Wikipedia:Village pump (all)

"Notability" really is a terrible name.

I've heard it discussed around a fair amount, and I'm sure it's one of those 'perennial proposals' that the veterans here are going to roll their eyes and say "ugh, somebody's bringing THIS up again," but I do think it bears saying. Notability is an awful descriptor for what we're actually looking for, which is presence in sources. That's 'notedness' if anything, not 'notability', and the inevitable result is that every time you tell someone you can't accept their autobiography/company's article/article about their favourite media thing because it's 'not notable,' they get their haunches up and go on a tirade about how many awards they/the thing have won and how many cool things they/the thing have done, etc. Pretty much every mention of something being notable or not notable has to be accompanied by a mandatory disclaimer of what notability means here and how it doesn't mean what they think it does. It's a thought particularly spurred on by my deletion nomination of the article Deaglán de Bréadún, which led the man himself to post a response essentially calling me a nasty person for daring to imply that him and his career aren't notable... which, of course, is not actually what we mean, despite literally saying the words "you aren't notable enough for a Wikipedia article"

So, the obvious question is; what would we call it instead? I've heard the term "Criteria for inclusion" mentioned, which I think would be a graceful solution, since you can explain that the criteria for inclusion is presence in sources etc without ever having to use the scary word 'notability.' Whatever alternative option is presented, I do think it is seriously high time that Wikipedia take the big step of retiring the term 'notability' Athanelar (talk) 00:39, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree with you. Notability is a dumb name. However, there's never going to be a consensus to change it. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:55, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

And then, what would we call all the lists of "notable" people/residents/alumni/etc.? "People/residents/alumni/etc. who meet the criteria for inclusion"? Donald Albury 01:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I think you could probably still keep those; the definition there would logically run in the opposite direction, they are notable because they meet the criteria for inclusion. It's not an ideal solution, but obviously cuts down on some of the logistical challenge. Athanelar (talk) 01:41, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Renaming notability has been an WP:PEREN issue, repeated discussed without finding any term that has a benefit over "notability" that would not be disruptive (how many P&G depend on it) but would be more descriptive. And no, "presence in sources" is an indicator of notability, but not how notability is defined. Masem (t) 01:16, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

It is undoubtedly true that it would be a lot of work changing the nomenclature all over the project if we got rid of 'notability,' but I don't think "It'd be a lot of work" is a compelling counterargument. There would no doubt be a long transitional period where lingering remains of 'notability' were still all over the place; but that doesn't have to be an issue, it's not like the change has to happen overnight. We could just say "from today on, the term 'notability' is deprecated and we prefer this new term instead" and people can change mentions of it as and when they catch it. Just today I heard about the NSPORTS 2022 RfC where the definition of notability for athletes was radically changed; that too would've had far-reaching implications on the project, but that didn't stop people from doing it just because it was a lot of work ahead of them to clean up the now non-notable athlete articles everywhere. Athanelar (talk) 01:42, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

The NSPORT change did not radically change what notability was, just eliminated a very poor presumption of notability (playing one professional game) that had led to thousands of permastubs on athletes that was a constant problem at ANI.

We've been through what the downstream impacts of changing the term notability to something else as part of past discussions (because this being PEREN) and its not as simple "from now on it will be known as..." "notability" is embedded in WP culture and in coverage of how WP works, so it would be a massive shift, so any new terms must carry a lot of massive benefit to make it worth the effort to make the change. And dozens of suggestions have been made and failed to show this. Masem (t) 04:47, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• My 9-year-old essay's time has finally come! WP:Noted not notable. (Note: It's a very, very short essay, admittedly.) EEng 01:58, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  We could put this in big letters on the notability page and all the spin-off pages like WP:42. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:24, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  This is also a fairly elegant solution, hut unfortunately relies on people actually clicking the link and then actually reading the words on their screen. The 'headline effect' is real when it comes to WP links. Athanelar (talk) 09:23, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Nice essay, EEng. I especially like how the "nutshell" explanation is nearly twice as long as the essay itself  ;) —Fortuna, imperatrix 19:24, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  EEng 20:16, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

• For reference, the last big discussion on this topic that I know of is Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 84 § RfC on change of name, from April 2025. isaacl (talk) 02:07, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Much appreciated. Starting to read through some of that, I think 'eligibility' is quite a strong contender. It's an easily-understood English word already, which perfectly encapsulates the concept being described, and also would actually allow us to broaden our definition in some useful ways (because eligibility is a catch-all term that could include not only the presence of positive indicators like strong sources, but also the absence of negative indicators like WP:NOT or criteria for speedy deletion.) A subject which is 'eligible' is one that is both suitable for inclusion and unsuitable for deletion, which 'notability' does not currently encapsulate. Athanelar (talk) 02:15, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  No, eligibility is a terrible idea, because it implies a brightline yes/no answer. Notability is a greyscale, its why notability is based on presumptions and not a hardline test.

  The only real issue with notability is for editors encountering the term for the first time, and coming to learn that real-world definition of notability is not exactly the same as WP's definition of notability, but reading the P&G should quickly resolve that. Masem (t) 04:53, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

The only way to get the name changed? would be to propose only one alternative. GoodDay (talk) 02:10, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I disagree, the bugbear for a lot of people seems to be whether we'll get consensus that changing the name is worth the effort. I think people first have to be disgruntled about the old name to be resolved to change it before we worry what the new name ought to be. Athanelar (talk) 02:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Do you have a proposed name? GoodDay (talk) 14:37, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

No! God please no! This is a perennial issue based primarily on WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It’s too late and too entrenched to change and someone is just going to bitch about how dumb “eligibility” is down the line. A better proposal would be outright banning perennial proposals and requiring consensus to unban them before allowing them to be discussed again, since that would require more extraordinary reasoning than “I know this has been talked to death, but just me out, I swear”. Dronebogus (talk) 02:43, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

While I agree that changing it has a less-than-ideal cost-reward, this post (and the others before it) explain legitimate downsides to the current name besides preference. Also, a discussion to unban a perennial proposal would look almost identical to the proposal itself. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:28, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

A discussion to unban a perennial proposal would look almost identical to the proposal itself. Maybe so, but it would force proposers to go through the process twice, which would discourage most proposers from doing it at all and save everyone a lot of time. Additionally, it wouldn’t necessarily always result in the aforementioned situation— if a proposal was banned because it was a hot-button issue now, it might be uncontroversially removed from the list 10 years later after things cool off, without actually endorsing it. It would be sort of like the MediaWiki:Bad image list or a gold lock for proposals. Dronebogus (talk) 09:51, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I totally agree with you and I was disappointed that there wasn't consensus to change the name in the aforementioned April 2025 RfC. But given the outcome of said RfC, I struggle to see the point of rehashing the discussion so soon as it's very unlikely that there will be a different outcome. Perhaps give it a year or two.  novov talk edits 05:24, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• Coverage perhaps? Or renown? Or just noted ... I doubt it'll ever actually change though. EvergreenFir (talk) 05:42, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Coverage is a distinction without a difference. Renown is far more pretentious than notability. Noted is barely even a change and couldn’t be used rationally in a sentence. Dronebogus (talk) 09:53, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• WP:Eligibility was recently suggested by Wikipedia expert Bill Beutler. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:00, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Eligibility is the rename option that sucks the least, since it most accurately reflects what “notability” actually means. But “notability” still at least puts a vague idea in people’s heads (namely, is this thing/person significant in some way?) whereas “eligibility” could mean pretty much anything and could actually put a worse idea in people’s heads (namely, eligibility is whatever somebody says it is, or is some arcane ruleset known only to insiders that isn’t easily summarized). Dronebogus (talk) 09:59, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  I still think "notedness" would be better than "eligibility", as "eligibility" seems like it should include non-WP:N things such as WP:NOT and WP:BLP. Anomie⚔ 13:50, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  I don't see that as a negative. We are, ultimately, looking for a term that describes "eligible to be included on Wikipedia." In fact, some of the AfC decline notices literally use "your references do not demonstrate that this subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article" as a piped link to 'notability' anyway. If anything, having a more comprehensive term would be an advantage, since then you don't run into the tricky situations of 'well, we TECHNICALLY have enough information to presume this person is notable, but there's still not enough coverage to substantiate an article about them' amd so on.

  Eligibility includes what we now define as notability, but way more succinctly communicates the point of whether or not something should have an article. Athanelar (talk) 14:02, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Having an all-encompassing term actually referring to just one facet seems like it would make it harder to discuss that facet versus other facets. "Ok, that meets WP:ELIGIBILITY, but it's still not eligible because it doesn't meet WP:BLP1E." "Wat?" Anomie⚔ 00:01, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  Exactly. Dronebogus (talk) 14:33, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  “notability” still at least puts a vague idea in people’s heads: but I think that’s the problem with the term. People don’t realize they are encountering a jargon term and substitute their own meaning. I’d argue that “eligibility” is better because there’s more precedent that contextual criteria will define eligibility for a particular thing; it might cue people that they need Wikipedia-specific information. (I’d almost want to try a complete neologism that people would know they don’t know the meaning of, something like “wikifiability” or “AAOEW” (Article Allowed On En-Wiki) that they’d know they don’t know.) ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 07:35, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  Anomie said it best with the “wiki-eligibility is not dictionary definition eligibility” example. Notability still hits the general vicinity of the right idea; eligibility doesn’t and has the potential to be more confusing. As for a neologism, I don’t support that either because (on top of being a solution in search of a problem like all these replacement suggestions) it just adds MORE incomprehensible jargon to Wikipedia— which is what this proposal is supposedly trying to cut back on. Dronebogus (talk) 14:39, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  I feel like you might have misunderstood my argument. When it comes to the one-word name for this concept, I contend that "trying to cut back on" jargon is counterproductive; any one-word name for this mess of concepts is inherently jargon. Accordingly, I think there's no point trying to change to something "clearer", but it could possibly be helpful to change to something less "clear", because it could make the term into a "known unknown" instead of "something you know that isn't so". Personally, when I want to avoid jargon with newbies, I write out a whole explanatory phrase instead (eg "our criteria for a book to have an article"); I think that's the only approach that can actually effectively cut down on jargon. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 02:42, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

• Notability was never a good choice of name, but we've stuck with it because of the cost of changing; it's a QWERTY vs DVORAK problem. Personally I'd quite like to call it "Citability".—S Marshall T/C 09:45, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  I think the 'cost of changing' would quickly be outweighed if you tallied up the editor-hours required and compared it to the editor-hours that have been spent and will continue to be spent in perpetuity explaining to disgruntled would-be article creators why appearing on a list of the Top 100 Best Things doesn't confer notability. Athanelar (talk) 13:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Don't misunderstand: I personally would support most reasonable alternative names because "notability" is still (after all these years) a misleading, dramagenic, and generally awful choice of words. But there's a non-zero cost of changing and a lot of neophobia to overcome here.—S Marshall T/C 14:40, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Is “dramagenic” a word? Dronebogus (talk) 14:40, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  As I discussed last April, personally I encourage everyone to focus on providing more complete explanations on the standards for having an article rather than just linking to a jargon term. The key obstacle is that the community has to want to reduce its use of jargon. isaacl (talk) 16:51, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• It is highly unlikely that the community is going to rename "Notability", this being as noted a perennial proposal that gets enmeshed in the long and complicated history and complicated current understanding of the concept of 'notability' on en.wiki. However, a creative smaller change probably worth exploring might be to create an alternative name for WP:GNG that somehow does not include the "N". GNG is the aspect of notability that best describes "presence in sources", it is the least likely aspect of notability to get enmeshed in notability politics. I don't have a perfect suggestion offhand, but creating an alternative name for GNG is a smaller task then renaming all of notability, and would capture much of the practical benefit of a full notability rename even if that full rename never happens. CMD (talk) 14:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)
• The community's inertia is such that a proposal to change this isn't a good use of my time or anyone else's. But I agree, and if I had my way I would want the policy not to be a near-synonym of "significant". The practical consequence I see most often is the eliding of "should we as an ambitious global encyclopedia cover this in principle" and "can we as an encyclopedia that cares about verifiability write an article about this in practice". I could go on at length, but a more prosaic name may help us a good bit, perhaps something as plain as "standard for inclusion". Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:47, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  “Standard(s) for inclusion” is by FAR the best proposed option so far; but there are multiple “standards for inclusion” beyond notability. Dronebogus (talk) 14:46, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  @Dronebogus: This is precisely the distinction that I want to make. To my mind there's not multiple standards for inclusion, because in our most overarching policy language, "notability" is used as a synonym for standards of inclusion. We do have multiple was of showing notability beyond GNG/SIGCOV. And the frequent use of "notable" to mean "has SIGCOV" therefore causes considerable confusion as well. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:18, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  "Notability" is one commonly discussed standard, but there are others such as WP:NOT and WP:BLP. Anomie⚔ 20:52, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  @Anomie: I see those as standards for exclusion, which may require the removal of notable topics, but will never compel the inclusion of non-notable topics. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:49, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

  Two sides of the same coin. You could just as well say that WP:N will never compel the inclusion of topics that go against WP:BLP, and so on. It all goes together to determine what's included, i.e. multiple criteria. Anomie⚔ 03:20, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

• Wikipedia jargon. We use a word with a meaning that differs from its normal English meaning. Any other word would therefore have the same issue unless we created an entirely new word like "cituated". My personal favourite is "living persons", which includes dead persons. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:42, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  I don't think that this is necessarily true; "eligibility" "suitability" and "criteria for inclusion" which have all been mentioned all transparently mean what we would want them to mean; the bar a subject has to pass to get an article. This isn't an unsolvable dilemma, it's just hard work. Athanelar (talk) 19:33, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  "Criteria for inclusion" leads us straight to one of the most common points of confusion: inclusion of an article in the encyclopaedia versus inclusion of details within an article. The criteria applied to the creation or retention of an article are not the same as those applied to the content inside it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:36, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• "Notability" really is a terrible name. Yes, you are correct. Toadspike [Talk] 18:49, 20 February 2026 (UTC)
• Yes, it is really a terrible name. The fixation that it needs to be one word is also bizarre. Neutral Point of View is not one word, Original Research is not one word, Biography of Living Persons is not one word, Article Title is not one word, etc.: so, Article Criteria, or some such. 'On Wikipedia, Article Criteria is a test . . .'; It meets the AC; it does not meet WP:AC; and done. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:44, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: Unpopular opinion I guess but I like the word "notability," especially when paired with "Wikipedia:Verifiability." Notability gives a lot of wiggle room but suggests there is some minimum for inclusion, and we can adjust what that is.

GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 02:23, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

It’s not an unpopular opinion. I’m pretty sure the silent majority either likes it or has no strong opinion on it. Otherwise we would have changed it by now. Dronebogus (talk) 14:50, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

• I think some people are confusing the aim and the criteria. We really do want to write articles on topics that are notable according to its everyday meaning (that's the aim), but to achieve that in practice we have to make guidelines for notability that editors are able to follow and agree with each other about (that's the criteria). So my opinion is that "notability" is actually the best of the options mentioned so far in this discussion. "Eligibility" is way too vague (neither an aim nor a criterion) and "citeability" is just wrong (that would refer to sources, not topics). The word that has annoyed me the most, for the past 20+ years, is "verifiability", which in wikispeak means something entirely different from its meaning in plain English. In plain English, something is verifiable if its truth can be confirmed, which is why the ancient slogan "verifiability, not truth" is my nomination for the worst own-goal in Wikipedia history. Zero^talk 10:35, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  In defense of verifiability, it's purely a question of which frame of reference you're using. Sure, in everyday speech it usually means verifiable [against objective truth] but it's not a stretch or corruption of the meaning that on Wikipedia it means verifiable [against a source text]. The whole point of 'verifiability, not truth' is to clarify that the thing we're verifying against is not objective truth, merely source->text integrity. Athanelar (talk) 10:48, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  No, that was not where "verifiability, not truth" came from (I was here when it was adopted). The "not truth" part refers to "no original research". The idea is that we use what reliable sources say is true and not what we personally believe is true. It isn't a reference to objective truth. The problem with the slogan is that it was commonly taken to mean that Wikipedia doesn't care about getting the facts right, and this misunderstanding got "out there" to our detriment. And we threw it at newcomers before they had a chance to grasp that "verifiability" didn't mean what they thought it meant. Zero^talk 11:40, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  When it comes to "verifiability" I view it as "is the notability verifiable." Something can be true, but not notable. There is a lot of stuff about me floating on the internet, my existence is verifiable, however none of it meets the criteria for notability, my notability is not verifiable. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:01, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I would probably call it "sourceability" which is somewhat more accurate. However, as said before it's one of these entrenched terms that are hard to change. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:25, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

What name is being proposed, to change "Notability"? GoodDay (talk) 14:37, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Nothing currently; I'm not trying to make a proposal, just to discuss the topic. There's no point in proposing a candidate if nobody thinks it should be changed to begin with. Athanelar (talk) 14:42, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

No-one can decide. And most likely no decision will be made. This is such an obvious waste of time I don’t really know why I, or any of the many high-profile editors here, dignifying it with a response beyond “WP:PERENNIAL” Dronebogus (talk) 14:43, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

I note WP:PERENNIAL doesn't actually have this topic listed (yet). Anomie⚔ 20:57, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

"Notability" is fine. It means what subject can be noted on Wikipedia. I don't see a glaring problem with it. Joe vom Titan (talk) 14:46, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

The glaring problem is that that's an extremely unintuitive and niche use of that word, which usually means "important" or "significant" Athanelar (talk) 16:34, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

That's what "notable" means, while "notability" reflects how much someone is likely to be notable, which matches the intent of what WP's notability does. Masem (t) 16:47, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

But "importance" is subjective (my wife is important to me, the road I take to work is important to me, the band my friend started when he was 15 is important to him; none of them are notable in the Wikipedia sense). "Notability" (or at least the GNG) aims to be an objective standard that is either met or not and has little to do with what most people think of as "importance". HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:49, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Also worth adding that we do "note" unnotable things on Wikipedia, just within articles rather than as standalone topics. CMD (talk) 04:18, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Its far from an objective standard, which is why notability is a rebuttable presumption. Show that the topic is given in-depth coverage from at least a few independent, reliable sources (generally being secondary sources), and we'll presume that the topic can merit a full article. But there's so much variability in what qualifies as in-depth coverage, how many and what kind of sources, etc. that its far to call the test solely objective. Otherwise, we'd not have any problem at AFD with deletion.

But we do associate being notable as if the topic was important enough to independent authors to cover in-depth, that is, is the topic demonstrated the quality of being notable based on sourcing. Masem (t) 04:29, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

When you read that notability is necessary for inclusion on Wikipedia how is it not glaringly obvious that it is Wikipedia that sets the standards for what is notable?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:09, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

While we’re here, why don’t we look at all the other less-than-ideal names used for rules on Wikipedia? WP:NPOV (which isn’t neutral) WP:IAR (don’t actually do this) WP:DELETION (pages aren’t deleted). I could probably find lots of examples. Wikipedia is just like any hobbyist subculture in that it has a lot of weird jargon that doesn’t necessarily mean what the dictionary and common sense say it means. “Fixing” that will just create more problems as now both newbies AND veteran editors are confused by the weird new terminology. On top of that Newbies still won’t understand what it’s meant to convey, veterans will just keep using the same terminology they always used, and eventually it will just get reverted back with the same unnecessary cost as changing it. Dronebogus (talk) 15:00, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

• Notability is a terrible name because it's easily conflated with "importance", which is subjective—everything is important to someone. I've previously advocated for "criteria for inclusion". HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:20, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  One word synonym could just be "Includable." GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:03, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

  It looks like we have a nice set of redirects in the Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion line. I think that's a good thing. People can use whichever they like. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:04, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

• I prefer "Notability". While "criteria for inclusion" would convey the idea, it would be awkward to use regularly. None of the other suggestions above work for me. - Donald Albury 19:04, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  My POV hasn't changed since the discussion last year, specifically that we should eventually change this, and that the way to go about it is to pick some other word or phrase and use both, e.g., "On Wikipedia, notability, or eligibility, is a test used by editors..." or "On Wikipedia, notability is the article creation criteria that editors use..." Then editors have a choice, and if they choose to say "It's Wikipedia:Notable" or if they choose to say "It meets the Wikipedia:Article creation criteria" or if they choose to say "I think this meets our Wikipedia:Eligibility standards", then that's fine (though it'd be preferable if the guideline suggested a single alternate name). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Hey @Athanelar, I'm the person who started the last massive discussion. Good luck. The main message I came out of it with is there will be many more opposing people in actual RfCs rather than discussions; I started an RfC thinking I would have significantly more support than I did based on my experience discussing it at the idea lab. I think the only way to make this work is to make a smaller change first -- maybe some sort of movement among AfD contributors to use eligibility (linking to notability) would work to get it off the ground, but I have no idea how that would be organized. Maybe a WikiProject? Mrfoogles (talk) 20:59, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

• Can we at least footnote the WP:N lead sentence with an explanation along the lines of:

  (1) Wikipedia notability is largely independent of real-world notability, (2) while this is confusing, we continue to use the word because multiple discussions have failed to find a better one, and (3) alternative names (that have been considered, but not adopted) include notedness, criteria for inclusion, eligibility, suitability, admissibility, and wikinotability.

  New editors start out assuming that Wikipedia notability is at least somewhat related to real-world notability, which isn't helped by WP:N statements like Determining notability does not necessarily depend on things such as fame, importance, or popularity. While new editors don't start by reading all the PAGs, WP:N and WP:GNG are quoted so often they'll likely see them first, making it even more important these pages clarify common misconceptions. An overview of previous discussions will also be of value to more experienced editors. Preimage (talk) 06:41, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

  Alternatively, we could remove the term altogether (in effect, making WP:N a self-referential acronym): "On Wikipedia, WP:N is a test used by editors..." Preimage (talk) 07:08, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

  Please note that the existence of the term "Notability" is essential to a joke on the signpost. I think it was in the comix section of the last January edition. ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 19:51, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

• I dunno why people have complained how terrible "notability" is other than... probably it's unfair to those who may not be "notable" but might deserve an article perhaps. This is more akin to (failed?) efforts to repeal and (failed) constitutional challenges to the Affordable Care Act, both perhaps time- and money-wasting. Right? Frankly, "notability" has been fine as-is, despite hostile backlash and all, and something that consensus should practice often. Too bad certain others here wanna change it. BTW, have standards of "notability" been that low or that high? George Ho (talk) 19:55, 4 March 2026 (UTC)
• I like Preimage's solution of referring to Notability as a native concept abstracted from outside usage, but I like better the idea of changing the word notability. I've created WP:WOTABILITY to try to best differentiate outside notability with WP's notability. If anyone has any better idea than my sort of clunky one please share - I suspect this may be a big problem in editor retention, to have such an onerous stumbling block placed so early in editor lifetime. Embyarby (talk) 04:02, 5 March 2026 (UTC)
• I am not sure what is wrong with the word notability. There are lots of citable subjects that are not really notable. Citability (is that a word) does not necessarily mean that the subject alone is notable, unless of course those citations come from notable or established sources. Wikipedia has much bigger issues right now than the usage of notability for establishing subjects. Words in the Wind(talk) 21:11, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

While I very much agree with this, I'm not sure what singular/compound word could replace it.

At AfC, I've started to refer to Notability to newcomers as "what Wikipedia calls 'notability'", or just saying "hasn't been covered in multiple reliable, secondary, independent sources". Nothing will scare someone off for good than saying that the topic they're writing about isn't notable, or perhaps even that THEY themselves aren't notable, in the case of autobiographies (which can very easily be taken as a passive-aggressive insult!).

I do agree with @Preimage - putting something at the top of WP:N to differentiate between real-world notability would be good. Or maybe even a change to the "This page in a nutshell" banner.

I do think a newbie friendly page to the notability guidelines could work out. It would be more detailed than Help:Introduction, but less jargony than other P&G pages. Pretty much, a line-by-line breakdown of key points like WP:GNG, WP:NTEMP, WP:WHYN. EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 05:06, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

"Notability" is clearly the best option. As Masem noted, "eligibility" is awful because it implies that notability is binary, which is only true if you treat the blurry line between inclusion and exclusion like an obnoxious WP:WIKILAWYER. "Notability" clearly means notable to Wikipedia – just like events notable to Kotaku and to The Law Society Gazette will have minimal overlap. Theoretically, that concept is capturable in "Relevance", which I haven't seen discussed here yet, but (just preempting this, because the anti-"notability" camp is ostensibly desperate for any alternative) this is even worse: 1) it's a lateral move at best because we're a general-purpose encyclopedia, and 2) it would completely overload the common word "relevant" across Wikipedia.

Having read this entire discussion, the suggestion is well-intentioned but nonsensical bikeshedding. No better term has been put forward (because, in my opinion, it can't be – unless we all decide on "cromulent" and use our hivemind to collectively understand it), the concept has already been baked-in for over 20 years, multiple attempts to change it in the past have ended in failure, the definition is literally right there and plastered around any discussion thereof if there's any confusion, the consequence of misunderstanding it is excruciatingly low-stakes, most misunderstandings of any real consequence come from not reading guidelines that a word or three could never capture on their own or meaningfully encourage someone to read, and in 99.9% of cases, it comports with the lay meaning just fine anyway. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 01:28, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Notability/Eligibility/whatever you want to call it should sound binary, because whether we have a Wikipedia:Separate, stand-alone article for a given subject is also binary.

(Also, did you read the literal "definition"? The one that says "Notability is a test"? Notability is not a test.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:17, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I prefer to treat the issue of notability as; "is notable::notability has not yet been established". There will always be a grey area, border notability, where we will argue over the notability of a topic, a point where finding one more piece of significant coverage in a reliable source might push the topic over the line to notability, or an obscure topic captures enough attention in the real world to result in new significant coverage in reliable sources (I repeatedly reverted attempts of a certain musician to add themselves to Wikipedia until one day I saw that they had finally made enough of a splash to get significant coverage in reliable sources). Donald Albury 16:53, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Adding pre-debut members of music group

There are 2 pages that in conflict: TLC and NSYNC. Both have pre-debut members who never released any song as the group member. The problem is, some Wikipedia editors list them as past members. In this case, Blackpink's page should also include Miyeon, BTS with Supreme Boi, Big Bang with Jang Hyunseung, SNSD with Soyeon, and Innosense with Britney Spears.

Now, what is the consensus? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 14:18, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. As long as the group has maintained the same name, then those pre-fame members are still former members of the group. There should definitely be a clear delineation of when a person was a member of the group in the prose and there may be special organization or footnotes in lists or tables, but they still need to be in there. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:28, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Reading the further responses, I see some possible distinctions to draw. A group of musicians may come together and practice. At some point, they try out for bookings and print materials to advertise themselves. Eventually, they begin booking shows. They finally receive a recording contract and release their debut album. People may come and go at any point in this sequence. My position is that anyone who is presented to the public (either in marketing materials or actual performances) should be counted as a member. Where in this sequence do the people you mentioned fall? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:35, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't know exactly why the pages for TLC and NSYNC have the very early members listed, but in the case of the K-pop groups listed; just absolutely no. You'd need to add over half a dozen "members" just for SNSD alone, because leading up to their debut, their management was swapping potential members in and out at seemingly a moments notice. There were at least four different line-ups prior to debut, with as many as twelve members in them. And that's just the ones we know of, I'm sure there were plenty more, are we gonna add every SME trainee from that period as a potential past member? Which brings me to a further point: good luck finding reliable sources any of this, because every thing I could find in my research for this reply was terrible fansites, or "sources" known to be unreliable. Pre-debut trainees are just that: trainees. They are not official members.DragonFury (talk) 22:28, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I mean, the actual final plan of SNSD was 10-member group before Soyeon left voluntarily.

But yes, pre-debut members should not be included since it's not official. I also don't know why they including pre-debut members on NSYNC and TLC. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 22:34, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

And to add another point; Twice was formed from the TV program Sixteen, so do we add the seven people not selected in the program as past members? Because if so, I'd like to see someone make the same argument for Kep1er and the NINETY contestants from Girls Planet 999 who weren't selected for the group. DragonFury (talk) 22:38, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

With TLC, it's because 1) she's mentioned in reliable sources as 2) the founder of the group. Similarly with NSYNC, it's because 1) Jason is mentioned in reliable sources as 2) a formative member of the group. We should default to sources here. Is someone reliably claimed to have been a member of the group? Then they should be included. Now, should they always be in the infobox? Should they never be in the infobox? No. That's editorial judgement, and it depends on the band. And I don't think a recording contract or "official" debut release is a good enough rule of thumb. Someone could be an important member of the group without that. Some groups release music without a contract. And judging "importance" here is often arbitrary, anyway.--3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 21:03, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

It should be whatever is reflected in reliable sources. If reliable sources describe those people as actual, bonafide former members of the band then sure.

For most of the examples you listed, however, this wouldn't be the case... they were just trainees in the same company along with the people who eventually became the final lineup. Agencies add and remove people from lineups all the time before they actually release any music. It doesn't mean they're a member of the band. RachelTensions (talk) 01:41, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

so you agree that we should not include pre-debut members? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 19:44, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm going to quickly reject "never released any songs as a member" as the dividing line, because bands can have a healthy life as a performing group before they become a recording group. There were no The Beatles songs released with Stu Sutcliffe on them until he was dead over thirty years (if I recall correctly), but he was a key player in their pre-record-contract days. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 02:16, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The Beatles does not include Sutcliffe, Pete Best, etc in the infobox -- instead they add a link to the former members section, so that would be a solution for this kind of issue. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 04:18, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Based on your contribution, this discussion seems to originate from a content dispute involving a temporary account that has since been blocked. As such, it is unclear why the argument is being revisited here rather than being handled on the relevant article's talk page, or whether it is intended to validate that blocked account's viewpoint. Regardless, there is general mutual understanding among most editors that only individuals who officially debuted and/or released work with the act are listed as members. Those involved solely during pre-debut stages, such as auditions or trainings, are typically excluded and do not carry long-term encyclopedic significance in relation to the act. Such information, if sourced reliably, may instead be included in the individual's biographies instead, should they have an article here. This standard has been applied consistently across comparable articles, with limited exceptions that are likely the result of per-article consensus. — 🧧🍊 Paper9oll 🍊🧧 (🔔 • 📝) 03:16, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

So the consensus is only official debuted members are listed, right? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 07:33, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

For clarity, when I refer to "general mutual understanding", I'm specifically referring to South Korean musical acts only. That wording is intentional and is applied in conjunction with WP:VERIFY. As for anything else, refer to the last sentence in my earlier reply above instead. Additionally, it appears you are conflating two different categories of group formation. Certain Western acts where membership may be tied to founding history, name origin, or early lineup evolution are being treated as directly comparable to K-pop acts, where membership is defined through a formalized debut system and post-debut activity. Applying the same framework to both assumes a one-size-fits-all standard, which does not reflect how these industries function. Because of that conflation, comparisons such as invoking NSYNC to justify listing pre-debut trainees in K-pop groups are not particularly meaningful. For cases outside the K-pop context, exceptions and differing treatments may and or could already be accounted for on a per-article basis, or may not be, as noted previously. — 🧧🍊 Paper9oll 🍊🧧 (🔔 • 📝) 08:25, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I mean, “pre-debut” means before debut, right?

Before debut = unofficial. Does it mean the same everywhere, or does each country have its own definition of “pre-”? Doesn't matter. It’s still unofficial.

