Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals sections when appropriate, or at the help desk for assistance. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Donation cancelled due to annoying begging

I was prepared to donate today, £15, then the prompts started for “would you like to add 60p to cover the transaction fee”, ok fine. Then “would you consider making this an annually payment”. Then “would you switch this to £3 a month instead”, and then “can we please contact you”.

Seriously annoying, really really pushy and verging on offensive. Just closed the window and didn’t donate a penny. GimliDotNet (talk) 21:26, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Good for you. I hope more people do the same and the WMF realises that you can't be ethical but then throw ethics out of the window when you are raising funds. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:54, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Agree… we all understand the need for donations, but I too am getting very tired of the constant pop-ups. To now hear that the WMF do an additional “hard sell” when you do try to donate is discouraging. Blueboar (talk) 23:23, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

I would find it very annoying as well if there are 3 more questions after the initial donation attempt. With Grokipedia/Encyclopaedia Galactica coming WMF should be doing more to combat the threat. WMF is winning by thousands of miles today but we should not be complacent. And annoying donors would be one of the things WMF should not be doing. ✠ SunDawn ✠ Contact me! 06:47, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

Hi @GimliDotNet, I'm sorry you had a frustrating experience and it's very useful to get this feedback. It looks like you were giving in the UK or Europe, where we are required to ask for consent to send emails to donors. That, plus the additional suggested upgrades on your initial gift, introduced too much friction.

We have been running some extra, short tests this month in anticipation of the end of year push. This feedback is very actionable to us, and we can look for ways to streamline the options we put in front of donors like you. Thank you very much for considering a gift and for taking the time to share this input. SPatton (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

Why do you have to be required to ask for consent? Surely you shouldn't dream of sending spam anyway? This is what I mean by my references to ethics above. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:46, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

Exactly, European regulations are only forcing WMF to be honest about their spammy behavior (as they are designed to do) Ita140188 (talk) 07:12, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

It looks like you were giving in the UK or Europe, where we are required to ask for consent to send emails to donors.
... Are you saying you're only asking for permission to send emails because you are legally required by law?! FaviFake (talk) 16:43, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

If someone gives their email address, I would presume that they are consenting to be sent occasional emails without checking an additional checkbox, unless the law requires it. – SD0001 (talk) 13:02, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

That's my assumption, too. In particular, if I'm buying something from a website, I don't expect it to be asking me "Is it okay to send your receipt by e-mail?" Of course I want transaction-related information in e-mail. If I didn't, I wouldn't have given you my e-mail address. If a website is sending messages unrelated to the transaction, I expect it to be default off and easy to unsubscribe – but "default off" means that they have to ask, and asking is what's being complained about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia's donation banners have become somewhat of a meme among the general (online) public now... An r/interesting thread appeared on reddit's front page yesterday (titled "Jimmy Wales, Co-Founder of Wikipedia, quits interview angrily after one question." -- not sure if I'm allowed to link the reddit thread here) and has some funny comments, e.g.

Wikipedia is so dying, like we're so dead but it's for real this time. Please bro can you spare three fiddy?

Some1 (talk) 14:30, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. Perhaps the WMF should consider the long-term effects of their banners on the site's credibility, instead of using them to juice short-term metrics. But there's a good chance that the people responsible for the banners won't be WMF employees in 10 years' time, and therefore have no incentive to maintain the long-term sustainability of the encylopedia.  novov talk edits 23:46, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

They are squandering the reputation of Wikipedia that was built over a quarter of a century by the work of volunteers to get a bit more money today Ita140188 (talk) 07:14, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

 Comment: I donate my time and expertise to Wikipedia, and don't plan to ever give money to them personally. That said, one of my biggest problems with academia is that authors have to pay to publish, then have to pay to access their own work (usually through an institution, but I have one thing in print that I can't see the final draft of without personally paying), and then are asked to review articles for free. The WMF publishes our writing for free, allows space to host relevant educational images in the public domain, and passes that on by being free to the public. They don't run obnoxious advertisements, and don't allow special interests to pay to curate their own pages. Most edits are transparent, talk pages are public, and you can see version histories to see why decisions are made. These are also all hosted and accessible for free. They offer metrics like page views and other statistics free of charge, being one of the biggest websites online, that dataset is extraordinarily valuable for researchers, corporations, governments, and the general public. I often create/work on pages that are extremely niche but important to me and a select group of people, and mostly emphasize good citations I come across while performing literature reviews so that others can use them in their own work as a starting point. I have seen many peer reviewed journals in these niche fields using citations I doubt they would have found outside the Wikipedia page I made. This is a net good, in my opinion, as it moves the high level knowledge out of the ivory tower for public consumption. Honestly, banners and nagging questions are a very, very small price to pay. They might take this advice/feedback to discuss with a marketing team to better format their approach, but honestly this is not something I would ever complain about given the state of the rest of the Internet. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 01:15, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

