03, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Limpre TheRealVillageBoy (20:54, 16 September 2025)

Hi would like to start adding information into my Wikipedia how can i do that --Limpre TheRealVillageBoy (talk) 20:54, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

@Limpre TheRealVillageBoy: It is strongly discouraged to write about yourself on Wikipedia, period. If you want to an improve an already existing article about yourself, please make an edit request. The following page may be helpful: Wikipedia:Edit Request Wizard ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 23:18, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Ok i get it . How about upload photo Limpre TheRealVillageBoy (talk) 01:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from CyberOdinn (18:56, 17 September 2025)

Hello, I saw a community and I wanted to make an entry about them. How many members does a community need to have in order to create an entry? --CyberOdinn (talk) 18:56, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

@CyberOdinn: Do you mean an online or real-world community? ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 21:50, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Discord Community CyberOdinn (talk) 21:01, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from CyberOdinn (19:15, 17 September 2025)

Ive made an Translation but i cant publish it, could you review it? "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CyberOdinn/sandbox?sx-source-page-title=Hövelhof&sx-published-section=Kultur+und+Sehenswürdigkeiten&sx-source-language=de&sx-target-language=en" --CyberOdinn (talk) 19:15, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Translation Request

Hello, i translated a site but i cant publish it, could you review my translation? "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CyberOdinn/sandbox?sx-source-page-title=Hövelhof&sx-published-section=Kultur+und+Sehenswürdigkeiten&sx-source-language=de&sx-target-language=en" CyberOdinn (talk) 19:16, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

@CyberOdinn: You may wish to add some citations to the section, then you can directly add it to the Hövelhof page on the English Wikipedia, since it is only a section of the associated German Wikipedia page. ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 21:52, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Burkina Faso01 (06:05, 18 September 2025)

Hello, I am Burkina Faso01. What is the minor edits? --Burkina Faso01 (talk) 06:05, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

@Burkina Faso01: Minor edits are edits that do not change the meaning of an article's content, such as fixing typos and formatting errors.

Happy editing, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 14:00, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Burkina Faso01 (talk) 11:05, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

@Burkina Faso01: Glad to help! ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 15:14, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 70

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 70, July–August 2025

• New collections:
  • Times of Malta
  • Africa Intelligence
  • Intelligence Online
  • La Lettre
  • Glitz
• Spotlight: Wikimania

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 13:16, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

(This message was sent to User:Rusty Cat and is being posted here due to a redirect.)

Question from Shamanimals on User talk:Rusty Cat (15:00, 21 September 2025)

Note: Shamanimals's mentor I dream of horses is away.

Hello and thank you in advance. Some months ago, I made major improvements to the Climate of Albania page. It became one of the most detailed climate articles I’ve seen, which fits my area of specialty. I was away for health reasons and hadn’t yet finished my work, which I planned as part of a series for every country, starting alphabetically with Albania.

Climate articles on Wikipedia are often extremely limited, especially for less well-known countries like Albania some are just one sentence (e.g“It has a tropical climate.”). My goal has been to change that with comprehensive, sourced coverage.

Today I found that user Gnomingstuff removed about 18,300 words from the article, with the edit summary “rv to pre-AI version.” This was done 4 days ago. While I did sparingly use AI tools, it was only to improve readability and style. The content and sources were entirely my own work, and I painstakingly reviewed not only every single claim but every single word hundreds of times. At no point did I copy-paste original AI output everything was checked, rewritten, and verified for accuracy. I understand why it may have looked AI generated I am still new, and all of my work has been done from mobile since my PC was out of service. I barely know how to format, add links, or pictures (mobile tutorials are almost non-existent), so I may have made mistakes that gave the wrong impression.

If you have time, could you please look at my version? I believe it is far more detailed and engaging than the current, much drier version. I would greatly appreciate your advice on how to restore my contributions without them being reverted, and how best to present this on the Talk page.

Thank you very much for your guidance --Shamanimals (talk) 15:00, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

@Shamanimals: To me, some of the content that you have added shows signs of AI writing.

