Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).

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Preparing for a short-notice security update to our services

Hey everyone – due to a critical security advisory about the PHP language (which we depend on), many Wikimedia services are going to be affected. We are hoping to avoid downtime to the wikis, but some supporting tools and services are unfortunately going to be impacted. This is a complex operation on short notice and we are still figuring out the details. More information will come later this week. Johan (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

Some tools (not using PHP) are now back up and working. You can see more at wikitech:Talk:Incidents/2026-10-21 PHP security update/Community.

There's also an FAQ aimed at technical contributors at wikitech:Incidents/2026-10-21 PHP security update/Community#FAQs. Johan (WMF) (talk) 08:59, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your patience as we've been dealing with this security issue. It's been a lot of hard work, for the Wikimedia technical community and the web in general.

Toolforge and Cloud VPS have been back up since last Thursday, 22 October. Many key tools the editing communities depend on have been gradually restored.

Some tools need the respective volunteer maintainers to restart them. Others still need to upgrade to a patched PHP version – some tools were using older versions of PHP which are not supported by the recent security patches, and these will require maintainers to carefully upgrade to a more recent version, which might require additional effort to make them compatible. You can follow the work on Wikitech. Johan (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

Toolforge and Cloud VPS temporarily offline

Sharing from listarchive:list/cloud-announce@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/CXGLGXBFICWKOHPPXWMFFG4GZCH5HQR7

In response to the recent PHP security advisory[0], we are temporarily disabling all network access for Toolforge and Cloud VPS pending security patches.

As security patches get deployed we plan to incrementally re-enable services. Initial efforts will be focused on securing Toolforge, but if you are 100% sure that your project uses no PHP please contact us directly and we’ll put you on the short list.

This is likely to be a prolonged outage which will depend on a lot of coordination with project and tool admins. This is not ideal, but is the best option among those currently available.

-Andrew + the Toolforge admin team

[0] https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-20-1

— JJMC89 (T·C) 00:02, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

• Well, this answers some of the questions that drew me to this page. Please keep the communication open and alert us to any progress made or obstacles that come up. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:12, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

  wikitech:Incidents/2026-10-21 PHP security update/Community is where they will post updates. Nemoralis (talk) 00:51, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Miraheze has taken their entire wiki farm offline. Obsidian the Fox 03:33, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, shucks. That's why PetScan wasn't wanting to load. I hope they take the time that's necessary to do a patch; I'm glad they're being cautious. EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 04:15, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

An update outlining the work to bring back affected tools, from the teams working on this (I'm merely passing it on):

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/10/21/impact-of-php-vulnerabilities-on-wikimedia-cloud-services/ Johan (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Update from listarchive:list/cloud-announce@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/CMA4M3LKRKZWH7HG4BS7KSF7WRRUO3CV:

For people following along: We have a two-pronged approach to getting services back up.

Toolforge:

We're working on making the Toolforge build service smart enough to block launching of PHP tools so that we can start launching non-php things safely. Next, we'll figure out what to do about tools that rely on unfixed/unfixable PHP versions. We hope to have partial (php-free) Toolforge functionality restored sometime in the next 24 hours.

Cloud-VPS:

We're currently focusing on projects maintained by WMF staff and/or NDA users, since we have more flexibility to adjust those projects to our current safety standards. Our team is auditing projects one by one with the goal of starting up those projects that don't use PHP at all ASAP. After that we'll look at patching projects that use PHP in some form - we'll do so to the best of our ability and understanding of each project, with a focus on security rather than fully enabled functionality at first - and after that we will face up to the projects that rely on unfixed PHP versions. This whole process will likely take a few days for most projects which have a simpler path to safety, and a few weeks for the most complex ones. We might start contacting some maintainers for support as we start working on their projects.

Both:

It's worth noting that while we're still focused on the wider platform functionality, we're hoping to use your input on specific tools at some point, so thank you to everyone who has been contributing to the talk page[0].

All of these timelines should be interpreted very loosely -- any new surprises will delay things. We appreciate your continued understanding and support as the WMCS admins continue to work diligently to bring as much as possible back up as quickly and safely as possible.

- Andrew + sleepy colleagues

[0] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Incidents/2026-10-21_PHP_security_update/Community

— JJMC89 (T·C) 16:04, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

Update from listarchive:list/cloud-announce@lists.wikimedia.org/message/GO6ICTSJYMAL2VINTY3MZKGRMRCD7BCZ:

We are happy to announce that Toolforge is available again for users.

We don't have yet images with patched php or have updated the buildpacks to be able to build images with php, but non-php jobs and webservices are free to run once again.

We will update as soon as possible once we have patched images for webservice and can allow build service images that use php back, but until then, please refrain from trying to work around the guardrails we have put in place.

There might be other things still not working completely, as not all CloudVPS is online yet, but please reach out with any issues you find and we'll try to help get you unblocked, though please be patient as we are still working on bringing some of the system online.

Our availability across timezones is also limited, and we're trying to make sure the team can get some rest in between all the effort we're applying, so any and all questions can take a while to get back to.

Thanks you very much for your patience and your effort, it's really appreciated.

David

— JJMC89 (T·C) 18:24, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

Updates page on Wikitech

wikitech:Incidents/2026-10-21 PHP security update/Community — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:37, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

That page is also down as of the time of writing. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 15:45, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

The wikis were temporarily affected by related maintenance work, but the link above should remain the best place for updates about which tools remain offline and which have been fixed. Johan (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm assuming that it's still down, perhaps? Tried to visit these links:

• https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/YVR%E2%80%93Airport_station
• https://xtools.wmcloud.org/authorship/en.wikipedia.org/YVR%E2%80%93Airport_station

but it reports an error about the services being unable to be reached, and telling me to contact a maintainer, without stating who a maintainer is in this instance (but including instructions for maintainers):

Error

This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project.

Maintainers can find troubleshooting instructions from our documentation on Wikitech.

--ABx11 (she/they) 00:24, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

XTools is back up now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:14, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Whle https://xtools.wmcloud.org/ is back up, the user page header lines, i.e.:

An autopatrolled user, checkuser, and administrator, 22 years old, with 103,715 edits. Last edited 14 minutes ago. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

link to https://xtools-ec.toolforge.org/, which generates no healthy upstream. Can that link be fixed to point to the working version? Is that something an interface admin needs to do? RoySmith (talk) 14:35, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Redirecting the toolforge URL to the wmcloud URL probably requires a toolforge administrator, I don't know the best way to contact them. This page currently appears to be the only place on en.wp that uses the toolforge URL (at least as far as searching special:search/insource:"https://xtools-ec.toolforge.org/" reveals). Thryduulf (talk) 15:17, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Phabricator also offline

For the same reason. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:02, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Same for WP:TWL. Now all we get is a connection timed out error. ミラP@Miraclepine 03:50, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

WP:TWL is part of Cloud VPS. Since it's not written in PHP it should be back online sooner than most tools ... * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:13, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

TWL now works! |)are2|_eap (Talk) 13:59, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Phabricator is back up now. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:18, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Wikimedia Docs also down?

