Wikimedia Toolforge: Tools for Wikipedia Editors and Developers

When you edit Wikipedia, you’re using more than just a web browser—you’re interacting with a network of Wikimedia Toolforge, a free, open platform that hosts tools built by volunteers to automate, analyze, and improve Wikipedia. Also known as Toolforge, it’s the behind-the-scenes engine powering bots that fight spam, scripts that fix broken links, and dashboards that track edits across hundreds of language editions. This isn’t fancy software—it’s practical, volunteer-built tech that keeps Wikipedia clean, accurate, and fast.

Toolforge runs on the same open-source foundation as Wikipedia itself: MediaWiki. It lets developers and editors host tools without needing their own servers. Want to build a bot that reverts vandalism? You can deploy it here. Need a dashboard that shows which articles in your region are missing citations? Toolforge hosts it. Tools like CirrusSearch, the custom search engine behind Wikipedia’s results and TemplateWizard, a form-based tool that helps editors create templates without coding errors were built and are maintained on platforms like Toolforge. These aren’t just add-ons—they’re essential infrastructure. Without Toolforge, many of the automated systems that protect Wikipedia from spam, bias, and errors wouldn’t exist.

Toolforge doesn’t just serve coders. Editors use its tools every day—checking edit histories with diff viewers, spotting geographic gaps in coverage, or verifying sources during breaking news. Even if you’ve never written a line of code, you’ve benefited from something built here. The tools hosted here are free, public, and community-owned. They’re built by librarians, students, and retired engineers who care more about accuracy than recognition. And they’re always evolving. The WMF engineering roadmap, the plan guiding future improvements to Wikipedia’s core software, regularly includes updates to Toolforge’s infrastructure to make it faster and more reliable.

Below, you’ll find articles that dig into how these tools work, who builds them, and why they matter. From bots that fix typos to dashboards that track global editing trends, these are the unsung systems keeping Wikipedia alive.