User talk:asilvering

Edit suggestions have not been answered for months

Hello asilvering. I've been following wikipedia's suggestions for edits, mainly finding reliable sources, since I can't edit tone or update articles. Very few edits have been answered and only 2 accepted. There's something like 50 edits pending, most of them citations. Am I doing something wrong? What can I do to move this faster in order to get enough edits so you can unblock me? Thanks for your time and help. Artful Historian (talk) 10:08, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

I spot-checked a few of them, and it doesn't look like you're using the template incorrectly. So it's just taking time because, well, we're all volunteers and no one's gotten to it yet. I'll see if I can't find someone to go clear that backlog. -- asilvering (talk) 23:21, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Artful Historian (talk) 12:56, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for sending help. GoldRomean did check a few edits, but there's still many more waiting. I just did several edits on a human rights in Iran page and asked for help to one of the last editors who edited the page. I'm wondering how many edits will need to be accepted in order to be unblocked. Thanks again for your help. Artful Historian (talk) 10:55, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

I can't say for sure, but it's been a while now, so you might try requesting unblock again. -- asilvering (talk) 17:52, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, I will list several edits for NorthernWinds and I will request an unblock again after that. Artful Historian (talk) 08:02, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Hello asilvering, I requested an unblock as you suggested and it was decline here. I don't know what else I can do. I would appreciate very much any suggestions. Thanks again for your time and help. Artful Historian (talk) 08:13, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

NorthernWinds gave good advice. You might also try making edit requests that aren't just "here is some verification", ie, ones that add some actual prose. That's the thing we'd be worried about most, so demonstrating that you can get that kind of edit through would help. -- In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 08:40, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks again. Over two months ago, I started doing the same kind of edits I was blocked for (Manuel Benedito page). They have been completely ignored so far, maybe because the sources are in Spanish. I guess I will try to fill another unblock request in the hope that my wording is the right one for whoever looks at it. If not, I will just try to request the kind of edits you mention with English citations. Thanks Artful Historian (talk) 07:23, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

hi Iamthemap99 (talk) 00:37, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi Artful Historian (talk) 09:44, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

@Artful Historian Please ping me to all your requests or leave a list on my talk page NorthernWinds ❄️ (talk) 19:14, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you so much. Artful Historian (talk) 08:02, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Question from Dmwaisman (16:06, 26 May 2026)

Hello,

I am David M. Waisman, a biochemist whose research has included work on endoplasmic reticulum calcium‑binding proteins and a recent historical review on calreticulin (“Calreticulin—Enigmatic Discovery”, 2024). Because this represents a conflict of interest under Wikipedia’s policies, I am not editing the article directly, but I would like to request that editors consider adding a short, sourced “History and discovery” subsection to the Calreticulin article.

At present, the article does not describe the discovery history of calreticulin. The literature distinguishes between early work on a hepatic endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-binding protein (calregulin/CRP55) and later sequence‑based consolidation under the name “calreticulin,” as well as a more controversial connection to a previously described skeletal muscle high‑affinity calcium‑binding protein (HACBP). My recent review and earlier primary papers summarize this development and may help provide a neutral, sourced overview.

History and discovery

History and discovery Calreticulin was first identified in the early 1980s as a calcium‑binding protein in liver, where it was purified from the 100,000×g supernatant and characterized as a novel cytosolic calcium‑binding protein distinct from calmodulin [ref 1]. A subsequent study isolated and characterized a related Ca²⁺‑binding protein (CAB‑63, formerly called calregulin) and established its basic biochemical properties [ref 2].

Further work on calregulin demonstrated its purification, cellular localization, and tissue distribution, showing that it is a high‑capacity, low‑affinity Ca²⁺‑binding protein localized to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) lumen of hepatocytes rather than the cytosol, and that it is conserved across vertebrate livers [ref 3]. These studies established calregulin as an ER luminal Ca²⁺‑binding protein with properties distinct from cytosolic Ca²⁺‑binding proteins such as calmodulin.

In 1989, Smith and Koch cloned and sequenc --Dmwaisman (talk) 16:06, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Dmwaisman, I see you figured out that you need to add this to the talk page for Calreticulin. But you haven't actually made an edit request, so no one but me will see it! I'll fix this one for you. If you want to make other requests in the future, try using WP:ERW to make it easier. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 01:32, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

AlphaChip

Related to what we discussed via email: Now that AlphaChip (company) - an article created by one of the Qq8 socks - has been deleted, can you look into moving AlphaChip (controversy) to AlphaChip? I see this move requires an admin. Alternatively, I can propose a page move on the Talk page if you feel that's more appropriate. I continue to question whether the AlphaChip article should even be retained, given the most recent sock/CoI revelations, but at the very least the title should be updated. Thanks. LovinLifer (talk) 03:22, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

@LovinLifer, if you're thinking of deleting the article, you may as well try that first, and then we can rearrange the disambiguation page if necessary if it's kept at WP:AFD. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 04:26, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I do think it should be deleted. I think other editors may agree, but I hesitate to nominate it again myself given the bad reaction I got to my previous nomination: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AlphaChip (controversy). Do you have any advice on how to move forward? I feel a bit stuck. Thanks, LovinLifer (talk) 20:58, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi, @asilvering. Do you have any further guidance? Thanks again, LovinLifer (talk) 19:13, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Oh dear, it looks like it was AFD'd even more recently, and that one was also something of a mess: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AlphaChip (controversy) (2nd nomination). @Vanamonde93, you closed that one, what do you think? It does actually look pretty likely to me that AlphaChip (company) was created specifically to force the other article to AlphaChip (controversy), which is honestly pretty clever. (You'll notice there's no corresponding article on ru-wiki [1]). In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 07:05, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

I'd just note that the participants in both AfDs were unaware of the extent of the CoI / sockpuppetry that contributed to AlphaChip (controversy). As it currently stands, about 60% of the article was written (or LLM-generated) by the Qq8 sockmaster, whose CoI identity is easily discerned. LovinLifer (talk) 14:57, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Two separate issues here. Deleting the DAB doesn't require an AfD in my estimation; replacing a two-entry DAB with a hatnote is uncontroversial, and I or any other admin can do so. What to do with the page itself is trickier; do I understand correctly that you think this TA is a Qq8 sock? The socking is enough reason to launch a new AfD - I would be willing to drop a note saying it shouldn't be kept on procedural grounds alone - but fundamentally, deleting a sock's contributions for being suspect isn't very different from deleting an LLM's contributions, and I would expect an AfD to go the same way as the first. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:19, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

@Vanamonde93:

• Yes, it seems clear that the TA is a Qq8 sock, if you look at the article's early history. Another likely sock, Cdmx545467 (who seems to have been overlooked in the SPI), also voted Keep in the second AfD.
• The POV fork question was not sufficiently considered in the previous two AfDs, as Martinp emphasized in the second AfD. And now that we know the sockmaster is someone with a specific axe to grind against AlphaChip, whose papers are cited 14 times in the article and who is still the author of more than half the article's content (including almost all parts directly relevant to AlphaChip rather than background information), it's evident that this is a POV fork in both outcome and intent. It was exactly what the creator of the article was going for.
• While I really appreciate your offer to drop a note to prevent a procedural keep, I fear it won't be enough. If I open a new AfD myself, I believe my CoI will be too great a distraction for editors to vote objectively. I will do it if there is no alternative, but I think my direct participation will only muddle things. LovinLifer (talk) 17:45, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from Halotech495 (14:40, 2 June 2026)

Hello so If something changes to the world I can put it on Wikipedia right? --Halotech495 (talk) 14:40, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Yep! So long as you provide a reliable source for any changes you make, go right ahead. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 23:28, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

UTRS appeal #113541

I'm totally out to sea with Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Etcnoel1. Could you make things clearer for me in the UTRS? Thanks. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 15:04, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Lordy. Probably not, but I'll try. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 23:20, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

What does ACAS/KURD stand for? -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 02:37, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

WP:GS/ACAS (Assyrian, Chaldean, Aramean & Syriac) & WP:CT/KURD (Kurds & Kurdistan) aesurias (ping me in your reply, or I won't see it) (talk) 02:43, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 03:08, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Blocking

Hello, for what reason have you blocked me from editing a Wikipedia article? I’d be grateful to know thanks. ~2026-19434-62 (talk) 18:28, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

I haven't, unless you're presently block evading. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 23:19, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Your AfD closure

Heya, I don't understand you closure of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greater Colombia. You said it's a speedy close, but you closed it as no consensus despite the discussion being closed earlier than 7 days. Shouldn't a sock nomination be closed as WP:SPEEDYKEEP?

But a speedy nomination wouldn't apply in this case. The speedy keep guideline says:

The nominator was blocked or banned at the time of making the nomination, so they were not supposed to edit. In that case, the nominated page is speedily kept while the nomination can be removed from the log, tagged with {{db-banned}} and speedily deleted as a banned contribution.

The nominator was not blocked, but even if they were, then the page should've been speedily kept, right?

However, if subsequent editors added substantive comments in good faith before the nominator's blocked or banned status was discovered, the nomination may not be speedily closed, unless all such comments support keeping the article. (though the nominator's opinion will be discounted in the closure decision).

