Wikisource:Scriptorium

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Announcements

The Score extension has been temporarily disabled

More details at Enwiki Village pump (technical).

We do not have a timeline for re-enabling it yet, but a fix is in progress.

we disabled it last night after finding a thorny bug. It'll be disabled at least through the weekend until more people come online in business hours on Monday.

Practically for us at Wikisource, it seems that editing or purging a page that already has a musical score on it, or adding a new musical score, will cause the musical score to be replaced with a "Musical scores are temporarily disabled". Edderiofer (talk) 04:16, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Bot approval requests

• See Wikisource:Bots for information about applying for a bot status
• See Wikisource:Bot requests if you require an existing bot to undertake a task

Repairs (and moves)

Designated for requests related to the repair of works (and scans of works) presented on Wikisource

See also Wikisource:Scan lab

Index:Geometrical considerations and nomenclature for reflectance (IA geometricalconsi160nico).djvu

Uploaded as a higher quality replacement for Index:Geometrical considerations and nomenclature for reflectance.pdf

However IA-upload decided to misalign the text layer by one page due to calibration pages being included in the scans, It was not possible to determine this would happen during the upload process via IA-upload.

Can SOMEONE ELSE, build a good version from both files? Thanks . If the tools are going to be un-coperative, I will be making upload requests directly at Scan Requests or here, rather than attempting to work with 'glitching' tools. Thanks. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:01, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: Done. The cache is not yet consistent for me (after page 52). • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 12:59, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

Still doesn't look right to me. I'll leave it , and then suggest someone else sits down very carefully and figures out which version is good. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:12, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

Looks good -

Please migrate pages from - Index:Geometrical considerations and nomenclature for reflectance.pdf to Index:Geometrical considerations and nomenclature for reflectance (IA geometricalconsi160nico).djvu and delete the PDF based index. Thanks. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:47, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Index:Intelligence Services Act 1994.pdf

Please move to Index:Intelligence Services Act 1994 (UKPGA 1994-13 qp).pdf. I've already request move on commons in order to disambiguate with the south african act with the same name. ToxicPea (talk) 17:38, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Other discussions

WSExport

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T437349

I haven't seen any other discussions of this here, so just to say it seems the WSExport tool for exporting ebooks, etc. is currently down. --Yodin^T 10:51, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

Now fixed. --Yodin^T 09:27, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

Great. And even the .pdf is now working, which it hadn't for quite a while. -- Beardo (talk) 17:48, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

This problem appears to be back again. I got a report (see ticket:2026092710006585) and when trying the same, PDF export fails for me as well. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:50, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

I too have found the .pdf export failing again recently. -- Beardo (talk) 01:25, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Epub seems to be working fine, but I'm also getting a 503 error when trying to export as pdf. Have raised this on the Phab task. @AFBorchert are you saying that pdf export is not working for you at OTRS, or here, or both? --Yodin^T 09:57, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

@Yodin: This is a misunderstanding. We have an open VRT (it is no longer called OTRS) ticket about PDF export not working at Wikisource. There is no such thing as an export function for VRT. I am just talking about Wikisource and I am one of the few who responds to VRT tickets related to Wikisource. Thanks for updating the phrabicator ticket. --AFBorchert (talk) 10:34, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Ah! I see, thanks for the clarification. --Yodin^T 10:46, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Deprecating category parameter in headers

Including categories directly in the header is a pain; among other things, it is not compatible with the HotCat tool. I therefore suggest that the categories parameter be deprecated. The issue was already discussed a few years ago (see Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2020-09#Deprecate category parameter in headers) where it was agreed that it makes maintenance difficult, but the outcome was never implemented. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:50, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Just for clarification: I suggest just disabling the manual categorization through the header parameter, categorization through Wikidata should stay, of course. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:55, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

The only categories which are regularly added are Category:Monthly Challenge. What would be done with them? I find Category:Translated indexes quite useful. Yann (talk) 20:08, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Also categories can be very well added with HotCat: . Yann (talk) 20:11, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

That is not what I mean. I just suggest disabling the categories parameter in the header of the mainspace pages, so that edits like this one would not be possible. Although it is still possible to add new categories with HotCat, those added from the header are not possible to be changed or removed with this tool. I cannot see any advantage to this approach. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 08:59, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

OK, understood. I don't have a definitive opinion on that. Yann (talk) 19:57, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

I agree that there's no reason for the parameter; all categories can be added at the end of the page as normal. --Yodin^T 11:20, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

@CalendulaAsteraceae: as the major editor of Module:Header–Do you think you could provide this? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:51, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: Sure, I'm happy to take care of editing the module. If we have consensus, I can edit the documentation to say the category parameter has been deprecated, and I can disable it once we've cleared out the pages in Category:Works using categories parameter. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 21:24, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-39

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

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday, 23 September 2026 at 14:00 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.

