Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin 2026 Issue 9

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our last issue on April 25. Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let foundationbulletin@wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

Highlights

• Community Protection: Wikimedia Foundation secured Indonesian government’s commitment to user safety, privacy, and content integrity ahead of administrative registration in Indonesia.
• Stronger protections against bots: Wikimedia Foundation is replacing our CAPTCHA with a new approach to detect bad-faith activities without making things harder for users.
• Transparency Report: The Wikimedia Foundation has published its latest Transparency Report. This provides an overview of the work to protect Wikimedia projects and support the volunteer communities who handle the majority of content requests. Our users trust us to protect their identities against unlawful disclosure, and we take this responsibility seriously, granting only 1 of 30 requests for disclosure we received from July to December 2025.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure

See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Product Safety and Integrity · Readers · Research · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Reading Challenge: As part of the 25th birthday celebrations, Wikipedia Mobile Apps launched a limited-time feature, the 25-day reading challenge with Baby Globe. This challenge encourages a daily habit of reading one Wikipedia article. The goal is to motivate users to come back to the app regularly.
• Latest experiments: One upcoming experiment is introducing the Incident Reporting System (IRS) to help contributors easily find the right place to seek help when facing harassment or other issues. See all live, upcoming, and completed experiments in Product & Technology.
• Change in how new users are autoconfirmed: The account age for autoconfirmed users will now start from their first edit, not the registration date. This is to avoid exploitation by vandals. This change will only apply to wikis that require at least one edit for autoconfirmation.
• Organized Reading lists: All Wikipedia users with new accounts and those who activated the “automatically enable most beta features” option can now use the reading lists beta feature. This lets you save articles for later reading and keep it organized in one place for easy access.
• Thumbnail size preferences: Default thumbnail size preference for article content is now limited to three sizes: Small (180px), Regular (250px), and Large (400px). This change aims to improve performance and reduce strain on thumbnail services. Current preferences will shift to the nearest new size.
• Wikifunctions: To make the development of Abstract Wikipedia visible, the Foundation is requesting your input: which metrics about Abstract Wikipedia pages do you deem important?
• Tech News: The latest highlights from Tech News weeks 18 and 19 include improvements on Global Watchlist. See also the 62 community submitted tasks that were resolved over the last two weeks.

Annual Goals Progress on Volunteer Support

See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog · WikiLearn News · The Wikipedia Library · list of movement events

• Annual Planning: We welcome your feedback on the main talk page for the 2026–2027 draft Annual Plan and many other places for the coming fiscal year.
• Wikimania: Wikimania is a joyful event. It is a chance to celebrate our community and projects, share ideas and information, build connections among Wikimedians, and inspire and develop future projects. If you and your community are interested in hosting Wikimania in 2028 and 2029 submit an expressions of interest.
• Community Conferences: The Foundation is supporting 15 strategic, diverse, and critical convenings taking place in 2026 and 2027, bringing together approximately 1800 Wikimedians across various regions, themes, and language communities.
• Don’t blink: The latest developments from around the world about protecting the Wikimedia model, its people and its values.
• Wiki Loves Monuments: The winners of the 2025 Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest are announced.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness

See also: Progress on the annual plan

• Enterprise: How CivicLens Uses Wikidata APIs to Make Civic Data More Accessible.

Board and Board committee updates

See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• Wikinews closure: All Wikinews have been closed and switched to read-only mode. Content will remain accessible, but no new edits or articles will be able to be added. This closure was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation following extended discussions.
• Affcom News: Read the latest issue of AffCom News (January-March 2026) to learn more about the latest news about the work of Wikimedia’s Affiliations Committee.
• Model for affiliates to support contributors through tools: The Product and Technology Advisory Council has published draft recommendations on a model that affiliates can follow when contributing to the technical space.
• Grantmaking: The Global Resource Distribution Committee closed their request for feedback on three initial questions about grantmaking, and published their monthly update for April.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news

See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · Education · GLAM · Milestones · Wikidata · Central and Eastern Europe · other newsletters

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