User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2020/June

Articles for Creation: List of reviewers by subject notice

Hi TheSandDoctor/Archives/2020, you are receiving this notice because you are listed as an active Articles for Creation reviewer.

Recently a list of reviewers by area of expertise was created. This notice is being sent out to alert you to the existence of that list, and to encourage you to add your name to it. If you or other reviewers come across articles in the queue where an acceptance/decline hinges on specialist knowledge, this list should serve to facilitate contact with a fellow reviewer.

To end on a positive note, the backlog has dropped below 1,500, so thanks for all of the hard work some of you have been putting into the AfC process!

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 27 May 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.

---

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 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. [1]

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. [2][3][4]
• 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. [5]

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. [6]
• 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.

22:32, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Alvin Clark (schooner)

Please see note on your DYK review. Yoninah (talk) 01:37, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

 Done --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:29, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Musician/musical band related draft

Hi, TheSandDoctor as per information at WP:AFC/RBS, I would like to draw your attention to Draft:Common Dream which you might be interested to review. Thank you. ~ Amkgp ✉ 12:27, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

@Amkgp:  Done --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:29, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Thula Victorious sock puppet

Hi there,

You were the closing mopper for Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nokuthula27/Archive - it looks like another has popped up here:

User talk:Doubl dee

Behaviour is exactly the same as the previous socks - insertion and creation of information about a wannabe South African model:

• [7]
• Thula victorious m

And so forth. Chaheel Riens (talk) 08:46, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Chaheel Riens: Thank you for making a report of a suspected sockpuppet at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nokuthula27, but it is unnecessary to also write me a talk page message about that suspected sock if you've filed a report. As a clerk, I do watch WP:SPI. Thank you for filing the report though! --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 17:11, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah - I did it the other way round. I notified you first, then realised that I could use Twinkle to do so as well. Despite my long time here, I think this is the first time I've reported a repeat sock puppet, so wasn't sure how to go about re-opening a previously closed case. Chaheel Riens (talk) 17:46, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Chaheel Riens: No problem! If you want to create a new report for an existing page, just go to WP:SPI, expand the "How to open an investigation:" heading, and put the master's username in the box. If the page already exists, it will give you the template for a new section. If the master doesn't, then that is also just how you create a new case. Please let me know if you have any questions . --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 22:48, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Unblock

Just letting you know that I've unblocked APT141 - they appear to be a single individual, and the account name doesn't seem to represent any real-life group or organisation. If I have erred and there actually is such a task force, please feel free to reblock and hit me with a fish, as desired. Cheers, Yunshui ^雲_水 14:39, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@Yunshui: No problem, just remember to remove the category when you unblock ;) --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 14:45, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Ugh, I always forget that bit, sorry! Yunshui ^雲_水 14:47, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@Yunshui: No worries! It happens ;) --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 16:36, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Regarding recreation of the page Arindam Sharma

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hello sir, with due respect I would like to say that I can see that the page Arindam Sharma is now protected from recreation but I have searched on google about the person and I have found couple of e-links including his interviews and other links. Therefore, would you kindly grant the page to be created? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Omishx (talk • contribs) 15:43, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Meta

This discussion is outside the scope of enwiki. I have copied this over and responded on their meta talk page (m:Special:Diff/20149332). --TheSandDoctor Talk 22:41, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

You seem to have made an error on Meta: 18:38, 6 June 2020 TheSandDoctor talk contribs blocked Pigsonthewing talk contribs with an expiration time of infinite (account creation disabled) (Removing content from pages) Please fix it, asap. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:27, 6 June 2020 (UTC) @Pigsonthewing: I will answer this here, but for future please direct any meta related questions to meta (e.g. ping on your talk page with a Q) as this is outside the scope of enwiki or any other wiki. No, everything was working correctly, with the exception that indef was too long for a first block. I have adjusted it to 2 months. If you have further questions, please direct to your meta talk page. --TheSandDoctor Talk 21:47, 6 June 2020 (UTC) I asked, and have, no questions. It was clearly an error, or rather several, on your part: infinite length bock, per above there was no removal of content from "pages" (plural); you have now repeated this false claim removing content from a page (or indeed pages, had that been the case), in the process of rewriting it, is not in itself a blocking matter no prior warning, or indeed any attempt to discuss no post-block notification on my talk page. Please now fix these egregious errors, by removing your wholly unwarranted block, with a summary that acknowledge the errors. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:05, 6 June 2020 (UTC) As I have said, please take this to your meta talk page. I am copying this over there and will respond in turn. --TheSandDoctor Talk 22:11, 6 June 2020 (UTC) You didn't say that; you said you would "answer this here". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:23, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

• I tried to follow the "special diff" and find nothing related. Help? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:08, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Gerda Arendt, try m:Special:Diff/20149332. Cabayi (talk) 09:15, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

That is less misleading, but I'm still in the dark about what happened, - said there as it seems not wanted here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:29, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt and Cabayi: I have fixed the diff link. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 15:39, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt and Cabayi: The reason is that I would prefer to discuss someone's block on the edition that it took place (if practical). Since it was a meta block, it has nothing to do with enwiki and is outside the processes of this edition. Thus, it is best discussed on meta. When it became clear that this was going to become a larger thread, I moved the discussion over to meta as I should have from the beginning. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 15:46, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-24