Just because the rest of the internet is terrible it doesn't mean we should lower our standards. The point is that this begging is unnecessary. The WMF has enough money already, their donations are increasing every year, net assets owned surpassed a quarter of a billion dollars last year, and there are plenty of ways to significantly cut costs: costs have been increasing way more than inflation (+60% from 2021 to 2024) while visits to Wikipedia have been more or less stable Ita140188 (talk) 07:43, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

visits to Wikipedia have been more or less stable. It is my understanding that views of Wikipedia are decreasing due to things like Google's knowledge panels saving people the click of actually visiting us. Source?

their donations are increasing every year. This was definitely not true around 2 years ago when WMF responded to community outcry about the wording of the banners and used a more honest wording, which created a budget shortfall of $10 million dollars, if I recall correctly. Source?

The WMF has enough money already. I don't think the meta:Wikimedia Endowment is at the point yet where it can pay the WMF's yearly expenses purely through interest from its investments (like a retirement account, but for organizations). So one could argue the Endowment could use quite a bit more money. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:54, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

If views are decreasing, that proves my point even more strongly. It's difficult to tell exactly how many visits Wikipedia has, but for example this article found more or less constant views in the last few years: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/17/new-user-trends-on-wikipedia/

For a overview of finances of the WMF you can refer to this page which aggregates data from yearly finance statements (with references): User:Guy Macon/Wikipedia has Cancer. There was only a single year in the history of the WMF when the yearly revenues decreased, and that was after an higher than usual increase the year before likely due to the pandemic. The decrease in 2022 is only a decrease compared to the record year of 2021, and it's in line with the more general trend of steep increase in revenue observed every year.

My point is not that the endowment is enough and we should stop collecting donations. My point is that we are not in any type of emergency, we don't need to annoy people with constant banners and reminders. Most of all, we should not imply that the survival of the project depends on their donation. Ita140188 (talk) 09:05, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

Good data. Thanks for linking. Sounds like overall you're right. I will update some of my assumptions about pageviews and revenue growth. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:37, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

If the donations are "stable" or "increasing" WMF would not have the incentive to cut costs. All organizations that have "unlimited budget" like the United States military wouldn't have much incentive to do cost cutting, while private organizations that have limited budget and have to appease their stockholders will do a lot to reduce cost of operation. Increasing costs every year without justified reason is unacceptable. ✠ SunDawn ✠ Contact me! 16:27, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

 Comment: @Ita140188 I understand that there is frustration with the way the donations are requested. They are donations though, we're all free to not give them money. I don't even notice the banners most of the time, and they are fairly easy to tune out. I'm just glad they haven't turned them into billboards for other organizations to advertise. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 08:58, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

I would like to propose the radical option that we (English-language Wikipedia, the project) could set up our own parallel donation system so that people who don't want to give to the WMF can give more directly to our specific project, to a fund that would be under the control of a panel of Wikipedians selected by Wikipedians. BD2412 T 16:45, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal. The recent donations to the WMF may indirectly influence certain parts of ENWP. A parallel donation will be for operating expenses and adding more security on-wiki and during the conferences. Ahri Boy (talk) 08:24, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm pretty confident that most donors aren't aware there's any difference between the WMF and enwiki, let alone what would change about how their money is used by one or the other. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:02, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

At this point why not just split off from the WMF given the general antipathy enwiki has towards it? Dronebogus (talk) 05:56, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

There will always be disagreements in any working relationship. That is not "general antipathy". When you spin off, you'll still need a registered non-profit that collects donations, operates servers, etc. That would just be WMF 2. – SD0001 (talk) 06:21, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

1) Forking is very expensive in terms of the money you'd need for servers and the staff you'd need to hire if you wanted to host a top 10 website in the world in terms of traffic (tens of millions of dollars and dozens of employees?) One reason the WMF exists is to handle this headache for us. We encyclopedia writers and encyclopedia janitors probably do not want this headache, and as SD0001 says above, would end up creating WMF 2.0 to handle it.

