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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

---

Stay connected:  

Reciprocal sanctions

We have our ONESTRIKE policy that allows us to block users who are blocked at another wiki if they violate rules here. I'm noticing that we have a number of users who come from another wiki and edit here in areas they have been sanctioned for or warned about elsewhere. The most common thing I'm seeing is editing in areas of the English Wikipedia that are under the "contentious subject" sanctions. These users are restricted from editing in those areas on the English Wiki (usually by not being extended confirmed) so they come here and edit those same areas instead. That's resulting now in contentious editing on Simple. The biggest areas of concern seem to be caste articles, Indian military history articles, and Kurd & Kurdistan articles.

Often times, these get addressed eventually as the behavior becomes disruptive that it violates our policies and guidelines and not just the other wiki's rules. But, sometimes it allows itself to drag out because we first have to go through escalation here.

Is there any thing we can consider doing to address these contentious topic areas and editors? CountryANDWestern (talk) 18:42, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I've been thinking on this a bit, and I'd like to support it, but there's one problem I keep coming back to and that's how to allow good faith editors to contribute to sanctioned articles. EN wiki has Extended-Confirmed Protection which gives an avenue for an editor to build up some experience before jumping into more challenging subjects. That doesn't exist here and I question if the extra bureaucracy is worth it here. Semi-protection is certainly an option, with the awareness that it's trivial to get past that barrier.

I've seen more and more nonsense in the past six months and I think it IS, as CountryANDWestern noted, from the restrictions being more aggressively placed on EN wiki so the editors are coming here. Many times, we don't have the number of editors with the background and knowledge to really help patrol some of those pages, so we end up with pages that can differ significantly from what's on en wiki, or just don't exist there at all.

Every time I think I have an option, I start thinking about the extra work that gets involved. Even if there's a low bar in place for things like semi-protection on articles or single-page bans (but not talk) on editors), it's still effort on a smaller set of admins. Y'all are overworked anyway, so to paraphrase, is the juice worth the squeeze? Ravensfire (talk) 01:10, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

@Ravensfire As an editor here, I've always wondered why due to the nature of how small this wiki is and how inactive the experienced editors including the editors with other permissions can get, why is there no extended-confirmed permission or protection at all on this wiki? SoyokoAnis - talk 15:13, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Revising the policy regarding interface administrators

On Wikipedia:Interface administrators, the policy states the following:

It is distributed by bureaucrats on an as-needed basis and removed when the needed edit is made.

However, I am proposing that we remove this part in a manner that some administrators can request permanent interface administrator rights. It might be needed in case someone updates MediaWiki:Gadget-HighlightAdmins.js, implement CSS changes (e.g. dark mode optimizations), etc.; also, requiring a bureaucrat to temporarily grant an administrator the IA permission then removing it later might be inefficient. This is also a request to see if the community is willing to accept permanent interface administrators. Thanks. Codename Noreste (talk • contribs) 15:37, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Interface administrators#Non-admins requesting interface admin rights, I don't think there is a need to discuss this again. BZPN (talk) 15:39, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

This proposal (here) is about if administrators can have permanent interface administrator rights. Codename Noreste (talk • contribs) 15:43, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

I was just referring to the part about bureaucrats temporairly granting IA rights to sysops. BZPN (talk) 15:45, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

If this is a proposal to permanently grant IA permissions (on what basis? RfIA? bureaucrats' discretion?), then I'll Oppose. It'd create unnecessary mess and redundant permissions inflation. BZPN (talk) 15:51, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Administrators would still request IA permissions at WP:AN, but if this proposal somewhat passes, they might need some kind of consensus. Codename Noreste (talk • contribs) 16:14, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

So the idea would admins would NOT have IA by default, but would have to request it as they do today. Optionally, they could be granted the right on a permanent basis. Is that the gist of the ask here? Ravensfire (talk) 17:15, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

When I look at how often it is actually used, I don't see an urgent need to change the current policy Eptalon (talk) 13:19, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

We actually discussed this when the usergroup was created and I think generally agreed on the current practice. You might find something around that in the archives. There is no need for permanent grant as the whole reason this group was separated was for security reason, and current practice feels much safer to me than having it permanently attached to an account.--BRP ^ever 13:55, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

After considering the objections and arguments here, I  withdraw this proposal. Codename Noreste (talk • contribs) 17:50, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

FWIW, I can't think of a reason for when we would need IA and not have a crat around to apply it. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:02, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Use LGBTQ instead of LGBT

