Update needed: practical and radical ideas to keep Wikipedia reliable by Femke Nijsse (Femke)

Workshop overview

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-11 15:38:00 UTC

Size of the problem
- Medical content
- Lack of retranslation
- Ever-expanding articles
Examples and inspiration
- Contests & Campaigns
- Software: the homepage
- Norms and policies

Medical content

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-18 12:49:51 UTC

Some areas of Wikipedia require constant updating
- Medical content
- Biographies of living people
- Geography
Even on English Wikipedia, we are falling behind in some areas, in particular medicine where requirements are incredibly strict

Climate denial review

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-19 13:12:53 UTC

In 2021, the BBC found severe climate denial in a few smaller language Wikipedias
In response, we assessed all climate change articles across languages
In over 1/3, there were elements of climate denial
Most commonly: the cause was that the article stemmed from a 2006-2009 translation of English Wikipedia, which included what was then a (vocal) minority opinion

Ever-growing articles

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-19 21:25:25 UTC

A common pattern:

Articles grow
New editors want to add information
Experienced editors are balanced
Overall: growth
Maintenance??

Contests

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-20 11:59:50 UTC

The Core Contest
- Focus solely on important articles
- Around 20 articles get an update / expansion
WikiCup
- Massive
- Often includes a lot of new article writing

Highlighting Article for Improvement

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-20 12:26:38 UTC

Identifying and asking new editors to help improve articles

How to structure?
How to select articles that a wide number of individuals could update?
Should we allow unpolished articles on the main page?

Norms and guidelines

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-20 12:36:41 UTC

We have strong norms of preserving information
Even past its sell-by date
In English Wikipedia this is captured in the [[WP:PRESERVE]] guideline
Sometimes stronger in smaller Wikipedias

Software: the homepage

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-20 12:41:58 UTC

The homepage has suggested tasks
For more experienced editors(?), there are often suggestions to update articles
Do experienced editors use their homepage?
Other ways the software can help?

Automation and AI

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-20 12:59:50 UTC

In general, the community has spoken out strongly against AI
But we do have success stories on more mundane automation
- Many languages have enabled Wikidata-linked automated updates
- English Wikipedia resistant because of quality-control concerns

Find your tables for a moment of zen

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-24 17:00:57 UTC

Find a table (Contests + gamification, software, automation and AI, or Policies and guidelines)

Let's take a quiet moment, and each come up with two radical + practical ideas to update at scale.

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-25 08:41:49 UTC

QR code for the Padlet

2026-07-25 09:17:10 UTC

The Guardian website has a banner for on old articles about e.g. politics and climate. Should we do similar for readers, not just editors?

2026-07-25 09:18:09 UTC

Could we use AI to identify statements+citations on Wikipedia, where there is a more up-to-date citation for the statement? Or where a newer citation would contradict the statement?

2026-07-25 09:18:17 UTC

Make verifiability easier with exact citations - ie rather than "this citation supports this claim" instead "here in the source supports the claim"

Extends the Wikidata-model to unstructed statements.

citation and article age data

2026-07-25 09:20:37 UTC

we could easily compute the age of citations (e.g. the most recent citation on a particular article is from 2009), and then know to update it.

also if most of the content in an article was added in 2009, then we know it needs attention to review it.

then could feed this info into suggested edits

Month of shrinking Wikipedia

2026-07-25 09:21:20 UTC

Burden

2026-07-25 09:22:03 UTC

Verifiability policies should place the burden for providing a source for a claim on the person who adds the content.

updated articles for DYK

2026-07-25 09:22:16 UTC

maybe substantially updated articles could be eligible for DYK on the main page (to help as a motivating factor)

Suggest using an edit summary if writing or removing a large amount of content – edit check

2026-07-25 09:22:27 UTC

Annual updater award

2026-07-25 09:22:33 UTC

Suggest to newcomers to update unsourced content (more specifically than outdated content in general)

2026-07-25 09:23:09 UTC

encouraging Medics to maintain pages

2026-07-25 09:23:50 UTC

Develop links with Medical associations to include Wiki pages maintenance for their specialty in exchange for CPD or Ongoing Professional Development points (each country has a different system but each country has a system)

Suggest the suggested edits mode to more people

2026-07-25 09:24:28 UTC

Prioritisation based on page views

2026-07-25 09:25:51 UTC

Encourage updating articles that get high page views

Have a process to suggest deleting articles that are old, with advance notice, so that people can start fresh

2026-07-25 09:26:14 UTC

data/statistics updates

2026-07-25 09:26:44 UTC

for data/statistics like census data, I think the data should come from wikidata and have a bot or way to keep it updated in all languages.