Wikimedia documentation also seems to be down. Should this be listed as part of the affected systems? Axolitl (talk | contribs) 05:14, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes. I confirmed that it is down intentionally, then added it to the Wikitech page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:15, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

It has now been restored, as have Phabricator, Translatewiki and GitLab. Johan (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Context

for those who are seeing this and don't immediately know what it's about: two vulnerabilities have been found in PHP versions up to the latest, and they're really really bad Gnomingstuff (talk) 06:30, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

and for the very beginners, PHP is the absolute essential foundation software Wikipedia needs to run. The whole of Wikipedia cannot operate without PHP. MilkyDefer 07:26, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

It is also the "php" in en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 08:08, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes – SD0001 (talk) 13:01, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

We have an article on it: PHP2Shell. --4thTrumpSichuanMandarinCall (talk | contributions) 13:54, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

de.wiki down?

• I assume that this is connected to German Wikipedia being down right now? RIght now it gives "Error: Please try again later (a607b0e)" when I try to access any pages. Chorchapu (talk | edits) 15:19, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

  Many others, too, eg. nl.wiki and et.wiki.

  Also just noticed that many images aren't displaying on en.wiki, although when you click through to Commons, they seem fine there. Presumably that's somehow part of this. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 15:23, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

  ZHwiki also went down, I saw, but it looks like they've all just gone back up. Chorchapu (talk | edits) 15:25, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Down for me. But this is expected, they will selectively allow certain blocks of IPs to work (sites, services), check logs if any exploits come in, move on to the next. -- GreenC 15:59, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

• I see also that image issue now. It looks like it's just previews - when reading the articles the thumbnails seem to load just fine, but when I click into the preview it goes black. Then, on Commons the preview also doesn't load but the image does. Chorchapu (talk | edits) 15:38, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

  Some maintenance work briefly affected the wikis, yes. We have updated our related Diff post to acknowledge this. Johan (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

reFill down?

Resolved

 – Restored. https://refill.toolforge.org/ –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:35, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

I just keep getting a no healthy upstream error? GiantSnowman 20:53, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

Likely #Toolforge and Cloud VPS temporarily offline. Shubinator (talk) 21:00, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

All my non-PHP tools on toolforge required a webservice restart to get rid of that error. Refill looks like it's node.js based, so Novem Linguae probably just has to give it a good kick to get it running again. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:51, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

It uses a php image, with vue.js as the front end framework. Ill try a restart when im back at a computer –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:29, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Restart didn't work. I think Toolforge is up but PHP is still down. Details of what I tried at phab:T441973#12464513. Will try again another time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:47, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Even though Toolforge is back up, for the most part, AIUI the owners of each tool/bot still need to update their individual tool to get it working again. Chorchapu (talk | edits) 22:23, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

For non-PHP tools nothing needs to be done other than a restart. For PHP tools, if they're using a patchable version it should be similar once WMCS updates the images over the next few days, but otherwise tool owners will need to update their scripts to support a more modern version of PHP. That being said, for non-PHP tools, this is a good opportunity for tool owners to update them to the latest versions of their languages. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 23:41, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

OK thanks - didn't even think the PHP issue would affect this! GiantSnowman 08:11, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

It's up now. I put in a temporary non-PHP server for the static files. – SD0001 (talk) 10:47, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

excel2wiki

Resolved

 – Restored. https://excel2wiki.toolforge.org/ –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:38, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

The Excel-to-Wikitable tool on Toolforge is still down. When I copy a spreadsheet into the tool, it says no healthy upstream. Do I need to ask the owner of the tool when it will be available, or can that question be answered? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:18, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

I think Toolforge PHP is still disabled. We should circle back to this when the cloud-announce mailing list says that safe PHP versions on Toolforge have been restored. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:50, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

I am the owner of a tool. That tool also says no healthy upstream. If you asked me when it will be available I wouldn't know the answer. I think owners are meant to add the tool to this list. I think that has already happened for Excel2Wiki Sean.hoyland (talk) 05:53, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

...apparently owners can now manually restart non-PHP tools themselves. Sean.hoyland (talk) 05:57, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: excel2wiki is written in PHP, so I'm waiting on the new PHP images to be made available on Toolforge before I can re-enable it. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:12, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

It's back up, and I took the opportunity to rewrite it entirely in Javascript so there's no server-side processing or dependency on PHP. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:24, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Comment on excel2wiki

As User:Ahecht notes, the tool has been rewritten. There is no longer a button to push to request the conversion. The conversion happens immediately on pasting the spreadsheet into the space. This is good, but is a surprise. Existing links to the tool work, but existing pages of the tool do not work, and must be relaunched from links. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:29, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia library

Resolved

 – Restored. https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/ –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:40, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm a big user of the Wikipedia Library wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org which is not available currently. Same problem? Any timeline to fix it? Thanks.Bob (talk) 20:13, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

TWL is apparently now accessible, according to Dare2Leap's comment above. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 20:22, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Can confirm, the Wikipedia Library is fully active. Biologo-in-erba (talk) 20:24, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

GAN stats still down

The GAN stats tool is still down.. Vestrian24Bio 11:17, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

I've restarted it. Should be up now. cc @Mike Christie. – SD0001 (talk) 11:26, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks; I've been away from the PC I use to access toolforge this week so could not do it myself. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:40, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

gitlab.wikimedia.org/toolforge-repos

Resolved

 – GitLab SSH is moving to gitlab-ssh.wikimedia.org

I am unable to git push to gitlab.wikimedia.org/toolforge-repos. I am getting a "ssh: connect to host gitlab.wikimedia.org port 22: Operation timed out" Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:32, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

List of tools still down

Tools running deprecated PHP is extensive and concerning, many may never return. -- GreenC 23:29, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Some of those are functioning bots that had placeholder/not-very-important webservices. But a lot of them are things that were important to someone at some point, but now may never run again. If you rely on any of these tools, and the maintainer doesn't seem to be around, please mention it here so that folks might be able to get the ball rolling on the wikitech:Help:Toolforge/Abandoned tool policy. AntiCompositeNumber (they/them) (talk) 05:47, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Copypatrol status?

CopyPatrol is one of the more important tools. Every couple days I try logging in and it fails. I'm hoping that maybe I'm accessing it wrong – I looked at the status report for other tools and don't see any mention.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:28, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Navigation templates break the "What links here" tool

When someone clicks Special:WhatLinksHere from the sidebar of a Wikipedia article, they expect to find the pages which link to the page, or one of its redirects. But, for many pages, what they get instead is mostly noise consisting of all pages transcluding some navigation template, among which the actual inbound wikilinks are hiding and difficult to find. In my opinion this is a serious bug which makes the "What links here" tool cumbersome and frustrating to use for many pages, sometimes to the point that it is basically unusable.

Instead, the "What links here" page should only show linking pages for which the link is directly contained in the source, excluding the content of template transclusions where the template directly contained the wikilink. The template itself should show up in the "What links here" list, but we don't need dozens to hundreds of list items for a single inbound link defined in a template.

This should not affect links generated by other types of template. (E.g. if someone uses the {{slink}} template to link to a section, that should not be excluded).

