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Coming back to an old block - been busy

I would like to appeal a topic block, but want first to interact with you. The topic block is, IMHO (and I believe I can demonstrate it) based on NOT READING THE SOURCES and assuming bad faith. There are, in my edits, only sources. So, will you consider the sources? Twasonasummersmorn (talk) 16:50, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Twasonasummersmorn, it's been almost two years and things have changed a bit. Your ban is no longer something special; it may be removed by any administrator, for example in response to a normal unblock request. Not all administrators will be aware of this, so you should ideally point to this edit here somewhere in your request. Alternatively, you can appeal your topic ban at WP:AN, and the usual form requirements for such an appeal do not strictly apply anymore. You can go to WP:AN and point to this edit here (based on Wikipedia:Contentious_topics#Appeals_and_amendments's "more than a year ago" clause), explaining to the readers that you are appealing a topic ban that was set over a year ago and thus can be revoked by any administrator, and that it's fine with me if this happens.
For me personally to undo the ban, I personally would like to see an understanding of what led to it, which is edit warring and incivility (Special:Permalink/1131405903, block log). This is about your behavior and not the sources, and the misunderstanding displayed in Special:Diff/1130308434 appears to be still present, so I currently lack the hope I'd need to undo the ban. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:00, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
You'll have to point to incivility rather than accurate and polite description. And - again - the edit warring was where other people serially reverted accurate sources, acting in concert. If you're interested in the edits and the sources, they're there. If you're not, then there is indeed no point. Twasonasummersmorn (talk) 13:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm going to presume there's no point and that you're not interested in the actual sources. And the fact that others are serially, in concert, reverting the articles to say that a source says A when the source actually says not-A. Plus, undoing edits when new sources are offered that they don't like. If wikipedia admins don't care about what the sources actually say, then it's become as reliable as twitter. Twasonasummersmorn (talk) 12:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
I have read your messages, but there's nothing convincing to me personally in them, and I have already explained why. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:05, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious
Six years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:51, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Gerda Arendt! 🌈😊 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 08:23, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I did not, actually.

But it's super cool. I left mentorship a long time ago. Having left, I assume there's not an easy way to check the list without rejoining, which I might do, once/if I fully return (I've been away for a while). From back then, I only remember DanCherek, whom I am proud of too, almost as much as of you 😎 I wonder who else is on there. 😎 😎— Usedtobecool ☎️ 17:48, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

😄 Well, Usedtobecool, "rejoining" just means opening Special:EnrollAsMentor and selecting "Number of mentees assigned to me: None". This enables the mentor dashboard without making you the mentor of anyone. However, as you are still internally listed as mentor for some users, I'm not sure what you'll see. Perhaps a list of mentees, perhaps not. If you see a list of mentees, please do take the opportunity to remove the assignment so they're automatically re-assigned to someone actively mentoring. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:45, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Interestingly, it currently doesn't even seem to be possible to remove mentees from oneself. Or I haven't found the option yet. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:51, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
I am not aware of a way to remove one's mentees other than by them being claimed by another. But I have not kept up with developments that closely either. It does not matter. My mentees still see me as their mentor and get told to contact me. Most mentees ask one question on their first day and never return, not even to Wikipedia editing, at all. Of the few who stay around and could contact me, none have, but that's not because they know I've quit. They have no reason to know, and I've turned none away. All the quitting does and did is, it doesn't assign me new mentees. Yeah, I could rejoin as an inactive mentor but I don't have a good justification to do so, and *they* recommend being an inactive mentor only for known short breaks, not long or indefinite ones, for whatever reason. Best, — Usedtobecool ☎️ 09:04, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
I could've sworn it was possible from the mentor dashboard, but again, haven't seen it in a long time, so I could be mistaken, or it could have changed. I have vague recollections of removing blocked spammers and vandals from my list of mentees, which could be from a real memory or just a visualised wish — Usedtobecool ☎️ 09:11, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
Usedtobecool, there's a way. If a mentor is administratively removed, all mentees get re-assigned. However, a non-mentor apparently can't be removed. So a workaround would be me adding you to MediaWiki:GrowthMentors.json (as there seems to be no interface for doing so) and then removing you from the list through Special:ManageMentors. Also, the bug that allowed you to stop being a mentor without unassigning mentees might simply have been fixed in the meantime.
If you would like to try this, please let me know! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:02, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
I suspect you're simply mistaken in your belief that all mentees need to be assigned to active mentors at all times. The program is not even fully launched because of a lack of volunteers. I doubt it would be the most efficient use of resources to keep reassigning people who've already got an opportunity and are no longer new accounts even, to new mentors. An administrative removal perhaps happens for cause, making unassignment desirable, which would not be the case with mentors who stop editing with or without quitting the program. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 00:46, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Oh. Usedtobecool, sorry, I've read my message again and it sounds as if I were about to do as proposed. I'm not! This was just an idea in case you didn't want to be a mentor anymore and in case the messages were undesired. You wrote My mentees still see me as their mentor and get told to contact me, and I wanted to point out that there is probably a way to fix this. I agree that administrative removal is a different use case than mentor inactivity or mentor quitting, and that reassignment may be completely unnecessary. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:22, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Ah, I see. You were considering my convinience (thank you)! — Usedtobecool ☎️ 09:54, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:29, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

New message from Drmies

Hello, ToBeFree. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Valjean/Archive 32.
Message added 01:02, 22 July 2024 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Drmies (talk) 01:02, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Drmies, thanks for the notification! I currently can't investigate this, but I have forwarded your request to the arbcom-en mailing list. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:15, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks--I appreciate it. Drmies (talk) 01:16, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 July 2024

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Hashid Khan

You had blocked this user for DE and then unblocked them after they provided an explanation for their edit. I plan to reblock them for socking; they definitely socked while they were blocked by you based on behavioral and likely CU findings, and are possibly a sock of R2dra although I haven't examined the latter claim myself. Wanted to run it by you before implementing the block just in case I am missing something.

PS: Based on what I have seen, this is a case of warring sock-farms. Don't know who, if anyone, is "correct" about the content issues. Abecedare (talk) 17:59, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Abecedare, sorry, I hadn't seen this when unblocking. Of course I'm fine with a re-block. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:18, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I didn't spot the sockpuppetry either when I responded to their page protection reuest. :)
Blocked now. Abecedare (talk) 21:47, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
😊 Thanks! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:48, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

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

It appears that a recently registered editor has decided they are a SPA

BasketballDog21 and Borgenland could really use some admin input at this noticeboard.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 13:03, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Never mind. Also, BasketballDog has been blocked as a sockpuppet.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 17:30, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
That escalated quickly. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:50, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Block evasion

Hi again! Sorry to bother you but on 6 July I wrote to you about 67.83.125.225 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). You blocked the user for one month and asked that I let you know if the bad edits continue after the block. Well, the block has not yet expired but it appears that the user is evading the block, now using IP 201.229.68.170 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). The behavioral evidence seems clear to me; they are editing the same set of articles, making similar edits. For example, compare Special:Diff/1231917275 with Special:Diff/1166474658, or Special:Diff/1231916612 with Special:Diff/1236661676. CodeTalker (talk) 22:43, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Never mind, @ScottishFinnishRadish has already blocked the new IP for a year. Thanks, SFR! CodeTalker (talk) 22:52, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Glad to help. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:53, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks both 😄 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:51, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

IP vandalism at St Margaret's Hope

Blocked already but same editor you blocked nearly two weeks ago. Thought I'd give you a head's up.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 19:33, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Oh. Thanks, Skywatcher68, I have now semi-protected the page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:05, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Suspicions of sockpuppetry

I am not familiar with the SPI process, so I need an admin with CU permission to take a look. Sadko was topic banned from the Balkans from 2021 until July 2024. Vanished user 297861 was created in 2022, immediately started to make a large number of edits (160 edits in the first week) and in the first day added themselves to the Serbia WikiProject Participants [5], suggesting that the person using the account had prior knowledge of the editing process. Vanished user's original username was Nickpunk and Sadko was noted in the report that got them topic banned to refer to other editors as "punks". There seems to be a correlation between the periods when Sadko was inactive with the periods when Vanished was inactive. The interest topics also correlate [6]. A few days after Sadko's topic ban was removed [7], Vanished put a "Retired" tag on their talk page [8]. I would like a CU to see if this is merely a coincidence or there is some truth in my suspicions. Excine (talk) 20:09, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Excine, this is  possible. Guerillero is a checkuser himself and may want to have a look, too, but if Sadko actually did this, they invested a noticeable (but not unlikely) amount of effort into keeping their accounts as separate as they were able to. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:00, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
  • First off, ToBeFree, thanks for the ping. Very appreciated.
  • Let's see what do we have here... Editor wih total of 284 edits who was last active in June 2023 has reported for me 'using socks'. The funny thing is, I have never interacted with this person, but they seem to think a lot about my areas of interest, editing habits and what not. That's not something you see every day on WP, at least I do not. And even more interestingly, these... claims get posted (without so much as a ping) just a few hours after I publicly told another editor that I'm traveling and have little time for WP. My guess is that there will be more comments on this topic.
  • Very important context aside for a minute... The claim is absurd and illogical. Why would I need a sock if I planned and worked hard to have my topic ban lifted? It makes no sense, but I have seen editors get banned easily in cases like this. Therefore, I'll provide a more thorough analysis, set aside my doubts about the report, and assume good faith, considering this might simply be a significant error on someone's part.
  • Note: I'm somewhat familiar with Nickpunk's work and I have no idea why they decided to retire this summer. For example, they expanded an article I created on another project. Considering that I have never been banned or warned on sr.wiki, I have reported myself to admins with CU permissions.
  • The two of us talked at some point. The two writing styles are quite different.
  • Never have I called anyone a punk, that is simply untrue, nor do I use or like that word for that matter. And I'm not a particular fan of punk music either. : ) A quick google search showed me that there are several members of internet communities in Serbo-Croatian with similiar nicknames. For example.
  • I have 50K+ edits on EWP under my belt and I have edited thousands of pages. Comparing my editing history with any editor active within the CEE area would produce a solid overlap.
  • Editor Interaction Analyser clearly shows that the other editor paid far more attention to certain pages than I did.
  • There is a bunch of topics and articles where the two accouns have zero overlap. My interest is far broader. Another note, they do not post edit summaries, I try my best to do so. Nickpunk/Vanished user's other edits clearly show that they are very interested in everything related to Novi Sad, which has never been a big priority for me. They have wide knowledge of the city, its streets and corners, which I do not possess. The only topic where this editor and myself actually had a common interest is Architecture of Serbia. They know a lot about birds, a topic area which I do not edit.
  • Nickpunk has greatly improved Jovan Soldatović, which has been on my watchlist for years. I noticed a rookie mistake regarding style, they left a flag icon in the infobox, which I removed. If this was my 'carefully crafted sock', how moronic would it be to make edits on the same page, just after the other editor made their edits? This editor had no real knowledge of how WP works and they made a lot of newbie mistakes, which can easily be checked via their TP history page.
  • (!) It is quite easy to determine that I have no other active accounts on EWP. In fact, when Nick was making his edits here and here, I was patrolling IP edits during the same minute, please see here and here. And here is another example of the two editors working in the same minute of the same day: Sadko - Nick. I could provide more examples, if needed.
  • My time is limited at the moment and I had little time to polish this reply, but I hope that this answer will be enough for the moment. P.S: Sorry for the long post and thanks for taking the time to read it. — Sadko (words are wind) 01:54, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
    Thank you very much for the detailed analysis, Sadko. Looking at all this, I think there's not much to worry about here. You shouldn't have to defend yourself against sockpuppetry accusations, though; I'm sorry for making it look as if you'd have to write a long defense statement. If the suspicion had turned out to be true, I'd have blocked; that didn't happen. Welcome back to the topic area and don't let these reactions (here and on your talk page) discourage you, please. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:06, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
My pleasure. Thanks for the kind words. That sort of approach has not stopped only on my TP, but it was taken further. Sorry for commenting on that, but, sadly, things are not what I expected them to be on WP, coming back after some time, and if one did not know any better they would think that I was some kind of Wikipedia Putin. : ) Best. — Sadko (words are wind) 17:37, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
😊 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:13, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

BLP issue at Emmanuel Todd

Maybe the references aren't exactly reliable, I don't know, but removing them and the supported content without discussion seems problematic.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 12:01, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, it's an interesting situation for various reasons. Thanks for sharing. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:21, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Frankly, I would undo that entire string of recent IP edits going back to before this one. The user appears to have a strong personal point of view about Todd. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:41, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Hi Cl3phact0, do feel free to – I only removed a half-deleted, broken section. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:56, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Noted, thanks. (Adding Skywatcher68 for information.) Is the best practice just to undo each successive edit one by one, or is there a better method? Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 15:06, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Cl3phact0, see Help:Reverting – in a nutshell, simply click the timestamp of a version you like, then "edit", enter a summary explaining the revert, then publish. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:07, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. I'll try that (I don't do a whole lot of undoing other folks work in general). Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 15:13, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
It looks like I may have inadvertently removed the page protection too (which, if true, shouldn't be so easy to do – but that's another matter). Could you take a quick look? Thanks, Cl3phact0 (talk) 16:20, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Cl3phact0, that's just the lock icon template displayed at the top right of the page. It's automatically added back by a bot sooner or later, and can be manually added back by anyone. No worries. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:47, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Got it. Page protection is an aspect of the project where I should probably improve my knowledge. Thanks again for your help. Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 16:53, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
All good 😊 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:07, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Pau Cubarsí

Why did you lock the article on the preferred version of a political vandal? Kingsif (talk) 20:55, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Kingsif, this appears to be a longer dispute between checkuser-blocked Panenkazo, block-evasion-blocked 186.211.107.65 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) and surely more; it is pretty chaotic and I don't have a full overview yet. Describing the edits as vandalism is easy but far from being obviously correct. It took you a few seconds to complain here; please take the same amount of seconds to state at Talk:Pau Cubarsí why Special:Diff/1237005223 is preferable and perhaps why Special:Diff/1237039463 should be reverted. I can then replace the short full protection by longer semi-protection to ensure that disagreement with your talk page explanation is discussed at the talk page instead of through reverts. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:05, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
If you checked the longer history, you would see I was the first user to add the information that the IP vandal is trying to remove. Kingsif (talk) 21:21, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Based on the content, it's clearly a politically-driven vandal, and so waiting for them to edit beyond a final warning and get AIV blocked is the easiest way to deal with it. Locking the article right as it hit that final warning, did not help. Please don't step into these situations with wide-ranging article protection without knowing what's happening, and then accusing someone who has been at the heart of the issue of not paying attention. Kingsif (talk) 21:23, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Kingsif, are you sure? Special:Diff/1233675588 was before your first edit to the page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:25, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
And while that's a concern, I'm referring to this. The inclusion of "from Catalonia", when there are sources, was agreed in a 2018 RfC. Panenkazo block evades and, importantly, did not add sources for the content at Cubarsí. My edit today, had a source. The IP removing the source is trying to give weight to removing it all. Kingsif (talk) 21:28, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
And it still doesn't make sense why you'd not wait for the disruptive IP on the verge of being blocked, to be blocked so the reverts immediately stopped. Kingsif (talk) 21:29, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
I'll try to find the RfC, but linking to it at least once somewhere, ideally on the talk page of the article, would have helped a lot and would still help a lot. The entire discussion could have been avoided by one single user referring to the RfC. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:31, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Okay, it's at MOS:CONTEXTBIO / Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2018 archive § RfC on use of Spanish regional identity in biography leads. I'll now add this information to the article's talk page... ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:37, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
 Done at Talk:Pau Cubarsí. Regarding the full protection, we'll remain in disagreement about whether you and/or AntiDionysius should have used the article's talk page instead of reverting and complaining about protection. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:45, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
IPs who want to remove references to Catalan/Catalonia, generally don't engage with discussion and ignore reasoning that they know exists. Better to let them walk into committing persistent vandalism. Kingsif (talk) 22:00, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Dimitar Glavchev

Hello, I need help. Because in the role of Dimitar Glavchev has a lot of Vandalism. Preime TH (talk) 10:37, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello Preime TH, thank you very much for the notification, and for not joining the edit war. I have informed both Jorkdkskakaksjjsk and Panam2014 about issues with their editing of that article now (1, 2). As both editors are extended confirmed, page protection can't solve the problem unless it's full protection preventing edits by all users. So I'm afraid that if this really continues again and again, the only administrative solution would be partially blocking them from editing the page for a relatively long duration, looking at how long this has been going on. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:39, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
@Jorkdkskakaksjjsk: seems to have accepted the sources. Panam2014 (talk) 14:41, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Hi Panam2014, my concern was about the behavior, not the content itself. It's good to hear that you have found an agreement on one of the discussion points, so please do continue discussing – my only concern is that edit warring and incivility don't help in finding a solution. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:43, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Jorkdkskakaksjjsk and Panam2014, if the discussion doesn't move forward and seems to be running in circles (but that's not the case yet as far as I can see), you can formally request a third opinion or even start an RfC. See the dispute resolution policy for this advice and more details about it, such as remaining in the top sections of a beautiful pyramid displayed there. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:45, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-31

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  • 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.

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

Mohseen Moosa apparently being edited by the subject

Just letting you know.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 13:33, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:59, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Came back

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Michalis1994#July_2024 Bbb23 (talk) 12:23, 27 July 2024 12.23 his block ended, 12.24 edited, the same as the ip https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evangelos_Marinakis&action=history Montigliani (talk) 12:59, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Montigliani, a block does not automatically prevent nor prohibit contributions made after its expiration. Looking at the article histories and comments such as [10] and [11], I'm afraid that multiple editors with a (far too) strong opinion on certain topics such as Evangelos Marinakis, Ivan Savvidis and Voice of Reason (political party) are currently attempting to get the "other side" blocked. Please stop using Wikipedia as a battleground. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:21, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
You're right. Sorry. Montigliani (talk) 23:57, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
I have to admit I didn't expect that response. All good, no worries. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:50, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Bringing this to your attention to have a better idea of what they are trying to achieve. Michalis1994 (talk) 17:13, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
The RfC desperately needs attention from uninvolved experienced editors not invited by D.S. Lioness, Montigliani or Michalis1994. Thanks for the notification, but the motives were already transparent enough. It should be clear to anyone looking at the situation for five minutes that it's an unnecessary, unproductive, unhealthy battleground that would best be met with disengagement by everyone currently involved in it. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:01, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I have now removed the most recent unproductive comments from the discussion and sent everyone a notification ([12] [13] [14]). ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:17, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Michalis1994 he is 1000% puppet of Phanaris, Dynasty Power. I respect and appreciate you completely ~ ToBeFree, and so I will be patient for a few days. Then I'll delete him. I can't let a user with only malicious intentions laugh and make fun of us. It is not possible for him to write so many accusations in one person's article and at the end say that he has been acquitted of all of them, so as to appear magnanimous. Important events took place in the last two months and he does not mention any of them: Marinakis is re-elected president of the Super League. Marinaki's team won 2 European football titles. For the rigged games, Nikos Georgeas, who denounced him, was finally convicted of perjury. Makis Triantafyllopoulos, a journalist who started the case with Noor 1 was also sentenced to 3 years for spreading false news in the case.

