Edit check/Configuration

Wikimedia Foundation projects Edit check Offer people actionable feedback about Wikipedia policies while they are editing. Group: Editing Start: 2022-10-01 Team members: Benoît Evellin, David Chan, David Lynch, Esther Akinloose, Marielle Volz, Rummana Yasmeen, Nicolas Ayoub Backlog: #EditCheck Lead: Ed Sanders Management: Peter Pelberg (product), Valerie Puffet-Michel (engineering)

Edit check offers people actionable feedback about Wikipedia policies while they are editing.

This page strives to equip experienced volunteers with the information they need to ensure Edit Check is configured in ways that will promote the nuances of each project's policies and conventions.

On-wiki configuration

See also: Help:Suggestion mode#For administrators

See also: Community configuration

Edit Check can be configured in some ways on-wiki by local administrators by editing the MediaWiki:Editcheck-config.json message. This will be null initially, signifying that it is unconfigured and the Edit Check defaults should apply completely.

The message must be valid JSON , or it will be ignored and the defaults will be applied. Any unspecified values will be filled in with the default values.

A summary of the configuration of Edit Check on a given wiki can be found at Special:EditChecks. JavaScript files mentioned on that special page are module filenames in the extension's code.

Generic check configuration

This can apply to any check, unless otherwise stated in that check's section. It tends to address the meta level of check functionality: account types, experience level, parts of the document, etc.

If a parameter is not used in the local configuration, then its default value is used. Default values and their per-check overrides can be found on Special:EditChecks. All of the configuration items have to match in order for a check to show. E.g. Using both inCategory and hasTemplate in a check, would require both to be true for that check to appear.

Name	Type	Description	Default
account	String, Boolean, or Object	Specifies which account state the edit check should apply to. Valid values are "loggedin", "loggedout", false. The default false results in the edit check applying to all users. Use an object with checkMode and/or suggestionMode to set separate values per mode. A string or number applies only to check mode.	false
maximumEditCount	Integer, Boolean, or Object	Specifies an upper bound for the number of edits at which this check is shown. The default 100 means that the edit check will only be shown to users with 100 edits or fewer. The number of edits is based on user edit count and includes edits from all namespaces. Set this to false to remove the threshold. Use an object with checkMode and suggestionMode to set separate values per mode. A string or number applies only to check mode.	100
minimumEditCount	Integer, Boolean, or Object	Specifies a lower bound for the number of edits required before this check is shown. The default 0 means that the edit check will be shown to all users. The number of edits is based on user edit count and includes edits from all namespaces. Set this to false to remove the threshold. Use an object with checkMode and suggestionMode to set separate values per mode. A string or number applies only to check mode.	0
ignoreSections	Array	An array of section titles, which will be compared case-insensitively to headings. If a heading matches an item in this array, all content within that section will be ignored for checks. Each section title has to be between ", separated by a ,: ["External links", "Unsupported claims", "Discussion"]. If an empty string is present, it refers to the lead section. Use +ignoreSections and -ignoreSections to add or remove from the inherited list.	[]
ignoreLeadSection (deprecated)	Boolean	If true, the content of the lead section will be ignored for checks. A "lead section" is content that precedes the first heading in an article. An article without any headings doesn't have a lead section.	false
includeSections	Array or Boolean	An array of section titles, which will be compared case-insensitively to headings. If a heading matches an item in this array, only content within those sections will be used for checks. Each section title has to be between ", separated by a ,: ["External links", "Unsupported claims", "Discussion"]. Specify which sections this check can be shown in. An empty string is used to refer to the lead section, e.g. (['']) means only the lead section. The default false allows the check to be shown in any section. Use +includeSections and -includeSections to add or remove from the inherited list.	false
ignoreDisambiguationPages	Boolean	If true, this check won't run on disambiguation pages.	false
ignoreQuotedContent	Boolean	If true, this check will try to not run on content that's within quotes, or within a blockquote. It determines this by checking whether the start of a potential match is a quote-character or is within a pair of quote-characters. It will also not run on content within a single template. If you're editing in English it will try to accommodate single-quotes, but trailing possessive apostrophes can confuse it.	false
inCategory notInCategory	Array	Specifies category names whose presence or absence in the document model determines whether a check can be shown.	undefined
hasTemplate lacksTemplate	Array	Specifies template names whose presence or absence in the document model determines whether a check can be shown.	undefined
showAsCheck showAsSuggestion	Boolean	Whether to be shown as a check and/or suggestion. Checks are shown on content that the user has already edited in their edit session, while suggestions are shown with lower-priority across the entire article. Setting both to false will make it an experimental suggestion.	true
extraNamespaces	Object	Specifies additional namespaces where checks and suggestions should appear. For non-default namespaces the local name might need to be used, if an English alias is not available. For example: (En) "extraNamespaces": {"draft": true, "user": false} (It) "extraNamespaces": {"bozza": true, "user": false} Use +extraNamespaces and -extraNamespaces to add or remove from the inherited object.	undefined

Override the local links and descriptions

The default Descriptions and Links are written for broad applicability to all wikis in all languages.

If your wiki has more nuanced details about any Check or Suggestion, or a relevant documentation link (such as a policy, or manual of style page), then administrators can and should override the local interface strings.

Local descriptions can be found and overridden by adding ?uselang=qqx to the end of the local Special:EditChecks URL, and then using those pagenames within the MediaWiki: namespace. Keep the descriptions short so that they fit within the bottom-half of a small mobile screen.