Have a process to propose sections of articles for deletion that seem outdated - enable annotating sections for deletion

2026-07-25 09:28:04 UTC

related to annotation feature under development

Delete articles that aren't updated in a certain period

2026-07-25 09:28:16 UTC

If an article is tagged and isn't updated within a certain period of time, it becomes eligible for deletion. Some articles may need updates more frequently than others.

For structured edits - provide different classifications of difficulty of tasks, to allow experienced users to opt into interesting tasks

2026-07-25 09:29:26 UTC

Train AI models and bots to feed local language Wikipedia for verification of translated content from English to all local language Wikipedias.

2026-07-25 09:29:31 UTC

Reverse watchlist - what hasn't been updated in a long time

2026-07-25 09:30:35 UTC

Note on watchlist when an article on your watchlist has more information available on another language

2026-07-25 09:31:51 UTC

Example from Irish wiki: one main area that is very outdated was sourced from scientific encyclopedia in 2007.

reader engagement and suggestions

2026-07-25 09:31:57 UTC

talk pages are difficult to use, and it can feel intimidating or scary to edit, yet I am sure readers could help identify things that are outdated or could suggest article improvements.

or would be interested in improving articles about places nearby them

SourcesPlease@WikiCredCon2026

2026-07-25 09:32:15 UTC

TL;DR: "Fact checking claims is more scalable than fact checking articles"

Based on topic of interest, see articles that need to be updated

2026-07-25 09:33:37 UTC

Suggested edits feature allows you to select a topic, but it's high level.

Move uncited text to the talk page

2026-07-25 09:34:17 UTC

Uncited content could be moved to the talk page so that people who are interested in improving the content could rewrite it or find sources. Could put it in a category so that experts or people knowledgable about the topic could find and improve it.

In specific categories/topics or based on other thresholds (such as lists of years), if an article hasn't been updated for a long time, automatically add a template tag that indicates it needs to be updated

2026-07-25 09:34:59 UTC

Use Wikidata ontology. Not just edits, but use Wiki Who author analysis to find out what percent of the article has been updated in the last x years.

Annotate an article with the last time the article was majorly revised and make that visible

2026-07-25 09:36:43 UTC

Claim-based watch lists

2026-07-25 09:36:55 UTC

Something I want to do is use the claim-based approach to look at what claims were added/removed between different revisions.

Then people can optionally have a watch list on the claims in addition to reformatting

For a newcomer, when am I able to remove a template? When is it updated enough? What do I do next?

2026-07-25 09:37:40 UTC

Encourage people to remove templates.

Detect whether there has been a substantial edit and prompt the editor to remove template

2026-07-25 09:39:46 UTC

Show in history when there is a large difference in text, not just number of bytes added/removed

2026-07-25 09:40:16 UTC

Identify "as of" phrases (both with natural language and templated) and prompt the editor to consider updating that piece with Suggested Edits

2026-07-25 09:41:39 UTC

Get rid of stubs/low-quality articles

2026-07-25 09:42:18 UTC

Stop hosting low-quality articles (based on some criteria - length? notability?)

Level Up

2026-07-25 09:42:42 UTC

People fullfill tasks and for five task you Level up, then again for 10 or 20 and so on.

You get badges or other rewards for euch Level

There could be an Avatar involved.

There could be cardstacks as well, so ppl can choose tasks by topic/category

Be able to detect/indicate when another language has a higher quality language

2026-07-25 09:43:28 UTC

Tracking category for when an article has relatively old citations if eligible for MEDRS

2026-07-25 09:44:33 UTC

Flagging

2026-07-25 09:45:07 UTC

Readers/New editors can flag articles/article sections that are outdated.

This might work with a stamp as a fun gadget.

The flag would involve a text-box, asking people for a link to/name of a citation, reason for the article being outdated

Introduce clerks who can offer advice on whether content can be removed

2026-07-25 09:46:16 UTC

Have experienced users who can provide advice on deleting sections or removing content

Show date of references to readers by default

2026-07-25 09:46:35 UTC

Add a visibe date instead of just the ref number, eg. :

some text some text ^refnr/2024

Metadata to tag sections

2026-07-25 09:47:00 UTC

Have quieter tags to flag sections that may need attention (e.g. something that needs to be updated as of a particular date) - track the date on which an article was updated

Make guidelines more accessible and simple

2026-07-25 09:49:03 UTC

Simplify guidelines to make them more accessible to new users

ref suggestions (from Johanna)

2026-07-25 09:50:33 UTC

Been using Wikipedia mobile app for a year. Because of that I won a photo contest last year in Finnish Wikipedia. It's mapping articles with no photos to other language versions or Wikidata. My duty was to check the relevance and write a Finnish caption.

📸

So could sth similar be added for refs too? There are newer refs on other languages, could you use them too?