I feel like Wikipedia is turning into a Wiki Fandom now. Why are we including unofficial members / non-final members in the same list as the official members? Where’s the standard? What makes Wikipedia different from Wiki Fandom? It's unofficial, like how I explain it better to you all. It's unofficial. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 11:07, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Alright let's summon User:Binksternet who putting Jason Galasso as former member of NSYNC. In his defense, Jason's name was part of the NSYNC name (which is already changed to Lansen). ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 07:47, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

• Why are we having this content dispute on VPP?—S Marshall T/C 10:23, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  Because it's still about guideline. We are literally talking about an undisclosed guideline for hundred pages related to musical groups. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 11:27, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  No we aren't. This decision is fact-sensitive and needs to be made on a case by case basis. It depends on the person's contribution -- did they help write a key song, did they affect the band's development or sound, were they just a hired gun for a few shows? What do the sources say about them? There's no guideline to write. It's a simple matter of editorial judgement. If there's dispute then they don't go in the infobox (WP:ONUS).—S Marshall T/C 12:28, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  Exactly that's why we are here. You think we are here for planning slumber party? No, we are here for discussion. And there is a big disagreement about whether people should include pre-debut members or not. Did those pre-debut members help the group? Put them on the History section, not the main infobox. That's the function of History section, to tell the story behind the group's creation. Infobox is only for the official information. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 19:42, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  Official in whose eyes? Is there an office somewhere where a team of people decide who is official or not? Without answering that queston it's no good bolding "it's unofficial". There are so many differences between times, places, genres and individual bands that it's pointless trying to create a general rule that will apply to everyone. And it seems that by pre-debut you mean before the recording debut. Many notable bands don't make recordings until a few years into their careers. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:42, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

  "official in whose eyes" oh my goodness. Wikipedia is using what kind of source for reference? Reliable sources, right. So it should be according to reliable sources. What those reliable sources say about "official members of the group"? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 03:09, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

  I would be surprised if there were reliable sources on American bands that made a distinction between "official" and "unofficial" in the way you describe, and I'd expect them to simply describe the people you're trying to remove as having been members of the band. Sesquilinear (talk) 03:23, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

  Let's change the definition from "recording debut" to the time they sign the contract. That's the exact situation when the member is the official member of the group. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 03:13, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

The sources talking about the formation of NSYNC all agree that the name of the band came at a time when bass singer Jason Galasso was in the group. Galasso was warmly received when he joined, with other group members telling him his voice was what they were finally looking for. It was this formation that was deemed ready for a record label deal. Timberlake's mother Lynn remarked that, with Galasso on bass, the group now sounded very much "in sync". They noticed that the final letter of each group member's name could be assembled to form the name NSYNC, with Jason supplying one of the letters. That means Galasso was a foundational member of the group. Supporting sources include a Timberlake bio book and a People magazine piece on Galasso, calling him the "original fifth member of NSYNC".

I don't think there is any basis for artificially drawing a line for the purpose of rejecting Galasso. We should not be determining band membership on our own by saying "pre-debut" or whatever. That would be a violation of WP:No original research. The reliable sources should be telling us who are the group members. Binksternet (talk) 20:40, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

I mean, he was the original member YES there are reliable sources telling that he was the original member. But that's not the point of this discussion.

Looking at the article, it literally says that he backed out the plan to debut, so he didn't sign the contract. After he left, the second N word for NSYNC is placed to Lansen (Lance Bass). So basically there's no Jason in the name, his name is replaced by Lansen.

The point of this discussion is about whether we should include pre-debut members in the main infobox, as pre-debut members are unofficial members. Why putting people that didn't sign the contract to the main infobox? They are unofficial. Unofficial. Should i repeat it for the third time? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 03:07, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Bands and groups exist before signing contracts and after losing contracts. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:13, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

You're creating an arbitrary, or at best industry-specific, definition of "official" and "unofficial" as a blanket rule for every band page. As has been said repeatedly, people can be members of bands without a formal contract or releasing a recording. We go by what sources say.--3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 20:53, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I think the problem with this is that the OP seems to think that one tiny genre of popular music, where terms like "unofficial" and "pre-debut" have some meaning, is representative of the whole. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:21, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Abuse of Wikipedia by AI

It seems a third of the sources used to train AI is material from Wikipedia. Shouldn't something be done about that? We all are doing this for free to inform people, not to support billionaires AI investments who can push out the people of their daily jobs. I've been working on several Wiki's in different languages, and I have the feeling my work is stolen by big companies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-13646-72 (talk) 19:49, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

1. Do you have sources to prove that "a third of the sources used to train AI is material from Wikipedia)?
2. Who cares if we're "supporting" billionaires? Not only is that a major oversimplification of the AI debate (more people use and are affected by AI than just the billionaires), but you also support billionaires through the brands you use in your day-to-day life (such as the device that you use to edit Wikipedia on, which was made by a company run by a billionaire), so the billionaire point doesn't hold much weight.
3. Where is the evidence that AI hasn't created more jobs than have lost, and what about the people whose jobs have been improved by AI (such as programmers, engineers, or medical researchers)? Besides, ending jobs doesn't make something automatically wholly evil; the internet has put a lot of jobs at stake (online shopping, for example, has put many brick-and-mortar stores on the line), yet that does not mean we should just forget about the benefits of the internet. The same thing can be said about AI.
4. How is AI analyzing information to train its ability to make something completely different "stealing?" Besides, your work on Wikipedia isn't wholly "your" work; not only have many other editors contributed to the articles that you have wrote on, but you and other editors have gotten "your" info from other sources, so it's not like AI is "stealing" your personal, wholly-original creation. Besides, Wikipedia is not meant to be anyone's source and its use is not meant to be restricted; it's meant to be a free-to-use platform for anyone to gain information. Why does that stop with AI analyzing that information? Furthermore, why doesn't it stop with others using Wikipedia as a source to get information for their own projects? I don't think you would get mad at someone on YouTube "stealing" from Wikipedia articles to get the info they need for their video essay.

QuisEstJoe (talk) 21:53, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

When you edit Wikipedia, you are agreeing to allow your work to be used by anyone in any way, basically. We don't have a way of excluding big companies (and indeed, some huge ones like Google use it in very obvious ways), and it would not serve the stated goals of the project if we did start excluding. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 22:00, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

not "in any way"

they still have to abide by either Wikipedia:Text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License or Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License

and as far as I know, they would have to add some notice to every LLM output since some fraction of it is a derivative work of content released under those two licenses, which mandate that you state who the original author(s) was/were Laura240406 (talk) 00:32, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

What could be done is calls for and work on better attribution/linking to Wikipedia as said earlier. However, whether it's really required isn't so simple and probably it wouldn't be unless it's a quite direct quote. People can read Wikipedia and other sources and then describe sth in more or less their own words without having to attribute all those sources. LLMs can do the same: usually it's not direct quotes or translations. It's true that "in any way" is false though and I would prefer if whenever a Wikipedia article is one of the main knowledge sources of an LLM output, it would link to the respective article(s). Prototyperspective (talk) 13:23, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

The C-by-C license covers the use of copyrighted material. Facts and ideas cannot be copyrighted, only the expression of those facts and ideas can be copyrighted. Anybody can reuse facts and ideas however they want, as long as they do not copy the expression of those facts and ideas. As long as they are not copying the expression of facts and ideas extracted from Wikipedia, the requirements of attribution under the C-by-C do not apply. We the editors own the copyright on content we add to Wikipedia, but we do not own any copyright on the facts and ideas in that content. Donald Albury 17:01, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I am not a fan of AI, but one of the pillars of Wikipedia is that all editors freely license their work to the public, and no editor owns an article – any contributions can and may be mercilessly edited and redistributed.

Whatever wikis you're working on probably have AI cleanup efforts you may be interested in. Gnomingstuff (talk) 02:47, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I am not agreeing to allow my work to be used by anyone in any way. Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content: Wikipedia's text content ... can be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license (CC BY-SA)... To re-distribute a text page in any form, provide credit to the authors... If you make modifications or additions to the page you re-use, you must license them under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 4.0 or later. Outside of that, the copyright reverts back to me. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:22, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I desire to see a source for your claim. Also, you agree by using Wikipedia that "agree to irrevocably release your text under the CC BY-SA License and GFDL." And "You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." This means that an AI agent providing a link to the Wikipedia page is enough to disqualify you from saying your work was stolen. You did agree to allow your work to be used. ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 19:48, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

This is what it means to license your work under a copyleft licence: you can't restrict who reuses your work if they meet the terms of the licence. And something is being done, by Wikimedia Enterprise getting Big Tech to pay for high-volume access without taking down the servers. See the various news reports following their announcement on our 25th birthday, such as this one in Ars Technica. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 21:45, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi ~2026-13646-72

The "one third" number needs a source, but yes, AI companies scrape Wikipedia for training data, this is a known fact. They are allowed to, under the CC BY-SA license, but other editors have identified that there is still the issue of attribution. As I understand it (I am not a lawyer), the considerations for licensed works used for training data is a legal grey area. And I agree, it does suck, because I agree that the AI industry sucks.

There's two senses in which you could say Wikipedia could "do something" about this. You either mean the Wikipedia community (the volunteer editors who edit Wikipedia), or the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit that hosts the website itself). I don't have much to say for what the Wikimedia Foundation could do.

For what the community could do, Wikipedia isn't really here to right great wrongs; we don't organize protests or anything, we're just here to build an encyclopedia, and we certainly shouldn't artificially inject anti-AI bias into the encyclopedia. You can, however, help chip in over at the AI cleanup efforts! We do (on the whole) consider using LLMs to contribute to Wikipedia to be abusive, but many folks try it anyways, and it takes no small amount of volunteer effort to deal with that abuse. You could always become an editor and assist over at WP:AINB. MEN KISSING (she/they) T - C - Email me! 20:10, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

I honestly don't even think that it sucks that much because Wikipedia is supposed to be a free-to-use encyclopedia for everyone to use, and suddenly closing that off to AI training itself because it's using "stolen" data is both unfair and nonsensical. If you come to Wikipedia to create "your own" article for yourself (which, just to be clear, I'm not saying that you in particular are), you're kind of missing the point of Wikipedia. Besides, it'd be one thing if this was an art-sharing or fiction-writing forum where we publish artistic expression, but saying to someone training AI that they can't use an article of real-world facts because "that's MY article of facts that I have the right to" is simply selfish. QuisEstJoe (talk) 20:40, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, the sentiment against AI scraping of Wikipedia is not only based on the idea of content ownership being violated. It's a complicated issue with a lot more moving parts than that.

This more gets into the wider politics surrounding AI, and I'm sure that can be quite polarizing, so I'm not too eager to dig into it. But perhaps that wider conversation is one we should have, because some of the involved politics is quite relevant to the Wikipedia project. MEN KISSING (she/they) T - C - Email me! 22:32, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

We pause to remember the Great Wikipedia Black Out of 2012. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:40, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

As others have explained above, whether you're fond of LLMs or not, it would be antithetical to the purpose of Wikipedia for us to impose restrictions on who can use its content, and for what purpose. That is the entire point of calling Wikipedia the "free encyclopedia"—not only in the sense that anyone can edit it, but also in the sense that anyone can use it, reuse it, reproduce it, redistribute it, etc. Kurtis ^(talk) 14:48, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Shouldn't something be done about that? What could be done is calls for and work on better attribution/linking to Wikipedia. We all are doing this for free to inform people, not to support billionaires AI investments who can push out the people of their daily jobs. […] I have the feeling my work is stolen by big companies. Speak for yourself.

1. automating work is great success and gets us closer toward a society where we have enough people working on meaningful jobs and in areas where workers are missing such as renewable energy industry and care work
2. it's not supporting billionaires but at least also lots of people who benefit from these technologies; additionally there's free open source AI software that's not supporting billionaires – nuance please, it depends on which AIs you use how
3. I think it's amazing if my volunteer work becomes more useful and reaches larger audiences, so instead of feeling 'my work is stolen' I feel like my work in Wikimedia projects is more worth my time and effort.

Prototyperspective (talk) 17:40, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Alternate potential usage of LLMs in editing Wikipedia—what is permissible, and what is not?

Say, for example, you have an editor who's written an article about XYZ. It is well-written, well-sourced, comprehensive, and it's about an actual person who actually lived. They get it to GA-status, and eventually, to FA-status. But later on, they admit that they used ChatGPT in helping them to create that article. They explained the process that they used in doing so:

• First, they found a bunch of reliable third-party sources about the subject in question.
• They use the following prompt to get ChatGPT to generate text: "Create a comprehensive overview of XYZ using the copy-pasted text provided below the horizontal line. Format this overview in the style of a Wikipedia article."
• They double-space, add three underscores (the "horizontal line"), and then copy large chunks of text from the various sources they've assembled, sectioning them according to the source from which they were excerpted.
• ChatGPT generates the text of a Wikipedia article; the user copies and pastes it into Google Docs.
• They then begin using their sandbox and the preview button to prune, paraphrase, copyedit, fact-check, expand, and further "Wikify" what ChatGPT generated.

By the time they're through with their work on the article and are ready to submit it, it can no longer be readily identified as AI-generated—it is almost entirely in their own words, using sources that they compiled. They checked it for factual accuracy, and they made sure that everything flowed together smoothly.

In your view, is this still a problematic use of generative AI for the purpose of editing Wikipedia? If so, why do you consider it problematic? And if an editor confessed to doing something like this, do you feel they should face sanctions for having done so? Kurtis ^(talk) 15:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• Your example isn't realistic. If a person is going to rewrite an LLM-generated article so that every word in it is their own, then what's the purpose of LLM generation in the first place? ~2026-14165-49 (talk) 17:08, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  Exactly. See my post below. EEng 17:16, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  They would use it as a springboard to actually building a proper article, and to make the whole task feel significantly less daunting. Kurtis ^(talk) 17:17, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  It can only "feel significantly less daunting" if they skip all the hard parts of writing an article i.e. gathering and internalizing the sources, selecting the facts for presentation, deciding on article organization, and so on. Your "springboard" is, in fact, a nice way of saying, "A way of letting people who aren't able to usefully contribute, feel like they're usefully contributing". Things like you're proposing will be the death of Wikipedia. EEng 17:32, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• It's problematic because it's fiction. The fact-checking part would never happen, because by the time you prune, paraphrase, copyedit, fact-check, expand, and further "Wikify" what ChatGPT generated you could have just written the article from scratch with less effort (not to mention less chance of AI excrement slipping through). Anyone with sufficient competency to do what you describe would know this, and so would know better than to actually do it; therefore those who claim they're doing it actually aren't competent to do so (even if they fool themselves into thinking they are, in fact, doing so -- Dunning-Kruger). That's why there's no use case for AI-generated content, and why those who use AI to generate either article content or talk-page posts are, ipso facto, incompetent and should be blocked on sight. EEng 17:16, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

The reason I would think of for someone doing this, even if it ultimately expends the same amount of effort as simply writing the article from scratch (if not more), is because it might make the act of actually writing an article soup-to-nuts feel less daunting. Logically, anyone would surmise that they're just doing content creation in a roundabout way, but the sight of a "completed" article with flaws might give them more of an impetus to develop and build upon what was generated. It could create the illusion of editing rather than building an article from the ground up. Kurtis ^(talk) 17:27, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

"Illusion of editing"? You want us to foster an "illusion of editing"??? EEng 17:33, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Was it not clear what I was attempting to convey? By "illusion of editing", I meant that it would feel more like editing an article as opposed to writing an article from scratch, even if that is functionally what it is. Kurtis ^(talk) 17:41, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

No, it was not clear. In general, most "editing" (in the sense you're using the word) involves improving presentation, copyediting, maybe pruning out UNDUE cruft, by making incremental changes to an article which is assumed, by default, to be verifiable, free of copyvios, and otherwise in conformance with key policies. What you're proposing is that we allow an inexperienced user be presented with a ton of material which without question is studded with hidden crap, and expect that user to find and remove all that hidden crap. EEng 23:06, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Oh, I disagree with this. Sometimes it's useful to have a sort of template to start from when writing an article. The AI can basically work like an outline as you do your own research. This is fine as long as the end result is in your own words and accurate. Sentimental Dork (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Say, for example,

Nope, start over and try again. Which specific Featured Article are you vaguely alluding to in this hypothetical?

Anyway, your thought experiment here has a lot of problems:

• WP:LLMDISCLOSE strongly recommends that people disclose AI use from the get-go, in all associated edit summaries. This is not an outrageous, time-consuming thing to do. Here's an example of someone doing it usefully in good faith.
• Your sense of how the average AI Featured Article comes about is unrealistic. Based on the cases I've seen, the more common scenario is that AI is used to find the sources (potentially introducing non-reliable sources/WP:UNDUE emphasis/bias), to summarize those sources (likely introducing source-to-text integrity issues), and copyediting/rewriting existing text (potentially introducing tone issues, and distortion of meaning).
• There's no way to prove the negative here, but many articles that people think "can no longer be readily identified as AI-generated" can be identified as AI-generated in about 15 seconds if you know what you're looking for. I've flagged several GAs and FAs as AI-generated (and was right), and there are several more GAs and FAs that I'm pretty sure contain AI text but haven't bothered to flag because I don't really feel like getting into even more arguments than I already do. (Panic Room, it's your time to shine!)
• There's no way to prove how much fact-checking people do, but in my experience, when I spot-check sentences and claims that obviously came out of an LLM, the citations do not often verify the text, and sometimes they don't even come close. WikiEdu found last year that of the AI-generated articles they flagged, nearly every cited sentence failed verification. Similarly, a lot of AI text has a sheen of promotional tone that, for whatever reason, just doesn't register on some people's radar no matter how obvious.

Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:10, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff: Which specific Featured Article are you vaguely alluding to in this hypothetical?—It really is just a hypothetical, but in the interests of disclosure, it's an idea that I'd been mulling over in recent times. Over the past few years, my executive dysfunction due to ADHD-PI has worsened (I suspect due to Long COVID-related brain fog), and so I have difficulty motivating myself to write much of anything. I've played with the idea of using ChatGPT to create a sort of "skeleton" for an article, or for generating something that I could use as inspiration. I want to be very clear: if I add something to Wikipedia, you can rest assured that it will have been thoroughly fact-checked and well-sourced, and each claim that has a reference attached to it is directly and explicitly verified by that reference. However, I was unsure of how the community would respond if I were to write an article, and then disclose that I had used ChatGPT to lay down a "blueprint" of sorts. I genuinely think that for a lot of editors, this would be seen as a serious breach of trust, even if what I submit is qualitatively different from what ChatGPT spat out; it effectively circumvents much of the article-writing process. I'm not sure if an editor who did this would be blocked for doing so, but I do think it would cast their integrity and their critical thinking skills into doubt, and it might trigger a review of whatever content they'd submitted using this approach.

Your linking of LLMDISCLOSE demonstrates that current community practice is more nuanced than I would have expected. Disclosure of using an LLM strikes me as the ethical thing to do, but it's fraught with risk. A lot of editors who attempt something like what I've described would probably opt against doing so, as it would undermine trust in them if they openly acknowledge using such a tool. Kurtis ^(talk) 03:30, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

A lot of editors who attempt something like what I've described would probably opt against doing so, as it would undermine trust in them if they openly acknowledge using such a tool.

I mean, it also undermines trust to learn about something the community strongly recommends doing (I realize LLMDISCLOSE is not really publicized that well) and decide "no, I'm not going to do that." It usually undermines it more -- generally if people are sanctioned for using AI it's because they are evasive about it, meanwhile there are a couple of people who are open about their process with AI who are not. Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:34, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, yes—but that's assuming the ones who hide it get caught. If they don't, then nobody would be any the wiser. If someone believes that they won't get caught, then the only other incentive to be open about it becomes their moral compass. Kurtis ^(talk) 09:36, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, shockingly, if you have no moral compass and make a deliberate effort to harm Wikipedia, sometimes you can get away with it. That's nothing new. Wikipedia's whole existence is built on the idea of people choosing to voluntarily cooperate with each other, including following community norms even when no one is watching. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 15:27, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

WP:LLMDISCLOSE is an essay. Nobody has to follow it, it's optional. Cambalachero (talk) 16:05, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Correct that no one has to follow it, but undisclosed LLM use will undermine trust with many people in the community, which is what the essay WP:LLMDISCLOSE is trying to help editors understand. On the other hand, disclosure is a good way to WP:DGF: Conversely, clumsily using an LLM in a transparent manner, promptly receiving relevant feedback, and responding reasonably to that feedback, would generally mean that the user is able to receive the message, following which they are just expected to improve their editing, motivated by what is in Wikipedia's best interest. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 16:34, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I have tried this before on a couple of articles and it turned out to be more work than just writing from scratch. So I would find it problematic for an editor to do this regularly because once you have built the writing muscle, that is so much easier than using the chatbot. 📎 JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 19:09, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Problematic? not necessarily but in practice this will both never happen or be done by people who have no idea what they're doing in the first place. Only someone with a decent amount of experience editing would be able to do this and those people don't need an LLM to write for them mghackerlady (talk) (contribs) 15:20, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

If you use AI to write an article, then fact check it thoroughly and rewrite sections to make it sound like it's not AI, it's literally your own work at that point. Obviously if it's accurate, cited information and it reads well, it's not a problem. The situation you describe is basically just using the AI as a structure/template and then writing an article using it. You're fine. Sentimental Dork (talk) 16:38, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I should probably clarify that the above hypothetical was devised for demonstrative purposes. The fundamental question is: if someone admits to using generative AI for any facet of content creation, but doesn't specifically use it to actually generate content, is that still something that we should explicitly refuse to tolerate? Kurtis ^(talk) 18:07, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Opinions vary on that point, but as EEng said, the non-hypothetical reality is that few to no examples of LLM use like you describe have been seen in the wild so far, while the LLM text we are actually seeing overwhelmingly fails verification. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 19:38, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

There was an RfC about this topic only a few months ago. Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:40, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Should something like the hypothetical scenario described ever actually come up… we can always look into it and decide on a case by case basis.

My one thought is that the editor in question made their job much harder by using the LLM… by simply summarizing the source material in their own words (from the get go) they could have saved themself a lot of extra steps (extra time and effort). Blueboar (talk) 20:37, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• This reads like ragebait. Why would adding fact-checked, human-written material be problematic? (But the bait has inevitably been taken).Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 00:38, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  To be clear, please: what reads as ragebait? EEng 02:37, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  The whole post has the whiff of "let me act as if I need help tying my shoelaces". Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 02:45, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  If an LLM is involved in any part of the process, it could cast the integrity of the editor into doubt in the eyes of many, even if they did their due diligence in ensuring that what they add is quality content. Kurtis ^(talk) 03:33, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I don't know why you would be worried about that. Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 04:45, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  If an LLM is involved in any part of the process, it could cast the integrity of the editor into doubt in the eyes of many

  That's something they need to own, then. Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:29, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

• For things that involve actual writing, genAI's a net negative and I agree with EEng's scorched earth philosophy. But I think it's worth pointing out that a tool linked on WP:ATODAY was created using Claude AI, and having used that tool personally, it's pretty good. This is obviously not what you mean by genAI editing, but it uses genAI and it's for editing Wikipedia. It's worth stating the obvious that a tool like this can also be created without the assistance of AI, and I wouldn't be surprised if it would've been easier to do so. Tessaract2^Hi! 02:29, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
• I am curious. Two editors cite the high proportion of LLM generated text that "fails verification", and one example cites the WikiEdu process where we encourage newbie students to edit Wikipedia. What proportion of non-LLM-generated text on Wikipedia also "fails verification" (putting, presumably, our "I'm going to be strict" hat on). And what proportion of newbie student edits either fail verification or could be described as "hallucinated" or "clearly doesn't have the first clue" or "wouldn't make that mistake if they were an experienced editors like we all are".

To pick an article I hoped wouldn't be AI generated, I chose the User:Gnomingstuff's Agnes Grozier Herbertson. The first fact "(c. 1875 – 1958)" I'm going to guess appears somewhere in the 462 pages of the "The Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction". The citation lacks a page number. The second fact "a Norwegian writer and poet" I can characterise as "fails verification". A source cites Norway as her place of birth, but having Scottish parents, growing up in Scotland and later living in Oxford and Cornwall, and writing English-language works, I'm pretty sure there are no serious reliable sources describing her as "a Norwegian writer and poet". Our WP:MOSBIO says not to describe someone's nationality by their place of birth.

If I ask CoPilot "is Agnes Grozier Herbertson a Norwegian writer and poet" it replies: "Yes — Agnes Grozier Herbertson was a Norwegian writer and poet. According to multiple reliable sources, she was born in Oslo (then Christiania) and is consistently described as a Norwegian writer and poet, even though she later lived in the United Kingdom." The so-called "multiple reliable sources" include the Wikipedia article and another that appears to have lifted some text from the Wikipedia article. This makes me reasonably sure that falsehoods that fail verification predate the AI plague on Wikipedia, and that our fallible human editors are themselves the source of a great deal of AI's incorrectness. -- Colin°^Talk 14:36, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Please don't ping me for discussions I am already aware of. The article isn't AI-generated, thanks for pointing out the style and sourcing discrepancies.

That being said, "fails verification" in the context of AI generally means that AI attaches a source to text when the source does not back up that text, and sometimes may not say anything even remotely like it. Generally this suggests that whoever added it didn't even bother reading the source (considering that many such issues can be found in 5-10 minutes' worth of spot checking). It doesn't generally mean unsourced content. Gnomingstuff (talk) 15:17, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

EDIT CONFLICT - basically what the unpingable user above said: There is no source attached to the claim of Norwegian nationality there, so this is not a source-text-integrity issue. No one is claiming that humans are infallible, what we are claiming is that AI routinely places in-line citations on text that those citations do not verify, and that a human who read and comprehended the source would be unlikely to think they did verify. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 15:29, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Text on Wikipedia "fails verification" regardless of the "context" of who or what placed it. Students on the WikiEdu programme (and newbies generally) have been placing text that fails verification, and attaching sources to text that do not remotely back up the text (verify it), long before AI came along to help them. LWG claims there is not a source-text-integrity issue in the example. Lead sentences routinely lack citations and we assume and hope verification is fulfilled by the body. The body contains several "life and works" citations that would be expected to verify the claim that Norway holds this writer and poet as one of their own. This false lead claim and all the body citations were added in the first edit. So, that's a human doing exactly what you claim is an identifying failure of AI. Someone/something created some text that cites some sources, and it turns out at least one claim has no basis within them, nor indeed, within any reliable sources. The only difference here from "some bollocks a random person on the internet wrote" to "an AI hallucination" is because you guys are keen to frame an age old issue in a novel way.

When we are prejudiced, we see only problems and limitations. There is a "human hands have five fingers" problem with some of the ability of AI right now, coupled with a "newbies aren't very good at prompting and using AI only for what it is currently good at". The Wright brothers flew 260 metres and for less than a minute. Sixteen years later, someone crossed the Atlantic non-stop. Sixty-six years after that first flight, we landed men on the moon and brought them back safely. And we did that with slide rules and spanners.

We have here a question asking, really, what would satisfy as an acceptable usage of LLMs in editing Wikipedia. And for some here, there isn't an acceptable use ever, and to justify that, all the current limitations are presented as though specific to AI (most are not) and without consideration, really, that the Wikipedia created by humans has lots of flaws one could enumerate too. If one picks random text, one can find all sorts of problems, so it isn't at all surprising to me, that if one picks AI generated text, one can find all sorts of problems.

I have no doubt that in a short period of time, we will routinely pass our text through polishing by AI. We will routinely get AI to locate and summarise sources and draft material. We will so routinely use AI to do text-source verification that the GA and FA processes will make it a requirement that nominators have done so before wasting human time. Editors will use AI to seek out dodgy sentences and articles for deletion. Edits by newbies will be vetted by AI before appearing in the text. And so on. You guys are looking at the Write brother's plane and scoffing that it just lifted off 3 metres from the ground for 59 seconds. Maybe it would be more productive if we put our efforts towards using it better, rather than fighting it. These debates will look frankly embarrassing in a short space of time, and be cited humorously in mocking listicles. -- Colin°^Talk 20:29, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

That's a lot of words to say "don't be a fuddy-duddy, the technology will improve until it becomes useful, trust me bro". I'm more concerned with the present reality than the hypothetical future. I'm still open to being linked to any examples you have of AI being used to improve the wiki so I can explore new use cases, and I'd encourage you to check out the examples I linked below to see the kinds of issues that arise in LLM text, and then pick up a shovel and head over to WP:AINB to help us work through the backlog of bad LLM content that has already been identified. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 01:14, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

There are many editors who see lots of bad content (they suspect to be) generated by LLMs and extrapolate that to "LLMs will always be bad, trust me bro". That attitude is exactly as unhelpful to everything as the "LLMs will inevitably be great in the future" comments.

The reality is between the extremes - it is currently easier to produce bad content with LLMs than it is to produce good content with LLMs, but producing good content is not impossible (see the examples given in the numerous other discussions, and also note that most good content produced by/with the aid of LLMs will go unnoticed because almost nobody checks good content to see if LLMs were used or not in the same way that neutral content about notable subjects written by undisclosed paid editors is not flagged). Some editors regard the time spent polishing LLM output as worthwhile. Unless you are paying that person for their time it's none of your business whether you agree with them or not.

It is probable that LLMs will get better. How much better and on what timescale is unknowable, but it is possible (although I personally think it unlikely) that it will become the panacea some people hope for. Our policies and guidelines should focus on the outcomes we want - i.e. well-written content verified by reliable sources - without regard for the the method used to create it, because as long as it's not a copyright violation the method is completely irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 01:31, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Still waiting on that apology for saying I should be blocked. If you're so concerned about policies and guidelines then follow them. Gnomingstuff (talk) 04:03, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I have never said you should be blocked. Thryduulf (talk) 10:35, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Your response to my simply... participating in AI cleanup work... was it's amazing you've not been the subject of a CIR block.. Which you have not apologized for. Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:06, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Please refrain from selective quotation. What I actually said was if you cannot understand the difference between a content dispute and the general issues with content that get discussed here then it's amazing you've not been the subject of a CIR block. As you haven't been, then I can only presume that your comments here are not the result of incompetence but something else.

I hope and assume the explanation for your misleading quotation and false accusation is neither bad faith nor lack of competence. Thryduulf (talk) 18:40, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, no. Saying "it's amazing you haven't been the subject of a CIR block" is, implicitly, claiming that someone should be blocked. Otherwise you'd say something like "it's amazing that someone has not mistakenly applied a CIR block," or something else that implies you do not personally endorse that. I don't know what the fuck you have against me. Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:08, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

If you actually read the whole of what I actually wrote, rather than reacting to something I didn't write then it should make complete sense. Seriously, read the whole thing, especially including the final sentence.

I don't know whether it will help but, I can try expressing it terms of semi-formal logic:

• A happened.
• B is one plausible explanation for A.
• If the explanation for A is B, then C would be the consequence.
• However C has not happened.
• Therefore B cannot be the explanation for A.

