User talk:Tollens/Archive 9

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Question from Ipogian (11:29, 23 June 2024)

Hi Sir, I'm Brian and i had a question concerning writing prompts in the search bar, could you recommend some of the best practices pls --Ipogian (talk) 11:29, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi Brian, I'm not certain I understand what you're asking about, are you referring to Wikipedia's internal search bar? I can only help with Wikipedia-related questions so I will assume that's the case. If so, in most cases you can just put in the topic you are looking for, and often you will be automatically redirected to the correct page even if you didn't put in the specific title. In more complicated cases, there are a wide variety of additional filters that can be used by going to Special:Search and opening up the advanced search dropdown. There are even more tools that can be used (like regexes if you know how to use them, don't worry if you don't) that are documented at mw:Help:CirrusSearch. If I've misunderstood your question please do let me know. Tollens (talk) 06:23, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Ok thanks CalculusPerson (talk) 01:56, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Shark725 (21:21, 16 July 2024)

Hi... I have a question about the COI policy. I've declared my COI per guidelines. I'm not sure if this means that content I add will undergo extra scrutiny for neutral tone, or if it means that it will just be deleted. I've already had one link removed due to "COI policy." --Shark725 (talk) 21:21, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Shark725 – there will be extra scrutiny not only for neutral tone but likely for several other policies and guidelines as well, it won't all just be removed. In the case of the removed link, that was because infoboxes should only list relatives who already have a Wikipedia article about them, which does not appear to be the case for Cindy Duke. It appears your other addition to the same page was not undone and looks fine to me.

It is recommended (though not required) that editors with conflicts of interest not edit affected articles directly except in cases of obvious improvements like typo corrections: you should instead consider making edit requests on the talk page of an article you want changed. You can do this using the edit request wizard (you can get there without using a link by putting WP:ERW into the search bar) or, if you prefer, manually using the {{edit COI}} template. Tollens (talk) 04:19, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from BUKURU RASHIDI (00:39, 20 July 2024)

love --BUKURU RASHIDI (talk) 00:39, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from BUKURU RASHIDI (00:44, 20 July 2024)

bukuru --BUKURU RASHIDI (talk) 00:44, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello BUKURU RASHIDI! This doesn't seem to be a question, do you need help with using or editing Wikipedia? Tollens (talk) 05:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from SCC1990 (08:12, 21 July 2024)

Hi do you know if it is possible to change my username, and if so how? --SCC1990 (talk) 08:12, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi SCC1990! There is a very short form you can fill out at Special:GlobalRenameRequest, and your request will be processed fairly quickly (anywhere from immediately to a couple days). Tollens (talk) 08:14, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Tollens thanks for your quick reply - that is really helpful. SCC1990 (talk) 08:24, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely, happy to help! Tollens (talk) 08:25, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-30

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

• Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
• Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [1]
• Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [2]
• Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone.
• Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [3]

Project Updates

• Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.

Learn more

• Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff.
• How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin and Add a Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Morrow Ncho on TerraPass (23:37, 23 July 2024)

Hello how are you doing my people I am new here can someone tell me how to do it to work set I will be earning money by answering questions like my partners? --Morrow Ncho (talk) 23:37, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello Morrow Ncho! I am not sure I understand your question. It seems like you are asking about how to answer questions like the one you've just asked, and be paid for doing so (if not, my apologies, could you please clarify?). If so, you are mistaken about how Wikipedia works: there are no paid employees, and there is no selection process for people wanting to contribute. Anybody is allowed to contribute to Wikipedia, and everybody who does is a volunteer and does not earn any money for contributing. Tollens (talk) 06:38, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from CalculusPerson (03:02, 25 July 2024)

Hi, can you teach me how to make money off of wikipedia. I want to start a side hustle. --CalculusPerson (talk) 03:02, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

@CalculusPerson: No. Wikipedia is designed as a volunteer project: many (probably most) frequent contributors, including myself, consider paid editing to be a net harm to Wikipedia. If you want to edit Wikipedia for pay, you are welcome to do the research yourself to find out how. The two places I will point you towards are WP:PAID, which outlines the mandatory disclosures that must be made if you do get paid for your contributions, and WP:COI, which provides additional guidance and describes additional restrictions on editing in cases where you have a connection to the topic (which is the case any time you are paid for a contribution to Wikipedia). Tollens (talk) 05:25, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Ginalyncharles (13:54, 23 July 2024)

Hello! I am trying to make, what I think, are minor edits to our school page. The correct motto, correct District name, correct CTE areas.

Also need to know if we have to keep information which is no longer relevant?

Thank you,

Gina --Ginalyncharles (talk) 13:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Gina!

You say "we" and "our": are you employed by the school in any way? If so, there are some mandatory disclosure requirements that I'd be happy to walk you through.

It looks like a couple of the minor edits were undone because the links you provided appear to be broken: are you able to provide a working URL?

