Latest comment: 30 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello everyone, and welcome to the 27th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 2025! Boy, does it feel good to kick off the year with an issue. Yep, it's been a year since we cleared out the 2022-2024 backlog with issues 23 and 24! Good times. Though in this case "a year" just means... 6 months? 😯 The salience of whatever joke I was planning to make here has vanished speedily. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:00, 31 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
WikiTextExpander by Polygnotus, is this edition's featured script. At the click of a configurable hotkey, this script will find and replace or link a configurable list of phrases within the selected text in all source editors (even in the comment/reply field!). Besides allowing the quick insertion of templated messages, this script greatly mitigates the WP:WTF? problem by providing both the legibility of familiar words and the convenience of shortcuts. And to those asking, the capitalization of "Wikitext" as "WikiText" was a necessary sacrifice for far-more-memorable acronymy.
CanonNi: AlertAssistant has been fixed and rewritten using OOUI instead of Twinkle's Morebits. Such modern, very tool. (Do note that the maintainer has since become inactive.)
NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh/AjaxLoader has been updated to use modern JS APIs that replace the browser's URL bar with the link you clicked on to load in place. The "back" (and "forward") buttons also work now. Cool, innit?
andrybak: Unsigned helper no longer shows an error when the message to sign was added in the earliest 50 revisions of a page's history. This is especially relevant to pages with short histories.
BilledMammal/Move+ needs updating to order list of pages handle lists of pages to move correctly regardless of the discussion's page, so that we may avoid repeating fiasco history.
In breaking m:Tech/News, Gadgets can now include .vue files. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons are now also available. The documentation has examples.
Appo/Globstory integrates OpenHistoryMap, updating the map whenever hovering/clicking on a ___location or year, the latter of which changes the map to be (hopefully) accurate to the year selected. It's pretty interesting.
linkinfo Somewhat similar to WP:NavPops, Awesome Aasim/linkinfo(pictured) provides a collection of links to replace the right-click context menu, presented beautifully.
PreviousDiscussions provides a link to search for your username on subpages of another user's userpage and talkpage conveniently.
Twineeea/noRedLinks brings you to the "read" instead of the "create" tab when you visit a red link. Contemplate life's mysteries as you stare into the blank! Deeply.
No, this is not going to be the enduring tradition of S++ for the future. This was meant to be a joke for the special occasion on the first day of the fourth month but was delayed by four months because I'm lazy.
Wikimania begins this week (August 6-9). Check out the Wikidata sessions and meetups in the event schedule and mark them in your calander.
New Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series: Join the second session in our Intro to Wikidata/EMCO series. It will be focused on gadgets and user scripts that enhance Wikidata editing. We'll demo useful tools and invite you to share your favorites too! 🗓️ Tuesday, August 5 🕘 9am PT / 12pm ET / 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST ℹ️ More info & Zoom link: Project page
Wikimedia Commons Depicts statements over time - Looking at the user of Wikidata Items to show that Wikimedia commons images depict, since the structured data on commons feature was originally turned on. Roads currently come out on top! By Adshore
Videos: Ongoing Wikidata sessions at the LD4 2025 events. (playlist)
Tool of the week
Who Painted this - is a tool developed by Francesco Negri. The tool is a game that let's you guess who created a painting, using data from Wikidata.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
If you are using Wikidata's APIs please be aware that the existing user agent policy will be enforced more strictly going forward. Please make sure your application sets a proper user agent. More details are in this announcement.
