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  "path": "/2026/05/18/tech-news-2026-issue-21/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-18T20:21:49.000Z",
  "site": "https://diff.wikimedia.org",
  "tags": [
    "tech\nnews",
    "Translations",
    "let us\nknow on Meta",
    "Reading\nLists",
    "[1]",
    "Suggestion Mode",
    "A/B test",
    "~15 Wikipedias",
    "resolved\nlast week",
    "[2]",
    "Wikidata\nPlatform team",
    "backend\nreplacement recommendation",
    "technical\narchitecture",
    "this\npage",
    "Migration\ntalk page",
    "next\noffice hour",
    "WDP\nteam newsletter",
    "MediaWiki",
    "trial\nof hCaptcha",
    "checkusers\nand stewards",
    "See\nthe hCaptcha project page",
    "Learn\nmore",
    "Read\nthe full newsletter for details",
    "Tech\nnews",
    "Tech\nNews writers",
    "bot",
    "Contribute",
    "Translate",
    "Get\nhelp",
    "Give\nfeedback",
    "Subscribe\nor unsubscribe"
  ],
  "textContent": "Latest **tech\nnews** from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.\n\n**Weekly highlight**\n\n  * The Abstract Wikipedia team has identified five potential pilot wikis to assess their interest in adopting abstract articles on their wikis. The pilots are Malayalam, Bengali, Dagbani, Arabic, and Indonesian Wikipedia. The feedback period will be open until May 22. If your community is interested in becoming a pilot, let us\nknow on Meta.\n\n\n\n**Updates for editors**\n\n  * An experiment to show Reading\nLists to logged-out readers on mobile web will launch on May 18 across German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, and Urdu Wikipedias, and will run for one month. The effort supports broader goals of helping readers save and organize articles for later reading, while encouraging habits that could lead to future Wikipedia contributions.\n  * To support a bookmark button in the Reading List beta feature, the “Tools > Action” menu has been updated to display icons, including the watch star indicator that helps editors identify temporarily watched articles. The icons now also match those used on mobile, improving consistency across platforms. The change is currently limited to the actions menu and mainly affects editors with privileged user rights. [1]\n  * \nSuggestion Mode was released as an A/B test for newcomer editors on the mobile website at ~15 Wikipedias. The experiment will measure the impact that Suggestion Mode has on the proportion of newcomer mobile web edit sessions that result in constructive (un-reverted) article edits. The experiment will also evaluate the feature’s impact on editor retention, and monitor changes in revert and block rates.\n  * View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved\nlast week. For example, an issue in the Wikipedia Android app where images could sometimes fail to load after opening a recommended reading list notification, has now been fixed. [2]\n\n\n\n**Updates for technical contributors**\n\n  * The Wikidata\nPlatform team has published its backend\nreplacement recommendation and accompanying technical\narchitecture for the migration of the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) away from Blazegraph. Feedback is invited until May 25th 2026, especially on potential gaps and impacts on advanced use cases. Wikidata community members and WDQS users are also encouraged to help identify high-impact tools and workflows that may need attention on this\npage. Feedback can be shared on the Migration\ntalk page or during the next\noffice hour. See the WDP\nteam newsletter for more details.\n  * Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki\n\n\n\n**In depth**\n\n  * On English, French, Japanese, and a few other Wikipedias, there was a trial\nof hCaptcha, a third-party bot detection service. The trial showed that hCaptcha effectively detects and deters some bad-faith automated activity, on its own and by giving checkusers\nand stewards signals to look into. Because the results were positive, hCaptcha will be rolled out across all wikis over the next few weeks. See\nthe hCaptcha project page for technical information about the implementation and privacy protections. Learn\nmore.\n  * The latest Community Tech update is now available, with progress across several Community Wishlist initiatives, including Reading Lists expansion from the mobile app to the website, new language support for “Who Wrote That” and the Personal Dashboard, improvements to 3D rendering and Charts, and upcoming work on talk page sorting, audio playback, and editing workflows. The update also shares current priorities, wishlist status trends, and opportunities for community feedback on future focus areas and the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2026–2027 Annual Plan. Read\nthe full newsletter for details.\n\n\n\n_**Tech\nnews** prepared by Tech\nNews writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get\nhelp • Give\nfeedback • Subscribe\nor unsubscribe._",
  "title": "Tech News 2026 – Issue 21"
}