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 articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [8]
• Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them. <b/> is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work. area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect <references /> or <ref />. [9]
• There is a banner called WikidataPageBanner. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions on MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [10][11]

Changes later this week

• You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [12]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 118 wikis need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [13]

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

21:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

The book of vessels

Hello SandDoctor, I started a stub article about a Han dynasty excavated medical text. The stub had one citation to an academic monograph by a major academic publisher, where all facts claimed in my stub could be verified. It is unclear to me why you moved the article to the draft space (i.e. pursuant which policy) and as such it is unclear to me how to make it pass your threshold. In any case, I don't see how my little article was doing anyone any harm. If you just need a second article cited, that is easily done, but I don't want ot invest time to only have it wasted. Tibetologist (talk) 10:16, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Tibetologist: Could you please link me the page which you are referring to? I took a look at Draft:Book on Vessels and Hui Lin and can confirm that I have never edited either of them. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:46, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, it was 'The Sand Bot' that moved it to draft, and I understood that you were the person behind the bot, but I guess anyone can use a bot and there is no way to tell the person? Thanks for your help in any case. --Tibetologist (talk) 07:33, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Tibetologist: That is indeed my bot, but it still never moved the page. Assuming at this point that you are speaking of Draft:Book on Vessels, Mccapra is the one who moved it with this edit (as can be seen with the edit summary "Mccapra moved page Book on Vessels to Draft:Book on Vessels: Undersourced, incubate in draftspace (via script)"). The edit summary itself actually gives a good indication of why it was moved. The page currently has too few references. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:40, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates

Read this in another language • Subscription list

The new features include a toolbar. What do you think should be in the toolbar?

This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.

• Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing @. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
• New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
• New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
• Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25

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

• Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

Problems

• There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [14]
• Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [15]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 June. It will be on all wikis from 18 June (calendar).

Future changes

• Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [16]
• The selectors .menu and .vectorMenu will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts. .menu should be replaced by ul. .vectorMenu should be replaced by .vector-menu. [17]

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

21:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Happy...

Wishing TheSandDoctor a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Birthday Committee! Best wishes! CommanderWaterford (talk) 06:44, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@CommanderWaterford: Thank you! It was that day already, heh? Time flies.... --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:26, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

@CAPTAIN RAJU: Thank you! I hope that you are holding up okay...wherever you are in the world . (re admin) Hard to believe its been 2 years already. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:28, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

Hello TheSandDoctor/Archives/2020,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources

• A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
• Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
• A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
• Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

SPI archiving

Thank you for helping to clear out the archiving backup. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:51, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: You're welcome! Archive cleanup is my specialty and actually what I do most often at SPI --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 18:52, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

TheSandDoctor, OK, cool. I will endeavor to keep your input queue full :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 21:47, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Awesome! I like archiving hehe --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

IP Rangeblock sock puppet accounts

Here are those other sock puppet accounts like we talked about at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Many of these have had varying levels of temporary blocks and one or two might still be blocked but most aren't.TKOIII (talk) 20:37, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/2.121.240.143
Special:Contributions/2.125.187.194
Special:Contributions/90.195.59.51
Special:Contributions/2.127.79.139
Special:Contributions/2.217.39.34
Special:Contributions/90.195.58.15
Special:Contributions/2.123.42.236
Special:Contributions/2.125.184.196
Special:Contributions/2.123.46.136

It was QEDK who you were supposed to leave this on TKOIII. Don't worry about it now though, I have pinged them as well. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

@TKOIII: None of these IPs have recent activity, and the ones which do are already blocked, drop a note on my TP if they become active so I can reassess collateral. --qedk (t 愛 c) 12:36, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26

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

Problems

• There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [18]
• Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [19]

Changes later this week

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [20]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [21]

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

18:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SeekerOfTruth90

Hi, TheSandDoctor I am finding a lot of similarities in editing pattern of the editors at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SeekerOfTruth90. Please have a look. Thank you ~ Amkgp 💬 20:13, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Angela Criss

Hi TheSandDoctor,

Re your comments here you might want to let User:ZLEA know about asking for Checkuser on IPs, as he was the one who did, not me. He reported the IP and I reported the user. The two reports were merged subsequently. Also, I made the report at 15:57 before the user was blocked at 16:05. Thanks. Lard Almighty (talk) 14:50, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I didn't know I had done that. I'll be more careful next time. - ZLEA _T\^C 14:58, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

No probs. Thanks. Lard Almighty (talk) 14:59, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

My apologies regarding that point then, Lard Almighty. (Please do ping me though if responding to something I said.) @ZLEA: Please be more careful. CU checks of IPs will be hard declined every time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheSandDoctor (talk • contribs) 15:03, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Will do. Thanks. Lard Almighty (talk) 15:21, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27

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

Problems

• Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [22]
• Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [23]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

• The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

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

16:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)