Michalis1994 does not write these. Why Michalis1994 don't you write these? Do not mind. See you later.--Montigliani (talk) 19:12, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Michalis 1994 does not answer. Meanwhile the discussion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Evangelos_Marinakis#Request_for_comment started on 22 July 2024 and today we have August 5, 2024. 14 DAYS! How long should it last? I remind the score is 3-2, including his opinion User:SportsGreece https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Evangelos_Marinakis&diff=prev&oldid=1225739309 --Montigliani (talk) 09:31, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
There is no "score" as there is no battle. Please find something else to spend your time on. You've made your point, others have made their points, hopefully further uninvolved opinions will appear, someone will close the discussion one day and there's neither a rush in closing nor in making changes to the article. Please take one hour of your time, one single hour, to demonstrate somewhere outside of this conflict that you're here to build an encyclopedia. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:33, 5 August 2024 (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.

New user?

Because you are a well-meaning user and because you certainly don't want to be mocked by Michalis1994 perhaps we can point out what I and Montiglianni have figured out about him - see if there is any reason for you to apply for an SPI. You probably know, I did but it wasn't considered because I failed to produce the evidence needed. It was the first time I applied and I didn't know how to do it. We are two users who say We are two users who claim that he is a puppet because we know him from the Greek Wikipedia. We know the way he talks, the topics he supports, his political position. Besides, he is so experienced around Wikipedia, and around old conflicts with other users that it is obvious that he is not a new user. D.S. Lioness (talk) 17:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello D.S. Lioness, this is kind, thank you very much. Coincidentally, the situation has already been resolved. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:06, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
I was delighted to see it. Worthy!!
By the way, can i remove the controversial sentence from Evangelos Marinakis lead as blocked user contribution or not, because there is an RfC? D.S. Lioness (talk) 18:11, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
D.S. Lioness, which sentence exactly? I might have already removed it, but I'm not entirely sure. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:23, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Well done! You have removed it!!! D.S. Lioness (talk) 18:26, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Ah okay, thanks, I just undid the latest contribution; for a moment I thought there was more. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:27, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
One last thing. I was banned from the Latinopoulou article because of accusation by Michalis1994. Shouldn't I be reinstated? D.S. Lioness (talk) 18:39, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Possibly, but perhaps also rather not. I personally can't decide; it's a community-imposed topic ban. You could appeal it at WP:AN, with a link to [15], the discussion that led to it. To me personally, while you turned out to be correct about the sockpuppetry issue, the way we went to that conclusion was so horribly rocky that I wouldn't use the checkuserblock by itself as a reason to appeal anything. I also haven't unblocked Montigliani as their block reason (refusing to focus on content on an article talk page and casting aspersions) is still valid to me. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:45, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
The one and only problem for Latinopoulou's article was Michalis1994. I didn't have problem neither High Dunker, nor any other user. I will take my chances and appeal the decision -for the sole reason that i had contributed a pov text in relation to today's malevolent content. Anyway, thank you very much. D.S. Lioness (talk) 18:57, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
I won't stop you. 🙂 Good luck and you're welcome. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:17, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

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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

readded Isabelle Belato
removed

Interface administrator changes

readded Izno

CheckUser changes

removed Barkeep49

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  • Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
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Arbitration

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

Sockpuppet Investigation

Hello I have a sockpuppet investigation that I need an administrator to investigate, this is serious. [18] Cookiemonster1618 (talk) 14:03, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello Cookiemonster1618, the page has been deleted – if I understand correctly, primarily because sockpuppet investigation pages are named after their master, not the sockpuppet. So if user A has been blocked and returns as "B", you would create "Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry_investigations/A". You may need to ask Bbb23 if that was the issue, as I can't find a deletion notification on your talk page and the deletion summary is rather vague.
As I am currently at Wikimania 2024, I would probably not have been much of a help, though, and I would probably not have processed a SPI quicker than the rest of the huge queue when asked to do so, unless it is about sockpuppetry I had previously personally dealt with. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:34, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Contentious topic

@ToBeFree: I want to designate Vasily Utkin as a contentious topic, after removing content related to WP:RUSUKR. 165.16.5.50 (talk) 23:48, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

I have filed an SPI case about this IP. — Mike Novikoff 09:50, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:56, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

67.83.125.225 again

Hi! The "accent" vandal 67.83.125.225 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) that you blocked on 6 July has returned immediately after their block expired and is making the same disruptive edits to the same articles. Can you take a look? Thanks! CodeTalker (talk) 01:25, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi CodeTalker, thank you very much for the notification! I have now re-blocked for a year. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 04:41, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks very much! CodeTalker (talk) 05:43, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Hi again. The very persistent accent vandal is back again, this time at 2601:86:C47F:BE60:2D5A:C15A:7973:96F5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). This /64 was blocked previously by you on 6 April and then for 3 months by Ad Orientem on 28 April. That last block has expired and they are now repeating the same unsourced disruptive edits to the same articles. They've only made a few edits so far but based on past history this will only get worse. CodeTalker (talk) 18:07, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, CodeTalker. I'm not sure what was meant to happen in Special:Diff/1239822107, but it seems to illustrate the issue. I've reblocked for a year. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:59, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

I found her

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:D.S._Lioness, as it says on its page, it is called Dora. This Dora https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:%CE%94%CF%8E%CF%81%CE%B1%CE%A3%CF%84%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%BC%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%8D%CE%BA%CE%B7&diff=prev&oldid=1145002178. I don't bother to translate for you the insults he exchanges with another blocked user. You will be disgusted. So it's her https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/%CE%94%CF%8E%CF%81%CE%B1%CE%A3%CF%84%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%BC%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%8D%CE%BA%CE%B7

Do what you think. I won't tell you. I'm sorry it's a woman. I'm sorry about the situation in general. Montigliani (talk) 19:26, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

D.S. Lioness, thoughts? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:44, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
About what? Really, i can't understand what he discover. Where is the problem? Both accounts are not blocked in english wp. For your consideration https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Steward_requests/Username_changes D.S. Lioness (talk) 19:57, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Is that you making that comment and is the person you're making the comment against also an EnWiki editor though? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:03, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm a bit confused and trying to get an overview. If I understand correctly, only Special:Diff/1144987485 is from D.S. Lioness. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:05, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
YES!!!!!!! D.S. Lioness (talk) 20:07, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
that's where i know michalis1994, Nikolaos Fanaris and Glucken!!! Is him!!! D.S. Lioness (talk) 20:08, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
And anyway, how can I protect myself from a user who, being unable to deal with me according to the policy of the project, resorts to devious and deceitful methods? D.S. Lioness (talk) 20:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
the guy who insults me is Michalis1994 D.S. Lioness (talk) 19:59, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
This one Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/NikolaosFanaris/Archive? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:11, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
YES!!! D.S. Lioness (talk) 20:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Apologies if this is taking a frustratingly long time to understand, do you think that Montigliani and the IP are NikolaosFanaris? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:15, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
No, i don't think so. it's just that Modigliani, in his haste to prevent me from editing the Marinakis article, supposedly found something against me D.S. Lioness (talk) 20:19, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
You should ask Montigliani who is the purpose of this topic. D.S. Lioness (talk) 20:20, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

SORRY, BUT I MUST EXIT. D.S. Lioness (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 20:22, 12 August 2024‎ (UTC)

I searched a lot and still searching for it. D. S. Lioness or Dora should not be a puppet of Nikolaos Fanaris. They certainly work on the same issues, with the same political point of view and aim to slander. D. S. Lioness is kinder, but just as cruel as Fanaris. Fanaris has a better quality as an editor, but he swears and is malicious. Generally it is the same coin with two sides. An encyclopedia to me should impart knowledge and not gossip or slander. But this is what these two users do. I think that D.S. Lioness made fun of V. Marinakis' article. I believe he will do it again. I don't forgive when they make fun of me. Goodbye Dora. Montigliani (talk) 23:24, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I searched a lot and still searching for it.
Your success in identifying Michalis1994 as a sockpuppet of NikolaosFanaris makes it very tough to say this, but I (still) think you're overdoing it. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:47, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I know that. I have to stop. Montigliani (talk) 07:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

What about that?

Here claims not to know the user glucken but here it is obvious that he khowns him User:Montigliani any ideas? D.S. Lioness (talk) 02:58, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Of course I knew him. Searching for Nikolaos Fanaris I ended up with him who is the source of evil. It was my trap to find out who you are. You have no difference. Your edits are defamatory and politically targeted. I am very angry with you. Looks like you got away with it. ToBeFree is big-hearted. Montigliani (talk) 07:11, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

This time you are making a big mistake

EverLove 124 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Super_League_Greece&diff=1237663219&oldid=1214969291

D.S. Lionesss https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:D.S._Lioness/sandbox&diff=1240028059&oldid=1239974293

I told you they act like communicating vessels. One complements the other. There is no difference. If you don't block her, you'll be forced to block me. I appreciate you immensely, but I won't back down. They want to pass the slanders about Marinakis to the Super Liq article. Over my dead body. Montigliani (talk) 09:02, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Montigliani, the first diff is between 40 revisions by multiple users. A more specific diff would be [21], for example, and it could be compared to [22]. I don't think that alone is similar enough to justify a checkuser check by itself, but perhaps there's more. Please let me know. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:19, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
There is no difference here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:D.S._Lioness/sandbox&diff=1240028059&oldid=1240025327
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Super_League_Greece&diff=prev&oldid=1215012633 In Corruption and violence they write exactly the same. Montigliani (talk) 11:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. That's not much, but together with the sockpuppetry block of D.S. Lioness on elwiki, I did now have a look.
D.S. Lioness is technically Red X Unrelated to Michalis1994 / EverLove124 / NikolaosFanaris. It is almost impossible for them to be the same person. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:20, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
They are not the same person, but they work together for the same purpose. They are definitely politically oriented people but for the purpose of propaganda. Montigliani (talk) 12:31, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Okay. So you are concerned about canvassing, if I understand correctly? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:56, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes. Montigliani (talk) 13:20, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Hello Michalis1994. First let me say that I have no idea who the two users you mention are. Secondly, I am moved by your solidarity for her Dora Stroubouki Lioness. You are a gentleman. Well done. Montigliani (talk) 15:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Montigliani, I understand the good faith aspect behind statements such as "I'm sorry it's a woman" when referring to someone having misbehaved, or describing solidarity for her as "gentleman"ship. However, the stronger the focus on an editor's gender is, the more inappropriate it is. I had ignored this above but it's appearing here again and please just shouldn't as it's completely unnecessary. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I get it. The discussion in the entry is not closed. You shouldn't have allowed her to make changes. Michalis 1994 also comes and supports her. I don't know. Let them dance. I've tired you enough too. I'll handle them myself. Montigliani (talk) 17:01, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm surprised you had to do a user check to find out I'm not Michalis 1994. It seems like you imagined I was addressing and conversing with myself when I was arguing with the user. Perhaps another administrator would be better suited to handle this issue. D.S. Lioness (talk) 16:58, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
D.S. Lioness, you're saying this as if I hadn't personally been asked by both of you to have a closer look at the situation. You're right, though. My work on this matter is done. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
although I am not at all obliged to give you an explanation, I will do so for the last time. I found this entry - which you retracted without reason - YESTERDAY, looking to see if you are Vrahomarinarer - and because it says important things from reliable sources I intend, after editing it, to include it in the article. If you don't like it, that's your problem. D.S. Lioness (talk) 17:11, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 August 2024

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Voisava Kastrioti

Since you are familiar with the article, can you take a look? A few days ago AzorzaI tried to remove Bicoku, a well-known academic source as "fringe" [23]. Marin Barleti, a biographer of Voisava, said she was of Triballi origin, and Bicoku argues that with "Triballi" Barleti meant "Bulgarian". After the first effort failed and other editors sorted this out on the talk page, AzorzaI is edit warring to add sources which say that Byzantine authors used the term "Triballi" for Serbs and to add "According to Bicoku" to make it look like Bicoku's conclusion is somehow of less importance [24][25]. It has been explained to AzorzaI by several editors that the content is off-topic because his sources do not talk about Voisava or Barleti's use of the term "Triballi" (Barleti was not Byzantine, he was Albanian-Venetian). The term "Triballi" has been uses by different authors to refer to Serbs, Bulgarians, Vlachs, Thracians amd who knows what else; only Barleti's meaning of the word is relevant to the article. Since AzorzaI continues his long-term, slow edit warring on the article in an WP:OWN pattern, can you do sth like a page restriction for the article (some articles have an 1RR for example) or a partial block on AzorzaI himself? Ktrimi991 (talk) 17:30, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

This year alone AzorzaI has 16 reverts on the article, roughly as much as the all the other editors combined. Can provide the diffs if needed. Ktrimi991 (talk) 17:37, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
There is also a history of him misusing sources to unconstructively push and highlight what appears to be a pro-Serb POV (it is debated in scholarship whether Voisava was of Albanian, Serb or Bulgarian origin):
  • There he removes well-sourced content that elaborates on Voisava's name [26]. He wants to keep only the part that says that "Voisava" is a Slavic name, and wants to remove the part that says that it was commonly used among Albanians as well. Apparently to reduce the "Albanianess" of the name.
  • There he edit wars to add that "most" scholars support a South Slavic origin for Voisava [27]. He does not have a RS saying that the Slavic origin is supported by "most" scholars; it is just his own conclusion.
  • There he adds that Stanisha, one of Voisava's sons, "fought for Serbia" [28]. Instead, the source says that Voisava's husband complained that he was forced to send one of his sons as a hostage to the Despot of Serbia, and that he sent Stanisha to help the Serbians. What AzorzaI wrote and what the source says are 2 different things.
  • He adds attribution to Bicaku who says that Voisava's biographer, Marin Barleti, uses the term "Triballi" to refer to the Bulgarians, although Bicaku is the only RS in the article that elaborates on Barleti's usage of the term "Triballi". AzorzaI adds off-topic sources that say that Byzantine authors used the term "Triballi" for the Serbs. However, Barleti was not a Byzantine, and those Byzantine authors never talked about Voisava (they had died centuries earlier) and use the term "Triballi" in other contexts. He apparently adds the off-topic content and the attribution to Bicaku to make a Bulgarian origin look less likely or supported, and to highlight the possibility that Voisava was of Serb origin.
  • If one goes deeper can find even more such cases where he takes things out of the context provided by the source, adds his own conclusions or removes those parts of the sourced content that apparently do not suit his POV. Ktrimi991 (talk) 19:29, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
    Hi Ktrimi991, thank you very much for the detailed description of AzorzaI's behavior. I think WP:ANI would be a better venue for this report, so that there is a central venue to discuss it. I also see that Special:Diff/1164362757 may have discouraged you from discussing this with AzorzaI on their talk page. May I copy your messages to ANI? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:07, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
    The thing is Balkan discussions at ANI/I rarely get solved for various reasons. Usually because discussions become "too long to read" and admins get discouraged from getting involved. Hence I prefer to seek a particular admin's attention. I chose you in this case because you are familiar with both the article and the editor. If you are not interested in getting involved, I will take this to AE. It takes time to prepare the diffs for an AE report, but from what I have seen Balkan issues always get sorted out there. Ktrimi991 (talk) 00:13, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
    Ktrimi991, oh right, that's a good idea. AE sounds ideal to me, and I agree that an ANI thread could end up being archived without responses. Your request is an honor to me and I feel bad for redirecting this to a noticeboard, but I'd really prefer AE in this situation. I hope this is okay. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:23, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
    It is OK, no worries. I highly appreciate your work and communication skills, and I trust your judgement, hence I have come here in several cases to ask for your input. The AE report limit is 20 diffs, and that is OK to show the misuse of sources. However, to show the long-term, slow edit warring pattern should I just point out the article and the time period of the edit warring instead of providing diffs? Ktrimi991 (talk) 00:32, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
    Thank you so much for the kind words! For showing edit warring, clever use of the page history parameters may be an idea. For example, when you open my talk page's history, the link is "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:ToBeFree&action=history". You could add "&offset=20220102235959&limit=200" to the link if you'd like to show 200 edits that happened before 2022-01-02 at 23:59:59. It is also possible to use the history's tag filter function to filter for reverted edits, but I wouldn't go that far as it hides edits and may make an disingenuous impression. That feature may be useful for collecting a list of diffs, though. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:44, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
    Thank you. Using the page history parameter had not crossed my mind. It is good that I asked because the way I had planned to show the edit warring would drive admins away. lol Cheers, Ktrimi991 (talk) 00:59, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
    😅 No problem. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:16, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Question

I wanted to know if I can edit another section of the Super League Greece article - not the disputed one. Can I or will it be considered as edit warring? Thank you! D.S. Lioness (talk) 17:17, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

D.S. Lioness, I won't judge. If someone ever deals with the report at WP:ANEW, you can ask them. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:53, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Message from Preime TH regarding the articles about Prayut Chan-o-cha and Phumtham Wechayachai

Heading added ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:36, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I need some help with this. Due to the article Prayut Chan-o-cha and Phumtham Wechayachai there is Vandalism by deleting the position of Privy Councillor and Deputy Minister of Transport by IP. I tried to get him to stop making unconstructive edits. But there's no sign of stopping. Can you help with Protection? Preime TH (talk) 06:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Preime TH, thank you very much for the notification. If I see correctly, the article about Srettha Thavisin is affected by the recent political discussions as well. I wasn't aware of these, but it seems reasonable to semi-protect all three pages for a while. Please let me know if this turns out to be insufficient to prevent violations of the biographies of living persons policy or edit wars. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:52, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
thank you very much If any article has a lot of harassment or is in the middle of an editing war, I will report it to you. Preime TH (talk) 15:11, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I want you to do it