(The example that came up recently was a new user complaining that they couldn't easily find the articles linking to Intersecting chords theorem because it is included in the navigation footer template Template:Ancient Greek mathematics, which is transcluded by hundreds of pages.) –jacobolus (t) 17:32, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

While we're here, it would also be extremely helpful if the "What links here" tool would separate inbound links pointed at specific sections of the linked-to page, and explicitly show which anchor each inbound link was pointed at. –jacobolus (t) 17:36, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Update: After running a search, I see that people have been complaining about this over and over again since 2004. Here's a partial list of past complaints/requests about this issue:

1. November 2004 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive A#What links here
2. January 2006 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive M#Bad What links here
3. March 2006 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive O#What links here and templates
4. December 2006 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AF#What links here oddness
5. April 2006 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive S#Whatlinkshere idea
6. January 2007 Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive AC#Disable What links here from transcluded templates
7. August 2007 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AT#Templates and "What links here"
8. December 2007 Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 11#What links here: pages linked to within templates
9. December 2007 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 8#'What links here' and templates
10. February 2008 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 February 25#Incoming/Outgoing page links (Backlinks and What links here) issue
11. December 2008 Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 40#"What links here" used to be useful
12. December 2008 Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 41#Would it be possible to filter "what links here" by removing links added by templates?
13. June 2009 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 June 20#What links here
14. August 2009 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 August 17#.22What links here.22 oddness
15. August 2009, May 2011, June 2021 Help talk:What links here#Question. How do we hide excessive linkage?
16. September 2009 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 September 2#What Links here - filter problem?
17. September 2009 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 September 16#Dab help
18. October 2009 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 October 10#Chasing WP links
19. January 2010 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 69#What links here and navboxes
20. March 2010 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 73#Page listed on "what links here" ... doesn't
21. October 2010 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 October 16#"What links here" bug
22. January 2011 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 January 18#how do I filter out template links from "what links here"
23. April 2011 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 April 25#What links here (but not there)
24. May 2012 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 May 9#"What links here"--is there a way to eliminate the nav box links?
25. December 2012 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 December 13#How to really filter transclusions out of .22what links here.22
26. April 2013 Help talk:What links here#Hiding transclusions (or something)
27. July 2013 Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 104#What links here - templates
28. January 2014 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 122#WhatLinksHere overwhelmed by links in navigation templates
29. March 2014 Help talk:What links here#Article with thousands of spurious links
30. May 2014 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 126#"What links here" to group links from templates as it does with redirects
31. July 2014 Help talk:What links here#Default to not showing transclusions
32. October 2014 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 131#Fix a problem with What Links Here?
33. November 2014 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 132#Amount of work for "What links here" to distinguish between links from within templates and those that aren't.
34. December 2014 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 132#What Links Here generating too many listings due to navboxes
35. December 2014 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 133#What links here and navbox
36. March 2015 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 March 25#Filtering "what links here"
37. May 2015 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 May 28#Problem with "What links here"
38. March 2015 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 March 25#Filtering "what links here"
39. April 2015 Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 328#'what links here' question
40. June 2015 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 June 6#What Links Here and API
41. August 2015 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 139#Can links via navboxes be excluded from "what links here"?
42. June 2016 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 147#What links here / templates
43. September 2016 Help talk:What links here#We need a way to hide.2Fshow links from templates
44. September 2016 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 September 7#What links here - hide transclusions
45. November 2016 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 151#What links here not hiding transclusions
46. May 2017 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 155#What Links Here vs.Templates
47. January 2018 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 162#What links here? - Exclude links from templates
48. May 2018 Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 148#“What links here”
49. August 2018 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 139#Can links via navboxes be excluded from "what links here"?
50. August 2019 Help talk:What links here#Many false positives from What links here
51. January 2020 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 178#What links here, excluding templates?
52. July 2021 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 191#glitchy What links here?
53. December 2021 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2021 December 13#"What links here" and transcluded boxes of links
54. May 2022 Help talk:What links here#How to only get links from page that link the article ?
55. November 2022 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2022 November 8#Using PrimeHunter or similar tool to find REAL What Links Here
56. January 2023 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 January 1#.22What links here.22 with templates excluded.3F
57. August 2023 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 August 27#What links here: hide links from templates
58. September 2023 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 September 9#What Links Here contains pages without links?
59. November 2023 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 November 9#Why are the "what links here" pages wildly inaccurate?
60. April 2026 Wikipedia:Help desk/Archive 81#What links here, minus navboxes

How can we get the WMF / Mediawiki developers to fix this bug? –jacobolus (t) 17:52, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Sounds like this community wish (?) Ponor (talk) 18:01, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Or m:Community Wishlist/W338 Ponor (talk) 18:03, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

This has been a known problem for longer than I've been editing navboxes (1 August 2009). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:15, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, hee's a complaint from 2004. Among dozens if not hundreds of others since then. It's absurd that this has never been fixed, since it is obvious to everyone that it fundamentally breaks the "What links here" tool. –jacobolus (t) 18:24, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

The links table does not distinguish between links that come directly from the wikitext for the page and those that come via templates. This is because the links table is updated after all templates have been expanded, and so are essentially part of the final wikitext. But consider also that links may also be made by templates that are not navboxes - for example I might put {{tlx|not done}} which makes a link - is that link due to the template, or due to the wikitext of this page? In short, how would the links table generator know the difference? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:55, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Templates such as navboxes which always include a specific wikilink as part of their output are clearly different from templates which generate a wikilink based on their inputs, and should not be treated the same way.

One possibility would be to have some kind of dedicated marker for templates such as navboxes (a start could even be as simple as flagging any template built on top of {{Navbox}}) which causes them to be excluded by whatever process is building and analyzing pages to compute the link tree. –jacobolus (t) 19:50, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

How about a hybrid approach, similar to what we currently do for redirects? This might be more complicated to implement, though, since the target page can be variable.

• Template:Section link
  • [usages that result in a link to the page in question]
• Template:Navbox foo
  • ...
• ...

Solomon Ucko (talk) 16:21, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

This should not affect links generated by other types of template. (E.g. if someone uses the {{slink}} template to link to a section, that should not be excluded). Already you're realizing why "fixing" this would be more difficult than it seems. Anomie⚔ 18:58, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

It may be difficult to fix, but the current state, since the beginning of Wikipedia, has been profoundly broken. It's ridiculous for Mediawiki developers to just mark this as WONTFIX and the let thousands of people repeatedly hit the same catastrophic bug over and over again until the end of time. –jacobolus (t) 19:44, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Meh, I mean, it's not necessarily trivial, but I assume there's an HTML class used by most navboxes; exclude links coming from that (or make a new class), or preferably a box to tick as an option of whether to include them or not.

Yes, the tree view mentioned in Meta:Community_Wishlist/W185 would be more complicated to implement, but I suspect that simpler fix would cover most people's concerns. LittlePuppers (talk) 19:52, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js finds links which are made with wikilink syntax [[...]] in the source text. On Intersecting chords theorem it produces Source links. It doesn't find links made with templates which specify the page name like {{slink}} and {{tl}}. It uses JavaScript to produce the link but wikitext can also do it so we could add such a link to MediaWiki:Linkshere which is displayed on Special:WhatLinksHere/Intersecting chords theorem. {{Source links}} makes a similar but currently not identical search to the script. {{Source links|Intersecting chords theorem}} produces Source links. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:05, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Allow me to propose:

