Talk:VisualEditor/Suggestion Mode

Feedback - new suggestion types and feature requests

We've collected a lot of ideas for possible suggestion types, including types that could be locally created using the textmatch feature, and more complex types that would require assistance from developers (staff or volunteer) to create custom code for. You can see the existing lists at Edit check/Ideas, and some more ideas at T360489 ("Generate and present edit suggestions at scale"). Please share any ideas you have, here or in either of those locations.

Here is the list of features the team is currently working on: Adding the ability to include links within the text-match types of Suggestions (e.g. The "English variant specified" type will link to MOS:RETAIN next week) (T416511); Adding the editsuggestion-visible tag to monitor edits that are made when any Suggestions have been seen (T413419); Adding the ability to see the specific suggestions someone acted on within a given edit session (T416535); Improving the feedback flow to be more streamlined (T401739); Adding the ability to toggle the visibility of the Suggestions cards entirely (T415589). Please let us know what features you'd like to see added or tweaked? Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:25, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

It is already mentioned in ideas but I want to emphasize that a way to surface typos and fixing spelling mistakes would be really nice as a small thing that would be gratifying to new users, it could even enable itself only and use browser's interface even. Ladsgroup (talk) 17:47, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Ladsgroup - I agree. And actually, those can likely be implemented using the TextMatch feature, which is configured at w:MediaWiki:Editcheck-config.json. For example, hewiki has already implemented some rules similar to those you're describing. We're encouraging the community to add to/adjust their wiki's respective TextMatch rules however they feel is appropriate.

If you have a chance to look at the documentation or write a rule yourself, please do share if you think of any additional TextMatch capabilities you think could help with the use cases you're describing. Thank you! CMedelius-WMF (talk) 03:49, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

General feedback

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T420495

I think this feature might be a problem the way it’s implemented now.

When I click on “Edit”, I usually already have something specific in mind that I want to edit and am not looking for suggestions. I assume most users click “Edit” not out of idle curiosity, but for a specific reason. In this case, the suggestions aren’t directly relevant to me.

Furthermore, this could prompt me to apply the changes anyways, which groups together multiple most likely unrelated changes into one. It would be better to add citations in a separate edit than e.g. fixing a typo; we don’t want edit summaries like Various changes or Fixed typo and added 3 citations and removed dead link and adjusted grammar in lead section.

A possible remedy might be a dedicated button for suggested edits, or a prompt after editing to fix some minor things as well.

Another possibility is to internally separate any user edits from the suggested edits and produce multiple edit actions once the user saves their edit. This would probably require substantial changes to the editor, though. Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything (talk) 01:49, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree with your comments on Suggested Edits. I think that they need to provide instructions to users on how to disable it. Rogermx (talk) 15:42, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, both.

Re: "When I click on “Edit”, I usually already have something specific in mind that I want to edit and am not looking for suggestions. - We appreciate you raising this point. Inside of it, I believe you are highlighting the importance of striking a balance that simultaneously enables both:

• People who tap edit out of curiosity, can discover a constructive change that they are inspired to Publish. (Especially complete-newcomers, who will eventually become the primary audience of some aspects of this feature)
• People who, like you, arrive into the editing interface knowing what you're wanting to edit, to do so without as little friction/distraction as possible.

This is something we are thinking about a lot, and are partially covering with the upcoming on/off toggle in the form of a dedicated toolbar button (linked below). If you have more ideas about how we could meet that balance well (within the user interfaces on desktop and mobile), please do share them.

Re: "I assume most users click “Edit” not out of idle curiosity, but for a specific reason." - Surprisingly, there are a very large number of newcomers who click "Edit" and then don't attempt to save anything. We've measured that everyday 150,000–200,000 mobile web edit sessions end with someone abandoning the editing interface (i.e. people who abandon the interface without making a change more than 2 seconds after the editing interface reaches a 'ready' state). There are some graphs and details in this page section and many more in or linked from this summary post.

