User talk:Rick Block

If you're here to respond to a comment I posted on your talk page, feel free to reply on your talk page (so the question and answer are together). I ALWAYS watch talk pages I've posted comments to for a while. If you leave me a message, I'll respond here unless you ask me not to.

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Indexing CFDs
I was replacing one of the templates in Categories for discussion/Archive debates and I noticed that the CFD archive indices stop after February 2018. Is there a reason the archives stopped being created? Primefac (talk) 20:51, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This is on my list to look at - I noticed a week or so ago. The way it's supposed to work is the bot waits until all the open discussions for the month are closed (one way or another), and then creates the monthly index. Without looking at it, my guess is something changed that is making the bot think there are still open discussions. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:55, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I think it's fixed and have added indices for the missing months (there's still an unclosed request from November, so the indices stop with October). -- Rick Block (talk) 18:13, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 special circular
   

This message was sent to all administrators following a recent motion. Thank you for your attention. For the Arbitration Committee, Cameron11598 02:19, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Administrator account security (Correction to Arbcom 2019 special circular)
ArbCom would like to apologise and correct our previous mass message in light of the response from the community.

Since November 2018, six administrator accounts have been compromised and temporarily desysopped. In an effort to help improve account security, our intention was to remind administrators of existing policies on account security — that they are required to "have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices." We have updated our procedures to ensure that we enforce these policies more strictly in the future. The policies themselves have not changed. In particular, two-factor authentication remains an optional means of adding extra security to your account. The choice not to enable 2FA will not be considered when deciding to restore sysop privileges to administrator accounts that were compromised.

We are sorry for the wording of our previous message, which did not accurately convey this, and deeply regret the tone in which it was delivered.

For the Arbitration Committee, -Cameron11598 21:04, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Montyflip.png


The file File:Montyflip.png has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "unused, low-res, no obvious use"

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2019 US Banknote Contest
Sent by ZLEA at 23:30, 19 October 2019 (UTC) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk)

Username changed
Hey, I brought this up at the talk page for List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations as well. But, could you update the list so my old username, User:Dan56, is changed to my new name? isento (talk) 17:46, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks like you figured out how to do this yourself :) Rick Block (talk) 21:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Rick Bot
Hi. Rick Bot seems to have missed me off as the nominator of Siege of Lilybaeum (250–241 BC) at Featured articles promoted in 2020 (June) and I am wary of inserting anything manually for fear of breaking something. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:13, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:08, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Featured topic promotion lists
Hi, I just came across Featured topics promoted in 2020 and noticed that your bot strikes through all the nominations after a while, for example to indicate that Featured topics/Operas by Claudio Monteverdi was demoted 9 minutes after it was promoted. Something seems to be wrong with Rick Bot's "autoupdate" function. If this is difficult to fix, I guess just turning off the strikethrough (and not mentioning it in the header) would make these pages less confusing. —Kusma (t·c) 20:44, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll take a look at it this weekend. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:33, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I believe I've fixed it. The layout of WP:FT apparently changed some time ago and the bot has not been able to determine the list of FTs. This also affects WP:WBFTN. Thanks for letting me know about this. If you notice any further issues, please let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:20, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks much better, thank you for fixing this! —Kusma (t·c) 16:51, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:WPCG" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:WPCG. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 30 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:36, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

A brownie for you!

 * You're welcome! -- Rick Block (talk) 00:32, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:28, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Bot question
Hello, Rick,

I was looking over List of administrator hopefuls the other day and noticed that there were quite a few editors listed on it who were blocked as sockpuppets or had been indefinitely blocked, some of them over a decade ago. So, I removed their names and the ones who had a "I want to be an admin someday" userbox, well, I removed it from their user page. None of these editors will be returning. Unfortunately, when RickBot updated the page, it removed the editors who had had the userboxes removed but it re-added all of the names that I had manually removed from the page. This is puzzling to me because I thought editors could add their names to the list (because they didn't have the admin userboxes) so it seems like it should be possible to remove them, too.