This might not resolve the original issue where transclusions are shown, but doing this by default would greatly improve the reader's experience if we think about the overall goal of initially showing only links to the page, instead of redirects and transclusions as well (though they can continue to be shown after user input).
By the way, the mockup should have the "Show links" as the first checkbox, not in the current default ordering (I just used DevTools to change "Hide" to "Show"). Hason-LEK-SIN ● 💬 ● 🧱 ● 🧪 09:08, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Your image looks essentially identical to the current version. What are you proposing to change, exactly? I also don't understand how this is relevant to the issue under discussion. –jacobolus (t) 09:45, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I understand that the proposed solution doesn't exactly resolve the original issue (which I acknowledged: This might not resolve the original issue), however, by only showing page links by default in the special page, and automatically hide transclusions and redirects, as shown in the mockup, this would let readers more clearly see which pages are linked to the page being queried (which I also mentioned: doing this by default would greatly improve the reader's experience). Hason-LEK-SIN ● 💬 ● 🧱 ● 🧪 12:11, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Can you move this to a new discussion? It't completely off topic here. –jacobolus (t) 15:51, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Although not a navigation template (but another form of template), this is the exact reason why using the IMDb template on actresses links to IMDb (identifier) which in turn redirects to IMDb. Same with good articles when clicking on the green circle on the top right; it leads to Wikipedia:Good articles* (with an asterisk at the end) rather than just Wikipedia:Good articles. And then you have links to periodicals like The Guardian often using a citation template, but it would break the 'what links here' feature if one isn't used. But anyway, I do agree that the feature shouldn't include links from navigation templates, but its just quite difficult to implement. Because of that, I'm surprised it isnt currently listed at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals JuniperChill (talk) 10:22, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

Add AutoCiteWikidata as gadget?

Automatic citations are now easier via Wikidata: See the AutoCiteWikidata gadget. Discussed here on Diff: "making automatic citations connected with Wikidata"

This should be a default gadget option without users having to discover this user page. See the discussion at T289287. – SJ + 19:02, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

The likelihood that we will be expanding the reach of {{cite Q}} I estimate is about 0. So, it has no chance of being a default gadget any time soon. Izno (talk) 21:03, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Cite Q is and always has been an ill-behaved and underdeveloped template that has caused CITEVAR issues. Just to check if anything had changed, I clicked on four articles at random from its "What links here" list, and found Cite Q CITEVAR problems and related inconsistency at Frances Abington, Edible mushroom, Atrial natriuretic peptide, and William Dampier. Four out of four. This template being used in over 17,000 articles is a problem for people who care about consistent presentation of citation information. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:57, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Two of your four articles do not even use Cite Q for citations. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 23:03, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Frances Abington uses it in the Wikipedia:External links section, and Atrial natriuretic peptide uses it inside a template in the ==Notes== section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:33, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Some issues. Cite Q only exists in 78 languages while cite journal is in 237. This is going to be an issue for those of us involved in translation.
When one looks at the Wikitext like <ref>{{cite Q|Q38897648}}</ref><ref>{{cite Q|Q104102440}}</ref> one has no ability to see the metadata. Ie what journal is this, what was the year of publication, all critical to determine reliability. One has to go back to the article text to see the reference which makes editing difficult.
Would need global templates and would need the lake of metadata in wikitext mode solved before this template should be used IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:32, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Cite Q is available to any project which wishes to use it and works in any language which Wikidata supports - which is far more than 237.

Your second paragraph is addressed in the template documentation.

While global templates would indeed be good, we do not need them for Cite Q to work. This too is addressed in the template documentation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 22:45, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I see the drawbacks of cite Q as greater than the benefits. I have raised these issues for years. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:56, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Odd, the template's talk page archive search only finds your name once. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 23:01, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Yah 9 years ago I raised the issue of no metadata in the wikitext and it appears not solved. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:05, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

"This too is addressed in the template documentation." Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 23:09, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

"Addressed", in the meaning of discussed? But not "addressed" in the meaning of solved? Or am I missing something.

Sure we could at the Q to cite templates. But that is not this.

The Cite Q template has many of the same issues as the Cite doi template that was deprecated. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:14, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

• I think this would be good - Cite Q's quite a mature template now, and it's widely used across many different language Wikipedias. There's been ongoing conversation in particular re Doc James's points in T289287. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:25, 2 November 2026 (UTC)
• Cite Q still breaks multiple different things, imports broken cites and improperly formated references. It use shouldn't be expanded until it's properly fixed. Beyond that editors shouldn't have to go to a different project just to change something on Wikipedia, but that's a different discussion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:27, 5 November 2026 (UTC)
• No. A bot that regularly turns all Cite Q templates into regular local citation templates would be a good thing though. We should limit the times people need to edit Wikidata to correct errors on enwiki to the absolute minimum, not burden articles with errors like ": Missing first/last names in Wikidata" (apparently this error happens in 3000 of the 18000 articles which use Cite Q, so not a rare occurrence). Fram (talk) 14:43, 5 November 2026 (UTC)
• No, per Fram and ActivelyDisinterested. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:05, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Would it be possible to add a size parameter to user contribution searches?

When I search contributions by an editor or to an article for potential shenanigans (e.g., unattributed copy-paste edits, LLM usage, etc.), it would be very useful to be able to limit the search to, for example edits adding more than 5,000 bytes, or some comparable arbitrarily large amount. Since that data is already reflected in these lists of contributions, would it be possible to add it as a searchable parameter? BD2412 T 22:46, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Have you asked the maintainer of the relevant tool? Izno (talk) 02:14, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I guess the post is about the standard MediaWiki filters at the top of user contributions like Special:Contributions/BD2412 and page histories like . phab:T235730 is a 2019 request about user contributions. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:21, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I mean the native display, not an issue with added=on tool. BD2412 T 16:43, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Likely the blocker to such a thing being built into MediaWiki would be the lack of an efficient database query to fetch the matching edits. Without that, you'd do just as well with a user script that would simply hide the rows based on the size displayed. Anomie⚔ 12:23, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

The numerical data is already returned as part of the display. I would tend to assume that what data it can return, it can parse. BD2412 T 16:47, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Parsing isn't the problem, efficient fetching is. The database can easily handle a query like "fetch the first 5001 rows by $USER ordered by timestamp", then a second query "fetch the lengths for these 5000 revision IDs" so the display code can subtract the lengths to get the size difference. A query like "fetch 5001 rows by $USER ordered by timestamp, along with their corresponding parent rows, subtract the lengths, and keep only the rows where the length difference is > $N" would be less efficient but (probably) still ok, but would give a fairly poor UX if $USER's last 6000 edits were all or mostly < $N. Where it really fails is when you change that for better UX to "fetch rows by $USER ordered by timestamp, along with their corresponding parent rows, subtract the lengths, keep only the rows where the difference is > $N, and stop once you have kept 5001". Set $USER to say User:WP 1.0 bot and $N to something large, and the database would have to scan 12 million rows (plus their parent rows) to tell you there are fewer than 5000 big enough for your filter. Anomie⚔ 18:02, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

It could make a limited return, for example just analyzing the last 5,000 edits. BD2412 T 18:10, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Sure. Or, as I suggested earlier, you could accomplish exactly that using a user script to hide the rows rather than waiting for MediaWiki developers to spend time writing and reviewing code for what many would find to be a poor UX. Anomie⚔ 19:03, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Interface elements in user ribbon

<rant mode> I find it ridiculous that you can change one aspect of your preferences in your user ribbon (the thing in the upper right, including watchlist and contribs) but all other user preferences are under preferences. It should be available in preferences only, and the people who implemented it as part of the ribbon should be run out of town riding a change log! :) </rant mode> --Hammersoft (talk) 12:38, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

What ribbon is this? Which is the one preference? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:49, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

