Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous
Page last updated: Wednesday 15 at 0258 UTC.
Board of Trustees Approves Closure of Wikinews
Following extended discussions within the Wikimedia movement about the Wikinews long-term sustainability, levels of community activity, and the availability of reliable news coverage on other platforms, the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation has approved the closure of Wikinews.
Following this decision, all Wikinews editions will transition to read-only mode one month after this announcement, on 4 May. From that date onward, pages on Wikinews will remain publicly accessible for reading, reference and dump downloading, but editing and new content creation will no longer be possible.
Further information about the technical transition to read-only mode and the preservation of existing content will be shared in the coming weeks.
We thank all contributors who have participated in Wikinews over the years and helped build a unique experiment in collaborative journalism within the Wikimedia movement, and we understand that some of them might be disappointed by this decision. To our regret, the project wasn’t able to fulfil its promise, and many of its functions were eclipsed by the notable news coverage in Wikipedias. We hope the Wikinews editors will continue contributing to the other Wikimedia projects or free knowledge projects.
Victoria, Affiliate and Community Liaison to the Board, 09:59, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- Pinging editors: @George Ho @Wikiwide @BigKrow @Lofi Gurl, @Dsuke1998AEOS, @Ternera, @Monsieur2137 @Asked42, @Sheminghui.WU, @Koavf, @Michael.C.Wright. @Gryllida, @Heavy Water, @Bddpaux, @Lofi Gurl, @Metropolitan90, @Tduk, @Bawolff, @Microchip08, @RockerballAustralia, @SVTCobra, @Acagastya, @Cromium, @William S. Saturn --Asked42 (talk) 10:13, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- Received, thank you. ~ Sheminghui.WU (talk) 11:25, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- Gutwrenching. Oh well. It was a good run. Lofi Gurl (talk) 12:17, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- Im going to make a Fandom for Wikinews. Thoughts? @Lofi Gurl @Gryllida Don Don 12:22, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- I won't do anything to stop you but if the project can't meet its goals on this platform then I highly doubt it can elsewhere, where articles will get far fewer readers than they will here. I'm convinced the only reason anybody even knows tgis project exists is because its WMF. We had our chance and we blew it, dude. Lofi Gurl (talk) 12:24, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- I guess Miraheze is are only hope.
- @Victoria @Lofi Gurl Don Don 12:47, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- How many users from Wikinews do you think will actually migrate somewhere else? I'm thinking it might just be time for me to move on. I'm lowkey extremely pissed that five good articles I wrote last week went stale and unreviewed. It's a waste of fucking time. I'm not getting my hopes up just for the same thing to happen elsewhere. Lofi Gurl (talk) 12:52, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- Then write less. Sorry mate. Five a week is a bit too much for me to even read, not to mention review. I was thinking it would help if on whatever new platform, users could cluster themselves by interests and geographical location; for a decade I have not found any approachable and readily available user from my continent. Gryllida (talk) 02:26, 31 March 2026 (UTC)
- How many users from Wikinews do you think will actually migrate somewhere else? I'm thinking it might just be time for me to move on. I'm lowkey extremely pissed that five good articles I wrote last week went stale and unreviewed. It's a waste of fucking time. I'm not getting my hopes up just for the same thing to happen elsewhere. Lofi Gurl (talk) 12:52, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- I won't do anything to stop you but if the project can't meet its goals on this platform then I highly doubt it can elsewhere, where articles will get far fewer readers than they will here. I'm convinced the only reason anybody even knows tgis project exists is because its WMF. We had our chance and we blew it, dude. Lofi Gurl (talk) 12:24, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- Im going to make a Fandom for Wikinews. Thoughts? @Lofi Gurl @Gryllida Don Don 12:22, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- ☹️☹️☹️ JJLiu112 (talk) 00:24, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
- Pinging editors: @George Ho @Wikiwide @BigKrow @Lofi Gurl, @Dsuke1998AEOS, @Ternera, @Monsieur2137 @Asked42, @Sheminghui.WU, @Koavf, @Michael.C.Wright. @Gryllida, @Heavy Water, @Bddpaux, @Lofi Gurl, @Metropolitan90, @Tduk, @Bawolff, @Microchip08, @RockerballAustralia, @SVTCobra, @Acagastya, @Cromium, @William S. Saturn --Asked42 (talk) 10:13, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- Related discussion: Wikinews talk:Migration. Gryllida (talk) 10:13, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- Aww Maroontruths (talk) 20:11, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
- Note that migration is a possibility and a link to discussion page is provided above. Gryllida (talk) 12:29, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
wn-reporters.org mail + staying in contact
Pinging those who have access to wn-reporters.org mail @Acagastya (self) @Gryllida @Pi zero (deceased </3) @RockerballAustralia @William S. Saturn @Kitabc12345 @LivelyRatification @Thibauld scelles (not sure what is their username -- @Gryllida -- do you happen to know?) @Bddpaux @JJLiu112 @Cromium @Heavy Water @Asheiou @Michael.C.Wright @Leaderboard.