And make the tool check if the refs have open access to save editors time?

Send emails to tell experts that an article is wrong

2026-07-25 09:51:22 UTC

Email expert who might be interested in updating an article to see if they're willing to fix it

Use AI to highlight gaps between Wikipedia and wikidata

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-25 09:51:28 UTC

Which one is more up-to-date

Allow wikidata watchlist from Wikipedia

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-25 09:52:01 UTC

So that trust in a single repository of up-to-date info is increased

Encourage Exact Citations

2026-07-25 09:52:01 UTC

On average to verify a claim on Wikipedia one has to read half the article.

We should encourage citation links that go to exact spans.

This can be done using text fragments ( e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_Deng#:~:text=He%20was%20awarded%20the%20Fields%20Medal%20in%202026) or timespans

Consider easier ways to indicate outdated illustrations and files on Commons and make it easier to update them

2026-07-25 09:52:04 UTC

Graph chart project could make this easier

Allow readers to give feedback on articles

2026-07-25 09:52:25 UTC

Allow readers to report errors in articles (already in place on Polish Wikipedia)

Democratise bot-making

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-25 09:52:25 UTC

With a system of agentic AIs that help build bots by less technical editors

Highlight articles on watchlist that need updating

fjmmnijsse1 — 2026-07-25 09:53:18 UTC

This can be combined by the idea from Sam to use agentic AIs, as these updates will be highlighted on watchlists anyway, or combined with the homepage

Maintenance Block award

2026-07-25 09:53:49 UTC

In German wikipedia there is a Regularien competition about how many maintenance blocks on articles you can remove/work out successfully

People earn badges

Build a sense of prioritization into banners (bigger and uglier if the problem is worse)

2026-07-25 09:54:04 UTC

Shame can be a great motivator

Detection of dead links in an article

2026-07-25 09:54:32 UTC

Use templates for example for IUCN (red list categories) - in German wiki:

2026-07-25 09:54:43 UTC

de:Wikipedia:Redaktion Biologie/IUCN zu alt

-> you see which species articles cite IUCN webpage older than 10 years

-> also highlights pages with many views

-> gamification possible, topic-related

-> one could also do that with general templates like cite web and collect specific urls or all old urls per article categories somewhere in subpages of related projects, but specific templates are more useful

Suggest making similar edits to pages with the same content

2026-07-25 09:55:02 UTC

Some facts are duplicated over many pages (An outbreak, the disease, the WHO agency page for the disease, disease in country articles, etc) and we should suggest neighbouring articles to update when you make contentful edits

2026-07-25 09:55:04 UTC

Backlog drives (with prizes) for maintenance tags, goals of removing all maintenance tags in a category in important articles

2026-07-25 09:55:25 UTC

Allowing editors to blank and restart an article, them comparing the alternate draft to the existing article

2026-07-25 09:55:37 UTC

Embedding the Wikipedia Adventure into the core infrastructure of the site itself

Wikidata integration

2026-07-25 09:58:04 UTC

Change policies to be more open to integrating data from Wikidata

Tell users that they can't create new articles until they fix their old ones

2026-07-25 09:58:44 UTC

Allow a view for colaborative working

2026-07-25 09:58:55 UTC

An article view that does not allow editing but do and read suggestions collaboratively inside the article last version,being able to place the suggestions in the appropiate places (not like in the discussion page).

Group voted best: local language WP library

2026-07-25 10:00:30 UTC

(Mostly for local lang news orgs)

Group voted best: Color coding articles by staleness

2026-07-25 10:00:49 UTC

Group voted best: Month of shrinking WP

2026-07-25 10:01:44 UTC

Eg svwp

Blocking article creation?

Group voted best: Funner worklists

2026-07-25 10:02:23 UTC

Eg puzzle pieces making and image, could then be a barnstar when done

Group voted best: count contribution stats and feature big updates

2026-07-25 10:03:31 UTC

Like big improvements to articles

Enable more cross-language collaboration

2026-07-25 10:14:28 UTC

Wikidata is one way of doing this.

Sharable (Claim,Citations) pairs is another

Require links to include an archived version

2026-07-25 10:46:29 UTC

Preempt link rot

Give notifications about how many time your edits have been seen

2026-07-25 10:47:11 UTC

Group voted best: Local language WP Library

2026-07-25 10:49:23 UTC

Would likely be mostly local language news, seems like that is what's most needed

Group voted best: Color coding articles by staleness

2026-07-25 10:49:58 UTC

Group voted best: Funner worklists--puzzles pieces that become an image, etc

2026-07-25 10:52:14 UTC

Image could be related to topic, become a barnstar-type award, etc.

Group voted best: Count and feature contribution stats for updates / quality improvement as well as new article creation

2026-07-25 10:53:28 UTC