I would like you to finish this case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:Montigliani_and_User:D.S._Lioness_reported_by_User:ToBeFree_(Result:_). Whatever it is, even at my expense. Do what you think is right. I'm not going to hold a grudge against you if it's against me. You helped me when you didn't know me and if you punish me now that you know me, it means I'm doing something wrong. It's also not my intention to punish the other user. I just want to break free. To know if I can continue writing or go home. So please make the decision yourself. Montigliani (talk) 21:56, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Montigliani, I'm sorry for having caused, or even causing, you stress. I understand that being on Wikipedia with a sword of Damocles in form of an open report with a block recommendation hovering above you is extremely unpleasant, and (hopefully obviously) not what I intended to happen. I had hoped for a quick resolution, which admittedly would probably not have been the fairest one.
I think there is one piece of information that you are currently missing yet that could reduce your stress: Not all reports are actioned before being automatically archived.
The edit-warring noticeboard, differently than others (WP:RFPP, WP:AIV), has no bot that removes reports based on "done" templates or actions from administrators. There is no bot that automatically closes a report because the reported user has been blocked; there is no automatic archival based on which reports are done and which are not. There's just archival based on inactivity, 48 hours to be precise. If no message is added to a section for 48 hours, a bot comes and silently archives it. You can verify this configuration by checking the top of the source code of the page, where it says "2d" for 2 days.
Also, reports are sometimes formally declared as "Stale" by an administrator when the active edit war is over and there's no preventative need to block someone for an issue far in the past.
I can't action the report because I am still afraid the best approach would be an indefinite block for now, and I don't longer feel being in a position to place it. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:39, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
I admit I didn't understand exactly what you mean. But I liked that you answered me nicely, because I thought you hated me. However, if you think I should be banned indefinitely, do it. Don't hesitate. I think I am right in this argument, but that is beside the point. Thanks again for everything. Montigliani (talk) 23:10, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Montigliani, thanks for the kind words, and I think I don't hate anyone. I certainly don't hate you. I was annoyed by your behavior for a while but since I no longer need to mediate or sanction in this conflict, I'm just relieved. This is also why, however, I won't jump into another session of arguments and accusations by making myself accountable for a block in this matter anymore. If someone blocks you, you can discuss it with them, and if everyone else turns out to be a block-evading sockpuppet, I won't need to unblock with an apology either. It's comfortable to stay away. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:31, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Οκ. Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SpacedFarmer trying to delete the super league formula one entries. It looks like a Nikolaos Fanaris puppet to me. Montigliani (talk) 20:11, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
and of course his entourage ran to consent https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Olympiacos_CFP_(Superleague_Formula_team)&action=history Montigliani (talk) 20:14, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
and see They have the same cookie treat on their talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Glucken123&diff=prev&oldid=963687579#A_belated_welcome! and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SpacedFarmer
They also talk in the same sassy way. It's him. I hope you now understand how dangerous they are. Montigliani (talk) 20:44, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
I lack words to describe my feelings about you reverting that user's contributions already ([29] [30]). Montigliani, being blocked after editing isn't block evasion. There may be sockpuppetry in play, but that should be reported at WP:SPI instead. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:46, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
I got carried away. Sorry. However, it is he, they, they have no end. Montigliani (talk) 20:50, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm trying to mention him here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations
I don't know if I'll make it, at least tonight. I can't do it... Montigliani (talk) 21:00, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/SpacedFarmer I think I did it. Easy, but I struggled. Montigliani (talk) 21:36, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

RUSUKR

Hi ToBeFree, I created a report at ANI due to a non-extended confirmed editor continuing to not follow WP:RUSUKR (along with various other disruptive edits). I gave them a final warning about RUSUKR after they made a revert (without giving a valid reason) a few days ago. Despite this, they made another edit about the war after this. They have also never responded on their talk page. Unfortunately, no administrator (or any other editor) has responded to that report yet. Can you take a look at this if you have time? Thank you. Mellk (talk) 15:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Mellk, thank you very much for reporting this at ANI and for the notification about the lack of action there.  Done ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:58, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

COI issue at Cute Is What We Aim For

Someone claiming to be Fred Cimato has been using two different accounts (Ciwwafred in July and Fredciwwaf today) plus at least one IPv6 range to edit there.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 21:18, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, thank you very much! Special:Diff/1241009833 is interesting. I've had a look at the two accounts and think the creation of the second account is fine as long as the old account remains unused/abandoned. Most people probably simply don't know how/where they could ask for a rename, and are certainly unaware of Special:GlobalRenameRequest. The article has been subject to disruption in general, so I have protected it for now, and I have removed the list of band member names due to a lack of citations. Best regards, ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:56, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

You obviously didn't notice

You have removed 9494 bytes of Michalis1994 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evangelos_Marinakis&diff=prev&oldid=1238788422

D.R.Lioness he brought it all back gradually and in a different order 1)https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evangelos_Marinakis&diff=prev&oldid=1238808123 1230 bytes 2)https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evangelos_Marinakis&diff=prev&oldid=1238988653 1202 bytes 3)https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evangelos_Marinakis&diff=prev&oldid=1238991236 452 bytes 4)https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evangelos_Marinakis&diff=prev&oldid=1239230416 646 bytes 5)https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evangelos_Marinakis&diff=prev&oldid=1239516487 3248 bytes 6)https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evangelos_Marinakis&diff=prev&oldid=1239517330 319 bytes 7)in between about others 100 bytes

brought back about 7500 bytes that is. Removed about 1800 from the covid 19 adventure and tipped the scales. I told you there is a big scam here. But everything is in your hands and you are too late. Montigliani (talk) 22:49, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I have read this message. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:11, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
The same here. He brought it back with a different title and tweaks, but with the same unreliable sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Super_League_Greece&diff=1241045405&oldid=1241044922 Montigliani (talk) 05:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-34

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 who want to re-use references but with different details such as page numbers, will be able to do so by the end of 2024, using a new sub-referencing feature. You can read more about the project and how to test the prototype.
  • Editors using tracking categories to identify which pages use specific extensions may notice that six of the categories have been renamed to make them more easily understood and consistent. These categories are automatically added to pages that use specialized MediaWiki extensions. The affected names are for: DynamicPageList, Kartographer, Phonos, RSS, Score, WikiHiero. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match. Thanks to Pppery for these improvements. [31]
  • Advanced item Technical volunteers who edit modules and want to get a list of the categories used on a page, can now do so using the categories property of mw.title objects. This enables wikis to configure workflows such as category-specific edit notices. Thanks to SD001 for these improvements. [32][33]

Bugs status

  • Advanced item Your help is needed to check if any pages need to be moved or deleted. A maintenance script was run to clean up unreachable pages (due to Unicode issues or introduction of new namespaces/namespace aliases). The script tried to find appropriate names for the pages (e.g. by following the Unicode changes or by moving pages whose titles on Wikipedia start with Talk:WP: so that their titles start with Wikipedia talk:), but it may have failed for some pages, and moved them to Special:PrefixIndex/T195546/ instead. Your community should check if any pages are listed there, and move them to the correct titles, or delete them if they are no longer needed. A full log (including pages for which appropriate names could be found) is available in phab:P67388.
  • Editors who volunteer as mentors to newcomers on their wiki are once again able to access lists of potential mentees who they can connect with to offer help and guidance. This functionality was restored thanks to a bug fix. Thank you to Mbch331 for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 18 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

  • The application deadline for the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has been extended to September 16. Members will help by providing advice to Foundation Product and Technology leadership on short and long term plans, on complex strategic problems, and help to get feedback from more contributors and technical communities. Selected members should expect to spend roughly 5 hours per month for the Council, during the one year pilot. Please consider applying, and spread the word to volunteers you think would make a positive contribution to the committee.

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  • The 2024 Coolest Tool Awards were awarded at Wikimania, in seven categories. For example, one award went to the ISA Tool, used for adding structured data to files on Commons, which was recently improved during the Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon. You can see video demonstrations of each tool at the awards page. Congratulations to this year's recipients, and thank you to all tool creators and maintainers.
  • The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available, and includes some highlights from Wikimania, an upcoming Language community meeting, and other news from the movement.

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:51, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I am disappointed

I don't understand your attitude which continues to be hostile towards me. Do you forget what he has done? 1) brings back contributions by Nikolaos Fanaris 2)Ignores the talk page 3) He's slandering me for stealing, when it turns out he's lying. 4)He says he wants to destroy wikipedia and will make a fan forum. 5) is blocked indefinitely in the Greek Wikipedia and here in an article. 6) He slanders V. Marinakis in his article and accuses me of wanting to whitewash him! I told you he has fooled you there.

You ignore all this. Yesterday he didn't even respond to your suggestion, which I thought was excellent. But you still think I'm bad and she's good. OK!

I am writing to you because at ANI the other administrators do not know the case and apparently do not read what proofs I give and what she gives. Anyway. I'm tired and frustrated. You abandoned me, while you have all the evidence to exclude her. It does not matter. I expect you to punish only me. With true appreciation, but also with great bitterness... Montigliani (talk) 09:03, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello Montigliani,
I think I made a mistake in Special:Diff/1240118860; I didn't want to cause the impression that ignoring gender by referring to everyone as "he" is better than referring to D.S. Lioness using singular they or checking her preference using {{they|D.S. Lioness}}.
If there's a specific edit of mine that is hostile and/or has upset you, please give me a link to it so I can apologize for specific words or can explain why I used them.
In I expect you to punish only me, I hope "you" is plural, towards the group of administrators. Because I personally see no need to "punish" anyone, and I will generally obviously avoid getting administratively involved in the matter again. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:10, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
I would like your opinion there at ANI. The time has come for them to decide for us. I want to hear your opinion. It is very important to me. I was here for 10 months and I felt like you were my guardian angel. I just want you to tell the truth. What you believe. Montigliani (talk) 21:53, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
I believe you should not edit Wikipedia in the way you did so far, either by avoiding the topic or avoiding editors you have previously frequently interacted with. This includes persistently asking me for an opinion I mostly already provided or actions I already refused to take. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:55, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
I understood. Thank you very much. Montigliani (talk) 22:13, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

User:Nougat10

This user, after having been warned and given a content block, continues to edit the Russian-Ukrainian war topics, avoiding a technical 3-revert only because it’s taken them four days]. Bearian (talk) 04:32, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Bearian, thanks for the notification! Note that WP:GS/RUSUKR, contrary to the Arbitration Committee's extended confirmed restriction, does allow "constructive comments" on article talk pages, so the main issue is directly editing the article about Korenevo, Korenevsky District, Kursk Oblast, not the (more recent) talk page editing. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:01, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for dealing with an edit warrior. Bearian (talk) 21:49, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh – thanks for the kind response! 😊 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:50, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

preventing miss info

im sorry for the editing war but for a first block is 2 weeks way to much i just get really annoyed by the people not able accepting the truth wat nintendo decides 87.210.159.212 (talk) 23:12, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi 87.210.159.212, you can still edit Talk:Mario Kart, Template talk:Mario Kart and Category talk:Mario Kart. A discussion about your concern has already been started at Template talk:Mario Kart § Mario Kart Tour, and you'd be welcome to join it. Or, if you are no longer interested enough to have a discussion, you can always disengage from the conflict and edit one of the other 6,871,287 articles. The two weeks are meant to discourage waiting for the block's expiration. If you do just wait 2 weeks and continue as before, I'd re-block for a few months. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:16, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
god damm for a first block 2 weeks is really harsh for a first block should be atleast 3 days or more but 2 weeks is wayover board for a first block 87.210.159.212 (talk) 23:30, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
It should not make a difference because you shouldn't continue after 3 days either, but I find that more likely than you continuing after two weeks while completely ignoring the discussion offer. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:31, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Beware of the sockpuppet

Michalis 1994 is back with a new puppet (when you blocked his ip)- which, what else? - vandalized one of my edits. Because I took the time and effort to create this section, and because sockpuppet undid it with the false excuse that I was blocked - which you clearly are not, because if I were blocked I could not add it - please do what you have to do to protect the article. Thank you very much. 188.4.124.122 (talk) 00:48, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

😄 Hey The Herald, thank you very much! Time flies! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:37, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Leroy Cronin

Seems we have a fan of Prof. Cronin vacationing in California. Just one instance of non-neutral content so far but maybe someone to keep an eye on.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 15:55, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, thank you very much for the notification! This clearly remains a hot topic, and I think 157.231.25.11 and 184.176.65.42 may have a conflict of interest. They geolocate to two different continents and seem to cooperate on taking focus away from the contentious section that led to extended-confirmed protection for a now-expired year. That was three weeks ago; now 12.208.167.242 comes around with Special:Diff/1241914098. I don't think the article should continue being edited without registration for now. If the promotion continues through the semi-protection, please let me know. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:59, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
No problem. That's been on my watchlist ever since the whitewashing of his suspension started.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 00:19, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Message from Montigliani

A liar is always a liar and a thief is always a thief. Watch and I hope you understand https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/%CE%9C%CE%B1%CF%81%CE%AF%CE%BD%CE%B1_%CE%B7_%CE%86%CF%83%CF%87%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%B7 Montigliani (talk) 14:44, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Ηere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:D.S._Lioness#I_will_be_honest
Now you're being mean and unfair, Μαρίνα η άσχημη. D.S. Lioness (talk) 18:20, 7 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You didn't put this up first
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Evangelos_Marinakis#Request_for_comment
Now why are you doing the exact opposite? Also, the reference you give is from the site of Makis Triantafyllopoulos. Are you kidding us? Who is Marina the ugly one? What exactly does this mean? Montigliani (talk)
she is herself talking to herself in the first link Montigliani (talk) 15:11, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
and this https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User_talk:%CE%9C%CE%B1%CF%81%CE%AF%CE%BD%CE%B1_%CE%B7_%CE%86%CF%83%CF%87%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%B7 Montigliani (talk) 15:46, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
You are totally out of your mind. D.S. Lioness (talk) 17:31, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
I have read the messages above. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:10, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-35

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

  • Advanced item Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
  • Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [34]

Bugs status

  • Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

  • Wishlist item Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
  • Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:30, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

BLP issue at Michelle Salzman

Hey, check out this edit & edit summary when you get a chance.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 13:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, thank you very much. The content had originally been added by a user named RealTruther2020 and removal appears to implement Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons § Avoid victimization. At very least, it has been removed in good faith and must not simply be restored. I am thus happy to see that noone has done so. If this changes, please let me know.
I have considered semi-protecting the page, as I often do when there are signs of sudden disruptive attention from outside Wikipedia, but it wouldn't be appropriate to do so in response to a good unregistered contribution. I'd certainly protect if there was any kind of edit-warring about this content. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:35, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
PS: I did also notice that someone already claimed to be the article subject in the revision history of the article, but I didn't verify this in any way and even if it's logged-out editing, it's clearly not done with an intent to deceive. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:37, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

A cup of tea for you!

Hello ToBeFree,

Thanks for your contribution to Wikipedia.

Could you please officially close the two RfCs below that have the same purpose: to decide on a new Trump profile picture?

1. RfC: Trump infobox photo 2. RfC: Trump photo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:2024_United_States_presidential_election#Alternative_options%3F 

Goodtiming8871 (talk) 13:03, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Hi Goodtiming8871, it's an honor to be asked to close a specific RfC. Thank you very much for asking and for the tea. I currently won't find the time to close the discussion and generally avoid closing RfCs. I think WP:RFCL might be a better place for requesting such closures. Best regards, ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:52, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

A bowl of strawberries for you!

Thank you for your kind suggeston for closing RfC. Goodtiming8871 (talk) 01:18, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you very much for the kind feedback and for the strawberries! I love strawberries. 😊🍓 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:34, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

BLP issue at Constantino Mendieta

Seems we have a whitewashing issue similar to what happened with Leroy Cronin's supension (i.e.: declaring sources as invalid, with their content not proven in court and negatively impacting the subject).   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 15:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, thanks – I think Tom4460 might have an undisclosed conflict of interest. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:58, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Update required for File:Flag of India.svg

Hey Tobi 👋 Could you update the svg from the Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_India.svg Danke :) — DaxServer (t·m·e·c) 08:15, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi DaxServer, thanks for asking!  Done – if I see correctly, the file is used on over 400,000 pages; it may take a (long) while for all of them to display the updated version one day. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 08:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
...thinking about it again, it's not the same as with templates. Nah, the change will probably be visible relatively quickly as there is no permalink to a specific revision of the image coded into the Wikipedia pages. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 08:33, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you Tobi 👌 BTW did you attend the Wikimania couple of weeks ago?
Speaking of which, I just noticed @Jeff0justin is using your userpage and thus impersonating you — DaxServer (t·m·e·c) 08:43, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, it was wonderful! 😊 But I've noticed that I lack practice speaking English, struggling with the small talk a bit.
Regarding the user page, uh, strange. Perhaps a trolling response to the page protection. Or – which would be okay – a first design revision to build an own userpage from. But it shouldn't explicitly claim being me as a person, even if it is meant to be changed later. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 08:55, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I lack practise speaking German.. we should get together.. sigh 😅 — DaxServer (t·m·e·c) 08:59, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
😄 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:52, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

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

Administrator changes

removed Pppery

Interface administrator changes

removed Pppery

Oversighter changes

removed Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

removed

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:45, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

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. [35]
  • 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. [36]
  • 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.

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:04, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 September 2024

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

COI issue at Family Policy Alliance

Seems we have we have somebody with a bucket of whitewash.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 14:53, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I'll try to keep an eye on it, but there's currently just one edit (split up into two technical actions, but still just one removal) and no evidence of something else than someone with a disclosed conflict of interest being bold. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:09, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
The claim that FPA Georgia, headed by Cole Muzio, never had anything to do with them is demonstrably false.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 15:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Verifiability and namespace

Hello, ToBeFree. I noticed this old comment of yours at MediaWiki talk:Editpage-head-copy-warn regarding verifiability of drafts, and was surprised. Please be aware that WP:V applies strictly to main space, and not to Draft space, User space (sandboxes, subpages) or anything else. This can be seen in paragraph two at WP:Verifiability. (Note also that the string 'draft' appears nowhere on that page.) It must be so, otherwise the whole point of draft space as a relatively protected area to develop one's article (with the help of others, if they wish to join in) where many of the rules don't apply would be lost, and a draft would have to be releasable at every moment and no different than main space, so you might as well just develop there. We *want* editors to have a place where the rules are relaxed, so the rest of us don't have to hover, looking for problems that will hopefully be gone before submission or release.