I have been maintaining wn-reporters.org mail server since @Brian McNeil passed away around July 4, 2020 -- Wow, it's been almost 6 years, that aches my heart. Wikinews was part of my entire college life -- it is going to be 11 years on enwn this May 1, but after Pi zero's death, and writing his obituary, it became very difficult for me to come back here. I will talk about this later. But for now, I would request you all to individually back up your own mailboxes. (I think if you log in via thunderbird, you would see an option to export the mails). I am not pulling the plug on the server yet. So you will have the access to mailboxes for the time being. Though should we move to some other host, we would have to see how we deal with the accredited requests and access to the mailboxes. For that, I will be lurking on Libera Chat, (OFTC, Slashnet, and tilde) on IRC as "acagastya". Additionally, I have my own IRC server irc.firebyagni.net:6667/6697 where I exist as "firebyagni".
Ages ago, I had created a discord server for wikinews, but noone came, apart from @AirSThib. Should anyone want to come, for the old times sake as the wikinews diaspora, please feel free to join here: https://discord.gg/cCEzC8d.
I have had some amazing people who mentored me. I probably won't remember many of the people, but I am forever grateful to this wonderful community. Wikinews was wikinews for me because of pizero and without him, neither would I have been on enwn, nor would I have known anyone of you. @Abhinav619 @ImprovedWikiImprovment @Tom Morris @Chaetodipus @Microchip08 @SVTCobra @Tyrol5 @Cirt @Darkfrog24 @Amgine @Wikiwide @ShakataGaNai @Blood Red Sandman @TUFKAAP @Skenmy @Zanimum @Cspurrier @Hawkeye7 @LauraHale @Crtew @Ezarate @DARIO SEVERI @AlvaroMolina @Gopher65 @Bluerasberry @Henrymyman @Xbspiro @Rubbish computer @Edu! @-revi @MGA73 @Tempodivalse @Numbermaniac @George Ho @Cassiopeia @Handraulic @AZOperator @Yngvadottir @Cognitive137 and many more whom I forgot to ping -- thanks for being part of my mid-to-late teenage life. enwn reminds me when I had just finished the school, wrote my first article which failed the review, the first article that passed the review -- the college days, me leaving the first college, going to Bangalore, buying scratch cards of internet data pack to write articles, hand-writing the articles, IRC bouncers and IRC bots, telegram bridges; figuring out how to do OR, and BR, ComicCons, then media interviews and what not? When I think about it, it has been quite a journey. Including those days when I fought with pizero -- and I hated that. I have learnt a lot here, and I will be missing this community, which I cared in various degrees of capacity. No matter how little we might have interacted, your allegiance to enwn was something I respected!
If you feel like being in contact, please feel free to reach out to me. It really saddens me. And I think I will get a big bottle of beer on May 4, after the READONLY kicks in, and drink and cry.
•–• 11:08, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- Thank you for all your contributions to wikinews, @Acagastya. I did not have many opportunities to collaborate with you, and I wish I had. I also have spent much of my college life contributing to Wikinews, and I guess that will end with it. Thank you again, and take care. -- Asked42 (talk) 18:47, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- Also BTW, there is a Telegram group for Wikinews. It has been active for quite a while, and many users are present there, although I do not know their corresponding usernames. -- Asked42 (talk) 18:58, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- Actually, there is a discord server here already, there is more than 2 users on it. Gryllida (talk) 20:09, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
- It has been so nice working with you, @Acagastya!!!
- I think some issue with Wikinews are that it lacks social media exposure. Centralised 'one wiki somewhere' model can be confusing. Most real news papers pay someone to deliver their output to multiple channels (youtube, paper delivery to homes, newsletters to email, rss). These were not leveraged here. Even though things like Mastodon existed.
- I think one open source project had encouraged everyone to have a fork of it in GitHub, so they can experiment and merge later if their changes were substantial and successful. Perhaps someone could provide web hosting and ask everyone to create a fork if they wanted to maintain it and implement some ideas how to setup the workflow. These could possibly go into subdomains like 'Username-copy.wikinews.org' or 'Something-region-Username.wikinews.org'. Someone would need to go around and collect content from forks into their own fork. This could increase innovation for software and/or activate regional groups. While also making it more fragmented -- or not really, since content licence allows derivative works and re distribution, so someone could play around with how to present the same content to users differently. I think this could be inevitable.
- Connections with universities did not start beyond one university. This could be improved.
- Just a few thoughts on perspective in light of what you wrote above.