Re: "[this] groups together multiple most likely unrelated changes into one. It would be better to add citations in a separate edit than e.g. fixing a typo" - To be doubly sure I'm following here, could you please share what (if anything) the below misses/misinterprets about what you're saying?

• "It's important that edit summaries describe all of the distinct changes someone is making in an edit. This way, the people reviewing those edits can effectively moderate them. I wonder/worry whether this experience could cause newcomers to make many changes in a single edit without adequately describing them in the edit summaries."
• "More broadly, I think we ought to monitor how/if this feature changes the size/complexity of edits people are publishing because I think there is a relationship between edit size/complexity and edit quality."

[I have more thoughts/questions here, but I'll wait for your reply before sharing them.]

Re: disable/toggle the Beta Feature (and the eventual launched feature): The team is currently working on the method to toggle the feature on/off in phab:T415589 ("Suggestion Mode: Find a way to toggle suggestion mode on/off on mobile + desktop") and it should be available fairly soon.  

Please do keep the feedback coming, even beyond my questions here, if you continue to experiment with the feature. Detailed feedback is greatly appreciated. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:29, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

When I click on “Edit”, I usually already have something specific in mind that I want to edit and am not looking for suggestions. agree! Prototyperspective (talk) 23:46, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Using with wide display

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T415589

On Vector 2022, I have the width set to Wide instead of Standard. When I open the visual editor, it squishes the entire article to create the space for the cards. I had to turn the feature off because the width is more important to me than the suggestions. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:32, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien thank you for being in touch about this. The tradeoff you described is not one we'd like for you/people to experience.

Accordingly, we're working on a fix in phab:T415589...we will post here once there is something ready for you to try. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Feedback - layout issues once editing is completed

When this feature is turned off in Vector 2022, once I'm done editing, the page width ratio remains the same. It scuffs the layout and squishes the table of contents once it reappears. The right sidebar also seems to remain missing even though I have it toggled to on. Refreshing the page after editing is done seems to revert the layout back to your preferences. Fallbackintoreality (talk) 19:12, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for this feedback/bug-report, it is appreciated.

Please could you share some details about your editing configuration, so that we can try to reproduce this behaviour you describe? - It would be helpful to know: (1) Which browser/OS are you using? (2) Which page(s) were you editing where you noticed these problems, and has it occurred more than once? (I.e. I'm wondering if it might be a "browser cache" related bug, and perhaps only happens a single time), (3) Are you using the "standard" or "wide" setting in your Appearance menu?

E.g. I tried to reproduce the bugs by editing w:Video design, with the "wide" setting, and my "Tools" menu pinned-open, in Firefox (in Linux). However, after I published an edit, the TOC re-appeared at the normal size, and the pinned Tools menu immediately reappeared. (Sidenote: The pinned-menus are hidden during editing, so that they don't overlap with the Suggestion cards).

If it would be helpful/easier to share screenshots as part of your reply, I'll note that you can upload files to phab:file (which may be preferable to using external sites).

Thanks again, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:12, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I disabled it because

It was talking too much of the screen (on pl wiki), offering suggestions I don't need (as an experienced editor) and I didn't see an easy way to close the popups and get the 1/5 screen back. Right now it's too intrusive to be useful for anyone but new editors. Piotrus (talk) 00:59, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree – I do like seeing them sometimes, e.g. if I find an article that I want to improve, I can use it to quickly find uncited sentences, clunky sentences and other things. But most of the time I don't want it enabled as I just want to edit an article. Would be nice to have a button to toggle it somewhere. GearsDatapacks (talk) 06:41, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

@Piotrus and @GearsDatapacks, thank you both.

Re: easy way to close - There will be a simple on/off toggle coming later this week (as a button in the Toolbar) that works per-edit-session (phab:T420245); then in the near future, that button will be enhanced to have a setting-memory (for more than per-edit-session) and then later to have a numerical count overlay (to show how many Suggestions there are on a page, so that editors who've hidden the Suggestions can be reminded to potentially toggle it on, within that article) (phab:T415589).