Updates for editors

• The Growth team tested a new post-edit notice designed to encourage Temporary Account holders to register for a permanent account. The new notice replaced multiple dialogs and a simultaneous welcome notification with a single message highlighting the benefits of creating an account. The experiment increased permanent account creation from 1.94% to 3.66%, an 87% relative increase. The change will now be released to all wikis.
• For Wikipedia editors using the "Suggestion mode" Beta Feature, there is a new opt-in user preference for showing "experimental" edit checks and suggestions. These types are listed at Special:EditChecks, and are intended for early developer-testing and for gathering feedback from experienced users. Administrators can change the configuration details for each suggestion as usual. Administrators can also use this feature to help test their community's ideas for locally created checks and suggestions. Experimental types will have a more distinct visual style later this week. Feedback is welcome.
• The CEE Technical Village Pump has been launched as a space for technical discussions and collaboration among Wikimedia communities in Central and Eastern Europe.
• A new tool, Starter Kit, is now available for new and small language Wikipedia communities. It brings together guided tasks, tools, and resources to help communities get started, monitor their progress, and collaborate with the broader Wikimedia community. Starter Kit is hosted on Wikimedia Toolforge and is designed for Wikipedias with fewer than 50,000 articles. Learn more about how Starter Kit works and how communities have been using it in this Diff blog post.
• The Reader Growth team is launching a retest of the image carousel experiment. The retest will use three new versions of the design, updated based on community feedback. The team will assess results and determine with communities whether or not to proceed with the feature. The experiment will begin the week of September 28 and will run on Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, English, Farsi, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
• After successful rollouts to Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias, the Reading Lists feature from the Reader Experience team will be available to all logged-in users on all Wikipedia wikis starting September 28.
• View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the mentor status script repeatedly updated mentors’ status even when nothing had changed, creating unnecessary Recent Changes entries, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• The abusefilters list query API, used to retrieve specific details about active or historical abuse filters configured on a wiki, has been updated to support the formatversion=2 configuration parameter, thereby leading to breaking changes to the API response. All users who maintain user-scripts or other code need to check if they use the abusefilters list query API, and respond to any breaking changes.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 11:56, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

Proofread of the Month

The Proofread of the Month work is completed. Should a new work be added right now, or should we wait for October 1st? Yann (talk) 18:41, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

@Yann Usually, when it is close to the end of the month, I believe Wikisource:Validation of the Month (or something like it) is displayed instead. Not sure how to make that happen though. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 20:55, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

OK, good idea. So I added Index:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu, which is one of the index to be validated in the waiting list. It also fits within the "Science/Technology" them. Only I don't know what to do about the author, since there is none. Yann (talk) 21:38, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

The cover says "Conducted by E. L. and W. J. Youmans" - shouldn't they be shown as editors? -- Beardo (talk) 02:44, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-40

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

Updates for editors

• Users of default skins on desktop and mobile web (Vector 2022 and Minerva respectively) will now be informed if the search suggestions displayed as they type into Search come from page redirects. Previously, users could get confused when the top search suggestions did not match exactly what they had typed. The new redirect notice clarifies that these suggestions are not random, but related to the search. The suggested pages may be redirects to the most relevant destination articles being searched for.
• Logged-out Wikipedia users on mobile web will begin to see a bookmark button for saving articles to their reading lists instead of the current Watchstar button. When clicked, the bookmark button prompts users to log in or create an account to save an article for later. An earlier experiment found that the bookmark icon was four times more likely than the Watchstar button to encourage logged-out users to create an account. This change is part of efforts to encourage more readers to become account holders and use features that help them save and return to content.
• An experiment will begin on September 29 on Spanish, Arabic, English, and French Wikipedias to simplify the experience users encounter immediately after account creation. The test will explore whether removing friction from the current Welcome Survey helps new users understand what to do next more easily. The experiment will run through the end of October.

• The Product and Technology Advisory Council has put out a call for the community to suggest topics that it should consider and discuss with the Wikimedia Foundation. Editors and technical contributors are invited to add topics to the council's talk page.
• Later this week, it will be possible for communities to configure Edit Checks and Suggestions so that they are shown within additional namespaces, such as a Draft: namespace. Feedback is welcome.
• A bug in the Global Watchlist is causing the page to fail to load for users that have unseen changes on Wikimedia Commons. Developers are working on a fix. Until then, affected users can follow the workarounds described in the relevant help section.
• New magic words {{CATEGORYSORT:TIMESTAMP}} and {{CATEGORYSORT:RTIMESTAMP}} are now available for use. They are able to change the default sorting of categories to be based on timestamp of categorization.
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where Wikistats for Wikipedias was not reachable has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• The datacenter switchover, scheduled on September 23, has been postponed. The equinox exercise revealed capacity issues, preventing the switch of all services to the other datacenter. The process has been paused, prioritizing investigating that issue, to ensure that we continue to be able to serve our users reliably. A new exercise will be scheduled. Meanwhile, all traffic and edits continue to work as usual.
• On September 23, a power loss briefly affected all wikis, creating intermittent issues on both reading and editing modes. This also affected Gerrit. This is unrelated to the datacenter switchover postponement.
• Produnto has been deployed to mediawiki.org and some Indic language wikis. We want to hear your feedback on this experimental product. Produnto allows users to use Lua modules hosted in Wikimedia's GitLab. It simplifies the sharing of Lua code between wikis. Instead of copying each individual Lua module from one wiki to another, users will be able to easily share packages across all wikis.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• A Cross-wiki code collaboration workshop will be held online on October 2 at 12:30 UTC, bringing together South Asian technical contributors to learn about Produnto and begin piloting it on Hindi, Punjabi, Odia, Telugu, and Malayalam Wikipedias. Produnto is a package manager for deploying Lua modules hosted on GitLab to Wikimedia wikis, and was recently deployed on some pilot wikis.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 10:49, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Help naming author

What should I name the author page for w:Donald Mackenzie (trader)? Donald Mackenzie needs to be a disambig page for both him and Donald Alexander Mackenzie. He doesn't have an established birth year for a lifetime spread. Eievie (talk) 22:09, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Hathi thinks that the Donald Mackenzie who wrote The Khalifate of the West https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001609171 is the same "Donald Alexander Mackenzie" and The Flooding of the Sahara https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005725886 is at least "Donald A. Mackenzie". Does anyone know any authorship research tricks to figure out whether this is actually true? Eievie (talk) 22:20, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

For the first question, maybe "Donald Mackenzie (1840-)"? for now

I don't have any fancy tricks and unfortunately I don't think HathiTrust links to a unique author identifier, but from the VIAF entries I'd say the one born c. 1840 could maybe also just have the same name. At least we know for sure that Flooding of the Sahara published 1877 could only have been authored by the Mackenzie born 1840 and not the one born 1873. And the description of The Khalifate of the West then only matches the biography of the former, too. Neon700 (talk) 07:49, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