One strong example is the sentence "The breadth and continuity of the Cfb climate across Albania’s upland terrain underscore the intricate interplay of topography, moisture transport, and atmospheric circulation, which together contribute to the country’s unusually diverse climatic and ecological landscape." in this edit.

I'm also finding that a lot of your additions seem to be unsourced.

If you'd like to learn the basics of editing Wikipedia, you're welcome to do so; see Help:Introduction. However, I'd like to say that it's still the text that's giving me the impression of AI writing, not any of the formatting mistakes or other mistakes you may have made.

Thanks, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 21:18, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Making a big edit

Hello, I've been planning on making a big edit to the page "Humility". Basically I want to take the last subsection "Humility and leadership" and expand it to something like "Humility as a character trait". I was wondering how I can make a sort of "draft" that I can "edit" wikipedia without really editing it so I can see how edits will look before they publish. Can I do something like that or should I just edit it directly since not a lot of people really edit the article. Thank you and sorry if my question is a little confusing

Humility Pistonsforlife (talk) 14:35, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

@Pistonsforlife: Just go ahead and edit it directly; when you edit, you'll be able to see what the article will look like when you publish the changes.

Happy editing, ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 22:45, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-39

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

• On September 24th at 15:00 UTC, all Wikimedia sites users will experience a brief read-only period due to a scheduled datacenter server switchover. The Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team will redirect all traffic from one primary server to its backup. You can listen to the switchover using the "Listen to Wikipedia" tool, where you will hear edits stop for a few minutes during the read-only phase, then resume. This twice-yearly datacenter server switchover ensures reliability by testing the backup datacenter, so that our sites can stay online even if the primary datacenter fails. You can read more about the process on the Diff blog.

Updates for editors

• Editors of 60 more Wiktionaries will soon be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them into their pages. A function takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, like adding numbers, converting miles to meters, calculating elapsed time, or declining a word into a case. They will join the other 65 Wiktionary language editions, which already have access to embedded Wikifunctions calls. Later this year, plans are in place to expand to more Wiktionaries and the Incubator.
• A new parser function has been added: {{#contentmodel}}. Template editors and admins can use it to get the localized or canonical name of the content model of a specific page. The function makes it easier to create and edit system messages, such as MediaWiki:editinginterface, even when you switch types of pages, like wiki, JavaScript, CSS or JSON page. [13]
• Adding or editing a DISPLAYTITLE for an article using VisualEditor will no longer be broken. Editors who use VisualEditor mode to modify the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} would no longer have the literal text "DISPLAYTITLE" or its localized variant added to their articles. A list of pages that may have been affected and might need cleanup is documented in this ticket.
• Beta users of the Wikipedia Android app can now try the redesigned Activity tab, which replaces the Edits tab. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.
• View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Wikifunctions users can now import many essential facts involving geo-coordinates, quantities and time values from Wikidata. This is made possible by the creation of Wikifunctions types for these values, which makes them available for use by functions in Wikifunctions. Learn more about how this works in this video and Wikifunctions' August 1 newsletter (for quantities) and August 22 newsletter (for geo-coordinates).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:52, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Lirress 3 (17:46, 23 September 2025)

Note: Lirress 3's mentor Actualcpscm is away.

Hi Rusty Cat when can I reach 500 edit counts where I become Extended Confirmed User and I decided to change my name to just Yetneberk Hailu and help me? --Lirress 3 (talk) 17:46, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

@Lirress 3:

I don't know when you will reach 500 edits. That depends on how much you edit Wikipedia.

You can change your username using the form at Special:GlobalRenameRequest. ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 00:37, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Taelo Moletsane on Wikipedia:Citing sources (13:46, 25 September 2025)

Hello I want to edit --Taelo Moletsane (talk) 13:46, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

@Taelo Moletsane: If you want to edit a page, just click the edit button! Do you have any questions about editing Wikipedia? ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 23:20, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Question from Zkahsan7 on Fly Jinnah (16:56, 26 September 2025)

Hello, I want to book a flight? Please help me? --Zkahsan7 (talk) 16:56, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

@Zkahsan7: Sorry, but I am unable to help you with booking a flight with Fly Jinnah, as that is a query unrelated to Wikipedia.