They may be referring to the eyeglasses/brassiere icon in Vector 2022, which expands into a menu or can be pinned as a right-hand sidebar element. It contains three appearance preferences: text size, dark/light mode, and content width. Those preferences do not appear in Preferences → Appearance. Possibly related: T432280. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:29, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Real users shun Vector 2022. I also shun Vector legacy; I started on MonoBook and not only does it still work, it doesn't get messed about nearly so often. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:20, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

If Wikipedia were old enough that it had once had a punched card interface, there would be users saying they still used it and couldn't understand what people saw in these new-fangled screen things. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:38, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

https://xkcd.com/1782/? Anomie⚔ 16:07, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

These preferences were made available for unregistered users as well, whom do not have a preferences page. Izno (talk) 16:28, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I use monobook. I'm referring, in desktop mode, to the ribbon in the upper right that says "Hammersoft <icon> <icon> sandbox preferences beta dark mode watchlist contributions logout" (emphasis mine). --Hammersoft (talk) 18:52, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

That's a gadget, Wikipedia:Dark mode (gadget), not part of MediaWiki. Anomie⚔ 19:06, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

And gadgets don't run on Preferences for security so they can't add options there. Nardog (talk) 01:33, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Oh and actually, all that gadget does is provide a convenient way to toggle the dark mode, which is its own gadget. So disable "Dark mode toggle" and use "Core styling for dark mode gadget" to toggle the dark mode itself. Nardog (talk) 01:36, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Link search oddity

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T443138

Using Special:LinkSearch, why do:

• thegazette.co.uk
• www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/

each get 1000s of hits (the former including URLs both with and without www.), but:

• thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/

only gets 2? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 16:07, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Looks like the behavior prior to 2023 did the expected thing for searches like (1) example.com, (2) *.example.com, and (3) example.com/some/path, but for (4) *.example.com/some/path it would ignore the path part, giving the same results as (2). In 889575, the "new" code path (accidentally?) did the right thing for (4), but broke both (1) and (3) by treating them like (2) and (4), i.e. treating every domain as if it had the *. prefix. Later 936769 reversed that breakage, treating (2) and (4) as if they were (1) and (3), i.e. breaking the *. prefix search entirely. Finally 937067 settled on the current brokenness, treating (1) like (2) but (4) like (3), i.e. forcing *. if there's no path given and ignoring it if there is. Anomie⚔ 17:40, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

You mean this behaviour is intended? It seems very counter-intuitive. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 19:33, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Seems like a bug to me, and then a series of bad "fixes". Anomie⚔ 20:18, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

OK, I've raised a ticket. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 21:04, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 20:58, 2 November 2026 (UTC)

Is there a way to create a list of redirects or links to disambiguation pages on a page?

I use AWB, and it can create lists using Links on page (only bluelinks) and Links on page (only redlinks). Is there a way to create a list of links on a page which go to redirects or disambiguation pages? In my common.css page, or somewhere, I've set redirects to be colored green and links to disambiguation pages to be colored orange, so I think it should be possible for the destination of those links to be communicated back to the page. Thanks, SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:25, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

What is the use case for only getting redirects? Redirects generally don't need to be bypassed (WP:NOTBROKEN). Axolitl (talk | contribs) 22:29, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm updating the long List of birds by common name. By agreement Wikipedia follows AviList for what common names we use to refer to bird species. Because Wikipedia is complicated and we don't all use the same variety of English, and we make different choices from AviList regarding diacritics in place names, we don't use exactly the same names. Also, the science changes for what species are accepted and what are not, so we need to be able to update List of birds by common name regularly and as quickly as practical. Identifying redirects and links to disambiguation pages in a sandbox used to prepare that list would save effort. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:18, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

There are 50 redirects and no disambigs linked from that page. Or did you mean from your sandbox? —Cryptic 23:59, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Wow. That's the ticket. Thank you @Cryptic! I may as well ask for the moon, because you've already done so much. I'd really like to be able to run it on User:SchreiberBike/sandbox and to be able to run it repeatedly as I work through one issue after another, and to get redlinks at the same time, to find out what redirects need to be created. I've not used SQL in about 20 years, and I don't remember it looking like that. I see I can create an account on Quarry, and I've tried to fool with a copy of the program you wrote, but I've not yet figured out how to do anything there. Thanks again for your help, and if you could do what I describe above, please let me know. Thanks, SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:15, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Here you go. —Cryptic 01:48, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

OpenStreetMap

Does anyone here have any experience with OSM? I've created a new article and am trying to add a customized map to it and I'm lost... Like REALLY lost. Anyone with any experience here would be super appreciated! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 02:25, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Guidance for maps on English Wikipedia is at WP:maps for Wikipedia; for an overview of mapping on MediaWiki sites, see mw:maps. Arlo James Barnes (pro-∪nion) 20:22, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

How do temporary accounts work "cross-project"?

If I start a temporary account like this one on (say) Wikipedia and make some edits, and then go to Wiktionary — or vice versa — then sometimes I can use the same temp account there. But on other occasions (by far the majority) I cannot: the other project shows me as completely logged out. What dictates this behaviour, and in general how can I use my temp account from one project on another one, rather than having to create two temp accounts on the same day? (I am not interested in creating a named account.) ~2026-58009-05 (talk) 12:24, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Seems to be discussed in phab:T355280 and related tickets. In short: in principle it should work (and it was intended to work that way), in practice it often doesn't, there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:01, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

2026 United States elections seems to hit some technical limit

See Talk:2026_United_States_elections#External_links_is_broken Laura240406 (talk) 15:47, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

WP:PEIS. Anomie⚔ 16:21, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

weirdly, the page isn't in Category:Articles where post-expand include size is exceeded Laura240406 (talk) 17:34, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

It was in the category at revision 1383211260. Seems like it has been fixed. Sean.hoyland (talk) 17:42, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

PEIS has since been reduced by switching citations to use the module instead of the template. LittlePuppers (talk) 17:44, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

That's only a temporary fix, as the article grows it will break again. The article needs to be better summarised or split. Having all the polling, pre-election, and election data in one article is not going to work. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:31, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

yeah it's already broken again Laura240406 (talk) 16:40, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Gadget to strike through blocked editors no longer working as advertised

In the past couple of weeks, the gadget that is supposed to strike the username of editors who are blocked has stopped doing that. Instead, it now shows those usernames in italics and light blue. I am using the Vector legacy (2010) skin and I don't think that I have any other code or settings that should be affecting this nor have I made any relevant changes to my preferences. It worked as advertised and then suddenly stopped working as advertised.