Nowhere in that is there any suggestion that C should happen if the explanation is not B. Thryduulf (talk) 21:05, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

So if I understand correctly, your only purpose in that comment was to say "Gnomingstuff is clearly competent, as evidenced by that fact that he hasn't been CIR blocked?" What was the point of even saying that? -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 22:09, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

To understand the point of the comment you will need to read the whole exchange in its original context. I'm not repeating it here because it's really not relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 23:41, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for saying that. I agree that what matters is the quality of the content and sourcing in articles, and that worrying about how the content and sourcing were generated is a distraction. I am firmly opposed to any attempts to prevent me from using LLMs as aides in creating and maintaining content. The content and sources I add to Wikipedia should be judged on their adherence to policies and guidelines, and not at all on whether I used an LLM. Donald Albury 12:35, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Thryduulf, I respect your years of service to this project, but your behavior on this topic has become WP:BADGERING. If you would like to engage with my actual position, I'd be glad to talk with you. If you are going to use my comments as a jumping off point to repeat your same position and throw shade at editors who disagree with you, I would respectfully ask you to stop replying to me. In case it's still unclear after all the previous discussions, my position is: LLM-assisted editing should be permitted, but disclosure should be required and WP:CIR should be enforced, with the WP:ONUS falling on the editor to demonstrate that they know what they are doing and that their LLM-assisted contributions are constructive. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 14:27, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

If you wish to accuse me of bludgeoning every time I make a comment feel free but don't expect me to agree with you. If you wish to assume that my comment was a personal attack then that's your prerogative (I can assure you it wasn't) but it's a bit rich to simultaneously berate people for not engaging with then substance of your comment when (a) I did, and (b) you didn't extend that courtesy to me. Thryduulf (talk) 23:46, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

STOP - and this is directed at more than one editor! While I don’t think anyone intended their comments to be personal attacks, this conversation is getting personal enough that others are taking it that way. I suggest that everyone take a break from this thread. You have all made good arguments to support your respective views on this issue. Let it rest there. We don’t “win” by being the last to respond. Blueboar (talk) 00:14, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes please. I accidentally subscribed to this topic, so I keep getting excited about new notifications and every single time it turns out that it's just these guys arguing more. Sentimental Dork (talk) 00:28, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

–For comparison, here are articles generated from those sources using Grok and using ChatGPT, so you can compare and see how the source use and style issues differ. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 15:50, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I'm seeking two pages listing prompts you used but not the results that you got from them. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:52, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Oops, I accidentally linked to the talk tab rather than the content tab. The LLM output is at User:LWG/AISandbox and User:LWG/AISandbox2, and the prompts are described on the corresponding User_talk pages. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 17:56, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Makes sense. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:05, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Of course not. The only thing not allowed is posting AI-generated content. Use it to help you as much as you want. Sentimental Dork (talk) 19:25, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Recommended reading: https://wikiedu.org/blog/2026/01/29/generative-ai-and-wikipedia-editing-what-we-learned-in-2025/

Their experience was that chatbots were bad at creating articles, but that they could be useful. For example, instead of producing sentences/paragraphs, you could probably get an outline that you turn into prose yourself, or perhaps with some LLM tools, a list of key facts, paired with sources that you could then check (e.g., "Birth: 32 Octember in Novia Scotia. Source https://example.com, which says "Alice was born in Novia Scotia on Octember 32nd" – and then you could look in the source to see whether the quoted text is actually in it). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Clarifying WP:NSONG

I propose we add a line (bold italics below) to the first paragraph of WP:NSONG:

• Songs and singles are probably notable if they have received significant coverage as the subject^[1] of multiple,^[2] non-trivial^[3] published works whose sources are independent of the artist and label. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, television documentaries or reviews. This excludes media reprints of press releases, or other publications where the artist, its record label, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the work.^[4] Coverage of a song on Wikipedia should mirror the sort of coverage a song gets in other independent, reliable sources. If only sources that discuss the song in the context of its album can be found, keep the song's content in the album article. If found sources dedicate entire articles to the song, it could be worth splitting out into its own stand-alone song article.

Per this discussion at Wikiproject Songs, I raised a question about song mentions in sources about albums. Editor Sergecross73 said basically the above line and others acknowledged it sounded like good guidance. Would this be a helpful addition to others, too? WidgetKid ^Converse 05:11, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

As it is now, this goes against the definition of WP:SIGCOV as a whole: "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material". The wording here suggests that entire sources or articles need to be dedicated to a song for it to be notable, which isn't in line with the site-wide definition of SIGCOV. λ NegativeMP1 05:29, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

NegativeMP1, I think this is what I struggle with. There is a chasm of grey between an entire book about IBM and the mention of a famous person's college band. In cases where several sources mention a song in the context of a normal album review (say 1-3 sentences, not paragraphs), do we consider those to be SIGCOV for the purposes of establishing notability? My gut says no, but there's nothing I can point to. WidgetKid ^Converse 15:03, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I believe we've had several RfCs aiming to address exactly this issue in the past. I remain concerned that rules like this could lead to otherwise excellent source material on a song being discounted simply because it is within a larger source about an album. At the extreme end, this could look like an entire book chapter on a song being disregarded in a notability assessment because the book within it is found is about an album. This rule may also prevent us from splitting large album articles for size reasons simply because we don't have the "right kind" of sources for individual songs.

That said, apologies for all the fear-mongering. I think this is the best attempt at a solution I have seen so far. As I read it, it is a compromise, in that it doesn't argue that these songs are not notable, only that they are best covered in an album article. I think, despite my concerns, I could support some version of this, ideally a more concise one. Thank you, Toadspike [Talk] 07:03, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Toadspike, I agree we wouldn't want to exclude sources with in-depth discussion of a song, just because they're in the context of an article. I also agree this needs to be more concise. What do you think about this?:

• v2: A song can meet WP:SIGCOV through substantial discussion within album-related sources. Such coverage shouldn't be discounted, but unless there's a structural need or distinct focus, the song is usually best kept within the album article.

I am making the ASSumption that we don't want standalone song articles with only sources of album reviews that have 1-3 sentences about a song. If that's not the case, it'd be good to clarify that as well. WidgetKid ^Converse 15:16, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

One concern that I have about this is the eternal question of whether a song article is about a composition or if it's about a recording. It can be awkward covering, say, a composition that has had a number of cover versions within the context of a single album. If the hypothetical song "What is Cheese For?" first appears on a Peggy Lee album but also gets with-album coverage for covers on albums by Janis Joplin, Neal Diamond, They Might Be Giants, and Del the Funky Homosapien, are we going in full depth on each? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:40, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

First, I had to search for that song only to find, sadly, that it doesn't exist. I would love to hear something first released by Peggy Lee and covered by both Neil Diamond and Del tha Funky Homosapien!

I feel like songs that have been covered by multiple artists are already well-covered by other guidance in WP:NSONG (3. Has been independently released as a recording by several notable artists, bands, or groups.) and WP:NCOVER (Notable covers are eligible for standalone articles, provided that the article on the cover can be reasonably detailed based on facts independent of the original.).

So while Peggy Lee, Neil Diamond, and TMBG's versions would be included in an article What is Cheese For? (assuming one or more of them received enough coverage), and the Del version that blew up could have it's own article, What is Cheese For? (Del tha Funky Homosapien song) and be referenced from both the main song article and the Del album. WidgetKid ^Converse 16:24, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

"Meet SIGCOV" doesn't exactly make sense. Something like "Substantial discussion of a song within album-related sources can constitute significant coverage of that song." would be more correct. The rest I philosophically agree with, but again, a cleaner wording can be created, like: "Such sources should not be discounted, but individual songs are best covered within album articles unless a structural need or distinct focus exists." I feel @NatGertler's concern is misplaced – that hypothetical song with many covers would have a "structural need" and a "distinct focus" for a split, in that the covers are not related to the original album, so this guideline would allow a split. Toadspike [Talk] 16:18, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Toadspike, I like that a lot:

• v2.1: Substantial discussion of a song within album-related sources can constitute significant coverage of that song. Such sources should not be discounted, but individual songs are best covered within album articles unless a structural need or distinct focus exists. WidgetKid ^Converse 16:28, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

While I obviously personally agree with the sentiment, as you can see, it can be difficult making this sort of sentiment "official" guidance. Might be better suited as an WP:ESSAY or something. Sergecross73 msg me 16:00, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:One hundred words is the shortest standard that (AFAIK) anyone has tried to defend as generally applicable to all subjects.

Leaving aside the WP:100W opinion, one of the open questions is whether SIGCOV should be measured collectively (all the sources, when added up together contain thousands of words, and dozens of facts total) or individually ("This source has 200 words about the subject and 7 facts we could put in an article, so it's SIGCOV. That source has only 75 words and two facts, so it is not SIGCOV. The next source has 450 words but only three usable facts, so...").

More generally, I suggest that you think about WP:WHYN. If you can write a regular Wikipedia article with these sources, then go for it! And if you can't, then merge up. The median Wikipedia article has 13 sentences and about 350 words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks much, WhatamIdoing! I hadn't encountered that essay before. Seems like a very reasonable way to gauge significant coverage. WidgetKid ^Converse 03:54, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Anonymity

I feel Wikipedia currently implies users can stay anonymous to a larger degree than what actually is the case.

What we (that is, not me, but WMF I guess) mean by anonymity is that we might resolve for our account database to not be hacked. But I don't think that's what regular people think - they think they can stay anonymous on Wikipedia by just making sure their account is protected. But we know that's not the case. After all, in the words of the man himself, "what is commonly called 'anonymous' editing is not particularly anonymous..."

Especially in the age of LLMs, our current presentation comes off as naive, and thus doing the reader a disservice.

Check out my edits to WP:Sockpuppetry § Legitimate uses & WP:ANONYMOUS and feel free to improve further. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 17:59, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

@CapnZapp: That quote is from 2007 and refers to unregistered editing, which WP:Temporary accounts directly addresses. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{threads critiques} 18:08, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I am fully aware the quote predated TAs. If you read my recent edits, you'll see why I felt I could use the quote. Thanks for responding. Regards CapnZapp (talk) 18:11, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if English Wikipedia makes any claims about users remaining anonymous, beyond that the WMF doesn't provide (sell) tracking information to anyone. As with all websites with user contributions, how anonymous they remain is up to how the users choose to contribute. isaacl (talk) 18:17, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't provide tracking information to anyone ... unless they sue the WMF . Black Kite (talk) 18:42, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

The Wikipedia links would be Video Professor § Video Professor lawsuit and Asian News International v. Wikimedia Foundation, respectively. Thanks. CapnZapp (talk) 11:25, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

It might perhaps be useful to also include this information at WP:How to not get outed on Wikipedia and WP:Personal security practices. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:53, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I've already made the additions (using your ce'd version)! CapnZapp (talk) 10:58, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

My question is, "why does it matter to me if I am or am not anonymous here?" My contributions should be the same whether anyone knows who I am or not. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:43, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

It matters if you are concerned about real world consequences arising from your editing. I personally have received a death threat and a rather veiled threat of physical harm, and been threatened with law suits a couple of times (nothing came of any of those). Other editors have been subject to much worse. In some cases disgruntled people have shown up at an editor's place of work or complained to their employers about their activity on Wikipedia. Some editors have been sent to prison over their activity on Wikipedia. I am not worried about my anonymity, but we must do everything we can to protect the anonymity of every editor who wants to remain anonymous. Donald Albury 21:27, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the point of spamming "OMG LLMs!" over a bunch of pages, some only tangentially related to the idea of privacy. Wikipedia:Personal security practices#Pseudonyms has had a relevant warning since 2007, long before LLMs were a popular thing. At most, LLMs may make this sort of analysis seemingly easier (but probably more prone to hallucination, and look at how poorly LLM detectors do at the job). Anomie⚔ 13:40, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Ask a question

About Andrea James article - Jokestress (= Andrea James themself) is indefinitely banned from the topic of human sexuality, including biographical articles. So they even cannot edit this page (yes its title about themself)? ~2026-15439-20 (talk) 10:55, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Remedy 2.1 of

Sexology

("Jokestress topic-banned from human sexuality") is amended to read:

Jokestress (talk · contribs) is indefinitely banned from the topic of human sexuality and gender, including biographies of people who are primarily notable for their work in these fields.

Passed 7 to 0 by motion at 06:24, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Disallowed to edit any page, EVEN IF any article about/mentioning themself?

~2026-15439-20 (talk) 11:03, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-15439-20 Yes, in general people are not permitted to edit articles about themselves due to our conflict of interest policy. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:01, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

(edit conflict) User:Jokestress has not made a single edit to the Andrea James article. Which is good. See Wikipedia:Editing a page about you and other resources. CapnZapp (talk) 11:04, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes This is COI issue. But they are banned from editing any article about themself currently? It's very very questionable and I don't know about that. ~2026-15439-20 (talk) 11:12, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

including biographies of people (even if THEMSELF too)? ~2026-15439-20 (talk) 11:15, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:16, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Users Ahecht and Phil Bridger have answered your question. Let me add a follow-up question intended for general clarity, not only applicable to this particular case:

Do ANI verdicts such as "User NN topic-banned from [topic]" or "User NN banned from editing BIO articles" and similar include a prohibition against making edit requests as well, that is using the {{Edit COI}} template to suggest changes?

Or do the bans automatically include a prohibition from participating on related talk pages as well? Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 14:01, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Unless otherwise specified, topic bans are a prohibition on contributing to the specified topic in any and all ways, including edit requests. The only exceptions are those listed at WP:BANEX. Thryduulf (talk) 14:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I knew I should ask before (incorrectly) suggesting making edit requests when you're topic banned. Thanks! CapnZapp (talk) 20:53, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Closing process

Editors should be required to have one year of experience before they can close a vote, my reasoning is that there are editors that have very little experience doing the closing process. Catfurball (talk) 16:44, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

This would only slow the process down more. I don't see a reason for this. How would experience be calculated? I made my account years ago but I only started editing regularly last month. Someone who has had an account for five months may be more experienced than somebody who has had an account for four years. If we made a requirement, it would have to rely on number of edits rather than time. Sentimental Dork (talk) 16:52, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Inexperienced closes can already be addressed through a regular close challenge, and there's relevant guidance at WP:BADNAC. I'm not aware of any pattern of widespread improper closures by inexperienced editors that would justify a change in policy. At the moment, this looks like a solution in search of a problem. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:55, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

We often get new but experienced users who are more competent than most, so I don't know if that is a good idea. Obviously flawed closes can easily be overturned. JayCubby 21:08, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't see a good reason for this. One year seems arbitrary too. Albeit I am biased, as an editor with a less-than-year-old account, but I feel I am literate enough to read the relevant policy on closing discussions before doing so. As pointed out above, problematic closures can be dealt with as needed. {{GearsDatapack|talk|contribs}} 21:52, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Promoting discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vandalism#Update needed due to IP being replaced by temp accounts

I already tried to start a discussion at

Wikipedia talk:Vandalism#Update needed due to IP being replaced by temp accounts, but only one person responded, so I’m APPNOTE’ing the discussion here.

It is basically about policy/guideline pages still being largely written with the existence of IP editing in mind, despite this no longer existing. I think this really needs to be addressed. Slomo666 (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Slomo666 The proposals there seem fine, I think you can simply boldly update relevant pages. If you're reverted and this goes to an RfC, then maybe you need wider input. Currently I don't have much to add beyond "yes, please update these pages". Toadspike [Talk] 21:20, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Agree with Toadspike here. Be bold, then discuss further if needed. {{GearsDatapack|talk|contribs}} 21:50, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I think it may not be clear what I’m asking. It isn’t just the fact that the text is outdated that I am raising. I am not sure what the actual guideline is now. I actually came to that page originally because I wanted to know how to deal with temporary accounts and (suspected) vandalism as I until then only knew how to deal with IPs or registered users.

I still don’t know what the advice would be. I would even less personally strive to write the guidance. Slomo666 (talk) 09:38, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Seems like @SuperPianoMan9167 has rewritten some of the text per what was discussed on the talk page. Some more work still needs to be done though.

As I see it, there are three main ways that the policy is outdated. The first is that it refers to "IP editors" in a general way to mean editors who do not have an account, or are not logged in. These can mostly be replaced directly with "Temporary accounts" without further changing to the sentence.

The second is that some parts of the policy refer to what happens when a user changes IP address or if multiple people share an IP address. These need to be changed, and largely removed, as temporary accounts are not shared by users on the same IP any more.

The last is what was brought up on the talk page, which has been edited by SuperPianoMan, but may still need some more work, and likely requires some consensus building for substantive changes. {{GearsDatapack|talk|contribs}} 10:07, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Note that guidance related to tracing behaviour based on IP addresses continues to be relevant, for those in the temporary account IP viewer user group, and IP address-based blocks may be suitable for some situations. I agree that best practice has evolved with rollout of the temporary accounts, and so appropriate changes are desirable. isaacl (talk) 16:47, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Is there a process wherewith we could essentially request comments (not really an rfc tho bc it would be more like a survey) from people who are in that group (TAIP viewers) so they can give their experience, talk about what they think is best, what kind of customs they are converging on (if applicable)? Slomo666 (talk) 12:05, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Is it ever appropriate to remove a "Translated page" template?

Hello, I recently edited a stub Jean-François Fournel, which was originally translated from the corresponding Swedish Wikipedia article. With my edits, the "Translated page" template on the article's talk page doesn't seem accurate anymore. (The content I added basically rewrote the stub.) Is it ever appropriate to remove that template (like in this case)? Chao Garden 🌱 (hi) 06:42, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@Chao Garden Yes, it seems reasonable to remove the tag here. More generally, those tags are optional and not necessary for attribution purposes: legally, the only attribution that counts is edit summaries in the edit history, which we already have . Toadspike [Talk] 09:24, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I would tend to suggest leaving the template up and using its insertversion parameter to make clear which revision of the page contained the translation. That's not strictly necessary but I do feel it would be best practice, not least in case the changes you made were to be reverted in future.—S Marshall T/C 09:38, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Do we not mention it in references or external links? I recall we (at least used to) do that on nlwiki. (And I personally think that is a good system) Slomo666 (talk) 09:39, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Different wikis have different systems. Here we do not put attribution in the page itself, only in an edit summary, like the example at WP:TFOLWP. On dewiki they import the entire edit history of the original article. Different ways to reach the same goal. Toadspike [Talk] 17:11, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@Toadspike, this is wrong: legally, the only attribution that counts is edit summaries in the edit history. The license accepts any "reasonable" method of attribution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

And whether or not a disclaimer on an entirely different page is reasonable is a matter for courts to decide, and is very much the thing that long, protracted, legal battles are fought over. All Wikipedia editors agree that a hyperlink to the original text is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license; that or listing their name. Local guidelines, as written by MRG many years ago, specifically say we put that in the edit summary. (Though, tbh, if somebody puts "this was copied/translated from X article" in the actual article... I'm leaving it.) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 00:37, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I think that’s very valid. As I mentioned, nlwiki does both essentially. There you must link in the edit summary to the permalink of the correct revision, and place on the bottom of the page (I think in external links or references, but I’m a bit fuzzy on the specifics) the template that says it was partly or wholly translated from parts or the entirety of whichever article (again: permalink) you translated. I think that is relevant, because you should show what kind of translation (automatic or human and in the case of automatic: how much human redaction/eduting went into that) was used. Anyways I know the policy here is different, but I don’t see why we wouldn’t allow it as an option. Slomo666 (talk) 12:35, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

As an aside, the specific template discussed here isn't chiefly related to attributation but cleanup - it is (was) {{Cleanup translation}}, not templates such as {{copied}} or {{Translated page}}.

And as an aside to the aside: While {{Translated page}} promises WP:TFOLWP will contain the rationale for the edit summary requirement, it only explains why attributation is required in general, it doesn't actually discuss or explain how and why edit summaries were chosen as the attributation delivery method (and it doesn't detail what other delivery methods were considered but discarded) CapnZapp (talk) 11:12, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

There is no "edit summary requirement" in the first place, so there cannot be any rationale for why it is required. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish with this pedantry. Unless you have evidence that courts would accept attribution outside of the edit history (or the article itself), it is for all intents and purposes "required" that we provide attribution there. Toadspike [Talk] 08:37, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

The license says "any reasonable manner". The license does not say anything whatsoever about an edit summary. For all we know, a court could decide that the edit history is an unreasonable form of attribution for some purposes. Since having no visible attribution at all has been declared "reasonable" before (e.g., for images printed on T-shirts, "reasonable" has been interpreted as providing the information and a copy of the license separately instead of printing it on the T-shirt), it's likely that many forms of attribution would be acceptable.

What I am trying to accomplish is: I want you to stop spreading the false rumor that only edit summaries or in-article text is acceptable. It is not true. Also, there's a risk that if you keep saying things like this, not only will we have editors worrying that Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia#Repairing insufficient attribution is wrong, but we might have a copyright troll using your words as "proof" that "any reasonable manner" is a narrow thing ("See? The Wikipedia admin said it, so it must be true!"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing You seem to have missed the part of the license that says ... in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors. Since the credits for all contributing authors are in the article history, it seems quite clear to me that "as part of these credits" means the attribution must appear there at a minimum.

The Terms of Use say that an edit summary in the page history is sufficient and do not suggest any other method of attribution. This suggests to me that we should use the legally approved method (yes, "legally", by the Board of Trustees and, presumably, WMF Legal) of edit summaries in page histories and not invent other methods of dubious legality. (Quote: You agree that, if you import text under a CC license that requires attribution, you must credit the author(s) in a reasonable fashion. Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as Wikimedia-internal copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the text.)

Finally, and of least legal weight but most practical import on this project: Our policy repeatedly states that edit summaries are required "at a minimum", while talk page notices are optional. I stand by the statement that only edit summaries are acceptable, and since in-article attribution is more prominent than an edit summary, I could be convinced that that is also acceptable.

I really don't care what a court could decide; I don't see how anything I've said conflicts with WP:RIA, which prescribes fixing attribution through edit summaries and which I do constantly; and copyright trolls will troll regardless of what you or I say here.

Since I avoid making personal attacks, I will not accuse you of spreading a false rumor in return, but I would appreciate if you were to withdraw that accusation against me. Toadspike [Talk] 18:49, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

If our policy says that edit summaries are required, then our policy is wrong. If you interpret "At a minimum, this means providing an edit summary at the destination page" as meaning "This is the simplest way to do this, but there are other options", then that would be correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Do you have any evidence for this claim, on which you based a personal attack? Your reading runs counter to all of the evidence I have seen. Toadspike [Talk] 20:47, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I don’t see anyone claiming that there aren’t other options. But that it is simple, and the current guideline, should mean this is what we do. (Unless in cases where something has gone wrong)

“then our policy is wrong”

I do not see what you are trying to achieve here. Do you aim to change the guideline? Because in that case, I wish you good luck trying to establish a project-wide consensus for this change, but you will find me on the opposing side.

What do you envision as the other options? Because I don’t dispute these exist (I think Toadspike does too) but in your hostility to edit summaries, it would almost appear as if you prefer things that would just make things harder for literally every party involved. (Editor, reviewing editors, and any potential copyright lawyer)

I do not get it. You do your name justice.

What are you doing?

Sincerely,

Happy editing,

Slomo666 (talk) 23:31, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

People claiming that there aren’t other options is exactly the problem: Toadspike – and presumably other editors, because where else would Toadspike have gotten that information? We teach our rules via telephone game, after all – appear to be saying that "Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as Wikimedia-internal copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary" means "Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as Wikimedia-internal copying), it is not merely sufficient, but actually necessary to give attribution in the edit summary".

Toadspike said "legally, the only attribution that counts is edit summaries". AFAICT this is wrong. Attribution can take any reasonable form. We, as a community, prefer and normalize edit summaries as the form of attribution, but that doesn't mean that legally edit summaries are the only option.

The main other options that I envision is the use of talk-page templates and in-article templates. We have used these since at least 2003 (since at least 2006 specifically for translated articles – Wikipedia wasn't even using the CC licenses at that point). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Please stop encouraging editors to commit copyright violations. Attributing a translation solely on the talk page is a copyright violation. If you are still confused, go back to "You seem to have missed" above and reread those two sentences. Toadspike [Talk] 09:54, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Those two sentences don't stats that attributing a translation solely on the talk page is a copyright violation, nor do they imply it. Katzrockso (talk) 11:33, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

The 3.0 license (see below) requires attribution as part of the credits for all contributing authors. The talk page is not the location of those credits. Not complying with the license is violating copyright. QED. I'm not saying this is the end of the world – per WP:RIA, it's not a huge deal – but it's not something we should encourage in any way. Toadspike [Talk] 12:16, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I don’t care about what we “legally” have to do according to (presumably) US copyright law. It may surprise you, but I have the utmost contempt for US copyright law.

While a licence may use the word “reasonable”, what is reasonable depends greatly on context. This reasonability standard is not limited to Wikimedia-based usage, but also usage after something has been published on Wikipedia. So necessarily it includes other forms of attribution than edit summaries, because other media forms/publications do not use edit summaries at all.

In my view, while a talk page template may be useful, I think it is not enough to qualify as reasonable and I do not think it falls into the established practice on enwiki (or even other projects).

I can illustrate this with an example: if you respond to an edit request, the guidelines call upon you to directly link to the edit request in the edit summary of your implementation of the request. (the summary would say “Per talk page edit request [link] by [user:insert user]”)

This is easy, and the fact it is the easiest way that appropriately attributes, is what makes it the “reasonable” option.

The fact this is the established practice, in my opinion, means you should try to use it when possible (by default) to make it so people will not have to go beyond the list of edit summaries for any legal issues related to copyright. (If it goes wrong, we should attempt to remedy this when- and however possible of course)

A talk page template requires checking a different page, in another namespace. Something that is not expected of non-contributors.

I think a template on the article itself (in references or another section of sources) can be sufficient, but I also do not see why you would want to do this without also saying it in an edit summary, and I am neither a lawyer nor an expert of Wikipedia’s guidelines. Slomo666 (talk) 12:05, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

The requirement is in a guideline? Maybe there isn’t a law that says we have to do this specific thing, but this is what our guidelines say, which themselves are how we implement the policies which in turn are what the WMF foundation expects, and is necessary to deal with the rulings from *their* legal departments.

I trust that the system is well thought-out and I would not want to jeopardise the legal situation of this project or the foundation because we think the current policy or guideline is too strict. I think, if that is the position of a large number of editors, we would first need to have a discussion on the policy, subject to intervention from above, before we change things about how we do things.

And personally, I think the system is fine, the current guidelines (mostly) suffice and I think it is not too much to ask to follow them. Slomo666 (talk) 12:43, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

"The system" was created before the Wikimedia Foundation existed. WMF Legal has never said that an edit summary is a necessary or mandatory way to provide attribution. In fact, when you look at things the WMF Legal department has uploaded themselves (example), you'll find that they do not always use an edit summary to provide attribution (in that example, the images are correctly attributed in plain text at the end of the document). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

That is...a PDF. It is not a Wikipedia article. I am seriously impressed by how many red herrings you've been able to come up with. Toadspike [Talk] 23:11, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

The CC license isn't specific to Wikipedia articles. It doesn't have one set of rules for wiki pages and another set of rules for PDFs. As a legal-as-in-contract-lawyers matter, the CC rules are the same for all media. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:29, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

"The CC license" does have a rule that applies to adaptations that credit all contributing authors (which Wikipedia pages do in the edit history), but does not apply to random PDFs with no named author(s). Or, at least, it did.

I've noticed that the guideline WP:CWW, under "The CC BY-SA, section 4(c)", is quoting an older version of the CC BY-SA license, the 3.0 version (Text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License). In 2023, we switched to the 4.0 version (Text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License), which does not include the wording about attribution credit appearing as part of the credits for all contributing authors. I will update the quote accordingly. However, Wikipedia edits published before 2023 (which is most of them, including the "translation" that kicked off this thread) still fall under 3.0, which means, afaict, we must provide credit in the edit history "at a minimum". Toadspike [Talk] 10:16, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

A CC license applies to anything that's licensed that way, including random PDFs with no named author(s).

Just to be clear: I've got no problem with the English Wikipedia establishing any reasonable system that works for us. My problem is in someone saying that this is a legal problem, as opposed to a violation of our own guidelines. The legal requirements can be met in multiple ways. A re-user is perfectly free to run an article through Wikipedia:Who Wrote That?, carve the usernames of editors responsible for the visible parts of the current text (ignoring all others) into the floor tiles, and lay a printed copy of the article reverently on top of the names. This would comply with the license requirements and would therefore be legal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree with this. Per what I also just said in my comment. Reasonable standards are reasonable for a medium. For Wikipedia, edit summaries are always reasonable. For media that don’t use edit summaries, there must be something else that is reasonable.

but besides I guess the factual inaccuracy of using the word “legally” which implies consequences beyond WMF projects, I think this discussion is kind of moot since you agree with wmf/WP/enwiki establishing its own standards to fulfill the “reasonable” requirements.

Slomo666 (talk) 12:09, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Guidelines needed for editing articles of those, who are registered sex offenders?

Student edits

I have a feeling that there is a 90% chance that the answer will be no, but then 10% is 10%. Is there any hope of a policy that will limit edits by class projects? I have been wondering if I should spend the time to fix pages such as Entropy (information theory) that need help, but most edits to the page were by a student in 2021 for a class project. The rest of the edits may be appropriately described as "entropy/chaos" as well. How can I tell myself that another class project will not start in 6 months? It is a complicated subject when it relates to thermodynamics and that is where the student made most errors. Typical editors would not make large edits because it is too complicated, but students "have to" and mess up. Is there any hope of protection from class projects? Else I would just move on. Thanks Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 15:14, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

The problem is not class projects per se, it's inappropriate class projects and/or inappropriately supervised class projects. There isn't really any easy way to stop class projects (of either kind), as in at least many cases they are technically indistinguishable from normal editing.

The best place to discuss these matters though is Wikipedia:Education noticeboard, where folks more knowledgeable about the issues are most likely to see it. Thryduulf (talk) 16:32, 12 March 2026 (UTC) Missing word "not" added Thryduulf (talk) 21:43, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Pretty sure The problem is class projects per se --> "is not class projects per se". EEng 20:37, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Indeed, now fixed. Thank you. Thryduulf (talk) 21:43, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

If there wasn't an education program, there would a lot of class projects conducted without any coordination with Wikipedia. I was involved with the education program for a while about 14 years ago, but dropped out for reason I won't go into. I know others have had a more positive experience with the program. All-in-all, blocking class projects, even if it were possible, would not improve Wikipedia. There is the potential, and sometimes realized, benefit of adding content to Wikipedia and recruiting new editors. As long as are we open to new editors, which we must be to survive, we will have a problem with problematic edits by inexperienced editors. Maintenance is one of the perpetual tasks, and cleaning up problem edits sometimes leads me to adding new well-sourced content, which I hope is a net good for the encyclopedia. Donald Albury 16:51, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

If there wasn't an education program, there would a lot of class projects conducted without any coordination with Wikipedia. I think this is really the salient issue. It happens even now; I've seen editors bashing their heads against the AfC process to no avail and explaining that they need to get it published because a teacher assigned them the task of getting an article published on Wikipedia. It is absolutely a good thing that WikiEd provides an organised avenue for these kinds of teachers to arrange class projects that actually have sensible expectations and requirements. Teacher Randy in Boise High School isn't going to know that Wikipedia has internally banned class projects and is going to continue to tell his students to edit information about sword-wielding skeletons into the Peloponnesian War article whether or not we officially endorse it; and it is a good thing that WikiEd provides a means by which we can reach out to Randy and offer some guidance and quality control to his project idea. Athanelar (talk) 13:04, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I think what you are talking about is not the same thing at all. This Randy, as it were, is not merely a teacher acting in good faith, but engaging in BRIGADING, treating Enwiki as a Battleground. That is much more severe and the community could act in a much less restrained way with people who do that. Even without those violations, that article would quickly be placed on Requests for page protection , which might already be enough to stop Randy’s (likely unconfirmed, certainly not EC) foot soldiers students. ~~~ Slomo666 (talk) 13:31, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you both for your responses. But I hope you will understand that I can have no clue as to the likelihood of a properly supervised class project. The real issue is if one feels that he is building a large sandcastle when starting on these non-trivial page improvements. Making small corrections all over does not have that problem, but major rewriting is another issue. I wonder if we could have a tag that would "suggest" to professors not to assign a page to a class. Anyway, I will mention this on the education page and see what they say. Thanks. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 22:04, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

So I have two suggestions:

1. Make it an FA. Students are already warned against editing FAs. (Get busy now, because most classes start in January and September.)
2. Just wait until the class is over, and revert back. A majority of students never edit again (at least not in their school accounts).