Re: Right now it's too intrusive to be useful for anyone but new editors - it is currently only available as a Beta Feature, so that experienced editors like yourselves can share feedback on any kinds of potential-improvements, or bug-reports. In the future we plan to make it available to newcomers. It is also already possible for each community to create custom local Suggestions (see Help:Suggestion mode#Create custom local types of Suggestions), some of which might be more complicated and thus only appropriate to be shown to experienced editors (I.e. communities can already each configure things like "maximum edit count" or "minimum edit count" for a Suggestion type to be shown to someone). There's a listing of more ideas for potential types of at Edit check/Ideas which we'd welcome your additions to. Please do share any further thoughts you each have on how we can make this feature more useful to everyone, over the months ahead.

Re: I do like seeing them sometimes […] - thank you for the positive feedback, and details on which types you are finding to be especially useful to you. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I will try to take a look when the QoL features are live; for now it was so intrusive I disabled the feature to auto-load all beta stuff that I had active on pl wiki... I do agree that this has potential to be very useful, and it may be a good tool to enable by default for new editors (as long as there is obvious and easy way to toggle it off for a session or permanently). Piotrus (talk) 02:06, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I've been enjoying Suggestion Mode as an experienced editor, and I'm looking forward to it getting rolled out to newcomers. It helps me catch extra little things to fix while I'm working on an article, such as duplicate wikilinks and external links within body text. I do appreciate the on/off button, especially for very long articles that can get very slow in VisualEditor mode. Dreamyshade (talk) 22:25, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Suggestion to improve citation recommendations in Suggestion Mode

Hello everyone,

I would like to propose a potential improvement to the Suggestion Mode feature in VisualEditor.

Currently, Suggestion Mode aims to help editors identify areas of articles that need attention, such as missing citations or content improvements. As described in the project, the goal is to use machine learning to surface useful editing tasks rather than directly generating edits.

Building on this idea, I suggest enhancing the “add citation” recommendations by integrating an AI-assisted system that can propose reliable sources for the specific statement in question. Instead of only flagging that a citation is needed, the tool could:

• Analyze the sentence or paragraph lacking a citation
• Suggest a small set of high-quality, relevant sources (e.g., academic publications, reputable news outlets, or books)
• Allow the editor to review, select, and insert the citation manually

This would not replace human judgment, but rather support editors—especially newcomers—in understanding where information comes from and how to properly reference it.

Such a feature could have several benefits:

• Lower the barrier for new contributors who struggle with sourcing
• Improve article verifiability and reliability
• Speed up the editing workflow without removing editorial control

Of course, this would need to be implemented carefully, ensuring that:

• Sources are trustworthy and policy-compliant
• Editors remain fully responsible for verifying and selecting references
• The system is transparent about how suggestions are generated

In summary, Suggestion Mode could evolve from highlighting problems to actively assisting in solving them—while still respecting Wikipedia’s core principles.

I would be interested to hear thoughts from others on the feasibility, risks, and potential design of such a feature.

Thank you! Rastrillero4K (talk) 08:45, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't think that would be a good idea; it would newer encourage users to just add the suggested citation without reviewing whether it actually supports the claims being made. It also doesn't really help new users learn how to add citations, because they would just be blindly following the AI. English Wikipedia has a strict anti-LLM policy, and I imagine other projects do as well. AI-generated content almost always results in citations which reference fictional material, or that don't properly support the text they are citing.

Sidenote: please don't use AI to generate your talk page comments. GearsDatapacks (talk) 09:39, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

@Rastrillero4K, very interesting, and I understand the risk involved as @GearsDatapacks has pointed out.

