Benison is busy and is going to be on Wikipedia in off-and-on doses, and he may not respond swiftly to queries.
You are going to leave a message in my talk page?: Go ahead (by clicking HERE) and do it but don't ping me (for the new-bies). Yeh, please be good enough to check back for my reply. I may not notify you always. Cheers!!
Contentious topics alerts
This user is aware of the designation of the following as contentious topics:
the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups
living or recently deceased subjects of biographical content on Wikipedia articles
Hello, BASEPAGENAME, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --BatteryIncluded (talk) 13:40, 14 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
An experiment launched on September 29 is testing article recommendations for new account holders who also identify as readers. By suggesting articles to read, similar to recommendations in the Wikipedia app for logged-in readers, the experiment aims to encourage new account holders to read and return to the website regularly, with the goal of increasing internal referrals by 1%. See the related Community Wishlist proposal.
Several Wikimedia services were taken offline last week because of a security vulnerability in PHP. This is because they need to be updated before they are safe to put back online. This is not a problem just for the Wikimedia movement but affects a lot of websites. You can follow updates on Wikitech. Cloud VPS and Toolforge will take longer to bring back online. This is to make sure that applications which run on Cloud VPS or Toolforge are not affected. Tool developers can see updates and more information on the Cloud-announce mailing list.
Last week we shared that to measure the impact of incorporating some community-requested features on logged-out reader retention, a test for the Image Carousel feature would be pushed to logged-out readers. Due to an issue, we will be restarting the test, but it will be live on October 26, not November 20 as initially announced.
Updates for editors
A new bot detection system to better identify automated traffic that disguises itself as human visitors, is coming to the Wikimedia wikis. This might cause sudden changes to visitor statistics starting from 26 October, going back to 20 June 2026.
The Score extension which renders musical notation inside wiki pages, has been temporarily disabled on all wikis due to a security issue. Affected pages will display a notice instead of musical scores, but the underlying code remains intact. No action is needed from editors, and a fix is in progress. A separate announcement will follow when the extension is re-enabled. Read more on Phabricator.
View all formatnum:18 community-submitted PLURAL:18 that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where CodeMirror syntax highlighter appears to have been enabled in error for existing editors has been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday, October 28 2026 at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests, which happen twice a year. During the switchover, all Wikimedia website traffic is shifted from one primary data center to the backup data center to test availability and prevent service disruption even in emergencies.
Scholarship and sponsorship applications for the 2027 Wikimedia Hackathon will close on Friday, October 30th. Submit your application through Pretix before the deadline!
Since August 2026, there is one more Mid-importance, nine more Low-importance, eight more NA-importance, and 78 more Unknown-importance articles, for a total of 96 new articles. There are also two more GA-class, four more B-class, 14 more C-class, 34 more Start-class, and 18 more Stub classes articles.
Discuss & propose changes to The Downlink at The Downlink talk page. To unsubscribe from the newsletter remove your name from the Mailing list.
Newsletter contributors: Template:Noping
Our three high scorers in the final round, who each got over 1,000 points, happen to all be among the top 8 as well:
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Participant17 with 2846 round points from 40 good articles, 4 pieces of featured content (including 2 featured articles), 11 DYK articles, and various reviews.
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Participant17 with 2603 round points from 43 good articles, 5 pieces of featured content (1 featured article and 4 featuyred lists), and various reviews.
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Participant17 with 1141 round points from 20 good articles, a good topic, a featured list, and 30 good article reviews.
The top eight scorers will receive awards shortly. The following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. These prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field over the course of the competition.
Wikipedia:WikiCup/Participant17, who withdrew during the competition but who had 38 featured-content reviews in round 2. Olliefant also had 43 good article reviews in round 1.
Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate. We are also looking for an experienced editor to help write the bimonthly newsletter. If you would like to help write next year's newsletters, please contact Epicgenius at his talk page.
The WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2027 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement!
Latest comment: 2 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
In our November 2026 newsletter, there was a mistake in calculating the final tournament point rankings (which have been updated here). We regret the error.
Following an RfC, election to ArbCom now requires at least 60% support. Successful candidates normally serve two-year terms, with one-year terms retained for filling vacancies. Proposals to change the election rules may now be added throughout the year and discussed on the talk page; formal discussion remains in September.
Following an RfC, first-time reviewers’ reviews require an experienced reviewer’s check, and GA requirements now include alt text and accessible tables. Featured articles may receive GA status during removal discussions if they meet GA criteria. Backlog drives will run every five months, with a points leaderboard and awards for the top five participants.
Miscellaneous
Self-nominations for the Arbitration Committee are open until 11 November 2026.
.png)