I have not had good success at warning students away from specific articles. When we shoo newbies out of Anorexia nervosa (a darling of Wiki Edu students for several years running), they just turn up at some other article, and sometimes the mistakes are worse (e.g., a series of newbies – definitely not all from Wiki Edu – that changed statements like "90% of women experience menstrual cramps at some point in their lives" to the gender-neutral but innumerate claim that "90% of people" do).

More generally: The stats show that newbie students are less horrible than newbie non-students (e.g., more than two orders of magnitude less likely to be blocked, if memory serves). The better the article, the less likely any new editor will get their necessary practice in that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

What about guiding students to making/editing drafts to be reviewed or making tentative edits that can then be reviewed, like with AfC?

alternatively, creating some sort of list of assigned pages where someone supervising it would know they are editing it. You could put pending changes protections on those pages (assuming the students don’t have advanced permissions) so that the supervisor (from their school, class or from the wiki projects) or a (dedicated) admin or other volunteer can review their edits first.

I see a clear benefit in letting students learn how to use Wikipedia, how to edit, contribute, etc. Even if it doesn’t necessarily recruit them as long time contributors, it could make them better at writing and researching. Slomo666 (talk) 12:13, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Students normally work in their sandboxes (because we recommended that years ago). If they are creating new articles, they often submit them through AFC. However, often they're just trying to update an article. In that case, they usually copy the article to their sandbox and make the changes there. The students review each others' work, hopefully the instructor will, and if the class is supported by the Wiki Education Foundation, then it's often checked by the Wiki Edu staff as well.

The Wiki Edu classes (but not necessarily independent classes) already post notes on the articles' talk pages and make centralized lists so that anyone can review them. Start at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard and look around to learn more.

As a general rule, students in the Wiki Edu classes are a net benefit to the English Wikipedia. Not everyone does a good job, of course, but most of them. And frankly some of our popular articles are pretty outdated and really need someone to sit down and do some boring work. For example, I think that Disease has statistics from 20–25 years ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

If they are creating new articles, they often submit them through AFC. - Just quickly on AfC: It's been some years since I've been fully up on all this stuff, but last I knew, WikiEdu students are not supposed to use AfC for the simple reason that they don't want to create a drain on the already-backlogged community review processes (same reason why profs aren't supposed to force students to go through GAN or DYK). That's what the trainings, class review, professors, and staff are for. IIRC one of the reasons for the custom sandbox banner is to take away the AfC button (and better structure the task). But also, the time to review at AfC is also kind of incompatible with the typical time constraints of a class. In general, if you see a WikiEdu student at AfC, something probably went wrong and it may be worth quickfailing and pinging staff. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:09, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Folks may want to check out the existing infrastructure for students if you haven't already. If you look at that student's userpage (Joycecs), there's a link to a course page on the WikiEdu dashboard. You can click around the tabs at the top to see other students in the class, articles they worked on, the professor's username, the name of staff assigned to the course, etc. So if you notice problematic edits and you're worried it might run through all students in the class, you can pull up e.g. this page to make such an audit simpler. If you find a class that has big problems, ping the staff member assigned or bring it up at WP:ENB. This class was five years ago, but clicking the professor's name will bring you to a page like this to see if they continued to run the project (in this case the class looks like a one-off). There's a step early in the process, following the idea Slomo666 mentioned, where the instructor decides whether they want to create a pool of articles to choose from. It looks like that was the case here (whether entropy was part of that pool at the start is unclear, as some classes let students assign themselves articles not on the list). If you want to see what courses are active this semester, you can see them here. Worth noting that those are just the classes that are (a) based in the US or Canada, and (b) decided to accept WikiEdu's infrastructure/guidelines. There are typically many others happening either in other parts of the world (some of them can be found on the other dashboard) or without any support (and thus harder to trace and tie to a particular university/professor). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:22, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Suggested links is problematic

For example, this suggestion (the second link) to link a reference to a fairly ancient sketch to the obviously unrelated more recent magazine, The Sketch. I have seen numerous instances of editors following suggestions for equally bad links. This is doing more harm than good. BD2412 T 22:54, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

That's a bad one. Please raise it on Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features. CMD (talk) 09:01, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

In my view, responsibility lies primarily with the editor who added the incorrect link. I see they have already been warned and have agreed to do better, though this is now their third warning. You are welcome to suggest modifications to the suggestion algorithm, but calling it "problematic" because someone can't be bothered to check their work misses the real issue. If I make a mistake, I expect to be blamed; I do not expect people to blame the visual editor, or Twinkle, or my computer. Toadspike [Talk] 09:50, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree. The link suggestion feature isn't supposed to be doing the thinking; otherwise we'd just have a bot which automatically implements the link suggestions. Obviously it's a bad suggestion, but we should also be able to trust the editors using it to give it some thought and make sure that the link they're adding is actually relevant and adds something to the article. After all, the whole point of the link suggestion feature is to be a low-risk way for newer editors to contribute. If anything, the occasional bad suggestion encouraging them to use some critical thought in their editing is a feature, not a bug. Athanelar (talk) 12:57, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, but it'd be nice if we could have the best of both worlds: better algorithm-based suggestions and better human thinking. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

For the record, I wouldn't have raised it here at all had I not seen the problem arise more than once. BD2412 T 21:37, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features#Suggested links are problematic. @Toadspike:, I gather that suggested links are a tool for newbies to get use to editing. I do hold the algorithm responsible if it is making suggestions based primarily on a linkable phrase appearing in some vaguely connectable context. BD2412 T 00:42, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Are paid editors required to have an account?

It seems to be implied but not explicitly stated that paid editors are required to have an actual user account rather than a TA (since the WP:PAID policy mentions that one must publicly link their userpage to any external account where they solicit paid editing services, for example.) My question is;

1. Is it commonly understood that this is a requirement for paid editors? If so, I'll go ahead and add some verbiage to that effect to WP:PAID.

2. If it is not already assumed to be the case, would there be support for amending the policy to add this requirement? It is obviously harder to track a paid editor's contributions across temporary accounts which may change, so for the sake of convenience and disclosure I think this would be a sensible requirement to institute. Athanelar (talk) 12:55, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

• I had assumed it to be true. WP:PAID doesn't seem to actually insist on it, but it would be difficult to comply with without an account. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:19, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

PAID pre-dated temp accounts - primarily considering that "main user page"'s were for users - not for IP pages -- so I would think it would follow. The main question is would you have let an "ip user" disclose previously -- probably not. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:25, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and boldly added the line In order to ensure that this disclosure can be tracked across an editor's contributions, paid editors must have a registered user account, and must not engage in paid editing on a temporary account to the 'how to disclose' section; anyone who objects please do feel free to remove it. Athanelar (talk) 16:56, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Yup, given dynamic IP, the current non-visibility of all IP addresses to most contributors, and given the temporary nature of TAs, any 'disclosure' is liable to become rapidly unverifiable. This is clearly incompatible with the objectives of WP:COI disclosure policy. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:01, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

You'd have to re-re-re-re-disclose under those circumstances. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I’m not sure if an account needs to be required. An editor who is paid to make one single edit can simply disclose when they make that one edit. No need for an account.

Of course, if they wanted to make multiple edits without an account, they would have to re-disclose for every edit. Now, I suspect this would quickly become tiresome… and thus there is an incentive for them to create an account (so they can make a blanket disclosure and save time). But ultimately that would be their choice. Blueboar (talk) 21:08, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree. I'd change the "paid editors must" to "paid editors will find it easier to". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:16, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Counterpoint; if you've got an editor who's an editor on a freelance basis rather than working for one particular company, we wouldn't want them cropping up on different TAs every now and then making the odd paid edit here and there without us knowing it's the same person, right? WP:PAID already mandates that these sorts of editors need to publicly link any of their offwiki freelancing accounts to their wiki account so we can know who's who; I suppose you could argue they could separately disclose that on every TA (since TAs technically can have user/talk pages), but that would leave us having to follow the trail of breadcrumbs to connect the accounts, when they could just have a registered account so we can clearly see their entire paid contribution history in one place. We have to consider that it's not just about what's convenient for the paid editor but also what's convenient for anybody who wants to audit them. The whole reason we have paid editing disclosure requirements in the first place is for this kind of transparency, so why make it possible for these editors to obfuscate things to even the slightest degree? Athanelar (talk) 22:28, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. Anyone with a CoI who wishes to edit should be obliged to make it transparent. If they aren't prepared to do that, they shouldn't be editing at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:48, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

This discussion seems ongoing. I would have expected a done deal. WP:PAID have already been changed to make it a requirement. But only in a single non-prominent place. And initially without any talk discussion or edit summary to link to this consensus - I am here because I reverted the change, asking for context and background.

I don't really have an opinion either way - just an open question: is this discussion over and has the site-wide community reached a consensus, and discussed where and how to advertise this change? (If so, great!) CapnZapp (talk) 11:04, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

It is indeed ongoing, but given that nobody has really raised any substantial critique of the concept (or my implementation thereof except for WAID's minor wording tweak suggestion) and the initial responses were to the effect of "I assumed that was always the case," I thought it prudent to add.

If you think it shouldn't be done at all (or if you think it should be done more prominently with its own section on WP:PAID or something) please do say so. Athanelar (talk) 11:11, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I do believe your edit is a change. Previously, three ways were offered, including disclosing on edit summaries, which did not require you to have an account back when IP editing was a thing (I checked PAID from before TAs were added). I have zero objections if this change is an intentional and deliberate decision made by the community at large; however, if this is just a bunch of random editors thinking they are only clarifying how it has always worked, I strongly suggest you first get your ducks in a row. And with that I am leaving this matter. CapnZapp (talk) 12:10, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I think editors here agree that paid editors need to either (a) have a registered account, or (b) disclose consistently every time they make a paid edit. As I think about it, it occurs to me that there can be a potential problem with (b). If an individual who is being paid pops up from time to time with different temp accounts, there is the opportunity to make edits that don't quite measure up to being paid edits, but which reflect the COI that comes with paid editing, and those might not be disclosed, even though they would draw scrutiny if it were a registered account that had disclosed previously. That could be an unwanted loophole. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:20, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Question about use of quote field in Template:Cite web template

I have been replacing archive.today links in some articles and i remembered seeing people suggesting using the quote field of Template:Cite web more liberally as an additional hedge to preserve relevant information during the whole archive.today discussion.

In the template documentation the following is written about use of quote:

quote: Relevant text quoted from the source. [...] When quoting a copyrighted text, only brief quotations to attribute a point of view or idea are permitted; extensive quotations are prohibited.

In the linked Non-free content article this is expanded on:

Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea.

Do i understand correctly that statements of fact (e.g. in an online news article) therefor must not be used in the quote field (since they are not points of views or ideas)? Statements such as these:

• "Video game x was released on date y on platform z"
• "Person x was hired as CEO starting on date y"
• "Math theorem x was proven today by person y"

Or in other words: must quote only be used to attribute quotes directly to the author (e.g. quoting an opinion piece on the authors Wikipedia page to establish political views, etc.), and never if the cited page is not written from the point of view of the author? 05hundred (talk) 18:49, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't think the non-free content guideline prohibits this kind of quote, since it would fall under "illustrate a point" or "establish context". However, we usually don't need this kind of quote, since the information should be fairly easy to find and verify, especially in a web source. Toadspike [Talk] 12:18, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Addition to Wikipedia:External links

Should links to sources for game recaps be added to be specifically allowed to Wikipedia:External links? They exist in article schedule tables such as 2025 Seattle Seahawks season#Schedule, 2025–26_Los_Angeles_Lakers_season#Game_log, 2025 Toronto Argonauts season#Schedule etc. Or are these all in violation of WP:ELNO?- UCO2009bluejay (talk) 21:59, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

AI help in c/e

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § AI help in c/e

To me, this copy edit appears to use an AI editor to produce the changes. I base this on the similarity to changes suggested by Grammarly (a product I use largely to detect typos that an ordinary spelling verifier would not detect). Beyond the blandness of the writing style that this produces, it can put errors into the article. In this instance I have had to change "across the Mediterranean" back to "the length of the Mediterranean", as the the two have quite different meanings in the context involved.

What is the Wikipedia view on editors using AI for copy edits? ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 08:34, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Might it not be a good idea to ask the person who made that edit whether they used AI, or any tool? Let's at least ping them. Meleager91. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:42, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

There's no current rule on using AI for copyedits. That said, quite a few of those edits changed the meaning of the sentence, so it is worth asking the editor if they meant to do that. CMD (talk) 13:49, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, a ping is appropriate; thanks. I only checked a part of the article that I knew well for retention of meaning, as I was short of time. I've not looked further at the changes for more changes of meaning.
Just out of interest, Grammarly decided to check the two posts above. User:Chipmunkdavis has a writing style that it thinks needs fixing, whilst User:Phil Bridger only gets one complaint from the software (the comma before "or any tool"). To be clear, I think both original versions are perfectly OK. The second sentence of this post is something that Grammarly wants to change to a version which seems to me to have no meaning whatsoever. The lesson is, I suggest, always proofread the output of the proofing software.

I should probably alert User:HopsonRoad, who may be interested in this discussion due to the article involved. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 15:50, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I think my comment is correct either with or without the comma, but subtly different in meaning. I guess Grammarly doesn't do subtle. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:56, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be moved to WP:VPP instead? We now have this guideline about LLMs for articles (WP:writing articles with large language models)... Actually, it now applies to only new articles. George Ho (talk) 19:18, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I have no problem with this discussion being moved to Village Pump (policy). You presumably look for opinions from the other contributors. I am going to be limited on further involvement in this matter as I will be on the road for 2 days. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 20:36, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Moved this from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), especially since I feel the matter may be more rule-related... or not? @Chipmunkdavis: Is what you said about lack of guidelines against AI-generated copyediting true, despite the list of rules seen in WP:AI? George Ho (talk) 22:44, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

As far as I am aware there are three broad "rules" (so to speak) regarding AI usage: don't create articles using AI, carefully research your AI translations, and with few exceptions avoid AI images. However, the issue here is a second-order issue of AI use, as AI use often creates issues with meaning, with source integrity and outright fabrication, with effective communication, and so on. CMD (talk) 06:28, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not really convinced whether this is an AI copyedit -- it could be, could not, the changes are so minor that it basically doesn't matter. Besides one or two small oversights it's a good edit regardless of where it came from; the problem with AI copyedits is when they start changing the meaning or injecting promotional tone (example), but this isn't that. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:20, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

update - upon spot-checking some other edits I think that one probably is AI-assisted in some way, just by association based on the speed of the editing and other changes that are much more unambiguously AI output: the text added here, the failure to eliminate obvious puffery here despite the edit summary claiming that happened. (The puffery seems to be AI-generated by someone else in 2023.) So I think that's a fairly good gamut of the three cases with AI revising: minor-but-good copyedits, bad "copyedits" that introduce slop, and "copyedits" that fail to do what they claim they do but are ultimately pointless either way. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:30, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

The edit cited does change the meaning in quite a few places, from the first change onwards. Whether the new meaning is an improvement or not would require a deeper look, but meaning is being changed. CMD (talk) 06:31, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

The "across the Mediterranean" from "the length of the Mediterranean" change definitely moved the article away from the cited source on this, and on the key point that both the source and Wikipedia are trying to make. "Across" is, at best, ambiguous and distance-wise is about 1500 miles out (or 60%).ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 08:35, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Got it, thanks for the clarification -- I was referring to most of the stuff like "give an indication of" => "indicate," which is clearly an improvement. Gnomingstuff (talk) 22:33, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Copying and pasting... and quoting below post by Meleager91:

Apologies for any disagreeable edits. I can confirm that I edited the article with the assistance of Grammarly, but I was reviewing each suggested change and inputting any edit manually in the plaintext. I certainly did not intend to worsen or confuse the meaning of the article. I apologize if any of my edits missed the mark.
— Meleager91 (talk) 01:46, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

George Ho (talk) 03:52, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models/RfC

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models/RfC. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:27, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Bolded text as an indicator

Tables of things quite often use a coloured background for a row or a cell to indicate some specific property of the item in the row/cell.
We have an accessibility policy, MOS:COLOUR, that says we should not use only a colour change as screen readers do not announce this distinction.
However, I was unable to find any statement about not using only bold text as an indicator in a table or list.
Do we advise against just bolding an entry and if so, where? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:01, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Mobile diff errors

This is the second time within a week that I've misjudged someone's edit because the diff in mobile view was wrong. Take a look at this edit to Malaysian Malay in both desktop and mobile views. Desktop view clearly shows that one ancestor2 infobox parameter was replaced by another, and the source code at the revision created by that edit confirms that there's only one ancestor2 parameter.

But I was reviewing my watchlist on my phone, and what the mobile view of the diff showed was an extra ancestor2 parameter being added while leaving the one that was already there in place. Based on that, I reverted the edit as an error, explained in my edit summary along with a suggestion that the other editor might want to "Try again?" But right after that it occurred to me to check what the actual source code had been and I found that the diff lied to me and that the edit had been fine, so I restored it. Largoplazo (talk) 23:10, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

This is some flavor of phab:T349335. Izno (talk) 23:15, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: The mobile diff is supposed to show an indicator that a paragraph was moved. It's an inline diff and shows the paragraph at both the before and after location. So does a two-column desktop diff but there it's shown in a before and after column. I can see hover text "Paragraph was moved. Click to jump to new location." for the indicator on a blank line and click it but not see the actual indicator. I think the only error is that the indicator is invisible. I can toggle "Inline" in the desktop diff to see an inline diff where an indicator is visible as arrows. wikEdDiff at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets gives a better diff. Sometimes it gives a worse diff but the normal diff is still shown and wikEdDiff just adds an option to see an alternative diff. I recommend it. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:02, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Or w:de:Benutzer:Schnark/js/diff (for alternative diff). — Qwerfjkltalk 12:31, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter Are you talking about hover text in mobile view? (That only works if your mobile has a mouse, or of course if you're in mobile view on a desktop.) David10244 (talk) 04:33, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

No. Largoplazo (talk) 05:21, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

@David10244 and Largoplazo: Yes, I meant hover text in mobile view. If you don't have a way to display hover text then try holding for a second on the blank line above | script. I get a box with a url ending with #movedpara_5_0_rhs. This indicates a paragraph was moved. Tapping on the blank line jumps to the new location of the paragraph (where colored backgrounds show that ancestor2 was changed to ancestor3). It's annoying that the indicator is missing on the blank line so you have to guess there may be something there. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:13, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter Oh, I didn't know how to "hover" on a phone. Thanks! David10244 (talk) 02:58, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@David10244: It's not a hover. It's a way to see where a link goes. The hover text for the link is "Paragraph was moved. Click to jump to new location." PrimeHunter (talk) 03:39, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter Thanks, that makes sense. David10244 (talk) 13:12, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Searching edit summaries

Is there a way to search for edit summaries (e.g., all edit summaries in the mainspace during the last month)? I'd like to have a list of diffs in which the edit summary mentions WP:ONUS (the shortcut). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:15, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

No easy or fast way. quarry:query/102943. A similar search in all namespaces is fairly badly polluted by instances of "REVISIONUSER". —Cryptic 03:35, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Maybe REPLACE(comment_text, 'REVISIONUSER', '') LIKE '%ONUS%'. Legoktm (talk) 01:47, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

comment_text RLIKE '\\bONUS\\b' would've done it, but the query took close to ten minutes the first time - the copy on Quarry only seems fast because it was cached - so it didn't seem worth running again. —Cryptic 02:11, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

If you're into command-line stuff, there is a denormalized dump of every edit, broken down by month. See wikitech:Data Platform/Data Lake/Edits/MediaWiki history. It's not trivial to get your head around the data organization, and you need a cloud account to access, but it's good for things like this. I ran bzgrep ONUS 2026-02.enwiki.2026-0* which took a little under 5 minutes and found 1169 lines. If you want, I could email you a copy. RoySmith (talk) 12:05, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

If "a copy" means a human-readable text file, then I'd be very happy to have that in e-mail. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:36, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. In case anyone's curious, after removing false positives (mostly REVISIONUSER, but also words like bonus) and discussions where we are talking about WP:ONUS but not invoking it, there were ~353 uses left (during the first two months of this year). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Phase 2: Reading lists results and scaling

Hi everyone,

Back in November we shared that the Reader Experience team was conducting an experiment to bring reading lists to the desktop and mobile web browser experience. We are back with updates and next steps.

We are experimenting with potential improvements to the reader experience because of declining pageviews to Wikipedia and fewer readers returning to the site. We think by strengthening the connection between existing readers and Wikipedia, we can help reverse these trends and help engage potential future editors. One way to build that relationship is by giving readers more ways to shape their reading experience. Reading lists will allow for that participation by giving logged-in readers the option to save articles they want to come back to later in a list accessible in their account. The feature is already highly utilized on the Apps, where it has contributed to improved reader retention.

The experiment went live on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese wikis in November, where we collected data for eight weeks on mobile and desktop. The experimental feature included:

• Options for logged-in readers to save articles to a private list for reading later.
• Ability for logged-in readers to access their list and delete articles that are no longer relevant.

What did we find?

The feature had good engagement. Our primary success metric was the clickthrough rate (CTR) on the save article icon. CTR measures how often readers engage with the feature, helping us understand whether people notice it and choose to use it. Typical web CTR is between 1-5%, but can be much lower for features which require an active or participatory action from the user. On English Wikipedia, we observed a clickthrough rate of 0.88% for the “save” button in the reading list experiment. This aligned with our expectations for the feature. Because saving an article reflects a specific intent through participation — returning to that article later — we did not expect engagement rates comparable to more general navigation actions.

Readers create accounts, but need reading focused features to sustain them. Our experiment was intentionally limited to a fraction of all readers who are not editors so we wouldn’t interfere with existing editing and moderation workflows. As a result, very few people saw the feature, making the exposure rate of the experimental feature too low to give conclusive evidence on how reading lists on web affect user retention. This was a helpful finding for us: currently, readers who do not edit do not have much reason to have an account, since most logged-in features on Wikipedia are designed for editors. The test helped us better understand how reader-focused features may reach a distinct audience of account holders who engage with Wikipedia differently than editors. For this reason, we are trying out a beta feature before full rollout so we can learn more about user retention with this feature with a larger audience.

Reading list users are active readers. Additionally, we found that readers that engaged with the feature had much higher rates of internal referrals – that is, that is, they more frequently navigated to other pages on Wikipedia. While this relationship is correlational rather than causal, it suggests that readers who already tend to spend more time exploring Wikipedia find particular value in this feature.

What are we doing next?

Based on the results above, we believe that reading lists is a feature readers are interested in and would like to collect more data on how people use it. To do this, we are planning on releasing reading lists on the desktop and mobile websites as a beta feature for logged-in readers.

To increase exposure among readers we will enable the beta feature for all new accounts. Existing users will be able to turn reading lists on manually in the beta section of their user preferences. We will be collecting feedback via QuickSurveys on whether beta users find it to be useful.

We’re planning on the following timeline:

• Week of April 6: Release the feature on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
• April 6 - April 20: Monitor and fix any bugs.
• Week of April 20: Release to all other Wikipedias.

We encourage you to try out the beta feature and give us feedback on-wiki or via the survey. Additionally, we want to hear more from you. Do you have any other ideas for reading lists based on this information? Please share your thoughts and questions here. For more info, see our project page.

Thank you. EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 21:05, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

To support current active readers on the wikis in their goals of learning from Wikipedia, we want to experiment with allowing readers to save articles to a list for reading later, helping them organize their knowledge while also building a practice of content curation that could pave the way for future contributions to Wikipedia.

Back in the day, this would be called "browser bookmarks". sapphaline (talk) 21:31, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Plenty of other websites have features to save posts or articles, perhaps because bookmarks are deemphasised in modern web browsers and people tend to use them less IME. In any case, I personally think anything that increases new editor intake is a good thing.  novov talk edits 00:48, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Mir Novov "People tend to use them less". How do you know that? I think bookmarks are great and I use them frequently, David10244 (talk) 02:21, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Anecdotally, I notice a lot of younger browser users don't use bookmarks apart from a few generic favourited sites, and mainly rely on tabs or other functionality for content they wish to revisit.  novov talk edits 02:39, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Mir Novov I think a lot of that comes from the fact that so much browsing is done on mobile, and mobile bookmarks generally suck. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:54, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't even have bookmarks in the mobile browser I use (Firefox Focus). Prototyperspective (talk) 21:13, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Mir Novov From a statistician: "Anecdotes are not data".  :-) David10244 (talk) 16:31, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Great news, thanks. However, I'm more interested in the Recommended Reading List which can recommend articles one may be interested in based on these saved lists or on specified interests/articles-of-interest. Please get them to desktop too. See Wish505: Show recommended articles on Wikipedia Main page on desktop & mobile web, not just in app. and give us feedback on-wiki or… I'm using the saved reading list during distraction-free book-reading-like Wikipedia reading during commute or similar occasions where I save articles when there's something in it I'd like to look at later or select from articles saved earlier when it's an article I'm interested in reading but eg it's long and not of importance (ie not for editing or any immediate info-need and just for curiosity). Far more users use mobile Web than the app so they should be able to use this feature too if they'd like to. On desktop, it can be an alternative to watching articles. Do you have any other ideas for reading lists based on this information I wonder whether some could be created dynamically based on some inputs like one's configured interests and a category. Enabling notes for these would be very useful too, similar to watchlisted pages. Prototyperspective (talk) 00:09, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Neatsville, Kentucky page views

Hi all,

The article Neatsville, Kentucky has racked up 3.1 million pageviews within 30 days. The issue on phab (from a year ago, when the issue wasn't as pronounced) theorized that there was some newsletter advertisement, but this seems insane for just a single/group of adverts.

I know next to nothing about the more technical side of Wiki, so I figured I would raise this to the attention of people who know what they're doing.

here are view statistics (2022 to present), and here is the issue on phabricator from a year ago. EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 01:39, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I logged the Phab issue nearly two years ago but the theory you refer to was added last August. My current hunch is what's happening is similar to the Archive.today issue, where some pernicious code has been injected in websites, but this time, possibly via a trojan/virus (although it can still be determined individuals). Someone or some group may be testing a way to harm the Wikipedia with a DDOS-like access that grows so gradually that nobody figures it out to stop it before metastasizing into a real, massive problem that defies solution. Of course, as of today, whatever's been happening continues to be seemingly well-absorbed. By the way, if anyone thinks I'm being overly imaginative, who could have imagined what happened with Archive.today? I'm really just trying to apply Occam's razor. These cannot be real visitors for the most part - if they were, they would be editing the article way more! Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 02:23, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not sure what else it might be other than what you mentioned. There is genuinely no point in bombarding Wikipedia with illegitimate traffic traffic other than to either test its network capacity (somehow) or to DDOS it (this is a far stretch from doing actual damage, so I'm more leaning towards the testing point). At least with archive.today, the guy had a bone to pick with the person publishing the blog, which makes sense (but still completely unjustified) why he would go after the guy.

The only other cause I could think of is some random really loves Neatsville, and he wants it to get to the top of the pageview statistics. But that is more unlikely than the former. EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 03:10, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

That or some piece of code is using that page to test internet connectivity (I seem to recall this happening in the past for an article about a tiny train station). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 12:53, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

If this was about more or less the same degree of extra hits over time, I could see it's a test like that. But the recent tremendous spikes seems to defy this possibility, unless there has been a similar spike in some sort of Internet-accessing device. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 21:26, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I’ve always assumed that it’s not out of malice, but just incompetence. Somebody wrote some piece of code that just keeps scraping Neatsville because it was badly written. I vaguely recall that there is some other place name in Kentucky or Tennessee that gets visits because it is linked in an Imgur ad campaign, or something like that, for some reason. My assumption with the reason ChatGPT is routinely one of the most-visited articles is that ChatGPT is stupid and so sometimes has to look up why it is when it is queried. I've also seen Google Chrome be one of the most visited articles and I’ve just assumed that some scraper forgot to change the "example" part on their code and keeps running it. Hanlon's razor instead of Occam's. 1brianm7 (talk) 07:42, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I considered whether this could be an uncaught test. But the long-term aspect of the problem along with the recent insane amplification of the views makes me return to the malice side. To test all our hunches, perhaps we should blow this up into a big media story, which would include a demand that whoever is doing this, whether accidentally or intentionally, needs to fix it or cut it out. Maybe I'll do a comedy podcast about it. :) Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 21:20, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Just typical modern bot/crawler stuff. sapphaline (talk) 08:15, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I guess so, but it still seems insane that all of this traffic would focus onto this one obscure article. EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 20:58, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Vastly overcrawling one article while almost all others get normal views doesn't quite fit "typical" to me. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 21:15, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I distinctly remember a similar problem at Mount Takahe a few years ago. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:04, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Watchlist

Most times I open wikipedia I log in and go to my watchlist to see what changes have been made to the watched pages. I will then look at those changes. If there have been a lot of changes to a page I might look at a few and leave the rest til later. Until recently the watchlist would still show that page with a black dot to show there were changes I hadn't seen. Recently the list has shown a white (unfilled) dot and I haven't found a way to alter it. Is there anything I can do? Is this a universal change, or have I made a change to "preferences" or something inadvertantly? Spinney Hill (talk) 09:27, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Spinney Hill Hi. I think I understand what you're describing, but I want to verify before I file a bug (or encourage you to file a bug, if you'd like). Please confirm this is an accurate description: In phab:F72822789, I'm showing two screenshots, where I've clicked on "1", and where you would expect that only "2" is marked as "seen". is that right? Also, do you (or anyone) have a more specific sense of when this behaviour changed (this week, last week, or longer)? With those clues, it should be sufficient to file a useful bug-report. [I searched, and can't see any existing tasks that precisely match.] Cheers, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I understand you -If the list is the history of an article I have looked at 1628 1641 and 1649 and then done something else. What should happen when I go back to that history is the entries for 1653 and 1659 are shown as not looked at but recently they have been shown as looked at so its difficult to see where I have got to in the history. Does that make sense. It happened in the last week I think. Spinney Hill (talk) 18:50, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I think I'm probably out of my depth here so I would rather you logged the bug. Spinney Hill (talk) 18:52, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

In the mean time the watchlst shows the article is shown as looked at instead of not looked at. I first noticed this on Haymarket Theatre Leicester when a large number of edits were made on the same day and I had only looked at ten of them. The sytem showed I had looked at them all Spinney Hill (talk) 20:23, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@Spinney Hill: They shouldn't be a black dot, they should be green, per the message

Pages that have been changed since you last visited them are shown in bold with a green marker.

Black dots are for the diffs that you've visited.

I had the opposite - normally, diffs not looked at are bolded/green-dotted until I refresh the watchlist; today I found that some edits remained bold/green-dotted even though I had visited the diff. One page that this happened with was Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:02, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@Redrose64 I believe that what we each see by default will vary, because there's a default gadget (but that is "(unavailable with the improved Watchlist user interface)") that adjusts those aspects.

@Spinney Hill & Redrose64: I've filed phab:T419918 with what I think is the most broadly-applicable description. I don't recall how exactly it worked before today, but hopefully that task will provide enough clues to unearth whatever is causing the change. Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the above. I've never seen any green marker --green text yes. Spinney Hill (talk) 09:16, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Was it one of Parkinson's Laws that "Improvement = deterioration)? Spinney Hill (talk) 09:20, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Re: The bug: it has been identified and patched (thanks to matmarex), and will be fixed onwiki next week. (Details in the task on Phabricator)

Informal addendum, re: Parkinson's Laws: I'm not sure, but you've reminded me of this hacker-laws compilation that I recently found interesting/amusing (and it primarily links here to Wikipedia, which is nice). [Caveat that it's also rife with oversimplifications, of course!]. Closely related to our List of eponymous laws, but topically-focused and expanded. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Searching edits to a given page name?

