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This is an archive of past discussions from Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2025. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current page.

Tech News: 2025-23

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 Chart extension is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. Editors can use this new extension to create interactive data visualizations like bar, line, area, and pie charts. Charts are designed to replace many of the uses of the legacy Graph extension.

Updates for editors

  • It is now easier to configure automatic citations for your wiki within the visual editor's citation generator. Administrators can now set a default template by using the _default key in the local MediaWiki:Citoid-template-type-map.json page (example diff). Setting this default will also help to future-proof your existing configurations when new item types are added in the future. You can still set templates for individual item types as they will be preferred to the default template. [1]
  • Recurrent item View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Starting the week of June 2, bots logging in using action=login or action=clientlogin will fail more often. This is because of stronger protections against suspicious logins. Bots using bot passwords or using a loginless authentication method such as OAuth are not affected. If your bot is not using one of those, you should update it; using action=login without a bot password was deprecated in 2016. For most bots, this only requires changing what password the bot uses. [2]
  • From this week, Wikimedia wikis will allow ES2017 features in JavaScript code for official code, gadgets, and user scripts. The most visible feature of ES2017 is async/await syntax, allowing for easier-to-read code. Until this week, the platform only allowed up to ES2016, and a few months before that, up to ES2015. [3]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

  • Scholarship applications to participate in the GLAM Wiki Conference 2025 are now open. The conference will take place from 30 October to 1 November, in Lisbon, Portugal. GLAM contributors who lack the means to support their participation can apply here. Scholarship applications close on June 7th.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:54, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

'5W Brief' format

Hello,

In light of recent discussions about quality of reviews, I'd like to propose a new '5W Brief' format. It would be similar to 'briefs', but would actually include a table and a recommendation to fit less than 200 words. Here is a proposed template: User:Gryllida/template2. If this is acceptable, this can be added to the main page and to WN:WRITE page. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 10:03, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Example:
Only 46 words. I'm thinking anything longer would already pose risks with reviewing. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 10:26, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be quite honest filling sources for it was the most time consuming part. And even the table does not click properly, need to double click. Is this adequate software for visual editing...? Gryllida (talk, live chat) 10:27, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe easier to work with User:Gryllida/template3-submit that. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 10:30, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you also include "How" (5Ws+H)? The idea is pretty cool, and an added bonus is that it would allow for more reviewers to contribute, since the articles are much shorter and thus there is less stuff to verify; there could also be a system of 'limited reviewership' where people who want to become reviewers can start by being granted the right to review the 5W+H briefs. GreekApple123 (talk) 14:09, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a better alternative to performing a 5W mini review. At least this way the 5W briefs would theoretically (hopefully) get a full and complete review.
However, a 5W brief article would amount to encouragement to read our sources rather than getting much meaningful content from Wikinews. A very brief article basically says; here are the basic details but go elsewhere to learn more. That, to me, does not represent quality and would not be a reason I would frequent Wikinews as a reader or consumer of our content. —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 16:02, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, there are not many takers for the current content anyways; the project is in a death loop, hoping for some intervention which will somehow make the existing model make sense. I think in some ways, it's better to build up some momentum with this 5W+H briefs idea, even if just for a few months, and then see if enough new people show up to do the work of creating longer articles. I think it also makes some sense just as a way to create brief snippets of events and happenings in the world, which can play into both the "Abstract Wikipedia" idea as well as offering something to link to within the Wikinews ecosystem. If nothing else, getting people in the habit of writing the 5W+H briefs would train them to write better articles, and might spark fresh collaborative curiosity. GreekApple123 (talk) 16:12, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Starting a "Wikinews shorts" section to the site would be similar to how many information companies are offering shorter content nowadays, like with YouTube Shorts or Tiktoks. The difference here is that Wikinews briefs can still be linked within the broader Wikimedia ecosystem, meaning that readers are able to quickly go from a brief overview of an event to very detailed content and details on its various aspects and contexts in any of the various sister projects.
I think a detail of implementation that might increase consensus for this change would be to limit the number of short articles/force editors to occasionally write a long article, in order to prevent this new feature from overwhelming the site's tradition. But overall, it doesn't make much sense to totally shut down the potential momentum this offers. GreekApple123 (talk) 16:47, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would frequent Wikinews with the 5W+H as 95% of "news" in mainstream media is vague on these points. They are often missing or wrong. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 13:06, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