Hi everyone, I propose using "LGBTQ" instead of "LGBT" in articles and related categories. This change is more inclusive, recognizing queer people, and reflects the term most people use today, keeping content up-to-date and consistent with English Wikipedia. Thanks. Saroj (talk) 17:52, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

@Saroj Just curious, where and how do you plan to make this change? PieWriter (talk) 01:08, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

This involves moving all articles and categories currently in Category:LGBT to use LGBTQ. You can see a similar discussion on English Wikipedia here. Saroj (talk) 06:45, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

If I take the term 'queer' at least in the past, it had a negative connotation. I don't want to exclude anyone, but since these are common, it is conceivable that the meaning change, much like 'nigger', which used to mean 'black person' in the second half of the 19th century. So even if enwp did the move, we should discuss on our own and reach out own decision Eptalon (talk) 07:04, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

The how isn't too bad, AWB exists for these sorts of changes. I don't really have any thoughts on what should be used, as I know there's more to it than just these two terms. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:04, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

i will state what most regular editors likely know already: We don't classify by gender. Eptalon (talk) 12:31, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Wayback Archive links in citation tool

in English Wikipedia if you put in a web archive link like https://web.archive.org/web/20260203153722/https://deadline.com/2026/02/disney-ceo-josh-damaro-bob-iger-1236707115/ in the citation tool in the visual editor it would automatically change the citation to "archived from the original" with both links. When I do that here it automatically changes it only to the original link, which is often no longer working, unless I replace it with the archived link or add it manually. Is there any way to fix that or have the functionality be the same? Newsjunkie (talk) 18:43, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Are you talking about https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=All_Creatures_Great_and_Small_(2020_TV_series)&diff=10738159&oldid=10737481?

You need to use the |archive-url= parameter, not |url= Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:05, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm talking about any archive link on all pages using the automatic citation tool in the visual editor. In the English Wikipedia if you put in an archived URL link like that it automatically creates a citation showing both links with the description "archived from the original". When I do the same thing here, it automatically changes that to only the *original* URL link, which in many cases may no longer be there (like in that specific example) which kind of defeats the purpose and you might not notice if you're not being careful. It seems like there is a bug or something here or missing functionality preventing it from working the same way. Newsjunkie (talk) 19:13, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Yeah, I suspect we are running a different version of VE than enwiki. I suggest a en:WP:PHAB ticket. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:20, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I looked into a little when I first noticed but I found it hard to figure out the exactly right place to file it exactly or or for what tool/functionality. Any chance you or somebody else could file something like that? in most other respects it does to seem to work the same way except for that one thing connected to the citation tool Newsjunkie (talk) 19:57, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Also I wasn't sure if it was a bug or something where there is a setting for this project that somebody can just actively change. Newsjunkie (talk) 20:01, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I suspect it would need some development work. I've asked in the discord about it, I'll raise a phab if that doesn't show it as a known issue. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:04, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! It's the Citoid tool I think specifically but some parts of it it seems can be configured by project so that's why I wasn't sure where the issue actually is: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Citoid#Troubleshooting_the_citoid_service https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Citoid/Enabling_Citoid_on_your_wiki Newsjunkie (talk) 20:05, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Sounds like it is configurable . I can't say I know how it's done though. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:47, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Hope there is somebody that can help! Newsjunkie (talk) 21:05, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Feminism and Folklore 2026

Feminism and Folklore 2026 is a local version of the annual international writing contest organized at Simple English Wikipedia to document folk cultures and women in folklore. We would be honored if you could serve as a participant for this event. Drop a message boldly if you have any questions! :-) HAOREIMA (Khurumjari) 16:45, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

How to process a Technical Request to Move on Simple Wikipeda?

Hey there, I was wondering how a request to move is to be performed on Simple Wikipedia. On the English Wikipedia, they have , but there does not seem to be an equivalent on Simple Wikipedia. I wanted to request a move of Humboldt-University of Berlin to Humboldt University of Berlin for making it consistent with the English Wikipedia. Any advice would be welcome! Proof finder (talk) 08:25, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Here or even better on WP:AN is the best place to request such stuff. However, I just moved the page. -Barras talk 08:28, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Proof finder (talk) 08:44, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Steward elections in Meta-Wiki

Hello! Steward elections 2026 has opened on Meta-Wiki. Please remember give a vote if you have right to vote. Thank you! Julius 12345 (talk) 12:00, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

The second link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2026. Julius 12345 (talk) 12:02, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Trans shooter

I've started a discussion at Talk:Trans shooter to determine what the best title is for this article. Please share your thoughts on the best title for it there. CountryANDWestern (talk) 22:23, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Added something to the talk page. Currently article suffers from different problems: we don't know how common the different terms or accusations actually are. We also don't have any examples how the terms are actually used. If this does not improve, we might end up deleting the article, as some obscure jargon. And all of that is independent of its title. So: needs a lot more context. Eptalon (talk) 07:16, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

A question: Is "subst:uw-vandalism1" better than "uw-vandalism1"?

