User talk:FunIsOptional
Tech News: 2025-48
[edit]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
- Last week, the Wikimedia Search Team recreated the "DWIM" (Do What I Mean) gadget functionality server-side, for Russian and Hebrew Wikipedias. This feature adds cross-keyboard suggestions to the standard search-box suggestions. For example, searching for cxfcnmt on Russian Wikipedia will now add suggestions for счастье ("happiness") that the user probably intended. They plan to enable this feature for other Russian and Hebrew wikis this week. [1]
- Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will have syntax highlighting available in DiscussionTools. This requires that the "Enable editing tools in source mode" preference be set. [2]
- Campaign events extension – the set of tools for coordinating events and other on-wiki collaborations has now been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. A new feature known as Collaborative contribution to help organizers and participants see the impact of activities has also been added. Join the upcoming learning session to see the new feature in action and share your feedback.
View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug which stopped CodeReviewBot from working, has now been fixed. [3]
Updates for technical contributors
- Users of Wikimedia API can join a usability study to help validate the new design of Wikimedia REST API sandboxes. Interested participants should fill the recruitment survey. [4]
- The MediaWiki Interfaces team is deprecating XSLT stylesheets within the Action API. Support for
format=xml&xlst={stylesheet}will be removed from Wikimedia projects by the end of November, 2025. In addition, it will soon be disabled by default in MediaWiki release versions: v1.43 (LTS), v1.44, and v1.45. Support for XSLT stylesheets will be fully removed from MediaWiki v1.46 (expected to release between April and May 2026). [5] - The WDQS legacy endpoint (query-legacy-full.wikidata.org) will be decommissioned at the end of December 2025, and finally closed down on 7th January 2026. After this date, users should expect requests to query.wikidata.org that require the full graph to fail or return invalid results if they are not rewritten to use SPARQL federation. The team encourages users to ensure that tools and workflows use the supported WDQS endpoints (https://query.wikidata.org/ - Main graph or https://query-scholarly.wikidata.org/ - Scholarly graph). For support with migrating use cases, please review the Data Access and Request a Query pages for details and assistance on alternative access methods.
- 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 15:54, 24 November 2025 (UTC)
Administrator Elections - Call for Candidates
[edit]The administrator elections process has officially started! Interested editors are encouraged to self-nominate or arrange to be nominated by reviewing the instructions at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/December 2025/Candidates.
Here is the schedule:
- November 25 – December 1 - Call for candidates
- December 4–8 - Discussion phase
- December 9–15 - SecurePoll voting phase
Please note the following:
- The requirements to run are identical to RFA—a prospective candidate must be extended confirmed.
- Prospective candidates are advised to become familiar with the community's expectations of administrators, which are much higher than the minimum requirement of having extended confirmed status. This includes reviewing successful and unsuccessful RFAs, reading the essay Wikipedia:Advice for admin elections candidates, and possibly requesting an optional poll on their chances of passing.
- The process will have a seven day call for candidates phase, a two day pause, a five day discussion phase, and a seven day private vote using SecurePoll. Discussion and questions are only allowed on the candidate pages during the discussion phase.
- The outcome of this process is identical to making a request for adminship. There is no official difference between an administrator appointed through RFA versus administrator elections.
- Administrator elections are also a valid means of regaining adminship for de-sysopped editors.
Ask any questions about the process at the talk page. Later, a user talk message will be sent to official candidates with additional information about the process.
If you are interested in the process, please make sure to watchlist the appropriate pages. A watchlist notice will be added when the discussion phase opens, and again when the voting phase opens.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:49, 25 November 2025 (UTC)
The Signpost: 1 December 2025
[edit]- News and notes: Election cycles come and go, and Wikimedia Foundation achieves record revenue in 2024–2025!
Admin and ArbCom elections upcoming, BoT elects two new members, task force advises to close Wikinews and keep Wikispore, and other news from the Wikimedia world.
- In the media: Wales walk-off, antisemitism, supernatural powers, feminism turmoil, saints, and sex
Plus mammoth mummy sex-change operation completed!
- Recent research: At least 80 million inconsistent facts on Wikipedia – can AI help find them?
And other recent publications about contradictions and retractions.
- Disinformation report: Epstein email exchanges planned strategy, edits and reported progress
At work on Wikipedia whitewashing. How much should they be paid?
- Traffic report: It's a family affair
Even in these times there is something to be thankful for!
- Book review: The Seven Rules of Trust
Jimmy Wales and Dan Gardner write a book inspired by Wikipedia. What's in it?
- From the archives: "I have been asked by Jeffrey Epstein ..."
The twists and turns of Epstein’s portrayal on Wikipedia.
- Humour: An interview with Wikipe-tan
A conversation about being the mascot of Wikipedia.
- Opinion: AI finds errors in 90% of Wikipedia's best articles
Using ChatGPT to fact-check a month's worth of Today's featured articles.
- Serendipity: Highlights from the itWikiCon 2025
A recap of the latest convention of the Italian Wiki-community, held in Catania from 7–9 November.
- Comix: Madness
It could happen to anyone.
Tech News: 2025-49
[edit]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 Wikipedia Year in Review 2025 will be available on December 2 for users of iOS and Android Wikipedia apps, featuring new personalized insights, updated reading highlights, and refreshed designs. Learn more on the review's project page.
- The Growth team is working on improving the text and presentation of the Verification Email sent to new users to make them more welcoming, useful and informative. Some new text have been drafted for A/B testing and you can help by translating them. See Phabricator.
- Add a link will now be deployed at Japanese, Urdu and Chinese Wikipedias on December 2. Add a link is based on a prediction model that suggests links to be added to articles. While this feature has already been available on most Wikipedias, the prediction model could not support certain languages. A new model has now been developed to handle these languages, and it will be gradually rolled out to other Wikipedias over time. If you would like to know more, please contact Trizek (WMF).
- View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where search boxes on some Commons pages showed no results due to switch from SpecialSearch to MediaSearch, has now been fixed. [6]
- Two new wikis have been created:
Updates for technical contributors
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- The Wikimedia Foundation is in the early stages of exploring approaches to Article guidance. The initiative aims to identify interventions that could help new editors easily understand and apply existing Wikipedia practices and policies when creating an article. The project is in the exploration and early experimental design phase. All community members are encouraged to learn more about the project, and share their thoughts on the talk page.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 18:55, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
Administrator Elections - Discussion Phase
[edit]The discussion phase of the December 2025 administrator elections is officially open. As a reminder, the schedule of the election is:
- Dec 4–8 - Discussion phase (we are here)
- Dec 9–15 - SecurePoll voting phase
- Scrutineering phase
We are currently in the discussion phase. The candidate subpages are open to questions and comments from everyone, in the same style as a request for adminship. You may discuss the candidates at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/December 2025/Discussion phase.
On December 9, we will start the voting phase. The candidate subpages will close to public questions and discussion, and everyone will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's totals during the election. You must be extended confirmed to vote.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which typically lasts between a couple days and a week. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (you may want to watchlist this page) and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate who has not been recalled must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and must also have received a minimum of 20 support votes. A candidate that has been recalled must have at least 55.0% support. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:47, 4 December 2025 (UTC)