Local links can be found within those descriptions. You need to use the same protocol-relative partial URLs that the default is using (not short internal wikilinks) for technical reasons, and so that the links are updated in all translations shown within the wiki. See this example edit for reference. Some more examples of the link-locations are provided at Help:Suggestion mode#Localize the links .

For example: The default wording and link for LLM Paste Check can be found and overridden at each wiki at MediaWiki:editcheck-copyvio-llm-description and MediaWiki:editcheck-copyvio-llm-policylink, as seen within this page with qqx.

Reference check configuration

The default configuration values are as follows:

{
    "addReference": {
        "minimumCharacters": 50,
        "beforePunctuation": false,
        "account": false,
        "maximumEditCount": 100,
        "ignoreSections": [],
        "ignoreLeadSection": false
    }
}

Any of these values can be overwritten on the wiki if required. For example:

{
    "addReference": {
        "minimumCharacters": 40,
        "beforePunctuation": true,
        "ignoreSections": [ "External links", "Unsupported claims", "Discussion" ],
        "ignoreLeadSection": true
    }
}

This would change the minimum number of characters required before the Reference Check triggers to 40, have it insert its citations before the terminal punctuation rather than after, and ignore content added within the lead section and several other listed sections.

Configurable values

These are in addition to the generic configurable values listed above.

Name	Default	Description
beforePunctuation	false	Specify whether the citation should appear before or after a sentence's terminal punctuation. Before is the style used at the French Wikipedia: "Sentence." After is the style used at the English Wikipedia: "Sentence.". The default is false, resulting in the style used at most Wikipedias, including the English Wikipedia.
minimumCharacters	50 (As of 2023)	The smallest string of consecutive characters that will prompt a recommendation to add a citation. This should generally be small enough to trigger for most additions of significant new information, but big enough not to trigger for copyediting, in the local language.

Tone check configuration

These are in addition to the generic configurable values listed above.

Name	Default	Description
predictionThreshold	0.8	Specify the confidence score required from the model for a Tone Check to be shown, from 0.0 to 1.0. This isn't quite "catch x% of tone violations", but rather "of the potential tone issues the model identifies, only show Tone Check to people when the model is ≥x% confident about its assessment." The default is 0.8, which testing suggests aligns with edit-categorization by volunteers 95% of the time.

TextMatch configuration

The TextMatch page has additional details on the textMatch feature, which can be used to create new entirely-local types of checks.

How configs are combined

The special * config item can be used to set default values that apply to all other checks.

This example would set all checks to show only for logged in users, with less than 1,000,000 edits, and not in the "External links" and "References" sections. It then overrides that for the reference check, so it only shows for users with less than 10 edits.

{
    "*": {
        "account": "loggedin",
        "maximumEditCount": 1000000,
        "ignoreSections": [ "External links", "References" ]
    },
    "addReference": {
        "maximumEditCount": 10
    }
}

The final config for any given check is built by combining the defaults for that check, the * values, and the specific values for that check. Later items will override earlier ones. Unless otherwise specified, later values will completely replace earlier ones. To change this behavior, since 2026-10-08, item names can be prepended with + and -.

• +key with an array adds items with no duplicates. With an object, it merges keys, and nested keys can also use + and -.
• -key with an array value removes those items. With an object value, give the key names to remove. A single string is accepted instead of an array.
• +key on a string, number or boolean just replaces the value, and logs a console warning. -key does nothing if there is no inherited value.
• Inside one config object, plain keys apply first, then +, then -.
• It is the same syntax as + in operations/mediawiki-config. Some admins will know it from there.

This example would tell all checks to be ignored in the "References" section, apart from externalLink checks which aren't ignored there but are ignored in an "External links" section, and which are also allowed to be used in the draft namespace:

{
    "*": {
        "+ignoreSections": [ "References" ]
    },
    "externalLink": {
        "+ignoreSections": [ "External links" ],
        "-ignoreSections": "References",
        "+extraNamespaces": { "draft": true }
    }
}

The Special:EditChecks page can be used to evaluate the final config for a check.

Site-level configuration

These values can be set in the site-level configuration in LocalSettings.php.

Config	Meaning	Default
VisualEditorEditCheck	Enables the feature	false
VisualEditorEditCheckTagging	Tags edits made related to edit check features	false

Suggestion Mode

"Checks" are shown when they relate to content that the editor has edited in their current editing session. When suggestion mode is enabled, "suggestions" will be shown across the entire article.

Suggestions can have separate account-level limits from checks for account, maximumEditCount, minimumEditCount by setting these as objects with checkMode, suggestionMode.

When plain strings or numbers are used the limits only apply to check mode.

{
    "addReference": {
        "account": {
            "checkMode": "loggedin",
            "suggestionMode": "loggedout"
        },
        "maximumEditCount": {
            "checkMode": 10,
            "suggestionMode": 0
        },
        "minimumEditCount": {
            "checkMode": 5,
            "suggestionMode": 1
        }
    }
}

A given edit check can be restricted to only appear in a certain mode with the showAsCheck and showAsSuggestion configuration values.

Getting help

• Any administrator at your wiki can configure this. You can find a list of admins on your wiki by searching for Special:ListAdmins.
• If your wiki is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation but is not a Wikipedia, you will need to request that Edit Check be deployed at your wiki. Please follow the process at m:Requesting wiki configuration changes. Tag the Phabricator ticket with all the following tags: #editcheck, #wikimedia-site-requests.