Hello! Is it the same thing to send a warning with "subst:uw-vandalism1" than "uw-vandalism1"? Julius 12345 (talk) 18:43, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Hello. The answer is both yes and no, as they display the same message to the user, but they work differently. If you use {{uw-vandalism1}}, the template is transcluded. That means the warning stays linked to the template, and if the template is later changed, the warning on the talk page will change too. If you use {{subst:uw-vandalism1}}, the template is substituted. The full text of the warning is copied into the page when you save it. After that, it's just normal wikitext and won't change if the template is edited. On simplewiki warnings are usually substituted so that the message stays exactly as it was at the time it was given. You can read more about substituted templates here. BZPN (talk) 18:50, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for info. In next time I will use: {{subst:uw-vandalism1}}. I have used until now: {{uw-vandalism1}}. Do I have to change the previous warnings to {{subst:uw-vandalism1}}? Julius 12345 (talk) 19:00, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it's best to change the previous ones to use subst: as well, so they won't keep transcluding the template, and won't unnecessarily increase MediaWiki's load :). BZPN (talk) 19:03, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Okay, thank you! Have a nice day. Julius 12345 (talk) 19:04, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Template for overciting?

Hello, do we have a template to signal that there are too many sources in an articel? - the article Gaza genocide has 59 working, and a few non-working sources. Looking at the length of our current article, I would expect 15-20 cited sources at most. Eptalon (talk) 12:29, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes. {{Excessive citations}} — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 12:55, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

I put the template on the page, it looks like it is the only page using it at the moment. I also changed the wording of the template, and removed the links to an EnWP essay we don't have. Should we move it to 'too many citations' or similar? Eptalon (talk) 14:19, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Too many would surely be simpler than excessive, so I'd support the move. -Barras talk 14:35, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

I was bold and moved it Eptalon (talk) 15:22, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Steven1991

What should one do with some of his pre-blocked edits? Do we have carte blanche to revert in full or delete some of his edits? For example Holocaust uniqueness debate and Palestinian political violence? Yeatglazer (talk) 03:18, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

I think each article should be judged based on its merits. This is about the subject, independent of who created the article. Note also that RfD is not for cleanup. If you think an article or section needs attention there are tags you can use. The article will then show up in the respective category. If you think an article should be deleted, nominate it for deletion. Eptalon (talk) 08:52, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

I just looked at the article about the 2023 attacks on Israël, where he also contributed. Cut down on references, simplified language. Likely needs to be done for the other articles too. Eptalon (talk) 13:52, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Ok. Kind of like the person above said he had a tendency to refbomb everything, usually with tangentially related things like here. This user Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Current issues and requests archive 92#c-Polygnotus-20251126151100-Steven1991 was cleaning up some of his edits, but they were extensive Yeatglazer (talk) 23:16, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't see why correct and well-sourced edits should be removed, even if the user is later blocked. If the edit is good and supported by reliable sources, it should not be deleted just because the user was blocked. A block is about the users behavior, not about whether a specific edit is good or relevant. -- SimmeD (talk) 23:40, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

The thing is that he was pushing a pov, like saying the holocaust uniqueness debate is holocaust denial or distortion and calling scholars that question it antisemitic 1 2 constantly saying Wikipedia is antisemitic 3 even saying half the world holds deeply entrenched antisemitic views where on wikipedia the adl is questionable on antisemitism 4, and many edits on Israel-Palestine. He was basically weaponizing antisemitism 5 Here was barras unblock decline reason 6

"Unfortunately, this is not a convincing reason to request an unblock. Having over 20,000 edits and creating more than 200 articles does not, in itself, justify lifting the block. In fact, it means that each of your contributions—including every page and every edit—needs to be carefully reviewed.

At first glance, many of the articles appear to contain original research. Additionally, most of the pages you created are overly complex, not necessarily in terms of language, but due to an excessive use of footnotes."

Simple wikipedia simply doesnt have the resources or time to fastidiously fact check some of his countless questionable edits like on English Wikipedia (which is probably why he refbombs), thats why reverting to pre-him would just be easier. But there should be more input as to what Yeatglazer (talk) 02:49, 16 February 2026 (UTC)