Latest comment: 26 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Editors can now enable the User Info card. This feature adds an icon next to usernames on history pages and similar user-contribution log pages. When you tap or click on the icon, it displays data related to that user account such as the number of edits, reverted edits, blocks, and more. It's part of a broader project to make it easier for moderators to evaluate account trustworthiness. The feature can be enabled in your global preferences, and later this week it will be available in local preferences. [1]
Everybody is invited to share comments on Collaborative Contributions, a project recently launched by the Connection team. The project aims to create a new way to display the impact of collaborative editing activities (such as edit-a-thons, backlog drives, and WikiProjects) on the wikis. Post your comments on the project talk page. [2]
Administrators can now define the default block duration for temporary accounts. To do that, they need to create a page named MediaWiki:Ipb-default-expiry-temporary-account and use a value defined in MediaWiki:Ipboptions. This allows administrators to easily block temporary accounts for 90 days, which is functionally equivalent to an indefinite block. The advantage of this solution is that it does not clutter Special:BlockList. More documentation is available. [3]
Gadgets can now include .vue files. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons can be loaded through the gadget definition. The documentation has examples. For user scripts that use Vue.js, an API module now exists to load Codex icons. [4][5]
Module developers can now use a Lua interface to simplify the preparation of Lua modules for translation on Meta-Wiki. This improvement makes it easier for translators to find and edit module strings without dealing with raw Lua code. It helps prevent mistakes that could break the module during translation. Module developers and translators are invited to watch the demo video, read more about translatable modules to understand how it works, refer to Meta-Wiki's Module:User Wikimedia project for example usage, and share their feedback on how well it addresses the challenges in their workflow. The interface still has some performance issues, so it should not be used in widely used modules yet. [6]
Developers of external tools that connect to Wikimedia pages must set a user-agent that complies with the user-agent policy. This policy will start to be more strongly enforced in August because of external crawlers that are overusing Wikimedia's resources. Tools that are hosted on Wikimedia's Toolforge or Cloud VPS will not be affected by this for now, but should still set a user-agent. More technical details are available, and related questions are welcome in that task.
Parsoid Read Views is going to be rolling out to some smaller Wikipedias over the next few weeks, following the successful transition of Wikivoyages and Wiktionaries to Parsoid Read Views. For more information, see the Parsoid/Parser Unification project page. [7]
Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
Following a request for comment, there is a new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses of temporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors can request access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.
South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
Wikimania 2025 is happening in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years of Wikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You can register here now.
Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The WikiEditor toolbar now includes its keyboard shortcuts in the tooltips for its buttons. This will help to improve the discoverability of this feature. [8]
The search bar on the Minerva skin (mobile) has been updated to use the same type-ahead search component that is used on the Vector 2022 skin. There are no changes in search functionality but there are minor visual changes. Specifically, the close-search button has been changed from an "X" to a back arrow. This helps to distinguish it from the other "X" button that is used to clear any text. [9]
Editors on some wikis will see a new toggle for "Group results by page" on watchlist, related changes, and recent changes pages. This is an A/B experiment that is planned to start on August 11, and will run for 3–6 weeks on the Bengali, Chinese, Czech, French, Greek, Portuguese, and Urdu Wikipedias. The experiment will examine how making this feature more discoverable might affect editors' ability to find the edits they are looking for. [10]
The multiwiki datasets of Unicode data have been moved to Category:Unicode Module Datasets on Wikimedia Commons, to follow the idea of "One common data source, multiple local wikis". Most wikis have been updated to use the Commons version. You can ask questions at the talkpage. [11]
Lua code can add warnings when something is wrong, by using the mw.addWarning() function. It is now possible to add more than one warning, instead of new warnings replacing old ones. If you maintain a Lua module that used warnings, you should check it still works as expected. [12]
Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2025-08-11. Missed the previous one? See issue #691.
Discussions
New requests for permissions/Bot: Dolabbot - Mass import of module subpages from other wikis (mainly English wiktionary) to Korean wiktionary and addition of corresponding Wikidata sitelinks.
Events
Past: Wikimania 2025 took place last week! Day-by-day playlists are available on the Wikimedia Foundation YouTube channel.
Tool of the week
Midleading created a a UserScript called RemoveRedundantLabels.js. This user script adds a new tool Item, that can be used to remove all labels that are the same as mul label, in one click.
We continued efforts to get our new mobile statement UI for Items with the Kartographer extension, and merged a first version that mostly works (Phab:T394906)
We began work on including accessibility testing for the new mobile statement editing UI for Items (Phab:T400678)
The entity types for the new search dropdown has been updated to have Items at the top (Phab:T398817)
Latest comment: 13 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the week leading up to 2025-08-18. Missed the previous one? See issue #692.