If this is an intentional change, can someone please (a) point out where this was discussed and advertised and (b) update the language in the preferences screen so it provides an accurate description of what the gadget does? If this is not an intentional change, can someone please fix it? Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 18:15, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Example: User:Sandbox. The reason this happens is because something changed in the "Preferences → Appearance → Underline links: = Never" setting, as it now overrides all text decoration on links, which prevents the strikethrough. This probably needs to be brought up on Phabricator. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 18:24, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Which is the point of that option. It is an accessibility option and should trump any other customizations. Izno (talk) 18:43, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Fair. Perhaps this is more an issue with the gadget than the skin. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 18:55, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Another customization for blocked editors can be added to one's personal CSS, as the script does add a class to the relevant element, if you should so choose. If in fact the issue is the incompatibility with the accessibility option identified by Axolitl. Izno (talk) 18:44, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Can't speak for everyone, but at least for me the point of that accessibility option is that links aren't indicated solely by color. Dotted underline does that just as well; line-through is less good but sufficient, especially with the lower opacity and, for indef blocks, italics. (And if a user's gone out of their way to turn on a gadget whose only purpose is to restyle a handful of links, shouldn't that take precedence over an option that restyles almost all of them?) Anyway, it's fixable with a.user-blocked-partial.user-blocked-partial { text-decoration: underline dotted; } a.user-blocked-temp.user-blocked-temp, a.user-blocked-indef.user-blocked-indef { text-decoration: line-through; } in your CSS. —Cryptic 19:10, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Looks like it's an accidental side effect of 1345183, which changed the selector for the preference from .mw-underline-never a to html.skin-underline-clientpref-never a. This raises the specificity above that of the gadget's a.user-blocked-indef selector. It should be straightforward enough for an iadmin to update the gadget's selectors, e.g. changing it to html a.user-blocked-indef (and similarly for the others there). Anomie⚔ 21:06, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for tracking this down. Will an iadmin see this thread or do we need to do something specific to alert them? ElKevbo (talk) 22:43, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

There are fifteen intadmins. One of them (Izno) has already commented here; several more (Chaotic Enby, MusikAnimal, Novem Linguae, Pppery, SD0001, Sohom Datta) have commented in other threads on this page recently. So the chances of one of them seeing this thread are high; the question is, would they wish to change it without further discussion? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:12, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

I came by to report the same issue. S0091 (talk) 16:34, 2 November 2026 (UTC)

Done. – SD0001 (talk) 20:13, 2 November 2026 (UTC)

Talk page with "/" in the title of the article displays a secondary link with text before the slash

On Talk:Baby/girls, an article I submitted through AfC, a link displays for Talk:Baby. This makes sense considering how links typically work across the internet - is there even a fix for something like this? 30Four (talk) 20:57, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

This is a side effect of subpages. There isn't really a good solution here. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 21:04, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

That's just how it works, generally. Mostly just means page movers need to be careful with moving with subpages. ScalarFactor (talk) 22:17, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Something like __NOSUBPAGE__ would be a nice feature though. Community wishlist possibly? Axolitl (talk | contribs) 23:19, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

There is a 2012 request in phab:T41395. We cannot hide it with TempateStyles because it automatically adds .mw-parser-output to CSS rules and that class isn't present at the interface link. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:42, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

New share button coming to mobile Wikipedia

Hello, I'm Maryana, a WMF Product Manager. We’re planning to add a new way to share Wikipedia articles on mobile web: a dedicated Share button and Share Card.

Screenshot of what the new share button on mobile Wikipedia looks like. The new button is to the right of the (locked) edit button in this screenshot.

Screenshot of the share card that appears after tapping the share on mobile Wikipedia. Tapping to Share pulls up your phone’s native Share sheet to ensure we don’t promote any specific third-party app or website.

Why are we doing this?

People share Wikipedia articles with each other through text and social media, but our mobile experience doesn’t encourage this behavior. With Wikipedia traffic declining, we want to help bring readers to our platform by providing additional information and attribution. Share buttons on articles are a WP:PERENNIAL request, and we’ve built this feature to allow users to choose whichever social or messaging apps on their phones that they would like to use to address the concern of promoting any specific third-party app or website.

This work is based on a May 2026 Reader Growth team experiment on mobile Wikipedia (arwiki, zhwiki, frwiki, viwiki, enwiki) to show this new Share button/card to a sample of readers. Findings from this experiment indicate that additional traffic was brought in by people clicking on Share Cards shared on external platforms, bringing an estimated potential 25 million additional pageviews to Wikipedia per year.

What risks have we considered?

We have held two calls with Wikipedians on Discord this year to discuss this feature and hear any concerns or risks, which we have worked to address:

• Bad-faith actors using Share Cards to share inappropriate images. To mitigate this and concerns about the quality of images in Share Cards, we disabled sharing for images that appear on the Bad Images Lists and have ensured that we are respecting notpageimage, noviewer and/or NOMEDIAVIEWERCAROUSEL. Editors who don't want a particular image to show up cards can add notpageimage to the image.
• Promoting specific social platforms to share to. As noted above, the Share Card does not specify any social platforms to share to and allows the user to share to any messaging or social app that is installed on their phone.
• The feature won’t be used because there are other ways to share (via link, browser share button, screenshot, etc.). There were thousands of article shares and pageviews to Wikipedia coming from the share button and cards during the small-scale (1% of readers) experiment earlier this year, so we are expecting a good amount of usage when scaled up to all mobile readers.

How we are planning to proceed

1. Today through November 8th: we are inviting all Wikipedians to test this feature for themselves on their wiki. To test: on a mobile device, add ?useformat=mobile&sharecard=1 to the end of any Wikipedia article URL. Please feel free to report any issues here or on this task in Phabricator: phabricator:T442968.
2. On November 9th: if all looks good and there are no outstanding major issues, we will deploy this feature on mobile web to all Wikipedias. (This feature will not be available on desktop.)
3. After November 9th: we’ll continue to monitor for any bugs, issues, and any enhancements suggested by communities. We will also consider future iterations of the share card to test.

Please let us know if you have questions or feedback, and we encourage you to give the feature a try. Thank you! Maryana Pinchuk (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 2 November 2026 (UTC)

I don't think I fully understand the functionality you are trying to create here – the new share button in my testing just creates an image composite. I wonder where traffic from people clicking on Share Cards comes from, because the image does not automatically become a link when shared. If someone posts the card in discord, I can't navigate to the article unless I type out the shortened URL or just search for the article title, which is significantly worse functionality than you get from just posting the link directly (which automatically embeds an image and short description). Your assertion that this generated thousands of article shares and pageviews in testing is plausible, but not impressive considering enwp alone gets on the order of 250 million page views daily. Do you have any idea how much more external traffic is coming from direct links, or how the CTR compares? I almost always use the mobile app when reading on my phone if I can help it, so I already have a very functional share button, but I have a feeling that anyone who does use this feature will actually be driving less readership than they would if all they had was a URL. —Rutebega (talk) 10:20, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

• 
  Sharing to text message
• 
  Sharing to text message (more)

Hi @Rutebega, thanks for your question and apologies for not making this clearer in the original post: when someone taps the big blue "Share" button on the Share Card, what's shared is the image you see in the screenshot above plus a link to the article (which we've instrumented using our standard practice of establishing provenance on traffic coming from different platforms/products).

To the right are a few more screenshots I took to show you what this means concretely. What you're seeing here is:

• After I tapped Share on the Cat article, I selected to share as a text message.
• When I did this, it opened up a new text message in my text message app, and the Share Card image, as well as a snippet of the lead and a link to the article (that's the box at the bottom of the text message in the second screenshot to the right, below the lead text, that says "Read more on Wikipedia") are automatically added here already.
• Note: This is what it looks like to share to iMessage on an iPhone – on Android or if sharing to other apps, this will look slightly different because they all take in the "share" metadata framework we're using slightly differently, but in general a link is shared along with the visual card.

This is how we know that people were coming back to Wikipedia via this feature during the small-scale experiment we ran earlier this year – other links to Wikipedia don't have this unique provenance parameter, so the only way for a pageview on Wikipedia to have this parameter is if it came from a click on a link shared via Share Card (or I guess someone could have manually copied the specific URL parameter we used and appended it to a Wikipedia URL, but that would be... implausible ).

