Wikipedia:Simple talk

Simple talk
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Feminism and Folklore 2026 starts soon

Please help translate to your language

Invitation to Organize Feminism and Folklore 2026

Dear Wiki Community,

We are pleased to invite Wikimedia communities, affiliates, and independent contributors to organize the Feminism and Folklore 2026 writing competition on your local Wikipedia.

The international campaign will run from 1 February to 31 March 2026 and aims to improve coverage of feminism, women’s histories, gender-related topics, and folk culture across Wikipedia projects.

About the Campaign

Feminism and Folklore is a global writing initiative that complements the Wiki Loves Folklore photography competition. While Wiki Loves Folklore focuses on visual documentation, this writing campaign addresses the gender gap on Wikipedia by improving encyclopedic content related to folk culture and marginalized voices.

What Can Participants Write About?

Communities can contribute by creating, expanding, or translating articles related to:

• Folk festivals, rituals, and celebrations
• Folk dances, music, and traditional performances
• Women and queer figures in folklore
• Women in mythology and oral traditions
• Women warriors, witches, and witch-hunting narratives
• Fairy tales, folk stories, and legends
• Folk games, sports, and cultural practices

Participants may work from curated article lists or generate new article suggestions using campaign tools.

How to Sign Up as an Organizer

Organizers are requested to complete the following steps to register their community:

1. Create a local project page on your wiki (see sample)
2. Set up the campaign using the CampWiz tool
3. Prepare a local article list and clearly mention:
   • Campaign timeline
   • Local and international prizes
4. Request a site notice from local administrators (see sample)
5. Add your local project page and CampWiz link to the Meta project page

Campaign Tools

The Wiki Loves Folklore Tech Team has introduced tools to support organizers and participants:

• Article List Generator by Topic – Helps identify articles available on English Wikipedia but missing in your local language Wikipedia. The tool allows customized filters and provides downloadable article lists in CSV and wikitable formats.
• CampWiz – Enables communities to manage writing campaigns effectively, including jury-based evaluation. This will be the third year CampWiz is officially used for Feminism and Folklore.

Both tools are now available for use in the campaign. Click here to access the tools

Learn More & Get Support

For detailed information about rules, timelines, and prizes, please visit the Feminism and Folklore 2026 project page.

If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out via:

• Meta talk page
• Email us using details on the contact page.

Join Us

We look forward to your collaboration and coordination in making Feminism and Folklore 2026 a meaningful and impactful campaign for closing gender gaps and enriching folk culture content on Wikipedia.

Thank you and best wishes,

Feminism and Folklore 2026 International Team

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Stay connected:  

What do you think about not using Archive.today any more?

Archive.today is a website that saves web pages on the internet to an archive, so we can use it as a reference. On 20 February 2026, the English Wikipedia decided to stop using Archive.today as a reference, because they found out that it is not safe any more. They made the decision at a talk page called "Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Archive.is RFC 5", which as a lot of evidence to support their choice.

The English Wikipedia decided to stop using Archive.today as a reference, because they found out that:

1. Archive.today added website code to make visitors' computers perform a Denial-of-Service attack against a website belonging to a person that they do not agree with. This is against the law in countries like the United Kingdom (source).
2. Archive.today changed the archived pages to harass the same person. This makes it hard for us to trust that the archived pages were the same as the original.

The "archive.today incident" page on the Meta-Wiki says that other wikis are taking similar actions as the English Wikipedia.

I wish to ask the Simple English Wikipedia:

1. How should we handle Archive.today links that we already added to the wiki?
2. How should we handle people who add new Archive.today links to the wiki?

My question does not affect Archive.org. That belongs to a different owner called the Internet Archive, and it is safe to use.

I think I tried my best to make the question as easy to understand as possible.

Best wishes, --Minoa (talk) 13:02, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

After reading the RFC, I agree with its conclusion, that “ Wikipedia should not direct its readers towards a website that hijacks users' computers to run a DDoS attack.” We should take the same approach, blacklist Archive.today as spam and replace the existing links with Archive.org links. Garsh (talk) 14:42, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

100% in agreement with this. Arthive.today has shown a willingness to hijack links for their own purposes and cannot be trusted any longer. Ravensfire (talk) 15:25, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

can we make this Wikipedia version bigger?

I really like this Wikipedia version, but I also wish it was more like English Wikipedia - like with the project pages, adding more gadgets, and making longer articles.

the first thing I’d like to begin with is adding dark mode. I like using Vector legacy, and my goodness, it’s worse, imo. Tonkarooson (talk) 01:46, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Like you, I started out at enwiki. Simplewiki's lack of certain features of enwiki bothered me at first, but I started to like it after being around here a little while. The size of simple English has to do with the number of people willing to put the time in to make it better. Everything is put together by editors like you and I, and there's not enough of us around to have tons of meaningful wikiprojects, portals, and such. The articles in simplewiki are supposed to be simple, and in a lot of ways this applies to the structure here also. We don't even have a lot of the rules the enwiki does, but we get along just fine. Also, dark mode exists in the "Appearance" tab of your user settings. Garsh (talk) 04:23, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

for dark mode, it’s not with og vector. Tonkarooson (talk) 23:57, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Help with new page

I copied the text of the lead of an English Wikipedia article and created a new page about Guru Gobind Singh but some citation errors have appeared and the IPA at the top does not get linked to the IPA page. Please help me with both. I am sure I can do it myself the next time.-Baangla (talk) 20:58, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

@Baangla, for the notes, you didn't copy the notelist template that the en wiki page used. You really need to simplify the language though when you pull in articles from other Wikipedias. Even in the lead. I don't think you made any changes to the text. Ravensfire (talk) 13:49, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