2) WMF isn't nearly "bad" enough to justify it. Relative to other tech organizations, the fact that we're run by a non-profit that has a culture of involving volunteers in a lot of decisions and routinely grants a lot of access to volunteers (for example, a volunteer software engineer such as myself can earn almost the same amount of access as a full time WMF software engineer) is in my opinion pretty unique and pretty great. Please don't forget to focus on some of the positives of the WMF/enwiki relationship. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:40, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately, everyone is a critic but few people offer solutions. I see this in my discipline from time to time, low hanging fruit for publications is to take pot shots at existing organizations without offering realistic solutions. The rotten fruit on the ground is taking pot shots at otherwise good things and highlighting the negative, with calls to burn it down and start over in a way that will somehow resolve the dirty reality that lead to the problems in the first place. Wikipedia is a big target, and there are more then a few organizations that would love to make waves by disrupting it in any way. I remember this being brought up when a "child friendly" version of Wikipedia was proposed. Poison pill that could really damage the project under the veil of a something that looks to be positive on the surface. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 07:30, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

We are talking about very specific problems with the WMF. In this case, the fact that the fundraising has been growing more aggressive and disruptive over the years, without any real financial need. This comment seems dismissive of these very specific concerns that have been raised about the organization. Ita140188 (talk) 07:59, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Purge button § Update icon

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Purge button § Update icon. FaviFake (talk) 16:43, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Can you please stop this ridiculous crusade to change icons of every single template. Nobody but you seems to want it, it's just causing needless strife. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:51, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I usually only want to replace default icons with specific images, to reduce banner blindness. In this case, the icon looks much more ancient that the ones proposed in the RfC (in which it was clear I wasn't the only supporter), and my suggestion was opposed, therefore I'm posting here. FaviFake (talk) 16:54, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

@FaviFake You came here because you didn't get the outcome you wanted from the talk page discussion. In that discussion, you referred to a dissenting opinion as a "dispute". Maybe it was, so you invoked WP:3O.

After the comment thread died out, you posted: "Oh well, I guess I'll have to advertise this at the VP? I've tried every other dispute resolution venue :( " I think you are trying too hard -- and you were already called out for that in the discussion itself. You shouldn't keep trying new venues until you get your desired result.

You also said "I wanted to point out that I didn't create Template talk:Essay § Icon as a TPER but rather as a discussion; it was then boldly implemented a few hours after I created the thread and reverted once other editors commented". So you started a discussion, then didn't even wait 24 hours (much less a few days), then implemented your idea, and only backed off when others objected. I agree with @Pppery: To me, that all seems a bit too bold, and you are being somewhat intransigent. (Edited because I mistakenly called that discussion an RFC. Fixed.) David10244 (talk) 04:24, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

So you started a discussion, then didn't even wait 24 hours (much less a few days), then implemented your idea

@David10244 I'm not a template editor, I couldn't have edited it even if I wanted to. If you actually check the history of that template, you'll see it was another editor who bypassed the discussion and implemented it.

You came here because you didn't get the outcome you wanted from the talk page discussion.

no, I came here because the discussion didn't involve right editors to reach a consensus. Si far, only two people !voted, one in support and one in opposition. If only two editors disagree about something, the natural way to attract more editors is posting to noticeboards. FaviFake (talk) 12:40, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

@FaviFake You are right, I misread the history. Thanks for the correction. David10244 (talk) 07:23, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

About replacing icons/images to reduce banner blindness: It won't work.

The things that might work (e.g., slow animated gifs) will make editors mad at you and prompt the incorrect removal of the maintenance templates. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:08, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

What's wrong with icons looking "much more ancient"? This is a long-established (as far as the World Wide Web goes) free encyclopedia, not some sort of trendy web site. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:13, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

(This is only supposed to be a notification, please comment at Template talk:Purge button § Update icon!) FaviFake (talk) 20:30, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

So, what do we do with the WP:BLOCK notice templates for anonymous/IP users?

(This discussion is continued from Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 November 11 § Template:Uw-ablock, following the advice of several responses there.)

Temporary accounts have completely replaced IP editing. In other words, when unregistered users make an edit, their edits are no longer attributed to their public IP address, but instead, an automatically-created, "temporary account".

This major change has rendered the block templates specific to anonymous users / IP users pretty much useless. Anonymous users no longer receive notifications for messages posted on the talk page of their public IP address (I've tested this myself), and furthermore, temporary accounts that are blocked from editing wouldn't be able to edit that public IP's talk page, but only the talk page of their temporary account, hence making even the block instructions in the block notice potentially misleading/useless.

It is pretty much a waste of admin time and server resources now to still place these templates on IP talk pages when blocking an IP address from editing.

Hence, what do we do with all these IP user-specific block notice templates? Do we delete them (precisely, remove the "anon=yes" feature and delete uw-ablock and uw-ipevadeblock), or, is there still some potential use for them? If they are still useful, what are some potential changes/updates that may need to be made, following the implementation of template accounts?