I want to search for edits which added a specific phrase to a given page. The problem is, the page has periodically been renamed (it's the user talk page of somebody who uses a bizarre manual archiving process). What I want is edits that were done to whatever was their user talk page at the time the edit was made. RoySmith (talk) 12:13, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Link please? It is a bit hard to follow. Is the desired content still part of original edit history or was it copy/pasted and the original edit was lost somewhere else? In the latter case, it may be necessary to manually find the old revisions of the source and target pages in the history tab... Gryllida 12:52, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Have you tried the "Find addition/removal" tool in the "View history" page? Its options can take a little practice to work with, but it may help. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:56, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I guess the user has repeatedly archived their talk page by moving it to different subpages. Help:Archiving a talk page/Details#Other procedures says: "The page move method is generally discouraged, as it breaks up page history". But it's not disallowed. You will probably have to search each page history separately. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:07, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

That is indeed what they've done. I've written a little python script to fetch the contents of all the individual pages to local disk files and I'm attacking it with grep and friends. RoySmith (talk) 15:12, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

The current content of the pages can be searched like notability prefix:User talk:RoySmith/, but it doesn't say how many hits there are on a page or which edit added it (there will usually be a signature). Most browsers have a way to search a viewed page for a string, e.g. Ctrl+f in Windows browsers. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:41, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

User talkpage, arrangements

Hello. How do I make my list of archives into two side-by-side lists? GoodDay (talk) 16:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@GoodDay {{Archive box|style=width:25em|1={{columns-list|colwidth=10em| ... }}}}, where ... is your list of archive pages. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:36, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

It's at my talkpage. GoodDay (talk) 17:38, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I have done the direct version of the suggestion above. It needed conversion to use a list format from the br format that you had on the page. Izno (talk) 17:45, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Much appreciated, thanks. GoodDay (talk) 17:48, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Logouts?

Is anyone else having problems with being logged out when they go to new pages? It's happened three times so far in about 10 pages visited this early afternoon, plus once on Commons, and just had uploading an image there get "loss of session data"-'d. Anything going on on the back end? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 16:57, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, in addition I cannot log out, it claims a bad token. NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 17:06, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm experiencing this one this morning. Izno (talk) 17:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, this is happening constantly to me right now. My session is restored after I refresh a couple of times or click "Log in", though. — Newslinger talk 17:57, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Reload the page works for me, this can be as simple as returning to the previous page and clicking again. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:53, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Is this something that started happening today? (I'd have some educated guesses if it started happening a week ago, not sure what changed this week.) Tgr (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, today. The session issues seem to have slowed or disappeared now for me. Izno (talk) 20:02, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Seems like this might have been a hardware issue (more details in T419764). Tgr (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I had assumed a dodgy connection where the login cookie was (a) not being sent; (b) corrupted en route; (c) not being interpreted correctly on arrival. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:50, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

strange effect with failed verification template

I fixed a missing bracket in a failed verification template with the weird result that the article text included [[Category:Articles with failed verification from March 2026}]]. I can't spot anything that I have done wrong (doesn't mean that hasn't happened), but I am guessing something else caused this. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 09:52, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@ThoughtIdRetired see the subsequent edit by AnomieBOT, I think that will explain it for you. Nthep (talk) 10:36, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@ThoughtIdRetired: Or even the previous edit, which shows the |reason= parameter being dropped between the two closing braces instead of before them. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:18, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that was my fat fingers on the keyboard, followed by a complete inability to spot the problem. I'll just slink away in embarrassment. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 23:07, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:52, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

RefToolbar is broken

The cite template feature in the default toolbar of the source editor is broken. I have reported it at Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar#RefToolbar is broken. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:39, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Fixed by Pppery. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:51, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Transparent PNGs appear broken on wikipedia

Not sure what happened exactly, but all transparent PNG images on wikipedia are now showing up blurry. You can see this particularly with Kratos (God of War), where both the infobox and lower image are blurry, despite previously being perfectly fine. Kung Fu Man (talk) 01:32, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Seems to be effecting "png" formats as well beyond transparent ones. BGC OVA.png for example is blurry even on its preview page. It is also happening with some jpegs. Like this file (heads up, this file has some uhh imagery that is "unfortunate" to put it lightly.) here which is a jpeg which is also compressed on its own article and the preview page, but on clicking on it, it retains its quality. Andrzejbanas (talk) 14:24, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

This affects, from what I've seen, every jpg file whose width is less than 250 px. ภץאคгöร 23:24, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Ah. Perhaps it's due to the recent change to allow only certain image widths to be served, instead of anything-you-like. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 226#Tech News: 2026-05, bullet beginning Image thumbnails that are requested in non-standard sizes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:41, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Blurry thumbnails on sports uniform / kit template images

Hello,

I noticed that many uniform template images used in sports infoboxes (such as Template:Baseball uniform and Template:Basketball kit) recently started appearing blurry on article pages, even though the original files on Commons have not changed.

This affects files uploaded by multiple users, not just my own, and the issue seems to only occur in the thumbnails. When clicking the file and viewing it on Commons, the image appears sharp.

Examples where this occurs:

Files I uploaded:

United States national baseball team

Puerto Rico national baseball team

United States men's national basketball team

Files uploaded by other users:

Cuba national baseball team

Japan national baseball team

There are many more examples all related to this kit templates, and possibly to other types of images and templates in lower resolution.

The ones I noticed though are images are used in Template:Baseball uniform, Template:Basketball kit, and similar templates.

Since the originals are unchanged and only the thumbnails look blurry, this may be related to thumbnail rendering or a recent MediaWiki change.

Is this a known issue, and is there a way to restore the previous thumbnail quality? ANTbook365 (talk) 13:34, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

ANTbook365, see the post directly above. Regards KylieTastic (talk) 13:40, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:53, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Doubt

Why do the images look very blurry when viewed in an article and as a file page, but they actually look HQ when the file is viewed like this ? Is this a new optimisation to improve performance or to tackle copyright restrictions? What is the reason behind images turning this blurry? Manick22 (talk) 12:35, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

@Manick22: It's a recent bug. See #Transparent PNGs appear broken on wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:39, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

When will this be fixed? This one looks very blurry! Manick22 (talk) 12:46, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

After the weekend. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:40, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

@TheDJ Oh, okay. Thanks for the reply! Manick22 (talk) 13:49, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

@TheDJ and PrimeHunter: It seems that not only png, the others file include jpg, jpeg, webp also have the same problem (the images look very blurry) and not only happen in english wikipedia, the chinese wikipedia have the same problems. Thanks. Stevencocoboy (talk) 07:28, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Appears to now be fixed, though you may need to purge the page to force the image to get unstuck. --PresN 21:11, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:52, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Trouble linking to sections at Rhoticity in English

The link Rhoticity in English § /ɔː/–/ɔr/ merger (meant to be the target of Caught-court merger) takes me to /oʊ/–/ʊər/ merger instead. That link takes me to Effect of non-rhotic dialects on orthography, the link to which sends me straight to the references section. If this isn't apparent for you, try using these section links with the legacy Vector skin on a maximized Firefox window on Windows 10 on a 1920x1080p monitor, if all of those are available to you. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 20:03, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@MrPersonHumanGuy: The page jumps around for me very quickly and ends in the right place but it can vary by browser and circumstances. It's a common issue when there is collapsible content earlier in the page. The browser first jumps to where the anchor (section heading) is positioned at the time but then collapses or uncollapses something earlier in the page so it should no longer be the same distance from the top. The browser may or may not adjust the position after this. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:32, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Seconding PrimeHunter. I believe this is entirely because of the collapsed tables within the article-sections above those link-targets. I.e. The links initially scroll to the correct place, but then the tables collapse afterwards [IIUC, this is because of how JavaScript runs after the browser has completed the HTML rendering?] which means the content gets moved. I think we probably need some kind of clearer warnings/explanations within MOS:DONTHIDE about this? I wrote a related essay years ago at mw:User:Quiddity/Collapsing and hiding that might be useful if anyone wants to document it formally (or improve/adapt the essay). HTH. Quiddity (talk) 20:34, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

If you click in the address bar and press enter then your browser probably jumps to the right place. It jumps to the section again and this time the collapsing is done. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:34, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

"Spaghettified" discussions

Is there an easy way (such as a bot) to fix "spaghettified" discussions such as has occured at Talk:Canadian Indian residential school system? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 09:37, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Probably possible, but such things are quite controversial; see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/IndentBot for an example. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:25, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

The default toolbar of the source editor has search and replace on a magnifying glass icon to the right. It can be used to replace a large number of colons with nothing. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:52, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

@Sapphaline, can I ask what method you used in your edit fixing the indentation? And thank you for doing so. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:25, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Manual copy-paste and comparing between page's code and rendered output. sapphaline (talk) 09:23, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I see. Too bad there's not an easier way. Thanks again. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 11:27, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Massviews

I am trying to run off statistics on pages views for Category:History of the Paralympic movement in Australia articles but the massviews tool but I am getting "An unknown error occurred when querying" Anybody know what is going on? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:19, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: It's discussed at meta:Talk:Pageviews Analysis#Massviews not returning any results. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:57, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that! I will keep an eye on it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:24, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

"a series" link font colour for Template:Sidebar person

Recently a parameter was added to {{Sidebar person}} to allow the "a series" text to link to the main category for the person, much as it's linked in sidebars like {{Shinto}} or {{Liberalism sidebar}}. Unfortunately the link remains blue, ignoring the font colour which is applied elsewhere. I've tried various things in the template sandbox, but none worked. Could someone better at programming templates take a look and see if there's a way for the link to use |font_color= when |series_category=yes is set? – Scyrme (talk) 00:01, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

@Scyrme: Link colors can only be changed inside a piped link. Special:ExpandTemplates shows {{Shinto}} produces [[:Category:Shinto| <span style="color:White;">a series</span>]] — Preceding unsigned comment added by PrimeHunter (talk • contribs) 01:26, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Redoing ping to @Scyrme: for @PrimeHunter:. Graham87 (talk) 05:54, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Or by changing the color with WP:TemplateStyles. Izno (talk) 06:12, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

OK, that's possible but too much work. If you want to use a template then just use {{Colored link}} which uses the piped link method. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:07, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers, though it turned out my mistake was using {{colored link}} around a link including the brackets rather than replacing the brackets with the template. Seems to work now. – Scyrme (talk) 17:07, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Search function malfunction on mobile v3

Space bar resetting the search term was recently fixed at phab:T418172. But now there is a new problem. Now the search suggestions are always one step behind the typed term. For example when searching for Trapdoor. Typing T, nothing shows up. At Trap it shows Transnistria while omitting the p letter.

Confirmed affected sites: en.m.wikipedia.org, en.m.wiktionary.org

Phone model: OnePlus 3, operating system: Android 9 / OxygenOS 9.0.6, browser: Firefox 148.0.1

Aloysius Jr (talk) 23:23, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

WikiBlame broken?

WikiBlame seems to be broken. I almost always get "Your search term was not found at all. Check the settings and try again." I tried different search terms, different pages, different wikis, searching for wikitext or full text. Always the same result. It's been like this for a couple of days now, maybe a week. (Half an hour ago, it seemed to be working for a few minutes, but now it's broken again.) I also opened a GitHub issue. — Chrisahn (talk) 23:39, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

An example article and search text that failed would be useful. Johnuniq (talk) 06:48, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I just visited John Draper and clicked "Find addition/removal" in history, then entered software engineer in 'Search for' and pressed Enter. In under a minute it found the addition on 02 March 2025. That is, it works for me. Johnuniq (talk) 06:53, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your response! There's been an overlap, @Flominator fixed the issue about an hour before you tested it. Thanks! — Chrisahn (talk) 09:02, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

 Done Fixed, see GitHub issue. — Chrisahn (talk) 09:03, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting that and getting it fixed. Apparently the fix was to set the newly required user agent. Johnuniq (talk) 10:08, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm surprised anybody is still using WikiBlame. I recommend installing the Who Wrote That? extension instead, it's so much better and saves a lot of time. Am I right, Johnuniq? Bishonen | tålk 20:23, 16 March 2026 (UTC).

WWT does not work outside of mainspace last I checked. Wikiblame, and User:Daniel Quinlan/Scripts/Blame, do not have this limitation. Izno (talk) 21:15, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I've been using w:de:Benutzer:Schnark/js/wikiblame which appears to be similar to that Blame script. — Qwerfjkltalk 22:27, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

@Bishonen: My life is sufficiently exciting without trying new things! But maybe later I'll have a look. Johnuniq (talk) 00:08, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Break markup

Hey folks. For a line break in an article -- in the infobox, or in the body of the article -- is it better to use an HTML break tag (i.e. <br> or <br />) or a break template (i.e. {{break}}), and why? Or does it not make any difference? — Mudwater ^(Talk) 17:14, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Depends. WP:NOBR is relevant if what you're making is a list. Otherwise, HTML br is fine generally. Izno (talk) 17:41, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

<br> is preferable. <br /> is unnecessary XHTML syntax, and {{break}} is intended only for cases where you can't use the tag directly. sapphaline (talk) 17:57, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Note that this markup shouldn't be used to create unbulleted lists; use one of the list templates. sapphaline (talk) 18:01, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

@Sapphaline: <br> is fine with me, but why do you say that it's preferable to the template? — Mudwater ^(Talk) 18:14, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

or
<br /> is preferable. <br> generates syntax highlighting errors in the editor. . In many cases, it is better to use a list template, such as {{UBL}} or {{hlist}} — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:51, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Which editor? Do you mean the old syntax highlighting gadget? Jack who built the house (talk) 20:53, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

The editor that I use seems to be called the "2010 wikitext editor". It does get quite upset by plain <br> tags — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:05, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

You are likely using Dot's syntax highlighter. It is an issue in this way. Izno (talk) 21:13, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

And if not Dot, then potentially WP:WIKED. Either way, my opinion is that neither of these are necessary today, the tools one might use with them are available in what MediaWiki supports now. You should consider trying those and ditching whatever you do have installed. Izno (talk) 21:19, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

@Mudwater: To return to the original question: as far as our readers are concerned it makes not one scrap of difference. The <br> tag was introduced in HTML 2.0 way back in 1995, and is valid in all subsequent versions of HTML, but not XHTML (unless followed directly by the closing </br> tag). The <br /> tag first appeared in XHTML 1 (2000) and is also valid in HTML 5 (2014) as an optional variant of <br>. The {{break}} template emits one or more <br /> tags, and browsers simply do not care (or know) whether these tags were typed directly or emitted by a template, function, macro or other typing aid. The MediaWiki software serves HTML 5, and normalises <br /> tags (however produced) to the <br> form.

The missing question - that others are attempting to answer - is this: where are you using these tags? Is it to emit a cosmetic newline, or to make a list? If the former, that's OK; but if the latter, MOS:NOBR applies everywhere - in infoboxes, prose and talk page discussions. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:29, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, Redrose64, and everyone else, I should have stated this clearly before now. I would not use breaks to make a list, I would use a template such as {{plainlist}}, or just use asterisks or pound signs to create bulleted or numbered lists, respectively, with regular Wikipedia markup. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 23:09, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Here's a bit more background: I saw this edit, and started to wonder if there's a reason to prefer either the HTML or the break template. The readers can't see the difference, and I haven't heard any technical reasons either way, so perhaps it's just a matter of editorial preference. But if so, some editors might be able to explain why they have a preference. I'd be interested in hearing any. Otherwise I won't worry about it too much. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 23:15, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

This is a cosmetic newline between two parts of an address. I would say that <br /> is fine to use in this instance. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:34, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-12

MediaWiki message delivery 19:33, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Announce: wikiurl

https://github.com/greencardamom/Wikiurl

wikiurl is a high-performance, multi-engine command-line tool for extracting URLs from Wikimedia projects. It allows you to search on specific domains across various wikis and output the results in multiple formats (TSV, JSONL, raw SQL, or article title list). At maximum, you could download all URLS across all 800+ wikis.

Notable for being written in Nim, it compiles to Linux, Mac or Windows binaries, and uses GitHub to do the compilation step, so users have safety downloading the executable. Being Nim it compiles to highly optimized C code which is then compiled to binary by GCC. It provides 4 options how to retrieve the URLs: API, SQL, Dump Download and Dump Streaming - each engine has pros and cons depending on nature of request. -- GreenC 21:11, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

VisualEditor not properly previewing pages when adding a link in the Wikipedia: namespace

Something odd is going on when searching for pages in the Wikipedia:Project namespace using VisualEditor. The word Wikipedia is showing up with a lowercase w and the search results are displaying results for the project page's name if it was in mainspace, as seen to the right. mdm.bla 21:56, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

It looks like the search field wants to interpreted the input as an interproject link to Wikipedia, despite being on Wikipedia already. For example, on Wikimedia Commons, the wikitext to produce a link to this Village pump page is [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)]] (note the repetition of the word "Wikipedia"). —⁠andrybak (talk) 22:16, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Filed as phab:T420288. Thanks both for the details. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:45, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

As a workaround you can use the namespace aliases WP or Project instead of Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:25, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

RfC: Should we deprecate WP:RfA?

Request for community consensus – CentralNotice for Wiki Loves Ramadan 2026

Hello everyone,

I am the Project Lead of the international team for Wiki Loves Ramadan, and the local organizer of Wikipedia:Wiki Loves Ramadan 2026 on English Wikipedia.

I am writing to request community consensus to run a CentralNotice banner globally for Wiki Loves Ramadan 2026.

This year, the campaign includes:

• An international photo competition on Wikimedia Commons (with participating countries running local editions), and
• A global writing competition on English Wikipedia.

For English Wikipedia, the banner should clearly reflect the writing competition and link directly to Wikipedia:Wiki Loves Ramadan 2026, in addition to linking to the relevant Commons competition pages for participating countries where applicable.

For reference, the detailed CentralNotice plan (including banner structure and implementation notes) is available at: m:Wiki Loves Ramadan 2026/CentralNotice.

Before proceeding further with the CentralNotice process, I am seeking consensus from the English Wikipedia community. Feedback on banner wording, linking structure, targeting, and overall scope is very welcome. Warm Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 06:38, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

A central notice banner will go a long way to promote the project, Wiki Love Ramadan on English Wikipedia. Tesleemah (talk) 10:41, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

@ZI Jony Please make the central notices compatible with dark mode if you plan to run it on the English Wikipedia. The current designs appear to be very much incompatible with dark mode. Sohom (talk) 16:52, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta, our technical team already updated that code, hopefully CN admins will update at thier earliest convenience. Warm Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 18:00, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

I was going to suggest a different name until I saw meta:Wiki Loves X campaigns, which endorses the current name. My only suggestions are:

1. Comply with Wiki Loves X campaigns.
2. Cover any variations among different branches of Islam and among different regions.
3. Use the Arabic terms with English translations and transliterations.

I don't see any issues. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:14, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

@Chatul, thanks for thinking about a different title, and it does make sense to check how the campaign is positioned first.

Just to ground this in how the project is framed: Wiki Loves Ramadan exists as part of the Wiki Loves X family of campaigns and explicitly carries that name on Meta-Wiki, so sticking with it aligns with Wikimedia branding.

The campaign’s mission is to empower communities to contribute high-quality, freely accessible knowledge about Ramadan and the wider Islamic world, highlighting diverse traditions and practices for broader understanding and heritage preservation. Its vision is to build a comprehensive, multilingual repository of knowledge that celebrates both the diversity and shared aspects of Muslim heritage globally.

In terms of areas of focus, contributions are encouraged across:

• core Islamic topics - beliefs, practices, branches of Islam and regional traditions,
• the many facets of Ramadan - fasting traditions, prayers, Eid celebrations, and how it’s observed in different cultures,
• religious structures, landmarks, figures, and broader cultural expressions like art and cuisine.

Given that, your points about complying with Wiki Loves X campaigns, ensuring coverage of different branches of Islam and regional variations, and using Arabic terms with English translation/transliteration all sit well with the campaign’s goals. I don’t see any blockers either. Warm Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 06:10, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Not a Muslim, Love the project. Topic: Ramadan in the Far North/Arctic Circle. All I know is that Canadian towns have different customs. ~2026-14035-61 (talk) 14:04, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

I do not give my consensus. Wikipedia should not be a religious Bleeding Kansas over banners about religious holidays. This site is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a chapel. ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 13:54, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

To clarify what i mean by "Bleeding Kansas", i am referring to when the Kansas territory turned into a battlefield over slavery. In this instance, the banners would end up turning Wikipedia, which is supposed to be an encyclopedia, into a battlefield for religious missionaries. ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 13:57, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

• (ec) The only people who are turning this into a battlefield seem to be those predisposed to distrust Islam (i.e., Islamophobes). It has been explained multiple times at the talk page of the project that a) Wiki Loves X is the standard format for projects of this type, and b) anyone is welcome to work to create a Wiki Loves Christmas, Wiki Loves Diwali, Wiki Loves Passover, or even Wiki Loves Festivus. That one project has been launched does not mean other projects are precluded. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 16:09, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  If they want to plan Wiki Loves Christmas, it should be neutral like "Wiki Loves Holidays". Ahri Boy (talk) 17:44, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

  Not if it is promoting Christmas. If you call it "Wiki Loves Holidays" then it should treat all holidays equally. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:56, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I am not a Moslem. I've had issues with abusive and aggressive missionaries, but none of them have been Islamic. I see nothing in this proposal that is objectionable or in conflict with the umbrella Wiki Loves X campaigns. In the US at least, Moslems are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:54, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

While I'm okay with Wiki Loves X campaigns in general, may I suggest that ones focused on a particular religion not run as central notice banners, due to the possibility of it being seen as proselytism? Not saying that they shouldn't exist at all of course, just that it might be more sensitive to not have these particular ones as banners. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:05, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. I am not religious and have no issue with Islam as a whole, but I feel that promoting any particular religion or religious holiday globally is non-neutral and should be avoided for the same reason we don't allow religious promotion in public schools. Articles, discussions, and the project itself are of course perfectly fine since they support information and education without Wikipedia itself appearing to endorse anything in particular. Particularly considering that holidays among various religions overlap, and this would appear to prioritize one above others. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 05:20, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

There appears to be no intention in this campaign of proselytizing or endorsing any religion or religious holiday over the others. For what it's worth, I also personally fail to see how this campaign is fundamentally different from (say) Wiki Loves Onam which promotes a Hindu festival in Kerala that has been running for the last 3 years without any accusations of proselytization or endorsement of hinduism and appears to already have the silent consensus of the community. If we were to treat this campaign differently due to concerns over the optics of bias and block it, that would actually risk introducing actual bias into the process. Sohom (talk) 05:52, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't mean to imply that it's intended, only that it might be interpreted that way.

Does Onam run a CentralNotice? That's the only thing I object to, not the existence of the campaign. If they do I haven't seen it, and my opinion applies to all religions equally - none should be singled out either by promotion OR suppression. If you were to compile a list of every holiday in every extant religion I'm fairly confident you'd have conflicts on every single day of the year. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 06:57, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't see a entry in the calendar about Onam so my assumption would be that they did not run a central notice. Sohom (talk) 01:43, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

As a side-note, a hatnote in meta:Wiki Loves Ramadan 2026 linking to meta:Wiki Loves X campaigns would be helpful. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:54, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose any central notice banner that could reasonably be interpreted by readers as Wikipedia showing favoritism to any religion (or irreligion), as per Chaotic Enby and ChompyTheGogoat. BD2412 T 14:24, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose banner per @Chaotic Enby and @BD2412. I agree that this could be interpreted as endorsing one religion over all others. It also puts Wikipedia at risk of actually prioritizing one religion over all others - if there were WikiLoves projects for Hanukkah or Lent that made the same banner request but community consensus was against it, that could set a very bad precedent. PositivelyUncertain (talk) 01:52, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose per BD2412 Andre🚐 02:10, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose I'm in agreement with PositivelyUncertain.--Wehwalt (talk) 02:20, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

• Meh, whatever decision we make here, we should be consistent and apply that result to other future religion-related Wiki loves X campaigns, because it would be weird if the community denied a banner for Wiki Loves Ramadan 2026, but in the future, approved one for hypothetical Wiki Loves Christmas, Wiki Loves Diwali, Wiki Loves Passover, or even Wiki Loves Festivus (to use Chris Woodrich's examples above). Some1 (talk) 02:38, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I'm fine with that. Remind us when such a banner is requested, we'll help vote it down. Wehwalt (talk) 02:42, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  If I see it, I'll also say so. There is also no limiting principle to such a thing. If we allow this, how would we be able to deny a banner for the Church of Cannabis, or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? BD2412 T 02:46, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I would be happier if we could get a general binding consensus, instead of doing it as a case-by-case basis (which may introduce systemic bias regarding who does/doesn't vote in specific cases). Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 09:03, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  Agreed again. My position applies to any banners associated with any religion, and I think an official proposal to clarify that it applies universally is a good idea to prevent exactly what I'm concerned about. Perhaps there should also be a broader standard relating to banners for any contentious topics, or ones that might be. The individual campaigns are volunteer run so as long as they comply with guidelines I'm not concerned about their subject matter, but the appearance of an official endorsement needs to be considered for banners.

  
  

  I'm not familiar with the technical side of things, but perhaps these campaigns that might be disallowed from central banners under such proposals could be allowed to add something just to specific articles they agree are directly relevant? That allows the possibility of multiple running at once. It would need to be limited to ones that are clear such as "Holiday within X religion", not "Holy site significant to multiple religions".

  
  

  I don't have much experience with pump - should additional aspects like this be broken down in new sections, or are spurs expected to split off within the initial proposal? It seems to be a somewhat looser format than many areas. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 09:48, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  It's a looser format indeed, but (at least at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) and here) it can absolutely be helpful to break down the discussion into separate clear proposals for people to discuss, while Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) is more of a completely open discussion. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 09:52, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  Wikipedia loved the Jewish Museum in the past, but I don't remember seeing a banner for it. Andre🚐 02:44, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

• Conditional agree This is, of course, a marvellous idea. However, there is the obvious rider, that this initiative must be balanced by extending the same courtesy to the many other areas that deserve the same consideration. Otherwise Wikipedia would be guilty of crass discrimination. The "Wiki loves Ramadan" initiative needs to be followed by other initiatives such as "Wiki loves Lent", "Wiki loves the Heart Sutra", "Wiki loves Passover", "Wiki loves the elephant goddess Vināyakī"... in fact we are just getting started, there are so many seriously overlooked areas: "Wiki loves black men", "Wiki loves elderly white men", "Wiki loves young brown men", "Wiki loves white boys", "Wiki loves young British working class girls", "Wiki loves cis white men"... Our time will be entirely taken up with all the things Wiki needs to love, and with posturing about how virtuous we are for being so virtuous. I guess there won't be time left for writing an encyclopaedia, but if Wikipedia keeps indulging this sort of stuff, there won't be an encyclopaedia. If Wikipedia is to survive the challenges of AI, it needs to focus on what it would take for Wikipedia to become a gold standard for epistemological reliability or truth so it can be a trusted resource as a core training ground for AI. That's a big ask, but if we can't take up that challenge, then there is no future for Wikipedia, and we may as well let it implode into sectarian ideological dementia. — Epipelagic (talk) 09:51, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I think the underlying goal for campaigns of increasing and improving the quality of articles on underrepresented topics is admirable - but splashing a banner across the whole site to point it out is probably less so. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 10:13, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I see the potential for future misuse here, by projects whose main goal is simply to display their banner on Wikipedia for several weeks. To prevent that, there should be a clear time limit (around five days), and any future requests should need to demonstrate clear community interest in the project in previous years.Ponor (talk) 10:59, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

@Ponor, it's not in the English Wikipedia communities remit to decide how central notices are displayed on other Wikipedia. There are already multiple policies about central notices and how and when they can be displayed on meta. If you are interested in "further misuse" the correct place to engage is on meta. Sohom (talk) 01:56, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Where did they say anything about other sites? ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 02:08, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I interpreted "on Wikipedia" as referring to other language version as well. Sohom (talk) 03:02, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

By "project" I meant all these "Wiki loves X" projecs, not other wikis. Religious, national, or political banners are too polarizing. People under a certain trillionaire's tweets read it as our endorsement. Ponor (talk) 02:08, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

So... you all know that every now and again, we get newbies saying "Why are there all these Featured articles on the Main Page always about subjects I don't care about, and there are never any FAs about subjects that I like? Wikipedia is soooo biased!" And we all tell the newbie that TFAs are based on what WP:VOLUNTEERS choose to write, so if they want an FA on their favorite subject, then they should improve the relevant article, get it through the FA process, and we'll cheerfully run it. We know this is basically impossible for the newbie to do in practice, but I at least don't feel guilty at all for telling them that there's no cabal controlling which articles get turned into FAs.

The same thing's happening in this discussion. Someone's done a huge amount of work, and we're all sitting here saying "Why isn't this banner on a subject I like? It's soooo biased!"

If you want a "Wiki Loves ___" banner on the thing you care about, then go create the program, get it through the CentralNotice banner process, and the CN admins will cheerfully run it. There's no discrimination based on subjects that some people don't feel an affinity for, or that your mother thought was inappropriate for a dinner party conversation – no "well, it's not polite to say anything about religion" or "we can't do anything about a specific nation" (though I don't remember seeing any similar complaints about m:Ukraine's Cultural Diplomacy Month). We've even had contests that combine both religion and national sentiment (e.g., m:Twelve Apostles of Ireland Challenge). For "political" ones, we need look no further than Wikipedia:Wiki Loves Pride, which has run here without objection for a dozen years now (maybe it's only certain religions, certain countries, and certain politics that we can't stomach?). If you want to get Wikipedia's articles improved in a given area, then run a campaign yourself. Just remember that "improved" doesn't mean "favorable to". A "Wiki Loves Incompetent Politicians" campaign could easily result in articles being improved without any of the subjects liking the results. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I doubt that "Wiki Loves Incompetent Politicians". After becoming interested in Cincinnatus, I started a list of honest politicians as a collection of such paragons. They were well-sourced and you can check their merits for yourself as it didn't get to be very long:

Anyway, Wiki didn't love the idea as it was renamed to list of politicians renowned for their integrity. It survived one AfD but not a second and so you now have to go elsewhere to find the details.

So, what does Wiki love? In my experience, its loves include:

• Wiki loves death – Deaths in 2026 is one of the most popular pages
• Wiki loves nationalism – it insists on pinning a national label onto everyone as their most important attribute
• Wiki loves war – WP:MILHIST is probably the most successful project

I could go on but you get the idea. These enthusiasms don't get promotional paeans because they don't need them. A banner that promotes "Wiki loves X" is, in fact, a sign that it doesn't love it so much.

Andrew🐉(talk) 21:05, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

That's an absurd comparison and you should absolutely know better. FAs run on a single page for a single day, and I've never seen one that I would consider to be contentious, although granted I don't pay much attention to them. Plus they're presented as just an interesting topic, no "Wikipedia Loves X" statement which is clearly non-neutral. Ramadan lasts for an entire month and the banner would run on all of English Wikipedia, precluding any others (religious or not). If someone submits a proposal to run one for Purim, who's going to decide whether Judaism or Islam takes precedence? Are you volunteering to moderate that discussion? What if someone starts a "Wikipedia Loves the United States of America" campaign and wants to splash that across the entire site? I know we have many middle eastern editors who do great work, and given the current situation they'd be entirely justified to take issue with what would appear to be endorsement of military aggression. Next thing you know WMF legal is getting involved and central notices get canceled altogether. Let's just head things off now instead of starting down that path, eh? ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 08:52, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-centralnotice-banners WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I also made it clear that I believe this should apply equally to all religious campaigns and in fact all contentious topics, to err on the side of caution, and that a proposal should be started regarding official guidelines to that effect so the community can try to ensure they're as unbiased as possible. Groups of editors promoting subjects they're passionate about is great AS LONG AS it's not at the expense of others. Campaigns themselves can all run simultaneously - banners cannot. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 08:57, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

As did I, asking to be pinged when a similar request involving another religion was made, so I could help vote it down. I'm afraid the facts get in the way of the prose upthread. The project at issue is free to continue, just without a central notice (though I have noticed WIKI LOVES RAMADAN occasionally on my cell phone over an article). The consensus that was asked has not been given. Will no one close this to that effect? Wehwalt (talk) 14:32, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

@ChompyTheGogoat, what makes you believe that this banner would be precluding any others? That's not how it works.