I know that this page probably gets very few views, but is there any way that manual changes won't be undone by RickBot? I just took the accounts off again but I don't want to do this regularly. Thanks for any help you can offer. Liz Read! Talk! 04:16, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The bot cues off the contents of category:Wikipedia_administrator_hopefuls which is populated by the userboxes, so to remove someone the userbox has to be removed. Note that the userbox can be on a subpage. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:26, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Several bugs in CfD indexing I found
* Pppery * it has begun... 15:17, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2020 September index, Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2020 November index, Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2020 December index, and Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2021 February index were never created.
 * 2) The bot gets confused by the markup in 's signature, causing things to render with stray apostrophes and in italic instead of the intended bold.
 * 3) The bot occasionally seems to conflate two discussions into one entry. For example, see the entry for Category:Activists from Dedham, Massachusetts at Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2020 April index, which has become merged with a separate discussion for Category:Activists from Toronto. The "Category" link goes to the first category, the "Discussion_log" link goes to the discussion for the second category, and the "Decision" link concatenates the closing statements of both together.
 * 4) Several historical indexes were created too soon, and are therefore missing some discussions. For example, Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2019 October index was created on the first of the month and doesn't include any discussions closed after the first of the month.
 * Thanks! I'll look into these, maybe this weekend. Franky, I've never been sure anyone ever uses these indices.-- Rick Block (talk) 15:05, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I made an update to the bot source which seems to have fixed 2 and 3, and have manually updated the indices from January 2020 through April 2021 (and Oct 2019). At this point I'm not sure why it misses some months and runs early. I'll look at it some more tomorrow. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:04, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I think I may have a clue as to the issue here. A couple of weeks ago, I was going over some old CfD logs for the last few months, and went to one of my sandboxes to transclude a bunch of CfD logpages. But for some reason I was unable to save the page! I don't recall the exact error message, but I believe it was a blacklisted link. (And all I was trying to do was transclude the log pages, so it's confusing that this would even be picked up by a filter). Anyway, I don't remember exactly which page it was, but I believe it was from one of the months your bot is currently having trouble with. If I were you, what I'd try is having it dump its rendered page to a text file, and then create the page manually (I believe sysops bypass the filter, or at least have an option to click through it). jp×g 05:04, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Active admins
Hi, Rick Bot seems to have removed a number of seemingly active admins in the u-z username category... Eddie891 Talk Work 22:02, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Is the bot down? The last update was 29 September. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:23, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, the bot is down. I have a certificate issue of some kind I haven't been able to resolve yet. Seems to be related to this, but as far as I can tell I don't have the expired certificate. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:48, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Places in Bedfordshire/script
Template:Places in Bedfordshire/script has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Tom (LT) (talk) 03:14, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

WP:WBFAN
Hi - I don't know if you are aware, but Rick Bot has not been updating List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations for promoted and demoted featured articles since the end of September. Also Featured articles promoted in 2021 has been updated manually since then. RetiredDuke (talk) 14:14, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know. I have certificate issues I'm working through. Shouldn't be too much longer. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:44, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled
A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Rick Bot
Hi there. I refer to this edit by Rick Bot:. My previous username was Freikorp. Most of my featured article nominations were made under this name, though obviously new ones are made under my current name. As per a suggestion at Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations, I manually updated the list to merge my contributions made under my two different names, as I am not happy to be featured on the list twice. Rick Bot, however, has reverted me fixing this issue. Is there any way we can stop it from doing that, and allow me to merge my nominations? I'm not sure how it collects data, but I'm open to modifying the original nominations to feature my current username, if that fixes this issue. Thanks. Damien Linnane (talk) 00:33, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I responded there. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:04, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Category:Real closed field has been nominated for renaming
Category:Real closed field has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 10:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Category:Formally real field has been nominated for deletion
Category:Formally real field has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. –LaundryPizza<b style="color:#b00">03</b> ( d c̄ ) 08:06, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users
Hi!