Do you have a question about editing or using Wikipedia? ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 23:14, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Women in Red | October 2025, Vol 11, Issue 10

Women in Red | October 2025, Vol 11, Issue 10, Nos. 326, 327, 350, 351, 352 Recognized as the most active topic-based WikiProject by human changes. Online events: New: Alphabet run S & T | Women in STEM | Halloween Continuing, year-long initiatives: #1day1woman | Music Announcements: Sister wikiproject Women in Green October 2025 Good Article Edit-a-thon focuses on What Women Do Tip of the Month: Notable does not always mean admirable; you don't have to like an article's subject to make the article a useful contribution to Wikipedia. Progress ("moving the needle"): Statistics available via various tools: previously, Humaniki tool; currently, QLever. Thank you if you contributed one or more of the 6,283 articles during this period: 19 May 2025: 20.114% of EN-WP biographies are about women (2,066,280; 415,618 women) 24 September 2025: 20.20% of EN-WP biographies are about women (2,088,533 biographies; 421,901 women) Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest

--Rosiestep (talk) 18:32, 29 September 2025 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Tech News: 2025-40

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

• A major software upgrade has been made to Phabricator. The update introduces performance improvements, a refreshed search interface, enhancements to Maniphest task search, updates to user profile pages and project workboards, new Herald automation features, as well as general text input, mobile experience improvements and more. [14]

Updates for editors

• The Community Tech team will release the new Community Wishlist extension on October 1, that will improve the way wishes will be submitted. The new extension will allow users to add tags to their wishes to better categorise them, and (in a future iteration) to filter them by status, tags and focus areas. It will also be possible to support individual wishes again, as requested by the community in many instances. The old system will be retired. There will be a brief period of downtime while the extension is deployed and wishes are migrated to the new system. You can read more about this in the latest update or you can consult the current documentation on MediaWiki.
• As announced on Diff blog, the production trial of the hCaptcha service for bot detection has begun. The trial is currently using hCaptcha to protect account creation on Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Turkish Wikipedias, where it will replace our existing CAPTCHA (FancyCaptcha). The goal with the trial is to better block bots while also improving usability and accessibility for users who encounter CAPTCHA challenges.
• The CampaignEvents extension has been deployed to Wikimedia Commons. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. On Commons, anyone who is a registered user can use it as an event participant. To use it as an organizer, someone needs to have the event organizer right.
• Sub-referencing, a new feature to re-use references with different details has been released to German Wikipedia. You can test the feature on testwiki or on betawiki as well. Please share your thoughts on using templates in sub-references or volunteer to become a pilot wiki.
• On wikis using the Mentorship system, communities can now opt experienced editors out of Mentorship through Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship. Within this setting, communities may define thresholds, based on edit count and account age, to decide when an editor is considered experienced enough to no longer receive Mentorship. [15]
• The Editing Team and the Machine Learning Team are working on a new check for newcomers: Tone check. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits, using artificial intelligence. We invite volunteers to review the first version of the Tone language model for the following languages: Arabic, Czech, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Farsi, Italian, Norwegian, Romanian and Latvian. Users from these wikis interested in reviewing this model are invited to sign up at MediaWiki.org. The deadline to sign up is on October 3, which will be the start date of the test.
• The rollout of multiblocks had the side effect that non-active block logs may have been shown on Special:Contributions and on blocked users' user and user_talk pages. This issue will be fully resolved in a few days. As part of the fix, messages prefixed with sp-contributions-blocked-notice will be removed and replaced with those prefixed with blocked-notice-logextract in a few weeks. Please help translate the new messages and update any local overrides if needed.
• There was a bug with links added using visual editor if they included characters such as [ ] | after the fragment identifier (#). They were not encoded properly creating an incorrect link. This has been fixed. [16]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote in Malay (q:ms:) [17]
• View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the User Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks. [18]