That said, could we look into:

1. TWL, aka the The Wikipedia Library, our Biblioteca . Is it feasible that quasi-AI recommendation will be rooted in TWL to point out sources-to-be? Can we look up at our database of selected resources as returning reliable source in better scope, when we apply a clever query?
2. to hedge risks, is it a good idea that we somehow connect Suggestion Mode and the Personal Homepage functionality? I mean, do we need to separate Suggested tasks by your wiki-life time, so that adding sources as pointed out here, will be reserved to editors with eg 500+ edit counts?

Sidenote: the above idea would benefit very minimum to my peers on Jawp (Wikipedia/ja) unfortunately, as TWL has almost no external bibliographic and academic database sponsored for Japanese language. /:

Then, if Suggestion mode be successful in the above scenario, won't it support those who negotiate sponsorship with any biblio database in many languages? Perhaps in the region covered by the m:ESEAP Hub, too?

--Omotecho (talk) 12:15, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback — I understand the concerns raised about blind citation and the risks associated with LLM-generated content. To clarify, my original idea was not to replace human judgment or editorial responsibility, but rather to assist editors (especially newer ones) in finding potential sources, not inserting them automatically. I completely agree that any suggested citation must be carefully reviewed before being added. I think the main value could be in a suggestion layer, similar to how some tools already recommend edits, but with strict safeguards:

1. Suggestions should never be auto-inserted.
2. Sources could be limited to already vetted databases (for example, resources available through The Wikipedia Library).
3. The feature could be restricted to more experienced editors, or gradually introduced based on edit count or experience level.

In that sense, the goal would not be to “automate citations”, but to reduce the friction in locating reliable sources, while still requiring full human verification. I also find the idea of integrating this with TWL very interesting, since grounding suggestions in curated databases could significantly reduce the risk of unreliable or fabricated references. Ultimately, I agree that any implementation should be cautious and aligned with existing policies — but I do think there may be room to explore AI-assisted discovery tools that support, rather than replace, the editorial process. Happy to hear more thoughts on this. Rastrillero4K (talk) 08:11, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Rastrillero4K, so appreciating that you sorted out challenges and could-be windows for further exploration: From among those three (3) options you showed, my hunch is that #4, or going rather slowly is a better option.

I have seen many new editors leave/un-respond after when editor(s) with longer wiki-lifetime has tried to "talk to the newer one", but in fact, had flatten the other party's hopes and aspirations: that is why I am supporting the Suggested Edits feature on the hope that new editors will realize they are self-training themselves for the first 2-3 weeks to start as editors, with that feature.

For people with 3,000+ edit counts: Will the Suggested Edits feature a good training to how better we will "host" new editors as our future peers? Means, are we good enough to assist a new editor for any points they are uncertain about, when they are responding to a task on Suggested Edit feature ?

The Five pillars are good, and to be fair to ~500 edit-counts users, it is not written very inclusive on its designated pages, as they are a patchwork of guidance and advices accumulated in 25 us for enwp/jawp. Many links are not quite intuitively comprehensible, if I recall my own first 1-5 months on Japanese Wikipedia.

I am a bit sceptic if we, who had stayed longer as Wikimedians than the ones we try to "help", are experienced or trained to bee good tutors. And the skills we the old bones hold onto is not better than those of the users who arrive later, like Dara mining with AI-assisted tools.

Yes, those who came earlier like myself better be more humble, if we really understand what new generation could *support/lead* us as better mastering AI-assisted data excavation.

I am excited to see how we users and Wikimedia Projects will evolve in the AI age, and that will include AI-assisted search for applicable and reliable information sources. (= --Omotecho (talk) 17:14, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, this is a very insightful perspective.

I especially agree with the point that the challenge is not only technological, but also social and educational. Many newcomers do not leave because they lack interest, but because Wikipedia can sometimes feel overwhelming, fragmented, or difficult to navigate during the first weeks.

I think that is where carefully-designed AI-assisted tools might become useful — not as replacements for editors or mentors, but as support systems that reduce friction for new contributors while they learn community norms and policies.