A draft needn't be cited (if you plan to do that later), it needn't have encyclopedic tone (if you plan to fix that up later), it needn't be in English (if you are working on a translation) and it needn't even be notable (although you are engaging in a futile, time-wasting pursuit if it is not as it will eventually be deleted). None of the usual content policies apply in draft space, and drafts are not checked for adherence to content P&G until they are submitted to WP:AFC, or until they are released by the author (but then they are in mainspace, and all rules apply). Naturally, policies with legal implications still apply, so no copyvio, libel, and so on. I frequently write my drafts full of raw notes, messages to myself, questions about approaches to look into, bare urls in the middle of a sentence, andd even red messages so I don't forget something, and it's all good. I didn't respond at the thread because it was old and seemed kind of o/t, but I thought I ought to mention it. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 03:42, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello Mathglot, the text "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable through citations to reliable sources." is currently shown as part of the copyright information when editing any page including noticeboards, user talk pages and drafts. I see no issue with this text being displayed when editing mainspace and draft pages, especially as this includes drafts about living people where WP:BLP does apply, and drafts of articles written to be immediately submitted via AfC by newcomers. My point is primarily about whether the text should be displayed in the Wikipedia, MediaWiki, User talk et cetera namespaces, not whether WP:V applies to the draft namespace. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 05:07, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

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. [38][39]
  • 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() and mw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid) will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [40]

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. [41]
  • Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new MOS namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning with MOS: (usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language code mos). [42]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:49, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

BLP & COI issues at Romero Britto

Evidently being edited by the subject or his employee(s) and a COIN discussion back in May hasn't deterred them. Take a look at the IP's WHOIS when you get a chance.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 20:00, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:53, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Question

Does this look like gaming? I warned the editor several times to not make edits about the Russo-Ukrainian war, but they persisted until I started a discussion on ANI (as is usual, no one cared enough to take any action). Now, they have made dozens of edits in the past few days that consist of adding language templates in references (such as this), often several such edits per article. Almost immediately after 500 total edits, they asked an admin if there is supposed to be a notification for receiving XC access level because they were told about the general sanctions, which suggests that they made those edits in order to bypass the restriction. Mellk (talk) 15:20, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi Mellk, thank you very much for the notification. Courtesy ping: Alex091981. I have revoked the extended confirmation for now and explained this at [43]. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:43, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
He asked me about it in Russian on my talk page, as noted in the link. I explained (likewise in Russian) that you revoked it for PGAMEing. Daniel Case (talk) 04:32, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
😃 Daniel Case, I wasn't aware you speak Russian – not that I'd have been able to use it – and am amazed by how different your languages are compared to each other (Russian, English, Arabic writing systems!) Thanks for answering their question in a situation where it may perhaps have resolved language issues/misunderstandings. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:13, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Well, I haven't gone full into Chinese. Though I have had the opportunity in the past. But it literally is a different writing system, not just a different alphabet. Daniel Case (talk) 01:18, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
😃 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:45, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for explaining this to them in detail. I have also given them some guidance on their talk page on checking the documentation for the template, since they incorrectly used it in some edits. Mellk (talk) 14:31, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
No problem. Mellk, you mean {{lang-uk}} et cetera? I have to admit I hadn't even noticed them in articles before these mass additions. I do like the use of (HTML or templated) language tags to assist tools like screen readers with converting a page to other forms like audio. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:15, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
They were using {{In lang}} but the documentation says that if a citation template is already used then the |language= parameter in that template should be used instead. So in this edit it would have been better to have used that parameter in {{cite web}}. But I suppose this is a fairly minor issue. Mellk (talk) 11:06, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Edit-war on the Kuči tribe page

Hi @ToBeFree,

User Alltan (talk · contribs) has been edit-warring for weeks on the Kuči (tribe) to remove sourced content, including a monograph from a recognized expert of the tribe, the historian Rastislav Petrović, references to another expert, Branislav Djurdjev, and a few other references as well. They have already reverted 3 times today, [44], [45] and [46]. And since August, they have reverted quite often too, most often over content they don't agree with:

They are usually careful not to break the 3RR so other users sharing the same interests come in their place and revert mostly without discussion, acting with the behavior of a WP:TAGTEAM. The talk page is useless in this case, as they don't want to discuss, using WP:STONEWALLING to present their point of view as the "consensus". Krisitor (talk) 13:38, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

  • I am not involved in that content dispute, but Krisitor's accusation above that Alltan is invovlved in tag-teaming editing deserves a strong reaction. Krisitor keeps accusing others of "tag teaming", although I warned them that accusations of tag teaming without evidence are personal attacks [58]. Enough is enough. These accusations have gone beyond any acceptable limit. Ktrimi991 (talk) 13:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
    There was a very good report about the tag-team activities a few years ago, Alltan being mentioned there: [59]. The fact that no administrative action has been taken to put an end to this obvious coordinated behavior does not mean that it does not exist. And as I said in this RfC, I have stopped working on the Kuči page because its content is clearly controlled by the same users. I was hoping the RfC would change that, but it hasn't. Krisitor (talk) 14:04, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
    Seems funny that you post this here, and one of the accused in that report replies to you in less than 15 minutes. :D
    Btw, i got notification so please check if you replied to me on that thread, or to Alltan. Setxkbmap (talk) 14:07, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
    I have this tp on my watchlist as I have been involved here several times in the past. Big surprise, no? And I am not even defending Alltan about the edit warring accusation, as I have no idea what that content dispute is about. Ktrimi991 (talk) 14:21, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
    You have TP of a random admin in your watchlist? Setxkbmap (talk) 14:23, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
    That's not unusual, and it's fine. Ktrimi991 has edited this page 11 times before Krisitor added their message. Of course it can be on their watchlist. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:57, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
    Yeah, i made a mistake. He did reply to me down here and i stopped further convo. Setxkbmap (talk) 00:01, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
    I have even put the blue "Please click here to add a new message!" button on my own tp :) TBF, I don't want to be time-consuming, but what about my concern of Krisitor's incivility with continuous, unproven tag-teaming accusations? If you see my concern as valid, could you formally warn/sanction Krisitor so they refrain from repeating them? Ktrimi991 (talk) 00:35, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
    @Krisitor. **That report from years ago proved nothing. It was written by an editor who is continuous conflicts with the accused editors, and the admins who looked at it were not convinced. You have a long history of accusing other editors of "tag teaming" without proving it with evidence, and you are doing it again after I warned you that unless you prove it at ANI/I or AE, it is a personal attack. Also, taking a look at the article's tp, what is that crude personal attack about This article has been confiscated for years by Greater Albanian nationalists[60]?! Ktrimi991 (talk) 14:17, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
    How did you get to this page? :) Setxkbmap (talk) 14:19, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
    See above and don't make silly questions. Ktrimi991 (talk) 14:22, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
    The tag teaming from the same group of editors pushing a POV Albanian spin has occurred for years. Enough is enough, this joke of a circus can’t keep going on. It’s utterly stupid. What’s next, Illyrian Arnauti have been around since the Jurassic period? Athens was settled by Souliotes ? Vaxjo-Agoy-Tetovo-Gjovik (talk) 20:24, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Hello Krisitor, Alltan, Ktrimi991 and Setxkbmap,
I have now extended-confirmed protected the article, excluding Setxkbmap from editing it for now, with advice on their talk page.
Alltan and Krisitor have received a formal warning addressing both ([61] [62] [63]). They are partially blocked from editing the article for 2 weeks.
I have additionally indefinitely blocked Vaxjo-Agoy-Tetovo-Gjovik as a disruption-only account.
The formal warning to Krisitor doesn't explicitly mention casting aspersions as a form of disruptive editing, but of course casting aspersions is disruptive. I'm not entirely sure if that has happened here, and it needs to remain possible to complain about perceived misbehavior on noticeboards (preferably) or administrators' talk pages (ideally not, and avoiding forum shopping). This needs to remain possible even when the perception is wrong, unless it's repeatedly wrong. But I did take action in response to the report, so the report was helpful and I can't complain. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:46, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Vaxjo account is sock of same guy that created account yesterday, with the same idea. Setxkbmap (talk) 00:49, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Setxkbmap, which account? Could you copy the username here? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:51, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
I think it was this dude User:KustrimiAbdu
I could be wrong, but it's same behaviour as yesterday. Setxkbmap (talk) 00:53, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Setxkbmap, independently of whether it was the same person, thank you very much for reporting this. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:10, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
No problem. I love discussing, and even arguing with people about certain topics, but trolls like this that come and bring nothing to the conversation are annoying af.
Thank you for doing your job and banning him. Setxkbmap (talk) 01:13, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
I am sure that Krisitor's comments are within the definition of personal attacks, as in the past other editors have been warned and blocked for making unproven tag-team accusations. Repeatedly making the same accusation without having it proven certainly is not acceptable [64][65][66][67]. Anyways, I respect your stance on the issue. Cheers, Ktrimi991 (talk) 00:53, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Ktrimi991, thanks for pointing this out. Especially the edit summaries of [68] and [69] are indeed personal attacks to me. Special:Diff/1232595103 is also unacceptable. Krisitor has received their warning already but should of course be aware of this. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:09, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
  • Setxkbmap, I was a bit curious how a supposedly new editor was familiar with many things on Wiki. After taking a look at your editing history, the question that comes to mind is: what is your connection with User:NekSeOvajVijekGordi? You created your account on August 9, 2023, just two days after NekSeOvajVijekGordi was blocked for socking (I was the editor who reported him). I noted at his SPI that he edited only the Kuci article. Over 95% of your edits are either on Kuci or on closely related articles. You are both Kuci-focued SPAs. Coincidance? He added Anna Ivanovic as a famous member of the tribe [70], so did you [71]. It is interesting that both his first edit on enwiki and your first edit argued for Anna Ivanovic as a special case of notability among the tribe members [72][73]. He argued that Muamer Zurkolic is not part of the tribe [74], so did you [75]. He made a highly disputed claim that in 1455 the Kuci and the related tribes requested that they have only Orthodox priests [76], so did you [77]. The fact that both of you edit warred against multiple editors over the same controversial medieval document is quite suspicious. Not to mention that both of you tried every possible way to dispute the statement that the Kuci tribe is only of Albanian origin. There are many diffs on that. He had the habit to keep saying "my bad" all the time [78][79][80][81]. Why do you have the same habit [82][83][84][85][86]? Next time you create a sock, be more careful. TBF, if you are convinced with the evidence, please block him. Otherwise I will take this to SPI. Ktrimi991 (talk) 16:05, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
    I didn't start here, i started on Serbian Wiki.
    As the rest goes, i was asked by another editor if i had a wiki account before, and i did have one 10 years ago on serbo-croatian wikipedia, but i lost that account because i don't have access to mail anymore, my bad :)
    As for the editor in question, i don't see how Zetski Zbor is highly disputed, or how having similar opinions on topic make you the same person. In fact, Ana Ivanovic info you are citing has been talked many times over Serbian and Montenegrin media, so it's "common knowledge", but ofc there is no RS that will confirm that, and i doubt Ana even considers herself part of any tribe. I've read some of the arguments that happened on talk page of that article.
    That user doesn't even format or quote correctly, he doesn't have his own pages, he wasn't active on any other wiki as far as i can see, and i was active on many other articles, like Drekalovići, Drekale, Lale Drekalov, Vasilije Petrović, Balšići, Xhufi Pellumb, Bjelopavlići, and i've been active on noticeboards as well, for my, but also for other sources.
    I'm not gonna tell you how to spend your time, but this is a bit sad. Setxkbmap (talk) 16:23, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Even after the CU confirmed your previous accounts, you kept claiming they were different people. I have heard this story from you in the past. FYI, there is further evidence, but I don't want to show here every way I can recognize your socks. Bye bye. Ktrimi991 (talk) 16:31, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Remember to tag! :) Setxkbmap (talk) 16:42, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Just for the record, Setxkbmap got blocked as a sock account. Ktrimi991 (talk) 22:16, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
Sorry for the late response. As it says in the editnotice for my talk page, please do take such cases to SPI first and feel free to notify me about the investigation afterwards. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:25, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
Hey, no worries. I did notice the note only after I had posted the evidence here. The important thing is that it got sorted out. Cheers, Ktrimi991 (talk) 00:37, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
Ktrimi991, ah, all good. Thank you very much for noticing and reporting this, especially with good evidence diffs, and for the update. I'm happy to see that your work led to the block of a sockpuppet that fooled me before. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:48, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Checking my work

Hello To Be free, While patrolling commons, I found FAUWBB (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log). They uploaded a copyvio to commons, and when I checked the article they added the image to, I found these diffs. As this is my first en-wiki report, I wanted to check with you to make sure I'm not missing something before I make a report. All the Best -- Chuck Talk 16:10, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello Alachuckthebuck, thanks for asking! The image has been deleted since. It depends on what it was: Copyright violations done by uploading an image to Wikimedia Commons are mostly a Commons issue and rarely need to be reported here. Image vandalism with thematically irrelevant images on the other hand would well be worth a report. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:30, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
The image was one part, this diff here was the worse offender. Can you take a look at this and give me your thoughts? All the Best -- Chuck Talk 15:36, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Sorry, I hadn't seen these; adding a pipe ("|") after external links breaks them, so I only saw one part of the diff. I have now fixed the external link syntax above. The text addition is a copyright violation, it seems, from [87]. In general, you can safely directly remove non-neutral additions to biographies of living people instead of tagging them. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:11, 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

  • Wishlist item 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. [88]
  • 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. [89]
  • 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. [90]
  • Advanced item 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-box need 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 newer cdx-message group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [91]

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. [92]

Tech in depth

  • Advanced item 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.
  • Advanced item 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.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:59, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Off topic, perhaps

Hey, I saw you were checking on that Pantrail already so I'll leave it be. But, a question--would you mind adding to your user page that you're an admin and a CU? I think for other users that's probably useful information. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 01:38, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi Drmies, ahem. While I assume that by checking, you refer to the block, I hereby disclose that I have performed checkuser checks in this matter including on the Pantrail account. 😅
I would value a second pair of eyes on the alleged connection between Xerxescience and Pantrail described at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Xerxescience. My current state is "possilikely", with the actual connection between Pantrail and any specific account being irrelevant enough to block Pantrail for purely behavioral reasons.
Regarding my user page, if I hadn't promised in Q4 to display recall information there, it would probably not contain any hint of usergroups or editing privileges. By those who neither know nor know how to check, the meaning of adminship is often misunderstood, and I'd like to avoid those who haven't interacted with me in an administrative capacity from suddenly feeling as if they were doing so automatically. This is why I thanked SoWhy for a mop icon yet reverted it in Special:Diff/925568723. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:48, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
No, I looked at the CU log--I was actually checking another account in that history, but that showed no evidence of foul play. I think the technical evidence is strong enough, but the behavioral evidence makes it a perfect match, IMO. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 01:59, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, that's a very valuable second opinion that made it much easier to close the SPI. I have now blocked both accounts. In general, I perform more checks than closing SPIs, especially when I think a situation needs to be looked at and might be simple, just to be hit with a case full of questionmarks and silently leaving it for a more experienced checkuser. So when you see me checking in response to a SPI, please don't let that stop you from taking it. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:29, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

User:Dmytrootamanenko

Hi ToBeFree. You indeffed this editor due to them persistently violating WP:RUSUKR but it seems they have made a new account. I have created a report here. If you could take a look, I would appreciate it. Thanks. Mellk (talk) 18:34, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi Mellk, thank you very much for noticing this and creating an SPI! Izno took care of it. 😊 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:55, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
Perfect, thank you both. Mellk (talk) 05:16, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Curious edits.

Hello, I hope you don't mind me disturbing you talk page bu I've just gone down a small rabbit hole. I see you have been involved with users; 'D.S. Lioness, Montigliani, Michalis1994 & NikolaosFanaris' previously. A while back I noticed some interesting edits on Reform UK's talk page. IPs (and maybe single use sockpuppets, I don't know) pushing for an edit. Then today the edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AReform_UK&diff=1246980861&oldid=1246942078 was made and fairly quickly undone with the edit note; ' Undid revision 1246942078 by 89.242.87.239 (talk) edit from blocked User: Michalis 1994.' The username was misspelt, but it was spelt correctly in another edit by the same IP, and so I read a few old edits and then I saw all the above usernames connected with the same agenda (usually regarding 'far-right' labels amongst others in the pattern.) This 'feud' by who knows how many users seems to be ongoing and spilling put onto other pages, who knows, it's just a guess. I thought it should be brought to your notice.Halbared (talk) 08:57, 22 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

A screenshot of the interface for the Alt Text suggested-edit feature
  • 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.
  • Advanced item 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. [93]
  • Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [94][95]
  • View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Advanced item 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

  • Advanced item 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.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2024

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

RFA2024 update: Discussion-only period now open for review

Hi there! The trial of the RfA discussion-only period passed at WP:RFA2024 has concluded, and after open discussion, the RfC is now considering whether to retain, modify, or discontinue it. You are invited to participate at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Discussion-only period. Cheers, and happy editing! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:38, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

BLP nonsense from new editor Ryan-gozling77

You might want to do something about this brand new editor adding "nicknames" all over the place.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 20:11, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Skywatcher68, although reverting and attempting to warn at least once would probably be an idea before reporting. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:27, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-40

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

Updates for editors

  • Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
  • Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [96]
  • For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [97]
  • The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
  • View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.

In depth

  • The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [98]

Meetings and events

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:17, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Xardwen

Hello, ToBeFree,

You made an indefinite block on this editor from certain article and project pages due to having a battleground attitude. I don't have a problem with the block except you made it indefinite, not just for the length of time of the AFD discussion. The AFD has been closed, the article has been deleted but if you go to this editor's Contribution page, there is a prominent block notice at the top of the page which, I think, is no longer relevant. Since the dispute is over, would you consider lifting this block? It will have no future effect as the AFD is closed and the article gone so I think it has served its purpose and can be removed. Thank you for considering this suggestion. Liz Read! Talk! 01:33, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Liz, thank you very much! The partial block has actually lost its meaning, as you describe. Thanks for closing the complex and strange discussion. Looking at Special:Diff/1248527412, I'm afraid the underlying issue is still present, so I have replaced the partial block by a topic ban for now. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:45, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Parliament of Malaysia

Hello, I would like to ask for help because there is non-stop harassment on the Parliament of Malaysia page by an anonymous user who has edited the election year of Malaysia. which is distortion of information Many people have tried to fix it, but he hasn't stopped. Preime TH (talk) 02:46, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Preime TH, I'm not sure if "harassment" is the right term for repeatedly adding the same unsourced information to an article, but I have semi-protected the page for three months now. Please notify me if this turns out to be insufficient. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:32, 1 October 2024 (UTC)
The anonymous user has distorted the information, that is, the current parliament will meet for the first time on 19 December 2022, and this parliament will be in place for 5 years. When the 5 years are up, it will be automatically dissolved on 19 December 2027, and then it must be rebuilt within 60 days, which we must organize no later than February 2028. But he (referring to the anonymous user) has changed it to 2027, even though other users have already said that the current parliament will expire in December 2027, but he has not stopped the correction. But I would like to thank you for helping to prevent it. Preime TH (talk) 12:18, 1 October 2024 (UTC)
I may not be very good at English. I apologize. Preime TH (talk) 12:19, 1 October 2024 (UTC)
It's all good 🙂 You're welcome, and thanks for the background information. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:26, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

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

Administrator changes

added
removed

CheckUser changes

readded
removed

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

edit-warring IP

Before they blanked it from their talk page, you blocked 103.231.73.87 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) for edit warring. Would you mind taking a look at Talk:Peter Ostrum#infobox occupation & years and their associated articular edits? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 12:40, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

P.S. Oh, what fun: they're now following me to my other recent edits and reverting them w/o cause. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 12:42, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Fourthords, thank you very much for the notification. The address is part of a /22 webserver/colocation network of Stark Industries and similar companies, which is now blocked for a year. Additionally, the specific user (independently of their IP address) is blocked for a month. If you see them evading their block, please create a report at WP:SPI and let me know. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:55, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks so much for your time! I'll keep an eye out. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 23:48, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
It would seem they are now editing as 103.31.182.7 (talk · contribs · WHOIS). I'll head to SPI momentarily. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 02:09, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
I hope I did this correctly: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/103.231.73.87. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 02:29, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
They have now seemingly moved on to 31.210.50.129 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) and Ban Fourthords Community (talk · contribs). I'm going to update Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/103.231.73.87, assuming I am correct to do so (and that I did it correctly in the first place); is there anything further I should do as I've seemingly attracted special ire? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 11:30, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Fourthords, the SPI is helpful. If there is obvious harassment continuing the behavior described at Special:Permalink/1249154433 from any account or address, you can also report it at WP:AIV for a quick block; the main difference between SPI and AIV is that AIV is quicker but should ideally only be used if the behavior is so clearly problematic that demonstrating block evasion isn't needed anymore. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:11, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
Not having used the SPI process before, please forgive me if my first response is to tap you on the shoulder, here, and double-check what to do. Thanks for all the assistance! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 14:15, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
All good, feel free to do so! 🙂 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:16, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Something odd at Zachary Levi

You might want to check this out. The article is being heavily edited by someone named for one of Levi's characters.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 15:17, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, this appears to be mostly-harmless fan editing without a conflict of interest, but other recent contributions made me semi-protect the page. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:01, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

A goat for you!