Templates affected:

• All templates in this list that are applicable to IP addresses (e.g. {{uw-voablock}} wouldn't apply), and/or have the "anon=yes" parameter
• {{uw-ablock}} (a wrapper for {{uw-block}} with the "anon=yes" parameter pre-enabled)
• {{uw-ipevadeblock}}

— AP 499D25 (talk) 09:49, 18 November 2025 (UTC) edited 07:29, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

In Twinkle, we decided to keep {{uw-ipevadeblock}} and create {{uw-tempevadeblock}}, to cover both use cases. Reminder that it is still possible to block IP addresses, even though the majority of blocks nowadays are probably going to be for temporary accounts. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:21, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I am well-aware that IP addresses may still be blocked from editing in cases where there's too much disruption from a single address/range, or if a vandal has 'outsmarted' the temp account system. Just that the anon-specific block templates that are placed on IP talk pages are pretty much obsolete now, due to a lack of notification system as well as the ability to access/edit it.

Another point I almost forgot to mention in the original post: anonymous users also won't be able to (easily) go to their IP talk pages either, unless they know their public IP address as well as know to type it in along with the "User talk:" prefix in the search bar to access it, which, very very few people would do. — AP 499D25 (talk) 11:29, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Is it possible to just mark them as historical? It's always possible the WMF could go back or change something up. Katzrockso (talk) 11:36, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't know what the standard protocol is for this situation, but I'd think we should always keep the documentation of historical templates that were used as widely as these. Deletion would probably consume more resources than it would ultimately save anyway. —Rutebega (talk) 16:39, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

All instances of these user block notice templates are actually substituted (not transcluded), and so ultimately nothing will really happen to the thousands and thousands of pages that have these IP user block notices if we delete the templates listed above. As for the fate of all the substitutions of the templates, they definitely should be left alone, especially given that we aren't going after and deleting every single IP user talk page either.

Just to be very clear: I am not asking for removal of every single "Anonymous users from this IP address have been blocked ..." message that exists on IP talk pages, ever; I'm just making a case for if we should discontinue and deprecate the usage of (i.e. new substitutions of) those IP user block templates listed above, due to several key issues I have pointed out. — AP 499D25 (talk) 07:26, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Deletion of the templates would screw up attribution records.

How many new uses/subst:s of these templates are you seeing? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:12, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

Deletion of the templates would screw up attribution records. This is a concern that I've had with several "subst and delete" TfDs in the past. From what I remember, the attribution behind "deleted" pages remains available 'upon request', as no wiki page actually gets deleted – it just simply becomes no longer accessible to the public and only to administrators and oversighters. Heck, we've recently had the {{Shared IP advice}} template deleted earlier this month – a template with at least tens of thousands of substitutions. It seems as if it literally isn't an issue to them that the deletion supposedly 'screws up' attribution.

How many new uses/subst:s of these templates are you seeing? Looking at the contribution history of some active Wikipedia admins, they do still appear to be regularly used when issuing blocks to IP addresses. I might consider inviting some of them here to discuss the point of continuing to place block notices on IP talk pages when blocking them, due to the number of issues that are listed in my original post. — AP 499D25 (talk) 13:12, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Some templates don't display copyrightable output, so I wouldn't expect this to be a concern for every template.

Maybe we should still post those messages, when IP addresses are being blocked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

If the usage of the IP-specific block notices is to be continued, then the text in the templates should be modified to say, "at the bottom of your temporary account's talk page", rather than "at the bottom of your talk page", because an IP-blocked anon user will only be able to post on their temporary account's talk page and not on the IP address talk page. Very similar to how a blocked user account can only edit its talk page and not the talk page of any other users or IP addresses. — AP 499D25 (talk) 02:57, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Evolution and ending

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Evolution and ending

 – ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢. IMO. 18:54, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

It's been something to watch Wikipedia turn from an open sourced community led project into a bureaucratic led fortress. Editors now seem quick to cite policy and stifle discussion and change.