- (Wikinews helped me pass IELTS and TOEFL reading/writing components to 100%, and get a visa to Australia and cope with English language content in first year at uni. That was my impression.)
- Have a great day. Gryllida (talk) 20:20, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-15
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- The CampaignEvents extension now includes a new group goal-setting feature, enabling organizers to set and track event goals such as the number of articles created and participating contributors in real time. Similarly, participants can work toward shared targets and see their collective impact as the event unfolds. The feature is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. Learn more in the documentation.
The new watchlist labels feature (announced in Tech News 2026-07) is now available via VisualEditor, the source editor, and the 'watchstar' (or watch link, for skins that don't have a star icon). Previously it was only possible to assign labels via EditWatchlist. In all three places it is a new field following the expiry field.
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where talk pages on mobile with Parsoid are unusable after empty section headers, has now been fixed. [1]
Updates for technical contributors
- The sub-referencing feature, which lets editors add details to an existing reference without duplicating it, will be gradually rolled out to more wikis later this year. Wikis using the Reference Tooltips gadget are encouraged to update their version (typically at MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js as shown here) to ensure compatibility. Other reference-related gadgets may also be affected. [2]
- All Wikinews editions will be closed and switched to read-only mode on 4 May 2026. Content will remain accessible, but no new edits or articles can be added. This closure was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation following extended discussions. Read more.
- The Action API has had several formats for requested output. One of them,
format=php, is being removed soon. Please ensure your scripts or bots use the JSON format. This removal should affect very few scripts and bots. [3] - The Special:NamespaceInfo page now includes namespace aliases. For example "WP" for the "Project" ("Wikipedia") namespace on the German Wikipedia. [4]
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 16:19, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-16
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Experienced editors are invited to test the Article guidance feature, designed to help less-experienced editors create well-structured, policy-compliant Wikipedia articles. Testing instructions are available. Also, after reviewing the outlines, please provide feedback on the project talk page. Based on your input, the feature will be refined and transferred to the pilot Wikipedias to translate and adapt. Check out the video explaining the feature.
Updates for editors
- On most wikis, all autoconfirmed users can now use Special:ChangeContentModel page to create new pages with custom content models, such as mass message lists, making custom page formats more accessible. Check Special:ListGroupRights for the status of your wiki. [5]
- The Growth team has launched an account creation experiment to evaluate whether adding an account creation button to the mobile web header increases new account registrations and encourages more mobile users to contribute to the wikis. The experiment is currently live on Hindi, Indonesian, Bengali, Thai, and Hebrew Wikipedia, and targets 10% of logged-out mobile web users.
- View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where VisualEditor could get stuck loading on Windows devices with animations turned off, has now been fixed. [6]
Updates for technical contributors
- Starting later this week, Abuse filter editors who have the ⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽ beta feature enabled will have CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor as the editor at Special:AbuseFilter. This is part of the broader effort to make the user experience more consistent across all editors. [7][8]
- Tools and bots that access the Notifications API (
action=query&meta=notifications) will need to update their OAuth or BotPassword grants to also include access to private notifications. [9] - Due to a library upgrade, listings on category pages may be displayed out of order starting on Monday, 20th April. A migration script will be run to correct this, and will take hours to days depending on the size of the wiki (up to a week for English Wikipedia). [10]
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 15:19, 13 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-17
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- After two years of development, ⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽, also known as CodeMirror 6, is to be promoted out of beta on Tuesday, April 21. It brings better code and wikitext readability, reduction in typing errors, and other benefits to all users of the standard syntax highlighter. A huge thank you to volunteer Bhsd who developed many of the new features, including code folding, autocompletion, and linting. [11]
- A major update to the Wikipedia app for iOS is now rolling out, redesigning the interface to align with Apple's latest "Liquid Glass" visual design. Download the latest version and explore the update.
Updates for editors
- Reading lists is a feature which allows readers to save articles to a list for reading later. This feature is now in beta on Arabic, French, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Chinese Wikipedias and by default for all new accounts on all Wikipedias.
- An experiment which explores extending Page Previews to mobile web will be launched in the week of April 20 on Arabic, English, French, Italian, Polish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Page Previews are pop-ups that display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and a link to open the full article of a blue link, thereby improving content discovery. The feature is already available on desktop and in the apps. Read more about this experiment and others.