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Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:12, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Datecnum
Template:Datecnum has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Nigej (talk) 18:58, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

"Sentry®Safe" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Sentry®Safe and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 April 15 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. BD2412 T 05:15, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

New administrator activity requirement
22:53, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Re: Update my name at FAN user list
Hi. I tried to update my username here at the list of Wikipedians by FA nominations, but your bot's next autoupdate undid that. Can you please restore the updated name? Thank you. 𝒮𝒾𝓇 𝒯𝑒𝒻𝓁𝑜𝓃 (talk &#124; contribs) 17:10, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Name changes have to be done in the by-year lists, like this. I think I caught them all. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:42, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Always precious
Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:00, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

WBFAN missing one?
Hi — looks like John Raymond science fiction magazines, promoted a few weeks ago, isn’t showing up in WBFAN? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:55, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I think this edit will fix it. Not sure why it was missing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 22:35, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Now fixed; thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:37, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message
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Administrative permissions and inactivity reminder
This is a reminder that established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period. You are receiving this annual reminder since you have averaged less than 50 edits per year over the last 5 years.Inactive administrators are encouraged to reengage with the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to be engaged with the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.Thank you for your past contributions to the project. —&thinsp;JJMC89 bot 00:22, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Prefecture navobox
Template:Prefecture navobox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:03, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Category:French Polynesian people has been nominated for renaming
Category:French Polynesian people has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 15:29, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured list nominations issue
Hi, filing a bug report for Rick Bot, though it looks like you may not see it - in the last update to List of Wikipedians by featured list nominations, all of the promoted lists were stuck at the bottom commented out as not having nomination history, and Featured lists promoted in 2023 was not updated. It looks like FACbot updated Featured list candidates/Featured log/September 2023 correctly, so not sure yet what happened. -- Pres N  15:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Must have just been a hiccup, Rick Bot fixed itself the next day's run. -- Pres N  21:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/June index" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Archive_debates/June_index&redirect=no Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/June index] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. <sup style="letter-spacing:-.1em;color:#737373;font-family:monospace">user: A smart kitten <sub style="color:#b842b8;font-family:monospace">meow 11:42, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity
Established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have not made any edits or logged actions in the preceding twelve months. Because you have been inactive, your administrative permissions will be removed&#32;if you do not return to activity within the next month.

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Proposed deletion of Noboribetsu (disambiguation)


The article Noboribetsu (disambiguation) has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "Noboribetsu is not ambiguous"

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Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.

''' This bot DID NOT nominate any of your contributions for deletion; please refer to the history of each individual page for details. ''' Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 10:02, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Administrative permissions and inactivity reminder
This is a reminder that established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period. You are receiving this annual reminder since you have averaged less than 50 edits per year over the last 5 years.Inactive administrators are encouraged to reengage with the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to be engaged with the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.Thank you for your past contributions to the project. —&thinsp;JJMC89 bot 00:31, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

german version of illustration Monty Hall Problem - Standard probabilities
Hello Rick, I updated the german version of the "Monty Hall Problem" article. It uses your illustration "Monty Hall Problem - Standard probabilities.svg" now. In addition, I used Libre Office Draw to change the text to german language. Unfortunately some of the colours disappear when I use Libre Office Draw. However, I uploaded my result to File:Monty Hall Problem - Standard probabilities_de.svg to commons. Now I'd like to ask you if you could please change the text with your tool chain, so all colours stay unchanged, and replace my intermediate german version with a final version from yourself. I like your illustration, thanks for providing it in the first place :-) Best regards, Buecherdiebin (talk) 12:04, 9 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Hallo! The image you're talking about was apparently created by (based on an image I created with no text at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Monty-RightCarSwitch.svg). I can't find the original image on the computer I'm currently using (a Mac). I suspect I created this image on a Windows PC that I no longer have access to, probably using Microsoft Powerpoint. Perhaps  might be able to help? -- Rick Block (talk) 23:46, 31 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I don't have the configuration I had when I created the image. maybe you can update the image and upload your version in both languages, so that the colorus match? Other option would be to crop the image and recreate the text yourself in a new tool. Diego (talk) 06:41, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Diego Moya Thank you for this feedback. In the meantime I managed to create a JPEG File with German Text and matching colours. I will use this and maybe replace it later when I find a Tool which updates the SVG File without funny Side effects. Buecherdiebin (talk) 07:31, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Done. Today I tried "Scribus" and it worked fine :-). Buecherdiebin (talk) 09:38, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Featured article nomination counter bug
Hey there! Thought you might want to know that WP:WBFAN lists (courtesy ping) twice, putting one of them under User:Gerda Arendt. Not sure where that comes from! Thanks :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 08:26, 26 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Looks like this edit fixed it. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:36, 18 June 2024 (UTC)