Maybe the project is finished. Time to lock the main gate? ProofCreature (talk) 19:18, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm unwilling to accept your premise without evidence. Please provide it. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

This seems like the perspective of most that attempt to try to edit WP now (if you are only reading like YouTube comment sections and stuff esp. videos about WP). It isn’t that bad as this post posits it to be but generally people find it daunting to join a community with dozens on dozens of rules and some editors unwittingly biting newcomers with reverts which may seem slightly abrasive. Only my opinion though, and not really have anything other than comments on Youtube videos on this.~212.70~ ~2025-31733-18 (talk) 06:12, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Biting newcomers has always been a problem though. WP:BITE was created on July 12, 2003, and although it looked quite different than it does now, the spirit was the same. Some people do not know how to give constructive feedback in a polite way, and other people do not know how to accept constructive feedback and take anything as a personal insult. This is nothing new. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:11, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

The culture does resist change to the detriment of the encyclopedia's evolution. Lock the gate? No, that's extreme and would never fly anyway. Just stop resisting change to the detriment of the encyclopedia's evolution. Biting newcomers, that's a subject I don't care to address at this juncture. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢. IMO. 19:07, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

You do realise that without rules there would be an edit war every minute? GarethBaloney (talk) 20:05, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

If we could convince half the people who sit around thinking about Wikipedia to actually help write it, all our problems would be solved. GMG^talk 22:29, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

There's helping write it, and there's helping improve the infrastructure. Both are important, and most editors are better at one than the other. The latter group are largely defeated by the inertia and risk-aversion of the current culture. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢. IMO. 22:36, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Is that what you call this? GMG^talk 00:38, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

No. I'm speaking more generally. You made it more general here. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢. IMO. 00:57, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

30 years ago it was an inspiring project. Now it seems as if the work is done and, when the bots are not doing it, the discussion is petty and insignificant if not overtly political. ProofCreature (talk) 12:05, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

30 years ago Wikipedia did not exist. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:15, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

The originator of this discussion has been here all of two years, and has amassed 250 edits in that time. I would suggest that they have not put in the work to credibly speak to the state of the project. BD2412 T 03:10, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

A man can see a corn crop grow and determine its goodness while being neither stalk nor cob himself. ProofCreature (talk) 15:44, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

There is no credible measurement of the Wikipedia corn crop growth rates which would result in an assessment of "it seems as if the work is done". Both the number of articles and the overall size of content are growing at remarkably constant rates. CMD (talk) 15:51, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

True. I did not look that up when I posted my comment. Wikipedia and its 5 Pillars didn't exist as a structured entity until 2001. The ideas that preceded it (an online collaboratively edited encyclopedia), from which Wikipedia developed, were being discussed 5-20 years before that.

The 90s were a remarkable time for the internet's cultural developments. The hardware and physical infrastructure was fully built by then and people were hopefully/hopelessly optimistic. To see it become strangled in bureaucracy and byzantine protocols is a bit sad. Yet, perhaps that is how society develops and projects evolve. There is a surplus of labor but a deficit of content. People make work for themselves, even if it is the tiniest of things, and try to create authority where the is none, relying on imagination. ProofCreature (talk) 15:55, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

Working together is work. It is not true that it was not work, often hard work, then also. Wikipedia just had less of a system to work it out. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:34, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Surely working together is work. It may be that there was more work accomplished When there was less of a system to work it out; a smaller bureaucracy. I wish there was some way to evaluate it. I wonder if there is some way to compare the content created with wikipedia's earliest and much less conservative policies with the content created today under the excessive policy structure. ProofCreature (talk) 15:53, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

But were Wikipedia's earliest policies much less conservative? And is the policy structure today excessive? I get along as I always have, by knowing a few basic principles but not being able to quote any written policy. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:24, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Isn't it the nature of an open-source community that participants work in their own sandboxes/forks/clones/branches and that work is drawn into the main repository of the effort after review and by consensus? I mean, I'm pretty sure that Linux doesn't consist of whatever any of a thousand developers feels like throwing into it with no vetting by anyone else and with no published standards to comply with. Aren't the GNU coding standards applicable? Open source projects aren't a free-for-all. Here, at least, you can throw whatever you want into the "main branch" and there's only a concern if someone challenges it after you've made it. You don't, in most cases (e.g., protected pages), need preapproval. Largoplazo (talk) 16:21, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by ProofCreature (talk • contribs) 16:07, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

Yawn… nothing new. I have been editing since 2006… and people complained that we had too many policies even then. There never was a “golden age” when things were less bureaucratic. Blueboar (talk) 17:32, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Looking for participants in a GenAI factuality study

I’m working with a team from Columbia University, funded by a Wikimedia Foundation rapid grant. We are seeking Wikipedia editors who are willing to participate in study on GenAI reliability, with a commitment of 10 - 20 hours in mid December - mid January 2026, and a symbolic stipend to compensate for your time.

The Research Project. Our goal is to find out if using a Wikipedia-inspired fact-checking process can increase the reliability of chatbots responding to queries related to Wikipedia’s content. The study uses open-source language models and frameworks, and our full results will be openly shared, with the aim of finding better methods for addressing AI hallucinations that are inspired by the well-established and highly successful practices of Wikimedia projects.