There were two editors in good faith who supported a merge, so in theory this discussion shouldn't even have been speedily closed in any way. Am I missing something? FaviFake (talk) 14:35, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

No, the page should not have been speedily kept. The page was created by the sockpuppet. The merge discussion was opened in order to fix the actions of the sockpuppet in the first place. Rolling back their edits obviates the need for the merge. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 17:05, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Then why was it closed as no consensus if the discussion wasn't allowed to run for the full seven days? That's only permitted for speedy closures. FaviFake (talk) 17:18, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

It was closed as "no consensus" because it was procedurally closed. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 02:26, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Discussions can't be "procedurally closed" as no consensus, according to WP:NOCONSENSUS. That's misleading, as it implies there was a standard discussion. Would you mind re-closing it as "speedy redirect" or a similar wording? FaviFake (talk) 16:38, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Patrick.N.L

[2]

@Patrick.N.L didnt get the hint. Should i just file a report again? User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 16:02, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Please do. I strongly prefer not to give back-to-back blocks so another admin should handle this one. Feel free to copy-paste whatever from the earlier one to speed it up. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 23:34, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Gaza Genocide Denial

I have added a good faith modification which is well sourced by BBC and other journals which are well established as neutral such as nasha niva. I do not understand why any countering viewpoints are promptly removed. We need to add some information to give some neutrality to the page gaza genocide denial, because currently a POV should be added.

Legal experts and the highest legal international bodies have also denied the Gaza genocide. The chief prosecutor of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) refused to lay genocide charges on Israel and considered there was no evidence of a genocide in Gaza . The International Criminal Court has refused to conclude the Gaza genocide was plausible Patrick.N.L (talk) 16:20, 5 June 2026 (UTC)Patrick.N.L (talk) 16:23, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

@Patrick.N.L, it doesn't matter whether your actions are in good faith, or even if they are substantially correct; you're being blocked for disruptive editing, not for being wrong or for acting in bad faith. You need to work together with the other editors of that page to achieve consensus. Please listen to what they are saying to you and treat them as your colleagues. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 23:36, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

I have put the modifications in the talk page and I'm waiting for them to comment. Patrick.N.L (talk) 03:08, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

i have put forward a single modification with strong sources such as bbc, an editor has reverted it and i went to the talk page to discuss it. I'm unsure on how i went wring. Patrick.N.L (talk) 03:11, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

The editor has responded to you, and you need to discuss this with them on the talk page. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 05:07, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

References

Gaza Genocide

Could you review why a few editors of gaza genocide refuse to add some neutrality to the page. The highest courts, both the ICC and ICJ have reviewed the evidence and both refused to say a genocide was plausible (ICC) or even lay charges of genocide against Israel (ICJ). The chief prosecutor of the ICJ even said there was No evidence of genocide in Gaza and that “It would be a reckless prosecutor to move simply because of clamor. You move based upon evidence.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/may/26/icc-prosecutor-khan-undercuts-gaza-genocide-narrative-israel/?__cf_chl_tk=qSSg337UZqLDLApKjbn6QM496rdfeP3nKN4P_u1AP4k-1780674554-1.0.1.1-lLYdQDGjH0wMHIaCZc0EoSLWYPoHmu5pfnG1YZJF570

https://nashaniva.com/en/395378

The fact that the ICC and the ICJ are the highest legal bodies, it would be quite relevant to put their countering viewpoints, or even consider that the page change from "accusation of gaza genocide" to "Gaza genocide" on December 11 was reckless and not based on evidence as the chief prosecutor of the ICC said “It would be a reckless prosecutor to move simply because of clamor. You move based upon evidence.” Wikipedia should be based on evidence, not on a group of editors trying to remove all dissenting viewpoints. Right now, the lack of neutrality hurts the credibility of all wikipedia.Patrick.N.L (talk) 16:23, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

This is an argument that you need to make on the talk page of the article. Make sure you're using reliable sources that are not opinion journalism, like that Washington Times piece is. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 23:39, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from Paul Kithima (12:02, 6 June 2026)

How do I add a ISBN? Because whenever I try it brings an error --Paul Kithima (talk) 12:03, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Paul Kithima, welcome to wikipedia! Can you show me the kind of error you're receiving, or give me some more information about what exactly you're trying to do? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 14:23, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Your experience level at Wikipedia

Hi Asilvering; I've seen your name as involved with sys ops activities for users using multiple accounts. At present on the Black hole Talk page there appears to be a temporary account ~2026-28259-76, which is freely admitting to have multiple accounts, some of which are listed on the Temporary account User page and some of which appear to not be listed. The Black hole article recently was promoted to FA and is currently in final constructive preparations for TFA later in July; and this temporary account has not been contributing to the content issues but only citing WP policy quotes about edit conduct, etc. That temporary account seems to have only about 77 edits and seems to be showing a disproportionately large knowledge of the Wikipedia Policy guidelines for someone with only 77 edits. That temporary account is also apparently making a large number of edits on the ANI noticeboard and trying to influence outcomes there as well. Could you take a glance at it to see if this might qualify for starting an SPI or CheckUser on this temporary account? ErnestKrause (talk) 16:31, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

@ErnestKrause, it doesn't look to me like there's anything fishy going on there. Some people just prefer to edit without having a named account. This person in particular has made hundreds of edits over their time as a wikipedian. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 02:40, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at this. My account is mostly dedicated to upgrading articles to FA status and I seem to get a significant number of thanks notifications on my noticeboard for them from most editors who I'm in contact with. Therefore, it seems relatively rare that I receive sharp criticisms from other editors for various reasons, which has occurred maybe 2-3 times in the past several weeks. It seems that of the 2-3 registered user accounts making these criticisms, that they appear to match up with the recent criticism which this temporary account has made of me on the Black hole article which I've just reported to you above. If one of the registered Wikipedia users critical of my account is also using temporary accounts to be critical about my account without notification, then this seems like it would be the equivalent of more or less direct sock pupppeting to gain an advantage in editing on Wikipedia. Should I express concern when it seems that a registered Wikipedia account is also using unidentified temporary accounts without notification in order to gain an editing advantage over other editors? Is what I just described sock puppeting under Wikipedia rules which ought to be examined? ErnestKrause (talk) 14:53, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

[3] goes slightly contrary to it, there are quite some people totally unrelated to the problem you're about now here and in another places, but still with a strong opinions they share there in not quite a pleasant way (while it's eventually went nowhere as I got, but it probably explains why you're not so eager to go there to rise a case).

(Sorry, I just couldn't resist to make this comment, because it turned out that at the provided link there is more words "canvassing" that I used in a recent days, and I hoped for a record.)

UPD Ouch, as I read that case as a whole now, I'm really not sure how could it was just left as is without any meaningful resolution (all the available admins were scared by verbiage?); but this quote is a perfect summary: I'd encourage BootsED to file at WP:AE if/when this thread inevitably closes with no consensus. (and there was no unanimity reached, that is different from the consensus, so it's even wasn't a self-fulfilling prediction) Another sad thing is that now I'm worrying that the message I left at Talk is of little help, as the problem is not the in the lack of understanding, but in the active willing to not understand. ~2026-33567-16 (talk) 17:57, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I just got pinged here and am confused about what the issue is. Is ErnestKrause canvassing people on another page and that is why I was pinged? Is this why my prior ANI submission about ErnestKrause was brought up? BootsED (talk) 03:35, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

My apologies, I'm still struggle with understanding that way of writing an account name do trigger a notification, and that's do not. I copied the quote as is, and, looks like it's triggered it, it was unintended. But it's worthy to say again that it is a very good quote. ~2026-33770-50 (talk) 12:07, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

@ErnestKrause, yes, if someone who normally edits under a named account logs out to make comments on an FAC, that's WP:LOUTSOCK/WP:PROJSOCKing. But you would need to have some evidence that this was the case. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 01:18, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning these sock issues in the context of this temporary account being discussed here. He also appears to be leaving wall of text messages both on my Talk page here [4] and on your talk page below. He has apprently changed his temprorary account six times in the last week and seems to be a Temporary account hopper. Is this an issue when his account appears to avoiding using his regular account in the normal manner? ErnestKrause (talk) 07:42, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

What is his regular account? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 07:50, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I've currently got the list down to the 3-4 regular account names which appear to be the most likely editors to look at. As I started to mention above in this thread, that since over 90% of my Wikipedia time is devoted to upgrading and promoting FA articles then I gratefully receive a large number thank-you notifications on my User account notifications board. Therefor when negative comments come up on my Talk page it sort of sticks out in very sharp contrast to all the other editor positive thank-you comments. There are 3-4 editors who fall into this category of negative critics which I can identify, and one of them has an edit history of leaving large wall-of-text edits on various Wikipedia article Talk pages. I can identify these 3-4 accounts to you at this time, or I could continue to narrow down the list further if that's the preferred option. Temporary account are issued with 90-day expiration limits, and I'm assuming that this is intended to give new editors a sufficient amount of time to decide if the new editors want to stay with Wikipedia and open a regular account. In this case, it seems to be the other way around and an editor (with the ability to quote large expanses of Wikipedia policy) has somehow decided that opening large numbers of Temp accounts as a Temporary account hopper seems to give him an edit advantage over regular editors who follow normal policy and edit from one and only one account. The Temp account editor appears to be opening over 6-7 Temp accounts per week. This situation seems to deserve closer attention? ErnestKrause (talk) 15:26, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Humor? ~2026-34586-18 (talk) 18:03, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

@ErnestKrause, there's nothing nefarious about having multiple TAs. It's not something that an editor can control - you'll get three different temp accounts if you edit at home, at work, and on your phone, for example. As far as I have observed, this editor hasn't been making any attempts to pretend they are different people, so they're not violating any kind of rules. You can just treat all of these TAs as though they are the same person. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 00:48, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

As far as I have observed, this editor hasn't been making any attempts to pretend they are different people, so they're not violating any kind of rules. You can just treat all of these TAs as though they are the same person.