Proposal 3: build a 5W+H database with Wikinews and Wikidata

Proposing to link the 5W+H with Wikidata.The date, who, and when with Wikidata looks easy-ish. And potentially "why" if there is a wikidata object for that. I am requesting your comments, votes, and implementation discussion. If there is a news story then link it to Wikidata item. If not, then generate based on Wikidata and publish as stub, if policies allow it. (See discussion above.) Gryllida (talk, live chat) 21:47, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (merit of the idea)

Discussion (feasibility of implementation)

Votes

Proposal 4 from Michael C Wright

Hi @Michael.C.Wright, you mentioned above that you agree that review process needs to be "streamlined". Please pick only one actionable item for that and describe it here. I and others will hopefully discuss and vote on it. If you need more than one, add as proposal 5, 6, 7, etc. Thanks. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 14:00, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve already made concrete, actionable proposals. See Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals#Markup for developing articles and the review process, which has been in use and iteratively improved over the past several months. That discussion has been ongoing for over eight months and includes specific, low-impact changes that several contributors are already using successfully.
Rather than introducing a new set of numbered proposals here, I think it’s more constructive to evaluate and build on the work that’s already underway—and to ensure that any streamlining of the review process preserves core standards like sourcing, plagiarism checks, and neutrality. Recent events have made clear that skipping those checks creates more work and reputational risk in the long run. —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 14:44, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
may i get a plot, the orange line which was in "wikinews is dying" post, updated to include additional weeks to now? Gryllida 14:52, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, I think it is confusing that you state opinions as facts. You cannot write "Recent events have made clear that skipping those checks creates more work and reputational risk in the long run.", for example; that is an opinion. If I had such opinion, I would write "I am concerned that, as recently it happened, skipping these checks may create more work and reputational risk in the long run". Or something like that. It is a concern. It is not an absolute. Gryllida 17:06, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m increasingly concerned that this discussion has become a back-and-forth between two people, and that in itself is becoming disruptive to the project. Our goal here should be to examine how we can streamline the review process without sacrificing key standards like plagiarism checks, neutrality, and proper sourcing.

I’ve already made proposals in that direction, which are currently in use and being tested. Rather than continuing to debate procedural structure in this thread, I’d welcome broader input from others on how those ideas are working in practice and whether they address the core challenges we face.

Ultimately, the focus should stay on quality, sustainability, and collective problem-solving, not on personalities or side threads. —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 15:10, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So you cannot provide plot. Provide me with the code for it then please. Gryllida 15:34, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 5 from Gryllida Notifications app or email setting

Apps to notify users from Echo for: Android, Mac, iOS, Windows. This should help users edit more quickly. As they cannot always eyeball the wiki. Maybe need to investigate how to setup Echo to email each @mention to a user. Is this setting on by default? App would be nicer as not all users get Notofication to their device for email.

Discussion

Votes : echo 2 email setting on by default

Votes: Notifications apps

Tech News: 2025-24

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 Trust and Safety Product team is finalizing work needed to roll out temporary accounts on large Wikipedias later this month. The team has worked with stewards and other users with extended rights to predict and address many use cases that may arise on larger wikis, so that community members can continue to effectively moderate and patrol temporary accounts. This will be the second of three phases of deployment – the last one will take place in September at the earliest. For more information about the recent developments on the project, see this update. If you have any comments or questions, write on the talk page, and join a CEE Catch Up this Tuesday.

Updates for editors

  • Wishlist item The watchlist expiry feature allows editors to watch pages for a limited period of time. After that period, the page is automatically removed from your watchlist. Starting this week, you can set a preference for the default period of time to watch pages. The preferences also allow you to set different default watch periods for editing existing pages, pages you create, and when using rollback. [4]
Screenshot of the visual improvements made on talk pages
Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.
  • The appearance of talk pages will change at almost all Wikipedias (some have already received this design change, a few will get these changes later). You can read details about the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt out of these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). [5][6]
  • Users with specific extended rights (including administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, and stewards) can now have IP addresses of all temporary accounts revealed automatically during time-limited periods where they need to combat high-speed account-hopping vandalism. This feature was requested by stewards. [7]
  • This week, the Moderator Tools and Machine Learning teams will continue the rollout of a new filter to Recent Changes, releasing it to several more Wikipedias. This filter utilizes the Revert Risk model, which was created by the Research team, to highlight edits that are likely to be reverted and help Recent Changes patrollers identify potentially problematic contributions. The feature will be rolled out to the following Wikipedias: Afrikaans Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Hawaiian Wikipedia, Icelandic Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia. The rollout will continue in the coming weeks to include the rest of the Wikipedias in this project. [8]
  • Recurrent item View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • AbuseFilter editors active on Meta-Wiki and large Wikipedias are kindly asked to update AbuseFilter to make it compatible with temporary accounts. A link to the instructions and the private lists of filters needing verification are available on Phabricator.
  • Lua modules now have access to the name of a page's associated thumbnail image, and on some wikis to the WikiProject assessment information. This is possible using two new properties on mw.title objects, named pageImage and pageAssessments. [9][10]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:16, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vote now in the 2025 U4C Election