Please note that this project is a ‘’’pure and contained experiment’’’ for analyzing how far or close large language models are to editor-level factuality. We don’t plan on implementing any live tools at the moment.

The Task. The task required from participants is to fact-check an AI-generated response to a general knowledge question. This will be done checking whether each claim in a paragraph-long response is supported by the provided sources (each paragraph will be supported by up to 3 citations, the text of each citation is up to a few paragraphs).

Each participant will be asked to fact-check about 50 samples, with flexibility to do a bit more or less according to your availability. We recognize that this will be a demanding task, which is why we’re offering a stipend to those willing to make the time. The amount of the stipend is based on the amount of samples fact-checked.

Privacy & Security. If you choose to participate, we’re open to either crediting your efforts in our paper, or maintaining your full anonymity, whichever you prefer.

We adhere to the Wikimedia Foundation’s privacy policy. Participants may be asked to provide basic demographics for research purposes, which will be completely discarded after research concludes in early 2026.

Participation. All Wikipedia editors are eligible to participate. For methodological purposes, we may prioritize editors with expertise in specific subject matters, a higher Wikimedia project editor experience, or a focus and interest in fact-checking. If interested, please take a few minutes to submit the form! (Qualtrics external link). If you’re not comfortable filling out an external form, you may just send the answers to me directly using the EmailUser.

Happy to share the research proposal or answer any questions!

P.S. if this is kind of request is not valid to post here, please let me know if there's anywhere else that would make sense (or nowhere!), as I was indeed not fully sure –Abbad (talk) 00:27, 26 November 2025 (UTC).

It's valid to request here, but it's utterly tone-deaf given recent events. Chatbots here have about as poor a reputation as a culture of Y. pestis. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{threads critiques} 00:42, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

• Sounds like an interesting project. LLMs have left the community with a bad taste. It doesn't have to be that way. Narrowing the problem down to fact-checking is a good idea. Wikipedia has serious reliability problems - try it, check every citation in an article see how many fail partly or completely. AI can be a great tool for lighting-up these problems up eg. a third-party tool running on Toolforge. -- GreenC 02:57, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

  @GreenC What you are talking about is a good idea, and I've been doing that. But that is not what they are proposing. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_AI_Tools#Looking_for_participants_in_a_GenAI_factuality_study. They are not checking external sources to see if Wikipedia articles are correct, they are using Wikipedia articles as their source of truth.. Polygnotus (talk) 03:02, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

  It wouldn't be the first time that Wikipedia was chosen as the arbiter for a study. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:43, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

  We've had a lengthy discussion clarifying the goals. The TLDR is that, at this stage, the research is focused on chatbots where Wikipedia content is used as a source, the direction that my research group is pursuing. There's obvious interest from us and others in the WikiProject of AI tools to try an LLM that's specialized for fact-checking, which seems pretty promising, and we'll also do a little work on it parallel. Happy to hear any other feedback or thoughts! --Abbad (talk) 21:40, 28 November 2025 (UTC).

Looking for a wikipedia page I distinctly remember, but am not sure ever existed

I very distinctly remember a Wikipedia category page/article that was something along the lines of “joke articles”, vandalized articles that were kept, obviously separate from the original ones, but were still archived because users deemed them “too funny to just erase”. I remember it from a few years back, (maybe 2020-2021) but I was also accessing the uncyclopedia a LOT at the time, so I may be thinking about one of their pages.

It’s been bothering me for years now, and I really want closure. ~2025-37018-90 (talk) 13:02, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

This sounds like WP:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense. Or at least what that used to be. —Cryptic 13:12, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

I think that was it! Thanks :) ~2025-37018-90 (talk) 04:24, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Maya cave sites

[1] - Removing information without explanation. --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 12:46, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Quickly looked into this… apparently there is a concern as to Verifiability. Suggest you start a discussion on the article talk page. Blueboar (talk) 12:58, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

A significant portion of the text had references to sources, and the sources were also removed. --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 13:11, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Vyacheslav has started the discussion at Talk:Maya cave sites#Removal of information and sources, and I have pinged the reverting editor to that page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:07, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Transcontinental countries

I contend that the use of the phrase "transcontinental country" in Wikipedia articles to describe countries (such as Turkey, Russia, France) with territory on more than one continent is a Wikipedia-generated phenomenon that took root outside of Wikipedia only after it began to be misused on Wikipedia.