In terms of information that you say is no longer relevant: ideally content should be updated, not removed. Since dates are provided throughout, there's no reason to remove anything as far as I can see, though some portions might need to be updated if they are inaccurate. For example, In 2000, the school opened its current library: I don't know if this is still true, but the solution if not would be to change it to "a new library" from "its current library" and talk more about the replacement if one exists, not delete it altogether (Just as an example. It might still be entirely correct, I have no idea). Similar would go for The case has not yet gone to trial – this should be updated, not removed. Tollens (talk) 06:35, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I am an employee at the school. Please let me know how to proceed. Thank you. Ginalyncharles (talk) 16:31, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

In that case, please add {{paid|user=Ginalyncharles|employer=InsertName}} to your userpage – this is so that others can easily see your affiliation with the topic. It is also strongly encouraged that editors with conflicts of interest like yourself not edit affected pages directly, but instead submit edit requests to be reviewed by others. This can be done easily using the edit request wizard. Tollens (talk) 06:16, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello, How do I edit my user page? I would like to be the one to submit the school page updates and new information. Will I be able to do this after I update my user page? Thank you Ginalyncharles (talk) 14:37, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

If you click your username or this link it will take you there (and should automatically open the editor). There should be a pencil icon next to the "Publish page..." button, if you select it and click "Source editing" you can place the code above onto the page (changing InsertName to the name of your employer), then click "Publish page...". I am not certain what you mean about being the one to submit the updates: you can of course submit requests after you've updated your user page, but it is still very strongly encouraged that you not edit the school's page directly even after you update your user page. Making a request is very similar to editing the page directly – you still need to tell others exactly what needs to be updated and exactly what it should be replaced with (and typically requests are accepted as-is unless there are issues), the only difference is that someone else will take a look at your change before it is implemented into the article. Tollens (talk) 19:49, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Farsamjamshidi (19:41, 26 July 2024)

Hello, I want to create Wikipedia, but I don't know where to upload my certificate --Farsamjamshidi (talk) 19:41, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Farsamjamshidi! I see that your user page has been deleted, and that you've been given some information about why on your user talk page. While I cannot see the content of the deleted page, please be aware that Wikipedia is not for hosting resumes/CVs, promoting yourself or your company, etc. There are some fairly strict rules about when people qualify for a Wikipedia article to be written about them (outlined at WP:Notability), and even then it is strongly discouraged to write about yourself. If you do meet Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, somebody else will eventually write about you unprompted. Tollens (talk) 06:22, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Rami wicki (20:41, 27 July 2024)

How do I encourage others to edit the page that I've put together? --Rami wicki (talk) 20:41, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Rami wicki! Most of the time, you really don't – aside from tagging the talk page as being related to the Wikiprojects it falls under (which has already been done) and placing appropriate categories on the page (which you've done also), there's not a whole lot to do. People will come across the page organically, but this could take some time. Keep in mind that the article will never be done: there's no hurry. If you think there are specific big issues with the page, but you can't fix them, you could add cleanup tags pointing out those issues (though there are loads of articles tagged like this and so adding it probably won't drastically increase the number of editors working on it). Tollens (talk) 05:23, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Walakira Ronald165 on Talk:Stephanie McKay (03:55, 29 July 2024)

Can i get 1000 subscribers a day on my YouTube channel walakiraronald 165 in one week --Walakira Ronald165 (talk) 03:56, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello Walakira Ronald165; I'm only here to help with questions about using or editing Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is also not a place for advertising or promotion. Perhaps you can get 1000 subscribers a day, but I can't give you advice about how and Wikipedia will not be an effective place to point people to your channel from. Tollens (talk) 05:29, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-31

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

• Editors using the Visual Editor in languages that use non-Latin characters for numbers, such as Hindi, Manipuri and Eastern Arabic, may notice some changes in the formatting of reference numbers. This is a side effect of preparing a new sub-referencing feature, and will also allow fixing some general numbering issues in Visual Editor. If you notice any related problems on your wiki, please share details at the project talkpage.

Bugs status

• Some logged-in editors were briefly unable to edit or load pages last week. These errors were mainly due to the addition of new linter rules which led to caching problems. Fixes have been applied and investigations are continuing.
• Editors can use the IP Information tool to get information about IP addresses. This tool is available as a Beta Feature in your preferences. The tool was not available for a few days last week, but is now working again. Thank you to Shizhao for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• There are new features and improvements to Phabricator from the Release Engineering and Collaboration Services teams, and some volunteers, including: the search systems, the new task creation system, the login systems, the translation setup which has resulted in support for more languages (thanks to Pppery), and fixes for many edge-case errors. You can read details about these and other improvements in this summary.
• There is an update on the Charts project. The team has decided which visualization library to use, which chart types to start focusing on, and where to store chart definitions.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Czech (voy:cs:) [4]

Learn more

• There is a new Wikimedia Foundation data center in São Paulo, Brazil which helps to reduce load times.
• There is new user research on problems with the process of uploading images.
• Commons Impact Metrics are now available via data dumps and API.
• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:08, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Victory Chinedum (21:30, 31 July 2024)