As here is already enough confusion going on (with a recently added example about confusing the cited book in question being a popular science one vs. its author being a 'pop-science' disposable source), it's better to clarify prior it deteriorated further: there are two different people who are treated by EK as if they are one. Quoted explanation doesn't work here: I'm definitely saying that we are the two different people with that other editor, and I even directly wrote it already. While I indeed cannot exactly know what is other user's opinion about it, I'd estimate that they're also doesn't pretend us to be the same people (as they're looks like a pretty reasonable person from what I could read from them). ~2026-34649-31 (talk) 18:55, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment here. This Temp account is now starting to watchlist my account for the purpose reverting my sourced edits when he doesn't personally like them. He appears to be using the Temp account hopper approach as his type of hit-and-run editing in order to prevail against other editors who are accountable to their regular accounts for good conduct. At this point he is now accusing an established university scholar as being a 'pop-science' disposable source by reverting here: [5]. Please note that even when he is challenged on his edits, then it seems to be of little effect since he just hops to another one of his Temp accounts and continues the same hit-and-run editing; what are the best recommendations (since he has now watchlisted my account for the purpose of reverting any edits he dislikes for his own personal reasons)? ErnestKrause (talk) 17:53, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

But that is a pop-science source. It's published by WW Norton, framed around a Hollywood movie, aimed specifically at non-scientists. That's what pop-science is. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 19:05, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Since I've read the book, I'm going to add a short comment in defense of Kip Thorne as a science advisor. Kip Thorne was not one of the authors of the fictional film. He was hired as a scientific consultant for the film to represent his scientific opinions. The title of the book is also "The Science of...", which means that Thorne is writing about his view of the science represented in the film. An accurate summary of Thorne's participation in the science aspects of the film on Wikipedia is presented at Interstellar (film)#Scientific accuracy. The current version of the Kip Thorne Wikipedia article is therefore in error and inaccurate largely because of the Temp account hopper who remains anonymous. ErnestKrause (talk) 02:22, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

asilvering, here is the fruit of this exchange: [6] ~2026-28259-76 (talk) 20:05, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Temp account hopper appears to be verging on WP:DE while watchlisting my account edits. Someone at sysops appears to think that this might be something like a freshman college student who has discovered a large bank of desktops at a University library, and is simply moving from one desktop to another desktop at the library in order to get a new Temp account each time he switches desktops. He is also refusing all contact on his Temp account Talk page(s) in order to discuss his issues as he reverted here: [7]. Request to consider again opening SPI or CheckUser on this Temp account hopper in order to at least find out which University he appears to be using as his access point for generating multiple Temp accounts. ErnestKrause (talk) 20:59, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Now from expressing more and more of CIR issues it also went into accusing (imaginary?) sysops in gross incompetence? Together with a striking unwilling (inability?) to read an answers it's more and more resemble a case when an old-time editor suddenly started to act weirdly, write a nonsence at various talk pages, and, in essentially similar way ignored all that they were responded about, only to continue doing the same again and again. Turned out it was a neurological condition onset. ~2026-35063-15 (talk) 01:29, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

TA, implying someone has dementia is an obvious personal attack, as is this. If you continue in that manner, you will be blocked from editing. @ErnestKrause, we are deep into "put up or shut up" territory here. I've explained to you several times that there is nothing wrong with having multiple temporary accounts. You continue to act as though there is. Editors who use temporary accounts have the same right to edit the encyclopedia as you do. If this editor's behaviour is otherwise problematic, you need to prove that, with diffs. If you think they are a sockpuppet of some named account, open an SPI and lay out your evidence. If you can't do either of those because your complaints have no merit, stop disparaging them. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 04:02, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Sincerely, I feel really sorry about that my last remark, it was totally inappropriate, and I'm grateful that you break a thought cycle I was in about removing it, striking it, or leave as it by chastising me for it (which alternative is better to do btw? could it be permanently deleted, as it's of no value for sure?). The fact it "resemble" something for me is works just the same as a direct claim indeed. I will try to do better (especially with editing at 1 AM, that is a real thing, I wasn't able even to do a proper link, definitely shouldn't speculate about anybody's perceived competence such time).

To clarify, with a plural nature of "you" it's could be read as if you addressed the first two sentences for the same person; it should be "TA's" in this case (disregard if it is actually unambiguous, and it is on me to to not read it properly). ~2026-35063-15 (talk) 04:31, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

The first two sentences are addressed to you (singular), yes. I don't think you need to strike or remove anything. But please do your best to be courteous to other editors, even when you find them frustrating. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 05:12, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Should I understand as is [this] as an additional example of that is not to do then (it's not my edit), or it's more complicated? Either way I will definitely try. ~2026-35063-15 (talk) 05:23, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that's certainly not courteous. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 06:01, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

The other TA already said this, but I would like to emphasize that there are two people here. My TAs are clearly identified on their talk-pages. The other person (not me) has been making a lot of edits in this discussion, and most recently helped bury the unique issue I raised. I am going to revert the pointy and disruptive edit [8]. It is true that my edit summary to C.fred was not civil; I also apologized to C.fred when I realized what the source of confusion was. I am more concerned about EK’s edits to articles than EK’s overactive imagination and attacks on me. ~2026-28259-76 (talk) 09:58, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Although I've now lost count of how many times they've canvassed other editors as part of this dispute; [9] today follows [10]. I would appreciate any steps you could take re "put up or shut up". ~2026-28744-62 (talk) 21:10, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Asking other editors for help when you think you're dealing with disruptive editing is not canvassing. I am, however, extremely unimpressed, and have declined their TAIV request. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 02:36, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. ~2026-28259-76 (talk) 10:17, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Stefan Gradmann

Right now, we have an article without any independent, secondary sources. At the same time, Powerful interests want to use unsourced articles such as this to take away our tax exemption. If you want to help, please add at least one reliable source. Thank you for collaborating. Bearian (talk) 03:23, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

@Bearian, why don't you add at least one reliable source, instead of incorrectly tagging it for BLP PROD? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 03:24, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I have done more than my fair share of rescues in the past 18 months, and despite what everyone in Düsseldorf thinks, I can barely read the German language. Thank you anyway. Bearian (talk) 03:28, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Canvassing question

Hello, I know you're rather busy now, so, please, ignore it if it is unappropiate currently, and reply only of it cause no disrupion of anything you're doing. (Just I'm more and more curious about it, and you habitually say that's it fine for you to answer.)

I totally failing to understand how "Canvassing" is work. I had read CANVASS few times, but it only create confusion for me, not provide explanations.

Recently I witnessed some discussions in ANI, and realized that there are some users, whom I could to call a "residents" if it's fine (while some of them use self-description of "goofing around"). Most obvious example is Blue Sonnet. I'll try to clarify that I precisely don't mean that I have any problem with that they are writing there (I could definitely say that I see it very reasonable, and mostly agree with it, if it's matter) or why they do it. That I'm trying to say about, is that it results in a rather weird situation. "Resident's" opinion is expected to be a part of discussion, merely due to a fact they are likely to read a case, well, being a "resident". It could be a very well thought out and useful opinion, but due to circumstances it seems to have a undue weight. Because one can expect a "resident's" opinion to appear, but due to "canvassing" opinions of "non-residents" are lost. How could an editor write own opinion if they don't know about discussion? Somebody could inform them about it, but it immediately declared a canvassing (and even possibly off-site canvassing).

Quoting CANVASS, In general, it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it be done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus., it says about intent. Anybody could call anybody else to participate anywhere claiming (and even genuinely having) that intent according to it. But in practice it seems that it is not how it works, people get blamed for it in case somebody else suddenly come to participate in discussion (and it could not involve actual contact between editors at all). CANVASS seems to put together few distantly related, but different things, and not explain the one that matter the most, I think. "Spamming" and "Campaigning" are about "broadcast reach", that could be regulated against not because it adds some undue weight, but simply because its a bother. "Vote-stacking" and "Stealth canvassing" are way more complicated. There is a "meatpuppetry" case that is close to a first one, but it assume voters don't actually know or bother about case; they're just brought there by a puppeteer. But if they do know or bother in fact, it still qualify as it, because they're not accidentally stumbled at case "goofing around", but were informed by somebody, especially off-site.

But it results in that opinion of somebody who have a lot of free enough time to check about cases matter way more than others, who doing something else. Not related to their actual expertise in case. You're accidentally noticed a case and participated? Fine. You're didn't noticed and it's over already? Well, you're had to somehow knew about it and participate in it if you wanted to (by a Catch-22). No, you're cannot be told about it, because it would be a canvassing, and would make your own and person's who informed you words less valuable. But if you will stumble at it accidentally it would be totally fine. Except if it could be declared as canvassing still, if somebody would feel to, as "being too good to just happen on its own". While one can expect that "resident" would participate in it, and nobody would ever think it as canvassing. And again, while the article about canvassing clearly start with a wording that it is good to inform other people about some discussion, in practice it's used as a rule against it.

I'd want to show the messages that make me thought about it enough to write this one; while I was puzzled about "canvassing" for quite a time prior, them finalized a decision to ask about it (and it took days of writing).

[11] & [12] < The ones that finally pushed me to start to write it. Any editor can and arguable should give their opinion, but there is no requirement on "breakdown", "!vote" is enough. As I understand it, it should be understand broadly, not essentially about "!vote" only, about any brief opinion mentioned. But it means that meatpuppetry is matter only as intent, the result is of no problem, as anybody can give their opinion, without requirement to even understand it.

[13] < According to CANVASS it is how it should be, due to Editors who have participated in previous discussions on the same topic (or closely related topics). But there is also The audience must not be selected on the basis of their opinions—for example, if notices are sent to editors who previously supported deleting an article, then identical notices should be sent to those who supported keeping it. right after it. Maybe there were editors who argued otherwise on a case, but they were not notified. And even in case one, who do a call, tried and did a thorough research of all possible participants, somebody could be still missed, and it could be blamed as intentional omission. And moving to a more general case: suppose there is some article is in question. Such message should include every editor from it's history? They all could be interested in it in theory.

