Forum:Announcements/Wiki Updates, Early 2026

Forums → Official announcements → Announcements/Wiki Updates, Early 2026

Hello, everyone.

MediaWiki 1.39 has begun sunsetting, and we have been working behind the scenes to upgrade the wiki to version 1.43 for a little while. As a result, there are quite a few changes that we will be taking the time to update and upgrade. There are mostly subtle changes with the wiki version upgrade. The three biggest things you may notice are (1) the amount of article body space becomes more dynamic again and generally larger, (2) wiki skins can be set to "dark"/"night" mode when logged in, and (3) some subtle but notable tweaks in the user interface like the location of action links (e.g. "edit"). There are other minor things that you might notice with line spacing, tables of contents, and category links; but, these are generally minor and may not even be noticed.

To accommodate these changes, especially for users to properly engage with "dark mode" or "night mode," a slew of global pages, templates, categories, forum posts, and other things, will be edited on the wiki. I have prepared updates for over 100 templates, in addition to the numerous flag templates, multiple categories, and other miscellaneous pages. They will be rolled out in stages in the coming days. Among the actions taken will be:

Retooling flag templates to work by height rather than by width to address changes in font size and line height.
Migrating a lot of code to a global .css to accommodate preferences for "dark mode" or "night mode" on the wiki.
Reducing and simplifying the color palette to better integrate "dark mode" and "night mode" while retaining as high contrast visibility and accessibility as possible.
Cleaning up some templates, categories, and other general maintenance activities.
Deleting old versions of images that are outdated with no meaningful content change (e.g. resizing or color tweaking) or had errors in them.
Deleting long-unused images and making changes to the image-upload page.
Updating the multimap, article template, and general help pages to reflect new or novel uses of templates and data.
Temporarily taking the wiki offline and launching the 1.43 version. (Further information about this upgrade downtime will be forthcoming in advance.)

Please let me know if you have any questions or thoughts. Happy mapping, happy creating! — Alessa _(talk) 03:11, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Announcement update: Wiki updates have been ongoing, and we are approaching the point where we need to do the server upgrades and launch the new MediaWiki version. The most time-intensive part of this is upgrading the server. Sometime during the next two weeks, the wiki will be offline for about six hours to complete the server upgrades and launch MediaWiki 1.43. The exact time will be announced a few hours beforehand, so please be aware that an extensive downtime will occur.

Thanks for your understanding as we work on our upgrades! — Alessa _(talk) 13:32, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

I am planning to undertake the upgrade on either Wed 28 Jan or Thu 29 Jan, from 19:00 UTC. The site notice will be updated as work starts, with the wiki initially going into a read-only mode before then being inaccessible for a few hours. Thanks/wangi (talk) 11:13, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Starting Wed 20:30 UTC /wangi (talk) 20:28, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Upgrade steps now complete, and monitoring the wiki server. /wangi (talk) 23:36, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

The server upgrade and MediaWiki version upgrade are completed. Most of the templates have been updated, although there are a few that will still require tweaking. A few minor updates will still occur throughout this week and weekend.

As we monitor the server post-upgrade, please let us know if you experience any issues with the site—particularly if it is failing to load, loading slowly, operated irregularly, etc. Thank you for your patience! — Alessa _(talk) 00:11, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Update as of 01 February 2026: Did you know that you can now use "dark mode" or "night mode" on the wiki? Due to MediaWiki constraints, this is only available when logged in. If you want to use "dark mode," follow these instructions (English-language version): log in → select "preferences" from your user dropdown in the upper right corner (second option) → select the "appearance" tab (from left, second tab) → scroll down to "color" (second dropdown menu) and select "dark." Even in other languages, the options should be in the same place.

There may be glitches with the "dark mode" implementation, so please let us know if you see things. More than 200 templates were rebuilt or reconfigured to adapt to this and other MediaWiki changes. Although I tested these beforehand, I am aware that there might be a minor bug here and there. As a reminder: unfortunately, we cannot deploy "dark mode" site wide due to MediaWiki constraints unless you are logged in and select this preference.

Lastly, all other things seem to be functioning well server-side with the upgrades to the server and the MediaWiki version. We will continue monitoring, but we continuing with the remaining things in our general wiki cleanup. Happy mapping! — Alessa _(talk) 00:27, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that the main page and the directory banner at the top of old forum posts are two areas where "dark mode" is still incomplete. I should have a main page revision out very soon, but the directory banner at the top of old forum posts will take a bit longer to do, because it recycles the revision dates on old forums. Thus, I will update those incrementally as old posts get archived. If you see areas of the site that are not seeming to render right, please let me know. Thank you for your patience! — Alessa _(talk) 00:35, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Feedback, questions, issues, and discussion

As always, super grateful for your (and admin more broadly) continued hard work on keeping the site and wiki up to date and functional! In terms of old images, I'm not sure if the resource icons that I ported over from the old wiki are currently being used, but I would appreciate if images of that nature could be kept as they have multifarious future possible uses. Thanks again! --User:Lithium-Ion | [1] (talk) 04:41, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. I plan to keep all the icons and have a draft of the multimap page that I'm working on that will include a gallery of icons, so that people know what they can use from we have uploaded already. Hopefully that updated page will have a ton of more utility also. — Alessa _(talk) 19:28, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Sounds good! --User:Lithium-Ion | [2] (talk) 07:28, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for the work on the updates. As of today, it seems the pictures from the Wikicommons are not loading. I imagine you are aware, but just in case I let you know. Thanks. --Izaland Terramorphing Committee (talk) 10:56, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Where and how frequently are you seeing issues with Commons images? These are actually not cached on the site, and come direct from the Commons servers. /wangi (talk) 16:37, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

I also have yet to see any issues with Commons issues. Is there a particular one or group of them that you're noticing? I just checked pages with multiple Commons images once again, and they all appeared. It is possible that the file name includes a character that is causing a foul-up, or maybe the Commons server had a blip for a bit? — Alessa _(talk) 23:15, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Now it seems to work again. Perhaps it was a momentary problem when I wrote in this page. Thank you,--Izaland Terramorphing Committee (talk) 01:13, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

The scale helper and route relation pages are now working again. /wangi (talk) 22:21, 5 February 2026 (UTC)