Please help translate to your language

Eligible voters are asked to participate in the 2025 Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee election. More information–including an eligibility check, voting process information, candidate information, and a link to the vote–are available on Meta at the 2025 Election information page. The vote closes on 17 June 2025 at 12:00 UTC.

Please vote if your account is eligible. Results will be available by 1 July 2025. -- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:00, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-25

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

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • Foundation staff and technical volunteers use Wikimedia APIs to build the tools, applications, features, and integrations that enhance user experiences. Over the coming years, the MediaWiki Interfaces team will be investing in Wikimedia web (HTTP) APIs to better serve technical volunteer needs and protect Wikimedia infrastructure from potential abuse. You can read more about their plans to evolve the APIs in this Techblog post.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:38, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2025 - Call for Candidates

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

The call for candidates for the 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection is now open from June 17, 2025 – July 2, 2025 at 11:59 UTC [1]. The Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's work, and each Trustee serves a three-year term [2]. This is a volunteer position.

This year, the Wikimedia community will vote in late August through September 2025 to fill two (2) seats on the Foundation Board. Could you – or someone you know – be a good fit to join the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees? [3]

Learn more about what it takes to stand for these leadership positions and how to submit your candidacy on this Meta-wiki page or encourage someone else to run in this year's election.

Best regards,

Abhishek Suryawanshi
Chair of the Elections Committee

On behalf of the Elections Committee and Governance Committee

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Call_for_candidates

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Bylaws#(B)_Term.

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Resources_for_candidates

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:43, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Future of Wikinews