[14] < Very worrying one. Any time anybody will write something it could happen to be a hour or two after something like that somewhere. In some trivial cases it would even match, so accusation could be even convincing. It is even opens a possibility to create with proper timing some message in some obscure place in a style "Don't write here, go to the place you already know about, and write there that is needed" in opposition to own case, then "discover" and "reveal" it in case discussion goes wrong for you.

[15] < This is like a short summary of that I'm trying to understand. This is totally not addressed in any response. Probably understandable, given a circumstances it's asked in, but I, in other circumstances, wonder about the very same things (except that obvious manipulation attempt).

[16] < It all seems valid: they're not asking other editor to join their cause (maybe they're hope for it, but definitely not asking for it), but to do what CANVASS propose to do, to add their own expertise on a subject. And they're being told that now it will diminish weight of other editor words too, because they're spoiled it by asking them about. (Note, that both responses there are unattended.)

[17] < Should I be assumed to take it as a horrible Stealth Canvassing Attempt turned Open Biased Partisan Campaigning due to technical difficulties? They wanted to collaborate, they do, how could they do so without contacting eachother, a telepathy? I can't see it as any problem, but it is some actual policy violation in fact? (If yes, please, could it go unnoticed further, as I only tried to use it as an example of something that is fine by me.)

(Additional example I noticed while posting the message, so added it as it is related to) [18] < Canvassing there means "Campaigning"? It seems to be a pretty natural thing for me (as you know), to try to reach somebody competent to get explanations. I think its good that they will eventually get their explanations, and they simply could be asked to stop if they are seen as a nuisance. I understand that the nuisance possibility is a problem, but what would be a better approach? At Teahouse there is a very good possibility of no help with it. As I understand now ANI would be a right place, but ANI sound very scary, and I'm not sure all users could just step over the threshold without at least advice to.

And a simple hypothetical case that could explain things I'm lost at: A and B are Wikipedia editors and roommates. A got a case in ANI against them (or some questionable for them edits in article A and B edits time from time). Now A cannot even tell a news about it to B at their coffee talk, because it would be a stealth canvassing, and possible vote-stacking? But if B accidentally will stumble in it and will write on a subject, C, who knows that A and B are in close contact, could claim that B's arrival is due to canvassing, so of little value still. Is there any difference if A and B are not roommates, but e-mail or some other way of communication was potentially used? Also there is immediately a problem of "partisanship", because people usually talk with their friends, not enemies. So A expected to tell B, who is their friend, about something happening with them, including ANI case, but wouldn't went to reach D, who is their enemy, about it. Not even because it could hurt their cause, but because they are normally not talking to eachother. I understand the problem of A asking B to do something for A's cause as potentially undesirable, but currently it seems to means that A couldn't even discuss something that's happening with them with others, unless the others initiated it on their own.

Getting back to the point of undue weight of "residents", as it's one of the main point I tried to ask about is: there is a concept of "Wikipedia:There is no deadline". But it contradict with at least some things like A final consideration period of at least 24 hours will usually elapse between the casting of the fourth net vote to close the case and the implementation of any remedies. However, closure may be fast-tracked if (i) all clauses pass unanimously or (ii) there is an absolute majority vote in the motion to do so.. This one is about Arbitration Committee, so as I understand is actually not affected by "residents", but Administrators Noticeboard cases are also time-based (must confess, I failed to find a trivially described procedure for it). They could be closed due to overwhelming unanimity by "residents" and passers-by (and that may be some very different result if there would been some another set of passers-by), or simply archived due to inactivity and so on. All of that in a relatively short time interval, so users, who'd spent some ten minutes of own time to write on a subject could trivially miss the opportunity, because they couldn't be informed about it, because it would be "canvassing" then. While a "resident", who loitering there as a habit (I must confess, I could understand why) will always have an opportunity to do so, constrained only by own desire to. So, if person is less liked by a "resident", more chances a "resident" would join a case arguing against them, and if person is liked by a resident", a "resident" could argue for them, or simply ignore a case. All of it in a relatively short window of possibility, when people who doing something else, and being unaware about the case could intervene only accidentally, because they couldn't even be informed about. Say, why my opinion on a case matters more, simply because I loitered around and had a time to write it, compared to somebody who, maybe, understand it way better than I do, but spent that time watching some movie or editing some article, despite would share their opinion if only they'd knew about such possibility (but they couldn't be informed about, as it would be a policy violation then).

There is also the provision of mystery in CANVASS: Editors who have asked to be kept informed being an "appropriate notification" targets. It still mention only about Talk pages of editors, so in the example A couldn't use it (as I understand, even if A will tell to B "there is a message on your Talk page for you", it still will be off-site canvassing, B have to discover it on their own, even if they preferred to not miss it in such case). But the part I'm confused about it the most is: it assumed that editors by default not asked to be kept informed. How they could do so? Could they ask to be kept informed about everything they don't directly ask to not be informed about, and to be informed via non-Talk page routes too? Is there actual rationale against that people are likely want to be kept informed by default? (With spamming and campaigning being a separate solvable problems.)

So if you will have some time, when/if you will have a free time, and will feel to, I would be really gratuitous if you'll share some explanations or opinions about it (I understand it is ridiculously lengthy, so, of course, "don't do that, I didn't even tried to read it" is fine too, as well as removal from the page if it waste too much space). ~2026-33567-16 (talk) 16:48, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

You definitely do not need to be this worried about canvassing. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 04:06, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm gratuitous that you're at least tried to read it, and I'll try to assume as a hope it's implying you're feeling better now; otherwise you'd not bother with it at all I think. (Sorry, I couldn't knew initially it's about health issues, not about general business; I wouldn't dare to ask it otherwise, regarding a circumstances.) ~2026-34586-18 (talk) 18:13, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from Bomie123 (17:31, 7 June 2026)

Hey bud, sorry to bug you, i was looking at doing citations and i found this page https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Order_of_the_Holy_Macedonian_Cross&gesuggestededit=1 The single source is an archive page which seems awful, i cant find anything recent, and even a quick glance at a couple of mentioned recipients doesn't seem to show any of them using it. Is this the sort of page which we should just remove? --Bomie123 (talk) 17:31, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, honestly, I would just place a WP:PROD tag on this one and say something like "non-notable award, unsourced article" for your rationale. If you use WP:TWINKLE, it will handle most of this for you: TW --> PROD --> fill in the brief form. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 02:14, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much, that is done, have a great day Bomie123 (talk) 06:51, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from DMWBBA (13:57, 8 June 2026)

For books that don't have an ISBN but do have a LCCN number, should I put the LCCN number in the entry? --DMWBBA (talk) 13:57, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

{{cite book}} has a LCCN parameter, so yes, you can add it. I don't think that the automatic citation generator will take an LCCN number as a lookup, so you'll have to fill out the template by hand. If you're using Visual Editor (the what-you-see-is-what-you-get one), type {{ to bring up the template inserter, then search for "cite book". You'll then have to search for LCCN in the left-hand side where the parameters are and make sure the box is checked off before you can add it. Let me know if you get stuck. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 01:31, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Similar unsourced-content editors on similar topic

If I remember right, you suggested I let you know about possible sockpuppets (someone else did too, earlier, but I didn't make a note). This user editing on Belarusian politics got blocked for adding unsourced content (with successive warnings by me in Sep 2025 on the user's talk page); this user (new since Feb 2026) added a section with some interesting, credible info on Belarusian politics, but without a source, and with the same username style as the other one. There's also a third editor (since May 2024) with a similar username style whose talk page seems mostly filled with concerns about unsourced content and adding non-existent template parameters, and who has recently edited on one of the same topics adding info to the infobox that does not seem to be in the article body. The blocked user has no article-talk-page contributions; the third user has no article-talk-page contributions; the second user has 7 article-talk-page contributions, mostly expressing eagerness to keep infoboxes for elections updated. Could be just coincidences. Boud (talk) 16:23, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Those first two at least do look really similar. I've filed at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/JamesLewis06. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 01:54, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Ack!

I've been busy IRL for a minute, but I just tried to make an edit, and suddenly it's not going to the normal edit page like it used to, I am stuck in some kind of (I am assuming) visual edit mode. How do I change back to the old editor? - Adolphus79 (talk) 16:51, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

HA! Nevermind, I just went back to try to figure it out further on my own and it apparently fixed itself once I complained. - Adolphus79 (talk) 16:54, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Should be a little pencil icon in the upper-right-ish of the screen that switches between the two views, if you get stuck like that again. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 01:22, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-24

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

• Wikimedia Enterprise has increased the free usage limits for its API offerings. The monthly request limit for the On-demand API has increased from 5,000 to 50,000 requests, while the Snapshot API limit has increased from 15 to 30 requests per month. In addition, Structured Contents snapshots are now available for free accounts. These changes expand access to Wikimedia Enterprise data for developers, researchers, and organizations using Wikimedia content. [19]

