User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2019/August

Request
Hi,

Please review some protected articles (in article namespace): Sobia Khan and Aalisha Panwar Thanks.—  Hammad     (Talk!)   15:27, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Hello, I cannot read the language in which all the sources of Draft:Sobia Khan are written in, so it would probably be best if I defer to the judgement of reviewers who can. As for Draft:Aalisha Panwar, I have looked at the English sources. From what I can tell, the sources are unfortunately not sufficient to satisfy WP:GNG or WP:NACTOR. The Gold Awards listing gives me pause, however, as it may satisfy WP:ANYBIO. I will get a second opinion on that prior to making any reviewing action. -- The SandDoctor Talk 04:49, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

ACC tool access request approved
Thank you for your interest in the account creation process. I have verified that you have signed the confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information and approved your request.

You may now access the interface here pending a tool root marking your account as identified in the tool database. Before you begin handling any requests, please ensure you have read and understood the account creation guide and username policy to familiarize yourself with the process.

Please subscribe yourself to the private ACC mailing list by clicking here and following the instructions on the page. I also highly recommend that you join us on IRC. We'll be able to grant you access to our private channel, where a bot informs us when new account requests arrive, and where you can chat with the other members of the team and get real-time input, advice, and assistance with requests and how to handle certain cases that are giving you confusion or trouble.

IMPORTANT: Please note that repeatedly failing to correctly assess and process account requests and take the correct resulting actions will result in suspension of your access to the ACC tool interface. Processing account creation requests is not a race, and each request should be handled with your upmost diligence, care, and attention. Closing each account request correctly, accurately, and within full compliance of the ACC tool guide is your goal and your priority; never sacrifice accuracy and compliance of policy in exchange for quantity, or to close a high number of requests that are in the queue.

ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL: Releasing any kind of personally identifiable information or any kind of non-public data listed in the access to nonpublic personal data policy (such as the IP addresses or email addresses of account creation requests), whether intentionally or unintentionally, is treated as an extremely serious violation of policy and breach of confidential information, and will generally result in immediate suspension of your access to the ACC tool interface. Depending on the severity of the offense, the intent, and the level of misconduct that occurred, the violation and the breach of the confidential information will be reported to the Wikimedia Foundation, which can result in further sanctions and actions being taken against you (such as being blocked, banned, or having your access to nonpublic personal data status revoked). If you have questions about this, or aren't sure about anything in regards to this policy, please ask a tool administrator.

Your current user rights allow you to create up to six accounts in a 24 hour period. After this limit has been reached, you won't be able to create any more accounts. However, you can still process ACC tool requests without any issues; just place any approved requests back into the queue so that another tool user can perform the account creation step and finish the process for you. You also won't be able to create an account with a similar username to that of another account that exists; these requests are listed in a separate queue on the interface, titled "flagged user needed". However, if you reach the limit frequently, you can request the account creator permission at Requests for permissions/Account creator after you've demonstrated a few months of experience and proficiency with processing and handling new account requests.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions, and I'll be happy to answer them. Thank you for participating in the account creation process, and we're glad to have you as part of the group! Welcome to the ACC tool user team!  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   17:34, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Johnuniq • Kosack • Valereee
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Ad Orientem • Ched • Gadfium • Jonathunder • Nick • Yelyos
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Bald Zebra • Beetstra • Doug Bell • Journalist • Ruud Koot • Splash • Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Dinoguy1000

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg RickinBaltimore

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Beeblebrox
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg RickinBaltimore

Guideline and policy news
 * Following a request for comment, the page Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
 * A request for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding the administrator inactivity policy.

Arbitration
 * Editors may now use the template Ds/aware to indicate that they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for a topic area, so it is unnecessary to alert them.

Miscellaneous
 * Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
 * The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing  here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist. Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.

Discuss this newsletter

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:24, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-32
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).

Problems
 * A change in RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  13:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

The SandBot task #2
Hallo, Just noticed this edit. It would be useful if the bot also commented out any stub templates on drafts. And I suppose categories too (comment out or add ":" to render them ineffective). But perhaps that's a complexity too far. Just a suggestion for a future enhancement, anyway. Looks a useful bot as it stands, thanks for your work. Pam D  07:56, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi, those are great ideas. However, categories are already handled by another bot (forget the name off hand and can’t really check on mobile easily). As for commenting out stub templates, I am fairly sure that that is an upcoming feature once I have the time to add it (if memory serves, it is even a pre-approved amendment). It just needs a check for over 30k templates and their redirects, which complicates matters and means there is a lot of processing on my end to keep the generated list current...I haven’t had the time to effectively automate the process unfortunately. It is on my “wish list” of things to implement, however. Hope that helps answer your comment. I truly do appreciate the suggestions & am open to more :) — The SandDoctor Talk 22:05, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-33
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated.
 * Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin.

Changes later this week
 * Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Removal of rollback
Hello SandDoctor, I'm posting here because you're listed in Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to grant rollback requests and were active recently. I originally accepted rollback permissions because I thought they would be useful. However, it turns out I haven't been using them very much at all, so there is no reason for me to have them. Would you mind removing them? – Teratix ₵ 23:55, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅. If you ever feel you would have a use for it in the future, you can request them on my talk page or at WP:PERM/RB. -- The SandDoctor Talk 00:35, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-34
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News
 * There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems
 * Octicons-tools.svg Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
 * Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again.

Changes later this week
 * Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
 * will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Backlog Banzai
In the month of September, Wikiproject Military history is running a project-wide edit-a-thon, Backlog Banzai. There are heaps of different areas you can work on, for which you claim points, and at the end of the month all sorts of whiz-bang awards will be handed out. Every player wins a prize! There is even a bit of friendly competition built in for those that like that sort of thing. Sign up now at WikiProject Military history/September 2019 Backlog Banzai to take part. For the coordinators, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:18, 22 August 2019 (UTC)