Events
Upcoming events: New Linked Data for Libraries LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group project series! Mark your calendars for our third session of our event series, an Introduction to Wikidata/EMCO, which is meant to introduce EMCO participants and anyone interested to Wikidata and to develop frameworks and skills for entity management in the Wikidata environment. We will review searching in Wikidata and have a practical, hands-on exercise where everyone can create a new person item and add some statements. Join us Tuesday, August 19th at 9am PT/ 12pm ET/ 16:00 UTC / 6pm CEST Time zone converter. Please see our project page for more information and Zoom links.
Magnus Manske’s developed a Como Wikidata Game using Autodesc, this game suggests short descriptions for Wikidata items that don't have any. Review each suggestion, improve it if needed, and submit a concise, accurate description. Additioanlly the andriod application for the game is available for download at Google Play Store
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Are you a developer using Wikidata's data in your application with the action API or Query Service? The Wikidata development would love to talk to you to help improve how you can get to Wikidata's data. More details here (Great Question). User interview is 60-mins and you’ll receive compensation as a thank-you for your time.
New General datatypes property proposals to review:
Código INE (Bolivia) (Official hierarchical identifier of the National Institute of Statistics of Bolivia for administrative entities such as departments, provinces and municipalities.)
quality for (quality that is described by this sense of adjective/grammatical modifier)
type of quality (qualifier of "item for this modifier" that specifies the type of quality)
Showcase Lexemes: spegnere (L1250690) - Italian verb (ˈspeɲ.ɲe.re) meaning "to extinguish (a fire)", "to turn off (a device)", or "to die (euphemistic)"
Development
Mobile editing of statements: We are continuing the work - so far on the read-only mobile version. We will start looking into editing soon. You can follow along with the development on beta Wikidata.
GraphQL: We are continuing some experiments with GraphQL to see if it is useful for specific types of access to Wikidata's data.
Dumps: We are starting to experiment with subset dumps to see if we can get meaningful smaller dumps for reusers.
Wikidata integration in the other Wikimedia projects:
We are working on scalability issues around the number of changes from Wikidata that get sent to Wikipedia and co. As part of this we are continuing to look into how to decrease the number of changes in recent changes and watchlist on Wikipedia and co that don't actually affect an article there.
We are investigating how the upcoming larger rollout of Parsoid affects the tracking of Wikidata usage in articles.
We are looking into improving the Databox Lua module that is used especially in smaller Wikipedias to get Wikidata-powered infoboxes.
Federation: We are looking at the previous prototype for Federated Properties that allowed to use Wikidata's Properties on another Wikibase instance. We are checking what if anything of it can be revived for our current work to allow other Wikibase instances to use Wikidata's Items and Properties seamlessly.
Data governance: We are concluding research around the current undestanding of people about which data should go where in the Wikibase Ecosystem.
Constraint reports: We limited Special:ConstraintReport to logged-in users to avoid AI scrapers hitting the systems too hard ([[phab:T401789]))
Latest comment: 12 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Later this week, people who are logged-in and have the "Discussion tools" Beta Feature enabled will gain the ability to "Thank" individual comments directly from talk pages, rather than needing to navigate to page history. Learn more about this feature. [13]
An A/B test comparing two versions of the desktop donate link launched on testwiki on 12 August and on English Wikipedia 14 August for 0.1% of logged out users on the desktop site. The experiment will run for three weeks, ending on 12 September. [14]
An A/A test to measure the baseline for reader retention was launched 12 August using Experimentation Lab. This measures the percentage of users who revisit a wiki after their initial visit over a 14-day period. No visual changes are expected. The experiment will run through 31 August. [15]
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
Featured script
Updated scripts
Newly maintained scripts
Improve a script
Requested scripts
Miscellaneous
New scripts
View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
Technical news
Arbitration
Miscellaneous