Updates for editors

• The refreshed Explore Feed, now called the Home Feed, is rolling out to 50% of users of the Wikipedia Android app. The Home Feed helps readers discover relevant content through two new tabs: Community and For You. The Community tab provides a scrollable feed of curated content and updates from the broader Wikimedia community and movement, while the For You tab offers a full-screen, swipeable experience that shows content tailored to a user's interests. The redesign is part of a broader effort to improve discovery and enhance the learning experience in the Wikipedia app.
• The Which came first? daily trivia game is now available in the beta version of the Wikipedia iOS app in English, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish. The game uses historical events from Wikipedia's "On This Day" content and challenges readers to guess which of two events happened first. The game was previously released on Android. Communities interested in making the game available in their languages can read the instructions and requirements.
• Sub-referencing, a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details, will begin rolling out to Wikimedia wikis following a successful pilot phase. Deployment will start on 8 June for most Group 1 wikis and French Wikipedia, with additional Wikipedia language editions receiving the feature over the coming months. Communities are encouraged to prepare by checking for untranslated Cite extension messages in their language and reviewing any use of Reference Tooltips, which may require updates to support the new functionality. Wikis using Reference Previews do not need to take any action. Communities may also wish to create the cite-tracking-category-ref-details tracking category as a hidden category using __HIDDENCAT__ (or a dedicated template), and connect it to the corresponding Wikidata item d:Q129764848. [20]
• The Page Previews experiment on mobile web has concluded. The team decided not to roll out the feature after the results showed no statistically significant impact on reader retention, as the primary success metric was retention improvement. Page Previews, which are already available on desktop and in the apps, display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and link to the full article when readers tap a blue link. The experiment tested this experience on mobile web across six Wikipedias.
• The user interface icon library will be updated later this week or next week. Most of the ~300 icons have been slightly refined and ~30 new icons have been added. These changes improve the icons to make them more consistent and comprehensible, and provide more visual balance when they are used in groups.
• The Universal Language Selector (ULS) interface in MediaWiki, which helps users select content in other languages, has been updated. The new version improves speed and accessibility, and users of Wikimedia projects can now pin languages for quicker language switching. The deployment to Wikimedia sites will happen gradually in the coming weeks. You can test it now as a beta feature by selecting beta features in your profile preferences and share your feedback on the project page.
• View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the Pageviews Analysis dashboard on pageviews.wmcloud.org stopped updating graph data in May 2026, affecting all users, has been fixed. [21]

Updates for technical contributors

• The function signature for mw.util.addPortletLink() has been simplified. Developers can now pass a configuration object instead of a list of positional parameters when creating portlet links. The previous function signature remains supported for backwards compatibility. For example, instead of: mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', '#', 'Stub', 'ca-stubtag', 'Add a stub tag to this page'); use mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', { href: '#', text: 'Stub', id: 'ca-stubtag', tooltip: 'Add a stub tag to this page' });. Script maintainers are encouraged to review existing uses of addPortletLink() and update them where appropriate. This change will be available on all wikis from 11 June. Thanks to community volunteer Gerges for contributing this improvement. [22]
• Community Wishlist discussion: Product & Technology introduced changes meant to increase the number and complexity of wishes fulfilled, including the disbanding of the Community Tech team. They are engaging in discussions about a proposed direction for the wishlist from community members. Includes ways to structure annual voting, better tracking of wishes, removing focus areas, and staffing updates.
• 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 21:28, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Correct forum

What is the correct forum to report a user who is violating the terms of their ArbCom-imposed topic ban? WP:AE or WP:ARCA? Katzrockso (talk) 01:05, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) AE. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 01:06, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Actually, I think you can pick either per Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#Direct violation reports SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 01:09, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

I'd say ARCA is the better spot for a directly imposed personal sanction. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 01:10, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for reply

No problem at all/no judgement. I've been there. Hope you're feeling better. 331dot (talk) 12:48, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Only marginally, but I've antibiotics now, so things ought to get better soon. Thanks. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 12:53, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Checkuser for promotional editing

Comparing the edit history of two authors of recent promotional articles suggests a clear pattern of activity presumably designed to minimize scrutiny of SPA editors by what seem like professional promotional Wikipedia editors. I don't have any particular evidence to link these accounts to justify a sockpuppet investigation, but thought I might contact someone directly to see if a checkuser would be appropriate to find other accounts used by these professionals. Daask (talk) 22:13, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, found a pile there. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 06:46, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 10

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on May 8. Please help translate.

---

Highlights

• Community Wishlist discussion: Product & Technology introduced changes meant to increase the number and complexity of wishes fulfilled, including the disbanding of the Community Tech team. They are engaging in discussions about a proposed direction for the wishlist from community members. Includes ways to structure annual voting, better tracking of wishes, removing focus areas, and staffing updates.
• Digital Public Goods: The Wikimedia Foundation has become a member of the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA).
• Better bot detection: A trial of hCaptcha on several Wikipedias, including English, French, and Japanese, showed it can effectively detect and deter bad-faith automated activity, on its own and by giving checkusers and stewards signals to look into. Based on these results, hCaptcha will be rolled out across all wikis. See the project page for technical information about the implementation and privacy protections.

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

Example of the Attribution Framework recommendations.

• A better way to give credit: The Wikimedia Attribution Framework and API makes it simple for developers to fairly credit volunteer contribution. When anyone encounters Wikimedia content, we want them to know that it comes from our projects, and they are invited to participate.
• Baby Globe joins the Reading Challenge: The Android and iOS Wikipedia apps released the 25-day reading challenge, to drive readers engagement through reading milestones. To track their reading streak during the challenge, users can add a widget featuring Baby Globe to their home screen.
• Account security: The Foundation is technically enforcing that all privileges that enable users to take security- or privacy-sensitive actions can only be held by users who have enabled two-factor authentication. Logging in with passkeys is quicker than logging in without two-factor authentication. In addition, logged-in users can see a banner encouraging them to confirm their email address. These changes secure individual accounts as well as communities and the wikis.
• Incident reporting form: The Foundation began a trial on English Wikipedia of the incident reporting form. 60% of unblocked logged-in users see a new Report button, allowing them to report conduct issues.
• Encouraging account creation: Following a successful account creation experiment, an improved logged-out edit warning message will be deployed to all Wikimedia wikis this week. The change will only affect logged-out users on mobile web who open an editing session.
• Wikimedia Android App: The Wikipedia Android App is at the Phase 1 of redesigning its Home Feed. The new feed includes two tabs: Community, featuring refreshed Explore content, and For You, with personalized reading recommendations based on reader interests and activity. The For You feed refreshes daily with updated suggestions.
• Better discovery of images: The Image Browsing beta feature was rolled out for all Wikipedias on mobile following two successful experiments. The beta feature will include a carousel of all an article’s images at the top of the article, with controls for editors to exclude images from the article’s carousel or to exclude an article from the feature entirely.
• Reading Lists feature: The Foundation is conducting an experiment to show the reading lists feature, which is still in development, to logged-out mobile readers to test whether it encourages account creation at a higher rate compared to the watchstar button. The experiment was launched on May 18 on German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu wikis, and will run for a month.

A design mockup of what the share card looks like.

• Testing Suggestion Mode: Suggestion Mode was released as an A/B test for newcomer editors on the mobile website at ~15 Wikipedias. The experiment will measure its impact on the proportion of newcomer mobile web edit sessions that result in constructive (un-reverted) article edits. It will also evaluate the feature’s impact on editor retention and monitor changes in revert and block rates.
• Wikifunctions now supports Wikidata references: References in Wikidata statements are now available on Wikifunctions, and you now can use external links in Wikifunctions-generated citations. This allows the use of more than 1.3 billion references available in Wikidata and adding them as citations to individual statements in Abstract Wikipedia.
• Pilot wikis adopting Abstract Wikipedia: The Abstract Wikipedia team has identified five potential pilot wikis to assess their interest in adopting abstract articles on their wikis. The pilots are Malayalam, Bengali, Dagbani, Arabic, and Indonesian Wikipedia. If your community is interested in becoming a pilot, let us know on Meta.
• Latest experiments: An upcoming experiment is testing whether we can serve readers better when a footnote click in read mode shows the full bibliographic information rather than flying them to the reference list. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
• Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 20, 21, 22, 23 include an experiment to test a new Share Card feature that allows readers to create visually engaging cards from Wikipedia articles and share them online See also the 92 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

• Tech blog moved to Diff: The migration of the Techblog to Diff is now complete: 138 posts going back over a decade have been successfully migrated. Diff is now happy to welcome technology-focused blog posts with renewed vigor.
• What’s new in the Wikipedia Library: Access to the American Psychological Association was renewed and collections from the Harvard Business Review and Swiss Media Database (Swissdox) are now available to editors who are eligible for The Wikipedia Library.
• New course on WikiLearn: A free self-paced online course, designed for researchers who want to make their field more visible on Wikipedia, was launched on WikiLearn. Share "Wikipedia for Researchers” if you work with early-career researchers, teach in an academic institution, or support open knowledge communities.
• Wiki Mentor Africa: The first edition of Wiki Mentor Africa - Women Tech Summit brought together over 315 registered participants across Africa to learn, explore, and grow in tech together.
• Let's Connect Learning Clinic: If you missed it, you can now watch the recording of the Let's Connect Learning Clinic "How to support up-and-coming groups in the movement as a long-time Wikimedian" with Wikimedistas El Salvador.
• Community Conferences: Registration for WikiConference North America and Queering Wiki Conference is now opened. Call for Speakers for the Queering Wiki is also opened until June 30.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan

• Sharing the Form 990s: The Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Endowment published their Form 990s, covering the fiscal year that ran from July 2024 to June 2025. The Form 990 is an annual form required of all nonprofit organizations in the United States. You can read the highlights on Form 990 for the Foundation and Form 990 for the Endowment on Meta-Wiki.
• Wikimedia Enterprise: Wikimedia Enterprise's free API accounts gets a substantial upgrade across the Snapshot and On-demand APIs, including free access to Structured Contents Snapshots.
• Structured Contents: How Databricks Parsed Wikipedia to Markdown with Python.

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Board selection process: The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is reviewing and improving how it selects new members. The goal is to ensure that there is the right mix of expertise and community representation on the board. Join the conversation on 16 June at 17:00 UTC, and share your ideas on the talk page.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. If you have feedback or suggestions about the bulletin, let us know at foundationbulletinwikimedia.org. For questions about the Wikimedia Foundation's work, contact us!

