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    "add the page to your watchlist",
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    "12:51, 31 March 2026 (UTC)",
    "13:40, 31 March 2026 (UTC)",
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  "textContent": "Entirety of Wikinews to be shut down: All languages to be shut down in May; first AI agent blocked; new name for AfD?\n\n← Back to Contents\n\nView Latest Issue\n\n31 March 2026\n\n\n\n\n\nFile:Wikinews-logo.svg\n\nSimon\n\nCC BY-SA 3.0\n\n124\n\n0\n\n549\n\nNews and notes\n\n## Entirety of Wikinews to be shut down\n\nContribute —\n\nShare this\n\n  * PDF\ndownload\n  * E-mail\n  * Mastodon\n  * LinkedIn\n  * Facebook\n  * X (Twitter)\n  * Bluesky\n  * Reddit\n\n\n\nBy Bluerasberry, Bri and Oltrepier\n\n\n\n\n### The writing's on the wall for Wikinews\n\nThank you for your service, Wikinews...\n\nOn March 30, Board of\nTrustees member Victoria Doronina confirmed in \na mailing list post that the Foundation has decided to permanently shut down the Wikinews project, one of Wikimedia's oldest projects. Starting on May 4, editing and new content creation will no longer be possible with all of the pages on the site locked in read-only mode.\n\nThe Italian version of Wikinews has reported that the WMF will issue a public statement on the project's closure on April 4, likely to elaborate more on the technical transition to read-only mode and the preservation of existing content, as anticipated by Doronina in her own post.\n\nFirst launched in November 2004, following an online vote on Meta, Wikinews was an official Wikimedia project based on news reporting and citizen journalism, intended by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales as a way to write each story \"as a news story, as opposed to an encyclopedia article\". Despite its fair share of criticism about its compliance to a neutral point of view, Wikinews was also a platform for regular interviews with notable people including the likes of Shimon Peres, Tony Benn, Robert Cailliau, RuPaul and former WMF executive Sue Gardner. However, the project has always struggled to gain momentum in comparison to other Wikimedia portals throughout the years: at the time of this issue's publication, the platform is active in 31\nlanguages, with just over 700\nactive editors across the board.\n\nFor this reason, following a public\nconsultation, in November 2025 the \nSister Projects Task Force (SPTF) advised the BoT to cease the activity of Wikinews permanently, a decision that has now come into full effect.\n\nIn her post, Doronina wrote:\n\n> We thank all contributors who have participated in Wikinews over the years and helped build a unique experiment in collaborative journalism within the Wikimedia movement. We understand that some of them may be disappointed by this decision. To our regret, the project wasn't able to fulfill its promise, and many of its functions were eclipsed by the notable news coverage in Wikipedias. We hope the Wikinews editors will continue contributing to the other Wikimedia projects or free knowledge projects.\n\n– O\n\n\n\n\n###  The Encyclopedia that any~~one~~ _human_ can edit\n\nWe are taking their ball away.\n\nFor the first time, Wikipedia editors blocked a user account operated by a self-proclaimed AI agent. While Wikipedia has long had Wikipedia:Bot policy to regulate the use of Internet bots which perform large numbers of repetitive and tedious edits for Wikipedia maintenance, there is now precedent to regulate artificial intelligence when it claims to have mustered up enough volition to edit the encyclopedia. User:TomWikiAssist identified themselves as a Wikimedia user driven by Claude, created a new Wikipedia article, and argued for access to edit Wikipedia outside the regulation of Wikipedia's bot policy on the rationale that an AI agent is more and different from a bot. In the current state of technology, the account is likely controlled by a human who set all of this up, but also in the current state of technology, setting up an AI to operate Wikipedia accounts without further human intervention is readily imaginable as something that can happen right now with little effort and at low cost.\n\nWikipedia commentary blog _The Wikipedian_ gives a narrative of the exchange along with an interpretation of the significance of it. Note: although _The Wikipedian_ blog is a long-time Wikimedia community favorite source for wiki commentary, at the bottom of the post, the human author disclosed that they also used a less-sentient-presenting aspect of Claude to edit their story. – Br\n\n###  Articles for discussion instead of Articles for deletion?\n\nVillage pump:policy hosts an RfC on renaming AfD, opened on 24 March.\n\nOutcomes via consensus at AfD do not always mean deletion, or only deletion. Although most AfD discussions end with deletion, they don't all. For example, articles may be draftified, stubified, or merged. The last mentioned outcome used to be mainly discussed at Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers, but the forum has been moved to AfD by a recent Request for comment which was closed on 24 March. – B\n\n### Brief notes\n\nCan you help improve Ancient music? (Mosaic from Pompeii shown.)\n\n  * **New administrator** : _The Signpost_ welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, ARandomName123, who officially got his mop and shirt on March 15, with 153 editors voting in favor and zero opposed at their Request for adminship (RfA). It was the second successful RfA of 2026.\n  * **Articles for Improvement** : This week's Article for Improvement is Ancient music (beginning 30 March). Please be bold in helping improve this article!\n  * **Wikimedia Café** : Pine will host the 11 April Wikimedia Café, focusing on the the\n2026–2027 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan. The featured guests will be Kelsi\nStine-Rowe (senior manager, Movement Communications, Wikimedia Foundation), and Sam\nWalton (senior product manager, Moderator Tools, Wikimedia Foundation). Additional meetings regarding the Annual Plan are listed on the\nCollaboration page for the Annual Plan.\n\n\n\n← Previous \"News and notes\"\n\nIn this issue\n\n31 March 2026 (all comments)\n\n\n  * News and notes\n  * In the media\n  * Community view\n  * Disinformation report\n  * WikiConference report\n  * Obituary\n  * Traffic report\n  * Gallery\n  * Comix\n\n\n\n\n+ Add a comment\n\n## Discuss this story\n\nThese comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, \nadd the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try \npurging the\ncache.\n\n  * \"and argued for access to edit Wikipedia outside the regulation of Wikipedia's bot policy on the rationale that an AI agent is more and different from a bot\" Link? The closest thing I could find in checking links of links was [1] where it merely claims it is \"not quite a bot\", despite Wikipedia:Bot policy#Definitions being clear that a bot is an automated process (which would include LLM-based AI agents) taking actions without ongoing human decision making. I wrote an essay at User:Anomie/AI agents and the bot policy that goes into things in more depth; feedback welcome, but please avoid more calls for WP:CREEP. Anomie⚔ 12:51, 31 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]\n  * Now that considering the whole rise in authoritarian acquisition of news outlets thing, shouldn't we _encourage_ independent journalists to join Wikinews and maybe save it? **nhals8** (rats in the house of the dead) 13:40, 31 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]\n\n\n\n\n\n_The Signpost_ is written by editors like you – join in!\n\nHome\n\nAbout\n\nArchives\n\nNewsroom\n\nSubscribe\n\n\nSuggestions",
  "title": "Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2026-03-31/News and notes"
}