Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2025-06

This wiki does not make it easy to find the equivalent of an administrator's noticeboard.

User:Ahmjahangir is spamming a request to have an article created, here and on multiple other projects. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:47, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

All the sources are from Canadian news. There are editorial and interviews. Honorable MP's Facebook page also shared. Please engage a volunteer who is a Canadian. Do not use judge without proper verification and do not quote machine language. Ahmjahangir (talk) 12:55, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

@Ahmjahangir: Kindly refrain from making such request on multiple wikis. This maybe considered as cross-wiki spam. – Phương Linh (T · C · CA · L · B) 12:58, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Well noted with thanks. I will not request any other onward. My concern was only whether a volunteer take my request or not. Thanks for being on my part. You can verify and perform necessary due diligence. Please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions. Ahmjahangir (talk) 13:02, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Warnings given here and on talk page. For admin noticeboard, see WM:RFH. – Phương Linh (T · C · CA · L · B) 12:58, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Please be positive and do necessary due diligence. If you have any allergy don't involve or comment. Let another person to take care who understand. Ahmjahangir (talk) 13:04, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

@Ahmjahangir: Do note that this is a public space and everyone can comment. – Phương Linh (T · C · CA · L · B) 13:05, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

I do appreciate. But we to be more inclusive. Should not hurt others. I am sorry if my words hurt anyone. Ahmjahangir (talk) 13:09, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

• Meta-Wiki administrator requests may be placed at Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat. We have redirects to that page from Project:Administrators' noticeboard, Project:AN and Administrators' noticeboard, and interwiki crosslinks via d:Q3907246. I've added another redirect at Administrator's noticeboard and added the term "administrator" in addition to "sysop" at the primary help directory. Besides that spelling, is there more of your user story of how it is hard to find this help page? We may be able to improve the process more. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:15, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

  btw who sign this, Xaosflux? —— Eric Liu _{(Talk )} 13:41, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

  Ooops missed a "~". Fixed. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:42, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

  @Ericliu1912: It's Xaos but they accidentally entered extra "~". – Phương Linh (T · C · CA · L · B) 13:42, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

  okay no problem XD —— Eric Liu _{(Talk )} 13:45, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: — xaosflux ^Talk 13:05, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Most links about donating money to the Wikimedia Foundation redirect to the domain donate.wikimedia.org which is not a wiki. I would like to post questions/proposals about payment methods. What is the appropriate forum for that? Lieven Smits (talk) 20:23, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

The donation system is not run by volunteers, but by the Foundation. You may contact them directly at: donate@wikimedia.org — xaosflux ^Talk 20:30, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

(Irrelevant technical detail: donate.wikimedia.org is actually a wiki, although they hide the wiki aspects in the standard donate UI) * Pppery * _{it has begun} 23:03, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for this clarification. That's a pity, really. The email address does a good job of helping out with individual problems, but I would like to address issues of a more general nature (such as how to make it easier for Europeans to donate money). Lieven Smits (talk) 09:02, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

You can try some of the pages for the fundraising team linked from Wikimedia Foundation/Advancement/Fundraising, I'm not sure how active they are. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:17, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Lieven Smits, the Foundation is always happy to hear feedback on the payment systems they offer! Looking at your username, you might be from Belgium, and it might be helpful to know that there are yearly collaboration pages for both the Belgium banners, that have ended on May 31st, and the Netherlands banner (page will be updated soon) that is scheduled for September. Staff actively watches Talk:Fundraising here on Meta, in case you would like to directly reach out and suggest changes or get in touch. Ciell (talk) 12:18, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

That looks like the type of forum I was looking for, many thanks! Lieven Smits (talk) 12:24, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: — xaosflux ^Talk 13:05, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi,

I was asked to take a survey from a box in an English Wikipedia article saying Take a short survey and help us improve Wikipedia. I took this survey, which turned out to concern AI-generated "simple summaries" of articles on Wikimedia wikis.

I interpret this as plans to include or consider including, and build technology for such inclusion, AI-generated summaries of articles on Wikimedia wikis.

I have not found another place more appropriate for this discussion, so I am writing it here. If you know of a better place to write this, whether that is because it is specifically about these plans or this survey, or you believe it would be more helpful to the community at large to write this there, please tell me.

I want to voice the strongest opposition to these plans.