If I were creating it, I would name it Author:Donald Mackenzie (b. c. 1840) (b.c. meaning born circa, if that wasn't clear)—Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 17:01, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

This is an interesting one; after looking into it in as much detail as I can, there are very few records that say when he was born (only one secondary source I came across says "around 1840", and that seems to be a guess; passenger records suggest he was born in 1849), and none that say when he died. As an anti-slavery and prison reform campaigner, who founded a town of 8,000 people as recently as 1882 (see the before and after pictures here), I'm surprised so little is known about his early and later life. Quite a few books and articles say he was the author of both The Flooding of the Sahara and The Khalifate of the West, so I think it's a pretty safe assumption. I've added what I've found for now at Author talk:Donald Mackenzie (1840–), and hope to add more details if/when I find more, as well as uploading his portrait to Commons/Wikidata. @Eievie: would you object if I moved the page to Author:Donald Mackenzie (1849–) or Author:Donald Mackenzie (b. 1849) based on this? --Yodin^T 20:31, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

I see that the works lists has The Khalifate of the West listed under both - as does Wikipedia.-- Beardo (talk) 20:39, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

It's definitely not by Donald Alexander Mackenzie, and the list here seems to be copied from Wikipedia, so I've removed it here and on Wikipedia. --Yodin^T 21:10, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

FYI I see records for him living up until 1913 in Woodcot, South Godstone Surrey, followed by a move to Neville House, Tatsfield where he is registered as a voter in 1914. MarkLSteadman (talk) 21:53, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

Category removals in watchlist?

Hi! I’ve had Category:Texts with missing musical scores on my watchlist for a while. Plus, I’ve transcribed a few musical scores myself, causing some pages to be removed from the category. Indeed I’m seeing the number of pages in the category go down. However, I’m not seeing the category removals on my watchlist — neither my own nor anyone else’s. Is this expected behaviour? Is there something I’m doing wrong? Is there a way to get a list of most recently transcribed music scores? — Timwi (talk) 07:32, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

I should have mentioned: I did turn on “Category changes” in the filter, and I did turn off “Hide categorization of pages” in the User Preferences. — Timwi (talk) 07:55, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

I think that the watchlist would only show changes to the actual text on that category page - if you click on edit, you will see what is there. The pages that are in the category are populated automatically, and so changes in them are not reflected in the watchlist. -- Beardo (talk) 13:52, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Done — The answer is that Category:Texts with missing musical scores is a hidden category, and for that to show up, in addition to the two options I already mentioned, you also need to enable “Show hidden categories” in Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options. — Timwi (talk) 15:22, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Wikidata Sitelink changes in Recent Changes and Watchlist

(Apologies for cross-posting in English, translating it will help spread the message)

Editors on group 1 wikis, including Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource, will no longer see notifications on Recent Changes and Watchlist when a link to another language version of a page is added, removed, or changed in its Wikidata item. This change will begin on October 5 at 07:00 UTC as a two-week trial to reduce high-volume, low-value notifications and make higher-value changes easier to identify. Editors who rely on these notifications should be aware of the change and can share feedback or concerns on the project or talk page.
Please reach out if you have any questions, thank you! -- Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) sent via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:42, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Google OCR not working

Now I get the error: Resource has been exhausted (e.g. check quota)

Does Google restrict access from Wikimedia? Ankry (talk) 19:02, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Are you still getting this error message? It seems to be working for me, and I haven't noticed any problems recently, but it has occasionally stopped working in the past. --Yodin^T 11:23, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

Problem with LST section headers

The behavior for LST headers (##s1) has changed. Now, there is no line break, causing issues like this page, where all of the sections blend together. This is obviously unintended and undesirable behavior because of some coding change; could this change be reversed? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:16, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Could this be because of Parsoid? --Yodin^T 11:15, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

Have just checked this by clicking "Switch to legacy parser" for the page, which does resolve it. The Parsoid team are quite responsive to reports here and it doesn't seem to be listed at the Known Issues or Known differences pages, so I think they'd appreciate the feedback that they've broken something! --Yodin^T 11:30, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

Only one interface administrator

In my opinion, since there is only one interface administrator (Xover), I would probably recommend the community to at least elect one or two more interface administrators, instead of only having one. Thank you. Codename Noreste /// ⭐️✨ 23:21, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

We had three, but due to inactivity two of them were not confirmed at their most recent !vote. The community expectation for interface administrators has been that they are experienced administrators here already and that they have an interest in and the appropriate knowledge for administering the interface. If any of the current administrators would be interested in adding the role, please let me or @BD2412: know. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:05, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

Wikisource:Interface administrators has very little information. I am not an admin here (I am on mul:), but I am knowledgeable enough about CSS and MediaWiki (and a little bit about JavaScript), and I have these rights on other WMF wikis, so I would be willing to assist here as well. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:17, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-41

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

Weekly highlight

• The process for this year’s Community Wishlist has been published, incorporating community feedback. The wish submission process will end on November 8. This year, a working group (open for volunteering) that includes community members familiar with the technical aspect of our wikis alongside Wikimedia Foundation staff, will take care of the triage process. The triage is expected to be completed by late November. Votes for wishes will start in January.