Because they eat anything. Including socks. Thanks for the cleanup tag team effort tonight with the "faction".

Star Mississippi 23:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Aww! 🤗💚 Thank you very much, Star Mississippi! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:06, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

HELE PLEASE

Hello, I would like some help please. Because in the article Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand and Cabinet of Thailand there is added text in the form of Vandalism and it destroys the data table. I ask you Protection for 6 months. Preime TH (talk) 04:51, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello Preime TH, I have now semi-protected the two pages and blocked 2001:fb1:160::/46 for 3 months. I hope this helps. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
Ok Thank You Preime TH (talk) 00:26, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Tech News: 2024-41

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

  • Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [99]

Updates for editors

Updates for technical contributors

  • It is now possible for <syntaxhighlight> code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if the copy=1 attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [101]
  • Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [102]
  • Advanced item Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
  • Advanced item Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
  • Five new wikis have been created:

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:39, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
For helping out with the 184.145.176.58 troll — Safety Cap (talk) 12:49, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
Oh. 🙂 Thank you very much, Safety Cap! 😊🌻 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:40, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
Love you. VERY much.
Frankfurter, out. Franfurter (talk) 22:54, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
🤔 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:12, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

142.114.1.184

Looks like we have an IP pretending to be an admin at RfPP. Skywatcher68 (talk) 20:54, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

If they had used (or attempted to use) the templates used by administrators to process these reports, I'd be more concerned. It's strange and I'll keep an eye on this, but making a request and commenting on a few others expressing concerns about them is generally okay. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:16, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin October Issue 1

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the first half of October 2024. Please help Translate.

Upcoming and current events and conversations

WikiArabia 2024
WikiArabia 2024

Talking: 2024 continues


Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure

See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org


Annual Goals Progress on Equity

See also a list of all movement events: on Meta


Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity

See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog


Board and Board committee updates

See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter


Other Movement curated newsletters & news

See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcac(_AT_)wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!


MediaWiki message delivery 23:30, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Ongoing edit war at Svaðilfari

I don't know who's right but an admin stepping in seems appropriate.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 19:24, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

We're slowly getting there! Thank you very much, Skywatcher68. There's now a talk page section where the years-long edit war can be discussed. It's not ideal in my opinion yet, so I've asked Ingwina to adjust it a bit, and we could then invite AntiDionysius, Bloodofox and Waxworker there so they can quickly voice their agreement, and there's finally a documented talk page consensus for the current revision.
I'm surprised about how stable the IPv6 addresses used for the edit warring are. I've blocked the range for a few years and semi-protected the page for a year, which should end the edit war, and I'd be open to an unblock request that agrees to finally discuss the matter at Talk:Svaðilfari. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:32, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
@AntiDionysius @Bloodofox @Waxworker I've adjusted the talk page in line with @ToBeFree's requests. Ingwina (talk) 07:25, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Jessica Nabongo

Semi no longer sufficient, this user needs a p-block from the article. No objection to them still making edit requests. Valereee (talk) 00:55, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh. Thanks, Valereee! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:10, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, and apologies for leaving a message that seems very terse, I started typing and the doorbell rang! Valereee (talk) 12:32, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
All good. 😄 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:39, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Edit war at Tailored Films

Seems to me that the bit about Margaret Forde fails WP:BLPGOSSIP.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 13:39, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

The edit cited Sunday World and Irish Independent. The banned-editor even confirmed this as much. Nofoolie (talk) 19:54, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Nofoolie, I can't see a ban; you're probably referring to Wrtyzxylu13's block. No amount of sourcing justifies ignoring the policy against edit warring, the policy section against restoring biographical content without consensus and the policy section placing the onus to obtain a consensus on those who prefer to include the material. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:59, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Attempts to discuss this were ignored. Attempts to draw the newly-created account (for the purpose of removing my edit) to the process of seeking consensus were ignored. They then responded in their commit message instructing me to not edit the page and their tone suggested they owned the page. Attempts to draw their attention to seeking consensus were just plain ignored. Nofoolie (talk) 20:02, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Nofoolie, I think you might be looking for WP:DISCFAIL, the most helpful essay I have seen so far. I recommend it regularly and have used the approach myself. That said, you and Babysharkboss2 have reverted four times (!) after [108] already provided an acceptable, discussable explanation for the removal. At very least after that explanation, any justification for continuing to restore the material was gone. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:08, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Not sure I read that as "acceptable".
Appreciate the link to the essay. Perhaps this assertion will appear in print from a reliable-source and then presumably it can be reinstated.
I can work towards that. Nofoolie (talk) 20:11, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Independently of whether there's a printed source, it can be reinstated as soon as a consensus for doing so is found, probably best on the talk page of the article. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:13, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Skywatcher68. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:59, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

2409:408C:8D49:BD9C:B90A:CC26:DBB6:2535/64

TOBeFree, need your help regarding an issue this IP range is engaged in making so many disruptions.[109] I've repoted this IP at WP:AVI[110] but still have not received a result. IP might be conducting block evasion, but I'm not sure their belonging.®asteem Talk 09:03, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

HJ Mitchell was faster. 😊 Thanks! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:57, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
No problem. I just worked my way down the list at AIV. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:01, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
HJ Mitchell Thanks for the quick handling at AIV. ®asteem Talk 02:57, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
ToBeFree ☺️ Thank you very much.®asteem Talk 02:55, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Monsieur Patillo

Hello, ToBeFree,

I looked through all of those diffs on the AIV report and not only do they not seem like vandalism but they are some of the most polite and diplomatic "personal attacks" I've seen before. I'm glad you are discussing the block with the editor as your response to the AIV report didn't seem like an obvious choice to me. There is clearly a dispute going on in a few articles but I don't see any of the editors as blameless and it's hard to see any editor as more responsible than another, at least reading over the dispute that found it's way to AN.

With ongoing talk page discussions and dispute resolution discussions, I'm not sure it had reached the level of an indefinite block yet. It's obvious that the editors are very frustrated with each other but it also seems like multiple editors are trying to eliminate their editorial opponents by painting them in the worst possible light. I'm not in the position to advise you what to do and I'll just reiterate what I said that I'm glad that you are open to discussing the situation with Monsieur Patillo on their User talk page. Thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 03:13, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

😐 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
 Unblocked. Thanks, Liz. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:35, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-42

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

Updates for editors

  • The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [111][112]
  • WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [113]
  • View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [114]
  • Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [115]
  • Advanced item Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [116]

In depth

  • The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
  • The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:18, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Cebu etc.

Thank you for protecting all those pages! I thought about requesting protection for them as a group but worried it was too big an ask. AntiDionysius (talk) 22:03, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi AntiDionysius, no worries! I think semi-protection of these pages won't hurt much and ends the easiest way for the sockpuppeteer to just continue "fighting" and getting attention. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello ToBeFree. This IP strikes me as the same person as this LTA which you recently blocked (for context see: [117])

They are exhibiting the same nationalistic and aggressive behavior as the LTA. Stylistically quite similar in their edit summaries. For example: 78xx and 216xx; 78xx, 78xx and 216xx.

What's really interesting is they both make an edit, then revert themselves, and revert themselves again so that they can use the edit summary to rant.

The geographic location is different but the proxy check tool on 216xx reveals it is a proxy. So it seems they are using a proxy to evade block. --Griboski (talk) 15:55, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello Griboski, thank you very much for the detailed analysis. The entire /24 range around the IP address belongs to hostus.us, a web hosting provider. There is no reason for that range to edit Wikipedia, especially if there is an open proxy running on the server(s) as you have detected. I have blocked them and, based on your comparison, reverted the latest edits as block evasion. I hope this helps! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:10, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! --Griboski (talk) 03:43, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

BLP issues at Vitaly Zdorovetskiy

One newly-registered editor who apparently has close ties to the subject, given that the new photo is the editor's own work, added non-neutral content. Now a second newly-registered editor has restored the same non-neutral content.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 21:29, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Twice!   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 21:39, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Accounts blocked, page semi-protected. 🙂 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:15, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Anti-Vietnamese sentiment

Hey, check out the history here when you get a chance. Newly-registered editor removing large swaths of content on the grounds that said content was added by a sockpuppet; others have already tried discussing the removal on the editor's user talk page.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 17:48, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, thank you very much for notifying me about this. I guess [118] already says it all. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:44, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Puppets to the left, puppets to the right.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 20:53, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
This! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:03, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
@ToBeFree Thank you for taking some action here. I didn't want to become involved in an edit war, but it was clear to me something was wrong.
Appreciate our last interaction wasn't positive, but thank you for your thanks and positive action.
OXYLYPSE (talk) 21:07, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Hi OXYLYPSE, you're welcome! I'm not sure which non-positive interaction you might mean; there's an ANEW report but that was justified and led to a block, so I'm thankful for the report and there's nothing negative about it, I hope. Did I decline a request at WP:AIV perhaps? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:15, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Hey @ToBeFree, Actually I think I've gotten you confused with another editor from VRT that I had an interaction with recently. My mistake; please accept my apologies, and thank you again. OXYLYPSE (talk) 22:39, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Oh, all good. 🙂👍 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:07, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 October 2024

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:16, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

PIA draft created by a non EC editor

If you have time, could you please look into this draft (as I'm not convinced that the average patrolled will be familiar with ARBPIA)? Thanks. M.Bitton (talk) 23:33, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi M.Bitton, thank you very much for noticing and asking. These normally get overlooked until they don't qualify anymore.  Done ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:36, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
Many thanks for taking care of it so quickly. Best, M.Bitton (talk) 23:44, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-43

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

  • The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app's navigation, and it is now available in the latest App store version. The team added a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view, and brings the "Donate" button into a more accessible place for users who are reading an article. This is the first phase of a larger planned navigation refresh to help the iOS app transition from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports reading and editing. The Wikimedia Foundation has added more editing features and support for on-wiki communication based on volunteer requests in recent years.
iOS Wikipedia App's profile menu and contents

Updates for editors

  • Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
  • Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
  • View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the South Ndebele, Pannonian Rusyn, Obolo, Iban and Tai Nüa Wikipedia languages were created last week. [119][120][121][122][123]
  • It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Advanced item Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new {{#timef:…}} parser function. For example, {{#timef:now|date|en}} will show as "26 December 2024". Previously, {{#time:…}} could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation. #timef (or #timefl for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [124][125]
  • Advanced item Commons and Meta users can now efficiently retrieve the user's language using {{USERLANGUAGE}} instead of using {{int:lang}}. [126]
  • The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [127]

In depth

  • The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: an upcoming Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module, new Community Configuration options, and details on new projects.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official partner of the CVE program, which is an international effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This partnership will allow the Security Team to instantly publish common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) records that are affecting MediaWiki core, extensions, and skins, along with any other code the Foundation is a steward of.
  • The Community Wishlist is now testing machine translations for Wishlist content. Volunteers can now read machine-translated versions of wishes and dive into discussions even before translators arrive to translate content.

Meetings and events

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:50, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in a research

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.

You do not have to be an Administrator to participate.

The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement .

Please find our contact on the project Meta page if you have any questions or concerns.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

BLP issue at Ibrahim AlHusseini

Not sure what's happening here, other than one blocked sockpuppet and possibly two others who remain unblocked.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 04:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, thank you very much! That's a pretty chaotic revision history. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Clarification for false positive report removal without explanation

Hello, you removed my false positive report here without a comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AEdit_filter%2FFalse_positives%2FReports&diff=1253028094&oldid=1253011800

I personally feel like this is a bit insufficient for the seriousness of the information outlined in the filtered report. Could you please take a moment to explain why you removed it without any comment? Perhaps it is an issue that could be resolved? Thank you. 145.224.72.102 (talk) 17:25, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello 145.224.72.102, I would normally avoid answering, but since I have no other way of reaching you, you'll most likely look for the answer here on this page and an answer may be needed to prevent you from doing it again:
Edits that violate the policy against harassment, specifically the section against outing, or that qualify for revision deletion or oversighting will neither be implemented nor publicly discussed. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for responding. The COIN page noted an issue with non-public evidence. I considered all of this public information since it is freely available on the internet. Apparently, I was wrong. Sorry for this. Do I understand correctly that sending it to paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org would be the appropriate alternative here? 217.142.18.234 (talk) 18:18, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
😐 I'm not sure. Would you mind sending an e-mail to arbcom-en@wikimedia.org and moving to paid-en-wp only if asked to do so in response? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:32, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Sure, will do when I find the time. Thank you for guiding me here! 217.142.18.234 (talk) 19:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks – if this turns out to be the right choice, I should have pointed you there earlier and didn't mean to make the path there as bumpy as it has been.
I'll later remove this section instead of archiving it and hope that's okay. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:24, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Editnotices/Page/COVID-19 pandemic in Asia

Template:Editnotices/Page/COVID-19 pandemic in Asia has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:34, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:49, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin October Issue 2

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the second half of October 2024. Please help translate.

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues

WikiForHumanRights
WikiForHumanRights


Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

  • Tech News: In issue 2024/42, read about the removal of the Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow), work on making text searches easier, and more. In issue 2024/43, read about improvements to mobile app navigation, temporary accounts pilot details, the Content Discovery Experiments, and more updates.
  • MediaWiki: The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available and include updates on Wikimedia’s authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, and more.
  • CampaignEvents extension: The CampaignEvents extension provides tools to create, manage, and promote collaborative activities on the wikis, such as edit-a-thons, meetups, and more. You can visit the Deployment page to learn how to get the extension on your wiki.
  • Research: The Research team and collaborators are launching new research on editors with extended rights.
  • New Content Translation feature: Translators using Content Translation on wikis with mobile support can now customize their article suggestions with 41 filtering options. This feature helps translators find relevant articles based on their interests for translation.
  • Wikifunctions: We are collecting feedback on the "About" widget that shows more info about the functions. Also, status updates from October 11 and October 17.
  • Temporary Accounts: Temporary accounts will begin rolling out on October 29 to production wikis with an aim to do a complete deployment by May 2025. You can see the deployment plan and timeline on the project page. As we rollout this change, it is likely that some tools (gadgets, user scripts, templates and bots) will be impacted by it. We have a developer FAQ to help developers with making necessary changes to their maintained tool(s). Please let us know on our talk page if you have any tool in mind that may need updating or if you need help with updating your maintained tools.
  • Knowledge is Human campaign: The Communications department has just launched a public awareness campaign (landing page) to showcase how real articles are edited and highlight Wikipedia as a source of information ahead of the 2024 “Big English” fundraising drive.


Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki


Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog


Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter


Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcac(_AT_)wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!


MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Criminal Complaint - USA vs. IBRAHIM AMEEN ALHUSSEINI - Case No. 2:24-mj-06166-DUTY

Hello - writing to you about Ibrahim AlHusseini

Could you please explain why you removed the section I added regarding the criminal complaint?

Every single statement is factual and drawn from the criminal complaint - it is both relevant and important to the biography of the page. Please advise. If there is a specific reference that is not acceptable, please indicate the specific issue.

Further, I noticed you deleted the Civil Complaint judgement and details - could you explain this? Again, it is relevant and factual - referenced by reliable sources - so should remain. TruthseekerT (talk) 23:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello TruthseekerT, you may not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 08:54, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

More COVID editnotices

Thanks for tagging the COVID editnotices with the CT template. There appear to be more at the Special:UnusedTemplates page, such as some cruise ships (Coral/Costa/Grand/Norwegian/Ovation/Voyager/World) that may or may not merit a CT template, Favipiravir, and possibly other pages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:31, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

[Workbench] ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:34, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
I think we got them all. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
ah, topOnly=1 :)
Thanks a million, Jonesey95! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:54, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-44

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

Updates for editors

Updates for technical contributors

  • Wikis can use the Guided Tour extension to help newcomers understand how to edit. The Guided Tours extension now works with dark mode. Guided Tour maintainers can check their tours to see that nothing looks odd. They can also set emitTransitionOnStep to true to fix an old bug. They can use the new flag allowAutomaticBack to avoid back-buttons they don't want. [129]
  • Administrators in the Wikimedia projects who use the Nuke Extension will notice that mass deletions done with this tool have the "Nuke" tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. [130]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:54, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Please explain your decision to remove my extended confirmed access

What do you mean by gaming the system? Scharb (talk) 01:36, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello Scharb, thanks for asking. I was still typing a message on your talk page, which has now been sent. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:38, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Block evasion?

Hello,

Just want your opinion re: [131]

Do you think this is connected to the same pattern of block evasion seen here ?

Best, Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 14:45, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. Hi Amanuensis Balkanicus, the quality of their English is noticeably different. Of course this doesn't rule out them suddenly intentionally making grammatical errors to evade detection. On the technical side, the blocked IP address is from a web hosting provider / proxy while the new one is from a mobile network if I see correctly. If the new address was from a web hosting provider again, I'd block of course. If there's something I've overlooked, please let me (or WP:SPI) know! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:30, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

May I comment on a request for enforcement?

Hi, I am new to arbitration and requests for enforcement. This is going on: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Discussion_concerning_Bohemian_Baltimore. May I comment on this? Or can I request permission to comment on this? Thanks for any information! Yuchitown (talk) 18:04, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Yuchitown, thanks for asking! Yes, you are allowed to simply create a new section for your comment, by editing "Statement by (username)", copying that heading for the next user, and editing the original section. Your statement is limited to 500 words and 20 diffs, but that's all – you're extended confirmed, so you can also comment on topics that are covered by an extended-confirmed restriction (not the case for biographies anyway). ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:22, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for that information! Yuchitown (talk) 14:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
No problem! Regarding the green text, I think you might be looking for {{tqq}}. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
Cool, TIL! Yuchitown (talk) 02:23, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
😊 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:00, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2024

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

Administrator changes

readded
removed

CheckUser changes

removed Maxim

Oversighter changes

removed Maxim

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:22, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Arbitration Enforcement blocks

Hi ToBeFree. Could you offer some general guidance on what might be considered too short of a duration for an Arbitration Enforcement block? Anything shorter than a month perhaps? Daniel Quinlan (talk) 20:38, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Daniel Quinlan, this is probably about Rob Roilen's 24-hour block that was originally an AE action. WP:CBAN provides some data:
  • Site ban discussions must generally be open for at least 72 hours.
  • If someone is indefinitely blocked and appeals their block at WP:AN, they are either unblocked or site banned as a result.
  • All community sanction discussions must be open for at least 24 hours.
So a 24-hour block will inevitably, per policy, expire before the unblock discussion is closed. That makes the request pointless. The block template for AE blocks correctly notes that an unblock request can only be made through AN or AE, so anyone appealing their 24-hour AE block ends up asking for something pointless.
This is less likely to be an issue for even just a week-long block, although requiring a noticeboard review for a quick week-long block is also hard to justify. Blocks are normally reviewed by individual administrators on the blocked users' talk pages, and the community would drown in appeal discussions if these were all held at WP:AN instead.
In the end, it's (mostly) not about the duration of the block but whether you expect another administrator to disagree and simply undo the action. This was a common fear when AE sanctions were intruduced, with sanctions against "unblockable" established users quickly being overruled by at least one of the then-over-1000 administrators, and reinstatement of the overruled action being prohibited as wheel warring. AE blocks exist to prevent me from being unblocked by you in case I made a personal attack, not to sanction battleground conduct by a newcomer.
Best regards,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:56, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer. I understand now that shorter durations may be problematic given how appeals work. I had previously read WP:CTOP and WP:AC/P which both say Contentious topic restrictions may be imposed for any fixed length of time, or for an indefinite period. and 24-hour to 72-hour blocks don't seem to be rare in the 2023 and 2024 Arbitration Enforcement log (although not as common in 2024). I'm not saying that the current wording of the procedures actually encourages shorter durations, but would it be worthwhile to include some brief practical guidance on those procedure pages? I can file a request if needed, but I wanted to ask for your opinion first. Thanks! Daniel Quinlan (talk) 21:49, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
It's a pretty good question. I guess a not-quickly-undoable 24-hour block of an "unblockable" user may sometimes make sense and may well have been an intended option. Regarding the logged actions, perhaps these are mostly from the WP:AE noticeboard, where practically every action taken on thread closure including short blocks becomes a logged contentious topic restriction that is only appealable on a noticeboard? Perhaps most of the blocked users are aware of their low chance of having the action overturned at a noticeboard, so the actual number of time-consuming reviews is low?
For a clarification/admendment request, I personally would be happy if a specific improvement to the existing policies was proposed. Specific wording that could be used instead; corrections that would improve the procedures.
Perhaps the following at Wikipedia:Contentious topics § Administrators' role and expectations already covers this?