Note that I will be using "AI" here to refer to large language models and generative AI, that is, AI that works on natural language and complex human cultural artifacts to do knowledge tasks, such as OpenAI’s GPT models and LLMs in general.

The plan to include AI content in Wikimedia wikis, as it appeared in the survey, is harmful and useless. This can be said despite the fact that the survey was vague in its description of the AI content. I assume this is because the concrete form and finer details of it are still being discussed.

I can say this because it is clear from the survey and the included demonstration video "Simple summaries EN demo" on YouTube (external site) that Wikimedia Foundation or the developers of this feature are concerned or appear to be concerned about the accuracy of AI. They recognise that AI can make mistakes, and that this is a problem. I can infer this because many questions were concerned with ways to manage AI content and make it more useful and accurate.

However, due to the lacklustre factuality, neutrality and completeness of current AI models in answering knowledge questions, the amount of safeguards necessary to restrain AI to achieve an acceptable level of accuracy is so great that AI ceases to be useful. The benefit of AI is in its ability to automate these knowledge tasks. But the manual patrolling and editing of these summaries will be a similar amount of work as just writing these summaries manually.

Among the measures considered in the survey were limiting AI summaries to a smaller number of pages than all pages of the wiki, and enhanced tools for administrators and editors to review AI summaries and spot bad AI summaries. These are tasks that are already being done with human editors, and they are tasks that will not get easier using AI. Specifically the restriction of AI to a subset of pages makes it easier to instead use humans.

Wikipedia articles already have short summaries of articles for search engines and link tooltips. Any summary of this sort could be implemented in a similar way.

It is also clear that the plans intend to focus on simple language in these summaries. They are called simple summaries, after all. Such simplification is admittedly easy to mess up in many cases, promoting false analogies, and it is difficult to find the best simple phrasing for a complicated topic. But writing simple summaries of an acceptable quality, similar to that of AI, is easy for humans.

It is important to emphasise that any implementation of these plans has a high chance of producing significant harm. It is known that AI reproduces systemic biases and that the humans trust AI, even if AI is wrong. Since AI makes a shocking amount of mistakes, both simple and complex, both subtle and obvious, the potential for harm is immense. Particularly in areas like medicine, law, finance, health, and home and workplace safety, AI summaries will have enormous direct impact. Additionally, in areas like history, social studies, politics, philosophy, AI will contribute to existing patterns of abuse and misinformation, and help spread false ideas that will influence people’s fundamental world views.

But if it is assumed outright that AI is needed, it is very likely that the implementation will not be adequate. Given that AI is being considered at all, despite overwhelming signs that AI is harmful to the information landscape, I find it likely that AI is being considered not because of its virtues, but in spite of its failures, and that such immense problems with AI will be overlooked in part because of a desire to use AI, divorced from its usefulness.

Therefore, I call on the Wikimedia Foundation to immediately distance themselves from this plan and consider other uses of AI, and strongly consider abandoning any use of AI, unless significant developments in AI model accuracy are made, and explain how they will avoid the temptation to use AI due to trends in technology divorced from its actual usefulness.

—

Additionally, I want to note that, on the last slide of the AI survey, I was taken aback at how the labels for the "positive" and "negative" options on the sliders "switched places", so to say. Before, I was asked to rate on a scale of "very good" on the left side of the screen to "very bad" on the right side of the screen. Now, I was asked to rate on a scale of "strongly disagree" on the left and "strongly agree" on the right.

I believe this unintuitive swap will contribute to respondents mistakenly selecting e.g. "strongly agree" when they meant "strongly disagree". Because I believe that my sentiment about AI is widely shared at least among Wikipedia editors, I expect that this will lead to a skew in the data towards a positive sentiment towards AI summaries. I think it is important that this is considered when evaluating the survey data. Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything (talk) 12:00, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

There is more discussion of this than anyone could ever want to read, at en:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Simple summaries: editor survey and 2-week mobile study and other venues linked from there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:49, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I was unaware. Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything (talk) 00:45, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

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

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

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

Best regards,

Abhishek Suryawanshi
Chair of the Elections Committee

On behalf of the Elections Committee and Governance Committee

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

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

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

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

Buongiorno, ho scritto una nuova pagina (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:EduLexIntC/Sandbox) ma non riesco a capire come pubblicarla (inviarla per approvazione poiché possa essere pubblicata). Sebbene nella versione inglese di Wiki ho un mentore, non capisco come si faccia su wiki ita. Qualcuno potrebbe darmi delle dritte per favore? EduLexIntC (talk) 11:14, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

Hello. On Special:WikiSets/14, there are currently 111 wikibooks listed that allow global bots. I went through first 15 sites, and most of them have been shut down. Is there a list of currently active projects? Or am I using outdated information? This is about deploying KiranBOT where global bots are allowed. Regards, —usernamekiran (talk) 08:38, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

Wikibooks/Table? Johannnes89 (talk) 08:51, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Johannnes89, this is helpful. —usernamekiran (talk) 14:37, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Folks following this page are welcomed to opine at Requests for comment/Should paid editing as a CU be allowed. Sohom (talk) 16:48, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Dear Wikimedia Community,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello everyone,

My name is Phil - I work in the Wikimedia Foundation’s Legal department, and I’m here to provide two updates on our legal challenge to the UK Online Safety Act’s "categorisation rules". Those rules are written so broadly that Wikipedia could be lumped in as a "Category 1 service". This would subject it to extra duties under the Act that could seriously impact the privacy, safety and empowerment of the Wikipedia community, and our collective ability to sustain the Wikimedia projects. For background on the OSA and our legal challenge, see here (Diff), or a more detailed post here (Medium).

First, an administrative note: the High Court has agreed to expedite our case, and set a two-day trial next month: July 22-23. We expect the hearings to be public, and can be observed in person at the beautiful Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Second: the Foundation will be joined in this case by a Wikipedian, as joint claimant. User:Zzuuzz, a longterm UK-based user, will play a pivotal role in articulating the human rights implications of this case, including for your rights to privacy, safety, free speech, and association.

I hope you’ll join us in expressing deep appreciation to User:Zzuuzz for volunteering to take this extraordinary step, and standing up for the Wikimedia movement worldwide. This might be legal history in the making: our early searches haven’t turned up any legal precedent of a website’s host and its users proactively joining forces to bring a legal challenge.

We’ll aim to provide further updates on Meta, and we’ll watch discussions for a few days in case there are questions we can usefully answer. As this is a critical moment in active litigation, we apologise for not commenting as freely as we’d like. Best regards,

PBradley-WMF (talk) 08:10, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi all! I’m pleased to report that the court hearing this week went well.

The judge was switched on, and very engaged with the issues we were raising. He seems to understand why Wikipedia is so important, how it works (in general terms), and why it’s not like the UK OSA’s classical targets (e.g. social media platforms). We think he saw how this law’s flawed design can have some very unfortunate - and unintended - consequences. However, he also seemed to be a strong believer that English courts should offer the government significant leeway when making technical policy decisions. Unsurprisingly, that’s also the government’s central argument - that courts should not hold it accountable for "imperfect" decisions.

We therefore do not know how the judge will rule. Timing-wise, the judge indicated that we shouldn't expect a ruling before the end of July; August is more likely.

We'll provide a further update once we have news, but in the interim, we wanted to once again offer our tremendous appreciation to user:Zzuuzz , and to the external legal team in this case. Both were essential to putting in what was a passionate and well-argued plea for rational, rights-respecting regulation. PBradley-WMF (talk) 17:43, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

Why does the Government think Wikipedia should be in Category 1? There really are not any "forwarding or sharing" features as the law defines them, at all. Recommendation features exist for new editors; everyone else has to go to a specific page to get them if they want them. It would be far easier to just disable those features for people in the UK than struggle through a Category 1 classification. 2603:800C:1200:596A:831C:A3FA:2D50:44FD 01:30, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

It's complicated. For example, one of the definitions[1] is concerned with "content that is generated directly on the service by a user of the service, or uploaded to or shared on the service by a user of the service" (e.g., posts something in the comments section on a news website) that could "be encountered by another user", even if it's not technically "forwarded or shared" (or even encountered) by anyone.

Another definition, of "user",[2] could be interpreted (or not!) as saying that editors/contributors to the wikis are not "users", but all readers are – the opposite of how we think about who a User: is. It's also possible that, since editors see themselves as volunteering for "the project" ("Wikipedia" or "Commons") rather than "the organization" ("Wikimedia Foundation, Inc."), someone would classify them the other way.