Exhibit 1: The literal meaning. The prefix "trans-" generally means "across". "Transoceanic", for example means "across an ocean" (such as transoceanic navigation or, more specifically, a trans-Atlantic cruise), not "lying in multiple oceans". "Transdermal" means "through the skin", not "located on multiple skins". Countries that are actually transcontinental are Canada, the United States, Russia (which runs across Asia), and Australia.

Exhibit 2: Google Ngrams shows the phrase was hardly used in books belonging to Google's English-language corpus until immediately after the launch of Wikipedia, since which time it has soared.[2]

Exhibit 3: Drilling down into Google's book corpus, restricting the search to books dated before 2005, one finds the phrase used exclusively to refer to Canada or the United States.[3] Only afterwards does it begin to be used to describe such countries as Turkey and Kazakhstan.

Exhibit 4: Google Scholar provides the same outcome for works dated before 2005.[4] Among the search results are a reference to Kyrgyzstan, but then that turns out to be from 2004, so I don't know how it evaded the filter. There are also a few garbage links at the end of the result list. Since 2005, there have been plenty of descriptions of Turkey, Egypt, Kazakhstan, at the least, as transcontinental. (There are also, since then, mentions of Russia, but that, along with the USSR before it, were already transcontinental in a different way under the original definition.)

Should we edit all descriptions of countries as "transcontinental" to use other wording and shall we rename List of transcontinental countries on the grounds that that we were misusing the phrase from the beginning? Or has the term, through misguided adoption elsewhere, achieved a self-justifying existence here?

Do we have a page somewhere that discusses Wikipedia-genic phenomena where this could be covered? Largoplazo (talk) 15:09, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion on the standalone list, but it should rarely if ever be used as an adjective elsewhere, being a quite undue piece of trivia at best. CMD (talk) 15:33, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

I have in the past removed it from leads in a couple of articles. In a sentence like "... is a transcontinental country located in Southeastern Europe and West Asia ...", as I've said in my edit summaries, even if it did have the meaning for which the writer was using it, it would be redundant given that the continents are then named. It attributes too much importance to the fact that the territory of a country doesn't happen to be confined entirely to just one of the world's land masses to which the term "continent" has been applied. It makes it seem like being transcontinental is an important aspect of a country but it just isn't. And it looks like Wikipedia's just showing off with a wikt:five-dollar word. Largoplazo (talk) 16:03, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

On your I don't know how it evaded the filter note: 2004 was before 2005. jlwoodwa (talk) 02:37, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Oh. OK, thanks. It made sense at the time, but I'm not going to retrace my steps to piece back together what I should have written or meant to write. I'll take your word for it that I goofed somehow. Largoplazo (talk) 02:50, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

AI or LLM noticeboard

Do we have something like an AI or LLM noticeboard and, if not, should we? So if a user notices a large batch of text being added to an article that looks like it was AI-generated, they could post it and those who've focused on the nature of AI-generated content and are skilled at identifying it can have a look? I see there's also now the {{AI-generated}} template (which I've applied to Technology and society following a massive contributions by another editor) which I imagine some editors may be tracking, but a noticeboard would provide a central location for discussions of this nature. I wonder whether there would be advantages to that over only holding such discussions on the talk pages of the articles in question. Largoplazo (talk) 16:27, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

You're looking for Wikipedia:WikiProject AI Cleanup/Noticeboard. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 16:59, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Largoplazo (talk) 18:10, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

oathauth-twofactorauth

I might have missed this discussion, but if I look on top of my user page (or user talk page), it says that I am administrator, autopatrolled, and oathauth-twofactorauth. I do not quite understand what the latter thing means, but if it means that I have TFA (which I do because I am interface administrator on two other projects), does this mean to be public information? In my case, one can probably figure out that I must have TFA, but I guess there are many users who are not required to have it but still have it? Ymblanter (talk) 22:12, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

To me it looks like saying "this user's password has 16 symbols". Probably not a top secret but still should not be public. Ymblanter (talk) 22:13, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

The oathauth-twofactorauth group means you can enable TFA, but does not indicate whether you have. It's being gradually rolled out to all users, see T400579. Anomie⚔ 01:01, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

I see, thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 06:18, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

And that is a temporary group, as this is being turned on for everyone that group will be turned back down during cleanup. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:54, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia 25th birthday CentralNotice banners

Hello, I am part of the Communications Department at the Wikimedia Foundation and I wanted to let you know that the team is planning to run Central Notice Banners in January on English Wikipedia in celebration of Wikipedia’s 25th birthday, for both logged-in and logged-out users. The banner will raise awareness about the milestone and invite everyone to learn more about Wikipedia’s history, impact, and how it works. The Central Notice Banners will be available in English, and will link to either a page on the Foundation’s website that showcases editors and impact (for logged-out users) or a special microsite with a time capsule of Wikipedia’s history (for logged-in users). Both of these pages will be available in English. You can view the campaign here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Request/Wikipedia_25th_birthday. Please feel free to reply here with any questions. BCamarda (WMF) (talk) 01:14, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Administrator Elections - Discussion Phase

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.

