User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2024/September
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Voting for coordinators is now open!
Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:41, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).
Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which
applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past
. - A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.
Arbitration
- Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
- Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
- The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.
Miscellaneous
- Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
- A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
Tech News: 2024-36
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualisation can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help to test the charts.
Feature news
- Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word
__EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [1] - Editors who use the New Topic tool on discussion pages, will now be reminded to add a section header, which should help reduce the quantity of newcomers who add sections without a header. You can read more about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Last week, some Toolforge tools had occasional connection problems. The cause is still being investigated, but the problems have been resolved for now. [2]
- Translation administrators at multilingual wikis, when editing multiple translation units, can now easily mark which changes require updates to the translation. This is possible with the new dropdown menu.
Project updates
- A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia's APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.
Learn more
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Charts, the successor of Graphs - A secure and extensible tool for data visualization (25 mins) – about the above-mentioned Charts project.
- State of Language Technology and Onboarding at Wikimedia (90 mins) – about some of the language tools that support Wikimedia sites, such as Content/Section Translation, MinT, and LanguageConverter; also the current state and future of languages onboarding. [3]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Question from Dxbgeorge (13:39, 18 August 2024)
Hello .. can I create information Wikipedia about my self .. as an athlete swimming champion in Greek national team and famous personal trainer participating in morning tv magazine from 1998 till 2002 I have few videos during this period and also as a guest in tv journalist shows talking about my experiences in the gym industry.. Also working as a personal trainer with famous Greeks tv actors and many shipowner and other VIP people.. Please Your prompt respond Georgios Chadimoglou --Dxbgeorge (talk) 13:39, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- Hello Dxbgeorge. Writing about yourself or others who you have a conflict of interest with, while not outright banned, is "strongly" discouraged. If you do wish to proceed, please see WP:AUTOBIO, this guide, this guide to referencing, and the WP:NATHLETE notability guideline. You'll need reliable secondary sources independent of yourself that demonstrate "notability" as defined by WP:NATHLETE and, more broadly, the general notability guideline. I would also recommend giving this short essay a read before starting. TheSandDoctor Talk 06:23, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Question from Wayne8491 (04:06, 21 August 2024)
I have a big edit I want to make about a page with which I am highly familiar. Can I do that as a new user? (my edits are very well sourced) --Wayne8491 (talk) 04:06, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Wayne8491! I am sorry that I somehow missed this. Provided that there isn't page protection applied to the specific page you're thinking of that would block you, you are technically able to edit any article. You can be WP:BOLD and hep improve articles if you happen to have reliable sources that are independent of the subject. TheSandDoctor Talk 06:17, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment
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Question from Mohit Kumar Sonipat on Talk:Pawan Kumar (politician) (16:27, 6 September 2024)
I want to add a photo of a political person --Mohit Kumar Sonipat (talk) 16:27, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @Mohit Kumar Sonipat:. I believe that you might be looking for commons: for images as there isn't currently an article about Pawan Kumar (politician). Or are you wanting to write an article? TheSandDoctor Talk 05:56, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for offering your mentorship
I've never connected with anyone on Wikipedia, but apparently you are my mentor, and it was recommended that I say hi, so here I am saying hi. Avi (talk) 03:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
- Hello Avigreen18! It is a pleasure to meet you. If you have any questions about getting started on Wikipedia, feel free to let me know and I'll do my best to assist or you can ask at the Teahouse (it's a more heavily monitored venue). TheSandDoctor Talk 05:58, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Hello TheSandDoctor
This is a message to say, I definitely didn't break into your house and steal all your pies 🤫 EncyclopediaOfLT (talk) 19:28, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
- oh, and hello, my mentor. EoLT EncyclopediaOfLT (talk) 19:51, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
- Oh noes! The pies! Not the pies!!!!