Even if they clear up these vaguenesses, how are we supposed to track how many people are actually reading Wikipedia, without violating their privacy? Is my laptop plus my phone "two users"? Is the shared laptop at school, used by six students a day, "one user"? Is someone who clears cookies every day "30 users"?

AIUI the usual thing for legislators to do is to decide whether they want to include Wikipedia, and if they don't, then they write a clear statement in the law saying "BTW, Wikipedia is exempt" (e.g., that the law applies only to services hosted by for-profit entities). And if they do intend for Wikipedia to be covered, then it would be nice to have them say so directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

We have said that there is a risk that (for instance, but without limitation) the inherent ability to embed images (or other content; maybe even user-generated templates) into Wiki pages may be deemed "forwarding or sharing functionality". We discussed how, for example, an uploaded image of the Baltimore bridge collision had been reused across various Wiki pages, including as a Picture of the Day on the front page. PBradley-WMF (talk) 08:07, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

RULING IS OUT: Hi everyone. Unfortunately, the High Court of Justice has dismissed the Wikimedia Foundation's challenge to the UK's Online Safety Act (OSA) Categorisation Regulations. While the decision does not provide the immediate legal protections for Wikipedia that we hoped for, the Court’s ruling emphasized the responsibility of Ofcom and the UK government to ensure Wikipedia is protected as the OSA is implemented.

The judge recognized the "significant value" of Wikipedia, its safety for users, as well as the damages that wrongly-assigned OSA categorisations and duties could have on the human rights of Wikipedia's volunteer contributors. The Court stressed that this ruling "does not give Ofcom and the Secretary of State a green light to implement a regime that would significantly impede Wikipedia's operations", and indicated they could face legal repercussions if they fail to protect Wikipedia and the rights of its users. In order to achieve that outcome, he suggested that Ofcom may need to find a particularly flexible interpretation of the rules in question, or that the rules themselves may need amendment in Parliament.

If the ruling stands, the first categorization decisions from Ofcom are expected this summer. The Foundation will continue to seek solutions to protect Wikipedia and the rights of its users as the OSA continues to be implemented. PBradley-WMF (talk) 10:02, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

This BBC summary of the judicial review mentions and quotes PBradley. Salient points about refusal to exempt Wikipedia from OSA Categorization:

• Due to the large number of users accessing Wikipedia, it would be Category 1, i.e. like a huge social media website and "have to verify the identity of its contributors".
• As WhatamIdoing said, OSA's definition of users is ambiguous. Are "users" our editors/contributors OR readers?! Proposed work-around, in BBC voice, no attribution: "The only way it could avoid being classed as Category 1 would be to cut the number of people in the UK who could access the online encyclopaedia by about three-quarters, or disable key functions on the site."

OFCOM has its hands full, as it is levying daily fines on websites (wholly domiciled in other countries) for not complying with UK ID reqs. 4chan (which is not non-profit but operates without profit) was one of the first to be fined. Also, in Feb 2025, OFCOM ordered Apple to disable privacy encryption for UK only. OFCOM extended that to Apple users globally. The US government objected to its citizens' data being revealed to UK under OSA. On 19 Aug, OFCOM backed down for (some?) countries; UK user privacy status is unknown.--FeralOink (talk) 23:56, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

@FeralOink My understanding is that Ofcom is not involved with the Apple matter (and that it's not an Online Safety Act matter); and that it is instead the UK Home Office that (reportedly) issued Apple with a Technical Capability Notice, using powers in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. See also the requirements that a UK TCN can impose.

Confusion is understandable, because there has been talk of OSA powers also in theory being usable to "backdoor" private messaging apps, for child safety purposes (whereas the IPA 2016 is more about UK national security/crime-fighting).

Interestingly enough, one of our lawyers (Raphael Hogarth) is also representing Apple in the dispute you mentioned. Small world... PBradley-WMF (talk) 08:02, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Hi all - just as an update, the Wikimedia Foundation will not appeal the UK High Court’s decision to dismiss our challenge to the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) Categorisation Regulations. We will continue to monitor how the Court's guidance is followed and Wikipedia is protected as the OSA moves forward. PBradley-WMF (talk) 15:07, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

This is a significant development. It’s encouraging to see both the Foundation and a long-standing community member working together to highlight the real human rights concerns. The outcome could set an important precedent not just for Wikimedia, but for how collaborative projects are treated under broad regulations like the OSA. Michael Jobel (talk) 12:56, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

• Talk archives