Before imposing a delegated enforcement action, administrators must consider whether a regular administrative action would be sufficient to reduce disruption to the project.

~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:09, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
(It's a bit comical that this comes from me, as I regularly fill the enforcement logs with contentious topic page protections that could simply be normal page protections. The reason why I do so, just for the record, is that placing a year of semi-protection or even a year of extended-confirmed protection without trying shorter protections first is something I wouldn't do if the topic wasn't already known to be contentious.) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:14, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
Well, I think you (and many other administrators including myself) are in the clear on that. Without logging those protections as an enforcement action, it would be a violation of WP:PREEMPTIVE. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 22:22, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, right! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:24, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
I think that blurb, which I've read before, but didn't cross my mind today, is quite clear and would cover many of these cases including the most recent one, but I believe it would still be helpful to add some practical guidance about the duration of restrictions somewhere.
It might also be a good idea to add a footnote (or even a sentence) to Wikipedia:Contentious topics § Standard set and Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Standard set to remind administrators about the separate section. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 22:36, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant to reply but was unsure what to. 🙂 Because I agree with you about the idea yet think if this should ever actually happen, that's probably only after someone wrote that practical guidance and the footnote text and presented them as a ready-to-use solution in their request at WP:ARCA. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:07, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
I always use an AE action when I'm enforcing a CTOP sanction like 1RR or ECR, since technically the authority to block for those does not exist without AE authority. Another thing worth keeping in mind about when to use AE is if you want the action logged. A block for edit warring is different than a block for edit warring in a contentious topic, and strongly influences further arbitration enforcement. It also provides a helpful log for tracking the baseline disruption in a topic area. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:17, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
Ah, that's a good point. Similar to the actions resulting from requests at the WP:AE noticeboard. Perhaps these are the main source of 24-hour CTOP blocks. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:44, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

A question

Hello, am I currently blocked somehow? I cannot reply to comments in any of the active threads I'm involved in. I'm using the mobile app if that makes any difference. Rob Roilen (talk) 20:22, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

You have no active blocks. While blocks on your IP can affect even you when you're logged in, this is unlikely since you're able to comment here. Also you should get some indication you're blocked when editing. Note that if you're trying to use the Wikipedia:Reply tool to reply, I'm not sure if this has been enabled on the Android app. You may have to reply old style, by editing the talk page and indenting your comment as necessary etc. If that isn't the problem, the Android app has a controversial reputation, I haven't used it much myself but when I have IMO it's decent for reading but has limitations when editing. It might be worth using a browser on your Android device whether with the mobile or desktop site when editing talk pages. The reply tool is enabled on the mobile website. Nil Einne (talk) 20:39, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
Hi Rob Roilen and Nil Einne, the reply tool is quickly broken by list formatting and templates. It will work here in this discussion because it contains no special code, but as soon as anything unusual is present in the section's code, it will refuse to work. Editing the section and adding a new comment the manual, old way using colons for indentation will work even then, though. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:42, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) One thing, if your IP is WP:partial blocked with the setting to prevent logged in users from editing with that IP, this would prevent you from editing anything affected by the partial block which might explain why you can edit here but not elsewhere, especially if all the other pages you're trying to edit are the Wikipedia namespace and that's one of the things you're partially blocked from. However you should see a block notice of some sort even on the Android app (Wikipedia:Mobile communication bugs). It's possible there is some weird interaction between the reply tool and the block so it might be worth trying to edit the page directly rather than with the reply tool if you haven't already. If you can find a block notice, it's more likely you could receive assistance as it's almost impossible for anyone to help without knowing if you're even blocked and if you are, by what block. Nil Einne (talk) 20:46, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
@Nil Einne @ToBeFree Noted, thank you both. Rob Roilen (talk) 20:49, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User:Khan Bijoy

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. A tag has been placed on User:Khan Bijoy requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section U5 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to consist of writings, information, discussions, or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals. Please note that Wikipedia is not a free web hosting service. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. GPL93 (talk) 21:32, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh my. 🙂 Thanks, GPL93.
For the record, I had moved/merged Khan Bijoy's user page and their sandbox to a draft and replaced the resulting cross-namespace redirect by "The draft that had been added to this user page is now at Draft:Khan Bijoy." I also informed them about the situation on their talk page.
None of this stopped the user from overwriting that text with new self-promotion a few hours later; I hope a two-week block causes them to have a look at their talk page and to consider editing about other topics. If it just continues after the block, please let me know. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:52, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-45

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

Updates for editors

  • Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [132]
  • Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
  • The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [133]
  • View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.

Updates for technical contributors

  • XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [134]

In depth

  • Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
  • The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.

Meetings and events

  • MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:48, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

About your block of Riisimit

Seems to have socked up.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 14:01, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, subtle. Thanks 🙂 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:44, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

AIV block/non-block

Evening,

If they'd made the edits in userspace then yeah i'd have probably blocked them but as they were going through the AFC process (forcibly or otherwise) i was happy to give them the choice. Not disagreeing with the block but just a difference in opinion i guess. Amortias (T)(C) 00:09, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Amortias, ah, I hadn't considered the choice between the User or Draft namespaces. Looking at the timestamps at [135] and [136], however, their moving to the draftspace was the result of a speedy deletion nomination of their userpage. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:14, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
(for the record, this is about Marketri's block and Special:Diff/1255648836) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:15, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 6 November 2024

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

block review

Hey! Could you review this block? It might need adjustment. Thanks. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User%3A203.54.128.0%2F17&type=block. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 02:28, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Deepfriedokra, at very least enabling talk page access should be an option, unless it results in a flood of Special:Diff/1089678601/Special:Diff/1093986733/Special:Diff/1093191348's. I'd say it's worth trying and can easily be undone. Graham87, what do you think? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:21, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
@Deepfriedokra: I assume this is UTRS 96216; I've turned on account creation (which might help) and talk page access (which might not, but is worth a try). Graham87 (talk) 11:13, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the UTRS link and for the block modifications! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:07, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin November Issue 1

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the first half of November 2024. Please help translate.
WikiCelebrate Mārtiņš Bruņenieks
WikiCelebrate Mārtiņš Bruņenieks

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues


Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org


Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki


Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

  • Global Advocacy: Reflecting on the anniversary of the EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA), Wikimedians share successes and public policy priorities at digital rights Global Gathering event, and more global advocacy updates.


Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports


Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta-Wiki. Let askcac(_AT_)wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!


MediaWiki message delivery 22:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

About user who disrupt "Yukio Mishima"

Hi. Thank you for letting me know about [137]. I think this User:CyberIdris violated the rule of multiple accounts. Where can I report multiple accounts? みしまるもも (talk) 01:21, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi みしまるもも, thanks for asking! Normally, you can report sockpuppetry at WP:SPI, but I have already seen and dealt with that specific situation. Unless it continues, the warning on their talk page and the already-placed block of the IP address showing the same behavior as the account should be sufficient. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
Dear ToBeFree, Thank you very much. みしまるもも (talk) 01:55, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
Dear ToBeFree, I would like to report this User:CyberIdris to WP:AIV because he is making the same mistake over again without providing any evidence for the edits I am making based on professional sources. Even in discussions, this person never gives a clear source.--みしまるもも (talk) 06:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi ToBeFree, User:みしまるもも is very uncivil and aggressive. His userpage suggests that he possibly has a conflict of interest or some kind of heavy personal bias toward Yukio Mishima and another user pointed this out about him on the talk page. I think he is improperly weaponizing reports as a way to force his personal views. He seems to be interested in promoting a nationalist POV and not being neutral or helping the encyclopedia. I also want to point out his account appears to be named after Yukio Mishima (his account is Rumomo Mishima). CyberIdris (talk) 07:46, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I believe it is you who has a personal prejudice against Yukio Mishima. Of course, I like Yukio Mishima, and I have read his works and all his literature, as well as the research of various researchers. That is why I can see where your perception is strange.
First of all, please tell me the clear source of the edit you made based on your personal assumption (restoring direct rule by the Emperor),(Even before the war, the Emperor did not rule directly, so this is illogical.), why I deleted the edit that established Mishima's position as a literary figure based on Donald Keene's source, and why I changed the official English titles of Mishima's works to incorrect ones.
Also, I don't really want to doubt you, but you remind me a little of Mr. Ash-Gaar. みしまるもも (talk) 08:00, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
Hello CyberIdris and みしまるもも, in your article talk page discussion at Talk:Yukio Mishima, please focus on content rather than others' behavior. If someone is behaving in a problematic way, I recommend talking to them on their user talk page. For example, if the conduct of user X upsets you, go to User_talk:X and tell them why. And if this really really doesn't help, you can create a report at WP:ANI, where your own behavior will be scrutinized too, however. AIV is unsuitable for such disputes; use ANI please.
If possible, discuss the article content on the article's talk page without talking about user behavior, and without asking people directly to do or not to do something, and without criticizing anyone. Such topics don't belong to an article talk page discussion.
If the article talk page discussion starts running in circles, you can request a third opinion, but this is only an option if you both have really discussed the content rather than people's behavior.
If absolutely nothing helps, you'll need an RfC to find a consensus, but you're far away from this point. Far away. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:32, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

File:Visual Editor - Overlapping issue.png

Hi ToBeFree,

I was going through random files in Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons and came to this one. It's in your category Category:Files prepared for transfer to Commons by User ToBeFree but I don't think this should be transfered, as it wouldn't be useful in other Wikimedia Projects. What do I do, remove it from your category and tag with Template:Do not move to Commons? Or only tag with Template:Do not move to Commons? Thanks, Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 22:30, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Myrealnamm, thanks for asking! In general, I'm very happy about files being removed from this category and marked as unsuitable for transfer to Commons; the category is a chaotic result of a process described at User talk:ToBeFree/A/1 § Image copyright question and in desperate need of cleanup. So thank you very much for every single image you're checking there.
However, to my knowledge, usefulness to just one Wikimedia project is not an exclusion criterion. On the contrary, a media file that is in use on one of the other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation is considered automatically to be useful for an educational purpose on Wikimedia Commons, and the file is used for an archived VisualEditor bug report. So I'd say feel free to transfer rather than removing or tagging as ineligible. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:38, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
Oh wow, I... never saw COM:INUSE. For sure, I'll transfer it over.
By the way, I see that when I transfer the file over, Category:Files prepared for transfer to Commons by User ToBeFree also gets brought over to Commons, and there's a discussion that started over three years ago (that you've participated in) regarding your category in Commons.
I have to go soon, I'll take a look at this tom. Thanks! Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 02:06, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
😅
A hundred years later people will still stumble upon this horrible category because the English Wikipedia is still full of files that aren't properly sorted between "transferable to Commons" and "not transferable to Commons" and the category is better than nothing for identifying transferable files... ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:10, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
Wait, I just said I would transfer it over... But then I didn't. Now I did. Thanks for the nudge!
Ha! That's hilarious. Gotta go, coming back tom. Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 02:13, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
That wasn't meant to be a nudge! 😊 Thanks again and feel free to ask about any other files in the category. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:57, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

10 November 2024

@ToBeFree, Could you please check my talk page and the numerous edit warning notices I've received? Despite making constructive and good-faith edits to Rajput, Rajput clans, and Political marriages in India, I haven't engaged in any edit wars or disruptions on Wikipedia and calling my edit as "Shamaless attempt".[138] wich I believe was provoking®asteem Talk 11:25, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

"numerous edit warning notices" - You have only received a single edit warring notice(softer wording) because you were in fact edit warring, see my latest reply on your talkpage. The other was a general note regarding marking non minor edits as minor, therefore not a warning. This is irrelevant now because that phrase was retracted [139], I also do not understand why are you forumshopping instead of responding to Abhishek. Ratnahastin (talk) 11:31, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
I would like to differ with Ratnahastin. I checked the page edited by Rasteem and found that their edits were genuine. Also, he is comparatively new to Wikipedia, hence the correct way to alert them is not by bombarding with notices rather than making him aware of policies if the need arises. But, as of now, I don't think they've done any blunder which necessitates such heavy warnings as done on the talk page of several articles and their own talk page. Adamantine123 (talk) 12:03, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
@@ToBeFree: Please also consider this talk page discussion[140] I had with Adamantine123 in wich I shared by concerned that I, Adamantine123, @LukeEmily:, & Ekdalian all we have received some edit warning notices just after making constructive edits on Rajput, Rajput clans, Political marriages in India for no actual edit wars by & received edit warning or contenious topic notices from (Ratnahastin), (NXcrypto), (Dympies) and (Abhishek0831996) you may not mind keeping an eye on these articles. These are some notices I received within less then 10 or 12 hours[141][142] in addition I received same notice twice for the use of minor edit tag on [Rajput]] from Ratnahastin & Dympies.[143][144] ®asteem Talk 11:59, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
Although here I differed with Ratnahastin, but, as an older editor compared to you I also have a piece of advice for you. Ratnahastin is a prolific editor in this area. I am noticing their edits for a long time and I have found that they have done good work to keep many contentious articles clean. Please note, that if you accuse a bunch of editors of colluding with each other, this is called violation of WP:AGF. Although, I agree with you that Dympies have been doing some problematic edits on Rajput caste related articles, which is being discussed here at User Talk: Ekdalian#pings by LukeEmily and Ekdalian, you should avoid commenting on motive of editors. Just point out at their edits with reliable source. Also, don't panic and take proper time in making comments and replying to others so that you can scrutinize your comment here. Adamantine123 (talk) 12:56, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
@Adamantine123 Thank you I'll consider your advise always in my mind before making comments regarding other editors. ®asteem Talk 13:04, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
Hi Rasteem, I think I see what you mean. Special:Diff/1256313211 is okay. Users are sometimes required to send these messages before they can request other actions. It's okay for Ratnahastin to send this message to you, but only once. In general, you are allowed to tell someone to stop messaging you, and they're required to stop. However, {{ani-notice}}, the alert box from Special:Diff/1256313211 or similar notifications may still be sent, of course. If you tell someone not to message you and they continue sending unnecessary messages, that would be a form of harassment. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:53, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
@ToBeFree 😊 Got it Thank you! for the brief explanation. ®asteem Talk 20:39, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Sandra masters

Why would you block me from making an innocent and accurate biographic statement? She has four kids, her x is Gary Houston the author. I feel it is an informative fact. Townsb (talk) 18:19, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello Townsb, where did you find this information? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:55, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-46

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

Updates for editors

Updates for technical contributors

  • Advanced item In 1.44.0-wmf-2, the logic of Wikibase function getAllStatements changed to behave like getBestStatements. Invoking the function now returns a copy of values which are immutable. [147]
  • Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. The API will be rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The impacted endpoints include getting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content. These changes will be available on testwiki later this week, with other projects to follow. This change should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints should verify behavior on testwiki, and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket.

In depth

  • Admins and users of the Wikimedia projects where Automoderator is enabled can now monitor and evaluate important metrics related to Automoderator's actions. This Superset dashboard calculates and aggregates metrics about Automoderator's behaviour on the projects in which it is deployed. Thanks to the Moderator Tools team for this Dashboard; you can visit the documentation page for more information about this work. [148]

Meetings and events

  • 21 November 2024 (8:00 UTC & 16:00 UTC) - Community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. The theme of this call is how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons.

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BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Unblock account

2months back account got blocked. Now terms and policies are understood and will be followed. Kindly unblock my ip and account Ruben015 (talk) 07:57, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Contentious topics/anchor

Template:Contentious topics/anchor has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 13:53, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

The Blue Rider, Helping at WP:VA

Hi there,

I just noticed that User:The Blue Rider got blocked recently and you seemed to have an understanding conversation with him/her. I don't normally approach the admins so I apologize if this isn't the proper forum; I don't know the details about why they were blocked either.

Next time their block is being reconsidered though, I just wanted to add that The Blue Rider strikes me as a helpful participant at WP:VA, where I mainly interact with them. The VA project in particular is under-appreciated, involves a lot of cat-herding, and inevitably brings out WP:FAN behavior. So every fair and reliable contributor there makes a big difference. I just wanted to let you and your colleagues know so you can factor that in, especially if there's a possibility of making their block partial in the future. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 21:03, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Zar2gar1,
Thank you very much for the kind feedback in favor of a user's return. This is rare and valuable. To me personally, at the moment, The Blue Rider's behavior has left me without short-term hope for a way for them to return to editing without disruption. Some users write wonderful featured articles and end up being banned for their uncivil behavior. Some users are great template coders and create wonderful technical improvements yet end up being banned for their uncivil behavior. To me personally, this is a sign of a healthy community with working measures and institutions against disruption, attacks and harassment. To me personally, someone working productively and collaboratively in one narrow specific area while starting fights in multiple other locations needs to remain blocked. Whether that changes, we'll see; I'll definitely take your point into account if the discussion comes up.
Best regards and thanks again,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:54, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) I haven't looked closely enough to have an opinion on The Blue Rider's block and don't plan to, but User:Pppery/The iceberg is worth a read in situations like this. I would say that as a general matter the community has gone too far in the deletion of banning otherwise productive people for incivility and is sabotaging itself as a result. * Pppery * it has begun... 00:38, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Hi Pppery, I generally agree with the idea that a "this user can be replaced" mentality in a large volunteer project can lead to the loss of the only person who cared about a specific topic, or one of the few people who patrolled a specific noticeboard or something similar. I disagree with the idea that bans are part of this issue, as bans result from the community dealing with actual disruption in a situation where other people would start leaving the project if the behavior remained unsanctioned. A "we need this editor's contributions despite their behavior" mentality is what ArbCom exists to steer against, what "discretionary sanctions" have been created to counter (preventing quick unblocks made with exactly this reasoning), et cetera. This view can become a real problem if too many members of a community loudly have it. And regarding this specific editor, the emotional blackmailing that hit me and those watching their talk page yesterday is something you can be happy about not having looked at. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:14, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
I appreciate the reply, and I agree 100% that you have to run a tight ship. Like I said, I don't know the details of what led to the block; I only noticed it because I planned to respond to something they wrote at VA.
I felt I should bring this up just in case you decide later that the problems can be limited to specific areas of Wikipedia. I can only vouch for my own impression of their behavior at VA, which has always seemed positive to me, and AFAIK nobody there has ever raised any significant complaints.
Anyways, thanks for taking the time to reply, and best wishes. It's a tough gig being an internet admin, not something I'm cut out for, so you have my respect. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 01:58, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Thank you 🌻 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:10, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Fwiw, I worked in a toxic environment for years because the manager would not take action because the toxic individuals, "did a good job." it's hard to balance all of the needs involved. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 08:54, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello. As the editor who templated User:The Blue Rider [149], which initiated the most recent ANI discussion, I'd also like to add my support in favor of future return of User:The Blue Rider. User:The Blue Rider will need to completely stop uncivil comments such as this [150]. If this condition is met, I think they can be a benefit to the project in the future, after a bit of a cool-down period.

