User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2019/March

revdel request: female education
Hi TheSandDoctor, Thank you for revdelling copyvio in Female education. I just realized that I had failed to remove one of the offending paragraphs—would it be possible for you to extend the revdel up to the current revision? Cheers, gnu 57 14:41, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ According to Earwig, the article is still a 92% violation. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to sort it out fully. Could you possibly take a look? Thanks, -- The SandDoctor Talk 14:44, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
 * They may or may not be mirrors, I seriously have to head now. -- The SandDoctor Talk 14:45, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

You've got mail!
~Swarm~  {talk}  23:51, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Never saw this notification in my email for some reason, but ‘’did’’ see your emails and responded to them individually. — The SandDoctor Talk 05:45, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-10
 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 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (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 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
 * The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

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

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Evad37
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg There'sNoTime
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Alex Shih • Brian • Mushroom • Nakon • Oscarthecat • PeruvianLlama • Ragib • Reaper Eternal • Rossami • Tom

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg Evad37 • Galobtter
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Ritchie333



CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg There'sNoTime
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Keegan • Ks0stm

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg There'sNoTime
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg Ks0stm • Sphilbrick

Guideline and policy news
 * The RfC on administrator activity requirements failed to reach consensus for any proposal.
 * Following discussions at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the restoration of adminship policy was reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.

Technical news
 * A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.

Arbitration
 * The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
 *  has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
 *  has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.

Miscellaneous
 * Following the 2019 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Base, Einsbor, Jon Kolbert, Schniggendiller, and Wim b.

Discuss this newsletter

Subscribe

Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:13, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Underlinked tagging in the Draft namespace
Your blog post turned up in my Facebook feed so I had a look. It seems to me that you've misunderstood the Underlinked template. If placed on a draft, it points out that the text of the draft contains too few blue links. It's the reverse of Orphan, not a weaker version of it. Do many drafts get tagged with Underlinked? -- John of Reading (talk) 18:55, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi and thanks for reaching out! underlinked refers to articles in every capacity over drafts. For instance, the category pages are put in is named "All articles with too few wikilinks" (emphasis mine). The documentation states "This tag should be applied to articles which need additional internal links." Based on this and the template text itself, it seemed logical that the template would not be appropriate for the draft namespace and the BRFA was approved by  4 January 2019.
 * When it comes to the specifics of how many have been tagged with underlinked, I am not sure as that telemetry is not collected. However, I can say that I would not have included underlinked in the BRFA if it was not used within the Draft namespace at the time (it was over 3 months ago now, I forget the exact numbers). What I do know is that the bot has performed around 1500+ edits since approval within the draft namespace/relating to this task. With that said, I would be open to requesting its removal from the BRFA if changes are made and/or consensus garnered that the template is indeed appropriate within the Draft namespace. -- The SandDoctor Talk 19:24, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Revisiting the Thai name sort bot
Hi again. I know you're probably much more busy nowadays, so no worries if you can't get to this (it actually also slipped my mind). Should I go ahead and ask if someone else could pick up the task, or would you still like do this? (Convenience link: Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people) --Paul_012 (talk) 09:41, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I am sorry that I have been unable to work at this. That unfortunately seems like a task that might not be best for me to work on at the moment. If you want to ask someone else to pick it up, feel free/go ahead. Sorry you've been waiting over 11 months.....I entirely forgot about this as well. -- The SandDoctor Talk 19:45, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Draft:Bradley Colburn
I thought I would give you a heads up -- your draft is eligible for G13 if you are interested in continued work on it. -- Dolotta (talk) 04:17, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads up . I have added some new information to it and will look to expand it (if possible) in the near future. -- The SandDoctor Talk 08:35, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Can you please block my account
Hi, I had self-requested a block of one year many weeks ago, but on 2 March 2019 I asked to unblock me and provided Request reason: I self requested the block but now I want to continue editing. But in reality I am quite addicted to the Wikipedia and I am very poor in time management. Therefore please block me for one year from today and write on the block note that this user must not be unblocked before one year without consulting you.Eatcha (talk) 09:26, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅. With that said, please do not make a habit of frequently requesting self-blocks and unblocks. --Regards, The SandDoctor  Talk 09:58, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Please participate to the talk pages consultation
Hello

Our team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working on a project to improve the ease-of-use and productivity of wiki talk pages. As a Teahouse host, I can imagine you’ve run into challenges explaining talk pages to first-time participants.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis – to ask questions, to resolve differences, to organize projects and to make decisions. Communication is essential for the depth and quality of our content, and the health of our communities. We're currently leading a global consultation on how to improve talk pages, and we're looking for people that can report on their experiences using (or helping other people to use) wiki talk pages. We'd like to invite you to participate in the consultation, and invite new users to join too.

We thank you in advance for your participation and your help.

Trizek (WMF), 08:37, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Please participate to the talk pages consultation - link update
The previous message about the talk pages consultation has a broken link.

The correct link has been misinterpreted by the MassMessage tool. Please use the following link: Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019.

Sorry for the inconvenience, Trizek (WMF), 08:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-11
 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
 * Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the  Lua function or the   parser function. If they do, they will now be shown using  mw:Special:MyLanguage/Help:Extension:Kartographer if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator.
 * There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.