This might not only be related to English Wikinews but to the Wikinews project in general. The Wikimedia Foundation's Community Affairs Committee Sister Projects Task Force is planning a public consultation about the long-term viability of the Wikinews model as a sister project. According to the task force, some concerns include the sustainability of community engagement, content quality, and alignment with Wikimedia's goals of knowledge equity and reliability. For now, no new language editions of Wikinews will be created. See a recent discussion related to this. -- Asked42 (talk) 15:14, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In light of the above comment, I would like to propose that we, as reviewers, take a proactive approach to address these challenges.
Moving forward, I propose that all reviewers commit to performing full and complete reviews of all draft articles and take no shortcuts in the process for any reason, including speed of publication. While a full and complete review can be time-consuming, it is currently the most reliable way we have to ensure that our content is of acceptable quality, free of unverified or false statements, and fully aligned with our established policies and guidelines.
By reinforcing our commitment to high-quality content, we can help strengthen Wikinews’s credibility and demonstrate the project’s ongoing value to the broader Wikimedia ecosystem.
@Acagastya, Bawolff, Bddpaux, Chaetodipus, Cromium, Gryllida, Heavy Water, JJLiu112, LivelyRatification, Michael.C.Wright, Microchip08, RockerballAustralia, SVTCobra, ShakataGaNai, Tom Morris, Tyrol5, William S. Saturn: —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 16:28, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I can see full reviews as problematic, as authors don't keep up with requests. I would suggest making a '5W Brief' format, which should be easier to review. Wikinews:Water_cooler/miscellaneous#'5W_Brief'_format has a example. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 10:03, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Added two proposals below. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 22:15, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Asked42, would you possibly consider writing a tiny copy of reFill, to fills sources templates from any URLs in the 'Sources' section? It presents with a edit box in which the changes were implemented, the user just needs to click 'preview' or 'show changes' and 'save'. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 10:25, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Reviews/FlaggedRevs were originally instituted as a requirement of syndication to Google News. I don't think it was a thing prior to that. Reviews on Wikinews rub against the wiki model, and, coupled with the shortage of reviewers, make it very difficult to recruit/retain contributors. I think we should seriously consider getting rid of reviews entirely. Ultimately, we're currently making the decision to have no news rather than imperfect news – and I don't think that's appropriate. Microchip08 (talk) 11:20, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Microchip08 I agree with you. What do you think of the suggested "mini" 5w brief format I proposed further down the page? Could you please check the two tiny stories I just wrote in that format? While the effort writing them is similar to writing a normal article, I think they stand out as much easier to review and harder to stuff up when writing them. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 11:46, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Microchip08 further: what do you think of verifying only the 5Ws in the first paragraph, and not undertaking a full review? I did that several times in April when all other reviewers were on holiday. I did not check beyond "yes, it happened there and then; it is not one sided propaganda; pass". Then @Michael.C.Wright strongly opposed this approach. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 11:50, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Since there are seemingly only a couple thousands of readers on this site at the moment, it should probably not be seen as a major catastrophe to go a long time without news being published here. So I would personally lean against being too quick with review processes.
At a minimum, any article that goes through a 'semi-review' process should have all the unreviewed information visibly flagged and perhaps even hidden from readers until checked. GreekApple123 (talk) 12:56, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Gryllida mentioned that I “strongly opposed” her approach, and that’s correct—but with good reason. The demonstrable problems with the abbreviated reviews are well-documented. Articles reviewed in this manner have too often included falsehoods, bias, and plagiarism—issues we must not tolerate if we wish to maintain credibility and align with Wikimedia’s knowledge equity and reliability goals.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s Sister Projects Task Force concerns—focused on sustainability, content quality, and alignment with movement goals—should be a wake-up call. Lowering the bar for verification, even temporarily, is not a solution. The mini review format as currently proposed does not produce high-quality, reliable content. Adopting it would risk undermining Wikinews further.
That said, I agree that the current review process presents significant obstacles, and that the shortage of active reviewers is likely both a cause and a consequence of this[11]. However, a replacement process must not result in higher levels of low-quality content. Any reform must improve efficiency without compromising the standards that are essential to the project’s integrity.
I’ll also point out a critical conflict between the review process and the archive process: if we were to tolerate more errors out of review (which I do not condone), the current 24-hour window before an article is edit-protected by archiving is far too short to allow necessary corrections. If the community were to shift in that direction, it would require a serious reconsideration of our archiving policies.
In summary:
  • I strongly oppose the "5w mini review" approach and any abbreviated review that sacrifices accuracy and neutrality.
  • The review process is flawed, but any replacement must maintain or improve quality standards, not lower them.
  • The archive process conflict makes adopting a low-bar review process impractical and risky.
I welcome further discussion on how we can improve the review process, attract more contributors, and maintain credibility—but it must start with a commitment to accuracy and balance. —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 13:00, 3 June 2025 (UTC);edited Removed bold. 15:23, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Microchip08, I agree the review process is a major bottleneck, but it’s also what separates us from Wikipedia and helps prevent fake news. Our archive policy reinforces that by locking content as a snapshot in time. If review were removed, the archive process would need rethinking. What might that look like while still keeping us distinct and credible? —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 16:33, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello,
  • I think we need an online call to discuss this and make a decision. Would @Michael.C.Wright and @Microchip08 be available?
  • This subject has been discussed on-wiki many times. For 'fake news' there are processes in place, such as edits within 24 hours, and corrections. I would be interested to try out a shortcutted review process with 'verify only 5W', and see how many of 'corrections' will be issued over the course of 3 months. If there is too many, the discussion can be revisited. To alleviate 'reputation' issues, we can put a banner at the article, which says 'This article was reviewed with a shortcutted process, involving only verifying the "5W" first paragraph and copyright. Neutrality issues and inaccuracies may be present. You are welcome to 'edit' or 'leave a message' about the content.' I am going to make a subsection for this with 'discussion' and 'votes' to see what will be the outcome.
Thanks. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 21:52, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I very much want to resolve this quickly and efficiently, but a private call between just three people isn’t the way to do it. This is a project-wide issue, and any discussion about changing core processes like review needs to happen publicly with full community involvement. —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 00:58, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

┌───────────────────────┘
 Given our current reviewer capacity, we need to affirm that full and complete reviews are currently the only reliable way known to satisfy the mission of Wikinews, as defined at Meta: m:Wikinews

Meta-wiki clearly states: “We cannot rely on the wiki process to improve articles after they are published,” because news receives “very high exposure for a very brief period of time.” Articles must be “accurate and legal at the time of publication,” especially given the added risk from original reporting.

