Latest *tech news <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News>* from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2026/39> are available.
*Weekly highlight* - All wikis will be read-only <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/Server_switch> for a few minutes on Wednesday, 23 September 2026 at 14:00 UTC <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1790172000>. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests, which happen twice a year <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Deployments/Yearly_calendar>. 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. [1] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T433363> *Updates for editors* - The Growth team tested a new post-edit notice designed to encourage Temporary Account holders to register for a permanent account <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Contributors/Account_Creation_Experiments#4._Encourage_Temporary_Accounts_to_Register>. 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. [2] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T433551> - For Wikipedia editors using the "Suggestion mode" Beta Feature <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures>, there is a new opt-in user preference <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-input-wpvisualeditor-editcheck-experimental> for showing "experimental" edit checks and suggestions. These types are listed at Special:EditChecks <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:EditChecks#experimental-checks>, and are intended for early developer-testing and for gathering feedback from experienced users. Administrators can change the configuration details <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Edit_check/Configuration> for each suggestion as usual. Administrators can also use this feature <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Suggestion_mode#Experimental_Suggestions> 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 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:VisualEditor/Suggestion_Mode>. - The CEE Technical Village Pump <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/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 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Language_Onboarding_and_Development/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 <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/09/18/introducing-starter-kit-for-new-and-small-language-wikipedias/> . - The Reader Growth team is launching a retest of the image carousel experiment <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Readers/Reader_Growth/Image_Browsing>. 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 <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Readers/Reader_Experience/Reading_lists> 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 <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Recently_resolved_community_tasks>. 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. [3] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T436659> *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. [4] <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T435828> - Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.47/wmf.21> *Tech news <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News> prepared by Tech News writers <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Writers> and posted by bot <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/User:MediaWiki_message_delivery> • Contribute <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News#contribute> • Translate <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2026/39> • Get help <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech> • Give feedback <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tech/News> • Subscribe or unsubscribe <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassadors>.*
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