Updates for technical contributors

• Later this week, editors using Lua modules will be able to use the mw.title.newBatch function to look up the existence of up to 25 pages at once, in a way that only increases the expensive function count once.
• A new Unsupported Tools Working Group has been formed as part of ongoing efforts to collectively determine technical work priorities, similar to the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). The working group will help prioritize and review requests for support of unmaintained extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. For the first cycle, the group will be prioritizing an unsupported Wikimedia Commons tool.
• 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 20:48, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 October 2025

• News and notes: Larry Sanger returns with "Nine Theses on Wikipedia"; WMF publishes transparency report
  

This time "not merely negative".

• In the media: Extraordinary eruption of "EVIL" explained
  

Wickedpedia wrangles post-truth politics.

• Disinformation report: Emails from a paid editing client
  

Unexpected news!

• Discussion report: Sourcing, conduct, policy and LLMs: another 1,339 threads analyzed
  

Fifty hot topics from fourteen noticeboards.

• Community view: The pressing questions of the modern WWW, as seen from the Village Pump
  

Policy, politics, icons, captchas, and LLMs.

• Recent research: Is Wikipedia a merchant of (non-)doubt for glyphosate?; eight projects awarded Wikimedia Research Fund grants
  

And other recent publications.

• Opinion: Some disputes aren't worth it
  

When to walk away.

• Obituary: Michael Q. Schmidt
  

Rest in peace.

• Traffic report: Death, hear me call your name
  

Celebrities, deaths and software.

• Comix: A grand spectacle
  

All invited!

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:52, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-41

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

• Paste Check is a new Edit Check feature to help avoid and fight copyright violations. When editors paste text into an article, Paste Check prompts them to confirm the origin and licensing of the content. Starting Wednesday, 8 October, 22 wikis will test Paste Check. Paste Check will help new volunteers understand and follow the policies and guidelines necessary to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia projects.

Updates for editors

• Mobile devices will receive mobile articles directly on the standard domain (like en.wikipedia.org), instead of via a redirect to an "m" domain (like en.m.wikipedia.org). This change improves performance. This week it will be enabled on Wikipedias. The existing mobile URLs and the "Desktop view" opt-out remain available. Learn more. [19]
• New date filters, creationdate: and lasteditdate:, are now available in the wiki search engine. This allows users to filter search results by a page's first or last revision date. The filters support comparison operators (e.g. >2024) and relative dates (e.g. today-1d), making it easier to find recently updated content or pages within specific age ranges. [20]
• Wikifunctions now supports rich text in embedded calls across the 150 wikis where it's enabled. To showcase this, the team created a Latin declination table that Wiktionary editors can use to automatically generate noun forms, producing clear, formatted results — see an example output. If you need any help or have any feedback, please contact the Wikifunctions Team. [21]
• An edit link will now appear inside the categories box on article pages for logged in users, which will directly launch the VisualEditor category dialog. [22]
• View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a problem downloading pdf files last week and that has been resolved. [23]

Updates for technical contributors

• The field rev_sha1 in the revision database table is being removed in favor of content_sha1 in the content database table. See the announcement for more information.
• The Reader Experience team will roll out Dark Mode user interface on all Wikimedia sites on October 29, 2025. All anonymous users of Wikimedia sites will have the option to activate a color scheme that features light-colored text on a dark background. This is designed to provide a more comfortable reading experience, especially in low-light situations. Template authors and technical contributors are encouraged to learn how to make pages ready for Dark mode and address any compatibility issues found in templates in their wiki before the enablement. Please contact the Web team for questions or any support on this talk page before the enablement. [24]
• Starting on Monday, October 6, API endpoints under the rest.php path will be rerouted through a new internal 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 the Service Ops team board. [25]
• 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 17:20, 6 October 2025 (UTC)