Updates for editors

• Editors using the visual editor will now see a warning when they paste text that is likely to have initially been copied from one of five external generative AI chatbots into Wikipedia. This feature is known as LLM Paste Check. It is a type of Edit Check that is community configurable. The check looks for markers in the copied HTML and is not using content watermark detection. Edits will also be tagged so that patrollers can review them more closely. The feature helps newcomers add content that respects Wikipedia’s policies and makes it easier for experienced editors to identify problematic edits. Communities with local policies about LLM usage can adjust the wording and policy that is linked. The team apologizes that this was rolled out without a delay for translations.
• Editors can now easily access the web visual editor directly from the iOS and Android apps. When opening the editor, users will be given a choice between visual editing and source editing. If they choose visual editing, they will be sent to a mobile web window in their phone's browser. After completing their edit, a banner will give them the option to return to the app. This enables readers to make quick contributions while casually reading.
• Users of the Wikipedia Android and iOS apps will now see a one-time account creation prompt after they have used the app for two consecutive weeks. This prompt explains the benefits of having an account. It is intended to help more casual readers become logged-in users who return to the apps regularly.
• Editors on group1 wikis, including Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource, will no longer see notifications on Recent Changes and Watchlist when a link to another language version of a page is added, removed, or changed in its Wikidata item. This change will begin on October 5 at 07:00 UTC as a two-week trial to reduce high-volume, low-value notifications and make important changes easier to identify. Editors who rely on these notifications can read more on the project page and share feedback or concerns on the talk page.
• View all 36 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where mentors who removed themselves from the mentorship program could still have mentees assigned to them and receive questions, has now been fixed. Mentees will now be reassigned when a mentor leaves the program.

Updates for technical contributors

• Wikimedia Brasil has published its Development Best Practices Framework (ABPD). It is a guide for staff, contractors and volunteers building technical tools and projects. It covers the project lifecycle, security, accessibility, personal data protection and responsible AI use, and explains how movement-wide guidelines were adapted to a local context. They encourage other affiliates to reuse it and adapt it. Read more in the Diff post.
• A new, canonical base URL for Wikimedia APIs will soon be introduced. The new canonical route follows a {projectName}/api/ pattern and will act as an alternative path for current REST APIs (for example: {projectName}/w/rest.php/). Both versions will be callable for all existing APIs, but the new structure will be the preferred path for newly created API modules. This change will be non-breaking for most users. The existing pathways will remain available for all existing endpoint requests. However, some endpoints may return URLs following the new pattern in response bodies. Changes will be available on test wiki first, with the rollout expected to cover all wikis by the end of October.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki.

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

18:52, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Slash and burn

If I understand it right, this is a translation of a book originally published in Norwegian, but never published in English besides this "Wiki version". At the same time the translation was done by the author himself and released through OTRS, but added to Wikisource by a different user. I am not sure what to do with this, as the mainspace is for previously published works. Should it be moved to the translation NS, although it was not translated by a Wikisource user? -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 13:25, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

Now I have noticed that the pictures used for illustration are not from the original publication. It seems that our version is not just a simple translation, but in fact a new compiled edition of the work which has never existed outside Wikisource. The Norwegian Wikisource version contains different pictures, and as it is not scanbacked, I suspect it is another compilation different from ours (for example File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison-no.png, which is included in the no.ws version, could surely not have been included in the original book). --Jan Kameníček (talk) 13:52, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

Chapter titles in The Story of My Experiments With Truth

The chapter titles of the two volumes are formatted the same but are transcribed differently Volume 1 uses {{asc}} and Volume 2 uses {{smaller}}. Could we have someone change one of them for consistency? ToxicPea (talk) 06:38, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

Isn't the result exactly the same? If yes, why would it matter? Yann (talk) 15:40, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

{{smaller}} is bigger than {{asc}}. It's {{x-smaller}} that the size of {{asc}} is equivalent to. ToxicPea (talk) 15:44, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

It's not a huge difference, but {{asc}} does also squash the capital letters a bit (a vs. A vs. A), and copies as a lower-case letter, rather than a capital. --Yodin^T 16:26, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

OK. So what should be chosen: {{asc}} or {{smaller}}? The later is more work, as all titles have to be changed to capitals. Yann (talk) 19:05, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

All the titles are already capitals anyway so it doesn't matter. ToxicPea (talk) 19:12, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

The book looks like it's using small caps to me rather than a smaller font size. --Yodin^T 11:04, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

OK, I will fix that with {{asc}}. Yann (talk) 18:35, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Yann (talk) 20:58, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Transclusion logistics

I just created Flower Fairies of the Spring, which uses {{side by side pages}}, and I noticed the work's CSS seems absent. I then tried creating {{flexbox side by side pages}}, hoping to iron out the issues of {{side by side pages}}.

A normal

<pages index="file name.djvu" include=5 />

doesn't seem to work when the index name is a variable. {{side by side pages}} gets around this by using

{{#section:PageTitle|file name.djvu/5}}

This seems to be what cuts out the CSS file. Can anyone give me insight into how this works?? Eievie (talk) 00:06, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

I figured out that

<pages index="file name.djvu" include=5 />

works if I call it from a Lua module. However, pages transcluded that way don't mark as transcluded from the index "Transclusion check". Does anyone know how to fix that? Eievie (talk) 03:55, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

WhatLinksHere for the individual scan pages also doesn't list them as being transcluded into mainspace. This sounds like a bug worth reporting on Phabricator. --Yodin^T 09:39, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

<ref follow=""></ref> is behaving like a normal footnote in page namespace

I'm finding that footnotes within <ref follow="pxxx"></ref> now have inline links in page namespace. See for example this page:

Page:The Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius - Vol I & II.djvu/205

The footnote which is a continuation from the previous page now has a [2] superscript link, and it's listed as footnote 2 on the page. Pasicles (talk) 13:00, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

This is another Parsoid issue (the footnote works as expected if you use the "Switch to legacy parser" link in the Tools menu). TE(æ)A,ea reported this here a couple of days ago, as well as some other Parsoid-related issues a bit over a week ago, but there doesn't seem to be a reply from the Parsoid team yet. --Yodin^T 13:14, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

Footnote quirk inside Ppoem

If you use '+>' at the beginning of a line that immediately follows a line with a footnote in it, the footnote appears twice in Page space (it also does so when the page is transcluded). As an example, if you replace {{hidden text|Him with his legions.}} with '+>' on Page:The Poetical Works of Samuel Rogers (1892, revised Aldine edition).djvu/240, you should hopefully see the effect. It seems to occur regardless of where the footnote is within the line. Chrisguise (talk) 14:38, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