Even though I disagreed with The Blue Rider in some of the WP:VA discussions, I also think The Blue Rider makes positive contributions there. A lot of people ignore WP:VA, but I think it's useful in organizing and prioritizing Wikipedia articles.

Also note that after this exchange [151][152], The Blue Rider and I still had a calm debate here: Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles#RfCs_for_nominating_articles. The Blue Rider provided a study that is favorable to aspects of WP:VA [153] (here's the study: [154]).

I also understand their comment. Template:Contentious topics/alert/first indeed says You have recently edited a page related to .... The fact that talk page discussions are covered under Wikipedia:Contentious topics/Arab–Israeli conflict is not in the template.

I know this discussion is early. But if there is a future discussion about unbanning this editor, and if I miss it, please include my support and this diff. But my support is conditional on complete stop of uncivil comments. Thanks! Bogazicili (talk) 18:15, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello Zar2gar1 and Bogazicili, has The Blue Rider sent you a message or asked for support somewhere? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:46, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
Not to me no. I had put their user page to my watchlist and saw what happened, including edit summaries. Bogazicili (talk) 00:12, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
No, he / she did send me a welcome-back message a couple weeks back after I came back from a wiki break.
I edit Wikipedia as just a periodic hobby & writing practice so I try to avoid any drama or edit wars. This is the first time someone I've interacted with over time got a block though.
I was a little hesitant because I understand processes like this shouldn't have any personal biases. Just in case you were on the fence about a limited block someday though, I felt it was only fair that someone vouched for them away from whatever precipitated the block. Zar2gar1 (talk) 00:24, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
🙂 Okay, thanks for the clarification! This is very kind of you both. I personally currently lack the hope needed for even a partial unblock, but we'll see. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:54, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

WP:PERM/EC

Hello, @ToBeFree,

Could you please look at my contribution and give me your opinion? Have I gained the necessary experience that the community expects from me? Thank you in advance for your opinion, it is important to me. --Alex091981 (talk) 15:03, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Alex091981,
Thank you very much for your patience and for asking not too early.  Done!
(But please don't jump into heated discussions and article conflicts only because you can now 😉)
Best regards,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:24, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Brazilian Army

Hi @ToBeFree, Long time no chat! :) Just wanted to reach out for some advice from an administrator's perspective of how to best handle an editor making some problematic edits. My patrol of CAT:MISSFILE this morning brought me to Brazilian Army, in which I noticed an editor (Cybershore) removing huge amounts of information and sources (including breaking links and images) without consensus, citing "biased sources" and "irrelevant bureaucratic info" as the reason for their mass removal of content. It appears from their edit history that they have been making edits of this nature for over a decade now, essentially writing off any sources or information they don't like as "biased" or "conspiracy theories." To me, it reads as a clear case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:NOTHERE, as the editor also seems quite aggressive and unwilling to be open to discussion. While I would just report them to WP:AN/3, another user, Unbaratocha has jumped in and started removing the exact same content. It appears to me that they are the same person using multiple accounts, given Unbaratocha conveniently jumped in to revert right at the edit that would have put Cybershore in violation of WP:3RR. It also seems suspicious that today is both accounts' first time editing since December 2018, and their edit history shows them editing mostly the exact same articles. Given neither account is blocked, and that this seems to be an issue that has persisted for years, I wasn't sure if the best place to report this would be WP:ANI, WP:AN/3 or if opening an WP:SPI report would be the appropriate thing to do given the circumstances. Let me know your thoughts! Cheers, Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 18:50, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi KatnissEverdeen, thank you very much for asking and for the detailed explanation of the issue and your ideas how to continue. I think SPI would be the best of these, and I'll have a look (preferably at an SPI but independently of its existence) later today! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:07, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
Okay, that was far easier than I thought. It's not possible for two accounts to be  Confirmed more clearly to each other. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:59, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks so much for taking care of it, ToBeFree! 🙂 Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 17:16, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
No problem 😊 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:06, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2024-47

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

Updates for editors

  • Users of Wikimedia sites will now be warned when they create a redirect to a page that doesn't exist. This will reduce the number of broken redirects to red links in our projects. [155]
  • View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pywikibot, which automates work on MediaWiki sites, was upgraded to 9.5.0 on Toolforge. [156]

Updates for technical contributors

  • On wikis that use the FlaggedRevs extension, pages created or moved by users with the appropriate permissions are marked as flagged automatically. This feature has not been working recently, and changes fixing it should be deployed this week. Thanks to Daniel and Wargo for working on this. [157][158]

In depth

  • There is a new Diff post about Temporary Accounts, available in more than 15 languages. Read it to learn about what Temporary Accounts are, their impact on different groups of users, and the plan to introduce the change on all wikis.

Meetings and events

  • Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10 2024. The registration for the event will close in mid-April 2025. The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual gathering that unites the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects and explore new ideas.
  • Join the Wikimedia Commons community calls this week to help prioritize support for Commons which will be planned for 2025–2026. The theme will be how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. This is an opportunity for volunteers who work on different things to come together and talk about what matters for the future of the project. The calls will take place November 21, 2024, 8:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC.
  • A Language community meeting will take place November 29, 16:00 UTC to discuss updates and technical problem-solving.

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:58, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Grammar

I get the dispute solution.

But please can we atleast retain the grammar I updated. The leading description should say "about a part of" not "about part of"

Thanks ShawarmaFan07 (talk) 11:36, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh. Of course. Thanks! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:27, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

User talk:Mut.Greg evading the partial block

Hi ToBeFree, it looks like Mut.Greg has evaded his block with an IP:- user talk:41.216.109.104. I have blocked the IP, but didn't want to modify Mut.Greg's block without consulting you. PhilKnight (talk) 10:47, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi PhilKnight, thank you very much for noticing this and dealing with it; I have indefinitely blocked Mut.Greg based on their behavior for now. I didn't perform a technical check, though. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:56, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

PROD

Hi, the issue was that the removal was by a COI editor who has been going on something of a spree in recent hours, interfering with the clean up operation and attacking the article of a user participating in that operation. Is there nothing that can be done to put a stop to the situation? Axad12 (talk) 04:02, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Axad12, thanks for the context. I found this through the report at WP:AIV about the issue, but this is really beyond AIV's scope and should long be at WP:ANI with diffs as evidence of the misconduct. Regarding the PROD itself, the next step after any objection, even when it happened with a conflict of interest, is to nominate the page for deletion (WP:AfD). ~ ToBeFree (talk) 04:05, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
Axad12, never mind, I went ahead and blocked. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 04:11, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, I was just in the process of asking you to do so.
I'm supposed to be on Wikibreak, mainly due to disillusionment over the lack of admin intervention at COIN over the last 12 months.
The user in question was the subject of this COIN thread [159] where there was a consensus for blocking, and this positive SPI investigation [160].
Thank you for blocking the user, you have (to some extent) restored my faith in Wikipedia. Whether I will ever return from wikibreak I don't know, but your intervention has made that prospect much more likely. Axad12 (talk) 04:18, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
🙂
Thank you very much for the kind feedback, although it makes me sad to hear the reason for your wikibreak. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 04:20, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Evadeluge has left a message for you

It's on their talk page. Since they have not pinged you I doubt you will have noticed/ 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 10:51, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

My error.They do seem to have pinged you.
Thank you for blocking them. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 10:52, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
Oh my. 🙂 Thanks for the notification! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:29, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
My oh my! I left them a reply to advise them about misuse if their user talk page post block. I have tried my best to be even handed and polite, and ignored their blandishments.
Editors such is this make me glad I do not have the keys to the janitorial supplies cupboard. The temptations that go with wielding the floor cleaning spray feel as if they would be very hard to resist. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 13:48, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
I feel you. 😊 Thanks for your patience. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:10, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
(talk page watcher) Personally, I've found the "mute" button to be a wondrous aid in maintaining my emotional equilibrium. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 12:33, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
Deepfriedokra, has your list of e-mail mutes reached 50 too, making you delete older entries to be able to add new ones? I wonder why I didn't ask on Phabricator for the limit to be increased yet. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:53, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
Oh, the limit is not 50 or not 50 anymore. I'll keep an eye on this, perhaps it was already increased. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:57, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
My mute list not nearly as long as yours. 😜 -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 15:06, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
I was sure your work with UTRS led to an even longer list. 😊 Well, good to hear then. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:08, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

User:Khanbijoy1471

This user made an autobiographical userpage after their block for self-promotion expired. I moved the userpage to draftspace without realizing they had been blocked, and that the draft was deleted several times. Should this user be blocked again? Helpful Raccoon (talk) 01:20, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Helpful Raccoon, thank you very much for the notification. Looking at Special:Diff/1259167556, I'm afraid there's not much else we can do. That message was a direct response to "I’d like to kindly advise against publishing articles about yourself" and further advice. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:01, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2024-48

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

Updates for editors

  • Wishlist item A new version of the standard wikitext editor-mode syntax highlighter will be available as a beta feature later this week. This brings many new features and bug fixes, including right-to-left support, template folding, autocompletion, and an improved search panel. You can learn more on the help page.
  • The 2010 wikitext editor now supports common keyboard shortcuts such Ctrl+B for bold and Ctrl+I for italics. A full list of all six shortcuts is available. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. [161]
  • Starting November 28, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: bswiki, elwiki, euwiki, fawiki, fiwiki, frwikiquote, frwikisource, frwikiversity, frwikivoyage, idwiki, lvwiki, plwiki, ptwiki, urwiki, viwikisource, zhwikisource. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF).
  • View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a user creating a new AbuseFilter can now only set the filter to "protected" if it includes a protected variable.

Updates for technical contributors

  • The CodeEditor, which can be used in JavaScript, CSS, JSON, and Lua pages, now offers live autocompletion. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. The feature can be temporarily disabled on a page by pressing Ctrl+, and un-selecting "Live Autocompletion".
  • Advanced item Tool-maintainers who use the Graphite system for tracking metrics, need to migrate to the newer Prometheus system. They can check this dashboard and the list in the Description of the task T350592 to see if their tools are listed, and they should claim metrics and dashboards connected to their tools. They can then disable or migrate all existing metrics by following the instructions in the task. The Graphite service will become read-only in April. [162]
  • Advanced item The New PreProcessor parser performance report has been fixed to give an accurate count for the number of Wikibase entities accessed. It had previously been resetting after 400 entities. [163]

Meetings and events

  • A Language community meeting will take place November 29 at 16:00 UTC. There will be presentations on topics like developing language keyboards, the creation of the Mooré Wikipedia, the language support track at Wiki Indaba, and a report from the Wayuunaiki community on their experiences with the Incubator and as a new community over the last 3 years. This meeting will be in English and will also have Spanish interpretation.

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:40, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Libby Weaver

Hey, just letting you know that there appears to be another Leroy Cronin situation brewing here – removing sourced content as "unwanted" "tabloid material".   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 20:53, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, this is interesting for multiple reasons. Thanks for sharing; I hope page protection and an {{anonblock}} help. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:32, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Re my marking AIV report as content dispute

Thanks for the thanks on Special:Diff/1259786355. I was not doing a deep inspection of what was going on, so I didn’t see or address the edit war. When reviewing AIV reports, should I be making a longer review of the underlying issues? Or is a quick response like the one I gave sufficient? — rsjaffe 🗣️ 03:09, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

[courtesy pings to Remsense and KrakatoaKatie; courtesy notification sent to 79.103.186.102.]
Hi Rsjaffe, I think the most important thing was not to block the IP address for vandalism in this case. 🙂 Whether your decline comes as a quick response, as a removal of the report perhaps with an edit summary pinging the reporter, or even time investment beyond this is probably not as important as the decline itself, which can be a tough decision. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:46, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
Will add that the content dispute that I was rash in reporting has been resolved amicably. Remsense ‥ 论 03:47, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
No worries, and thanks for resolving this! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:48, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
Rsjaffe, now that I think about it, I should add: You'll probably see me taking action where you wouldn't have; I think we met on a few users' talk pages in this way already. You warning, me blocking. That's okay, at least to me; I do this when I think the probability of anyone using the same IP address productively is lower than the probability of more disruption. An IPv4 address that has been used for editing Wikipedia for the first time after its over 20 years of existence, and only disruptively, or most IPv6 addresses, can probably be blocked with little hesitation in response to clear vandalism, for example. Vandalism is intentional; real vandals don't need to be informed that their actions are destructive. They sometimes stop when they see that their actions have no lasting effect on the encyclopedia but possibly on their ability to edit. However, the probability of them becoming a constructive contributor and the block preventing really helpful encyclopedic contributions during the next weeks is close to 0, and the probability of them returning for more sophisticated vandalism circumventing filters a few days later has been proven in front of my eyes to exist again and again, sometimes after 36-hour blocks. I ended up blocking vandals for two weeks by default, but that's just a personal habit rather than general advice. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 04:07, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
I'll agree with that. It's really good that you didn't block for vandalism. I've worked AIV for, gosh, almost 20 years, and I'd estimate 15-20% of reports aren't vandalism. A lot of that 15-20% is IDONTLIKEIT. With experience, you'll see the real vandals quicker and block them faster, and likewise recognize the edit wars and content disputes. I also block IP vandals longer than some others, depending on the geolocation; I'll start with 36 or even 60 hours, then go to at least one week. And don't be shy about blocking schools. I also like pending changes more than some other admins, because I get this picture in my head of a guy sitting in his underwear in his mother's basement drinking Diet Coke and bingeing Squid Game while screaming "WHERE IZ MY VANDALIZMS CURSE YOU WIKIPEDIA". Katietalk 16:00, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
😅 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:08, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

User to keep an eye on

Hey I came across this edit reverted, and warned the user. I don't think it's ANI level yet, since that's their only mainspace edit, but I think they should be on an admin's radar. TornadoLGS (talk) 04:57, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi TornadoLGS, thank you very much for the notification. I'll watchlist their talk page so all of their possible future contributions are on my radar. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:16, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
(In the future, do feel free to report racist vandalism at WP:AIV or WP:ANI.) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:19, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. I thought it would be good to watch this one. I usually wait until a registered used vandalizes twice before reporting at AIV or repeated disruption for ANI. TornadoLGS (talk) 21:41, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Suppress this revision

@ToBeFree Please, you can suppress this[164] revision?. ®asteem Talk 22:46, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Rasteem, hm. I'd say this is the kind of 'ordinary' incivility excluded from WP:RD2. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:55, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Justin Goldston

Just giving you a heads-up about the recent promotional edits here.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 05:11, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, thank you very much! I wonder if DXdy FX's account may have been compromised, but it doesn't seem so. For example, Special:Diff/1258732853 was in an article the user had edited in January. It simply seems to have appeared on their watchlist. There's also no technical evidence of an ownership change at least during the last three months. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:28, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Recent correspondence

Hi,

Following on from recent correspondence, just a brief note to ask if the background provided was satisfactory?

Hopefully it was at least sufficient to indicate that I genuinely believed that (to the best of my understanding) I was operating within the relevant policy.

If I’m deemed to have crossed a line in that regard I assure you it was entirely accidental. With the benefit of hindsight I probably ought to have used the formulation “an account promoting the work of X”.

Kind regards, Axad12 (talk) 08:25, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey – I'm sorry for the late reply, Axad12! I have now answered. I hope this is okay? Regarding “an account promoting the work of X”, yeah, that would be a good and safe solution in such cases. 🙂 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 08:51, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Yes, no problem at all. The history of that situation was rather complex and the relevant material was widely scattered. Your question was thus quite natural. I'm glad to have clarified matters to your satisfaction and that all was in order.
Best wishes, Axad12 (talk) 09:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

November 2024

Moved to WP:ANI § Ram112313 promoting Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha

Signature for archival ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:42, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Appologies

for cutting you off. NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 01:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi NightWolf1223, all good! 😊 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:02, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

WP:RUSUKR

Hello!

I have created a draft about a well-known Ukrainian company that specializes in the development and production of electronic warfare and electronic intelligence equipment.

Can I move the article to the main space? Would it be a violation of the WP:RUSUKR rules? Thank you in advance for your response. Your opinion on this issue is important to me. Alex091981 (talk) 20:42, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Alex091981, you meet the requirements for editing in the RUSUKR topic area, so that's fine; of course the content is (very) closely related to the war and affected by the restriction, but that's okay. Thanks for asking! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:48, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
ToBeFree,Thank you for your response and support.--Alex091981 (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I've read WP:FCOI closely, (probably)

Context: [165]. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I see the point you have made, but I'm struggling to find the distinction between Foo who owns Bar Plumbing and Foe who works as an employee of Bar Plumbing should each write about Bar Plumbing. Each derives a benefit from writing about Bar Plumbing, one as Owner's profit and the other as wages because Bar hav=s become better now.