- On several wikis, logged-in editors who haven't confirmed their email addresses can now see a banner encouraging them to do so. Having the email address confirmed allows a user to restore access to the account if they lose it. Learn more. [12]
- View all 15 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where editing very large wiki pages in the 2017 wikitext editor caused slow loading, preview and scrolling lag, and performance issues when selecting, cutting, or pasting content, has now been fixed. [13]
Updates for technical contributors
- As part of the promotion of CodeMirror from a beta feature, all users will use CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor for syntax highlighting when editing JavaScript, CSS, JSON, Vue and Lua content pages. [14]
- The
mirrors.wikimedia.orgservice for Debian and Ubuntu users will sunset and stop working on May 15. The resources for the service will be replaced with new and better options. Some users may need to switch to a different server which should take about a minute. You can read more. [15] - The
imageandoldimagetable will be removed from wikireplicas. If your tools or queries accessimageoroldimagedirectly, please update them to use thefileandfilerevisiontable before 28 May. [16] - Following the recent implementation of global API rate limits on unidentified traffic, the Wikimedia Foundation will continue efforts to ensure fair use of infrastructure by applying global limits to identified API traffic beginning the last week of April. These limits are intentionally set as high as possible to minimise impact on the community. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
- The Attribution API is now available as a beta. The API fetches information for crediting Wikimedia articles and media files wherever they are used. Reference documentation is available through the REST Sandbox special page available on all Wikimedia wikis (such as the REST sandbox on English Wikipedia). Share your feedback on the project talk page.
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 15:00, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Request for comment (global AI policy)
A request for comment is currently being held to decide on a global AI policy. Thank you! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:57, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-18
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- There is a change in how new users are autoconfirmed that will improve anti-vandalism protection. Currently, users who have had an account for a few days and made a few edits are automatically added to the Autoconfirmed users group. This configuration tends to be exploited by some vandals, who create accounts and start to use them only after some time. To mitigate this, the configuration will be updated next week so that – for the purpose of becoming autoconfirmed – the account age will be counted from their first edit, instead of registration date. The numeric value of the age threshold will remain the same. This change will be deployed only to wikis which require at least one edit as part of the autoconfirmation conditions. [17]
- All Wikipedia users with new accounts and those who activated the "automatically enable most beta features" option in their preference can now use the reading lists beta feature to save articles for later reading. This helps organize reading interests in one place for convenient access.
- View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where infobox images have huge padding in Firefox, has been fixed. [18]
Updates for technical contributors
- As a reminder, the global API rate limits will be applied this week to identified API traffic. This is to help ensure fair use of infrastructure. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, including the actual rate limits, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 18:06, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-19
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- The Article guidance team invites experienced editors of pilot Wikipedias—Arabic, Bangla, Japanese, Portuguese, Persian, Turkish, Simple English, Spanish, and French—to help translate and adapt sample outlines. These outlines will guide editors in creating clear, well-structured, and policy-compliant articles when using the feature once it is launched in May 2026. Simple instructions on how to translate and adapt the outlines are available.
Updates for editors
- The Product and Technology Advisory Council has published draft recommendations on a model that affiliates can follow when contributing to the technical space. Community members are invited to provide feedback on the recommendation until May 8th on the talk page.
- The number of available thumbnail size preferences in MediaWiki is being reduced to three standardized options—Small (180px), Regular (250px), and Large (400px), as part of ongoing efforts to improve performance and reduce strain on thumbnail services. As a result, existing preferences will be mapped to the nearest new size (for example, smaller selections like 120px or 150px will render at 180px, while larger ones like 300px or 360px will render at 400px). The preferences interface will soon be updated to reflect these changes, and users who wish to opt out or provide feedback can do so. [19]
- From now on, even when a permission expires automatically, users will receive an Echo notification similar to the standard notification for permission changes. There is a difference between this and Global reminder bot in that the latter reminds users a week before the rights are due to expire, so that they can renew the rights.
- View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the problem where the ULS language selector in Special:Translate would scroll vertically when it shouldn't, has been resolved. Previously, when users opened the "Translate to English" dropdown and typed certain inputs, the dialog would scroll vertically by a few pixels even when there was enough space to display all results. The dropdown no longer shifts unnecessarily when filtering languages. [20]
- The Global Watchlist, which lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on a single page, continues to improve. For example, watchlists for Wikibase sites such as Wikidata now support EntitySchema elements for better tracking. The Live Updates mode now refreshes the special page every 60 seconds to comply with the updated global API rate limits for improved real-time responsiveness. Additionally, a directionality bug that displayed links as "changes 3" instead of "3 changes" in mixed-direction lists has been fixed. [21][22][23]
Updates for technical contributors
- The second phase of global API rate limits has been rolled out to reduce the impact of AI crawlers and ensure fair, sustainable access to Wikimedia resources, prioritising human and mission-aligned traffic. Limits have been shifted from per-hour to per-minute, producing smoother traffic patterns and more predictable API load. Community users are not expected to be affected, and no action is required. Early indications show some User-Agent-based requestors are adjusting behaviour, and around 64% of automated API traffic has been identified. Monitoring continues, and Wikimedia Enterprise remains available for commercial support.
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.