This August, Esra'a Al Shafei was replaced on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees by Mayree Clark. Esra'a is a Bahraini civil rights activist who served on an "Appointed Seat" on the Board of Trustees for nearly 8 years (with nine years being the current term limit). She first joined the Board in December 2017; only two current BoT members have served for longer. A board resolution notes that it was Esra'a who "informed the Chair of the Board of her decision to resign from the Board", and OwenBlacker confirmed in a comment that she "chose to stand down voluntarily before the end of her term".

The remainder of her term, until December 2026, will be served by Mayree Clark. Mayree currently serves on the Deutsche Bank AG Supervisory Board, and has previously served on the boards of various financial, software and philanthropic organisations. In Wikimedia spaces, Mayree was most prominently a member of Wikimedia Endowment Board since 2024.

According to a press release by the Foundation, Board Chair Nataliia Tymkiv said

"Mayree will strengthen the connection between the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Endowment, as we share a commitment to protect the sustainability and future of the Wikimedia projects in a pivotal moment for access to knowledge."

This news came mere weeks before the Board of Trustees made controversial changes to the 2025 BoT elections. For further coverage of those, see Interview and Special report in this issue. – S, H

WMF announced that the temporary accounts feature (formerly known as IP masking) will be rolled out on English Wikipedia on November 4. It involves restricting the ability to view the IP addresses of logged-out editors; only users who are either admins or hold the newly created "Temporary account IP viewer" user right will be able to do so. Their usage of the "IP Information tool" also has to abide by a new WMF policy.

Temporary accounts were last covered by The Signpost in the 2 October and 27 February issues. – B, S, H

A graph generated by TestUser345 and brought to the attention of The Signpost shows that the number of edits made by accounts blocked due to large language model usage is doubling around every 100 days, per this SQL query. Note the graph has a logarithmic scale on the right-hand axis. – B

The Arbitration Committee announced the resignation of members Worm That Turned and Liz. Both attained seats in the December 2024 election (see prior Signpost coverage).

Barring any more changes, there will be nine vacant seats at the upcoming December elections, joining the 6 currently-seated members. For comparison, the 2023 and 2024 elections appointed 8 and 9 Arbitrators, respectively. – B, S

Partially coinciding with the above, the next Administrator Elections are scheduled to be held in December 2025. The Call for Candidates is scheduled to open from 25 November, with candidate sign ups open for a week. After the July 2025 elections, there were some tweaks to the Admin Elections process via the RFC phase. – S

The Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC) was appointed. The Committee was announced in 2024, with the appointment process stretching out for half a year. GRDC was last covered by The Signpost in the April 2025 issue.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) made its first ruling in August, declaring systemic failure on the Uzbek Wikipedia. U4C also appointed two non-voting members - Denis Barthel (talk · contribs) and Ferien (talk · contribs). The Committee was last covered by The Signpost in the August 2025 issue.

Earlier this year, three overlapping community RFCs were initiated regarding the future of Wikispore and Wikinews. The future of the two projects came under jeopardy with two recent consultations and subsequent announcements from the Board of Trustees' Sister Projects Task Force. It is currently unclear what results from these proposals, or the initial consultations. The Task Force was last covered by The Signpost in the July 2025 issue.

The Affiliations Committee (AffCom) recently announced a pause on recognition of new User Groups, Chapters, and Thematic Organizations until March 31, 2026. The announcement cited a paper co-written by WMF staff and affiliate leaders about the Wikimedia movement's affiliate ecosystem. The Committee was last covered by The Signpost in the 1 May 2025 issue.

Earlier this month, the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) made nine recommendations to the Product and Technology department about how to improve product updates and community trust. The council was formed in October 2024 in a one year pilot, it is unclear what happens to it now. The PTAC was last covered by The Signpost in the 27 February 2025 issue. – S

Here is some news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletins of the last 6 months.

Dark Mode will be rolled out on all remaining Wikimedia sites on October 29.

Search Suggestions was deployed on English Wikipedia, giving logged-out users article suggestions on the search bar. In September, the Growth team rolled out "Add a Link" to all users on English Wikipedia. This feature gives AI recommendations to potential editors for potential links that could be added to articles.

Last month, the Community Tech team announced a new extension for the Community Wishlist. In particular, the team seeks feedback on Multiple Watchlists, a feature to allow editors to maintain multiple private watchlists. Earlier this year, a pilot project was started on English Wikipedia to support community requests for resources.

In July, the Knowledge Equity Fund (launched in 2020 with $4.5 million) announced a Final Round of grants, distributing its remaining funds of USD 819,000 in form of "top up grants" to six of its previously selected final grantees (Signpost coverage) and four "Connected Grants" to Wikimedia movement organisations "who will pair closely with one of the grantees to collaborate together", the latter being a reaction to community feedback.

Wikimania 2026 will be held in Paris from 21 July to 25 July 2026. Scholarships for the conference are currently open, and will close on 31 October 2025. – S, H

• Last month, Ergo Sum (talk · contribs) was desysopped after a recall petition was certified.
• The first Request for adminship since April (stats, see footnote re July elections) was successful. The Signpost welcomes our newest administrator, Toadspike, selected by a community vote of 245 support, 0 oppose, 1 neutral. It was the fourth successful Request for adminship this year.