Partial reviews, though well-intentioned, often lead to articles being published with unresolved issues around neutrality, attribution, sourcing, or plagiarism. With so few active reviewers, we rarely have capacity to follow up and correct these issues post-publication.

It’s also worth noting that the mission statement at m:Wikinews does not mention frequency of publication. While I fully agree that improving the regularity of article output is important for the project's future, that goal cannot come at the expense of one of Wikinews' core principles: neutrality. Prioritizing speed or volume over accuracy and neutrality undermines both the mission and public trust.

I stepped back from earlier discussion because it had become a two-person exchange, and I felt the community needed space for other voices. I'm raising this again because the problem remains unresolved and directly impacts our review standards.

Given the risks and our current limitations, we should immediately stop performing any partial reviews until a new, accountable process is defined that satisfies the mission and purpose of English Wikinews. —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 01:49, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello
  • I'm afraid I need to disappoint you in your thinking that 'the problem remains unsolved'. The current situation requires full reviews. The proposed changes don't require full reviews; however, they are not currently in force.
  • With that in mind, the best course of action for working with high quality and quickly is to get into as many real time comms as possible. My user page has a bunch of them. If you are on any of them, I encourage you to send me a private message and join a Wikinews-related group. Real time communication allows to tag the user and get their response in real time, and reduce delays. Despite Echo existing, with several users its output is delayed by hours at random points. I cannot rely on it every time. It also leaves the user without knowing what's going on with other articles than the one they've written or edited.
  • There are ways to make comms kind of similar to a live chat group about Wikinews, but it would require copying messages from all talk pages of all articles into one water cooler. Or copying messages from talk pages of all articles about Australia to an Australia water cooler. The software is poorly adapted to this. The Wikinews live chat (WN:IRC works but is not friendly to beginners. I have setup Wikinews groups in discord and telegram and matrix, and messaging me on this platforms (my username on them is listed on my user page) means I can add you to these groups. Hope this is helpful.
  • Next step I would like to suggest to have a routine at least 30 minutes a week. I'm routinely available at 5:30pm on Fridays Sydney time for a contact on any of these platforms. Every day I am contactable from 8pm to 10pm in my local time. The w:Maemo community has had some success with monthly meetings. At a news site it would be ideally at least twice a week. For heaven's sake, this shouldn't be too difficult. Yet the wiki software lacks any kind of a scheduler, a shared calendar, a doodle, or anything of that sort. That's a shame. I welcome any suggestions what platform to use.
Regards, -- Gryllida 11:59, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

{{flag}} I am proposing that a trial is done for 3 months to publish an article after verifying the 5Ws and copyright, without verifying neutrality and without verifying the items which are reported in the further paragraphs. I would be interested to try out a shortcutted review process with 'verify only 5W', and see how many of 'corrections' will be issued over the course of 3 months. If there is too many, the discussion can be revisited. To alleviate 'reputation' issues, we can put a banner at the article, which says 'This article was reviewed with a shortcutted process, involving only verifying the "5W" first paragraph and copyright. Neutrality issues and inaccuracies may be present. You are welcome to 'edit' or 'leave a message' about the content.' I am going to make a subsection for this with 'discussion' and 'votes' to see what will be the outcome. I am hoping this trial will show whether reducing review requirements leads to inaccuracies in reporting and whether it increases the comprehensiveness of the reports. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 21:53, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Hi @George Ho @Wikiwide @BigKrow @Lofi Gurl @Back ache @Md Mobashir Hossain @Almondo2025, @Dsuke1998AEOS, @Ternera, @Monsieur2137 @Asked42, @Sheminghui.WU, @excelblue (if you want yourself removed or someone else added to this list, please inquire here) A revision has been requested. Here is a list of what to do. (If/when you intend to start working on it, please Subscribe to this section and to this talk page, and post reply messages here when you started and finished editing) See below:

1) Review the discussion above. Add your 'Proposal 2' (or 3 or 4, etc) if you have another idea.

2) Vote or leave a comment on this proposal.

