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On March 30, 2026, the Wikimedia Foundation decided to apply a global ban to a group of users who were administrators and highly active editors on the Serbian Wikipedia, with some of those being active in other Wikimedia projects, as well. Serbian magazine Vreme reported the news, and reached out for further comments to fellow sr.wiki admin and Wikimedia Serbia board member Filip Maljković – known as dungodung on-wiki.
At least six users received a global ban, including:
As per the WMF Global Ban Policy, global bans from the WMF "are considered a last resort and are generally implemented upon receipt of complaint, investigation, extensive review and explicit approval by several Foundation staff members", in order to protect the community and in response to serious violations of their Terms of Use; however, the banning process itself does not automatically indicate any kind of guilt or wrongdoing. Moreover, in contrast with other user-generated content platforms and social media, user account contributions on Wikimedia projects remain fully accessible for examination.
As usual for WMF bans, there is no public case evaluation or explanation, and Maljković told Vreme that neither he, nor Wikimedia Serbia, have any information about how the bans took place. However, it is likely that this decision has been influenced by ongoing controversy about coordinated efforts to promote right-wing bias, nationalist views and historical revisionism on the Serbian Wikipedia. The 2013 Meta-Wiki request for comment on Croatian Wikipedia raised concerns about far-right propaganda on the Croatian Wikipedia, similarly leading to a number of global bans and even an independent report by the WMF itself. (Serbo-Croatian is its own main language; both Serbs and Croats understand it, while Serbs speak in Serbian language and Croats speak in Croatian language.) The Signpost has covered this over the years:
The aforementioned 2021 report acknowledged that the Serbian Wikipedia, which currently hosts over 713,000 articles and has just 11 active admins, was also susceptible to nationalist bias and historical revisionism. The academic report noted by The Signpost in 2024 asserted that a "cabal [of nationalist editors] seized complete control of the governance of the encyclopedia" through administrative actions such as bans and blocks and "operated a network of fake accounts", i.e. sockpuppets, to retain control.
A 2024 inquiry published by Vreme questioned the adherence of sr.wiki to neutrality policies, while highlighting several examples of articles that were seemingly influenced by nationalist rhetoric and revisionism, particularly in relation to the Yugoslav Wars and the war crimes committed during them.
Another investigation published in 2025 by Belgrade-based magazine Radar also raised concerns about political bias within editorial practices, noting how pages involving the ongoing anti-corruption protests in the country reportedly included language and framing aligned with pro-government narratives.
An anonymous user contacted by Vreme stated that the global bans are "a huge success for freedom of knowledge and opinion" and that the Serbian Wikipedia was used as a tool to "spread radicalism", while also acknowledging that "a lot of work is still needed to repair the damage". – BR, O, B
Following months of lengthy discussions within the community, on March 20 Wikipedia officially updated their policy on writing articles with large language models, effectively banning the use of LLMs to write or expand articles, bar a few exceptions. The news have first been reported by 404 Media (free subscription required, followed by The Guardian (at this link), CNET (here) and PC Magazine (here), among others.
Following the update, the policy now states as follows:
Text generated by large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, or Grammarly often violates several of Wikipedia's core content policies. For this reason, the use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited, save for these two exceptions:
- Editors are permitted to use LLMs to suggest basic copyedits to their own writing, and to incorporate some of them after human review, provided the LLM does not introduce content of its own. Caution is required, because LLMs can go beyond what is asked of them and can change the meaning of the text such that it is not supported by the sources cited.
- Editors are permitted to use LLMs to translate articles from another language's Wikipedia into the English Wikipedia, but must follow the guidance laid out at Wikipedia:LLM-assisted translation.
The encyclopedia and its editors have had quite a rocky relationship with AI for a while now: back in June 2025, the Web Team decided to suspend a proposed trial that would have had introduced AI-generated summaries on the top of Wikipedia articles, following widespread backlash from the community. Then, in October of the same year, an official WMF report highlighted a worrying decline in traffic on Wikipedia pages due to "the impact of generative AI and social media".
As per the final RfC on the matter, discussions have been in place since December 2025 RfC about replacing WP:NEWLLM with a new policy that would focus on limiting large-scale, disruptive use of LLMs to generate new content, in order to allow volunteers to save time from further clean-up activities and prevent new users from adding hallucinated sources or other policy-violating content, while also protecting users from unfair accuses. The RfC, first opened by user Chaotic Enby to bring forward a proposal made by fellow user Kowal2701, received SNOW-like consensus towards approval of the amendments, which have now been fully applied to the policy. – O, B
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