At the moment, depending on the interface language you select in your preferences and your geolocation, there are supposed to be banners running for tax season donations in three European countries, three Wiki Loves events (Folklore, Africa, Ramadan), two campaigns related to International Women's Day and Women's History Month, and three WMF-sponsored conferences. None of these are preventing any of the others from being shown. There's an established system for limiting impressions (called putting a banner on a "diet"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

So if multiple religions all applied for one at the same time, users would see any and all of them? ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 20:22, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

And how is a Ramadan running one when this clearly isn't going to reach consensus? ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 20:23, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Wait… there is an option that gets central notices canceled altogether? Where do I sign up? Blueboar (talk) 17:06, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

The correct place to do that is by doing a meta RFC. Sohom (talk) 20:20, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Tough call. I find some of the opposition arguments above borderline ridiculous, but I'm also unsure myself. For a Wiki Loves X to happen, someone has to organize it. Anyone who wants Wiki Loves [something else] merely has to step up and do the work to make it happen. I'm delighted that ZI Jony and others on the team have coordinated to make Wiki Loves Ramadan possible, and I trust we will get some good photos and article edits for it. The question is about the extent of promotion. CentralNotice is, as I understand it, the most visible possible type of notice. Presumably, as it is in part a recruitment drive, it will be displayed to all users, logged in or not. There aren't very many banners, other than donation banners, which rise to that level of project-wide prominence and folks are right to think about rules. This would be, AFAIK, the very first such notice of a Wiki Loves X about a specific religion, and I share concern about any centralnotice focusing on a specific religion. We have, however, run events about cultures, and the extent to which religion and culture are separate is complicated to say the least. Culture/practices associated with Ramadan basically covers how 2 billion people live their lives, including multiple entire countries [practically], live their lives for a full month out of every year. It's a genuinely tough call. I think I'd have no trouble with a banner based on geolocations in primarily Muslim countries, or banners at the top of relevant articles, but for all of enwiki? I think I land neutral-to-weak-oppose, where I would be for any religion-specific event. Another possibility would be to have a year-long "Wiki Loves Religion" that displays banners at key times for various religions, but (a) that would be a huge amount of work that we may not have organizers for, and (b) Wiki Loves Ramadan is already a thing and already happening. This is a lot of words for a [more or less] neutral, sorry. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:59, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Can't we just ask that the organizers of all "Wiki Loves X" campaigns... pick a different slogan when advertising them on banners here? Full disclaimer: I don't like the naming scheme, never particularly have (it's twee and much too artificially kumbayah-ey), so any chance to get rid of it is fine by me. We'd still get complaints about any Islam-focussed campaign, the way we do about fashion designer TFAs and, more recently, Genshin Impact DYKs, but, you know what, you can't make everybody happy. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 06:39, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

"Wiki Documents Ramadan" maybe? Sohom (talk) 06:54, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

• Wiki Documents Pride
• Wiki Documents Folklore
• Wiki Documents Ramadan
• Wiki Documents Onam

You know what, I like it. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 07:46, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Personally, I think it sounds a bit more like corporate-speak than I like. If there is consensus to use a different phrase, perhaps something like "Wiki Explores Z", to summarize the reader experience from browsing articles related to Z? isaacl (talk) 15:55, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I really like Wiki Explores! Maybe Wiki Studies could work too? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:02, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I'd also like any of these!

@ZI Jony, as the organizer, would a change like this be something your project would be amenable to? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 22:52, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I would support "explores", "documents", "studies", etc. Unless I'm misunderstanding what these "Wiki loves X" campaigns are about, the word "loves" feels too restrictive. If a good-faith editor wants to start a campaign to improve and expand coverage of genocide-related articles on Wikipedia, they couldn't start one under the current naming scheme because "Wiki loves genocide" sounds... well... inappropriate. Some1 (talk) 01:21, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Also, 'Wiki loves [singer]'… ~2026-68406-1 (talk) 05:24, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Real " This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it" energy. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 18:53, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't particularly care that we're running banners for a wiki event on a religious topic, though I will not oppose the broad ban proposed above. I will note that as part of the Foundation's recent update to its banner and logo change policies, they prohibited logo changes (but not banners) for "primarily religious or political" holidays. This provides some precedent for handling these topics differently from others. I also like GLL's idea of changing the name of this type of event.

I do care about keeping the number and frequency of these banners contained. The recent mess with Wiki Loves Folklore (if that link breaks, search for "Let's review"), which had settings so excessive its banners had to be repeatedly reduced by CentralNotice admins, should not be repeated. I unfortunately see no indication of what settings (impressions per day for logged in and logged out users) will be used for this banner campaign on the page linked by @ZI Jony and the CentralNotice request simply says "To be determined by Central Notice admin". I must also point out that the linked page says "Once your local landing page is ready and the banner text is available in your language(s), the CentralNotice banner can be scheduled for your country", which seems to inappropriately presume a 1:1 correspondence between languages and countries. I would appreciate more information on what, exactly, would be done were we to support the proposed banner campaign here: What countries would this run in and on what diet settings? Toadspike [Talk] 10:02, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Courtesy link to meta:Requests for comment/Religion-focused CentralNotice banners. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 13:22, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Through excellent arguments in that RfC, I ended up changing my mind, and now support this running as a banner, provided it is made clear that "loves" does not refer to proselytism, but to a love of knowledge, a passion for practices and peoples. I am still open to "studies", "explores", or "documents" as alternative wordings. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 01:03, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Support. I am invested in this, but more as a cultural push then the religion. Some religions and cultures are so intertwined with each other that there is no way entangle them. Wordings can be updated accordingly if the community thinks that 'loves' is a word to be avoid in this instance, and possibly for consideration for future runs, if any. – robertsky (talk) 05:51, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't like the wording wiki loves x, but any change should be global; as long as the other articles are adhering to that nomenclature, Wiki loves Ramadan should as well. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 09:01, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Yep, that would be the ideal way to go at it. Like Some1 showed above, that same "Wiki Loves" issue also applies to other cases beyond religions. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:00, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

The global change should be done for future runs. A change for this run will be disruptive not just on wiki but also any outreach efforts off wiki. – robertsky (talk) 04:02, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Zoom-in for fossil ranges

Quick facts Scientific classification, Type species ...

Palaeotherium Temporal range: Middle Eocene – Early Oligocene 43.5–32.5 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N Da. S T Ypr. Lut. B Pr. Rup. Ch.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Perissodactyla
Family:	†Palaeotheriidae
Genus:	†Palaeotherium Cuvier, 1804
Type species
†Palaeotherium magnum Cuvier, 1804
Other species
†P. medium Cuvier, 1804 †P. crassum Cuvier, 1805 †P. curtum Cuvier, 1812 †P. duvali Pomel, 1853 †P. castrense Noulet, 1863 †P. siderolithicum Pictet & Humbert, 1869 †P. eocaenum Gervais, 1875 †P. lautricense Stehlin, 1904 †P. muehlbergi Stehlin, 1904 †P. renevieri Stehlin, 1904 †P. ruetimeyeri Stehlin, 1904 †P. pomeli Franzen, 1968 †P. crusafonti Casanovas-Cladellas, 1975 †P. llamaquiquense Casanovas-Cladellas & Santafé Llopis, 1991 †P. giganteum Cuesta, 1993 For subspecies suggested, see below.
Synonyms
Genus synonymy Paleotherium Cuvier, 1804 Paloeotherium Cuvier, 1804 Palaetherium Rafinesque, 1814 Paloetherium Rafinesque, 1814 Salaeotherium Roulin, 1829 Palacotherium von Meyer, 1838 Synonyms of P. magnum Palaeotherium girondicum Blainville, 1846 Palaeotherium aniciense Gervais, 1848–1852 Palaeotherium subgracile Aymard, 1853 Palaeotherium magnum parisiense Gervais, 1859 Palaeotherium stehlini Depéret, 1917 Palaeotherium franzeni Casanovas-Cladellas & Santafé Llopis, 1980 Synonyms of P. medium Palaeotherium brivatense Bravard, 1843 Palaeotherium suevicum Fraas, 1869 Palaeotherium möschi Stehlin, 1904 Palaeotherium euzetense Depéret, 1917 Synonyms of P. crassum Palaeotherium indeterminatum Cuvier, 1822 Synonyms of P. curtum Palaeotherium latum Cuvier, 1822 Palaeotherium buseri Stehlin, 1904 Synonyms of P. duvali Palaeotherium heimi Stehlin, 1904 Palaeotherium kleini Dietrich, 1922 Synonyms of P. castrense Paloplotherium magnum Ruetimeyer, 1891 Synonyms of P. siderolithicum Plagiolophus siderolithicus Pictet & Humbert, 1869 Synonyms of P. eocaenum Paloplotherium depereti Stehlin, 1902 Synonyms of P. muehlbergi Palaeotherium velaunum Blainville, 1848 Dubious species Palaeotherium gracile von Meyer, 1839 Palaeotherium parvulum de Serres, 1844 Palaeotherium commune Blainville, 1846 Palaeotherium primaevum Aymard, 1853 Palaeotherium gervaisii Aymard, 1853

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Hi folks! A proposal for providing zoomed-in fossil ranges focusing on a single period, with {{Period fossil range}}, was discussed on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology, which received broad support for being used in specific cases. It would show up in addition to the main range generated by {{Geological range}} (for example in taxoboxes or formation infoboxes). Some editors suggested querying broader input outside of the WikiProject, so I am asking here if anyone has feedback about it!

Here is an example to the right, suggested by User:IJReid! Beyond this one, all 12 possible bars can be found at {{Period fossil range/rangebar}}. Courtesy ping to people in the earlier thread: @The Morrison Man @Hemiauchenia @African Mud Turtle @LittleLazyLass @IJReid @Jens Lallensack Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:27, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

It feels like a useful inclusion for us at our WikiProject, but there is always the worry that by including additional "technical" details we could oversaturate the infobox with details that are in some way against the interest of informing those who aren't as knowledgable about the geologic time scale. Input on its appearance and intuitive use would be appreciated; does it make sense in the example infobox on the right here how the timescale bars are related among other things. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 03:40, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

I appreciate your reasonable concern about oversaturation, but the infobox on the right seems way shorter than the chemboxes that we currently have at pages like Calcium. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 17:26, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

For the sake of completion I have modified it to include the entire contents, originally it was abbreviated to focus just on the upper region. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 17:38, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

(partial-contents permalink) I see; thank you for that! That does change things a bit: still shorter with lists collapsed than Calcium, but still long. We probably should have a mandatory maximum infobox size but thinking about it, that's a discussion for Wikipedia at large, not Wikipedia's taxonomy infoboxes in specific. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 19:30, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Palaeotherium is a bit extreme in having such a long list of species and synonyms. Many fossil genera have only one species and few if any synonyms, and thus have very short taxoboxes. Giving a "see text" notice as with Dimetrodon is also an option when it simply becomes too much, or collapsing the list as at Titanosauria. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 19:39, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Quick facts Scientific classification ...

Horodyskia Temporal range: Middle Calymmian – Late Ediacaran 1480–550 Ma Pha. Proterozoic Archean Had. Paleoprot. Mesoprot. Neoprot. Calymmian Ectasian Stenian
The holotype fossil of Horodyskia
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Clade:	incertae sedis
Genus:	†Horodyskia

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Quick facts Scientific classification ...

Primates Temporal range: 65.9–0 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N Pal. Eocene Oligo. Miocene P P Early Paleocene to Present
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Clade:	Pan-Primates
Order:	Primates

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I've been playing around with this template in my sandbox and I really like the idea. Is there a plan to add graphical support for the Precambrian? I see that the template documentation says that Periods before the Cambrian are not formally subdivided into epochs or ages, and this template will not work on them, however, I feel like it could be possible to add this support, maybe on a different scale? As an example, I added an infobox excerpted from Horodyskia with the template added twice. The first bar is using the parameter Proterozoic (an eon) and the second bar is using the template Mesoproterozoic (an era). The bar appears to display correctly in both cases (the runoff is expected as the Mesoproterozoic ends midway through Horodyskia's range), just without the graphics. mdm.bla 18:00, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Yep, now that I think about it, that could also be a great addition! I'll try to see if I can set this up for the Proterozoic as a demo. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:25, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Additionally, not sure of the reason behind this, but the {{All time 250px}} template is wider than the Phanerozoic one (which is 220px). Should they be uniformized, or should I make a separate 250px wide template for Precambrian subdivisions? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:32, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

They can probably just be uniformized. Template:All time 250px also appears to display as a larger font than Template:Phanerozoic 220px. mdm.bla 18:40, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Added a slight fix so the bars wouldn't have runoff, and are instead displayed as open on that side if there would have been some. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:36, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

• In the first example, the meaning is not intuitively accessible from the display. I spent awhile thinking the longer green bar was intended for the upper line of geological periods, as its green bar is very small. Would it work if the second bar is below the zoom in? CMD (talk) 08:17, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  That could work! Although I'm not sure of the effect of having the more detailed/technical bar first. Alternatively, we could have the green bar on the bottom side of the second bar, or even just space them up by a few more pixels? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 09:24, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  I believe having it on the bottom of the second bar is what they were suggesting. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 14:20, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  How would that work when there are more than two bars?

  Either some sort of highlight (surrounding circle?) when a bar is narrower than (some amount) to make it more prominent or (probably more difficult to implement) a link between the bars would be clearer imo. c.f. File:Vatican_Europe_Location.svg. Thryduulf (talk) 14:42, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  From what I understand, there shouldn't be more than 2 bars per infobox if/when this is added to mainspace. mdm.bla 14:47, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  Yep, that's also what I'm having in mind. The only case where nested bars could be possible is the one to the right (as both the Proterozoic and its eras have bars), but in that case we should just pick the most precise one that fully covers the range (in this case, the Proterozoic as a whole, as the Mesoproterozoic one sees half the range be cut off).

  A link between the bars could also be possible, I'll have to look into it. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:01, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  I mean, theoretically you could have era-level bars for the Phanerozoic as well (see example for Primates with the parameter Cenozoic), but at that point you might as well just also create Template:Era fossil range. mdm.bla 15:11, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  Honestly, it makes sense for the Cenozoic as its periods are already quite short and you're likely to see ranges overlapping (especially between Neogene and Quaternary), but in that case, you wouldn't want another period-level range below it. Also, given the already broadened scope, I'm open to renaming the template something like {{Detailed fossil range}}. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:21, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Quick facts Scientific classification ...

Palaeotherium Temporal range: Middle Eocene – Early Oligocene 43.5–32.5 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N Da. S T Ypr. Lut. B Pr. Rup. Ch.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Perissodactyla
Family:	†Palaeotheriidae
Genus:	†Palaeotherium Cuvier, 1804

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• For comparison, here's the sandbox version with the zoom-in and the bars on the lower side. Not especially a fan of that alternate design, although if the community prefers it I'd be happy to go with it. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 13:16, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  On second thoughts, that design is starting to grow on me, especially on a full-width infobox where it doesn't look too busy. Still torn between both, personally. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:18, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I do think the addition of the zoom-in makes this a favourable version, could help with any confusion as to how the bars relate to one another. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 16:32, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I very much like this template as an idea, and quite like the current implementation. Although the template could use much better documentation. I also prefer the version with the zoom-in and bar on the lower side (can we just call it option 2?). However, in the case of the zoom-in on option 2, I'm uncertain that it is sufficiently visible. Likewise the colors used to demarcate stages and epochs are very close to each other.

• I could not decipher the Pre-Cambrian sections, but by my count it has the following (very useful) possibilities: 5 period-to-stage level zooms for Paleozoic, 3 period-to-stage zooms for Mesozoic, 1 era-to-epoch level zoom for Cenozoic, and 3 period-to-stage level zooms for Cenozoic as well.
  • Courtesy of Monster lestyn in a convo on Discord: the Pre-Cambrian sections are 2 eon-to-era for the Archean and Proterozoic Eons, and 3 era-to-period for the Proterozoic's eras. That far back, it doesn't need to get more granular.
• I will note that there are not era-level zooms for Paleozoic and Mesozoic, whether to the better-known periods or the epochs (like Cenozoic has); I do not deal with Paleozoic or Mesozoic paleontology often enough to say whether those who do edit in that area would find those useful.
• The unofficial, but frequently used, split of the Carboniferous into the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian periods is not treated at all. I have no opinion on whether there should be two extra for these but am mentioning it for others' sake.

Personally, I have an issue with the Quaternary-to-stage bar, because in the Quaternary, the stages are more commonly called the Early/Middle/Late Pleistocene than Gelasian/Calabrian/Chibanian, and the rigorous adherence to having the sections proportionate to the time span means the Holocene doesn't show up at all. I would ask that the names be amended and the sections more evenly proportioned.

Overall, I thank Chaotic Enby for their hard work and support widespread implementation of this template. SilverTiger12 (talk) 22:30, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I saw this on the WP:Palaeo Discord and overall, I really like the concept! While I do agree that oversaturation could be an issue with it, having it in tandem with the overall timescale is nice. I prefer the second method (the one with the zoom in) because in my opinion it helps connect the two and explain the concept to the layperson. My only gripes really are with the Quaternary period. the ages like Chibanian, Gelasian, and Calabrian aren't commonly used in literature, it is much more common you hear the unofficial terms "Early Pleistocene" = Gelasian & Calabrian, "Middle Pleistocene" = Chibanian, and "Late Pleistocene" (not official recognized, but very commonly used. I really think for the Quaternary, you should have one range that separates into the Early, Middle, Late Pleistocene, as well as the Holocene. Its unfortunately not as neat as the official terminology, but it is much more widely used in literature and by the public. All, in all, I really like the proposal and am more than happy to support it once some of the kinks are worked out --Montanoceratops (talk) 22:32, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks both of you for the feedback! @SilverTiger12, I can't really change the proportions as the bar length is proportional to the time length. For the stage/epoch demarcation, I've been using the official ICS colors from {{Period color}} – I've been thinking of adding one-pixel dividers between them to make the demarcation more visible.

The Mississippian and Pennsylvanian are a bit of a mess. They're not on the main timeline, so adding them as a zoom-in might be confusing (especially since the Pennsylvanian uses a similar color scheme to the Carboniferous itself), but I'm open to still offering them as an alternative.

For the Quaternary: thanks @Montanoceratops, I didn't know about that! I tried to follow the official one (which is why the L for Late Pleistocene is in italics), and, while I'm worried that the timeline would be visually very unbalanced if more than half of the period was a single subdivision, I could do it if that reflects the sources better than the "official" version. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 01:21, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, unfortunately there really isn't a perfect solution since there's a lot of variation in the geologic timescale. While I do think having half of the Pleistocene as one period is a little silly, I would like to definitely prioritize the most common terminology used in scientific literature if possible, since, from my experience, most folks in Quaternary research use/are familiar with the early/middle/late terms over the "offical" ones (based on both my research into formations myself for Wikipedia and my friends' book, as well as my discussions with folks interested in Pleistocene research and paleomammology). And at least for the Chibanian, that's already what Wikipedia redirects to. Unfortunately really no matter how its split there's compromise involved, because there's a lot of nuances in the international timescale, as well as the many, many local scales that sometimes get utilized over the international ones (this is thankfully becoming increasingly rare, except for maybe land mammal ages). Still, I do think this template is really great and it will be a very useful addition to extinct species pages (as well as many straight up geology formation pages which also use the same template). I do hope you add an arrow icon for specific date. For example, if something is exactly 47 Ma, it doesn't display anything, but sometimes dates can get really precise (down to a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of years).

Additionally, I personally think its fine not distinguishing the Mississippian from the Pennsylvanian too heavily. The colors already imply it, and most modern resources usually say Carboniferous first and foremost over Mississippian or Pennsylvanian.

All in all, great work! Montanoceratops (talk) 04:56, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I've made quite a few changes, including moving the zoom from the sandbox to the main template, slightly darkening the zoom color, adding dotted bars to distinguish epochs (which add a bit of visibility to the latest epoch when it's short), fixing the Pleistocene timescale, and adding the arrow icon. As I believe these are all the changes that could be addressed, I'll mark it as ready for mainspace! Thanks a lot to all of you for the feedback! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:03, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

RfC: Term dates in Infobox officeholder

{{Infobox officeholder}} is not clear about the usage of term dates, which leads to situations such as Kristi Noem, where users have added not only dates in the future, but labels such as "TBD". Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 175#RfC: Interim use of successor in Infobox officeholder implied that Wikipedia should not be including dates that have not happened yet, and precedent supports that assumption, but it leaves open the TBD issue.

Should the term dates in {{Infobox officeholder}} be strictly limited to dates that have already passed, excluding non-specific labels? elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 02:08, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

CentralNotice banner in Indonesia explaining the recent block on auth.wikimedia.org and linking to ID WP community statement

Background: Indonesian government blocked the login/registration authentication subdomain in Indonesia since Feb 25th.

• (Indonesian) Kemkomdigi Batasi Fitur Login Wikimedia
• https://en.tempo.co/read/2091029/contributors-urge-indonesia-to-unblock-wikipedia-login-access
• https://voi.id/en/news/561350
• https://www.techinasia.com/news/indonesia-limits-wikimedia-access-after-registration-delay

The communities from Indonesia have written a statement together, and proposed to put up a banner:

• (Indonesian) https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pernyataan_resmi_komunitas_Wikipedia_bahasa_Indonesia_terhadap_pembatasan_akses_auth.wikimedia.org_di_Indonesia
• Place to discuss this statement in English
• Banner (ongoing) request in Meta.

I would like to invite English Wikipedia to put a banner as well, to be displayed through March 10, 2026, with Indonesian geolocation (according to stats.wikimedia.org, in February 2026, English Wikipedia has 58 million page views from Indonesia), explaining the restriction and link to the community statement.

Wikimedia Foundation statement can be found in Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2026-03-10/In_the_media#Logins_blocked_in_Indonesia

Banner content (feel free to copyedit):

Since February 2026, registration and login access to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects has been blocked in Indonesia. At this time, these sites remain accessible to read, and to contribute to as logged-out users.

read more →

Cheers. Bennylin (talk) 06:30, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

A banner is probably a good idea to inform editors/users of the situation as it will impact some users, but the second sentence directly communicating with the Ministry does not seem necessary for this. May as well include a link to that Signpost which seems to explain the situation, unless we want to spin up a separate information page. CMD (talk) 07:04, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Feel free to edit the banner. We were thinking of tagging the ministry in social media and such. Bennylin (talk) 07:22, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

A separate information page wouldn't be a bad idea. It could focus specifically on how it affects readers and editors and what actions they can take, with a link to the Signpost for more information on the background. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:12, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I would combine then with a few tweaks like so, with the signpost link as a placeholder for a specific information page:

Since February 2026, registration and login access to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects has been blocked in Indonesia. At this time, these sites remain accessible to read, and to contribute to as logged-out users. CMD (talk) 03:46, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis maybe this link instead? Wikipedia:Open letters/Official statement from the Indonesian Wikipedia community regarding the restriction of access to auth.wikimedia.org in Indonesia. – robertsky (talk) 04:03, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I would not link an open letter from another Wikipedia so prominently unless endorsed by the English Wikipedia community. CMD (talk) 05:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I've incorporated CMD's version. We can still discuss where to link the "Read more" to (or none at all). Thanks. Bennylin (talk) 08:51, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Support. Also in agreement with CMD. – robertsky (talk) 07:11, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Support. Jack Wylde (talk) 08:30, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Agree But, as mentioned by CMD, instead of directly urged by "us", should we use the literal translation from Indonesian copy that encourage our readers to do so? Or, is it intentional in English?

So, what do you think if we go with: "Since February 2026, registration and login access to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects has been restricted in Indonesia. We [encourage you to] urge the Ministry of Communication and Digital Technology [Affairs] to revoke this restriction so that we can continue to disseminate knowledge together!" William Surya Permana (talk) 13:25, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I have incorporated your changes. Thanks. Bennylin (talk) 17:31, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

WMF's statement: At this time, Wikimedia projects remain accessible to read and contribute to as logged-out users. should probably be added to the notice too. Some1 (talk) 13:44, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

That would be obvious because they're able to visit that wiki page, no? Bennylin (talk) 17:32, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Support a banner with whatever wording the community agrees upon. This should be the response when Wikipedia is forcefully censored. It's frightening how common it's becoming, and it's even more frightening that, to this point, a portion of the community has been so resistant to protesting when it happens. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:09, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Explanation of the Proposal Process

You have a sentence or two at the top of this page for where to post for various kinds of topics, but nowhere (accessible) do you have an explanation of the steps in the proposal process or of ways to help shepherd the proposal to approval or even to get an acknowledgement of awareness by people who make decisions on proposals.

The lack of the explanation does not properly acknowledge people's efforts in making a proposal, and it can result in just a waste of time for the proposer and anyone who reads the proposal and especially comments on it. This ultimately discourages people from making proposals to try to improve Wikipedia.

Thank you for your consideration. ~2026-90420-1 (talk) 16:21, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Proposals are posted here and discussed by those interested in doing so to reach a consensus. For high profile issues, a mass message drawing attention can be sent out, though we try not to pester people, either.

The best thing that someone can do to persuade others to support a proposal is to explain what concern/issue the proposal is trying to remedy and why the proposal is the best way to do that.

I'm guessing you've wanted to offer proposals but have felt discouraged? Please offer one now, if desired. 331dot (talk) 17:02, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I actually already made a proposal, which did include the reasons for the proposal -- appearance and sustained readability. It was discussed on various points, people went out of their way to contribute some helpful graphics and other things, *there was no controversy to draw many comments*, and then nothing more happened, and it went to archive (227).

My point in this proposal about the explanation is that I have no idea how the proposal is supposed to get the attention of actual decision makers. I have no idea what progress would look like or what the criteria are to help the proposal go in that direction. And then there's no demonstrable justification for the proposal to just fade away.

That comes across as Wikipedia saying, "We just don't care. And we don't care that you put time and effort into proposing something, and that other people put time and effort into noticing it and commenting on it (and more). We just don;t care about the efforts of anyone who was involved in this proposal."

"And given that we don't explain anything about the process ahead of time, we don't care if you waste your time again in the future." I think that Wikipedia probably does care; that needs to be demonstrated. ~2026-15808-31 (talk) 19:10, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

There is not a single Wikipedia voice. The people who make decisions on proposals are you, me, and anyone else who comments. In practice, in order to get anything accepted, it needs someone (who may be the originator of the proposal) to run with it and ensure that consensus is enacted. You, too, can be that person. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:14, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

First, that's interesting information. And as I said, it should be included at the top of the Proposals page.

Second, included in the explanation of the proposal process, what does "run with it and ensure that consensus is enacted" actually mean? How is something enacted? ~2026-15808-31 (talk) 12:41, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

How something is enacted depends on what you're trying to do. If for example your proposal is to modify a particular policy or guideline, then you enact it by making the necessary edit. Athanelar (talk) 16:26, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for that information. Again, it needs to be at the top of the page. And that needs to include how you know when consensus is reached to make the change appropriate. And how do you edit the Proposals page?

Also, the experience that led to this is the proposal that's now archived at 227, regarding another background color option. I program, but not web pages. That's a broadly technical change involving whatever the mechanism is to add the option where the Dark Mode option is, and changing at least one part of the CSS. Obviously, if not done correctly, this could be very harmful. So, who enacts that? (Who enacted the Dark Mode option?)

So again, it's important to have this information beforehand to be sure of how and where to guide any type of proposal, so that you don't just waste the time of anyone who contributes their time to the process.

227 is an example. It would indicate that this likely happens more regularly than that. So, that's a lot of wasted time. It's also a lot of missed opportunity to improve Wikipedia. How many good ideas have just faded away because the process wasn't handled as it needed to be? ~2026-15808-31 (talk) 05:58, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Syntax - Mathematical Expression - Coding Examples

More than 15 years ago looking at coding of mathematical expression in Wikipedia with the background of Computer Science (parsers, compiler theory, ...) I perceived the mix of XML-tags for the MATH-tag and LaTeX inside the XML-tag as big technical challenge while the rest had a simple Markdown like notation for the source text editor. Now I can appreciate those decisions:

• user-centric approach Editors are used to LaTeX for mathematical expression in their work, so for a least a part of the community members it is much more convenient to uses the source code editor even if WYSIWYG editors are available.
• interoperability - Web libraries like MathJax, TexMath extension for LibreOffice use LaTeX, so it allows interoperability for creative commons content.
• Code chunks in Wikipedia KnitR package or Jupyter notebook use syntax mix, to create executable code that calculates the values of mathematical expressions while there is syntax highlighting for programming code that shows equivalent code for processing mathematical expression (e.g. numerical analysis)

Now I see a transformation away from the MATH-tags towards a template driven rendering of mathematical expressions. Is there a best practice or are there recommendations/proposals how to keep coding examples and corresponding mathematical expression in MATH-tags in sync with the syntax highlighting tags to be displayed on Wikipedia article?--Bert Niehaus (talk) 09:03, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

This sounds like a topic for WT:WikiProject Mathematics. For the last discussion, see WT:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2025/Dec#HTML vs LaTeX. Preimage (talk) 11:45, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Baby Globe Fear

Hi! I saw in Village Pump (proposals) that User:SunDawn said Today's Google Doodle is about Winter Olympics, a Google logo but the Os are replaced with a puck and a hockey stick, a funny thing. It still appears as that when I searched about "holocaust" and about "Putin invasion". Both are very serious issue and Google is not changing their look for such matter. and I wondered... could we add a mechanic where on a genocide-heavy page, the baby globe would appear, but then be scared away by the topic? Thanks!

P.S. If this is the wrong place to discuss this, please tell me. SeaDragon1 (talk, contributions) 14:29, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

This seems yet more frivolous than the example that SunDawn was complaining about, and thus yet more offensive. Add to that that it would require a fair amount of effort to implement and this idea seems fundamentally unworkable. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 14:33, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Oh, okay. Just thought it would be kind of cool. SeaDragon1 (talk, contributions) 14:36, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

This implies that the baby globe manages to keep absolute perfect composure at genocide, war crimes, dictatorships, and other horrors of man. I wouldn't want to have to face him in a match of poker. ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 15:04, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

What I meant was:

The Baby Globe (if it appeared on ALL pages) would be scared by the title and flee off to... wherever.

Or cry. That works too. SeaDragon1 (talk, contributions) 16:17, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The VPP discussion got long and difficult to navigate, but don't worry, baby globe will be OK. The baby globe will only appear on a pre-determined set of articles, not every article. (The exact list of articles can be found on Meta-Wiki if you know where to look, but I haven't been sharing this list so as not to spoil the surprise.) ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 22:29, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I think your idea is kind and foundamentally right in theory but i see this as hard to implement in practice Madotea (talk) 16:56, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

I am in agreement with @Madotea for this, implementing this feature would take a lot of unnecessary templates and code complexity, and would almost guarantee that every single page relating to any form of atrocity would end up with a Wikipedia:TURQUOISELOCK. ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 14:01, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Also, the "Baby Globe Fear" module would be a big pain to fix, not only because of how complex it would be, but because of the fact that it would get a Wikipedia:PINKLOCK before you can say damn you Red Baron! ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 14:04, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

I meant like how the baby globe appears on pages, right? Well, maybe if the globe appears on a... let's call them no-no pages for now. Anyways, if the globe appears on a no-no page, then it plays a video (which is literally just what the baby globe is) of it getting scared and running away, then delete the <video> element.