Should be fixed? Normally references are removed now. — Alien  3
3 3 17:32, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Does seem to be OK. Thanks. Chrisguise (talk) 22:06, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-42

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

• Starting October 13, wikis can change the default pattern for auto-generated reference names in VisualEditor (currently <ref name=":1" />). They will be able to use human-readable, content-based reference names that are more helpful to contributors using the source editor (e.g. <ref name="Miller2026-1" />). VisualEditor reference name patterns can be defined using MediaWiki system messages, JSON, templates and modules (more information). Admins can enable these changes via community configuration. This is a community wish implemented by WMDE Technical Wishes.
• Sub-referencing is a new MediaWiki feature that allows editors to reuse references with different details. It will be deployed to English Wikipedia on October 14 and to remaining Wikimedia Foundation wikis by end of October (likely October 21). The FAQ lists possible actions to take on your wiki to support the deployment. This is a long-standing community wish implemented by WMDE Technical Wishes.

Updates for editors

• Moderator Tools will be removing the list view of the Watchlist and defaulting everyone to the changelog view. Previously, there were two versions of how the Watchlist is shown to mobile web users: the list view, where editors could see watched articles in a list format, and the changelog view, where editors could see changes to watched articles in a log format, controlled by a user's Advanced Mobile Control settings. This has created issues for code-base maintenance: two different displays means two sets of code to manage. By defaulting to the changelog view, we are simplifying the codebase and avoiding the likelihood of missing bugs.
• The Wikipedia Android app is testing a way to listen to article introductions in the “For you” feed. A text-to-speech model reads the existing article text aloud without rewriting it or adding any content. The 30-day experiment will begin in the Wikipedia Beta app during the third week of September, then move to the regular Wikipedia Android app in October for a limited group of eligible users. A small portion of app users (those with English feeds and at least one topic interest) will have access to the feature. This experiment is part of broader efforts to give app readers options in how they consume content in order to deepen engagement and user retention. Learn more and share feedback.
• CodeMirror syntax highlighting was enabled by default for all logged out and newly registered users on the English Wikipedia on September 14. With no signs of adverse effects, the same change is being proposed to be made globally across all wikis in a few weeks. If you have concerns or feedback, or if your wiki would like to opt out, please see the help page.
• Wikidata mobile statement editing of all datatypes will be officially launched on October 13, when it will be removed from Wikidata beta features and become available to all editors. Users can report bugs and share feedback.
• Last week, language link changes were removed from Recent Changes and Watchlist feeds on Wikivoyage, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikiquote and Wiktionary. As no adverse effects have been observed, the Wikidata For Wikimedia Projects plans to roll out this change globally to all Wikipedias. This is scheduled for October 13 at 07:00 UTC, after which editors will no longer see when a link to another language version of a page is added, removed, or changed in its Wikidata item. Editors who rely on these notifications can read more on the project page and share feedback or ask to opt out their wiki on the talk page.
• View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where accidentally touching the graph while scrolling on the Pageviews tool on mobile could unintentionally zoom in has now been fixed. Click-and-drag zoom is now disabled on touch devices.

Updates for technical contributors

• There are three major changes coming to dumps: the legacy content dumps deprecated in January 2026 will now be sunset, the replacement MediaWiki Content File Exports will be delayed to implement a “safety buffer”, and they are now also available as 7zip-compressed files. Users will need to switch the URL they download their dump from. For more information, timeline and migration instructions, see Legacy content dumps sunset.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The Wikimedia Foundation discovered unauthorized activity by OpenAI agents on Wikimedia projects, including edits to wikis, attempts to exploit a public note-taking tool, and heavy automated traffic. Read the blog post on Diff for more details about the activity and the Foundation’s response.

Meetings and events

• Save the date for the next Wikimedia Hackathon! We’ll be meeting in lovely Tirana, Albania for the 2027 Wikimedia Hackathon from April 9–11, 2027. Scholarship and staff sponsorship applications are currently being accepted through Pretix and will close on October 30, 2026. General registration will open in January 2027.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 07:39, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

Possible spammer

User:~2026-55430-53 is creating non-transcluded, unsourced pages (Sokoli Tomari Iccha, Bengali Religious Lyrics, Śākta (1923)) and also removing the {{no source}} template when it's rightly added. (). I think this may be a spammer. Eievie (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

They don't look like a spammer to me. More like a new user who doesn't understand the way things should be done here. -- Beardo (talk) 02:53, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Monthly Challenge (no expiry)

Hi, I notice that some works have been in this section for ages without change. I wonder what is the point to keep them if nobody seems to be interested. Since January 2026: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (volume 1), History of Greece (Volume 2), National Geographic (Volume 2). Opinions? Yann (talk) 15:05, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

@Yann Technically not nobody, as volume 1's for two of those series were finished. But if there remains no interest at present, then happy to remove them come November. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 20:07, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

OK, I replaced these 3 with other works in the waiting list. Hopefully these will bring more activity. Yann (talk) 19:33, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

October 2026 Wikimedia Café: legal issues on Commons, and WMF Board selection process

Hello! There will be two Wikimedia Café discussion opportunities in October. In a change from the usual Café practice, this month's sessions will have different topics. Anyone who meets the Café attendance criteria is welcome to attend either or both sessions.

Session A will happen on Saturday, 24 October 2026 at 15:00 UTC (timestamp converter), at a time friendly to the Americas, Africa, and Europe. This session will feature Wikimedia Foundation lawyer Phil Bradley-Schmieg. We will discuss legal issues on Wikimedia Commons, including complexities of international law. (I am hoping that in a future month, a similar Café session will be offered at a time friendly to Asia and the Pacific.)