Thanks, Gryllida (talk, live chat) 21:54, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Gryllida stated above that in April she performed several partial reviews, checking only the 5Ws in the lead and not conducting full reviews. The following month, after the articles were published and in many cases archived, we identified plagiarism in five articles, four of which have been corrected:
A fifth article has yet to be corrected nearly six weeks later:
All of these April articles were edit-protected when checked for plagiarism, which significantly delayed the correction process.
One additional article—Competitive local elections held in England—was not yet archived when issues were identified and was corrected promptly for unsupported and biased statements:
Today I identified and removed plagiarism from one article published in May and issued a correction:
That brings the total to five plagiarism corrections from April and one so far in May—just among the cases we know about. Do we really need to trial this method for three full months to see that it consistently produces low-quality, policy-violating content? Is this the standard of quality we want to present to the Task Force as justification for keeping English Wikinews running? —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 00:51, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Let me rephrase this for you. "Gryllida suggests to check for 5W and plagiarism. I will point to instances of failed plagiarism check." Let me reply to this. We have a seemingly working plagiarism checker, this is now less risk. For low quality, unfortunately unlike Wikipedia here articles cannot be editable forever, so those that were not fixed up within 24 hours will be stuffed with a bunch of correction tags at the top. This is not end of world, there is a procedure for this. Let me ask you, why do you think I am proposing this? What will be the advantages? Gryllida (talk, live chat) 13:17, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I share the concern that the current review process can be a bottleneck and have been exploring ways to improve it. That said, the recent need to correct (not just a little) plagiarism in several published articles illustrates why certain core checks such as fact verification, plagiarism detection, and neutrality review can’t be optional. In that case, a decision to skip those checks created a significant post-publication burden and left policy violations publicly visible for weeks. While I agree the review process must evolve, I believe we should focus on streamlining it without compromising the basic standards that protect our credibility. We don't "have a seemingly working plagiarism checker" unless the reviewer does the checking. —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 13:40, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Two points:
  • Quit chatting about the plagiarism, will you do me a favour please? I already unprotected these pages for two weeks and installed earwig link in my face (in each review template) on April 22, and already acknowledged (on that very day) that lack of that facility before was unfortunate and was concerning. The plagiarism checker is unmissable now. Every atom in the world including BigKrow knows of it and chats of it on nearly each article where earwig reports an orange light.
  • This proposal suggests to keep checking for plagiarism and placing this discussion here is not constructive. If you want to complain about no check, head over next door to proposal 2. --->
Regards, -- Gryllida (talk, live chat) 13:54, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the clarification. However, this is not simply a side conversation. It is directly relevant to how we approach proposals to narrow the scope of review.
This discussion is constructive because it illustrates the tangible risks of minimizing review steps. The addition of the Earwig link to the template is appreciated, but it does not retroactively resolve the issues created before that change, nor does it remove the need to understand why those failures occurred. The link also does not automatically detect or prevent plagiarism. It still requires manual use and judgment by the reviewer.
The workload caused by incomplete reviews is still being distributed across multiple contributors. That’s not just a tooling issue. It’s a question of process and responsibility. It remains directly relevant to any discussion about how to reform the review system responsibly. —Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 14:16, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. Tooling and awareness improved sufficiently. Having some issues pending is not a sufficient excuse to bring that up here.
Yes, for fewer checks it will be needed to involve more people to pick them up. Not only one person writing and one person reviewing. Sorry about that. Two people usually do not succeed at finishing to a high standard and quickly, unless they are working in real time. If you want to keep the standard high, you need to be the one sitting in 15 social media and pinging each author on his or her favourite platform to get them alerted and involved. Just sitting on wiki, without a mobile app to buzz the user's ears off, and expecting magical quick work to prevent staleness will not work.
In short, to get fresher news, in scenario above, responsibility to fix them up quickly will need to be shared. Issues may be tagged and users will then need to fix them. What was not fixed in 24 hours will need to be unmarked and shoved into a correction tag. Gryllida 15:02, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

Proposal 2 from Gryllida (from Microchip08 above): disable reviews

{{flag}} As Microchip08 suggested above, suggest to get rid of reviews entirely. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 22:09, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps article which was published without review can be tagged with 'The article was not reviewed. 5Ws, copyright, and neutrality may be an issue. Use 'EDIT' or 'LEAVE A MESSAGE' as you wish' at the top, until it passed some form of a review. Gryllida (talk, live chat) 22:11, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Hi @George Ho @Wikiwide @BigKrow @Lofi Gurl @Back ache @Md Mobashir Hossain @Almondo2025, @Dsuke1998AEOS, @Ternera, @Monsieur2137 @Asked42, @Sheminghui.WU, @excelblue (if you want yourself removed or someone else added to this list, please inquire here) A revision has been requested. Here is a list of what to do. (If/when you intend to start working on it, please Subscribe to this section and to this talk page, and post reply messages here when you started and finished editing) See below:

1) Review the discussion above. Add your 'Proposal 2' (or 3 or 4, etc) if you have another idea.