. It is a pleasure to meet you, EncyclopediaOfLT. If you have any questions about getting started on Wikipedia, feel free to let me know and I'll do my best to assist or you can ask at the Teahouse (it's a more heavily monitored venue). - What I will say about spelling is that MOS:ENGVAR is worth keeping in mind when looking to correct spelling errors. There are multiple correct spellings for certain words and it relies on context of the nationality of the subject (usually) for what one is correct. In the case of this edit for yours, it was reverted by QuickWittedHare because the change went against MOS:ENGVAR. I hope that that helps explain that a bit! TheSandDoctor Talk 06:01, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
- Oh noes! The pies! Not the pies!!!!
Tech News: 2024-37
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [4][5]
- Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions
entity:getSitelink()andmw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid)will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [6]
Project updates
- Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [7]
- Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new
MOSnamespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning withMOS:(usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language codemos). [8]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Question from Malik Shahzad Hassan Awan (18:00, 11 September 2024)
how do i create my page to appear on google --Malik Shahzad Hassan Awan (talk) 18:00, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- @Malik Shahzad Hassan Awan: I assume that you are referring to your user page, which is separate from an article. Please see Wikipedia:User pages and review WP:AUTOBIO and WP:ABOUTME. If you still wish to proceed, please see this guide to creating your first article, this notability guideline, and this guide to referencing. TheSandDoctor Talk 14:28, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
Question from Fourtwenty Stargazer (04:55, 14 September 2024)
I want do create a page my artist bio what necessary information do I need to put in the article to give a thorough overview about who the artist is and what they do --Fourtwenty Stargazer (talk) 04:55, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
- @Fourtwenty Stargazer: Welcome to Wikipedia! What type of artist are we talking here (painting, music, something else)? If we are talking a non-musical artist then the relevant Wikipedia notability guideline is WP:NARTIST. If this is a musical artist, then WP:MUSICBIO would be the most appropriate notability guideline (this one also applies to bands). Those give you a demonstration of what sort of markers of coverage that we need, but there is also the overall general notability guideline that could come into effect. Though not an official policy, a good rule of thumb (in general) is to find at least 3 "good in-depth references in reliable sources that are independent of each other."
- If you are wondering how to get started writing an article, an age-old method is to look for similar articles that already exist in terms of formatting. There is also this guide to creating your first article, this guide to referencing, and this guide to inline citations. Please do let me know if you have any questions. I'm more than happy to help where I realistically can. TheSandDoctor Talk 14:37, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
Question from Cledders123 (15:03, 15 September 2024)
Hello,
I'd like to add some photos to the page 'Aberdare Golf club'. I cannot seem to find how I add the images into the page though. --Cledders123 (talk) 15:03, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
- @Cledders123: Do you have the images yourself or are they already on Wikimedia Commons? If so, please see Help:Introduction to images with Wiki Markup/1. That should hopefully help! TheSandDoctor Talk 04:00, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-38
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Improvements and Maintenance
Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.- The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [9]
- References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [10]
- It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [11]
Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.- Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes
mw-message-boxneed to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newercdx-messagegroup of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [12]
Technical project updates
- Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [13]
Tech in depth
- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
- Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Question from Griffpatch201494 (11:46, 17 September 2024)
Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!
Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open! A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. Register your vote here by 23:59 UTC on 29 September! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:35, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
2600:1001:A100:0:0:0:0:0/40
FYI the sockmaster is back editing again at 2600:1001:A100:0:0:0:0:0/40 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial)). You blocked this range 3 months ago in response to an SPI report at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Gabriella~four.3-6 wizzito | say hello! 04:14, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-39
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.
Updates for editors
- Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
- The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
- It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within
<syntaxhighlight>tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax{{…}}are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [14] - Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [15][16]
- View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- From Wikimedia Enterprise:
- The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
- The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.
In depth
- The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Hi SandDollar! I'm glad to meet you as my mentor. I noticed while editing the Space art page that there's a name in the list of 'prominent artists' (R.A. Smith) that doesn't have their own page. His name isn't even mentioned anywhere else on this page. I've been researching about his works and he's really interesting. Would it be alright if I made a page about him? --Domorito (talk) 11:26, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
Question from MichaelWhelanArtist (19:00, 29 September 2024)
Hello! I'm seeking a reference to guide me in editing a photo; I'd like to delete a current photo and replace it with another. --MichaelWhelanArtist (talk) 19:00, 29 September 2024 (UTC)