Your point about experienced editors also resonates with me. Wikimedia communities have accumulated enormous knowledge over decades, but transmitting that knowledge in an accessible and welcoming way is not always easy. Perhaps AI-assisted guidance could also help bridge that gap by making policies, workflows, and sourcing practices more understandable to newcomers.

I also strongly agree that experienced editors should remain humble in the AI era. New generations of contributors may arrive with different technical skills and research methods, including AI-assisted discovery and analysis tools. The challenge will be finding ways to integrate those capabilities responsibly while preserving Wikipedia’s core principles of verification, transparency, and human editorial judgment.

So maybe the question is not “Should AI edit Wikipedia?”, but rather:

“How can Wikimedia projects use AI carefully to help humans become better editors?”

I think exploring AI-assisted source discovery through curated environments like TWL, with strong human oversight, could be one possible path worth discussing further. ~2026-28216-56 (talk) 07:58, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Rastrillero4K, you may be interested in en:Wikipedia:WikiProject AI Tools, where a number of editors are developing and trying out editing workflow tools that incorporate LLMs. Individual editors can try a much wider range of experiments than the foundation, at a much smaller scale. For example, so far I've found a citation-checking tool (en:User:Alaexis/AI Source Verification) helpful, while a citation-finding tool (en:User:Alaexis/CNfirmed) was generally not helpful. You could try adapting the code for CNfirmed to create your own vision of how an automated "add a citation" tool could work, and post it at en:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject AI Tools for other people to try. Dreamyshade (talk) 22:17, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Prompt text for Add a reference

Often, when you find a source for an uncited paragraph, it does not fully support the text. New editors often do not change the text to align with the citation they found.

Could the prompt editors get include something like: "Do not forget to update the text based on your new source"?

Is that sufficiently clear? Tried to keep it concise. Femke (talk) 09:28, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks again! I've now added this into phab:T431375 where we're discussing improvements to that Suggestion's wording. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:11, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Update needed as a suggestion?

I could have sworn this was a thing already, but I cannot find any image of it on Commons, and cannot trigger this on Spanish Wikipedia, where I got other suggestions last week.

It would be great if we can show suggestions that flag 'update needed' tags in the first instance, maybe for editors with between 10 and 100 edits. It's a fairly easy task, in the sense that you get an example citation for the old data, so you often just have to find a newer version of that source. Not as easy as some of the other tasks, but it would be good to bring people on a learning trajectory.

If that works well, a machine learning algorithm might be able to surface further instances of possible dated information. Femke (talk) 21:07, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

That's partially covered at phab:T399781, but might need a more specific Task. [I thought there was already a task specifically about both w:en:Template:Update_inline and w:en:Template:As of, but I cannot find it currently. I'll look again later, and create one if needed.] Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 13:57, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

How do you install "Suggesting Mode". How do you use it? I need help please

I read through the project page and can't figure out how to "install" "Suggesting Mode" for use. As I have been an editor for years (first edit in 2007) and have designed, documented, and implemented systems in the real world for many years, so I have not just fallen off the wiki turnup truck. But I just can figure out how to install "Suggesting Mode" and how to use it. It seems pretty clear that putting a User Script somewhere is part of implementation. I have read the section "User Script" and the direction given there is very thin and ambiguous. Whoever wrote this "User Script" documentation is assuming that the user/editor who being installing this "feature" (or whatever it is called) can readily read their tech talk "shorthand". I characterize this type of documentation was written by some "too too close" to the code and assumes (you know what assume means) that the edit has the same "closeness" and perfect understands the tech talk "shorthand". I'm experienced and I don't understand the tech talk shorthand.