Session B will happen on Sunday, 25 October 2026 at 03:00 UTC (timestamp converter), at a time friendly to Asia and the Pacific, we will discuss proposed changes to how Wikimedia Foundation Board candidates are selected. The latest proposals are much different from the earlier July 2026 proposals. The due date for feedback on current proposals is 27 October, and Wikimedians are welcome to participate on the proposal talk page regardless of Café attendance.

Please see the Café page for more information, including how to register!

To subscribe or unsubscribe for Café notices on your talk page please go here.

༄ᨒ𖠰 Pine (✉) 06:23, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Musical scores are temporarily disabled

Is there some reason that musical scores have been disabled sitewide? See, e.g., "Daisy Bell", "The Entertainer", "Transit of Venus" --EncycloPetey (talk) 13:34, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

See "The Score extension has been temporarily disabled" in the Announcements section above. -- Beardo (talk) 14:07, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Abduction, and Criminal Intimidation of Witnesses Ordinance, 1947

A discussion was started regarding the name of this page on User talk:Jan.Kamenicek. We have agreed to move this discussion to the Scriptorium. The contents of the discussion up to now are as follows.

I have no idea why you decided to move the ordinance’s title to the long title, especially it contains a citable, official short title. The move is also contrary to the previous practice for other Commonwealth legislation. Can you please explain?廣九直通車 (talk) 05:16, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

@廣九直通車: Hello. I moved it because the actual name of the document used by its authors is An Ordinance to provide enhanced punishments for the offences of abduction and criminal intimidation in certain circumstances, see its first page. In Wikisource we always use the original titles. Will you move it back, please? If you know of any other documents which were not named here by their original titles, and if you point them out, I can rename them too. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:02, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

And please also see section 1 of the Ordinance as well! If you don’t know, in most common law jurisdictions, primary legislation has two titles: the long title (e.g. An Ordinance to provide enhanced punishments for the offences of abduction and criminal intimidation in certain circumstances) and short title (e.g. Abduction, and Criminal Intimidation of Witnesses Ordinance, 1947). Both are official titles, though the short title is the title most commonly used. If you look at other legislation, you will also find they are named after their short title.廣九直通車 (talk) 23:37, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

There is two another problems if you use the long title as the title on Wikisource: (1) long titles tend to be very long, and some recent legislation can have over 100 words in the long title (let alone some with extraordinarily long ones like the Criminal Justice Act 1988): remember wikis only allow 255 bytes at page titles; and (2) long titles can be identical, especially for amending legislation; while for short titles, they are meant to be unique identifiers within the jurisdiction.廣九直通車 (talk) 05:34, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

@廣九直通車: I think the misunderstanding is that you are confusing the common name of a work with the title of a specific edition. While a work can be known by various names, an edition has one specific title (sometimes accompanied by a subtitle), which is usually printed on the first page. On Wikisource, we have version pages, which are connected to the work and contain links to its editions, and mainspace pages, which contain the texts of specific editions. The page we are discussing contains the text of a specific edition and should therefore be titled according to the title under which that edition was originally published. The title Abduction, and Criminal Intimidation of Witnesses Ordinance, 1947 does not appear anywhere in this edition. The actual title can be found on its first page. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 09:18, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

The title is Abduction, and Criminal Intimidation of Witnesses Ordinance, 1947 is literally in the first paragraph. It states “This Ordinance may be cited as the Abduction, and Criminal Intimidation of Witnesses, Ordinance, 1947, and shall come into force on the 10th day of June, 1947.” ToxicPea (talk) 07:52, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, it is not really the title of the edition, which is only one. It is a shortened version of the title which "may" be used for citation, it is not the full title. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 10:33, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

From a legal standpoint that’s a distinction without a difference. The short title is not just a nickname, it has legal significance. For all intents and purposes the short title and the long title are both equally valid as titles. ToxicPea (talk) 16:46, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Quite possibly. That is why it is fine to use it in citations. But it is still a short version of the title, not the full title. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:48, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Legally that’s not a difference. If an act says “This Act may be cited as X” that is legally the same as saying, “X is the title of this Act”. The short title is not just a short version of the long title. It is legally another separate full title that is equally as valid as the long title.

This is not some ordinary book with multiple editions. This is an act with the force of law. Those of us who work on law related works use slightly different conventions on law related works than on regular works because law is different to other works and should be treated differently. No one has had a problem with this until now. ToxicPea (talk) 17:02, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Is it okay if I move this discussion to WS:S? ToxicPea (talk) 17:17, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Of course, a good idea. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 17:30, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

I would also like to ping @Penguin1737: and @DraftSaturn15:. They also work on legislation and may want to comment on this. ToxicPea (talk) 17:35, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Personally having categories full of An Ordinance to provide ... and An Act to ... so all legislation are grouped under A for act makes them less valuable. An Act To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2012 all grouped under A for Act is instead of looking for it under National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, nevermind An Act To provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of S. Con. Res 14. for the Inflation Reduction Act and An Act To provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14. for the One Beautiful Bill is even more obscure and unhelpful. MarkLSteadman (talk) 18:06, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Are page after page of An Act to provide for, An Act to authorize in categories and portals in any situation better than being able to click on N to skip ahead to to National Defense...? MarkLSteadman (talk) 18:11, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

I am of the opinion that the short title should be used as the mainspace page title where it is provided for by the legislation. The short title is the most commonly used form to cite Acts, Ordinances, etc, as 廣九直通車 pointed out in the original talk page. Almost all legislation that has been drafted in the 20th century to present will have short titles. I am going to use a few Australian examples as that is what I am most familiar with but a lot of common law and Commonwealth [of Nations] countries use very similar conventions.

