User talk:TheSandDoctor

Coming here to ask why I deleted your article? Please read this page first...

Coming here to ask about a block or other admin action that I have issued on another WMF wiki where I am an admin? Please discuss on your talk page there (if you have Talk Page Access) and ping me as it has nothing to do with enwiki and is outside of its processes. Please also do not assume that that WMF wiki has the same blocking policy or processes as enwiki.

If you have any questions about another WMF wiki or my actions on such edition, please leave it on my talk page on that wiki and I will see it as a notification/get back to you. enwiki is not the appropriate place to discuss concerns from other WMF wikis

RfA candidate	S	O	N	S%	Ending (UTC)	Time left	Dups?	Report
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No RfXs since 08:57, 27 September 2024 (UTC).—^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online}

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Article policies

This user talk page might be watched by friendly talk page stalkers, which means that someone other than me might reply to your query. Their input is welcome and their help with messages that I cannot reply to quickly is appreciated.

Archives

If you feel that I have reverted an edit or issued a warning in error, please let me know. I am human, and I do make mistakes. Please don't interpret an error on my part as a personal attack on you. It's not, I promise. I ask you to simply bring it to my attention; I am always open to civil discussion. Thank you. TheSandDoctor (talk) 04:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)]][reply]

If I see something such as a box, template, image, etc., on another user/user talk page that catches my eye, I will "borrow" it. More than likely without asking. ;) TheSandDoctor (talk) 04:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)]][reply]

Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!

Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open! A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. Register your vote here by 23:59 UTC on 29 September! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:35, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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2600:1001:A100:0:0:0:0:0/40

FYI the sockmaster is back editing again at 2600:1001:A100:0:0:0:0:0/40 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial)). You blocked this range 3 months ago in response to an SPI report at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Gabriella~four.3-6 wizzito | say hello! 04:14, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-39

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

Weekly highlight

All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.

Updates for editors

Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within <syntaxhighlight> tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax {{…}} are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [1]
Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [2][3]
View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

From Wikimedia Enterprise:
- The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
- The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.

In depth

The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.

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

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

Question from Domorito on Space art (11:26, 24 September 2024)

Hi SandDollar! I'm glad to meet you as my mentor. I noticed while editing the Space art page that there's a name in the list of 'prominent artists' (R.A. Smith) that doesn't have their own page. His name isn't even mentioned anywhere else on this page. I've been researching about his works and he's really interesting. Would it be alright if I made a page about him? --Domorito (talk) 11:26, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Question from MichaelWhelanArtist (19:00, 29 September 2024)

Hello! I'm seeking a reference to guide me in editing a photo; I'd like to delete a current photo and replace it with another. --MichaelWhelanArtist (talk) 19:00, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. [4]
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. [5]
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. [6]

Meetings and events

October 4–6: WikiIndaba Conference's Hackathon in Johannesburg, South Africa
November 4–6: MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 in Vienna, Austria

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)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Mustang Challenge on a "All RFCs" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

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

Administrator changes

CheckUser changes

Guideline and policy news

Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

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

Notification of administrators without tools

	Greetings, TheSandDoctor. You are receiving this notification because you've agreed to consider endorsing prospective admin candidates identified by the process outlined at Administrators without tools. Recently, the following editor(s) received this distinction and the associated endearing title: Vanderwaalforces
Thank you for supporting this effort. Your contributions are an integral part of overall success, and an example for others to follow. To stop receiving these notifications, remove your name from the list.

Tol Bot (talk) 21:00, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Obzfg on Relebohile Mofokeng (04:59, 7 October 2024)

How can I place a picture of him? --Obzfg (talk) 04:59, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Obzfg: Please see this guide to learn more. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:12, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. [7]

Updates for editors

Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [8]
View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

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. [9]
Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [10]
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.
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:
- a Wikipedia in Komering (w:kge:) [11]
- a Wikipedia in Mooré (m:mos:) [12]
- a Wiktionary in Madurese (wikt:mad:) [13]
- a Wikiquote in Gorontalo (q:gor:) [14]
- a Wikinews in Shan (n:shn:) [15]

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)[reply]

Question from Huda machincal on Talk:Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram (15:08, 13 October 2024)

What is the vision, mission and objectives of thrivandram medical college institutions --Huda machincal (talk) 15:08, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. [16][17]
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. [18]
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. [19]
Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [20]
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. [21]

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)[reply]

Question from Johnjackson750 on Draft:Esports Wales (10:01, 16 October 2024)

Esports Wales is looking to setup a Wiki Page how do we declare that its us submitting? --Johnjackson750 (talk) 10:01, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnjackson750: Are you meaning to declare that Esports Wales is submitting the draft Draft:Esports Wales for review? If so, I gather that you are being paid to create/edit this draft. Is that a correct assumption? It doesn't preclude you from submitting it in any way, the Terms of Use just require that paid editing be disclosed. If you can confirm here for me what the case is, I can take care of tagging appropriately for you.

TheSandDoctor ^Talk 14:59, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback requests from the Feedback Request Service

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Jordan and Talk:Major professional sports teams of the United States and Canada on "All RFCs" request for comments. Thank you for helping out!
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