Apologies again for the confusion. Does this help clarify? Maryana Pinchuk (WMF) (talk) 01:57, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Mechanics of redirects used with fragments

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Shortcut § Shortcut links with hash broken. I'm having difficulty explaining "that's how it works, it won't be altered". Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:02, 2 November 2026 (UTC)

PHP

Meant to ask long ago, have the Foundation updated the XAMPP package to resolve the PHP issues? All the best: Rich Farmbrough 23:21, 2 November 2026 (UTC).

Wikimedia doesn't use XAMPP, but yes, PHP was upgraded the same day disclosure happened. Legoktm (talk) 04:54, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-45

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

• Many Wikimedia tools were taken offline last week because of a security vulnerability in PHP. This affected many websites worldwide. Toolforge and Cloud VPS have been back up since October 22. Many important tools have been gradually restored. Some tools need the respective volunteer maintainers to restart them. Others still need to upgrade to a patched PHP version. Some tools were using older versions of PHP which are not supported by the recent security patches. They will require maintainers to upgrade to a more recent version. This might require additional effort. You can follow the work on Wikitech.

Updates for editors

• A new optional search experiment is running in the Wikipedia Android and iOS apps for Arabic, French, and Japanese Wikipedias. Participating readers can search inside articles and open quoted passages directly in their source articles, no answers or summaries are generated. This is the first of four experiments in Phase 2 of Semantic Search. It began on October 22 and runs for 20 days. Feedback is welcome on the project’s discussion page.
• The Future Audiences team is planning to bring Share Cards to Wikipedia on mobile. This feature gives users the option to share a visually appealing card with friends, based on the article they are reading. The card contains the article’s title, image, opening text, and related attribution, and links back to the article for full reading. Editors are invited to try out this feature by adding ?useformat=mobile&sharecard=1 to any article URL from October 29 to November 8. Share any thoughts on the project talk page and report any bugs on Phabricator.
• The default renderer for math formulas will change on November 2. After the change, the server sends the formula as MathML, and your browser uses MathJax to show it. This is the last step towards the Mathoid/RESTBase deprecation process, for sustainability and security reasons. You can ask questions or report problems.
• Do you have an idea for a new feature, or a bug that needs fixing? Submit your suggestion for the community wish list by November 8!
• View all 41 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 14:20, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

What's going on with musical scores?

All of a sudden, the MIDI scores found on pages (all of them) don't work, saying how they're 'temporarily disabled'. This has however been going on for a month and counting. I've tried on mobile browser, Chrome and Firefox, but both yield the same result. In solidarity, Kristi ☎️ 18:31, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

See T441579. KylieTastic (talk) 18:47, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

@KrystalInfernus: Official notice: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 233#The Score extension has been temporarily disabled. Short answer: there's a security hole. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:19, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

We need a more public, more detailed explanation so we don't have to hunt around multiple web­pages (Village pump, Village pump archive, Help talk:Score, Phabricator, meta:Community_Wishlist/W814) just to find ourselves still in the dark as to why scores are temporarily disabled, how long they will take to restore at minimum and at maximum, and whether there will be any user-facing changes when they return. 1101 (talk) 17:16, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

The why is "it's a security issue, which means you will not be informed of the specifics nor even particular generalities until a security release with the fix is provided to 3rd party users of MediaWiki". You can watch the phab task for further updates. Izno (talk) 17:40, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

I have asked multiple times for a link of some kind to be placed in the error message. Does that error message live locally, and can we modify it to insert a link to Help:Score? That would help readers and editors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:52, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

It's MediaWiki:Score-exec-disabled. I created that page with some more details and a link -- better wording suggestions welcome. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:56, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. That will be helpful. I have provided more details in the notice at the top of that page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:04, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

leads with indented formulas are fragmented on mobile

On desktop, the lead of NADPH dehydrogenase is:

In enzymology, a NADPH dehydrogenase (EC 1.6.99.1) is an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction

NADPH + H⁺ + acceptor NADP⁺ + reduced acceptor

But on a mobile device, or in mobile view on a computer when the browser window is narrow like it would be on a mobile device, the infobox intercedes between the incomplete first sentence and the formula, leaving the article starting with an incomplete sentence fragment:

In enzymology, a NADPH dehydrogenase (EC 1.6.99.1) is an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction

[infobox]

The lead of NAD(P)H dehydrogenase (quinone) has the same problem. I could just edit these articles to make the formulas part of the lead sentences, but a) I wonder if there's a better solution, and b) I suspect there may be more cases like this: perhaps someone knows how to look for any, and then fix them all systematically. -sche (talk) 03:01, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

I guess the trick we need is to add a line break before the formula, but keep it marked up as a part of the previous paragraph, so that the mobile site doesn't split it. Here's one way to do it, using <chem display="block"> markup:

In enzymology, a NADPH dehydrogenase (EC 1.6.99.1) is an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction

However, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Chemistry#Line equations advises against it, on the basis that it looks bad. (IDK, it looks good to me.)

You could also achieve a similar effect using {{pb}} and {{pad}} instead of a real paragraph break:

In enzymology, a NADPH dehydrogenase (EC 1.6.99.1) is an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction

 NADPH + H⁺ + acceptor NADP⁺ + reduced acceptor

But I'm not sure if these templates are supposed to be used outside of talk pages. Matma Rex talk 18:48, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

got a weird popup

Got a weird popup going to the us election page, something about a banned user, I guess it's vandalism but was there more to it? How is it possible in the first place? (The popup itself was removed now looking at the history) ~2026-43917-50 (talk) 14:00, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Yup, it was some vandalism, since promptly fixed. There may be some temporary caching issues. It's possible because this is a wiki that anyone can edit, though that user won't be making that edit again in a hurry. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:03, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

I saw it, too. What happened? -- Veggies (talk) 15:21, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Timelash is what happened.

Creating legitimate-looking templates (such as Template:Cⅰte web and Template:Citatⅰon needed which uses a different letter i) and inserting them onto pages, likely to make their vandalism harder to detect. These templates change the background color of the page and make it impossible to read the text on the page.

Edderiofer (talk) 18:00, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

I've added this specific Timelash tactic to the title blacklist. Sure, they'll think of something else, but a useful page will never be created with a mixed-script title like that so no harm done. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:37, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Struggling to get subboxes of infobox to work

A while back, I created this infobox template: Template:Starbox new. It has seven subboxes: Template:Starbox new/Observe, Template:Starbox new/Characteristics, Template:Starbox new/Astrometry, Template:Starbox new/Orbit, Template:Starbox new/Details, Template:Starbox new/Relpos, and Template:Starbox new/Exoplanet. I have been testing the templates out in my user sandbox, User:Shocksingularity/sandbox2. The observe, characteristics, orbit, and exoplanet subboxes are all working fine, but unfortunately, the astrometry, details, and relpos subboxes won't even show up when I call them. I am not sure why they are not showing up or what is wrong with them. Could someone help me? Shocksingularity (talk) 21:14, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

@Shocksingularity: In Template:Starbox new/Astrometry, you're starting with row 63. I believe that whilst Module:Infobox allows gaps in the numeric sequence, and indeed allows the "first" row to be something higher than 1, it's not unlimited - it stops scanning for numbers if the gap is too big. Start with a lower row number, it doesn't need to be 1 but might be 3, 13 or 23.