Of course, the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (Cth) does not apply to us but it can be a guide that we follow when determining procedure such as how to title works. Acts may be cited by the short title, secular year and number, and its Federal Register of Legislation ID (Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (Cth), s 40(1A)(a)). It does not provide for the citing using long titles of Acts. The provision uses the word "may" but that would be to allow for some flexibility but I have not seen any examples of the long title being used in modern legislation. No modern drafter would ever use the long title of an act when drafting legislation. This was not the case in the past before short titles were invented when acts would have been cited in a very long-winded way as "an Act of Council made and passed the 8th day of February in the Year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five intituled 'An Act to regulate of licenses for the Sale of Spirits Ale Beer and other Liquors in New South Wales and Van Diemen's respectively'" (Fines and Penalties Recovery Act 1825 (NSW)) or by the regnal citation.

The Australian Guide to Legal Citation is used by academia (as far as I see, no Australian courts use this style) as the primary referencing style for law. Rule 3.1.1 states that the short title should be used and that the long title should only be used if there is not short title (Australian Guide to Legal Citation 4th ed, p 67). A similar provision appears in Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities 5th ed at page 25. In Hong Kong, the short title gives the ordinance its name (Drafting Legislation in Hong Kong, p 11, item 2.2.2). The Federal Court of Australia practice note Lists of Authorities and Citations Practice Note (GPN-AUTH), states in the Annexure that the long title should only be used if there is not sort title; for reference a practice note sets out procedure for lawyers and parties to follow. The only times I have seen judges use long titles are to give further context relating to the Act itself: Hoxton Park Residents Action Group Inc v Liverpool City Council [2016] NSWCA 157 at [27]; Doyle’s Farm Produce Pty Ltd atf Claredale Family Trust v Murray-Darling Basin Authority [2026] NSWSC 1036 at [201]; Australian Securities and Investments Commission v Auto & General Insurance Company Limited [2025] FCAFC 76 at [40]; Davey on behalf of the Gudanji, Yanyuwa and Yanyuwa-Marra Peoples v Northern Territory of Australia (No 5) (McArthur River Project Compensation Claim) [2026] FCA 153 at [163].

Practically, if a person is going to search for legislation, the short title will come to mind. For example if someone wants to search for their workplace rights, that person will search for "Fair Work" or "Fair Work Act", not "An Act relating to workplace relations, and for related purposes". While long titles in other jurisdictions like the United Kingdom might be very long, such as the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (UK), Australian legislation has been using shorter and more generic long titles (Office of Parliamentary Council Drafting Direction 1.1 at [1]). The short title also includes the year the legislation was enacted which is useful to know at an instant.

For example, the following acts all have the same long title of "An Act to amend the Fair Work Act 2009, and for related/other purposes", the short titles are more descriptive, practical, and sortable (as MarkLSteadman said):

• Fair Work Amendment (State Referrals and Other Measures) Act 2009
• Fair Work Amendment (Textile, Clothing and Footwear Industry) Act 2012
• Fair Work Amendment Act 2015
• Fair Work Amendment (Respect for Emergency Services Volunteers) Act 2016
• Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Act 2017
• Fair Work Amendment (Corrupting Benefits) Act 2017
• Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia’s Jobs and Economic Recovery) Act 2021
• Fair Work Amendment (Baby Priya’s) Act 2025
• Fair Work Amendment (Fairer Fuel) Act 2026

I agree that having categories and portals with entries that have "An Act to … and for related purposes" looks cluttered and inelegant.

Wikisource is a library. One of the goals for libraries is quick and intuitive access to resources for everyone. As I have stated earlier, almost no-body uses the long title to search for or to refer to a specific piece of legislation (I do not have data for actual usage but based on the practice of legislative drafters, academia, and the judiciary), so I believe it would be counter-productive for Wikisource as a library to have the long title be the main title. —DraftSaturn15 (talk) 05:14, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

I believe we should prefer full titles to shortened titles whenever possible. This specific edition is titled in some way at the top of the page, and only then inside the text a shortened version of the title is suggested for the purpose of citations, but that is imo no reason why it should be used for the page name. Our common practice is full titles. —unsigned comment by Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 21:53, 18 October 2026.

I don't believe our common practice is full titles: e.g. A General History of the Pyrates, whose full title as used on A General History of the Pyrates/Volume 1 is at the very least "A General History of the Pyrates, from Their first Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence, to the present Time." (Also cf. A General History of the Pyrates/Volume 2, which just calls itself "A History of the Pyrates, ..." on the title page. In the case of these laws, I see no reason to use the long title.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:26, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

It's Hamlet (Shakespeare) not The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, Twelfth Night (Shakespeare) not Twelfe Night, Or what you will it's King James Version not THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Teſtament, AND THE NEW: Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Majesties ſpeciall Comandement, it's Utopia (More) not A truly golden little book, not less beneficial than enjoyable, about how things should be in a state and about the new island Utopia etc. We certainly aren't consistent currently... MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:05, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

Another example An Essay on the Principle of Population vs. An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:13, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

In almost all of the examples mentioned above, I am afraid version pages for works (where one title must be chosen to encompass multiple editions of different titles) are confused with titles of specific editions. However, it is the titles of editions that we are discussing here. Your point could therefore probably be better illustrated by Hamlet (1917) Yale, which is not titled The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark for some reason, although I believe it should be.

In the last example, “An Essay on the Principle ... M. Condorcet, and Other Writers”, you also included the subtitle, which nobody is suggesting. The full title would simply be An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, and that is what I consider appropriate.

A General History of the Pyrates is an interesting example, since the continuation “From Their first Rise...” is separated from the main title only by a comma, but is printed in a significantly smaller font. It is therefore somewhere on the borderline between being part of the title and being a subtitle, so leaving it out makes sense.