You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:47, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

captcha

Did the captcha system on Wikipedia change recently, or is something borked on my end? I remember a few weeks ago, I could use it, but now it's not appearing properly. I hope it isn't based on CloudFlare, because that's just crashing my browser with gigs of RAM chewed up each time it tries to load. -- ~2025-37878-99 (talk) 10:39, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

It has changed, see Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)#Replacing our CAPTCHA with a new bot detection service, part 2: editing. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 22:52, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Ugh, it's just not loading then. Does it have the same signature as advertising? Is my adblocker killing it? Or is my privacy blocker killing it? If it's trying to create a traceable signature then the privacy blocker is killing it. I see that if I were on my Linux system, I'd also not be able to use it, as it now uses JS, and I surf on Linux with JS off. I have a custom block to prevent CloudFlare from blowing up my browser, if it uses the CF-antibot script, that would also kill it. -- ~2025-37878-99 (talk) 04:41, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

Detailed peer-reviewed analysis of effect of ghost-written, now retracted, paper on Glyphosate article in Wikipedia

A new peer-reviewed paper in the journal Environmental Science & Policy discusses at length the effect that a retracted, ghost written paper had on the Wikipedia article about Glyphosate. The paper is quite critical about the ghost-written nature of the paper being "..repeatedly removed or reversed."

The paper is:

Kaurov, A.A. and Oreskes, N., 2025. The afterlife of a ghost-written paper: How corporate authorship shaped two decades of glyphosate safety discourse. Environmental Science & Policy, 171, p.104160.

The paper stated:

Overall, we find that WKM2000 had a significant and problematic influence on how Wikipedia presented the science of glyphosate safety. Not only did Wikipedia editors frequently cite WKM2000 to support claims about glyphosate’s safety, but attempts to add context about its ghost-written nature were repeatedly removed or reversed.

Note: "WKM2000" = Williams et al. (2000), which is the retracted paper noted below.

At the time of its publication, Kaurov et al. (2025) noted that Williams et al. (2000) is also cited in the Wikipedia articles Polyethoxylated tallow amine, Roundup (herbicide), and Glyphosate-based herbicides.

The retraction notice for Williams et al. (2000) is:

Williams, G.M., Kroes, R. and Munro, I.C., 2025. Retraction notice to “Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans” [Regul. Toxicol. Pharm. 31 (2000) 117–165]. Available online 5 December 2025, 106006.

The citation to the, now retracted, Williams et al. (2000) is: Williams, G.M., Kroes, R. and Munro, I.C., 2000. Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans. Regulatory toxicology and pharmacology, 31(2), pp.117-165.

Articles discussing Williams et al. (2000) are:

Science journal retracts study on safety of Monsanto’s Roundup: ‘serious ethical concerns’ Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence. by Cary Gillam, The Guardian, December 5, 2025 Paul H. (talk) 18:58, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Glyphosate safety article retracted eight years after Monsanto ghostwriting revealed in court, Retraction Watch.

Oreskes, N., 2025. Cleaning the scientific house: Rebuilding trust in science requires confronting the harms of ghostwriting. Science, 390(6772), p.eaec4187. Paul H. (talk) 20:07, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

It would be useful to identify which edits were removed or reversed, according to the article quoted in blockquote tags above. Can anyone do so? Phil Bridger (talk) 21:20, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

THe article, Kaurov et al. (2025) provides specific dates and names of editors for specific edits. I have access to all of the papers and articles, including Kaurov et al. (2025), if someone needs one. You can emails me from my Talk page. Paul H. (talk) 21:51, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Some editors have been discussing this at Talk:Monsanto and some bird article I can't remember the name of right now. Katzrockso (talk) 21:42, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

In the mainspace at the moment, it is only cited in Monsanto and Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, both of which are explaining that the paper was retracted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:48, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

That is true, because of the discussion at Talk:Polyethoxylated_tallow_amine#Williams et al 2000 paper in early October. However it was in mainspace at that time and removed despite at least some critical discussion points arguing to retain it. It was still cited in this version and was removed [5] [6] twice Andre🚐 04:39, 6 December 2025 (UTC)