2) Vote or leave a comment on this proposal.

Thanks, Gryllida (talk, live chat) 22:09, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Microchip08 , hi, you may be interested in this https://gryllida.neocities.org/news/writer/v3/index-2, a way to lower entry barrier without binning the beloved "quality" mission for here. Maybe attempting 5Ws discussion there may help with improving writing and reviewing skills for application on wiki. Gryllida 12:38, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong URL
meant to be this,
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T396948
regards, -- Gryllida 12:39, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

The Task Force has released a report that formally recommends closing Wikinews. The public consultation is here: m:Public consultation about Wikinews. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Michael.C.Wright (talk • contribs)

Tech News: 2025-26

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

  • This week, the Moderator Tools and Machine Learning teams will continue the rollout of a new filter to Recent Changes, releasing it to the third and last batch of Wikipedias. This filter utilizes the Revert Risk model, which was created by the Research team, to highlight edits that are likely to be reverted and help Recent Changes patrollers identify potentially problematic contributions. The feature will be rolled out to the following Wikipedias: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Latin Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia. The rollout will continue in the coming weeks to include the rest of the Wikipedias in this project. [12]

Updates for editors

  • Last week, temporary accounts were rolled out on Czech, Korean, and Turkish Wikipedias. This and next week, deployments on larger Wikipedias will follow. Share your thoughts about the project. [13]
  • Later this week, the Editing team will release Multi Check to all Wikipedias (except English Wikipedia). This feature shows multiple Reference checks within the editing experience. This encourages users to add citations when they add multiple new paragraphs to a Wikipedia article. This feature was previously available as an A/B test. The test shows that users who are shown multiple checks are 1.3 times more likely to add a reference to their edit, and their edit is less likely to be reverted (-34.7%). [14]
  • A few pages need to be renamed due to software updates and to match more recent Unicode standards. All of these changes are related to title-casing changes. Approximately 71 pages and 3 files will be renamed, across 15 wikis; the complete list is in the task. The developers will rename these pages next week, and they will fix redirects and embedded file links a few minutes later via a system settings update.
  • Recurrent item View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that had caused pages to scroll upwards when text near the top was selected. [15]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Editors can now use Lua modules to filter and transform tabular data for use with Extension:Chart. This can be used for things like selecting a subset of rows or columns from the source data, converting between units, statistical processing, and many other useful transformations. Information on how to use transforms is available. [16]
  • The all_links variable in AbuseFilter is now renamed to new_links for consistency with other variables. Old usages will still continue to work. [17]
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: the recent updates for the "Add a Link" Task, two new Newcomer Engagement Features, and updates to Community Configuration.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:20, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sister Projects Task Force reviews Wikispore and Wikinews

Dear Wikimedia Community,

The Community Affairs Committee (CAC) of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees assigned the Sister Projects Task Force (SPTF) to update and implement a procedure for assessing the lifecycle of Sister Projects – wiki projects supported by Wikimedia Foundation (WMF).

A vision of relevant, accessible, and impactful free knowledge has always guided the Wikimedia Movement. As the ecosystem of Wikimedia projects continues to evolve, it is crucial that we periodically review existing projects to ensure they still align with our goals and community capacity.

Despite their noble intent, some projects may no longer effectively serve their original purpose. Reviewing such projects is not about giving up – it's about responsible stewardship of shared resources. Volunteer time, staff support, infrastructure, and community attention are finite, and the non-technical costs tend to grow significantly as our ecosystem has entered a different age of the internet than the one we were founded in. Supporting inactive projects or projects that didn't meet our ambitions can unintentionally divert these resources from areas with more potential impact.

Moreover, maintaining projects that no longer reflect the quality and reliability of the Wikimedia name stands for, involves a reputational risk. An abandoned or less reliable project affects trust in the Wikimedia movement.

Lastly, failing to sunset or reimagine projects that are no longer working can make it much harder to start new ones. When the community feels bound to every past decision – no matter how outdated – we risk stagnation. A healthy ecosystem must allow for evolution, adaptation, and, when necessary, letting go. If we create the expectation that every project must exist indefinitely, we limit our ability to experiment and innovate.