There will always be special cases that can be dealt with individually when there is a good reason to do so—for example, when a title extends over several screen widths. In general, though, I think we should prefer the full original titles. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:52, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

Even if you look at editions: Shakespeare - First Folio facsimile (1910)/The Tragedy of Hamlet, Shakespeare - First Folio facsimile (1910)/Twelfe Night, Bible (King James Version, 1611), even ignoring Utopia which is unsourced. My point still stands that we haven't been consistent about using full titles. MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:45, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

Not only are not consistent about using full titles, I can find no such policy that would imply that full titles are preferred. I also have no idea what benefit there would be to such a policy. ToxicPea (talk) 23:37, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

This moving pages from a short version of a title to the full version has happened before. A user changed the title of Executive Order 13971 to Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by Applications and Other Software Developed or Controlled by Chinese Companies. This was raised and debated in the Scriptorium and the consensus appears to be that Executive Order ##### should be the page title and not the full name. That is reflected in WikiProject United States Executive Orders where the titling is codified as Executive Order #####. —DraftSaturn15 (talk) 00:15, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Speaking of which, would appreciate if someone could go through all of Joe Biden's orders on Author:Joseph Robinette Biden/Executive orders and move those to Executive Order ##### ToxicPea (talk) 00:24, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Oppose using long titles, where Short title exists

Having set up extensive templates to handle short titles for English Acts (which can run to 5 or more lines if you quote the full title), using the short title i simply more convenient. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:12, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Not sure why your opposition needs a specific heading Well, some titles can be too long to handle, but this one is within common WS limits (far from "5 or more lines"), there are many much longer titles in Wikisource. That is why I wrote "whenever possible". When the original edition prefers the full title at the top and only somewhere in the text suggests a shortened version for a specific purpose (citation), we should be faithful to the original and prefer the full title. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:23, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

As you seem to determined to push for long titles, I'll start removing my templated approach, so you are not obstructed. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:26, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

??? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:29, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Module behind : {{Short-title}} has had link generation removed until there is a clear strategy for linking, and all items transrcribed or linked under their short titles are placed at what you consider to be their "appropriate" titles. It also conveniently solves the template expansion limits that were being hit on a number of items I'd worked on extensively. Reach your decision and I can start manually updating every single table entry in the Short Titles Act 1896, In the tables at the start of Ruffhead, and so on. We want Wikisource to use the "correct" titles of course. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:35, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Also the module as currently written only works for English/United Kingdom acts, and doesn't take into account other jurisdictions which follow British practice, or develolved assemblies. I am slowly deprecating it to allow for an overhaul. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 06:56, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-43

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

Updates for editors

• To measure the impact of incorporating some community-requested features on logged-out reader retention, a test for Image Carousel will be pushed to logged-out readers. With the Image Carousel feature, readers browse community-uploaded images, selected by editors as relevant to specific articles. The test starts on November 20.
• An experimental notice will be pushed to 0.5% of logged-out mobile readers who come to English Wikipedia from Google, asking them to add Wikipedia as a Google Preferred Source. The test is to see if this notice increases reader retention and encourages people who use Google Search to visit Wikipedia more often. It will run from October 15–29 and will be assessed for its impact on retention and referrals.
• View all 26 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where Quarry returned an “Access denied” error when users tried to run SQL queries, preventing queries from running normally, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• Due to a long-standing bug, applications that use the OAuth 2 client credentials flow to act on their owners’ behalf are treated as if they are logged out. This will be fixed for new applications registered on or after Monday, October 19. Some affected applications need to re-register.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• A proposal to hold the Wikimedia Hackathon every three years, with regional hackathons in between, has been shared. It explores making the event more accessible to technical communities in different regions. Share your feedback on the proposal’s talk page before November 6.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 14:38, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Spammer

@~2026-56028-00 is spam editing. Can we get a block? Eievie (talk) 04:15, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Rollbacked, but only 6 edits and quickly stopped activity so doesn't warrant a block as of now. — Alien  3
3 3 08:58, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Validation request

I am asking for a validation of https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Glaucus,_or,_The_wonders_of_the_shore_(IA_glaucusorwonders00kings).pdf. Pages 1-178 out of roughly 240 pages are ready for validation.

Thank you! QuarrySparrow (talk) 09:19, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

OCR tool not working

Don't know if anyone else is having this issue, but the OCR tool hasn't been working for me all day. All three 'engines' return 'No text was returned by the OCR tool'. Chrisguise (talk) 14:52, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

It would not surprise me as there is major security work going on: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/10/21/impact-of-php-vulnerabilities-on-wikimedia-tools-and-services/ 15:32, 21 October 2026 (UTC) MarkLSteadman (talk) 15:32, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

See where it lists Cloud VPS as offline. MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:09, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Chrisguise (talk) 04:13, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

Just wanted to mention that services (but not OCR, it uses php) have started to be restored if you look at the page. Thanks to anyone reading this who has been working to keep Wikisource safe and restoring functionality. MarkLSteadman (talk) 05:04, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Note that there is a ticket here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T442082 to make OCR a production service instead of depending on cloud VPS. MarkLSteadman (talk) 19:51, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T442268

I have created the task T442268. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:45, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the work you (Mark and others) have already done. Can we do anything more at this moment, to accelerate the repair process? --Dick Bos (talk) 16:25, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

It's running again! Thanks. --Dick Bos (talk) 19:37, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

It looks like book export and ia upload are up as well. MarkLSteadman (talk) 20:20, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

FYI: How a 139-year-old family document led to my first Wikisource edit

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/10/22/how-a-139-year-old-family-document-led-to-my-first-wikisource-edit/ ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:12, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

Server switch - Your wiki will be read-only for a short time soon

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation will switch the traffic between its data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster.

All traffic will switch on 28 October. The switch will start at 15:00 UTC.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. This banner will remain visible until the end of the operation. You can contribute to the translation or proofreading of this banner text.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday 28 October 2026.
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.
• GitLab will be unavailable for about 90 minutes.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule.

Please share this information with your community.

Trizek_(WMF) 14:00, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-44

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 18 community-submitted tasks 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.

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• Scholarship and sponsorship applications for the 2027 Wikimedia Hackathon will close on Friday, October 30th. Submit your application through Pretix before the deadline!

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MediaWiki message delivery 18:56, 26 October 2026 (UTC)