Problems
 * Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
 * Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed.
 * Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (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 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

OTRS template
Thank you! I knew I had seen that somewhere, but didn't notice it in Template:OTRS. I now see I didn't dive deeply enough. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:01, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm glad I could help . I don't often deal with OTRS verifications and as such tend to misplace the template at a comical rate and am always looking for it as a result. I initially found OTRS user identified but knew that that wasn't what I wanted. I had to look for a couple of minutes myself. Hey, now you know about it. Hopefully your memory for template names is better than mine and I just taught you of an extremely useful OTRS template. If not, I'm sure we'll both be having this discussion at some point in the future and probably never realize.
 * Seriously though: I'm glad I could help. I realize you are also an admin, but will say this anyways: I'm always around if you need a hand...even ticket pick ups (my email is that way). --All the best, The SandDoctor  Talk 06:10, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

FIFA World Cup/rollback rights
Hey, I think I'm having a little difficulty. I will have this content in bold and I hope you agree with me that it's not needed when it comes to specific countries at the FIFA World Cup.

'''The FIFA World Cup, sometimes called the Football World Cup or the Soccer World Cup, but usually referred to simply as the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946, due to World War II.'''

'''The tournament consists of two parts, the qualification phase and the final phase (officially called the World Cup Finals). The qualification phase, which currently take place over the three years preceding the Finals, is used to determine which teams qualify for the Finals. The current format of the Finals involves 32 teams competing for the title, at venues within the host nation (or nations) over a period of about a month. The World Cup Finals is the most widely viewed sporting event in the world, with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the 2006 tournament final.'''

For a specific country (e.g. Germany) this content is unnecessary. I feel like I have been treated poorly. This even led to me losing rollback rights after I reverted someone's reversion of my edits. I was honestly not misusing rollback, I just wanted to revert to a correct version because they act like they don't care if the bolded irrelevant content is there. So Ivanvector incorrectly removed my rollback rights. I wonder when I can get them back. It even led me to a useless 31-hour block just for removing unnecessary content. I have been in general a good faith editor because I have taken down vandalism a lot.

See Spain for example. I don't know why users are reverting my removal if countries like Spain don't have the content. And I also wonder if I can get my rollback rights soon.

Any comments?

Thanks, Dolfinz1972 (talk) 02:31, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Have you brought this up with Ivanvector? They would be the one who this should be appealed to. — The SandDoctor Talk 05:43, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay TheSandDoctor, I have to admit (according to Ivanvector) I used the rollback right improperly just to bring up a correct version of the page. I realize this is not acceptable and will have to use Twinkle for now. I wonder how long it's gonna take for me to have rollback restored. I don't even know if it may me okay to ask to restore them now as I would really like to have them, but I fully realize that edit warring is against policy. I completely, genuinely agree to refrain from similar actions I did in the future. Feel free to remove them if I do some incorrect editing again. Dolfinz1972 (talk) 03:29, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

FinalBall
plenty of bad balls.
 * Oscar Amoabeng
 * Olav Tuelo Johannesen
 * Teresa Noyola

I'm sure there are plenty more. Why? Talk about confusing (talk) 04:40, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I am not sure exactly what you are asking? -- The SandDoctor Talk 04:43, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Talk to us about talking
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:
 * 1) First, sign up your group here.
 * 2) Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group.  This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
 * 3) Then ask people what they think about communication processes.  We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki.  Please consider asking these five questions:
 * 4) When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
 * 5) What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
 * 6) What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
 * 7) What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
 * 8) What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
 * 9) Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group.  Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you. Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.17


Hello ,


 * News
 * The WMF has announced that Google Translate is now available for translating articles through the content translation tool. This may result in an increase in machine translated articles in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to use the tag and gently remind (or inform) editors that translations from other language Wikipedia pages still require attribution per WP:TFOLWP.


 * Discussions of interest
 * Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
 * db-blankdraft was merged into G13 (Discussion)
 * A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
 * There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.


 * Reminders
 * NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD  because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.


 * NPP Tools Report
 * Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
 * copyvio-check – automatically checks the copyvio percentage of new pages in the background and displays this info with a link to the report in the 'info' panel of the Page curation toolbar.
 * The NPP flowchart now has clickable hyperlinks.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – Low – 2393 High – 4828 Looking for inspiration? There are approximately 1000 female biographies to review. Stay up to date with even more news – subscribe to The Signpost.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:8-Bit Bastard


Hello, TheSandDoctor. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "8-Bit Bastard".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the, , or  code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. JMHamo (talk) 08:33, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

YGM
Just a quick note, I've replied via email. Did you get it? ~Swarm~  {talk}  09:02, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 * If you're talking around March 8th, then yes. Just haven't gotten around to replying. Will today. -- The SandDoctor Talk 17:05, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-12
 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
 * When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (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 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

New mailing list for Wikimedia Canada
Good day, this message is to inform you that Wikimedia Canada has created a new mailing list operated by Mailman. This mailing list is for all discussions related to the Wikimedia movement in Canada, in both English and French. Announcements from Wikimedia Canada will always be bilingual, but you are welcomed to discuss in any language of your choice. The old google group will be abandoned. To join this mailing list, please go to. To send messages to the list, write to general(at)discussions.wikimedia.ca. Also, please forward this message to anybody who may be interested. Thank you and do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. JP Béland (WMCA) (talk) 14:10, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Your BRFA (7)
Hi TheSandDoctor, your recent BRFA (Bots/Requests for approval/DeprecatedFixerBot 7) has been closed as denied. This is because the discussion shows there is no longer any work to actually be done here. If I've missed something please let me know and it can be reactivated. Best regards, — xaosflux  Talk 15:15, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-13
 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
 * The new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version.

Problems
 * There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed.
 * The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon.
 * Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (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 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  18:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)