I failed to find words on that section which distinguish between the two. It's perfectly possible that I read it with my interpretation of it in mind so glossed over it. Would you mind taking a detailed look and helping me to find what I am missing, please? 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 21:59, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Timtrent, the strict disclosure requirement from WP:PAID / TOU §4 is about contributions for which someone receives, or expects to receive, an exchange of money, goods, or services. This is not the case when someone promotes themselves or their completely self-owned business or website. They do have a financial conflict of interest if the promotion could lead to an increase in sales, and we do strongly encourage the disclosure of any COI, but the disclose-or-be-blocked language from the {{uw-paid}} series doesn't apply to self-promotion. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:01, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
I may be being obtuse. To be fair I am also awake (for no good reason, but rather frustratingly) at 4am my time, so perhaps that can be forgiven. I've read the elements you have linked to, yet find it hard to see where a distinction is made between a business owner (who may or may not be employed by the business) and an employee, who is paid for their day to day work by the business. I'm not having a discussion for the sake of it, if you get my drift. I've had problems with the semantics here for some time, and you've been kind enough to engage with me over the topic..
I appreciate the discussion we're having, and would like to see chapter and verse of why I should change my opinion so that I can change it. I might be word blind, of course, since I have a current opinion! 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 04:06, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
Timtrent, it's all good, but I think I've provided all points I could. We probably remain with differing opinions about the existence of a meaningful difference between "financial conflict of interest" and "paid editing". It's a topic that led to heated discussions such as at Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Greenman#Oppose #1 (courtesy ping Greenman, Serial Number 54129, JayBeeEll, Bilorv, Levivich, Xeno, Lepricavark, Joe Roe). There was Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conflict_of_interest_management#Final_decision since, but FCOI vs. PAID wasn't really addressed by it as far as I can see. It's also not really ArbCom's role to decide authoritatively about this specific question. I guess a statement from the WMF could at least help us to understand their definition, and we could still decide afterwards to say "FCOI = PAID", making it a community policy even if the WMF is only concerned about a subset of financial conflicts of interest. If there has been such a clarification already and one of the pinged users is aware of it, please share. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, TBF... wow, I was a real asshole back then. Thank God I've mellowed so much!  :) SerialNumber54129 14:08, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
😅💚 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:13, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
We should resolve this ambiguity, but it will be a tiresome process. I think the case above is a good example of why it doesn't make sense to worry about the source of the money; it's the the fact that money is involved that's the (potential) problem. – Joe (talk) 16:38, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi Joe Roe, while I agree with both what you said, isn't this also an example of how unnecessary a disclosure can be? It doesn't seem to make any difference in the context case to me. Disclosed advertising or undisclosed advertising both leads to the same block, and a disclosure wouldn't lead to an unblock. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:22, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
I can never understand why discussions on technical matters such as this become heated. I have no difficulty with holding a differing opinion from yours in the very civilised discussion we're having. At least we know that we differ, and have differed collegially.
A WMF 'proclamation' would help, but their hands off approach means it is likely not to happen
@Joe Roe I think you are correct. We do need to do this tiresome process. I don't mind which way the verdict goes, just that it happens and is defined. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 17:17, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks TBF for the ping. FCOI vs. PAID was explicitly addressed by arbitrators at the case you mention: see the votes here, in which the arbitrators voted 3-7-1 against a proposal whose logical structure was "NJ edited while an employee; therefore he engaged in paid editing" (with vote rationales that make it clear that they reject this collapse of a supercategory "editing with a FCOI" into its subcategory "engaging in paid editing"). Unlike SN54129, I'm still an asshole. --JBL (talk) 19:42, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Aah, a finding of fact rather than a principle, and one that didn't make it in the end. That's why I didn't find it yet thought I had seen it in the case. Thanks! Yeah, that 3-7-1 is practically 2024 ArbCom's response to the question, with Moneytrees's support practically being an oppose towards this question. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:29, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

AIGOGY

Okay guys, I am wondering to write AIGOGY Methodology page or make it better According my previous definition or other Methodology like pedagogy, Andragogy, cybergogy etc. MAL111 (talk) 01:21, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

None of this, MehdiAlireza, none of these ideas. Please try correcting typography errors in existing articles or something similarly small and neutral to start editing and gaining first experience with the encyclopedia. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:37, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-49

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

Updates for editors

  • Two new parser functions were added this week. The {{#interwikilink}} function adds an interwiki link and the {{#interlanguagelink}} function adds an interlanguage link. These parser functions are useful on wikis where namespaces conflict with interwiki prefixes. For example, links beginning with MOS: on English Wikipedia conflict with the mos language code prefix of Mooré Wikipedia.
  • Starting this week, Wikimedia wikis no longer support connections using old RSA-based HTTPS certificates, specifically rsa-2048. This change is to improve security for all users. Some older, unsupported browser or smartphone devices will be unable to connect; Instead, they will display a connectivity error. See the HTTPS Browser Recommendations page for more-detailed information. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [166]
  • Starting December 16, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: arwiki, cawiki, frwiki, mediawikiwiki, orwiki, wawiki, wawiktionary, wikidatawiki, zhwiki. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF). [167]
  • This month the Chart extension was deployed to production and is now available on Commons and Testwiki. With the security review complete, pilot wiki deployment is expected to start in the first week of December. You can see a working version on Testwiki and read the November project update for more details.
  • View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug with the "Download as PDF" system was fixed. [168]

Updates for technical contributors

  • In late February, temporary accounts will be rolled out on at least 10 large wikis. This deployment will have a significant effect on the community-maintained code. This is about Toolforge tools, bots, gadgets, and user scripts that use IP address data or that are available for logged-out users. The Trust and Safety Product team wants to identify this code, monitor it, and assist in updating it ahead of the deployment to minimize disruption to workflows. The team asks technical editors and volunteer developers to help identify such tools by adding them to this list. In addition, review the updated documentation to learn how to adjust the tools. Join the discussions on the project talk page or in the dedicated thread on the Wikimedia Community Discord server (in English) for support and to share feedback.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:20, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2024

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

Administrator changes

added
readded
removed

Interface administrator changes

added
readded Pppery

CheckUser changes

readded

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:20, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I doubt they will visit faWIki

I think their objective was to self promote in English. The escalation to legal threats came at astonishing speed. 🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrent FaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦 15:26, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

You seem to be right. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:08, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-50

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

  • Technical documentation contributors can find updated resources, and new ways to connect with each other and the Wikimedia Technical Documentation Team, at the Documentation hub on MediaWiki.org. This page links to: resources for writing and improving documentation, a new #wikimedia-techdocs IRC channel on libera.chat, a listing of past and upcoming documentation events, and ways to request a documentation consultation or review. If you have any feedback or ideas for improvements to the documentation ecosystem, please contact the Technical Documentation Team.

Updates for editors

Layout change for the Edit Check feature
  • Later this week, Edit Check will be relocated to a sidebar on desktop. Edit check is the feature for new editors to help them follow policies and guidelines. This layout change creates space to present people with new Checks that appear while they are typing. The initial results show newcomers encountering Edit Check are 2.2 times more likely to publish a new content edit that includes a reference and is not reverted.
  • The Chart extension, which enables editors to create data visualizations, was successfully made available on MediaWiki.org and three pilot wikis (Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew Wikipedias). You can see a working examples on Testwiki and read the November project update for more details.
  • Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now discover articles in Wikiproject campaigns of their interest from the "All collection" category in the articles suggestion feature. Wikiproject Campaign organizers can use this feature, to help translators to discover articles of interest, by adding the <page-collection> </page-collection> tag to their campaign article list page on Meta-wiki. This will make those articles discoverable in the Content Translation tool. For more detailed information on how to use the tool and tag, please refer to the step-by-step guide. [169]
  • The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, now has a multiselect filter for namespace selection. This enables users to select multiple specific namespaces, instead of only one or all, when fetching pages for deletion.
  • The Nuke feature also now provides links to the userpage of the user whose pages were deleted, and to the pages which were not selected for deletion, after page deletions are queued. This enables easier follow-up admin-actions. Thanks to Chlod and the Moderator Tools team for both of these improvements. [170]
  • The Editing Team is working on making it easier to populate citations from archive.org using the Citoid tool, the auto-filled citation generator. They are asking communities to add two parameters preemptively, archiveUrl and archiveDate, within the TemplateData for each citation template using Citoid. You can see an example of a change in a template, and a list of all relevant templates. [171]
  • One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Indonesian (voy:id:) [172]
  • Last week, all wikis had problems serving pages to logged-in users and some logged-out users for 30–45 minutes. This was caused by a database problem, and investigation is ongoing. [173]
  • Recurrent item View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug in the Add Link feature has been fixed. Previously, the list of sections which are excluded from Add Link was partially ignored in certain cases. [174][175]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Codex, the design system for Wikimedia, now has an early-stage implementation in PHP. It is available for general use in MediaWiki extensions and Toolforge apps through Composer, with use in MediaWiki core coming soon. More information is available in the documentation. Thanks to Doğu for the inspiration and many contributions to the library. [176]
  • Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. On December 4, the MediaWiki Interfaces team began rerouting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content endpoints on testwiki from RESTbase to comparable MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The team encourages active users of these endpoints to verify their tool's behavior on testwiki and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket before the end of the year, as they intend to roll out the same change across all Wikimedia projects in early January. These changes are part of the work to replace the outdated RESTBase system.
  • The 2024 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 3 January 2025, and has an associated privacy statement.
  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [177]

Meetings and events

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:14, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 December 2024

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:59, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Nancy Torresen

Why would a Brazilian IP be concerned about the privacy of a district court judge in Maine?   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 16:38, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi Skywatcher68, good question, but I also wonder where exactly it came from. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:06, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

On my query regarding possible socks

Hey ToBeFree, as communicated, I have opened this SPI case for your perusal. Danke! hundenvonPG (talk) 13:54, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi HundenvonPenang, thank you very much! I might have a look later; the main purpose of me requesting SPI instead of direct messages about sockpuppetry is to allow the normal processes and experienced other users deal with the situation before I have the time to perform a deep investigation. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:08, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Bill Cowher

Just letting you know about the recent COI edits here.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 17:59, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Very well caught. Thank you very much, Skywatcher68. Octagon CN and Alyssaromano2 are  Confirmed; the article about Andrea Kremer was affected as well. Please check both articles for inaccuracies or badly sourced statements as the conflict of interest and the sockpuppetry do of course not justify bad sourcing. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:50, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Shahi Jama Masjid (Sambhala)

In the five days that have elapsed since you protected Shahi Jama Masjid, not one of the four/five editors who were fervently reverting me, have shown up at the talk-page. Obviously, it was evident all along that those editors knew the lack of merit in their grievances and had no intention whatsoever to discuss anything; they heckled me (by filing 4 complaints at different venues) in a bid to scare me away.

I and Kautilya3 (who, if you recall, was the only involved editor to speak in support of me) have been discussing issues just as before; then, he is making the edits. This is working fine but is taking a lot of time even for effecting banal edits. Thus, I request that (1) the semi-protection be restored and (2) in future, you pay more heed to which of the involved parties have tried to discuss things, than imposing blocks.

Thanks, Upd Edit (talk) 12:45, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Hello Upd Edit, thank you very much for the detailed feedback.
If I see correctly, the requirement to request edits at Talk:Shahi Jama Masjid led to highly constructive discussions between you and Kautilya3 about policies and guidelines. It may have been possible to achieve the same result by being bold and making changes yourself, to be corrected by Kautilya3 where needed afterwards, but there was a real risk of Cerium4B or Ratnahastin continuing to object to actual issues by reverting the changes entirely – something they can no longer do as Kautilya3 discusses and removes possible problems before making the edits. Instead of interpreting the lack of reverts and the silence from Cerium4B and Ratnahastin as a reason for downgrading the protection or even saying it was unjustified in the first place, I personally interpret these as a positive result of the protection.
Best regards,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:01, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

UTRS appeal #98001

OK to unblock Elijah_Wilder (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)? Globally locked, so uphill climb. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 11:42, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi Deepfriedokra, WikipedianHelper123 was theirs. That was after a promise not to create further accounts from another of their confirmed sock accounts. I'm generally fine with second chances, but looking at Special:CentralAuth/Elijah_Wilder, the broken promise and the current request, it seems too early to me. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:20, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. I screwed up and clicked decline. Will note your concern for when they return. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 20:30, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Pharaoh Cleopatra

What the...?   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 14:51, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Good question. 🙂 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:10, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin December Issue

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation since our second November issue. This will be the final bulletin for 2024 and we'll be back in late January 2025 with the next issue. Please help translate.

Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues

Chabota Kanguya Isaac
Celebrating Chabota and his contributions to the movement.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

  • Tech News: Chart extension is now available on Commons and Testwiki; a new version of the standard wikitext editor-mode syntax highlighter will be available as a beta feature; Edit Check will be relocated to a sidebar on desktop. More updates from tech news 50, 49, and 48.
  • Wikifunctions: WordGraph dataset is released, which is particularly useful for abstract descriptions for people in Wikidata. More status updates.
  • Wikipedia 2024 Year in Review: Wikipedia 2024 Year in Review launched, showcasing the collective impact of Wikipedia and Wikipedia contributors in the last calendar year. The iOS App also released a personalized Year in Review to Italy and Mexico, with insights based on reading, editing, and donation history.
  • Wikipedia Android App: The Android team has launched the Rabbit Holes feature in the final release of the year as part of Wiki Experiences 3.1. Currently being tested in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, this feature suggests a search term and a reading list based on the user's last two visited articles. For more details or to share feedback, visit the project page.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

Board and Board committee updates
See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

External media releases & coverage

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

For information about the Bulletin and to read previous editions, see the project page on Meta-Wiki. Let askcac(_AT_)wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!


MediaWiki message delivery 18:03, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-51

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

  • Interested in improving event management on your home wiki? The CampaignEvents extension offers organizers features like event registration management, event/wikiproject promotion, finding potential participants, and more - all directly on-wiki. If you are an organizer or think your community would benefit from this extension, start a discussion to enable it on your wiki today. To learn more about how to enable this extension on your wiki, visit the deployment status page.

Updates for editors

  • Users of the iOS Wikipedia App in Italy and Mexico on the Italian, Spanish, and English Wikipedias, can see a personalized Year in Review with insights based on their reading and editing history.
  • Users of the Android Wikipedia App in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia can see the new Rabbit Holes feature. This feature shows a suggested search term in the Search bar based on the current article being viewed, and a suggested reading list generated from the user’s last two visited articles.
  • The global reminder bot is now active and running on nearly 800 wikis. This service reminds most users holding temporary rights when they are about to expire, so that they can renew should they want to. See the technical details page for more information.
  • The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 13 January 2025 because of the end of year holidays. Thank you to all of the translators, and people who submitted content or feedback, this year.
  • Recurrent item View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed in the Android Wikipedia App which had caused translatable SVG images to show the wrong language when they were tapped.

Updates for technical contributors

  • There is no new MediaWiki version next week. The next deployments will start on 14 January. [178]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:22, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Age and health concerns about Donald Trump

Pro-Trump nonsense going back to at least 3 December; the recent BLP vandal unrelated to previous nonsense has been blocked.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 19:53, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! The page had semi-protection until it expired 25 November 2024. I have re-added it now. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:04, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Thank you for your contributions! 🗽Freedoxm🗽(talk • contribs) 04:26, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
😃 Hey Freedoxm, thank you very much! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:06, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Science of Identity Foundation

Dear ToBeFree, I've got a question as to the extent of my block. Am I merely blocked for two weeks from the article Science of Identity Foundation or also from the associated talk page? If from both, I would have to insist that the ongoing RfC cannot conclude while I am on the sidelines. Str1977 (talk) 22:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi Str1977, this is really limited to the article itself only and doesn't affect the talk page. Thinking about the situation again, umm... Now that the section is removed until a consensus is found, is there anything you'd change in the article if you were not blocked? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:13, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
Ah well, the content is back in different form. Mh. Thoughts? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:16, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Leroy Cronin

One of the COI editors has returned to remove criticism, calling it "trolling".   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 14:00, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

The protection log of that article is amazing.
Thanks again, Skywatcher68. If indefinite extended-confirmed protection and a block don't help, I'm starting to run out of ideas. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:27, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

Hello ToBeFree: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 16:58, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message
Long time no see! 😊 Hi KatnissEverdeen, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to you too! 🐈🎄 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:47, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Merry Christmas, from Iggy the Swan

Hello ToBeFree: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 12:46, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message
And let the sun move towards us in the northern hemisphere due to the winter solstice being today. Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 12:48, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi Iggy the Swan! 😃 Thank you very much and Merry Christmas to you too! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:19, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
Days are finally getting longer again. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:20, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

~~~ Merry Christmas! ~~~
Joyeux Noël! ~ Buon Natale! ~ Vrolijk Kerstfeest! ~ Frohe Weihnachten!
¡Feliz Navidad! ~ Feliz Natal! ~ Καλά Χριστούγεννα! ~ Hyvää Joulua!
God Jul! ~ Glædelig Jul! ~ Linksmų Kalėdų! ~ Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus!
Häid Jõule! ~ Wesołych Świąt! ~ Boldog Karácsonyt! ~ Veselé Vánoce!
Veselé Vianoce! ~ Crăciun Fericit! ~ Sretan Božić! ~ С Рождеством!
শুভ বড়দিন! ~ 圣诞节快乐！~ メリークリスマス！~ 메리 크리스마스!
สุขสันต์วันคริสต์มาส! ~ Selamat Hari Natal! ~ Giáng sinh an lành!
Весела Коледа! ~ Meri Kirihimete!

Hello, ToBeFree! Thank you for your work to maintain and improve Wikipedia! Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
★Trekker (talk) 07:14, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove and leave other users this message by adding {{subst:Multi-language Season's Greetings}}

★Trekker (talk) 07:14, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

StarTrekker! 😊✨ Hey, thank you very much! Merry Christmas and a Stellar New Year to you! 🪐 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:46, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2025!

Hello ToBeFree, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2025.
Happy editing,
–Davey2010Talk 23:42, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

😄 Hey Davey2010, time flies! Happy New Year and Happy Holidays to you too! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:19, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi ToBeFree, I know where has the year gone?, Feels like I've blinked and 2024 just whizzed past!, Thanks so much :), I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas and I hope you all have a Happy and Healthy New Year, Take care my friend, Warm Regards, –Davey2010Talk 17:30, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays!
Wishing you a Merry Christmas filled with love and joy, a Happy Holiday season surrounded by warmth and laughter, and a New Year brimming with hope, happiness, and success! 🎄🎉✨ Baqi:) (talk) 10:59, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Hey Jannatulbaqi, thank you very much! 😃 🎄 Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you too! 🍀 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:24, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Question

Hi ToBeFree. I recently alerted a new editor about WP:RUSUKR because they were making edits in that topic area such as the status of Crimea e.g. this edit. They repeatedly said that those edits have nothing to do with the war. They also said that they would not restore those edits and would instead wait until they reach 500 edits. After this, they began making a series of minor edits making typo fixes e.g. changing "wil" to "will". I have warned them about gaming but they have insisted that this is not gaming and now they have circled back to why it is OK for them to make edits about Crimea and suggesting that I self-revert to "save us both time". What is the best way to proceed here? Mellk (talk) 14:45, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi Mellk, thank you very much, both for dealing with the situation and for the notification. I've had a look at the changes as they are made right at the moment and they seem to be fine because they're actually necessary typographical fixes. This is unusual and doesn't yet require intervention. It might become tiresome quickly enough for Maxymczech (hi) to invent less helpful strategies, so I'll keep an eye on this. If there's just 500 of the current type of changes, I'm okay with this. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:21, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
At the moment they are prohibited from making such edits about Crimea, I would imagine? Thank you and happy holidays. Mellk (talk) 15:28, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Hello. Thank you for taking a look into this situation. Please refer to User_talk:Maxymczech for full context. I assure you that I am not a vandal and I am not going to "invent less helpful strategies". The situation spiraled out of control after I attempted to fix few factual errors on pages for geographical features in Crimea.
At this point, from my point of view, it seems like User:Mellk is set out on a personal vendetta to bar me from ever editing those pages out of spite, not out of interest of improving Wikipedia. Maxymczech (talk) 15:30, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
This edit and this edit is specifically about the annexation/occupation. You even referenced this in the edit summary. It is not helpful to continue saying that this has nothing to do with the war. Mellk (talk) 15:53, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Is it "helpful" to continue threatening me and treating me like a vandal even though it can't be more obvious that I am not one? 🤔 Maxymczech (talk) 16:08, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
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