Pseudocode:

if (fearPages.includes(pageName))<br>{<br>    let video = document.createElement("video");<br>    video.setAttribute("loop", "");<br>    video.setAttribute("src", `/w/extensions/WP25EasterEggs/resources/media/video/scared-${mode}.webm`);<br>    video.setAttribute("style", "width: 100%;height: 100%;object-fit: contain;");<br>    easterEggContainer.appendChild(video);<br>{{#parsoid

SeaDragon1 (talk, contributions) 22:21, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

book reading mode

what im suggesting is a mode where everything appears like your reading a book in a library, it firstly, citations and links flat out don't work, to check citations, you actually have to go to the cites page and links would be like being told to buy this other book, or you could make links and work but lets assume not, you would view articles in pages, swipe to go to a page on the left or right, the first page would be the cover, it show the title, (article name) author, (article creator), writers, (recent editors), publisher, (wikipedia) A [all categories of that article], (categories for that article) and more, i think long infoboxes should be their own page, you could also swipe down or press a button on top to close that book, then you could explore a library of books that are articles, i do think the library idea is unrealistic (?) so i think it is better to have a normal searchbar (?) Misterpotatoman (talk) 06:00, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

This feature would be extremely complex, and would almost instantly get a Wikipedia:PINKLOCK. Maybe it should be a feature just to turn off links? ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 15:14, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Help:Printing Misterpotatoman (talk) 21:36, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Why would anyone want the citations and links to not work? I sort of understand where you're coming from on the pages part (kind of like having an e-book), but I don't see the point of making people manually copy and paste citations into the URL bar to check the sources for accuracy. And hyperlinks are a main part of what makes Wikipedia so useful.

Sentimental Dork (talk) 23:21, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

If the idea is replicating an e-book perhaps the idea is to keep everything in black and white? Probably something any book view could handle via css. CMD (talk) 01:42, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Searching by category with a higher depth

There should be a way to search by category with a higher depth. e.g. incategory:"Cities in Australia" doesn't give any results, because it only has subcategories. There should be a way to search within all of these subcategories in e.g. Cities of Australia at once. ChaoticVermillion (converse, contribs) 03:14, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

If you replace incategory: with deepcategory:, that will search subcategories to a depth of five: see mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Deepcategory. Alternatively WP:PetScan allows you to specify an arbitrary depth. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 07:09, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:07, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanking for things other than edits.

I had a page that I decided to db-g7 and when it was deleted, I had an urge to thank them, but I don't see an easy way. Could something be added to enable thanks for things like page creation, page deletion, moves, protection addition or removal, etc. I'm expecting that would be technically complicated, but I thought I'd drop the idea here.Naraht (talk) 20:04, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Deletions (including speedy deletions) are logged at Special:Log/delete, and you should be able to thank the deleter from there. mdm.bla 20:07, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Or you could post your thanks about anything to the user talk page. It's not hard. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:15, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Page creations can be thanked for via going to the page revision history and selecting the first diff. I don't think protection addition or removal is sth that should be thankable except for say creation of discussion regarding the protection status or similar (which can be thanked). Prototyperspective (talk) 18:07, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I have an idea

What about a template made for each page, just as a guide for beginners? We could also try to strengthen existing security measures for account saferty. An auto-deletion bot checking articles for AI usage, or deleting innacurate information may also be in order. ~2026-13727-27 (talk) 07:22, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Who would decide what is inaccurate? Phil Bridger (talk) 09:24, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

You'll need to elaborate on your idea before you post it here. For your 3rd concern there is already a bot on Wikipedia woaharang (talk) 09:24, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

There are many bots on English Wikipedia, unless you mean that there's an adminbot that deletes AI articles that I haven't seen? Tenshi! (Talk page) 11:24, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Preventing abuse of the DEPROD system

I had recently dropped a PROD on the Yamaha RX-Z article which was removed by a temporary user. You can check the diff here. I propose that we implement a check which allows only registered editors to remove a PROD template to prevent abuse of WP:DEPROD. woaharang (talk) 09:23, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

How does knowing how to create a userid relate to accuracy of a removal? Phil Bridger (talk) 09:29, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

The editor removing the prod can be held accountable for the edits he made! woaharang (talk) 13:24, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

As anyone can remove a prod for any reason, what would be the point of looking at their other edits? If someone is creating an account, temporary or registered, to avoid a block or scrutiny of previous edits, we have policies and guidance to deal with that. Donald Albury 13:51, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

That any user can remove a PROD is a feature, not a bug. The only potential issue I see here is that neither the PRODder nor the DEPRODder left a descriptive edit summary. —Kusma (talk) 10:37, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

If someone removed dozens of prods in a couple of minutes, that would suggest abuse. But a single removal is not abuse. Use AFD if required. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:22, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

In fact the opposite is true: PROD is misused by unregistered accounts who don't know our deletion policy because PRODing is much less complicated than sending an article to AFD (especially since unregistered accounts are unable to directly create AFD discussion pages!), even though PRODs receive less scrutiny than AFDs. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 06:11, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

award for collaborating well in CTOPs

Have an idea to improve the editing environment in CTOPs. Basically, set up something like WP:EOTW where people get an award for collaborating well with a user they often disagree with, or for successfully leading consensus building efforts in a heated dispute. And editors have to be nominated by someone they often disagree with (read 'opposite POV'). This'd hopefully bridge the gap between 'POV trenches' and result in CTOPs having a handful of highly collaborative regulars, which then affects newbies entering the topic areas (and make true partisans stick out more).

Atm, our only way to encourage collaborative behaviour is through punishing objectionably uncollaborative behaviour (and barnstars, but that's rare), which is not great. From a 'game' perspective (and there's always going to be some editors who treat editing like a game, esp. in CTOPs), the status quo just encourages WP:CPUSHing and avoiding petty insults etc., while collecting evidence of their ideological enemies' slip-ups to try to weaponise conduct noticeboards and expel them from the topic area. This creates a lot of bad blood which makes the editing environment even worse.

Again from a 'game' perspective, this award would add to a user's social capital, and so incentivise people to seek it. Thoughts? Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 14:14, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

This does not seem like the best idea. There should be zero "game" perspective. Editors that treat editing like a game should be sanctioned. Just give barnstars to editors who collaborate well with others, regardless of your POV. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 16:16, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

ideally, yes, but in practice it's not black or white Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 16:57, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

At first glance it seems a good idea, but I can see gaming coming from "editors have to be nominated by someone they often disagree with". There are rarely only two "sides" to a dispute, so people would insist that this is clearly defined, and it could lead to manufactured "disagreements". Phil Bridger (talk) 17:59, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree, I hope there'd be some 'panel' not restricted by legalisms determining noms, but I guess people from the peanut gallery can call out bad-faith noms/when there's similar POVs. Open to other thoughts and better ideas about the problem generally Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 18:13, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Facilitating, incentivizing, recognition for, and rewarding positive behavior and contributions does not imply editors "treat editing like a game". Stack Exchange users also do not treat that Q&A site like a game just because they can receive reputation and badges. However, I don't know whether "award for collaborating well in CTOPs" is a good idea and have doubts about it, e.g. due to requiring time-intensive manual subjective review etc. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:05, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, I'd hope a nomination would include links to discussions which display it (there'd be a high bar), and I guess someone would scan the nominee's editing history (I was thinking AE admins would be a good fit for the 'panel' as a) it'd add prestige and b) they'll have more familiarity with CTOPs and such editors) Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 19:01, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Editor of the Week was deliberately set up as a low-stakes recognition initiative, to avoid making it something that people would spend a lot of time arguing about. While in principle it's fine to have a high-stakes recognition initiative, personally I'm dubious that this would improve the editing environment in areas where there is a lot of contention. My preference is to encourage low-stakes approaches that spreads out encouragement to lots of people for small acts of collaboration. isaacl (talk) 02:06, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if Stack Exchange is the best example to use. It was deliberately designed by Jeff Atwood to gamify knowledge sharing, harnessing the desire people have to level up in service of building a repository of well-written answers. isaacl (talk) 01:56, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Didn't claim it was the best example; it's a good example and what's your point even. It works well and Stack Exchange users also do not treat that Q&A site like a game just because they can receive reputation and badges.

Btw, maybe another idea for consideration would to do sth effective about contributors who repeatedly insult others and better enable constructive deliberation on contentious topics where for example users do not address people's points, make false claims about what others say (both of which leading to "bludgeoning" accusations and difficulty for others to participate) or rule by the majority of who happens to watch the article or some noticeboard linking to the page where the subjective opinion of the majority crushes any constructive calm respectful deliberation. On a related note, I think an issue will be that users who often actually act unconstructively will get awarded with what's described here just because they also often contribute very constructively in lots of contentious topics. Prototyperspective (talk) 13:16, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

The point is that Stack Exchange deliberately made a game out of sharing knowledge, and users did indeed treat it that way, seeking to level up. That had both positive effects and negative effects. Personally, I wouldn't use it as an argument in support of a similar system on English Wikipedia. That being said, recognition initiatives don't have to work the same way as on Stack Exchange, and trying to build more esprit de corps is a good way to foster cooperation. isaacl (talk) 17:10, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

and users did indeed treat it that way, seeking to level up Disagree with that unsourced/unsubstantiated statement. Whatever they did it worked and works remarkably well. recognition initiatives don't have to work the same way as on Stack Exchange indeed. I think for a start we need better feedback & recognition than mere edit counts which do not reflect well the constructivity and contributions of users. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:23, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

It was discussed by Jeff Atwood at the time of creation, and there has been discussion online about how Stack Exchange's incentive structure led to gatekeeping and ownership behaviour. The details are not really important, since I don't think a Stack Exchange-type system is going to attain consensus support on Wikipedia. The key takeaway is that making knowledge sharing into a game can have pitfalls as well as benefits. I think Wikidata has some interesting examples of making contributing info more like a game, without any badges or levels.

I think editors should be doing more to thank others publicly, to foster collaborative behaviour by demonstrating it. I appreciate, though, that this may not come naturally to a significant proportion of the community. isaacl (talk) 02:21, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

As said, that would not make it into a game, at least for the vast majority of users. SE which I did not claim was ideal did not make it into a game either. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:32, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Let's not make barnstars be rare. In particular, I recommend The Teamwork Barnstar (for groups), the Half Barnstar (for two editors; two halves shown), and the Diplomacy Barnstar (for the peace brokers) for these situations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:26, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Feel free to write an appreciative note on the talk pages of editors who act collaboratively, whether or not they support the same views that you do, and to encourage others to do the same. Personal notes are great, particularly when they list specific actions that are being appreciated, so they really convey your personal thanks. isaacl (talk) 23:12, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I like this idea because it would let us make a cleaner case for who's pushing what POV, making it easier to eventually remove them from the topic area. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:53, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

I disagree with Thebiguglyalien. I don't think it would make a cleaner case for who's pushing what POV. It would only tell you which accounts have won the award. It is not possible to extrapolate much from that. And it is not currently technically possible to remove a person from the topic area. It is only possible to remove an account from the topic area. The non-equivalence between a person and an account means that removal acts as a filter that increases the concentration of people willing to employ deception and dilutes the concentration of editors unwilling to employ deception. This is why socks love to weaponize reporting systems of course because sanctions provide a very significant fitness advantage to people willing to employ deception via disposable accounts. This is where I disagree with SuperPianoMan9167 a bit. There is utility in thinking of Wikipedia as a game with payoff matrices.

I'm not sure whether the notion of 'collaboration' is the best target. First the caveats...

• I'm not sure what is meant precisely by 'collaborative behaviour' or how to measure it in a sensible way. Even if we could measure/recognize it (roughly) I'm not sure we have the kind of visibility into the topic area and all of its actors to make sensible evidence-based decisions. People mostly see shiny objects and hear the noise when most of the activity in the topic area just hums along undramatically in the background.
• I'm not sure that the kind of collaboration (talking?) that is being considered as worthy of merit or virtuous is an important factor in content creation in the topic area in practice since 'consensus usually occurs implicitly'. The vast majority of activity in the topic area is routine editing and does not involve conflict/disruption.
• I'm not even sure whether a collaborative environment is actually better than a diverse partly adversarial environment at producing policy compliance for something like the PIA topic area where content needs to capture things from all sorts of perspectives and sources. A bit of chaos might be better at doing that over time.
• I'm not sure whether WP:CPUSHing is good or bad given that the alternative to civil POV pushing is just POV pushing. POV pushing is not going to stop, and there is very little anyone can do about it without solving hard problems like the use of deception via disposable accounts. Editors in the topic area have POVs and it impacts every choice they make whether they are aware of it or not. So, for me, the number of active editors, their activity levels and their diversity of views is what matters much more than details about individual editors.

Having said all that, if there were an award, maybe it would be better to reward people for using the tools available to resolve conflict and find consensus on contentious issues. I'm thinking of RfC usage, things like that, tools intended to help people focus on policy-based decision making. It is those tools that I think have the best chance of making the topic area function better. Perhaps that was already captured by the 'for successfully leading consensus building efforts in a heated dispute'. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:41, 9 March 2026 (UTC) 

Wikipedia is not survival of the fittest. It is not a battleground between "pro-RS editors" and sockpuppets. It is an encyclopedia.

Civil POV pushing is still POV pushing, so it is bad. The alternative to civil POV pushing is not letting your opinions come out in your edits at all. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 18:17, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I think on here we've accepted the reality that on some topics few people put several hours every day into Wikipedia for free solely because they want to improve the encyclopedia, if we tbanned/blocked everyone with a POV this place would become a ghost town. Also, presenting and analysing evidence for POV pushing takes ages. So long as there's a diversity of POVs and they all collaborate well w one another, article quality turns out good. Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 19:15, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Article quality turns out good... if one happens to hold the POV that "wins" in that particular area. I believe most Wikipedia editors do want to write neutrally by properly summarizing the totality of sources/opinions, and do have the goal of improving the encyclopedia without tilting coverage one way or the other. But there are also many editors who are participating in bad faith by balancing articles and casting !votes in a way that strengthens their POV. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:26, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

by collaborating I mean compromising (assuming NPOV sits in the middle), RfCs are a joke in CTOPs Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 22:00, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

A lower-contrast dark mode?

I really like that users now have the option to view Wikipedia in dark mode. However, the background is pure black. This is a good thing to some people, but for a lot of people the high contrast between the black background and white lettering can cause eye strain. For me, I don't like looking at Wikipedia's dark mode because it makes my eyes feel weird. This isn't really a problem because I usually prefer light mode anyway, but it would be nice to have a dark mode to switch to at night that's comfortable to look at.

My proposal: a third mode, where the background is dark gray or a low-saturation navy, and text is a slightly more muted shade of white. Several sites have a default dark mode that looks like this, and then a separate mode where the background is pure black. I feel like lots of people would appreciate a dark mode without such high contrast.

Sentimental Dork (talk) 23:16, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if there is an easy way to do this unless you can switch to a different skin with darker colors at night. The way dark mode works (as I understand it) is that the whole page is inverted, then things that shouldn't be inverted are un-inverted (like images). -- Reconrabbit 17:31, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

The dark mode gadget does that. The dark mode that is part of the Vector2022 skin uses a color palette and sets it based on which mode is in use. Users can override those colors in their personal common.css file, but you need to be comfortable with CSS to do this (for anyone interested, see mw:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis § Target night mode using standard media query as well as HTML classes and mw:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis § Use CSS variables or CSS design tokens with fallback for background and text where possible). isaacl (talk) 17:53, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Age verification protest

There should be a banner (at least) about age verification laws, why they are bad, why they would harm free software, why digital wallets will force everyone to have Android or iOS, why some variants (like the New York one) would even ban root access to your own computer! Gugalcrom123 (talk) 17:16, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I personally am not a fan of age-verification software either, but I don't understand what that has to do with Wikipedia? Sentimental Dork (talk) 19:37, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

They might be what we need to raise awareness. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 19:42, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

If it was directly restricting access to Wikipedia, I would agree. But Wikipedia doesn't take sides on issues or promote causes, no matter how just. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:15, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

True. But we do provide factual, neutral, non-advocacy information in articles such as Age verification system, and the better those articles are, and the more they rely on the WP:BESTSOURCES, the better Wikipedia's will understand the subject. I suggest that anyone interested in this find some very good sources and improve the related articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

It might be genuinely banning free software like GNU/Linux, which Wikipedia runs on. For example, requiring that all OSes have circumvention-proof ID checks kills it. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 14:15, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia has taken sides and promoted causes in similar situations in the past, most notably Stop Online Piracy Act#Wikipedia blackout CauliflowerMoon (talk) 04:12, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

The difference is that was an existential threat to Wikipedia. Age verification, while pointless, moronic, ill-conceived, etc..., isn't. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:33, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Maybe not now, but age verification laws could affect Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects (especially the Commons) one day. Some1 (talk) 00:15, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Restricting page creation

Hello. I've seen a ton of trash drafts and AI garbage throughout my tenure at AfC, and I have a new idea. Temporary accounts and unconfirmed accounts can't create articles in any way whatsoever. Autoconfirmed users can only submit through AfC, and extended confirmed users can either use AfC or make a userspace draft. It may not do much, but a decent chunk of trash I've seen is created by unregistered users or temporary accounts. Please tell me if this is a bad idea. CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 18:28, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

The point(?) of AfC drafts (and New Page Patrol) are to prevent the public-facing encyclopedia from being filled with articles made by people who have no idea about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Temporary accounts are already under enough restrictions. -- Reconrabbit 17:35, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm thinking from the perspective of the reviewer here. From my experience, I see so many temporary and unconfirmed accounts making useless drafts that do nothing but waste our time. If TAs and unconfirmed accounts are unable to create AfC drafts, then hopefully, there will be less trash clogging the review list. CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 17:48, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

If temporary accounts are prevented from creating AfC drafts, then the people behind them will, for the most part, register an account. So the reviewer will see "a ton of trash drafts and AI garbage" created by registered users, rather than by temporary accounts. How long does it take to reject a draft anyway? Phil Bridger (talk) 18:25, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

4 clicks, so about maybe 10 seconds at most? Tenshi! (Talk page) 18:29, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

@Phil Bridger This idea was created with the assumption that at least some of the people dumping trash into AfC would not be persistent enough to get an account and make it to autoconfirmed status. Still a good point, however. CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 19:09, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Why refer to it as people "dumping trash"? New editors' submissions are often misguided, but rarely malicious. If every draft was obviously trash, we wouldn't have a backlog. If we prevented temporary accounts from making drafts, we would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater for people who make constructive contributions, and encouraging people to make useless edits to game the system in order to create articles. -- Reconrabbit 19:15, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I've just re-read the proposal and noticed that it said, "extended confirmed users can either use AfC or make a userspace draft". By preventing everyone from creating articles directly surely this generates a lot more work for reviewers? Phil Bridger (talk) 18:36, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

@Phil Bridger Thanks for pointing that out! If this goes anywhere, userspace drafting will be left alone. CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 19:06, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I have to say I would support this, or a variant thereof, if it came to a formal policy proposal. I don't care if it would create more work for AfC or if it would just prompt temporary users to create permanent accounts. Our policies seem to mostly assume it's still the mid-2000s and the vast majority of users are good-faith contributors who need to be encouraged to contribute. That world is gone. We are now flooded with drive-by editors trying to troll us, or to promote their stupid company/social media account/new cryptocurrency, or to game AI summaries. Probably two-thirds of the articles I reject at AfC are mostly or entirely LLM-written on trivial subjects, startup businesses, or the intersection of two random topics ("Breast cancer in Laos"). Any speed bump we can create to slow down automated or low-effort article creation would be welcome, however imperfect. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 22:35, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Breast cancer in Laos is a notable subject; it's a top-10 cause of death among Laotian women, and they have the highest triple negative rate in Asia. If you get such an article and can't evaluate it correctly, then please request help from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:37, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I'm sorry if I sound rude, but the example provided by WeirdNAnnoyed was likely just 2 random subjects stapled together with no regard for whether the topic was actually notable. The spirit of the statement was that oftentimes, drafts are either hoaxes, ads, AI garbage, or an intersection of random topics. CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 12:06, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure he intended it to be two random subjects stapled together, and it turned out not to be a good example of that. But it's a good example of my point, which is that what appears to an individual editor to be two random subjects stapled together might not be a non-notable subject. This is why seeking help is a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I wonder if the rate of Draft: creation (or page creation/whatever we can realistically measure) has actually gone up compared to a couple of years ago. It might be worth asking at Wikipedia:Request a query. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:40, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Said question at request a query was answered, saying that half of all drafts not moved to mainspace or deleted are made by TAs and unconfirmed accounts, and the other half is made by autoconfirmed and higher users. CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 14:20, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I'll tell you what - let's just ban article creation completely. That way reviewers will have no work whatsoever to do. While we're at it let's block everyone from editing, After all, Wikipedia has been going for 25 years now, so it must be complete, mustn't it? Phil Bridger (talk) 13:17, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Phil Bridger There are still genuinely good drafts submitted to AfC, so people should still be able to submit articles. My proposal is just to make it to where people must be autoconfirmed to create drafts, and all things considered, ten edits and four days isn't much, but it may be enough to deter spur-of-the-moment vandalism. Also, the encyclopedia is far from complete. Just click on the random article button and chances are, you will find a maintenance tag. CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 14:24, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@CabinetCavers The above response by Phil Bridger is sarcasm. If I can reiterate: New editors are unlikely to know that what they submit is violating a bunch of guidelines. That's what reviewers are for. We are given the tools to deal with bad-faith contributions, hoaxes, and advertisements before the rest of the world sees them. It's a good thing AfC exists and catches these things first. Even the harshest reviewers have draft acceptance rates above 30% - putting this barrier in place could lower that number simply by decreasing the number of existing submissions. -- Reconrabbit 15:05, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I concede Where are you getting this 30% from? CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 15:11, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Here's one example: https://apersonbot.toolforge.org/afchistory/?user=Zxcvbnm -- Reconrabbit 15:18, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 15:21, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Here's one question to think on: Are submitted drafts supposed to be "genuinely good drafts" (e.g., grammatically correct, non-promotional description that is longer than a stub), or are they supposed to be a starting point for a "genuinely notable topic" (e.g., an obviously notable subject, regardless of writing quality – e.g., the latest album released by the most famous pop star, which has a 0% chance of being non-notable)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, from the perspective of reviewers, submitted drafts are not ‘supposed’ to anything other than documents for review that have been penned by non-registered (or registered) users who assume that Wikipedia will accept them (except of course for obvious graffiti, vandalism, and other bad faith); one should not fall into the trap of believing that notability is the only criterion.

New editors are unlikely to know that what they submit is violating a bunch of guidelines: while this is only partly true - some criteria are common sense - still nothing is being done after 25 years of Wikipedia to ensure that those editors who are determined to create an article as their first edit are properly informed at the moment of registration about what is appropriate and what is not (two similar community initiatives are currently under discussion with the WMF).

So, @CabinetCavers, no , it is not a bad idea at all. In fact in 2018 by a resounding 90% consensus of a large turnout following 7 years of resistance from the WMF, users were required to be auto confirmed before they can create an article in mainspace. Maybe it is now time to consider applying the same rule for the creation of drafts. It would not deter those who are determined to write what they genuinely believe to be an appropriate article but it would probably make those think twice who intend to paste utter nonsense and AI garbage and waste their own and everyone else’s time. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:19, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I wonder whether "AI garbage" in drafts correlates with paid editing. I suspect that it does. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I think my comment was clear enough - It was long but tried to keep it as short as possible without going into unnecessary minutiae. 'and other bad faith' covers it quite adequately[User:Kudpung|Kudpung กุดผึ้ง]] (talk) 00:30, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

But it affects the utility of a rule against creating drafts until you've made 10 edits. You will recall in 2018 that very soon afterwards, we had a burst of "new" accounts that posted spammy articles on their 11th edit, and then disappeared. If a Draft: requires the same, then I think the paid editors will adapt. The cost of creating an article will go up by US$1 to account for the necessity of making 10 simple edits. But we'll still get the same garbage from those same spammers in the end. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:47, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

This is exactly my thought as well - COI editors will go through the extra hoops because they are being paid to do this/have a vested interest, while casual new editors thinking "why isn't there an article about this government official/historical figure/species of tree?" are more likely to be shut out by the autoconfirmed requirement. I just now saw that CabinetCavers edited the first comment in this thread which makes me less worried but I still want to bring this up. -- Reconrabbit 14:14, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

It does. I often see blatant AI in drafts where a COI was disclosed. CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 01:07, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@Phil BridgerI fully understand your point Phil, but in the last three years the genre and quality of articles finding their way into the NPP feed and AfC lists has changed significantly. On NPP this has had the effect of further reducing the enthusiasm of patrollers to do any reviewing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:28, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

As a preface, we should not confuse article quality issues with the "should this article exist? issues. New folks often don't know the "should this article exist?" criteria, and other creators don't bother with that question, pushing the job on the NPP'er to search the world and see if the required coverage exists. So we have folks creating articles who have no idea what Wikipedia's requirement is for existence of an article, and others who ignore those criteria and so pushing the job onto NPP to "prove a negative" when they don't meet the ignored criteria. They also get to beat up the NPP'er when the NPP'er doesn't thoroughly do their job for them. And AFC folks often don't follow their own criteria, declining articles for quality issues, making AFC sort of a rough random route. Maybe it would help to strongly suggest and create an expectation for reading wp:notability before creating a draft, and also note to them that in most cases, it requires in-depth coverage of the subject by published sources. And also create the expectation that when creating articles which need sources to meet wp:notability that they put on the talk page which of their sources they feel are most likely to fulfill this requirement. IMO this would help a great deal with the issue of this thread, as well as helping with the NPP issues. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:53, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Sounds good to me! CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 15:22, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I thought the original point of AfC was to provide a route for non-registered users to create articles after they were prevented from doing so directly in main space. It would be ironic if AfC became the reason to stop them. There are some people who have edited for years with IP addresses and really don't want an account; some are very productive. It would be a pity to alienate them. To my mind, it makes total sense to make it clear during article creation that unless the creator provides three good references or otherwise fulfil policy (e.g. NPROF), the article will be rejected at AfC without the AfC reviewer being expected to do any searching whatsoever. The creator then has six months to find three references. If they can't, or won't, I don't see their article as having any huge value to wikipedia. I wouldn't object to a similar rule for NPP: if your article doesn't have three references and you haven't made a case that it meets some policy like NPROF, it will be kicked into draft-space automatically, and if not eligible for draft-space because you already moved it from there, kicked to AfD instead. This wouldn't be a big burden on NPP/AfC. At worst, it's a burden on AfD, but that's why AfD exists. Elemimele (talk) 17:41, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

North8000's proposal would be the ideal one if this is taken out of this section, not mine. CabinetCavers----DEPOSIT OPINION, [valued customer] 17:52, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Your NPP idea is several levels stricter that the current reality, mine was a bit softer than that. Right now for most of the que (which is over 6 months) a NPP'er can't send any article to draft for any reason. Which just leaves AFD. And there even a creator who provides zero GNG references gets to use WP:Before to beat up the NPP'er for not doing their job for them. North8000 (talk) 19:59, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I do think I would support a change to the rules in this respect; I don't think it should be the responsibility of AfD nominators/NPPers to do the research for an article creator who is too lazy to do so just because the topic is arguably notable enough for inclusion. We shoukd be able to say "this is includable, but not with this article." Athanelar (talk) 00:35, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

@North8000, Thank you so much for this, you have yet again succinctly reiterated what I have been pushing multiple times for action on since 2022. ...we should not confuse article quality issues with the "should this article exist? issues. New folks often don't know the "should this article exist?" criteria - because nobody and nowhere is telling them before they begin. ...other creators don't bother with that question, pushing the job on the NPP'er to search the world and see if the required coverage exists – these are the lazy 'editors' who believe that we have 100s of users just waiting to pounce on new articles and complete them. @Reconrabbit: As for other bad faith users and paid editors who will create an account anyway, we will always have these but these but by filtering out the others before they even reach the New Page Feed or AfC will permit the reviewers to concentrate on identifying and dispatching these bad faith actors. Unfortunately too much conjecture is offered by users who do not have in-depth experience of working in AfC and NPP and with a long institutional memory of these issues and anecdotal evidence. I thought the original point of AfC was to provide a route for non-registered users to create articles after they were prevented from doing so directly in main space Too many weak arguments against heightened controls are posited by users who still take the mantra 'Anyone can edit' far too literally. Correctly, it should be: Anyone can edit but there are policies and guidelines to be observed, and registration is/could be one of these. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:06, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, but my desire is that we nobble articles that are bad rather than editors who might be bad. North8000 has got a good point about NPP's getting beaten up; this is why I haven't applied for the job. Would it help if we restricted AfD's "BEFORE" requirements to pre-existing articles that have been in main-space for a while, and insist that the obligation to check sourcing of new articles is on their author (or whoever triggered their move to main-space, either by hitting "submit" on an AfC, or moving it themselves)? Also permit draftify from AfD even if the article has previously been in draft space, as an alternative to deletion? Elemimele (talk) 14:07, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@Elemimele, ...we nobble articles that are bad ..., but there are many different kinds of 'bad' articles to nobble and behind them is a significant number of bad faith actors who need to be nipped in the bud. However, a great many new articles in the feed are created by users who simply fail to grasp what an encyclopedia is; in February this year (excluding redirects):

• 32.2% of new articles were created by users with < 100 edits.

Apart from that, @North8000's comment about NPPers getting beaten up is very real and probably the very reason why only a tiny fraction of the 800+ accredited reviewers are thick skinned enough to persevere; this research (still being evaluated) will explain. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:13, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Other areas of Wikipedia

I just have a small idea. I think the section "Other areas of Wikipedia" on the main page is too small and might get missed by people trying to navigate around Wikipedia pages (not articles) Perhaps this idea might help?Robloxguest3 (talk) 20:22, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

You've certainly not the first to suggest such an idea. The issue is that nobody's ever actually agreed on what a good solution would be.  novov talk edits 00:35, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps just making it bigger? Or squeeze it in at the top of the main page Robloxguest3 (talk) 21:00, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I Support it. However, I believe that before making any visual changes, it is necessary to discuss the actual purpose of the section to avoid changes without a clear direction and discuss this at Template talk:Other areas of Wikipedia or Talk:Main Page. {{Other areas of Wikipedia}} and {{Wikipedia languages}} are the only sections of the main page without a visual appeal, and Other areas of Wikipedia is the only one with a non-centered alignment, not that this is a problem, but it is worth noting, the problem, I believe, is the link to outdated sections such as the Portal Space.Guilherme Burn (talk) 12:32, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

A dataset containing 200,000 architectural objects: is it of interest to the community?

I'm new here, sorry.

A well-filtered dataset taken from Wikipedia contains about 200,000 architectural objects from all over the world.

You can check it out here (filters by architects, style and era are available):

https://apalladio.org/architecture-around/

This is not just a Wikidata issue, as 99% of objects have a link to a Wikipedia page, a description, and so on.

Here is the entire database (SQL dump):

Github: https://github.com/MyropolskyiHennadii/ArtefactsLocation-data

Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18955341

There's also a Java model: https://github.com/MyropolskyiHennadii/ArtefactsLocation-model

The question is: if it's interesting and useful, how do you use it properly in a wiki? Myropolskyi (talk) 13:02, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Really interesting map / app! I just wished this was possible within the standard Wikipedia app. Then more users could make use of this and learn about this as many have that app installed or install it for other reasons. Additionally, it gives people more reason to install the Wikipedia app. I think this could be made possible along with various other things if this wish was implemented whose potential I think is still not understood: W295: Filters for types of items shown on the Wikipedia app Nearby places map.