I made some minimal changes but I believe the language is simple already.-Baangla (talk) 14:28, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

BZPN has tweaked it more!-Baangla (talk) 14:31, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Ran the text through the online tool I've pointed you towards before and there were areas flagged. I've made more simplification changes. I'm done here, unfollowing this and the article. Ravensfire (talk) 15:27, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Okay, thanks!-Baangla (talk) 15:37, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Please point to that online tool again, so that I can see what gets flagged in future.-Baangla (talk) 15:44, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Edit filters

I’ve seen repeated behaviors which could be stopped with the edit filter. Lta Username patterns, lta page titles is there anyone who can implement stuff here? I’m willing to learn Cyberwolf (talk) 13:55, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

In principle, admins can edit the abuse filter. The link I provided explains more about how the extension works if you're looking to learn. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:11, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

I just want to blacklist titles like 777bet, non English titles titles containing promotional things like that Cyberwolf (talk) 14:12, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

1xbet i meant Cyberwolf (talk) 14:13, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Request it on MediaWiki:Titleblacklist talk page. AF is not necessary here. BZPN (talk) 14:17, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Done Cyberwolf (talk) 14:33, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

I just know @CountryANDWestern most admins delete the same page type everyday Cyberwolf (talk) 14:17, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Deleting local files

We have about three dozen audio files here, which are recordings of articles. Typically, these are about 15 years old. They are all uploaded at Commons as well. Per Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Files, these duplicates can be kept here, but it is not needed and per {{NowCommons}}, admins can delete them. I am proposing that we change the policy and practice to delete these local files, as Commons routinely hosts audio used in specific wikis and there is no need for a local copy. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:08, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

The last of these files was uploaded over 10 years ago. I’m not sure that changing policy is necessary. I would be supportive of a sysop deleting the duplicates as a practice, however. Garsh (talk) 15:42, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Request for comment (global AI policy)

A request for comment is currently being held to decide on a global AI policy. Thank you! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:58, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Chinese herbology

Given that this article has been in that state since 2009, and the discussion page will likely die in a few days, I'm raising the issue here.

The Chinese herbology article is full of WP:OR, has no sources, and is generally written in advanced English, thus being inconsistent with WP:VER, WP:MOS, and WP:COMPLEX, among others. In that case, I propose shortening it to a well-sourced stub, which I have already done. User Catcus DeMeowwy, on the other hand, suggests leaving it as is and adding further information and sources.

According to some, this has turned into an edit war requiring discussion, so the matter ends up here. So, what do you think? Best regards, BZPN (talk) 22:44, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Probably better to trim it down and then expand from there. @Catcus DeMeowwy, would you be willing to take BZPN's version and expand upon it with additional information? You can always readd the information from the previous version, if it can be sourced. Garsh (talk) 06:03, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Essay

Hello! I recently wrote an essay (WP:USERESSAY) about how, in my personal opinion, 3RR can be applied. However, some people have argued that my essay is "AI-generated" or that it was written just to justify my own actions that are against the rules, instead of simply expressing how I perceive certain policies.

Therefore, in order to ensure that my essay is simply useful and compliant with the rules, I would very much welcome suggestions for improvements and feedback from the community if anyone is willing to share them. So, I invite you to join the discussion :). Thank you. BZPN (talk) 13:45, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

I find it to be extremely WP:POINTy, especially as the examples you're using are from this specific edit conflict. You're not talking about 3RR in general; you're, as Ferien said, using this essay to defend your position in this particular instance. I'll withhold my judgment on the AI-generation aspect, but, Ferien is one of the best on this project at sniffing out LLM writing so if he's sensing that it is, I would trust that opinion. CountryANDWestern (talk) 13:52, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing your opinion. Do you have any possible solutions I could use? Change the examples? Or describe my position more in general, without specific examples? BZPN (talk) 13:55, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Okay, I've gone through the essay again and removed the rightly noticed POINTs, and I've also made some small visual changes. Do you have any other suggestions I could use? BZPN (talk) 14:42, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Invitation to adapt the Article guidance outlines

Dear Wikipedians!

We are pleased to announce that the Article Guidance outlines are now ready for your adaptation and integration into Simple English Wikipedia. Adapting these outlines will help ensure that new and less experienced editors get support tailored to the unique standards and practices of this community when the feature goes live.

Here is how to adapt an outline:

• Choose an outline from the prioritized list to adapt (for example: Project:ArticleGuidance/Person).
• Create a new page in the Wikipedia namespace using this format: Wikipedia:Article Guidance/[outline name]. For example, use Wikipedia:Article Guidance/Person for the Project:ArticleGuidance/Person outline.
• Open the 'Edit source' mode to access the outline content you want to adapt.
• Copy the content from the source editor and paste it into your new page, ensuring that all tags remain unchanged from the original.
• Edit the pasted content to match Simple English Wikipedia’s standards, policies, and templates. Do not remove or modify any tags or the text within the angle brackets (e.g., <instructions>... </instructions>), as these are required for the feature to function properly. For more details on markup elements, see the 'Quick guide to markups used in outlines'.
• Publish the page when you have finished adapting the outline.

Please note that pages may appear odd after publishing until the extension is deployed. You can continue adapting additional outlines in this link: https://b24e11a4f1.catalyst.wmcloud.org/wiki/Category:Pages_using_article_guidance

Our goal is to enable the feature on Simple English Wikipedia in May. We would appreciate it if editors can adapt all prioritized outlines and more by 15th May, 2026. If you have any questions, please share them on this talk page

Thank you for your dedication to this project! UOzurumba (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 29 April 2026 (UTC)