MediaWiki message delivery 22:31, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from Martincsattos on User:Martincsattos (02:43, 11 June 2026)

How do I create a citiation? --Martincsattos (talk) 02:43, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Martincsattos, welcome to wikipedia! When you're using visual editor, there's a "cite" button in the top toolbar. Just click that and paste in a URL or ISBN and it will generate a citation for you. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 04:10, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks but

You could have left it to me to fix that AFD rather than reverting my close. Would have been nice to get a message on my talk page too, but appreciate your clearing out the socks. Didn't see any indications on the afd that they were socking so glad they had not got away with it. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:04, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Fix the AFD in what way? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 13:08, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

undoing the close and relisting. I'm good at grunt work like that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:11, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Sorry. Didn't seem worth bothering you about. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 13:18, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from Ewoks69 (13:51, 12 June 2026)

Mentor will you oks check my last revision? --Ewoks69 (talk) 13:51, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

TPS comment: Hi Ewoks69, welcome to Wikipedia! If you are asking about your draft article, it seems your submission was denied because of your use of chatGPT or another Large Language Model. We do not allow new articles to be written with LLM, as was explained to you already by MSK. There are several glaring errors/AI hallucinations included in your draft, the obvious one (upon a quick glance) being that the subject of the article is listed as the author of more than one of the sources used, and you have made zero improvements to the article after it was last declined. I would suggest you re-write the entire article, using your own words, and check it for other hallucinations and errors before submitting again. - Adolphus79 (talk) 14:08, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Hello again Ewoks69, I have taken a look at your draft, and tried my best to clean it up and "wikify" it, but I do not see much that would pass our notability standards. My suggestion would be for you to read WP:SINGER and see if you can find better, more reliable sources and/or more content in general. If you need further help, feel free to ask. Good luck, and happy editing! - Adolphus79 (talk) 17:43, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Urgent Email

@Asilvering

Hello, Asilvering. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

EaglesFan37 (talk) 20:41, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Alakmarsaify

Hi Asilvering, please could you have a second look at Hirematviru, the most recent closed report on this SPI? I've added some evidence that seems to show that this account was compromised 2 days ago, about 12 hours after the last CU check was performed, which would explain why the account didn't come up. I'm aware that Alak will likely be able to read the SPI and I'm aware of WP:BEANS but in case you need to have further evidence, I will enclose the below on your talk page rather than the SPI. The other dead giveaway here is the sudden fluency in English within a few months.

Compare:

• Dec 2025
• Jan 2026
• Mar 2026

The standard of English is quite poor in all above examples.

But then after I suspect the account to be compromised, look at how they suddenly write at a native level:

• June 2026
• June 2026
• June 2026

It's possible they had a bloody good English teacher in the few months in between but the far more likely explanation is that the last 3 diffs were written by a totally different person to the above 3. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:08, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Huh. I was expecting to tell you that sudden fluency in English is surely a LLM thing, but those really don't give the vibes I'd expect. No technical evidence of anything weird on CU though, and no sign of recent compromise as far as I can tell. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 21:17, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

FWIW I was looking at some of the most recent confirmed socks a couple of hours ago, and this one did not pop up. Vanamonde93 (talk) 21:19, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

How bizarre. Based off the fact that TechWriter2026 was also negative on the CU check (despite producing carbon copies of previously deleted Alak drafts) means that we might be looking at some sort of meat, then. I suppose this was always going to happen if we pushed back hard enough on them. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 07:38, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Need Rights for Autoconfirmed

My account is old and I have done more than 10 edits but I still haven't received the autoconfirmed Amitnageswar11 (talk) 18:37, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) @Amitnageswar11: Please see WP:CONFIRM. The four-day clock to receive autoconfirmed starts from the time of the user's first edit, not the time of account creation. Your first edit was only a few hours ago. Left guide (talk) 19:15, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

EnbIl's TPA

Saw you were active, could you revoke TPA? Thanks, 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 04:49, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Done. CoconutOctopus talk 05:00, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-25

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• The Reader Growth team has launched an Image Browsing beta feature on the mobile web version of all Wikipedias. The feature shows an image carousel at the top of articles with 3 or more images. Editors can configure this feature with the following controls: to hide a specific image from a page, either use class=notpageimage excluding it from thumbnail previews, or class=noviewer excluding it from MediaViewer. The carousel can also be disabled from a page entirely, with the magic word __NOMEDIAVIEWERCAROUSEL__. To submit feedback or flag bugs, please visit the project page.
• Wikitables can now be sorted in descending order on the first click by adding data-sort-order="desc" to the header cell. Previously, by default, clicking a column header for the first time sorts it in ascending order. This addition to a Wikitable gives it more control and flexibility, while the default behavior for subsequent clicks remains unchanged. [23]

Updates for editors

• The Article guidance feature is currently being tested with some editors creating new articles on the Simple English, French, and Turkish Wikipedias. The experiment will soon begin on the Arabic and Bangla Wikipedias as well. This feature gives editors community-curated guidance to help them create articles that follow community standards. Experienced editors can continue creating or adapting outlines for specific article types that are commonly created by less experienced contributors. The outlines guide less experienced editors in creating high-quality articles. A quick guide to markups used in outlines can be found on this page. Example outlines that can be adapted and instructions for how to adapt them are on this section of the project page.
• Wikis that wish to replace the "indefinitely" button in Special:Block for temporary accounts (for example, wikis that block temporary users only until account expiration) will be able to do so by creating MediaWiki:ipb-indefinite-expiry-temporary-account with the block duration they want. [24]
• View all 41 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• By the end of June, a valid user-agent string will be required for automated dumps downloads from the dumps.wikimedia.org website. Automated requests that provide a generic or empty user-agent will be blocked. This extends enforcement of the long standing user-agent policy. Access to dumps through Wikimedia Cloud Services will not change.
• The roll out of global API rate limits is now complete, with limits enforced across all APIs and at the documented levels for all groups. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki remain exempt. All bots should continue to follow the documented best practices to avoid being rate limited.
• The API Portal wiki will be read only starting this week (June 15-18). The following week (June 22-25), all API Portal wiki URLs will redirect to Wikimedia APIs on mediawiki.org. Learn more on the project page.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• On June 17th at 6pm UTC the WMF will be holding Discord call focused on a code review. We've heard through the Developer Satisfaction Survey that volunteers are struggling with code review and we'd like to discuss these experiences with the goal of surfacing workable solutions. You can join the call via the Wikimedia Community Discord server.
• The Latin American Wikimedia Conference will host a regional hackathon that will bring together the Wikimedia movement’s technical community including developers, system administrators, data scientists, and users with extended rights. Interested technical contributors can apply for a scholarship to participate until June 21 at midnight (Bolivia time, UTC-4).
• Sign up for Wikimania Team Challenges to join this special event. The Team challenges will take place online and in person from July 21 to 22, before Wikimania conference. Everyone is welcome, regardless of skills or Wikimania registration. Teams will work on 10 important challenges supporting the Wikimedia community. For details, visit the Team Challenges page and register there. Registration closes on June 20th at 11pm UTC.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:46, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

A Barnstar for you!

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		Thank you for your patience, fairness, and kindness. You encouraged me to learn from my mistakes and gave me many opportunities to improve myself. You always go above and beyond to help others and Wikipedia. Thank you for truly seeing the good in people and your exceptional competence as an admin. LesIie (talk) 17:08, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, and good luck. :) In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 02:32, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Request for help on Library access with block

Hello asilvering. I would quite like to have access to Wikipedia Library, for example for the Brill Encyclopedia of Islam for work on male guardianship, NYT for reports and investigations, etc., but my current block means that I cannot. I would appreciate it if it was possible to remove my block. I have no intention to edit on AJ in any article, let alone on the one I am technically blocked for, before the end-date of this block, and even then not without consultation.

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 10:14, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I could convert the block to a topic ban from Al Jazeera, but I think that would be much more difficult and I wouldn't advise taking that option. A better idea would be going through WP:RSX, in my opinion. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 17:27, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Alright. If a verbal commitment from myself is not enough, and you think that a topic ban is but isn't advisable, I will simply try to contact wikipedialibrary@wikimedia.org. I was not familiar with WP:RSX. It's good to know that it exists, but I don't like the idea of making other people work for me for every locked source I want to have a look at, especially considering how many I usually go through.

As a side note, I looked up what a topic ban is and why it might be difficult and inadvisable. Having read WP:TBAN and WP:BLOCKBANDIFF, and:

1. I am extremely confused as to why blocks and bans are treated differently by the system in terms of the technical recording of them, such as the effect on the Library resource in my case, but also, as far as I can tell, that bans do not appear on a person's contributions page and block log.
2. I cannot possibly be the first or even the 50th person to say this, but considering that a block is in a sense just the technical extension of a ban, except that a ban is in a sense actually more significant since it is a matter of community consensus rather than the decision of possibly as little as one admin, why in the world would bans not feature as prominently as blocks do on contribution pages, logs, etc.?
3. If anything, prominently displaying and recording bans, which are (to my current understanding) be monitored and enforced by the community, seems to me to obviously be much more necessary than doing so for blocks, which are self-enforcing.

After writing the points above I read much of the discussion over here, and I think I'll maybe open a discussion on that talk page again and tag some of the editors that have been involved there. But still sending this here, in case you wanted to give your 2 cents.