I've not looked at the other two subtemplates, but I expect that the issue is the same. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:32, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Template:Infobox says "There is no upper limit on numbers but there must be at most 50 between each used number." – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:38, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Oh I didn't realize, thank you Shocksingularity (talk) 23:11, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

It's working now! Tysm! Shocksingularity (talk) 23:14, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

For future ref, the 50 is set at line 668. Basically, the while loop beginning at line 605 looks for rows numbered anything from 1 to 50. If it finds at least one row in this range, it notes the highest row number encountered - say row 37. It then continues the scan up to row 87 (50+37) and if more rows are encountered, it again raises the upper limit and continues, until it's checked for 50 consecutive rows without finding one. So when you start with row 63, it never checks for rows 51-63 inclusive, since it gave up after finding none between 1 and 50. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:01, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1 § module suite update 7–8 November 2026

 You are invited to join the discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1 § module suite update 7–8 November 2026. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 21:29, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

The editnotice for the current AFI is not updated automatically

Moved from WT:AFI § Fixing the edit notice

 – FaviFake (talk) 00:26, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

TL;DR: The {{AFI editnotice}} was not shown in this week's AFI (Frozen yogurt) because it's still being added manually. How can we make sure it automagically appears on the current AFI?

@Isaacl, we've just discovered the AFI edit notice is not even displayed on the current Article for improvement. Is there a way we can force it to appear automatically, without it having to be added by an admin manually, for example by adding it to any article that contains the {{AFI banner}}? Cc @Chaotic Enby. FaviFake (talk) 23:18, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

You don't need to be an admin, just a template editor. InfernoHues (talk) 23:22, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

There are namespace-based edit notices; the one for main space is at Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Main. It invokes Module:Mainspace editnotice to decide when to put edit notices on various pages. It's already used to put an edit notice on today's featured article. (Although I'm personally not a big fan of expanding this approach further, I imagine I don't represent consensus :-) isaacl (talk) 23:36, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Sounds great! What do we need to copy and paste in order to do that? FaviFake (talk) 23:40, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

You need someone to modify Module:Mainspace editnotice, which is fully protected, to add support for an article for improvement notice. (The straightforward way is probably to copy the infrastructure for today's featured article.) But first I suggest opening a discussion at the miscellaneous village pump to obtain consensus for this approach. The module has a processing impact every time any main space page is edited, so I think it's a good idea to establish community support.

Also note that the security issues around edit notices remain, and so I personally think it is still advisable for {{AFI edit notice}} and its subpages to be fully or template-editor protected. (As I recall, there are others who disagree with me on the degree of risk, though.) isaacl (talk) 00:09, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

I've moved the discussion to the technical pump.

There are indeed, see the edit notice's talk page. But this is off topic. FaviFake (talk) 00:26, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

The technical village pump is for questions on implementation. The miscellaneous village pump is appropriate for establishing consensus. (There was no need to copy the separate matter to the village pump.) isaacl (talk) 00:55, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

What consensus do you need? Of course the edit notice that has been discussed for 6 months and was an integral part of the TWAFI RfC question has consensus to appear on the current AFI. We just need to figure out the best way to implement it in a secure way without stopping the AFI team from keeping it up-to-date while the AFI is improved. FaviFake (talk) 01:04, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

You asked for my opinion about what needed to be done to make use of the Module:Mainspace editnotice mechanism, and I gave it, as well as a reason why I felt it should be brought to the community for feedback. Someone with appropriate permissions can of course just manually place the edit notice on the corresponding article; no further consensus is needed for that. isaacl (talk) 01:39, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Yes. I think the folks at VPT are best suited to consider whether to use the module or a different approach. We can always create a bot if editing the module would cause performance concerns. (And in that case, we'd still end up here.) FaviFake (talk) 01:52, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

This seems complex. Using:

<div>'''Improve this article by:'''</div>{{Article for improvement/data/{{{1|{{{year|{{#time:o}}}}}}}}/{{{2|{{{week|{{#time:W}}}}}}}}|tasks}}

Gives us something like:

Improve this article by:

• Expanding the sections of the article
• Finding reliable sources about production
• Adding examples and perspectives to represent a worldwide view

↑ That is synced to the main page. Then when people have to post the updates to the Main Page content WP:ERRORS, those changes get automatically applied to the edit notice. I realize I'm about to suggest a somewhat complicated technical task for someone else to handle, but applying styling like image bullets and bolding the first words could be handled with a small module just for this template. Part of my thought is that the more complex each thing is to maintain, the less likely it will be maintained, and the simpler it is to maintain, the more likely that it will be maintained. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:54, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

@Isaacl: you seem really knowledgeable so I'd like to get your input on this proof of concept: Template:AFI edit notice/new/sandbox. If a module was worked out like this, then those enumerated parameters could be passed down from the {{AFI edit notice}} template itself. There would be no need to do some kind of quick changeover because the template would automatically pull the data used on the main page based on the week, and the editnotice page could define the icons. I took some Nyquil which is just kicking in, but can explain more in the future after I find some sleep. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 05:02, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Unless the main space edit notice is used, the individual article for improvement needs to have an edit notice added to it. True enough though that this could be added ahead of time, and made to display at the appropriate time. This is probably the most straightfoward approach, though with an ongoing cost for an admin or template editor to do it in advance (and remove the edit notice from the previous article for improvement).

Regarding the separate issue of dynamically updating content: there are many ways to do it, each requiring different levels of comfort with various syntaxes. I suggested one way on the articles for improvement talk page which I feel is reasonable for those who are comfortable with creating new templates to hold each week's data, and doesn't assume there is only one article per week. But if those who will be doing the ongoing updates are happy with your approach, go for it. isaacl (talk) 05:21, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Just to be clear, what exactly are the drawbacks of using the main space edit notice module? Why would we want to add the notice manually to each article?

I like Rjj's proposed implementation of suggestions synced with the main page. FaviFake (talk) 14:03, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Rjjiii said "This seems complex." As I said, as long as those doing the work are OK with the implementation approach (leaving aside performance questions), then go for it. isaacl (talk) 18:17, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

I've been messing around at {{#invoke:Mainspace editnotice/sandbox}}, but I'm not great with Lua. Help would be appreciated. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 05:20, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Update: I've gotten {{#invoke:Mainspace editnotice/sandbox}} to work (diff), so all we would need is a sysop to sync it. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 06:42, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

And, if needed, consensus. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 06:42, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Technical tools for following discussions

I find it hard to follow discussions from my phone. The indented replies get really squished. It’s hard to tell which comment is being replied to. I’d like to follow along chronologically. Using notifications goes partially along the way, I like how it highlights each comment but it’s overkill and doesn’t solve the first two problems.

Is there already a skin or script that solves this?

What’s the right way to go down a path of building my own reader if there’s not? Probably a script, right?

The current discussion I’m interested in is the LLM to policy RfP.

thanks!! Dw31415 (talk) 16:33, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

@Dw31415 There is c:User:Jack who built the house/Convenient Discussions, but it don't work in the mobile view (it does work on mobile with the desktop view). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:21, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

@Dw31415 You can also try User:Ahecht/Scripts/discussionrows that I just whipped up, which works on mobile, and highlights comments in alternating colors and makes it easier to see which comments are children of which other comments. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:03, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

That’s awesome! Thank you. Would it be easy to add a click to hide all the previous replies to a parent? Like for Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#c-Gnomingstuff-20261105141300-TonyBallioni-20261105013500 It’s still hard to tell what the editor is replying to. Dw31415 (talk) 19:18, 5 November 2026 (UTC)