How do I publish a new article? --Victory Chinedum (talk) 21:30, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Victory Chinedum, and apologies for the very delayed reply – there is a good information page at Help:Your first article that will hopefully be of use, and there is a button on that page that will help you create the page where you can work on your article. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that content in the article needs to be supported by citations to reliable sources (you can't use your own personal knowledge directly), and that the article must contain citations to multiple reliable sources that are both independent of the subject (so for example, in an article about a company, their website would not be independent) and have significant coverage of the subject rather than only a passing mention. Tollens (talk) 15:09, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-32

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

• Two new parser functions will be available this week: {{#dir}} and {{#bcp47}}. These will reduce the need for Template:Dir and Template:BCP47 on Commons and allow us to drop 100 million rows from the "what links here" database. Editors at any wiki that use these templates, can help by replacing the templates with these new functions. The templates at Commons will be updated during the Hackathon at Wikimania. [5][6]
• Communities can request the activation of the visual editor on entire namespaces where discussions sometimes happen (for instance Wikipedia: or Wikisource: namespaces) if they understand the known limitations. For discussions, users can already use DiscussionTools in these namespaces.
• The tracking category "Pages using Timeline" has been renamed to "Pages using the EasyTimeline extension" in TranslateWiki. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match.

Project updates

• Editors who help to organize WikiProjects and similar on-wiki collaborations, are invited to share ideas and examples of successful collaborations with the Campaigns and Programs teams. You can fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage. The teams are particularly looking for details about successful collaborations on non-English wikis.
• The new parser is being rolled out on Wikivoyage wikis over the next few months. The English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikivoyage were switched to Parsoid last week. For more information, see Parsoid/Parser Unification.

Learn more

• There will be more than 200 sessions at Wikimania this week. Here is a summary of some of the key sessions related to the product and technology area.
• The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available.
• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New design previews for Translatable pages; Updates about MinT for Wiki Readers; the release of Translation dumps; and more.
• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available.
• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:41, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2024).

Administrator changes

Isabelle Belato

• Ian.thomson
• Modussiccandi

Interface administrator changes

Izno

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49

Technical news

• Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
• Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ

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• Discuss this newsletter
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• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

User talk:Ginalyncharles

Hello—I am Neonorange I hope you do not mind my butting in, but I have just reverted an edit by an IP which is much like the edits to Sussex Technical High School made by the User talk:Ginalyncharles account. All of GC edits to mainspace have been reverted, mainly for deleting multiple citations.

I notice that on your talk page that the account directly claimed to be a school employee. I think this highly unlikely that this vandalism only account is employed by the school. I have left a warning on the ip talk page and intend to leave a warning on the GC talk page.

Please check the contributions at the GC talk page. I leave it to you to take up the impersonation since is was not on my talk page.

Thank you for lending your talk page. — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 05:59, 8 August 2024 (UTC) —

Hey Neonorange, you aren't butting in! Thanks for the pointer, I am only working from my phone for the next week-ish so I will probably not be able to look at this very effectively until I'm able to sit down at a real computer again, but I'll certainly take a look then. From what I remember of the account's editing, I do think it's entirely plausible that it is controlled by an employee of the school, since it was mostly removing negative information about the school as well as a section that looked like it could very well have been outdated (not that removal of the section would have been correct even if so, just that I can imagine that a school employee might do so). I certainly agree the edits are problematic regardless. Tollens (talk) 15:32, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Question from Dmbjrw67 (19:29, 8 August 2024)

How long after I make edits will they show up? --Dmbjrw67 (talk) 19:29, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Dmbjrw67, and welcome to Wikipedia! Edits are made public immediately after you click the publish changes button. It seems like you made an edit where you did not change any content on the page, but did provide quite a long edit summary, which may be the source of the confusion here. Edit summaries are not part of the article, they are only to help others figure out what you changed, and are visible only in the page history (in the case of your edit, that is here) and diffs, which show the changes that were made by each edit (in your case available here). You can see in that diff that you added only one blank line to the actual article: you may want to try again, placing your new text with the rest of the text of the article, then putting only a brief description of what you added in the edit summary box. Tollens (talk) 15:24, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Could you direct me on how to make an addition to the recipients section? That is what I'm trying to accomplish. Dmbjrw67 (talk) 16:07, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

If you go to the article page, you can click "Edit" near the top of the right-hand side of the page (or "Edit source" instead if that button is there), or alternatively you can use this direct link. That should bring up another page with the text of the article which you can type in: if you scroll to the place in the article you want to change, you can type directly into the article. If you look at other entries there are some extra parts of each entry that are responsible for the formatting which you should also include in your entry: your addition should look like :: {{Hanging indent|text=Your entry goes here}} before you click publish. When you are asked for an edit summary after clicking publish (where you put your content before), you can put something like "Added entry for person's name" so that others can easily tell what you changed. Tollens (talk) 16:57, 9 August 2024 (UTC)