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 08:15, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

I think if we could indicate bans and soforth in block logs, we probably would. We do, for example, when making conditional unblocks. But also, to clear something up - cbans are set by the community, but admins can unilaterally ban someone in certain circumstances, such as a conditional unblock or a CTOP sanction. And both arbcom and AE can hand out bans that are not set by the community either, though those do require a vote (arbcom) or consensus (AE). I'm not sure why TWL restricts access to partially blocked editors. Since all pblocked editors are still allowed to edit something, I don't understand why that would prevent a person from accessing TWL resources. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 23:04, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. So it is indeed some kind of technical issue that prevents bans from showing up in block logs and on contribution pages? I wonder why it's such a problem. Would it be reasonable to petition WMF to make it possible? It really seems like a pretty silly limitation for such a massive project.

I don't really understand what a conditional unblock or AE are, and don't really feel like looking into it rn haha. Maybe some day.

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 07:24, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Request for an essay on the experience of arbitrator-ship

Sorry for the possible impoliteness. I meant to use "request" in the "feature request" sense. I'm a bit curious about what it's like to be an arbitrator. -- Least Action (talk) 11:46, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) @Least Action: Category:User essays on arbitration seems to have some relevant entries on this topic. Left guide (talk) 14:58, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Also, here is an interview I gave once, although it's a few years old at this point. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:05, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

"A few years". Characteristic understatement... In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 17:05, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I plan to! I have been writing up some "day in the life" type notes, since I hope this will be helpful to admins who are thinking about running and not sure about the time commitments, etc. We hear there is a lot of off-wiki business, but for obvious reasons, arbs can't really say much about what that entails, and I can tell you as an arb that one very quickly gets used to all that and so it becomes difficult to describe. This is the part I found mysterious before becoming an arb, and quite a lot of it has changed in even the past couple of years, so my hope is that this will be a useful addition to the canon of arb essays. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 17:26, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Requesting global locks for lock evasion by default

Hi asilvering, I didn't get a chance to read your comment in the 12 June Sennick4858 (talk · contribs) SPI case until after it had been archived. I set the case page to request global locks by default on 30 May because Sennick4858 had been globally locked since 7 8 April and their sockpuppets have since been repeatedly locked for "Lock evasion" due to their English Wikipedia activity (e.g. [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]). Was the setting change a wrong decision here? — Newslinger talk 15:22, 16 June 2026 (UTC); corrected date 02:04, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for tracking that down, I couldn't figure out what was going on. That original report to SRG was a bad idea, I think, since as far as I'm aware that sockmaster is not involved in any cross-wiki abuse. If I'm wrong, yes, we should be locking them, but as far as I can tell this is an unnecessary make-work project for the stewards. @AntiCompositeNumber, tagging you in as "the first stew I thought of who has recently complained in my earshot about lock creep", and @M7 tagging you in as the stew who locked the master. Should we be locking these or no? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 17:04, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi there, usually I lock following Steward policy, and this case might be borderline, since it seems that there was no cross-wiki abuse, nor lock evasion. In case you confirm, I can indeed lift the block, as always I am at your service and ready to follow the community consensus. Thanks for bringing this up. --M/ (talk) 17:34, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

@M7, you locked in response to a report that said other accounts by that sockmaster had been locked, which seems logical enough. But I don't see that lock request there or on the previous week's page archive, and I have no idea where else to look. I'm wondering if maybe a steward locked a pile of Sennick accounts earlier because it seemed easier to multilock several dozen accounts than to handle it in some other way? Are you able to find out what happened there? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 21:05, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

According to the global account log, 974 sockpuppets of Sennick4858 were locked by Teles (courtesy ping) on 7 April prior to the Sennick4858 account being locked. — Newslinger talk 01:54, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

@Newslinger, and everyone, thanks for pinging. Information from loginwiki shows that this account can be linked to a banned user at enwikivoyage. They call them “Brendan” socks and the socks are still coming in a case of abuse that lasts more than 12 years, still ongoing. Enwikivoyage is by far more damaged by those actions and local admins put up a lot of work on catching them, but still miss some. Here at enwiki, I noticed that a few socks were found and also caused disruption here, so they received indef blocks. However they were tagged as Sennick’s socks and I kept that in order to use the category of socks; they don’t do it at envoyage. I am 90% sure that at least one of the accounts had already been locked since I started to lock them, but I can be misremembering that specific point. I can get back on that one as soon as I reach my laptop if required.

I understand there must be a reason to lock accounts, and this reason talks about the crosswiki disruption an user must perform to be eligible to locking. In my opinion, we have two identified projects affected in a constant, disruptively relevant way. As I mentioned above, I can still provide more information, but if it’s the decision of enwiki that this user should not be locked, I have no objection on stop doing it as it would only leave another affected project. I hope this was helpful. Written by phone. —Teles «Talk to me˱_{M @ C S}˲» 02:00, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Not yet on my laptop… but I could identify that the account Lfp417 linked to Sennick was already locked due to crosswiki abuse and some information from login wiki in February. Ping EPIC who locked in case you want to add something. Also, some of these accounts have already been blocked at Wikidata as “LTA”. See NobleTourist89 for instance. There are other reverted silly edits at frwiki and itwiki, but no other project blocked them as I could identify in a quick search. —Teles «Talk to me˱_{M @ C S}˲» 02:39, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

In general, we should not be taking global actions against accounts where it's not necessary (where local actions would be just as effective at preventing abuse). Doing so increases steward workload, because they see one account get locked and then continue to report socks for that master forever. This is especially the case when folks use unclear lock reasons like "Lock evasion". Locks are not a tool for indicating that someone's abuse was particularly bad, and if they're not regularly causing a problem on multiple wikis we shouldn't be using that tool. AntiCompositeNumber (they/them) (talk) 19:19, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from Jaypac13 on Cullinet (20:15, 16 June 2026)

How can I recover my damage voucher code --Jaypac13 (talk) 20:15, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Sorry @Jaypac13, I'm only here to answer questions about Wikipedia editing. You'll have to contact the company directly. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 21:06, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

2600:1008:b200::/40

Hi Asilvering. Did you mean to hard block 2600:1008:b200::/40 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial))? -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:12, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes. If you have people getting stuck on it that aren't the LTA you can see in the legacy IP edits on that range (JohnAdams1800), grant IPBE. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 00:41, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

OK, thanks, just checking. Sometimes we press the wrong buttons. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 00:48, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from Burkophyta (00:02, 17 June 2026)

Hi mentor,

When editing wiki articles, must all references be in the public domain? or is it okay to reference articles that are behind institutional paywalls? --Burkophyta (talk) 00:02, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

It's perfectly fine to use references that are behind paywalls. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 00:55, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

A scroll of restoration for you!

Rare Consumable?

Per your request...oops, did I get the wrong type? Ah, well. Thanks for all the clerking help (and other help) recently, I appreciate it a lot. I don't know what a "5th-level abjuration" entails, but hopefully this US government poster advertising World War II war bonds is an ingredient in restoring some of your spell slots. It helped restore the US economy at least. Best, Staraction (talk · contribs) 04:00, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Well, it's certainly a scroll. I'll take what I can get. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 05:39, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

In most places you get mail. On Wikipedia, mail gets you.

Hello, Asilvering. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

-- Deepfriedokra (talk) 02:33, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

You always bring the worst presents. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 02:00, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Larry Sanger/WikiProject Intellectual Diversity/PolicyScanner

Hi Asilvering,
There is currently a MfD discussion occurring in regards to User:Larry Sanger/WikiProject Intellectual Diversity/PolicyScanner. In the deletion rationale, the nominator has in part referenced Larry Sanger's views on the A-I conflict.
Am I permitted to participate in the MfD? If permitted I would not mention the conflict in any rationale I provide for my !vote. TarnishedPath^talk 00:41, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, this is hardly inextricably linked to that topic, so as long as you personally avoid mention of it, that's fine. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 01:05, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Cheers. I was thinking that it wasn't inextricably linked to that topic; however, I wasn't wanting to take chances. TarnishedPath^talk 01:07, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Indeed, better to ask. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 01:21, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Question - checkuser request?

Hello! I have recently come across an editor with COI issues (their username User:TheresaVonDoom confirms they have a personal/professional relationship with the subject/institution pages that they are editing). Based on their contribution history and behaviour pattern, I have very good reason to believe that they are also using/have used at least two other IP accounts to make COI edits. I am happy to provide detailed evidence with diffs for a COI/SI investigation.

Since you have Checkuser permissions (+ I’ve run into you a few times and found your suggestions helpful), I’m reaching out for advise on how to proceed. I thought it’d be best to bring a Checkuser request to your directly (in lieu of posting on the notice board) for now. I’m open to any and all suggestions you can provide on this. Thanks! Baberoothless (talk) 06:54, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Checkusers can't connect IP accounts to named accounts, because that would essentially be equivalent to revealing the data we learned in a check. You can start an investigation at SPI for that sort of thing, it's just that we need to do it "behaviourally" rather than with CU data. But SPI really only cares about preventing ongoing disruption, and no one is going to do much about edits from more than a few months ago other than say "thanks for the report". So if what you've got is mostly "stale" edits, all there really is to do is explain your findings on the talk pages of the relevant articles, then stick a COI tag on them (or skip the tagging part and clean them up yourself). In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 18:34, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from Flamencowriter83 on User:Flamencowriter83/sandbox (08:52, 20 June 2026)

Where do I post this message? " I am submitting this draft in accordance with Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest guidelines.