Could you upload some helpful images or ideally videos of what this webapp & mobile app can be used for and/or how to use it? I'd add them to c:Category:Wikimedia projects and maps. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:22, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I'll try to do it in a (next) week. Not sure about video:) Myropolskyi (talk) 15:47, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective

Hi!

I'm not sure, that it is the best video, but I created it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X9ptSoZOU4

And thanks in advance.

If something more would helpfull or you have questions - you are welcome. (And I supplemented the dataset-project by presenting a description of the methodology) Myropolskyi (talk) 15:55, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

It's useful, thanks. Would be best to also upload it as a webm to Commons and then adding the video to a new wiki page about the tool. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:41, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

So... this basically shows buildings, artworks, etc. on a map. When you click on an item, you see the name and some of the Wikipedia article. Items are mostly located in Europe. For example, the entire Chicago area, home to almost 10 million people and many world-class museums, had about 8 (eight) points of interest.

I'm not sure how it could be useful within Wikipedia. However, editors at Wikivoyage might find it useful for finding attractions in a similar area. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing

I do not know, where do you find 8 items. I see 423. If editor allows images, I can set screenshot, but it does not allow me do that.

If you are using android version - you can go to app-settings and set radius more high. Or just move the map and app suggests you to refresh object. (Check on web-version)

And by the way: it is not about museums at all, it is not about POI, banks, theaters and so on. It is about architecture. Only. You are walking through Chicago and seeing 423 items.

Maybe it is not enough for Chicago, but that is what has been found in wikipedia itself for now WITH architectural STYLE. Myropolskyi (talk) 17:41, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

The mobile app has something similar (iOS; Android), idk whether @User:JTanner (WMF) would be interested? Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 19:18, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Kowal2701 @WhatamIdoing

Sorry, I did not understand what do you mean with "something similar".

Just in case, I've uploaded screenshots to the project, because I can not show them here.

One is for Chicago in the Android app, the other is for the web app.

In the Android app, we see about 70 objects (within a 3 km radius), while in the web app, we see 483 (within a 10 km radius).

Android app screenshot:

https://github.com/MyropolskyiHennadii/ArtefactsLocation-data/blob/main/20260311_202356_Architecture%20Around_android_Chicago.jpg

Web app screenshot:

https://github.com/MyropolskyiHennadii/ArtefactsLocation-data/blob/main/2026-03-11%2020_41_35-Architecture%20Around%20-Chicago.png

I recommend using the Google Play app for Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=myropolskyi.android.locations&pcampaignid=web_share

In the web application, there is an "I" icon in the upper right corner, it will show you the legend (including the number of loaded objects).

And if you still only see eight objects in Chicago, I have to ask, sorry: are you viewing the web version on your phone?

Have you tried changing the zoom level? If you're zoomed in at 500-1000 meters, you might very well only see eight objects, why not? Myropolskyi (talk) 20:13, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Sorry for not being clear, I was talking about a similar feature on the mobile Wikipedia app Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 20:18, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Please see my comment above regarding that. Prototyperspective (talk) 21:14, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

If only I could read Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 21:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I go to https://apalladio.org/architecture-around/ which defaults to Munich. "Search location" at the bottom of the webpage doesn't work, so I zoom out and drag to the US. I zoom in on the general Chicago area and click the blue "Search objects in this area". It gives me a little cluster of buildings, such as the Garfield Farm and Inn Museum (all of which are close together and none of which are actually in Chicago proper). I suspect that it is only searching for objects in a tiny area, and there's no way to know which area it's going to search for (e.g., it's not where the works "Search objects in this area" are showing on the page). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

It's working (at least mostly) for me. It asked to know my location, I allowed that and it centred it on what looks to me the point x=50% y=0% of the 0.01° grid square in which I am geolocated in London and it showed me an interesting selection of points of architectural interest in that area (assuming the points shown are a representative selection of all eligible points, I'd estimate circa 40-50% coverage). Zooming out it appeared to have loaded all the points in a 0.1° grid square. Moving around and clicking "search objects in this area" it appears to load the points in the 0.1° degree area that contains the centre of the screen. The further out from central London the fewer the points it has.

Search sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I moved to the Cheddar, Somerset area and it has only two points St Andrew's Church, Cheddar, which it identifies as Medieval architecture (our article just says 14th Century), and Cheddar Palace which it lists as "Ancient Roman Architecture" and "Events: Creation (approximately):Before Christ Era (BCE), 300 - 399 years" despite it being a Saxon palace dating to the 9th century CE. I would have expected, at the very least, to also see Market Cross, Cheddar as an architectural point of interest.

I did also look in Chicago, and I saw lots of points in what I assume to be the same coverage area, including in Chicago proper. I have insufficient knowledge of that city though to estimate how comprehensive it is. Thryduulf (talk) 21:46, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

When I typed "Chicago" in the "Search location" box, nothing happened. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

The search box sometimes works for me as I would expect and other times doesn't, only sometimes autocompletes and when it does autocomplete gives some strange results. For example the first four results each time were:

• C (nothing)
• Ch Shenzhen, Chengdu, Xi'an, Taipei
• Chi Ho Chi Minh City, Karachi, Changchun, Jinan
• Chic (nothing)
• Chica Boca Chica
• Chicag (nothing)
• Chicago Chicago, Aurora, Joliet, Napierville

Searching Aurora the top four results are Denver, Colorado; Aurora, Colorado; Aurora, Illinois; Lakewood, Colorado.

When I click on the Chicago entry in the search results, it centres the view on what seems to be the southwest corner of the 0.1° degree grid square containing the centre of Chicago (i.e. 41.9°N 87.6°W / 41.9; -87.6) which in this instance is roughly 17 miles south of the city centre), but the view is too zoomed in to see the centre of Chicago. Thryduulf (talk) 23:45, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Thryduulf

Yes, it can be so.

This depends on the free geolocation service (https://secure.geonames.org/...), which sometimes behaves "unreliably".

I do not even know, what I can do here Myropolskyi (talk) 12:26, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll check these places. (The epoche appears from wikipedia-pages, but from one of the synonymes, not from all of them. I mean, if en-page with date was found the first with date, then this date comes to database. It can be and it could be mistakes in such dates) Myropolskyi (talk) 12:33, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Thinking about Wikipedia:Wiki Shoot Me, from an editing side such a tool may be useful if it can identify what sites lack photos, articles (or sections in other articles), etc. From a reading side it has its obvious browsing use but that's not something we can really integrate. CMD (talk) 12:38, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Creating the "Disambiguation" and "Disambiguation talk" namespaces

I have a idea for new 2 namespaces, "Disambiguation" and "Disambiguation talk" namespaces. All disambiguation pages (and their talk pages) will go to this namespace. ~2025-42974-91 (talk) 19:58, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

What advantage over existing practice would this give? AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:59, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I suppose it would allow disambiguation pages to coexist with a mainspace article of the same name in cases where there is both a most common use of the term but also multiple alternate uses, (so Table (furniture) could become just Table and the disambiguation page would move to Disambiguation:Table)

Whether this is a desirable state of affairs is an entirely different matter. Athanelar (talk) 16:43, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

We can already do that if we want, for example Chair and Chair (disambiguation). Anomie⚔ 18:53, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

If we were designing Wikipedia from scratch today then maybe we would implement this and maybe not. With the current state state of affairs I can't see that this would be worth all the upheaval. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:06, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Show new users what an encyclopedia is!

Ever since I've read this talk page comment, I've been wondering about a possible generational problem for Wikipedia -- newer users, having grown up in a world where paper encyclopedias are not used much, don't have much of an idea of what an encyclopedia is -- and they may take Wikipedia's quirks and humorous areas as encyclopedic, or, if Wikipedia severely declines in popularity, have no idea of what is encyclopedic at all.

I think this has happened to some extent now -- just check venues like the Teahouse, the Help Desk, and the Reference desk for many confused people who, despite our nagging, are treating Wikipedia like an everything app and don't get why people are so hung up on this quality of "encyclopedic". Beyond simply telling the new editor what not to do, or having them read through policy, I'm wondering if it would make sense to have some sort of notification occur upon creating an account, saying something like "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia! If you're not sure what an encyclopedia is, you can look at these examples:" and then have a link to perhaps Britannica's website, or, if we wish to stay local to Wikimedia, links to Wikisource's archives of old editions of Britannica or other encyclopedias. (This could also boost Wikisource editing, but it could have the side effect of users thinking encyclopedias must be written about old fashioned topics, and could result in duplication of academic biases if that's what they pick up on in the encyclopedias).

Whatever we do, I really think we need to take this step as a clear way to show what our source of information is meant to be, something very important when people are reading more ChatGPT conversations than textbooks. ✨ΩmegaMantis✨^(he/him) ❦blather | ☞spy on me 21:55, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

This has occured to me too. Would all these people writing vanispamcruftisements be as eager to shoehorn then into Wikipedia if it was explained to them that that would be like barging into the Encyclopaedia Britannica writers' room and demanding they publish their garbage? Honestly, some of them probably would, but quite a lot might reconsider what they're doing. JustARandomSquid (talk) 22:49, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Maybe we should, but I don't think it will make much difference. POV-pushers will still push their POVs and spammers will still spam, while good-faith editors will still think that an encyclopedia article has to be long and written in glowing prose, an idea which is disagreed with by the encyclopedias which I have on my bookshelves. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:23, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Collector's items! Fear not; nearly half of all Wikipedia articles are stubs. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:57, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Encyclopedias are outdated/obsolete, so I don't think we should give them any more attention than necessary. I also wonder how many new/younger users think Wikipedia is the more "serious" version of the different Fandom wikis. Some1 (talk) 14:31, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I assume you mean print encyclopaedias, because, well, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. JustARandomSquid (talk) 15:28, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Monobook was great at doing so by utilising an open book as page's background. sapphaline (talk) 11:55, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

This feels somewhat condescending. If I were a new user I'd be a bit put off by the implication that I don't know what an encyclopedia is. Gnomingstuff (talk) 16:56, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Collapsing infoboxes for mobile users

Article layout has been historically designed for a computer screen. Its width allows to present additional elements such as infoboxes along the main text column. This logic can't work on a narrow mobile screen, where additional elements are inserted between paragraphs. Mobile pageviews have surpassed desktop more than a decade ago, but the layout design is still desktop-oriented, with minimal considerations for mobile experience.

Infoboxes, a supplement material for the main text in the desktop version, are inserted after the first lede paragraph on a phone screen. This solution is problematic in multiple ways. The manual of style considers the lede the most important part of the article, and its priority is above any other piece of content. In practice, it is only respected for the first lede paragraph, because the majority of readers see an infobox next. With the size of infoboxes taking up to several phone screens and the amount of information inside, the comprehension certainly suffers by the time reader gets to the second lede paragraph, which is written to be read immediately after the first one. And huge infobox might be a nuisance itself, with tendency to fill it with tangential or technical data suitable for table form. Vladimir Putin, Biphenyl, Vietnam War, Mars, Arabic, Nguyễn dynasty, IPhone 15 Pro, SS United States - it's neither editors' nor readers' choice to have articles introduced with these long tables.

I doubt that current state of affairs is considered desirable or acceptable. In my opinion, generally only the infobox illustration is important enough to be displayed to mobile readers by default, and the rest of the infobox would be better hidden. I suppose it could be a viable workaround to make infoboxes a collapsible element, such as commons:Template:Wikidata Infobox, collapsed by default in mobile view. Better ideas might be suggested, but this is an important issue, and I hope it gets traction and some sort of solution gets developed. Qbli2mHd (talk) 22:03, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

In the mobile apps, infoboxes are collapsed. I'm not sure if that is a good default but there really should be a button to collapse the infobox at its top. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:45, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

To scrape data from Wikipedia, do you need to go through Wikipedia Business

Just wondering. ~2026-82871-0 (talk) 00:59, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

This isn't really answerable without a lot more context, but I think the answer is "no". * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:20, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

From a Foundation article from November: "Financial support means that most AI developers should properly access Wikipedia’s content through the Wikimedia Enterprise platform. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, this paid-for opt-in product allows companies to use Wikipedia content at scale and sustainably without severely taxing Wikipedia’s servers, while also enabling them to support our nonprofit mission."

I would try looking at Wikimedia Enterprise. From what I am getting from this TechCrunch article, I think it might be what you are looking for or in the right direction. --Super Goku V (talk) 02:34, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

How much data and how frequently? Aaron Liu (talk) 16:49, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

You don't need to as long as you comply with Wikipedia's content licence, but if you are copying a lot of data it would probably be better (for both you and Wikipedia) to. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:01, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Considering that our API is free for most small usecases and we freely provide dumps for everyone to use, no? Wikimedia Enterprise is if you usecase meets the brief "if I do this, I will cause production outages" Sohom (talk) 18:37, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

See WP:Database download for an overview of ways to get at our data. —Cryptic 21:16, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi @~2026-82871-0,

Yes as other people have said here - it depends on "how much" or "how fast" you want... There are various APIs and database dumps that exist. Here's the User-Agent Policy and API Usage Guidelines for starters.

You can also access and download content via the enterprise API service directly, at no cost, up to a fairly high limit. That same dataset is also available via several alternative methods including WikimediaCloudServices and external platforms. For information on those options see meta:Wikimedia_Enterprise#Access.

LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 14:59, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

There are even companies that will put all of Wikipedia on a hard drive and ship it to you for a fee. See prepperdisk.com (don't know if they are any good - I just picked the first one duckduckgo listed). --Guy Macon (talk) 15:22, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ RoySmith (talk) 16:24, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

they ideally should but we can't legally do anything more than politely ask them to stop mghackerlady (talk) (contribs) 15:42, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

We can. Terms (legal contracts) apply as LWya listed them, and there's many methods to block excess traffic when we want to. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:14, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 3

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on January 30. Please help translate.

---

Highlights

• Wikipedia Library: Wikipedia Library gained new content partnerships, restored access to the British Newspaper Archive, and added an Arabic language academic resource with more than 7 million records.
• Gender gap: The Celebrate Women 2026 campaign will run from March 1–31 to advance the achievements of the women’s rights and gender equity movement globally.
• Annual Planning: The Annual Plan is the Wikimedia Foundation’s description of what we hope to achieve in the coming year. We invite you to shape this plan together with us. Between now and the end of June 2026, we will have continuous conversations about how global trends may shape our future, how we can experiment, adapt and respond together.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Patrolling improvements: A new feature available on Special:Contributions shows temporary accounts that are likely operated by the same person, and so makes patrolling less time-consuming.
• Wikifunctions: How Abstract Wikipedia articles can be integrated into Wikipedia language editions to enable Wikipedians to write an abstract article once and have it available in many languages.
• Suggestion Mode: A new Beta Feature for the VisualEditor, Suggestion Mode, is now available on English Wikipedia for experienced editors. This features proactively suggests actions that people can consider taking to improve Wikipedia articles, such as "add citation", "improve tone", or "fix an ambiguous link".
• WDQS Blazegraph Migration: As part of the migration away from Blazegraph (the current backend of the Wikidata Query Service), an initial evaluation of open-source triple store candidates has been completed. Using the published evaluation methodology, performance, stability, and compatibility was assessed.
• Tech News: Latest updates from Tech News week 06 and 07 include the new Watchlist labels feature that allows logged-in contributors to organise and filter watched pages in ways that improve their workflows. They also link to the 44 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.

Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events

• Funding Principles: The interim Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC) has published a first version of the Funding Principles which guides the broader grantmaking ecosystem across the Wikimedia Movement. Share your feedback in the Discussion page.
• Wikipedia 25: Celebrating 25 years of Wikipedia in Warsaw.
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MediaWiki message delivery 23:26, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

AI agents are coming - what's the current state of protection?

This feels like something that must've come up already, but I'm not seeing it. As many interventions likely require WMF involvement, I'm putting it here.

With the sudden popularity of e.g. OpenClaw, AI agents are becoming more popular, and stand to be radically disruptive to our project (omitting potential applications for the time being, to avoid compiling a playbook). I'm curious what the current plans are to deal with an influx of agents.

Seems to me there are interventions that would intercept a large number of unsophisticated agent users, like using clues in the user agent (the web kind, not to be confused with AI agent). Then the question is about people who take steps to be sneakier. Rapid edits can be dealt with by captchas (assuming the captchas are hard enough). We could take action against data center IPs, but that would probably snag some humans as well (and pushing agents to residential IPs makes them more costly but not impossible to use). Then there are the various imperfect LLM output detection tools, of course.

Apologies if this discussion is already taking place somewhere - happy to receive a pointer link. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:51, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

But can AI agents press edit or even be able to navigate around the editing method? ~2026-68406-1 (talk) 16:50, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

You can edit Wikipedia through the API without using the front-end web interface. That's how bots, tools, etc. make edits. Both use the same process on the back-end, more or less, as I understand it. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:10, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

They have been shown to send emails on their own accord by navigating the Gmail interface, so I bet they would be able to edit Wikipedia as well (though I don't know about the CAPTCHA). OutsideNormality (talk) 06:02, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

I had a small moment of panic about agentic browsers in December and the consensus seemed to be that it wasn't time yet, but now the OpenClaw-enabled crabby-rathbun/matplotlib incident has me worried again. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 07:13, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

That's either (1) a human pretending to be an agent or (2) a human prompting their agent to write a hit piece. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 18:19, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject AI Cleanup. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 07:21, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

It would be interesting to encounter AI agents that you could try breaking their instruction prompts and have them dox their creator. That would be fun to attempt. There's so many good guides out there on how to destroy AI agents (under the guise of preventing such actions, but it's still informative on how to do it purposefully). Silverseren^C 07:29, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

i hope that the doxxing is said in jest and not an encouragement to do so. – robertsky (talk) 13:47, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

It was in jest, though also somewhat uncontrollable? There's been multiple instances of AI agents doing it spontaneously or with minimal prodding, giving up either personal details if they somehow have them or just account and password info, IP address and computer info, ect. Silverseren^C 18:14, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for raising this. The LLM capabilities that the major providers have released in the last month pose an existential threat to the project today, let alone factoring in capabilities in future releases. Early 2025 GPT-4 era models were cute little toys in comparison; non-autonomous, with obvious output that was easily caught with deterministic edit filters. Autonomous agents are indeed coming, and output may improve to the point that detection is difficult even for experts. Big tech data center capex is ramping 20%+ YoY and given the improvements in LLM functionality in the last 6 months, much more must now be expected. The latest releases have shaken me personally and professionally. NicheSports (talk) 08:38, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

We have an obvious place to document how much of what we see on Wikipedia (and the Internet in general) is generated by AI. That page is Dead Internet theory. Alas, a single editor has taken WP:OWNERSHIP of that page and WP:BLUDGEONS any attempt to make the topic of that page the topic that is found in most reliable sources -- whether the Internet now consists primarily of automated content. Instead the page claims that the dead Internet theory is a conspiracy theory and that the theory only refers to a coordinated effort to control the population and stop humans from communicating with each other -- something no reliable source other that the few that bother to respond to the latest 4chan bullshit talk about. There does exist such a conspiracy theory -- promoted by Infowars and 4chan -- but that's not what most sources that write about the dead internet are talking about.

There was even an overly broad RfC that is being misused. The result was no consensus for a complete rewrite of article, but is now used (with the usual trick of morphing no consensus into consensus against) as a club against anyone who suggests any changes to the wording of the lead sentence.

It's sad really. It would be great if, in discussions like this one, we could point to a page that focuses on actual research about how big the problem is that human-seeming AIs are taking over the job formerly done by easily-detected bots. I gave up on trying to improve that page. Life is too short. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:29, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

4chan was the origin of the phrase and the conspiracy theory the original sense of it. It seems to have gone through semantic diffusion to now just mean "there are lots of bots on the internet". The process seems complete now though, inevitably the page will be rewritten, eventually... TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:33, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

These can be easily blocked as unauthorized bots. sapphaline (talk) 16:46, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. We have more time than usual here, since right now we're still in the phase of these tools being used by AI tech bros and not the general public. Which doesn't mean do nothing, obviously.

I will admit to being somewhat less concerned about this development, at least for Wikipedia. This could be premature or overly optimistic but it seems like the main benefit of agents vs. chatbots for the average person using AI to edit Wikipedia is that they don't have to copy-paste ChatGPT output, which doesn't seem like an enormous amount of friction for this use case compared to, say, doing shopping.

I also would expect that people, particularly the kinds of people who want to edit Wikipedia maliciously (which is a smaller subset of people, though) would find different ways to spoof User-Agent etc if they are not already. (Grok apparently is already.) Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:31, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

still in the phase of these tools being used by AI tech bros - There are some of those with access to lots of resources who have expressed an interest in messing with Wikipedia... But also, it wouldn't take a lot of careful agents to be seriously disruptive. But we're getting into WP:TECHNOBEANS territory. Hard to talk defense on a transparent project without encouraging offense. :/ — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:19, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

"we're getting into WP:TECHNOBEANS territory" - would you be comfortable discussing this by email? sapphaline (talk) 18:21, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

By the way, none of the pre-emptive solutions proposed here are effective. Residential proxies are dirt cheap, user agents are easily spoofed and captchas are easily bypassed. sapphaline (talk) 18:01, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

That they aren't going to catch everyone doesn't mean they're ineffective at catching some. Only an unsophisticated sock puppeteer, for example, would be caught by a checkuser, but it's still a valuable tool because it does catch a lot of sock puppets. It's a starting point, not a solution. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:14, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Thoughts and prayers PackMecEng (talk) 18:18, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

guess ECPing main and project space is a (temporary) last resort Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 22:58, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

user agents are easily spoofed User agent spoofing can easily be detected. Look up TCP and TLS fingerprinting - while those can be spoofed, it's generally harder than spoofing a single header. With JavaScript (slightly outdated article), or even plain CSS (using a technique similar to NoScript Fingerprint), you can make it even harder to successfully spoof the user agent - especially if you don't outright block the user, but instead silently flag them in Special:SuggestedInvestigations, giving no feedback to attackers on if their spoof was successful or not, at least until they get blocked (although this may be undesirable, as the AI edits would be visible for a short while). OutsideNormality (talk) 23:03, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

(Of course I'm not necessarily suggesting any of this be implemented, I'm just outlining possibilities.) OutsideNormality (talk) 23:27, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I haven't quit editing yet, but I will in the future due to the overwhelming flood that is coming from AI. As is usually the case, the WMF will barely lift a finger, and if they do it will be the wrong finger. Millions of jobs are being replaced by AI in the real world workforce. The impact here will be felt just the same. We can't really stop it. The project will be destroyed by it. It's already happening. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:51, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Which fingers should they lift? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:25, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Maybe cook up some AI agents that can spot fake references and references that don't support the content cited to them? I think such AI would fix roughly 90% of all AI related problems we have right now (and 50% of the future ones) and many problems from non-AI edits. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:36, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

this won't work, if LLMs cannot accurately characterize a source then they definitely can't determine whether a source is accurately characterized, the same mechanism would be at work

outright fake references are pretty rare nowadays Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:45, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

That seems to assume that it's impossible for an AI - even a non-LLM AI - to compare sources to article claims, which is unproven (and likely false). Based on some complaints I have seen on AN and elsewhere, I am not sure that fake references are as solved as you seem to assume? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:26, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Fake references aren't solved, but they have become less common with newer LLMs that have search capabilities and/or the ability to provide sources to them. Which doesn't mean that the text doesn't extrapolate beyond the source. Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:30, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

OK, but this doesn't demonstrate that "this [cook up some AI agents that can spot fake references and references that don't support the content cited to them] won't work" at all. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:15, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

...because the same process by which it summarizes a source is the process by which it "spots fake references"? Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:36, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff, Not really? Looking up information can be reduced to a similarity search on a vector database using transformers, "summarizing" is different in that it requires the generation of novel information based on the existing mappings. Sohom (talk) 19:58, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, I didn't know that. At some point though, the information has to be actually conveyed, and then you're back to the LLM generating that. Gnomingstuff (talk) 04:26, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

But that still doesn't support the contention - minutiae about how LLMs operate do not demonstrate that "this [cook up some AI agents that can spot fake references and references that don't support the content cited to them] won't work", because, for one thing, a LLM can operate recursively in a trial-and-error. Never mind that LLMs aren't the only type of AI out there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:33, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this idea, @Jo-Jo Eumerus! We are actually beginning to explore exactly that: whether AI models might be able to help us surface to editors times when a reference appears not to support the claim it is being used to cite. Feel free to subscribe to or comment on that Phabricator task if you'd like to be involved!

As to your question, @Gnomingstuff, about whether or not this is work feasible for AI, we don't know either. So I want to emphasize that it is still at a very early stage, and if we ultimately find that it's not a suitable task for AI, we won't move forward with it. We'll seek community collaboration on the development of any features that come out of it long before they reach the deployment stage. Also, any such features will be informed by our AI strategy that centers human judgment. For instance, I could envision a future in which an editor opens up an article and a Suggestion Mode card appears next to a reference stating that an AI tool thinks it may not support the text it's being used to cite, prompting them to check it (this is one way to keep a human in the loop).

Cheers, Sdkb‑WMF ^talk 19:49, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Given the capabilities recently released, with more coming, drastic action would be required. The following are the magnitude of changes that could even have a chance

• Negotiation with LLM providers to build guardrails into models preventing their use in generating wikipedia style content
• Banning TA editing, and requiring new editors to submit real-time typed essay responses during sign up to establish a semantic and statistical baseline
• Limiting new accounts to character-limited edits for their first N edits, to ensure that new users are willing and able to contribute without LLM assistance
• Obviously, completely banning LLM assistance in generation or rewriting of any content, anywhere on wikipedia. The latest releases are nothing like what came before; it will completely overwhelm the community's ability to even identify it. The strictest measures are the minimum measures

Of course, most of these will not happen, so we will turn the project over to the machines. Devastating stuff really NicheSports (talk) 18:10, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

There's already been a massive amount of traffic in having to deal with LLM using editors. From my chair, an immediate first step that must be taken is to ban the use of LLMs by any account, including TAs, and make it a bannable offense after one warning. That's just the first step that must be taken. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Agreed this is the first step NicheSports (talk) 18:20, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Disagreed. This violates a fundamental Wikipedia guideline. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 18:22, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I feel like TAs are a red herring here -- maybe you are seeing a different slice of this since you focus on new edits that haven't stuck around long, but the vast majority of AI edits I see are by registered users. Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:36, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

We immediately indef anyone who's rapidly spreading harmful content, and I'd consider LLM-generated content to be a much more severe problem than something like placing offensive images in articles. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:44, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Community Consensus is to allow LLM generated content with heavy guardrails and restrictions. Besides, most good faith editors, using LLM's or not would either not want to live type their essays, or would be creeped out by the privacy concerns of letting Wikipedia access their keyboard to that level. ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 16:44, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

requiring new editors to submit real-time typed essay responses during sign up to establish a semantic and statistical baseline You do realize someone could have their LLM open in another window and just type the words it generates into the form manually? SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 18:15, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

This will leave a wildly obvious statistical pattern that conclusively demonstrates the response was not written by a human in real time. Key stroke sequence/timing would solve this robustly NicheSports (talk) 18:19, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

So we need to mandatorily require a keylogger installed on their computer before they even think about contributing to Wikipedia? Sohom (talk) 18:44, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

No, why would that be required for this to be implemented during sign up? The data could be collected as the user types into a response box in the browser. Possibly I'm missing something. Also these are not all firm suggestions... rather examples to demonstrate how far we are from the types of measures required. I need to stop responding now apologies NicheSports (talk) 19:00, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Plus many people also write articles in word or in notepad. What would it do for that? ~2025-38536-45 (talk) 19:16, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

There's probably a set of smaller bandaid fixes:

• Gather data and collate findings about what newer LLM output tends to look like, and then publicize this better than we already are (and no I don't care about some rando using it to make their claude plugin go semi-viral). WP:AISIGNS has some things that still happen and a few that only started happening around 2025, but a lot of that page describes GPT-4 or GPT-4o era text. I'm sort of doing this but I need to add the current numbers; I've gotten bogged down in cleaning the data of template boilerplate so I haven't updated them in a while.
• Disable Newcomer Tasks or at least the update, expand, and copyedit tasks, in practice these have just encouraged users to become AI fountains because it makes numbers go up faster. They have proven to be a net negative.
• Create a tool, whether via edit filter, plugin or (optimistically thinking) actual WMF integrations with an AI detection service, that automatically flags and/or disallows suspect content. I've been tossing around doing this but nothing concrete thus far.
• Make WP:LLMDISCLOSE mandatory. I've said this before, but the most realistic best-case endgame is probably to disclose, as permanently as possible, any AI-generated content, and let readers make their own decisions based on that.
• Somehow convince more people to work on this than the handful who currently are. We need people working on detection, we need people working on fact-checking, and we need people doing the most grueling task of all which is getting yelled at by everyone and their mother about doing the former two.

Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:56, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Disabling newcomer tasks is something we could get in motion right now. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:49, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien,@Gnomingstuff Disabling all newcomer tasks feels like taking a nuclear bomb to fight what is in general a good thing for newcomers. If you show numbers (and get consensus) I can/will support disabling the copyediting task pending the deployment of paste check or similar, I don't see a reason to disable (for example the "add a link" task or "find a reference" task) over this though. Sohom (talk) 23:57, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

At the very least, a warning not to use LLMs in the newcomer tasks would mitigate the issue to some extent. But even that is going to be a tough sell because there are enough people who support LLM-generated content and will come along with "well technically it's not banned therefore we can't say anything that might be interpreted as discouraging it". Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:00, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't really see how disabling one (1) feature that has proven to be a net negative for article quality is "a nuclear bomb." Gnomingstuff (talk) 00:37, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff I think there has been significant effort poured into newcomer tasks by the WMF (and also community members) that disabling all newcomer tasks is probably be a significant undertaking that would see opposition from a lot of folks. This is not to mention, that I think we would kinda doing well meaning newcomers a disservice by potentially breaking the Homepage (which relies on the infrastructure of Newcomer tasks), which is the first glimpse of contributor workflows they see after registering.

I will don't think the same opposition applies to disabling specific tasks that are net negative, for what's worth I would not be averse to including a "don't use LLMs" notice to the prompt of the "copyedit article" prompts. And if you can show stats that for the copyediting tasks we are just creating a newbie biting machine/are creating a undue burden on Wikipedians, I would support turning off the specific tasks that are the problem. Sohom (talk) 01:21, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

(Please stop pinging me.)

This is just sunk cost fallacy. Significant effort is poured into a lot of things that turn out to be a bad idea.

At one point I was tracking this; will take a look at the recent stuff if I can find the link. Gnomingstuff (talk) 02:17, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

(Sorry about the pings, will keep that in mind. I prefer to be pinged, since I lose track of discussions on large threads like this -- and kinda assumed similar for you)

I don't see this as a sunk cost fallacy, my point is that I do think the newcomer tasks benefit well meaning newcomers (who go on to be long-term editors), what you need to convince folks of is that the downsides of any newcomer tasks outweighs any benefits that come from engaging well-meaning newcomers, (again stressing any here, I don't disagree that the copy-editing/expanding article ones are a bit of a mess, and I could pretty easily convinced that it is in the communities interests to turn it off). What I'm also saying is that my understanding is that the WMF views this similarly (especially talking about the whole set of features called "newcomer tasks" in aggregate). I don't think WMF will object to us turning off individual tasks that can be shown to be a undue burden on editors as you or TBUA were suggesting the copy-editing task has become (which again is a position I kinda agree with). Sohom (talk) 02:40, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I just did a check of the 60 copyedit/expand task edits starting at the bottom of recent changes. tl;dr: not good!