Going over the directions in the User Script section I am pointing out the vagueness in the tech talk shorthand. Here are the directions:

First, install the script - OK, that is the task involved, good start. And I anticipated that the following would walk me through the process (like real user documentation should do)

Visit: meta:Special:MyPage/global.js - OK that is good direction (however, I am not sure why I am visting there)

Tap Edit source - hmm. Where do I tap "Edit source"? Is on the meta:Special"myPage/global.js? I don't see any where to "Tap" Edit source, about the " source"? Am I supposed to be editing "source code". What is this "source" Paste the following code: Good, I see the "code" (is this a user script) Where do I paste this code? What page? mw.loader.load( 'https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:DLynch_(WMF)/alwaysbesuggesting.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' ); Tap Publish changes: "Tap" (is that actually what you do?) isn't it more like select "Publish changes" (but I am just guessing here). And again where is it that I can "Tap" Publish changes. Yes Done: Yes? Done? --- The direction thats was suppose to help with the task "install the script" creates a lot of questions on how to do what and where to what. And, what exactly have I "done".

I hate to point out the obvious, well, it is what is obvious to me, that much of Wikipedia's "user document" is not well written (yes, I know, this situation is edemic in the software development process throughout the industry. Code is important, user documentation not so much). As I said before, the user documentation always appears to be written by someone who "is standing too close the to the code and the process involved. They intimately understand the entire thing. They are experts without a doubt, however, they are not able to effectively communicat in their creation of useful user documentation. If a development like "Suggestion Mode" is nicely designed and implemented, if the user documentation is just one big puzzle, it is not likely that the development will be implemented and use. Implemented and used. Isn't that the objective wikipedia developer are trying to achieve? Just saying.

Could someone please help me and explain exactly what I need to do in order to use "Suggestion Mode" and where I would use it. (I am guessing it is an editing tool to aid editors in writing Wikipedia Articles?

Could some also revised the section "User Script' (that's a pretty vague section title) to reflect the necessary, comprehensive user documentation that can be easily understood?

Osomite ^hablemos 00:51, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

@Osomite: first, I'm sorry for the confusion you experienced in trying to enable Suggestion Mode. Second, thank you for taking the time to share this confusion with us! You doing so is precisely what we need to make the feature as useful as possible, along with the documentation people might need to understand it.

Now, to enable Suggestion Mode, could you please try the following and let me know what (if any) issues you run into?

1. Visit Beta Features on any Wikipedia of your choosing
2. Locate the "Suggestion mode" feature
3. Check the box that appears next to it
4. Tap the Save button at the bottom of the page
5. Open any Wikipedia article using the Visual Editor
6. Notice the lightbulb icon (cdxIconLightbulb ) in the edit toolbar. This confirms you've successfully enabled Suggestion Mode.
7. If you see a number on the icon, that means there are edit suggestions available within the article you're editing
8. ✅ That's it!

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 04:57, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Ok! I've updated the project page in way that, hopefully, prevent other people from experiencing the confusion you did, @Osomite. Could you please let me know what (if anything) else you think could further clarify the steps needed to enable Suggestion Mode? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

namespaces configuration

on it.wiki Suggestion Mode is currently only active in the main namespace. can we have some configuration to enable it in other namespaces (Draft and User sandboxes)? thanks! Valepert (talk) 10:47, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

@Valepert Thank you for this request. A few other wikis have requested similar functionality, and the team is working on it in phab:T400506 ("Enable volunteers to configure what namespaces Edit Checks have the potential to show within") and the connected tasks.

The Draft namespace use-case should be easy and coming soon, if I remember the technical discussions correctly.

The User sandbox use-case is more complicated because there are so many ways that editors use subpages of their userpage, and not much consistency regarding templates/categories for tagging "draft articles" in particular, across languages. (e.g. only 21 Wikipedias use Template:Draft article (d:Q19723431). But I've added the request and my notes into the sub-task phab:T422435, for the team to continue investigating options. Thanks again! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Nice, I just came here to ask about the possibility of enabling Suggestion Mode in the Draft namespace on English Wikipedia for people who have opted into the beta. I believe Suggestion Mode will be especially helpful for editors drafting their first articles, so I'm interested in seeing how it behaves while I review and fix drafts. Happy to hear that this option is in progress! Dreamyshade (talk) 07:11, 6 August 2026 (UTC)