I have a professional and personal familiarity with the subject and have authored some published articles cited in this draft. To address this potential conflict of interest, I have attempted to base the article primarily on independent reliable sources, including coverage from the San Antonio Report, San Antonio Woman Magazine, Conexión/San Antonio Express-News, and scholarly research conducted by Claudia G. Green and Juan Vargas of Pace University." --Flamencowriter83 (talk) 08:52, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Flamencowriter83, welcome to wikipedia! I've moved the article to draftspace for you, and now it has a big blue "submit the draft for review!" button. When you click that, it should let you add that comment. Let me know if you run into any problems and I can add it manually for you. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 18:35, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from ShakesPBP (04:16, 21 June 2026)

I find myself doing a bit of copy editing this summer. What's the best practice for "Briefly describe [my] changes"? should I write something like "MOS:Neutral" or say be more specific and say "Removed peacock word"? or just click the "minor edit' button? What's the most useful for other editors to see? --ShakesPBP (talk) 04:16, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

"Minor edit" is for things like fussing around with templates and typos. If you're changing the wording significantly, or the meaning in any way, it's best to avoid using that button. As for what you write in the edit summary, it's up to you, but in my opinion what's most helpful is not so much a description of what was done but a reason why you did that. For example, I'm not going to say "removed footnote", even if that's exactly what I did, because it doesn't give any indication why. "Removed footnote - link is dead, not needed, other footnote verifies the whole sentence" explains everything you'd want to know about the edit. (What I did, why, and yes, I checked my work.) Copy editing doesn't have much to explain. So "removed peacock wording" is great, very clear. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 04:26, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	For your patience, common sense, knowledge, humour, willingness to communicate, being a good mentor, and your extreme kindness on me when I was an IP, I award you this. May you wear it with well deserved pride, and continue to be a star shining above the bog. In solidarityUser:Wikipedian12512(alt) (Talking is fine | contribs) 19:20, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

Happy editing. :) In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 19:47, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Possible off-wiki canvassing by User:Larry Sanger#We should not link to the New York Post here

Am I permitted to participate in this discussion? The article being discussed mentions my topic ban and the Zionism article. However, it also mentions other things outside of PIA which I would like to address. If permitted I would ensure my comments do not broach PIA. TarnishedPath^talk 01:26, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

I would advise against it from a general "don't feed the trolls" perspective, as well as a "I don't think anything you could say here would improve the situation". It's pretty clear the author has it out for you personally. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 01:36, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

I was planning on restricting my comments to pointing out that the article lies about my role in Larry being CBANed and appealing to editors to not include material in the article talk which lies about me. However, I'll take your guidance. TarnishedPath^talk 01:52, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

The article gets a lot of things wrong (it claims "The exact reason for his blocking was not given" and incorrectly gives the abbreviated name of the proposed WikiProject as "WID" instead of "WPID"). SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 01:58, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Sometimes one needs to let people be wrong on the internet and go to bed. Especially if "Ashley uses the wrong initialism for the project" is in the top-5 problems. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 02:18, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

If it escalates such that people start discussing that on-wiki as though it's fact, we'll have to do something about it. For now I think giving it as little air as possible is the better option. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 02:33, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-26

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

• Growth features are now available at Wikidata. This update enables access to Mentorship (if configured), Impact module, the Help Panel, and a simplified Newcomer Homepage (without Suggested Edits). Wikidata administrators are still configuring the features through Community Configuration.

Updates for editors

• The special page Special:RangeCalculator has been created. It allows users to find an IP range without needing to rely on external tools. Until now, this tool was only available to CheckUsers. [30]
• Sub-referencing is a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details. It will be deployed to most small and medium-sized Wikipedia language versions on June 23. The FAQ lists possible actions to take on your wiki to support the deployment. Check the rollout plan for the next deployment steps. [31]
• Starting next week, users will get a notification when they are blocked or unblocked from editing, or if this block changes. [32]
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Starting next week, abuse filters that are set to "require CAPTCHA verification" will begin to also affect users with the skipcaptcha right, which includes most autoconfirmed users. Bots are exempted. This change only affects edits that trigger an abuse filter. The skipcaptcha right will continue to exempt users from having to solve CAPTCHAs in the ordinary course of using the wikis. [33]
• Reference documentation for the Lift Wing API has moved from the API Portal to the interactive REST Sandbox.
• The API Portal wiki is now closed. For API documentation, see Wikimedia APIs on mediawiki.org. All API Portal wiki URLs (https://api.wikimedia.org/wiki/) will redirect to the mediawiki.org page starting June 22. [34]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• Join an online call on 25 June at 2:30pm UTC to meet the current Wikimedia interns for Google Summer of Code and Outreachy. Interns will provide an overview of their projects and a brief demo of their work so far. Attendees are encouraged to share ideas and connections in their community.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 13:03, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Teahouse

I'm sorry, I didn't even think of contacting you about that situation, SFR is my general go-to guy when there's something outside my wheelhouse... - Adolphus79 (talk) 22:08, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 11

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on June 5. Please help translate.

---

Highlights

The Wikimania program is now live!

• Community Wishlist: Weigh in on proposals and open questions on how the wishlist will operate in the future.
• Simplifying account creation: The Foundation is working on improving the account creation process to reduce potential friction for newcomers to create an account. Improvements include making "Create Account" icon more prominent on mobile, simplifying the registration form, and introducing real-time username validation.
• New U4C members elected: The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) has new members and has two remaining vacancies in Middle East & North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Wikimania conference program: The Wikimania 2026 program is now live! Take a moment to review the program, and, if you are logged in, you can mark your "must see” sessions with a star to start building your personal schedule. Register for a virtual ticket here, if you haven't signed up yet.
• Neutral Point of View: A proposal for a baseline NPOV standard for Wikipedias that do not have one was published, with a community discussion open until July 15, 2026.

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

Screenshot showing the Explore Feed refresh in the Wikipedia app (from the Community tab entry point)

• App Explore feed: The redesigned App Explore feed, now called "Home", has been released to all Android users. The update introduces a refreshed feed experience along with the first set of new content modules, including Did You Know, Places of Interest, Random Article, and a new end-of-feed experience. Additional content and improvements are planned in future releases.
• Wikipedia games: The Which came first? daily trivia game is now available in the beta version of the Wikipedia iOS app in English, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish. The game uses historical events from Wikipedia’s “On This Day” content and challenges readers to guess which of two events happened first.
• Reusing references: Sub-referencing, a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details, has been rolled out to Group 1 wikis and French Wikipedia following a successful pilot phase.
• Article guidance: The Article guidance feature is being tested with some editors creating new articles on the Simple English, French, and Turkish Wikipedias. The experiment will soon begin on the Arabic and Bangla Wikipedias as well. The outlines guide less experienced editors in creating high-quality articles. A quick guide to markups used in outlines can be found on this page. Example outlines that can be adapted and instructions for how to adapt them are on this section of the project page.
• Mobile Page Previews: The Page Previews experiment on mobile web has concluded with the decision not to roll out the feature. The results showed no statistically significant impact on reader retention – the primary success metric. Page Previews, which are already available on desktop and in the apps, display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and link to the full article when readers tap a blue link.
• Wikifunctions: You can now add images to Abstract Wikipedia and the loading and display of test results when viewing Functions has been improved.
• Wikidata: The Foundation is migrating the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) away from the Blazegraph backend since it no longer scales efficiently with Wikidata’s growth. The migration will take place in several phases. Here is the timeline.
• Growth features: Growth features are now available at Wikidata!  Wikidata administrators are still configuring the features through Community Configuration, but this update enables access to Mentorship (if configured), Impact, the Help Panel, and a simplified Newcomer Homepage (without Suggested Edits).
• Mentors' management: The Growth team will soon provide a system to automatically suspend or remove inactive mentors from the list of mentors. Communities can already start configuring the process in the Community Configuration.
• Collaborative Contributions: If you need help setting up the Collaborative Contributions and the Goal setting features, check out these video guides. These features allow you to view which edits are made during an event and allows the group to track progress against a goal with a public progress bar. Learn more.
• Latest experiments: An upcoming experiment is testing whether we can serve readers better when a footnote click in read mode shows the full bibliographic information rather than flying them to the reference list. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
• Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News week 24 and 25 include how the user interface icon library is being updated. Most of the ~300 icons have been slightly refined and ~30 new icons have been added. See also the 62 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

• Digital Safety: Join a conversation about Using AI Safely. It'll explore risks & concerns of using AI tools in personal and organisational contexts and practical strategies to reduce those risks. It will take place at 03:30 UTC & 14:30 UTC on June 26. This session is not about using AI to edit Wikipedia. It's focused entirely on safe personal and organisational use.
• Don't Blink: Read the latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values. Highlights include exploring the implications that new child safety regulations have on privacy online.
• Grantmaking strategy & Affiliate model: Members of the Global Resources Distribution Committee (GRDC) and the Affiliations Committee (AffCom) met to advance two key movement initiatives: the development of a new Grantmaking strategy and a refreshed Affiliate Model. They produced initial proposals and advanced work on both initiatives ahead of broader conversations planned for Wikimania 2026.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: Progress on the annual plan

• Enterprise: SimPPL Uses Wikimedia Enterprise to Map Online Conversations and Fact-Check Social Media.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:38, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Question from Ar1201u1 (22:40, 23 June 2026)

Note: Ar1201u1's mentor Norellia.sh is away.

Hi Asilvering, a chunk of my editing (well-sourced, properly cited from notable academics) has been reverted with NPV and OR. Well-accepted facts across the political spectrum were presented; at least I did my best to present all viewpoints. I have asked the user who reverted them for a justification. How could I get the work restored? As a newbie, I don't want to "undo" what others have done. However, the article's lead opens with an outright misrepresentation of facts. What should I do?

Also, I wanted to add an infobox for something in another place because the content of the infobox doesn't represent the worldwide view of the subject matter; so I wanted to add one more infobox (like this is a part of a series on x, and at the same time, another one showing above/below that this is a part of a series on y as well) --Ar1201u1 (talk) 22:40, 23 June 2026 (UTC)