Wikipedia:Simple talk

I first brought this idea up on this page in January but it did not receive much discussion. Based on the actions at pages like Soran-Persian War (1829-1834) and Ottoman-Soran War (1832–1834), I think we need to re-examine my thoughts. We are seeing significant conflict over these articles between users who are often "locked out" of editing these topics at the English Wikipedia due to them being under the contentious topic sanctions which require a user holds extended confirmed status in order to contribute there.

As it was 6 months ago when I first brought it up, the biggest areas of concern seem to be caste articles, Indian military history articles, and Kurd & Kurdistan articles. Nothing has changed, just some of the players.

It is currently being addressed via some protections right now, but I think we need to examine a longer term solution for this problem. CountryANDWestern (talk) 15:08, 20 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Each of those editors has to be told that every article must have both points of view - for and against and also be told to paraphrase and simplify sentences as can be seen in this example.-Baangla (talk) 18:34, 20 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

The thread you have linked to has nothing to do with what I am talking about. CountryANDWestern (talk) 18:38, 20 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

It does. The editors trying to edit pages about "caste articles, Indian military history articles, and Kurd & Kurdistan articles" should be given the advice I mentioned above.-Baangla (talk) 01:15, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Again, not relevant. My topic is about whether or not we should consider having similar restrictions to the English Wikipedia where users who are not extended confirmed are not eligible to edit those topics. CountryANDWestern (talk) 01:19, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yes, we should. These problems arise all the time fr33kman 01:30, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I agree that something needs to be done, but I’m a little hesitant to defer to enwiki too much. Something that is contentious there may be totally unproblematic here. Reciprocal sanctions is a possible solution, similar to WP:ONESTRIKE but more targeted. I think editors sanctioned on Enwiki should at least be given a chance here, which is the principle behind onestrike. On the subject of editing restrictions/sanctions, who would issue them? We don’t have an arbcom here, and leaving it to individual admins could bring a level of randomness that we don’t want. Garsh (talk) 05:55, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

It would be excellent to implement general sanctions here as well; thanks to them, there is no longer chaos surrounding controversial topics on the English Wikipedia, and if we apply them here too, the chaos here will end as well. General sanctions could be imposed, particularly on articles concerning the Kurds. Kajmer05 (talk) 14:18, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

In general, I like this idea as there certainly is some spill-over from en wiki to here as sanctions restrict the ability of some editors in some topics. The reason it really succeeds on en wiki though is Extended confirmed protection. Semi-protection is a trivial speed-bump that doesn't really slow things down. Full protection is a sledgehammer when something smaller is needed and would really, really slow down article development with the number of admins here. ECP is what makes those sanctions work, 30 days and 500 edits before an account can edit articles that are known to be problematic.

The Contentious Topics rules give admins quick and easy tools to use to manage disruption when it's brought to attention with (reasonably) clear definitions of the scope of the topic. I wouldn't mind seeing at least that brought over by reference to given admins known tools for some areas. I don't think that's really, really needed here, this wiki is small enough and frankly the admins good enough that when something is brought to attention it gets handled fairly quickly. The more difficult areas - Kurdish topics, south asian social groups/caste for example - are where ECP might be more helpful. Ravensfire (talk) 14:56, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Consensus has been against adding an Extended Confirmed group (and protection) for a while. The downside of contentious topics rules is they have to be understood by our editors. It seems like it's hard enough for some editors to understand the rules we already have. I'm not necessarily against them, but we have to be very clear about them. Garsh (talk) 19:11, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I mean there's gotta be a way for people to know a merger would happen and some maintenance people or people watching for mergers, right? I already did the steps to propose a merger in China. Am I missing anything? Thecommunitiesguy (talk | contribs) 18:55, 20 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Thecommunitiesguy This page (Simple Talk) is often used to draw more attention to discussions. Not a lot of people monitor the categories (just look at the backlog in Category:Pages_to_merge!) — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 02:21, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

You are invited to voice your opinions in a request for comment about the future of Abstract Wikipedia. Thank you! Kowal2701 (talk) 12:24, 24 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi! We are now actively making stub articles about the geography of Ukraine. It would be great to create a separate template for them to help coordinate our work, just like on the English Wikipedia. I would happily make it, but I am not very good at doing it. Thanks! Duntsov (talk) 08:35, 26 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Can I use this to write here? ~2026-41779-93 (talk) 18:08, 27 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Yes! Don’t feel constrained only to the words recommended by any one tool though. We have our own list of suggested words, WP:BE 1500. Readability scoring tools can also be helpful to see if your writing is simple enough. Happy editing! Garsh (talk) 18:36, 27 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I’m Johannes from Wikimedia Germany's Technical Wishes team.

We’ve been working on a new feature to improve re-using references with different details: Sub-referencing. We have deployed the feature to most Wikimedia projects as of July 2026, including eight out of the ten largest Wikipedia language versions. We'll deploy to Simple Wikipedia mid-August.

What to expect?

You will notice footnotes like [1.1] in Wikipedia articles, if citations are used with different details (e.g. different page numbers) using sub-references. We are implementing a long-held community wish: Many Wikipedia articles currently contain references that are almost identical but differ in details such as the page number. This leads to cluttered reference lists which make it harder for readers to quickly assess how many different sources have been used. And unlike with identical reuses, re-using references with different details previously required duplicating the reference, which led to longer wikitext and – especially in VisualEditor – also to more time expenditure. Existing community-created workarounds like {{sfn}} have drawbacks for VisualEditor users and in the reference pop-ups (especially for mobile readers – more about the problem).

Sub-referencing solves these issue: We are adding a new wikitext attribute details="..." – similar to the existing attribute ref name="...". VisualEditor users can use the "add details" button to insert sub-references. You can find detailed instructions on our project page. We also published a report about our learnings on the first months of sub-referencing on German Wikipedia which you might find interesting. Note that sub-referencing is an optional feature, you can continue using other citation styles if you prefer to do so.

Deployment

We’ll likely deploy sub-referencing to Simple Wikipedia on August 12 (phab:T432731). Please take the following action to prepare for the deployment:

• There is a tracking category for pages using sub-referencing to quickly identify any issues with the new feature. You can change the category name via MediaWiki:Cite-tracking-category-ref-details. You might want to create the category page (currently Category:Pages that use sub-references) using __HIDDENCAT__ (or {{Hidden category}} + {{Tracking category}}) to hide it from the default reader’s view – and add it to d:Q129764848.
• We've listed more information on possible actions to take and examples from different wikis in our FAQ.
• Note that we recommend against combining {{Reflist}} and (sub-)references defined in the reference section ({{Reflist|refs=...}}) because VisualEditor struggles to deal with those (as opposed to <references>...</references>). English Wikipedia discouraged the usage of {{Reflist}} when using list-defined references for similar reasons .
• If you want to try sub-referencing, you can do so on testwiki or one of the many wikis we've deployed to already, e.g. German, French, Polish or Spanish Wikipedia – or sister projects like English Wikibooks.

Please let me know if you have any questions. We look forward to your reactions about the new feature, either on our discussion page, my user talk page, or as a reply to this post. We will continue improving sub-referencing based on your feedback!

Best regards from the Technical Wishes team --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 13:57, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

This really looks interesting, and I'm looking forward to being able to use it on articles. Thank you. Ravensfire (talk) 14:24, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply