User talk:Nick Moyes/Archive 7

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 5

Administrators' newsletter – April 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2018).

Administrator changes

331dot • Cordless Larry • ClueBot NG

Gogo Dodo • Pb30 • Sebastiankessel • Seicer • SoLando

Guideline and policy news

Administrators who have been desysopped due to inactivity are now required to have performed at least one (logged) administrative action in the past 5 years in order to qualify for a resysop without going through a new RfA.
Editors who have been found to have engaged in sockpuppetry on at least two occasions after an initial indefinite block, for whatever reason, are now automatically considered banned by the community without the need to start a ban discussion.
The notability guideline for organizations and companies has been substantially rewritten following the closure of this request for comment. Among the changes, the guideline more clearly defines the sourcing requirements needed for organizations and companies to be considered notable.
The six-month autoconfirmed article creation trial (ACTRIAL) ended on 14 March 2018. The post-trial research report has been published. A request for comment is now underway to determine whether the restrictions from ACTRIAL should be implemented permanently.

Technical news

There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.

Arbitration

The Arbitration Committee is considering a change to the discretionary sanctions procedures which would require an editor to appeal a sanction to the community at WP:AE or WP:AN prior to appealing directly to the Arbitration Committee at WP:ARCA.

Miscellaneous

A discussion has closed which concluded that administrators are not required to enable email, though many editors suggested doing so as a matter of best practice.
The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released the Interaction Timeline. This shows a chronologic history for two users on pages where they have both made edits, which may be helpful in identifying sockpuppetry and investigating editing disputes.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:23, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-14

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Template Wizard script available for testing. It will show up as a puzzle-piece icon in the 2010 WikiEditor. You can click on the icon to insert a template.
The Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey is to be sent to participants around the world this week. If you are volunteer developer, and have contributed code to any pieces of MediaWiki, gadgets, or tools, please take 20 to 40 minutes to complete the survey.

Problems

MediaWiki deployment train has been rolled back to version 1.31.0-wmf.26 on week 13, due to a multiplication of lost connections during MySQL queries. Some of the recent changes may have not been applied. They will be deployed next week. [1][2][3]
The Notifications badge icons were overlapping other links. This has been fixed. [4]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 April. It will be on all wikis from 5 April (calendar).
User subpages ending in .json will now be protected from other people editing them, like .js and .css pages already are. If you have a tool that stores static configuration, you can now use a subpage like User:Example/mygadget.json to do this without concerns. [5]
Tidy will be replaced by RemexHtml on the next set of wikis. On April 4, we plan to turn off Tidy on all Wikiquotes (except frwikiquote) and Wikimedia chapters and user groups wikis. 23 wikis will have Tidy replaced this time. [6][7][8]
AbuseFilter will transition to use OOUI starting April 4, and the rule editor will also be changed to a CodeEditor (ACE) similar to what is found on user JavaScript pages. The move to OOUI will continue over the next few weeks. [9] [10]
In Special:Preferences, the preference "Reload the watchlist automatically whenever a filter is changed (JavaScript required)" is now only visible for users who have opt-out the New Filters for the Watchlist. [11]
You can see names of individual abuse filters in Special:AbuseLog. Now if the name of an abuse filter contains some wikisyntax like links, it will not change to a link when displayed. [12]
You can now search through filter patterns at Special:AbuseFilter. You may specify either a plain string or a regular expression and the matching filters will show a snippet of their pattern with the match highlighted. [13]

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

If you're using, creating or improving Lua modules, you can give your feedback to help harmonizing the modules across wikis and add more useful functions.
On April 11th, we plan to turn off Tidy on all wikis with less than 50 entries in all high priority linter categories. About 60 wikis will have Tidy replaced. Currently about 600 wikis have had Tidy replaced and we have another 300 wikis to go. We plan to finish this transition from Tidy to RemexHtml by end of June 2018. Please follow T175706 to monitor progress of Tidy replacement. [14][15]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:28, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Deletion

Hi, when an article has no content aside from the title of the article in it, you can just WP:A3 it after ~10 minutes, instead of wasting a week with WP:PROD. Iffy★Chat -- 10:12, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Iffy. I was aware of that, however AnandaTV does yield some results on Google, so may be noteworthy. This was more of a prompt to the article creator to pull their finger out and add some content or see the page disappear if they do not. You may remove my PROD notice and AfD it if you wish, but for this page I did not feel that action was in the Project's best interests. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:18, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

A page you started (Sulagitti Narasamma) has been reviewed!

With a bit more work, this new article has the potential to be a good candidate for WP:DYK on the main page of Wikipedia.

Hi Nick Moyes
Thanks for the review! Please let me know, how can i improve this Sulagitti Narasamma article to fulfil eligibility createria to feature on WP:DYK on the main page of Wikipedia.
--NaveenNkadalaveni (talk) 04:30, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@NaveenNkadalaveni: If you a seriously interested in this, I'll try and support you (especially with copyediting to improve English grammar). However, my first experience of Did You Know? was that it is almost harder to understand and follow the process than creating an article in the first place!

Most importantly, you would need to read the DYK rules and criteria - noting that there is a time limit for submission to DYK of 7 days from the date when the article first went live on the encyclopaedia. So 7 days from 20th March, or you can't submit it!

Next the article needs a hook which makes the article sound interesting and, critically, it must be supported by an explicit references to demonstrate it to be true. I could envisage something like:

| hook = ... that 98-year old Indian midwife, Sulagitti Narasamma, has undertaken over 15,000 free deliveries?

You can offer more than one alternative hook, if you aren't sure which is best. You have a photo, too, which helps a lot to give it prominence if it's accepted.

Once you have made the submission you no longer have to worry about time limits. Inevitably, editors will scrutinise your article and point out things you must fix before it goes anywhere near the Main page of Wikipedia. It won't progress unless you monitor and act on that feedback. Sometimes, sorting out an article can take weeks, once it's in the DYK cue. So, if you're still serious about this, you would need to go through every single sentence you wrote and ask yourself "would another person be able to show from my references that everything I've said here is absolutely correct?" There is no room for peacock words or your own opinion. If it's not supported by a reference, cut it out. Could a sentence be reworded to sound clearer when read out aloud, for example? If so, have a go at changing it.

Because the process is so complicated, one user wrote this very helpful simple guide to understanding the process.

The choice is yours. If you start the process of creating a 'hook', cleaning up the article, and submitting it as a DYK, you could come back here and show me how far you've got. Should I not reply before the deadline, just have faith and give it a go. Do not worry about the English as the major stumbling block - if you choose to go ahead I will support you in working on this. (Your English is fine for normal articles, but needs just a little bit of extra help to bring it to a standard for the front page of Wikipedia for half a day and to get thousands of hits.) What you need to ensure is that no-one can challenge anything in your article. What you would have to commit to is taking your time to read, understand and follow all the guidance and instructions at WP:DYK (including the links at the right hand side of that page) I certainly didn't find it easy, but once you've done your first, it becomes a bit simpler the next time. I completely understand if you tell me you don't feel you can do this within the timescale. Regards from the UK. Nick Moyes (talk) 12:08, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes Thank you so much for the detailed explanation :) I have nominated Sulagitti Narasamma for WP:DYK. it looks like as shown below, In fact i missed out this reply of yours and ended up nominating it way before reading this, After reading your reply, added ALT3 as well as per your above suggested hook. I will work on cleaning up the article. Your suggestions are welcome!

@NaveenNkadalaveni: Well done for doing this, and thank you for letting me know. I've now gone through your article and tidied it up quite a bit. I must politely but firmly 'tell you off' for a little bit of 'copy/pasting' from newspaper articles which I had not spotted at first - this is really not an OK practice anywhere on Wikipedia, and most definitely not on Did You Know. You must always rewrite factual information in your own words. Anyway, having spotted it with one of the tools that the Did You Know reviewers will be using, I've rewritten these bits for you. One part I do not fully understand is: Though she belongs to Karnataka state, since its border of Andhra Pradesh, her mother tongue is Telugu.. Can you sort this out, please? If it's not important, either leave it out or just say what her mother tongue actually is. (providing it's stated in the relevant references.) You will see I have also taken the liberty or slightly rewording your DYK 'hooks' to enhance the English, and to clarify that she is actually a midwife - and not a postman delivering parcels for free!! I did wonder whether the word "traditional" in every hook is essential. I would be grateful if you would now go through both the DYK hook wording I've modified and, of course, the article itself to ensure that every single sentence is fully supported by an appropriate reference in which that fact is clearly given. If not- cut it out. I am really very pleases you've done this - DYK nominations are not at all easy to grasp. Don't be disappointed if someone criticises the article, but do be ready to address any concerns they may raise. You will find that someone will probably ~~strike out~~ the hooks that they do not like, leaving behind the best one. I will watch with great interest to see how you get on with it. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 12:14, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes Thank you so much for doing cleanup for Sulagitti Narasamma article. As per this line Though she belongs to Karnataka state, since its border of Andhra Pradesh, her mother tongue is Telugu. is concerned, I have sorted out this by just adding Her mother tongue is Telugu. Thanks for sharing "copyvios" online tool link, I'm gonna use this tool going forward to check articles Confidence. Will definitely consider all your suggestions to improve my Wiki skills, You are the best Wikipedian i ever come across! Have a nice day :) Regards, NaveenNkadalaveni (talk) 18:02, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for those very kind words, NaveenNkadalaveni. I shall be delighted if your article does make the DYK slot in due course, and you'll definitely deserve a barnstar if it does! I think you made exactly the right choice in your edit about her language. Keeping things short and factual is the watchword here. By the way, if you have a particular interest in creating articles about Indian women, you might like to know about the Women in Red WikiProject. They are keen to increase the proportion of articles about women on Wikipedia, and produce various lists of potential new articles that might merit creation. So do check out this, if you're interested: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by nationality/India. They also run monthly competitions on variopus topics around the world, which might interest you. (I've just learnt of this one on the Indian Subcontinent during April 2018). Oh, and one thing to mention about your new page on Kadalaveni - we have a policy you probably ought to read called WP:NOINDICSCRIPT about not using that script in lead paragraphs and infoboxes. I believe there was a discussion about it some while ago which concluded that there can be so many ways (and arguments!) to spell Indian names that avoiding conflict by banning them was the best way. I'm sure you'll appreciate this better than I will from over here in the UK. Kind regards and good luck with the WP:DYK. Shout here or at the Teahouse if you ever need any help or advice. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:36, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes, Article Sulagitti Narasamma DYK has been reviewed and raised couple of issues, I have corrected the same now. Good to know that reviewer found ALT2 interesting and received +Ve feedback about entire article. I have given my response to it, in DYK nomination portal. Hope this correction maybe enough to eliminate issue tag template. Sure i will consider all your suggestions mentioned over there in your above response. --Naveen N Kadalaveni 17:14, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi, NaveenNkadalaveni. This type of feedback is all perfectly normal for DYK, and shows that progress is being made. Good luck. Nick Moyes (talk) 18:23, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Nick Moyes, Thank you for your help ! Sulagitti Narasamma moved to WP:DYKNA --Naveen N Kadalaveni (talk) 18:28, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

@NaveenNkadalaveni:That's brilliant! I can take no credit - you did this all yourself. I don't mean this to be patronising in any way, but I'm proud of you. May this be the first of many great DYKs from you. Nick Moyes (talk) 18:47, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Question

How do you get that clock ubox in your time zone? If I wanted one in my upage in pacific time where do I go? Thegooduser Let's Chat 17:25, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

@Thegooduser: You can find a wide selection of time-related userboxes at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Time. I chose one with the ability for any user anywhere to see what my own local time is. I think this is probably the most useful as I've not got a clue what Pacific Time is in my lozal zone, and vice versa. We all sign with UTC, so knowing that someone who I've contacted in that time zone might well be in bed asleep whilst I'm up and active is most helpful. I trust you'll choose one that helps others, too. Regards from UTC+1 here in England, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:18, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Question

Why are new users thanking me for tagging their upages for deletion? Thegooduser Let's Chat 20:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

That's an interesting question, and odd to see. Except that I'd probably thank a policement for telling me off for speeding in my car (possibly in the hope I might be treated more reasonably or fairly). Of course, the templates we leave are designed to be helpful and supportive, so maybe that's the reason - I'm not sure. Or it could be an attempt at sarcasm. "Thank you" for stoppping me promoting my company!! You so-and-so!! ...Who knows the rationale of other editors?

It's great that you're spotting these odd accounts, but as a complete aside, do you realise you've made three times as many edits to your own user page as you have to the main part of Wikipedia? I probably ought to urge you to focus whatever time you've decided to allocate to not doing schoolwork and to editing Wikipedia to actually work on articles and gaining experience in more of the basics. I don't mean this in a nasty manner at all, but hope you'll appreciate what I might be driving at? Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:41, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Adoption

Hello Nick,

Just wanted to know if you would be willing to adopt me? I am interested in making contributions about latest starts ups and technological advancements. I am willing to spend 2 hours learning and contributing here. CutsViper (talk) 11:29, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello, CutsViper - thank you very much for contacting me, and welcome to Wikipedia. I'm very sorry, but I would expect someone who is keen to be adopted and to learn how to contribute constructively to Wikipedia to be willing to dedicate far more than the "2 hours", which you have apparently allocated to the task. I am very willing to work and guide new but serious editors who have already demonstrated via some of their past editing a genuine desire to volunteer their time to building this encyclopaedia. Their interests and mine also need to match - and you can read more about my adoption criteria at this page. I have a sense that yours and mine don't match at all, so I must politely decline your request. Please accept my apologies for this, and any disappointment that using the adoption template might have caused you. (The Adopt-a-User scheme is in a bit of the doldrums at the moment, and I am hoping it might be revived very much in the manner of suppporting editors with mutually compatible interests and genuine long-term commitment to the project. Of course, if you need any further assistance on anything specific, you are free to ask at the Teahouse where I or my fellow hosts there may be able to offer immediate assistance to you. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 00:39, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Derby Uni events

Hi Nick, apologies for not responding to your last message. Unfortunately I suffered a bereavement last week and as a result I have been in Scotland and off Wikipedia over that period. To belatedly reply, I saw some reference to the event at the university, but only after it had already taken place! It did sound interesting. As it happens, I am starting a new job next week which is located on the university campus; I might be interested in taking part in future events, but as the job is of the 9 to 5 variety, I would only be available to contribute if there was anything taking place in the evenings or at weekends. Do keep me updated anyway. Jellyman (talk) 17:08, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Jellyman. Thank you for the note. Please accept my commiserations for your recent loss. I wish you well in your new job at Kedy Road Tech (as we used to call it). It doesn't happen to be connected to Biosciences does it, by any chance? I happen to know one or two of the staff in that section. I will certainly keep you informed if there are further events planned - either there or elsewhere in the city. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:57, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your good wishes. I'm not actually working for the university itself, but for a well-known academic bookshop located on the campus. Jellyman (talk) 10:54, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Ok, Jellyman I know it. In fact we launched our magnum opus there a few years back. Went in the other day, but now only available to order. (...I hold the stock if the store needs any signed copies. LOL!). You might want to check out the bio for another new Wikipedian. (User:Cbderbylib). Don't want to reveal her full name here, but she's v. enthusiastic to develop a GLAM-wiki connection. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:29, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

"More footnotes" and "BLP sources" tags

Hello Nick! Could you please help me with article about Andrey Esionov? I'm stuck with "More footnotes" and "BLP sources" tags. Can you explain me what is wrong with this article? Today I added more footnotes and several new references, but I don't know if it's enough for now. And the same question for "BLP sources" - it says that article needs additional references. But there're 14 of them. Is it enough to remove this tag? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Finkrek (talk • contribs) 13:00, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Finkrek, as you'll have seen, I think the template was OK to remove. I've slightly altered your article and removed full date of birth. Unless this is a widely known and published fact, our policy is to not give complete details of day/month of birth for living people. Whilst I did not check all the references, I couldn't see this information easily, so decided to leave it out. Does that sound OK? (See WP:DOB for more explanation) The one thing I would then suggest is that you move some of the content and rather long quotation out from the very long lede, and down into the body of the article, perhaps leaving just one or two paragraphs there at the most. The lede is meant to simply provide a quick introduction to the topic, and more details should be added later on down the article, supported by references, of course. (See MOS:LEAD). I hope you find this helpful, and I think the article is a big improvement on how it looked when first created (as is so often the case, or course). Thank you for querying this with me. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:13, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-15

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Some pages have templates that describe problems with that article. There is now more information for mobile readers and what is wrong with the article and how they could help fix it. [16]
You can now thank users for many more actions than edits to a page. This was one of the top ten requests in the Wishlist Survey last year. [17]
The sort order of categories will have errors for a short time starting Monday 9 April (UTC). We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a script to update the database. This will take between a few hours and a few days depending on wiki size. You can read more details. [18]
Tag filter titles will now work better on wikis where the tag filter title is in a language that is written in another direction than the language of that wiki. This could for example be an English title (written from left to right) on a Hebrew or an Arabic wiki (written from right to left). [19]

Problems

The bookmark icon for saved filters on the recent changes page disappeared because of new icon changes. This has now been fixed. [20]
For a week in March rollbacks got both the rollback and the undo tag on the recent changes page and other pages where you see tags. This has now been fixed. [21]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 April. It will be on all wikis from 12 April (calendar).
Patrolled edits now have three states instead of two. Recent changes filters are updated to show unpatrolled, autopatrolled and manually patrolled edits. [22]

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The iOS and Android apps will get synced reading lists later in April.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:08, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

K2-155d lede should mention habitable zone?

Thanks for cleaning up the article on K2-155d. Among the information you removed from the lede was that this planet is probably in the habitable zone. To me, that seems important enough to mention at least briefly in the lede - would you object if I add it back in? --Gronk Oz (talk) 11:34, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello Gronk Oz. I have absolutely no objection to you putting whatever you feel would be helpful back into the lede. Mine was, admittedly, just a very coarse edit to balance the article following a comment at the TH, and noticing the template saying the lede was too long. It was a speedy edit from a mobile, with little opportunity to fine-tune the article, and you are utterly correct that important facts need briefly stating in the lede paragraph and then expanding upon later on. Go for it! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 12:35, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Done - thanks.

--Gronk Oz (talk) 12:57, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Apology Accepted

Apology Accepted dear friend nick moyes lets just hope this doesn't happens again regards DashDog01 DashDog01 (talk)DashDog01 (talk) 02:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC) DashDog01 (talk) 02:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Me too! Nick Moyes (talk) 07:36, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Award question

Do you think I would win a user page award for most changed user page I can't seem to stop changing it but I think I will leave it as is now I should focus on creating and editing articles please a look at it tell me what you think DashDog01 (talk) 02:36, 13 April 2018 (UTC) DashDog01 (talk) 02:36, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Quite possibly. I think I may have said something to that effect to you at the Teahouse. Less so for the number of changes, but for the extraordinary ratio of userspace edits to mainspace edits! Nick Moyes (talk) 09:09, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

@DashDog01: Yes, you definitely win. Congratulations. You have been added to the User page Hall of Fame. Working on one's user page is good practice (css, wikicode, page layout, templates, etc.). Very good preparation for working on WP:Portals. They are going to love you over there. Have fun! — The Transhumanist 13:19, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Scripts

Hi friend can you help me out I have enabled some scripts in my custom js and vector js and cleared all cache but some features that was visible at first seem to have disappeared please helpDashDog01 (talk) 22:52, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Also you should know I enable a lot of them DashDog01 (talk) 22:52, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

@DashDog01: Oh dear - I very much doubt I can give you any useful advice in this area. My knowledge of scripts is extremely limited. You didn't say what functions you have lost, which might have helped. But in these circumstances I would restore all the files to their initial state, and see how things perform then. You haven't changed your skin in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering, have you? I might also restore all default settings in Special:Preferences and check if things are working again then. If all my own attempts then failed, I'd probably ask for assistance at the Help Desk, which tends to be able to answer more technical queries than we do at the Teahouse. Sorry I can't help any more with this. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:57, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Another approach would be to uninstall the scripts, and load them one by one, to see which one(s) cause the conflicts. Keep in mind that almost all gadgets are scripts, too. So, the conflict could be between scripts you have loaded, or between one of them and a gadget. — The Transhumanist 13:06, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

P.S.: Nick, I stopped by to copy/paste part of the message I posted above. ;) -TT

Account creator granted

After reviewing your request for the "accountcreator" permission, I have enabled the flag on your account. Keep in mind these things:

The account creator right removes the limit on the maximum number of new accounts that can be created in a 24-hour period.
The account creator right is not a status symbol. If it remains unused, it is likely to be removed. Abuse of the account creator right will result in its removal by an administrator.

If you no longer require the right, let me know, or ask any other administrator. Drop a note on my talk page if you run into troubles or have any questions about appropriate/inappropriate use of the account creator right. Happy editing! — xaosflux ^Talk 00:43, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Please note, this has been added for an event you have planned and will automatically expire after the event. Do not use this to override antispoofing or blacklist for event attendees, only for overriding the creation threshold. Good luck with your event, — xaosflux ^Talk 00:44, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-16

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

Profiling statistics for an abuse filter tell how often edits match the filter. The statistics for the abuse filters were reset after 10000 actions. Wikis can now decide to reset it more or less often. They can file a phabricator task to do so. [23]
Abuse filters will now treat integers and floats more precisely. For example, 5/2 was rounded down to 2 but will now be 2.5 and 2*4 will be the integer 8 and not the floating-point number 8.0. Division values are the only ones changed. For the rest only strict comparisons (=== and !==) will be affected leaving the values unchanged. [24][25]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 April. It will be on all wikis from 19 April (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The new PDF renderer could not create PDFs from books. Books are in this case collections of pages on a Wikimedia wiki. PediaPress will take over development of the books-to-PDF function. [26]
Pywikibot will no longer support Python 2.7.2 and 2.7.3. [27]
Volunteer developers can fill out the Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey. The last day is April 22 (UTC). This is a third-party service survey. See the privacy statement.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:21, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Hi Nick Moyes, I just wanted to let you know that I have added the "autopatrolled" permission to your account, as you have created numerous, valid articles. This feature will have no effect on your editing, and is simply intended to reduce the workload on new page patrollers. For more information on the autopatrolled right, see Wikipedia:Autopatrolled. Feel free to leave me a message if you have any questions. Happy editing! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:00, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Electronarcosis

Thank you for reviewing my new article electronarcosis. At the time I first created the article, I knew that electronarcosis had medical uses, and I soon found some medical articles linked to it. As I was preparing to fix the problem, you reviewed the article and fixed the problem for me. Thanks. I have now expanded the article into a neuroscience stub. Please take a look. Thanks for your many other contributions to wikipedia. Comfr (talk) 19:23, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

The Worst Witch

I'm not really interested in 'The Worst Witch' subject, but as I've recently started editing 1000's of topics on Quora and get most of my information from Wikipedia I end up editing small things occasionally here.

I've fixed mainly subjects regarding Films, Film Companies, TV Shows, TV Genres, TV Networks, TV Companies, Radio Stations, Radio Conglomerates, Radio Companies etc on Quora as it's easier than here, but there's still 100's that keep getting messed up again by the bots or the admins.

'The Worst Witch (1998 TV series)' was one of the subjects I came across on there so I fixed that, then I noticed 'The Worst Witch (children's book series)' had a picture of 9 books, yet the Wikipedia article said there were only 7. That's how I found out there were now officially 8 books in the series, plus 2 spin-off books.

I was going to add the 2005 series and the 2017 series on Quora too and then I noticed some of my TV Company/Network/Channel/Genre/Show edits had been messed up again, so I'm leaving it for today. It's annoying when the bots mess stuff up, and it's even more annoying when some of the admins caused the problems in the 1st place. If I could just have admin privileges for a month, I'd fix the entire 'Television in the United Kingdom' topic.

I just edit the simple stuff on Wikipedia at the moment in 'visual mode', unless it's easy enough to copy symbols from the same section in 'source mode'. I leave all the stuff like creating/editing contents boxes, the other box on the right hand side box, the pictures, the graphs, the tables, and the boxes at the bottom etc to other people.

In future I'll be editing and adding new pages to do with the people, places and things in the City of Bradford so I'll probably have to learn, but for now I'll just stick to the simple stuff.

--Danstarr69 (talk) 18:37, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining things, Danstarr69. It sounds like you're doing a great job, and it's is a very sensible approach to fix simple things you can, learning as you go. (I'm still learning, too.) I am a bit surprised to hear you blaming 'bots and admins', though, for the problems you see. Are you really sure? These are the good guys here, and rarely foul up if citations are provided to support legitimate changes. I'd be happy to look at the page histories of particular articles for you, if you wish to let me know your concerns. Normally, bots only reverse bad faith edits like vandalism, so that's worth looking into. Are you sure genuine 'admins' have made those poor edits? (There is a way to highlight which editors are actually admins - as it's easy to assume one person is when they're not at all, though to do that you have to install a little script which might sound a bit fiddly and unnecessary for you. Nowadays the selection process for admins is extremely tough, and they're hot on spotting errors that other editors make. Sometimes another editor can think a person has made a bad edit, then be shown to be wrong. (I've done that myself -and it's horrible to cause upset to a constructive editor, or damage to an article.) Again, these edits (even the wrong ones) are usually done in good faith, so it's worth alerting the editors concerned. Other times it's a case of one or another editor not following the normal way or working, or perhaps being over-possessive of the content of an article, not liking it when another editor comes in making changes. But no-one owns articles here. What I would advise is that, even if you're unsure how best to make specific edits, do raise concerns over wrong reverts or subsequent edits, either with the editor(s) concerned, or on the article's talk page as you did with TWW. I'm happy to take a quick look at anything for you if you wish to get back in touch. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:34, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes

The first 3 paragraphs I was talking about Quora the website which is similar to Wikipedia but easier to edit. You can add profile pictures, topic descriptions, edit the name, add alias', merge topics, add parent topics, and add child topics. Before I start answering questions properly on there, I want to make sure my favourite topics are complete. There's millions of incomplete 'topics' on there so I've been fixing 1000's of topics about Film, TV, Radio, Countries, Cities etc, but the Quora bots keep messing them up repeatedly. For example there was a topic named "BBC TV Shows" which included ITV shows, Channel 4 shows, E4 shows, and even an NBC show, which had all been added by an admin from India, so I removed them...Then the bots put them back. So I decided to change the topic name to "British TV Shows" and changed the profile picture...Then the bots changed it back. I've finally got them fixed now after contacting an admin, but it seems to be the same 4 admins causing these problems on Quora. There's also locked topics like the 'BBC' which is a mess, but I've managed to fix most of it's child topics. One of these admins is from Australia and doesn't know the difference between English Villages, Towns, Cities, Districts, Counties, Regions, National Parks etc but she's messed around with them anyway. I'll be fixing them once I'm happy the Film and TV topics are fixed.

So when I'm editing topics on Quora I mainly get my information from Wikipedia which I won't be editing properly for a few years. I'm wanting to create a blog somewhere like Quora, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger etc using mainly just photos and a title, about the people, places and things of my city, which is the City of Bradford. That's when I will start editing Wikipedia properly as I'll be attaching Wikipedia and/or IMDb links to the photos in specific albums eg. "Actors from Bradford". That's when I'll need to learn as I've noticed there's the odd page missing like the actors Shaun Thomas and Conner Chapman who don't have Wikipedia page's yet https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5649091/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5519350/ Danstarr69 (talk) 07:43, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Danstarr69, I had thought you were referring to problem admins and bot issues here on Wikipedia, when it was on the Quora website. It's a relief we're not causing you the problems, though it sounds like you do have your work cut out over there. It's nice that you want to focus on your home city of Bradford. I only know it a little bit from having spent 5 years in nearby Huddersfield. Any time you need help here, do come back to the Teahouse. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:42, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes I've had no problems with Wikipedia, apart from last week when I found out you still have to use the word "Is" rather than "Was" even when something no longer exists, and a few years ago when I added some photos. I was busy editing things on Facebook at the time so pages on things like music genres without a profile picture annoyed me.

One of those pages was "Dance Music" so I went to Google and got a random photo of people dancing and added it to the Dance music category on Wikipedia so it would appear on Facebook too, but it got removed probably because I didn't own the picture.

So the next time I decided to add a picture I added my own picture to the Nahki Wells article which I took of him when he was at 'Betfred' for reasons I can't remember, and that got removed too!

How am I meant to prove that photo was taken by me? Take a photo of myself taking the photo? That's why I haven't bothered messing around with photo's since as I don't understand how photo additions work on here. If you don't own any photo's on the subject, and they don't exist on Wikimedia Commons, how can photo's be added apart from stealing them from Google? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Danstarr69 (talk • contribs) 09:19, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

@Danstarr69: Put simply, if you don't own the picture (or it hasn't been released by someone else under the approiate 'Creative Commons CC-BY-SA licence) you cannot upload it to Wikipedia or to Wikimedia Commons. If you do own it, there should be absolutely no problem unless other issues like 'Freedom of Panorama' come into it. You can always appeal the deletion of an image you have legitimately uploaded. Sometimes simply failing to complete the upload licence declaration correctly flags up problems. If you look here the deletion notice suggests either the file was probably corrupted or was from a description on commons. When these things happen, it's always worth contacting the deleting administrator for an explanation. I suggest you try uploading the image again, or even just to Wikipedia via the'Upload file' link on the left side of this page. As for 'Is' versus 'Was' - that seems very strange to me. Who on earth told you that? There are many circumstances when 'was' is totally appropriate. See MOS:TENSE for a little bit more detail on that. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 15:50, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes The photo which was mine I'm not really bothered about anymore. I've got it still on one of my memory cards somewhere, as well as my main laptop that got corrupted by Windows 10's two October Updates last year. Still not sure why it got deleted. It looks like it might have had something to do with me not signing it according to one comment. But another mentions something to do with the date, so maybe I uploaded a copy by mistake rather than the original photo file. I just wanted it uploaded at the time as it didn't have a picture back then, and I didn't have a computer so didn't have time to waste in the library editing Wikipedia.

You can see the convo with the "was" vs "is" debate on my talk page. Apparently TV shows still have to say "is" even though they finished 15 years ago, which according to your link seems to be true. It's a stupid rule imo. Danstarr69 (talk) 16:44, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

@Danstarr69: Yes, but TV shows do get repeated. often after many years, so I can see why it's inadvisable to say 'was' in that regard. Just like a film - it still exists somewhere in the archives. Maybe those in black and white might be less likely to be shown, so 'was' might be more relevant. eg Captain Zeppos. Anyway, good luck with future editing. Nick Moyes (talk) 18:01, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

The worst of the worst witches

How to kill a witch — The Transhumanist 07:17, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject Portals

The Portals WikiProject has been rebooted.

You are invited to join, and participate in the effort to revitalize and improve the Portal system and all the portals in it.

There are sections on the WikiProject page dedicated to tasks (including WikiGnome tasks too), and areas on the talk page for discussing the improvement and automation of the various features of portals.

Many complaints have been lodged in the RfC to delete all portals, pointing out their various problems. They say that many portals are not maintained, or have fallen out of date, are useless, etc. Many of the !votes indicate that the editors who posted them simply don't believe in the potential of portals anymore.

It's time to change all that. Let's give them reasons to believe in portals, by revitalizing them.

The best response to a deletion nomination is to fix the page that was nominated. The further underway the effort is to improve portals by the time the RfC has run its course, the more of the reasons against portals will no longer apply. RfCs typically run 30 days. There are 19 days left in this one. Let's see how many portals we can update and improve before the RfC is closed, and beyond.

A healthy WikiProject dedicated to supporting and maintaining portals may be the strongest argument of all not to delete.

We may even surprise ourselves and exceed all expectations. Who knows what we will be able to accomplish in what may become the biggest Wikicollaboration in years.

Let's do this.

See ya at the WikiProject!

Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 10:22, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, The Transhumanist, I've signed up now, and have added a few tweaks and thoughts. Well done on rebooting this. Can I point out that I was extremely confused by what you're asking when you say 'inspect it to see if it is completed' Can you expand on what is meant by 'completed' and what you want from editors? regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 00:19, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I've added this description to the instructions (in both places): "Most incomplete portals have one or more empty sections that have nothing more than a red subpage link in the middle of them.". — The Transhumanist 07:22, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-17

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

All Wikipedias now have Page Previews.
The iOS and Android apps now have synced reading lists. This means you can save articles to a private list that can be seen on your other devices if you use the apps.
The icons in the 2010 wikitext editor have changed. [28]
The visual editor and the 2017 wikitext ask you to write an edit summary after you press Publish. This button now also shows an ellipsis. This is to show that pressing Publish is not the last step. [29]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 April. It will be on all wikis from 26 April (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

<mapframe> will come to most Wikipedias in May. This means that you can put interactive maps in the articles. Nine Wikipedias that use a strict version of flagged revisions will not get this feature in May. [30]
The rollback function could change. This was a German community request. All editors with rollback rights can leave feedback on the proposed solution. The last day to leave feedback is 4 May (UTC).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:16, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Your thread has been archived

Hi Nick Moyes! You created a thread called What are the ten most cited sources on Wikipedia? at Wikipedia:Teahouse, but it has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still find the archived discussion here. If you have any additional questions that weren't answered then, please create a new thread.

Delivered by Muninnbot, an automated account. You can opt out of future notifications by placing {{bots|deny=Muninnbot}} (ban this bot) or {{nobots}} (ban all bots) on your user talk page.
This functionality is currently under test. If you received this notification by error, please notify the bot's maintainer.

Hello CILIP East Midlands members!

You have two tasks to perform here:

TASK 1 Copy the following three lines of text, and paste them into your User Sandbox. (If your sandbox link is red, it means you haven't yet created and saved any edits there, so you will have to click Create Source, paste in the text, then hit the big blue 'Publish page' button.)

Northern White Rhino

The last male northern white rhino died in March 2018.

Sir David Attenborough described the imminent extinction of this sub-species as "another catastrophe and another warning signal".

TASK 2 Come back and edit this section, and leave me a message below to say 'Hello'. Start it with an asterisk to create a bullet point on a new line. Then sign your name by simply typing four tildes, like this: ~~~~ Then click 'Publish changes'. Thank you, Nick Moyes (talk) 00:04, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello. NM Demo (talk) 12:28, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello JBo.Boxall (talk) 13:49, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Nick AnomaGS (talk) 14:49, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Northern White Rhino The last male northern white rhino died in March 2018. Sir David Attenborough described the imminent extinction of this sub-species as "another catastrophe and another warning signal". AnomaGS (talk) 14:51, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Nick, thanks for the introductory message. Turner Street (talk) 20:27, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

The Members Day Training

Thanks Nick this is really useful. JBo.Boxall (talk) 13:44, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Christophe Jaffrelot

I think that there is a mistake of interpretation: I am not paid to modify the page of Christophe Jaffrelot. I work with him and he asked me this as a service (I am responsible for the researcher pages on the CERI Sciences Po website). I am not paid and that is why I am disconcerted and very very bored by the fact of not being able to finish rendering this service (the page on the French wiki has been realized but it is only half of the work). It is a service rendered. I did the same for Alain Dieckhoff, current director of CERI Sciences Po, a few years ago on wikipedia and it didn't cause so many problems. I think we're going to give up wikipedia and C Jaffrelot's page on the English wiki has its old information and its outdated bibliography. It does not seem to me that we can get along. Juchie G — Preceding unsigned comment added by JuchieG (talk • contribs)

I'm sorry you feel that way, JuchieG. At the Teahouse you referred to him as your boss, so I feel it is not unreasonable to conclude you are being paid to make these edits. English Wikipedia does not mind if you do that, although it does require you to declare that fact, as I advised. See WP:PAID. I'm sorry you are bored here. Personally, I find Wikipedia amazingly exciting. I suggest the simplest way (that won't involve you in too much work) is just to leave a note on the Talk Page (with links to sources) to request editors to make the necessary changes for you. Unlike you, we are all volunteers here, so edits are made when people are interested enough to make them. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:26, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

One-and-one-half mountains

You will recall that about six months ago we had a discussion about Mount Venamo and Waukauyengtipu, which are either two names for one mountain in a remote equatorial rain forest in South America or two peaks of the same larger landform. The area is evidently one of the remaining parts of the Earth that is still poorly explored, those being mostly either in high latitudes or in low latitudes. The temperate zones are well-known. The argument isn't over. We are where we were six months ago. We probably should have one article that discusses the area and the controversy about it. We definitely should not have two articles that argue with each other. I declined Draft:Waukauyengtipu again. If the author disagrees, they can request discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:44, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me, Robert McClenon. I really feel for the editor on this one. I do start to wonder whether the information world might be better served if we did accept two separate articles, but on the understanding that they could be merged together. The Mount Venamo article is clearly saying that their is wrong synonymization, so this tilts us towards moving Draft:Waukauyengtipu into mainspace, whilst recognising that we don't want conflicting or duplicated content. Your current solution is a pragmatic one, so expanding Mount Venamo by adding a new section based on the content created by User:MatWr at Draft:Waukauyengtipu could by a sensible route to follow until there is an independent published research paper. I would certainly find this utterly frustrating as the explorer who had actually been there, and knows for a 'fact' that Wikipedia has got it wrong. But Wikipedia only ever follows independent, reliably-published sources, and is predisposed to ignore personal and business websites, no matter how professional the content. Nick Moyes (talk) 07:52, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

User:Nick Moyes - I think that you are saying that maybe we should temporarily accept the Waukauyengtipu draft, and tag them both to be merged, rather than having them argue with each other. That is probably the right answer. I will think about it and will answer further within 24 hours. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:08, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Welcome template

Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates#‎RfC on welcome template standardisation.-

teahouse photo addition

I am an android user and I have found the five links using desktop mode. Where is the link with small wiki. There are - File, File history, usage on commons, usage on other wikis and metadata. Where is the link with small wiki? Ppt2003 (talk) 16:56, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

TheWikiWizard - May 2020

Hello, Nick Moyes! Here is the May 2020 issue of TheWikiWizard.

Coronavirus Updates for Wikipedia Updates on Wikipedia during COVID-19
What's Hot! (wifi)
Articles (none this month)
The Wikipedian (Want to be interviewed?)
News about Wikipedia! (Wikipedia News and Updates!)
Editor's Notes (News/Updates!)
Activity Page (Fun Activities!...)
Ads (Super Cool Ads)

To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. We hope you like this month's issue! If you'd like to discuss this issue, please go to this issue's talk page. Happy Reading & stay safe! --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 23:58, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-22

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [31]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

David Pearson (librarian)

Hi Nick. Would you mind taking a look at this? Someone stating they are Pearson has been "updating" the article occasionally over the years, almost certainly in good faith, and for the most part what they've added looks more like general updates than a major attempt at WP:PROMOTION. These changes probably went unnoticed since the article is probably not one that is highly watched, so this person might be a bit surprised with the attention they have suddenly attracted. They recently ran into a bit of difficultly trying to add an image (see User talk:Explicit#David Pearson image) which is where I came across the article. I've tried to explain WP:COI to this editor on his user talk page and was wondering if you might have any other other suggestions. This person already seems a bit flummoxed by things Wikipedia and I might've made them more confused. Perhaps as someone who has declared a COI for certain subjects and as an admin, you might be able to clarify some things about COI editing better (and more succinctly) than I did. Of course, any of your talk page watchers are also welcome to chime in if they want. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:41, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: OK, will do. But I must go and get a coffee first! I'm surprised you've struggled - you're usually brilliant at communication. I do seriously hope you'll think about standing at an RfA one day soon. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:44, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: Right, I've taken a look now, and drunk my coffee. I don't think I should add anything more as they would probably feel a bit overwhelmed by a second, unknown person weighing in. You could possibly go back and break up a few of the paragraphs into smaller, discrete chunks, but that's about all I can suggest. So, wait a while and see how they respond. If they're still confused, you could offer to bring me in as a friendly, retired museum curator who also just happens to be an admin. But I don't think you need me. The one thing you could either suggest they do - or offer to do it for them - is to help by putting this {{UserboxCOI|1=David Pearson (librarian)}} on their userpage for them. You could also ask if they could give you the full details of reference (especially page number) for their entry in Who's Who (if that was actually what it was, and not just a mention of the Bibliographic Society). I must admit to wondering about this page meeting our notability criteria - it probably all hinges on the Who's Who entry. Let me know if you need me to drop in. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:32, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for taking a look. I'm also not too sure about the subject's notability, but I felt that directly pointing this out might be taken the wrong way and cause the discussion to spiral out of control. Telling someone who has a Wikipedia article written about them that they might not be "notable" (even if you try to politely explain you mean Wikipedia notability) often seems to put them on the defensive, especially if the article has existed for some time. I'm not saying such an article should be kept just to avoid possibly hurting its subject's feelings, but felt it would be quite the bombshell to suddenly drop upon him at the moment. Besides, there might be some WP:SNG which is being met. Anyway, he's yet to respond to my post so perhaps he's reviewing things at the moment and will decide to use the article talk page from now on. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

ANI closure

re this: Violence? I think not. If so, I would concur that our familiar "trouting" is a form of virtual physical violence and that too should be called out. That's used on a daily basis around here in the name of "humour", which we seem to be losing very rapidly. May be if I'd have accompanied my "metaphorical clip round the ear" with a comedic picture, it would've been ok? Un flipping believable. Cassianto^Talk 13:09, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Chill, my friend. Sorry if my humour seemed misplaced to you. I did say "acts of metaphorical physical violence are inappropriate unless approved 6 months in advance by WMF." I'm not sure which part of that you could take seriously. But on another note: you do realise that it was not the IP that posted the report at ANI, aren't you? Nick Moyes (talk) 13:23, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Irony is lost in a textual format, I apologise. Was it not? I thought the first post was by the IP, no? Cassianto^Talk 13:26, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

No problem, tnx. Nope, it was Serial# who moved the post over to ANI from the Teahouse where the IP placed it. I think they were simply expressing frustration to us there, so I did feel sorry for them, suddenly finding themselves under the ANI spotlight, accused of all sorts, like timewasting and S#'s regular insinuations of sockpuppetry. I think the IP deported themself well, under the circumstances. (I should add that I do take Wikipedia extremely seriously, but I do also try when I can to lighten the mood. Hence my pictorial response at the Teahouse to Serial#'s announcement that he was reporting himself at ANI. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Teahouse&diff=prev&oldid=958747180&diffmode=source see here)). Nick Moyes (talk) 15:52, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I personally tend to take a very hard-line approach to the humor disclosure requirement for reasons like this, but I'm not sure how widely my view is shared. Templates like {{Jokes}} are always good to have in one's toolbox. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:49, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Humour works best when you don't need to explain that it is humour, yet at the same time it communicates a point in a gentle manner whilst also being pretty apparent that it is indeed humour. It's when you have to explain, flag, template, delete or apologise for it that you know you've messed up somewhere along the line. I wasn't expecting to have to explain this one, to be honest.

User:Rock Solid Talwnt Entertainment

You may want to leave a message for User:Rock Solid Talwnt Entertainment stating why they were blocked. Also, your talk page is getting quite long. Please {{ping}} me when you reply. --Jax 0677 (talk) 16:31, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Done - message left. Thanks - I do like a long talk page covering some months, but something has definitely blocked archiving. Will sort later. Ta. Nick Moyes (talk) 16:43, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Rollback

Hi! So On the Test Wikipedia, I used rollback to revert an lta's edit, they added the word "test" on every page they vandalise, My reason for using rollback is that it's a bad-faith edit, and an LTA edit. I wanted to know if this is valid use of rollback (since I used it twice) before proceeding. --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 01:58, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I've only recently visited test.wikipedia, so know little about it. But I see no reason why you shouldn't use rollback to revert vandalism (as you did here). I note the Ip has since been blocked. Nick Moyes (talk) 02:06, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

It's not against policy to do so right? Last thing I want to do is get blocked and have rollback removed --Thegooduser Life Begins With a Smile :) 🍁 02:10, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

question re section

hi. I wanted to ask would it be okay if I could please reformat my signature, in the talk page section above? I don't mind the section being here, obviously, but I don't want everyone's eye to be immediately drawn to my own signature. I would simply remove the bold font and the emoji, just to make it more subtle. don't worry, I would do a draft in my own user space first, so that I could revise it in one edit, and not make multiple edits. I hope that's ok? I appreciate it. please ping me when you reply. thanks very much. --Sm8900 (talk) 12:19, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Yep -that's OK with me. I appreciate you having the courtesy to ask. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:28, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Adopt Me

Hey Nick,

Can you add me next up on your adoption list if you are willing to please? As you’ve seen I need the help and I have respect for you.

Thanks, Galendalia Talk to me ^{CVU Graduate} 08:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@Galendalia: I'd be happy to help and support you if I can (assuming you're still interested.) It would be on an informal piecemeal manner, with you approaching me with a range of questions, or seeking guidance and advice as needed, rather than me offering you a structured training programme. How does that sound? Nick Moyes (talk) 22:10, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: works for me bud. Galendalia Talk to me ^{CVU Graduate} 22:12, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	Thank you for helping me on my talk page! I didn't even realize you had done that until I looked at my talk page contriblog! Maccore Henni _{Mii! Pictochat Mii!} (Note: respond on minha talk page 22:05, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks

Hey!!! Thank you very much Nick Moyes☺ You have welcomed me to Wikipedia ...I'm glad to be a part of this. And I will take care of that what you made me understand .

Tanisha priyadarshini (talk) 05:16, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks

Merci pour avoir trouvé Aron Ralston! (Living in Lyon and formerly in Grenoble, I guess that's why it teased me. I've tried google with english syntax but I guess MSN spoil on my PC as far as it will do the same it for Le Bistro en français) Artehjbj (talk) 12:14, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	thank you so much for helping me with editing! Firestar9990 (talk) 15:57, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	your cool :D Firestar9990 (talk) 19:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi Nick,

many thanks again for all your (further) essential advice! In my ‘mind‘s eye’, I had made only a couple of trifling amendments to Nerine's page on ‘List of South African artists’ in 2019. So revisited that page again (having mentally ‘written it off’), and am quite surprised at how many changes I had made! I must conclude that this is yet another symptom of ‘old timer‘s disease’. sigh… And I definitely will NOT be tinkering with that page again. Shall only mention A Brush with Life in ‘Further Reading’ on the ‘women artists’ page. Oh, and ‘good on yer’ for awarding me a ‘BarnStar’!

Dave — Preceding unsigned comment added by DeSoto 383 (talk • contribs) 01:22, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Good Humor
	For your funny message: It looks like global lockdown is distorting everyone's perception of time! Interstellarity (talk) 18:26, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	For the many instances of extended patience I have noticed you giving new users, and very frequent instances of level-headedness all around. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 00:16, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Why, thank you, kind Sir!
Why, thank you, kind Lady!

(delete as appropriate). Nick Moyes (talk) 10:12, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).

Administrator changes

CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth

Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL

CheckUser changes

SQL

Guideline and policy news

A request for comment asks whether the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) should allowed any unblock request or just private appeals.
The Wikimedia Foundation announced that they will develop a universal code of conduct for all WMF projects. There is an open local discussion regarding the same.

Arbitration

A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:27, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

There is a new beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [32]

Problems

There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [33][34][35]
The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [36]

Changes later this week

You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [37]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Tea House and Redirect

Hi Nick, I got a message from you to join the teahouse, this was quite a few months ago... sorry I'm late for tea... thank you so much for offering to help me. I just created the first article about a Chilean sculptor. I hope to contribute more articles on Hispanic women.--Pworren (talk) 10:15, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Please Nick can you delete the redirect page from my Sand Box: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Pworren/sandbox&redirect=no I need it to keep on writing, thanks a lot, --Pworren (talk) 10:22, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Hey Pworren, thanks for stopping by, and a belated welcome to Wikipedia. (I've merged your two questions into one, if that's OK) Although you could have easily done it yourself simply by editing the sandbox page, I have removed the redirect command from your sandbox for you. You can have more than one sandbox if you need them, just by adding a number or word to the url in your browser, like this User:Pworren/sandbox2. It's a 'redlink' at the moment, but if you want to use it, just click create, and type in some content. In desktop view you can find ll your subpages by clicking the 'Page' tab, and then 'subpages'.

Do you have any more sources to support your article on Tamara Jacquin? You said she has received several awards - can you specify and cite a reference for each one? This will help establish her Notability - an essential criterion every person has to meet if their article is to stay on Wikipedia. Are you aware of the Women in Red Project? It's a Wikipedia scheme to create more articles about women here. They maintain lists of 'redlinked' women's names that it's felt ought to be written. I'll pop by your talk page and leave some details for you. If you run in to problems, that's what the Teahouse is for. So feel free to ask, anytime. So all the best for now. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:05, 2 June 2020 (UTC)