Because of this, SPTF reviewed two requests concerning the lifecycle of the Sister Projects to work through and demonstrate the review process. We chose Wikispore as a case study for a possible new Sister Project opening and Wikinews as a case study for a review of an existing project. Preliminary findings were discussed with the CAC, and a community consultation on both proposals was recommended.

Wikispore

The application to consider Wikispore was submitted in 2019. SPTF decided to review this request in more depth because rather than being concentrated on a specific topic, as most of the proposals for the new Sister Projects are, Wikispore has the potential to nurture multiple start-up Sister Projects.

After careful consideration, the SPTF has decided not to recommend Wikispore as a Wikimedia Sister Project. Considering the current activity level, the current arrangement allows better flexibility and experimentation while WMF provides core infrastructural support.

We acknowledge the initiative's potential and seek community input on what would constitute a sufficient level of activity and engagement to reconsider its status in the future.

As part of the process, we shared the decision with the Wikispore community and invited one of its leaders, Pharos, to an SPTF meeting.

Currently, we especially invite feedback on measurable criteria indicating the project's readiness, such as contributor numbers, content volume, and sustained community support. This would clarify the criteria sufficient for opening a new Sister Project, including possible future Wikispore re-application. However, the numbers will always be a guide because any number can be gamed.

Wikinews

We chose to review Wikinews among existing Sister Projects because it is the one for which we have observed the highest level of concern in multiple ways.

Since the SPTF was convened in 2023, its members have asked for the community's opinions during conferences and community calls about Sister Projects that did not fulfil their promise in the Wikimedia movement.[1][2][3] Wikinews was the leading candidate for an evaluation because people from multiple language communities proposed it. Additionally, by most measures, it is the least active Sister Project, with the greatest drop in activity over the years.

While the Language Committee routinely opens and closes language versions of the Sister Projects in small languages, there has never been a valid proposal to close Wikipedia in major languages or any project in English. This is not true for Wikinews, where there was a proposal to close English Wikinews, which gained some traction but did not result in any action[4][5], see section 5 as well as a draft proposal to close all languages of Wikinews[6].

Initial metrics compiled by WMF staff also support the community's concerns about Wikinews.

Based on this report, SPTF recommends a community reevaluation of Wikinews. We conclude that its current structure and activity levels are the lowest among the existing sister projects. SPTF also recommends pausing the opening of new language editions while the consultation runs.

SPTF brings this analysis to a discussion and welcomes discussions of alternative outcomes, including potential restructuring efforts or integration with other Wikimedia initiatives.

Options mentioned so far (which might be applied to just low-activity languages or all languages) include but are not limited to:

  • Restructure how Wikinews works and is linked to other current events efforts on the projects,
  • Merge the content of Wikinews into the relevant language Wikipedias, possibly in a new namespace,
  • Merge content into compatibly licensed external projects,
  • Archive Wikinews projects.

Your insights and perspectives are invaluable in shaping the future of these projects. We encourage all interested community members to share their thoughts on the relevant discussion pages or through other designated feedback channels.

Feedback and next steps

We'd be grateful if you want to take part in a conversation on the future of these projects and the review process. We are setting up two different project pages: Public consultation about Wikispore and Public consultation about Wikinews. Please participate between 27 June 2025 and 27 July 2025, after which we will summarize the discussion to move forward. You can write in your own language.

I will also host a community conversation 16th July Wednesday 11.00 UTC and 17th July Thursday 17.00 UTC (call links to follow shortly) and will be around at Wikimania for more discussions.


-- Victoria on behalf of the Sister Project Task Force, 20:56, 27 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-27

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

Updates for editors

  • AbuseFilter maintainers can now match against IP reputation data in AbuseFilters. IP reputation data is information about the proxies and VPNs associated with the user's IP address. This data is not shown publicly and is not generated for actions performed by registered accounts. [18]
  • Hidden content that is within collapsible parts of wikipages will now be revealed when someone searches the page using the web browser's "Find in page" function (Ctrl+F or ⌘F) in supporting browsers. [19][20]
  • Wishlist item A new feature, called Favourite Templates, will be deployed later this week on all projects (except English Wikipedia, which will receive the feature next week), following a piloting phase on Polish and Arabic Wikipedia, and Italian and English Wikisource. The feature will provide a better way for new and experienced contributors to recall and discover templates via the template dialog, by allowing users to put templates on a special "favourite list". The feature works with both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. The feature is a community wishlist focus area.
  • Recurrent item View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that had caused some Notifications to be sent multiple times. [21]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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 23:40, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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