User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2019/November

Sockpuppet investigations/Goldemold
You missed a step: check the account name in SPI archive notice. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:57, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Thanks for reaching out - that was my first more complicated split. The rest of it looked good to you? -- The SandDoctor  Talk 15:58, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Yep, all looked good except for that one thing. Personally I would have just copied the text over to a new page, but I guess splitting the history is the "right" way to do it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:07, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi! Can you revoke his TPA? It's a cross-wiki vandal. Thank you! — Has ley 18:46, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi . Embarrassingly, I never saw this until just now. The account is locked, so there is no need now. Sorry about that! -- The SandDoctor Talk 21:42, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter November 2019
Hello ,

This newsletter comes a little earlier than usual because the backlog is rising again and the holidays are coming very soon. There are now holders of the New Page Reviewer flag! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog but it's still roughly less than 10% doing 90% of the work. Now it's time for action. Exactly one year ago there were 'only' 3,650 unreviewed articles, now we will soon be approaching 7,000 despite the growing number of requests for the NPR user right. If each reviewer soon does only 2 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by every reviewer doing only 1 review every 2 days - that's only a few minutes work on the bus on the way to the office or to class! Let's get this over and done with in time to relax for the holidays. Want to join? Consider adding the NPP Pledge userbox. Our next newsletter will announce the winners of some really cool awards. Admin has been officially invested as NPP/NPR coordinator by a unanimous consensus of the community. This is a complex role and he will need all the help he can get from other experienced reviewers. Paid editing is still causing headaches for even our most experienced reviewers: This official Wikipedia article will be an eye-opener to anyone who joined Wikipedia or obtained the NPR right since 2015. See The Hallmarks to know exactly what to look for and take time to examine all the sources. Would you like feedback on your reviews? Are you an experienced reviewer who can give feedback to other reviewers? If so there are two new feedback pilot programs. New Reviewer mentorship will match newer reviewers with an experienced reviewer with a new reviewer. The other program will be an occasional peer review cohort for moderate or experienced reviewers to give feedback to each other. The first cohort will launch November 13. The annual ArbCom election will be coming up soon. All eligible users will be invited to vote. While not directly concerned with NPR, Arbcom cases often lead back to notability and deletion issues and/or actions by holders of advanced user rights. There is to be no wish list for WMF encyclopedias this year. We thank Community Tech for their hard work addressing our long list of requirements which somewhat overwhelmed them last year, and we look forward to a successful completion. To opt-out of future mailings, you can remove yourself here MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Getting the queue to 0
 * Coordinator
 * This month's refresher course
 * Tools
 * It is now possible to select new pages by date range. This was requested by reviewers who want to patrol from the middle of the list.
 * It is now also possible for accredited reviewers to put any article back into the New Pages Feed for re-review. The link is under 'Tools' in the side bar.
 * Reviewer Feedback
 * Second set of eyes
 * Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work, especially while some routine tagging for deletion can still be carried out by non NPR holders and inexperienced users. Read about it at the Monitoring the system section in the tutorial. If you come across such editors doing good work, don't hesitate to encourage them to apply for NPR.
 * Do be sure to have our talk page  on your watchlist. There are often items that require reviewers' special attention, such as to watch out for pages by known socks or disruptive editors, technical issues and new developments, and of course to provide advice for other reviewers.
 * Arbitration Committee
 * Community Wish list

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

Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg GermanJoe • Girth Summit • Kees08 • Nosebagbear
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg DESiegel • GB fan • MSGJ • Voice of Clam • WilyD
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg DeltaQuad • Fang Aili • Pakaran

Bureaucrat changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg DeltaQuad • Pakaran

Interface administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg MSGJ

CheckUser changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg L235 • Mz7 • SQL • ST47
 * Gnome-colors-view-refresh.svg Ivanvector
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg DeltaQuad

Oversight changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-add.svg L235 • Mz7 • ST47 • Stwalkerster • The Blade of the Northern Lights • Xaosflux
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg DeltaQuad • DGG • Julia W

Guideline and policy news
 * An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.
 * The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).
 * A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

Arbitration
 * Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.

Discuss this newsletter

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Quack?
As you were one of the blocking admins who reviewed behavioural evidence at Sockpuppet investigations/Claíomh Solais/Archive, I thought I'd ask for your input here. This one is really bringing to mind what I recall of the sockmaster account of this sockdrawer. , you also reviewed a lot of the behavioural patterns of the sockmaster. Is this one quacking for you, too? - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 01:08, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Editor Interaction Tool
 * Hi, this edit (perhaps not used to images??) and general behaviour does strike me as kind of strange, but I'm not sure it's megaphone quacking. What makes you suspicious? -- The SandDoctor Talk 01:30, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The same type of edits defending "alt-right" and neo-Nazi figures and their politics, on a lot of the same articles. Edit-warring, aggressive, condescending speech patterns and WP:BATTLE attitude, particular focus on kings of the same regions of Ireland and genealogical connections to these historical figures and regions. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 01:36, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The same type of edits defending "alt-right" and neo-Nazi figures and their politics, on a lot of the same articles. Edit-warring, aggressive, condescending speech patterns and WP:BATTLE attitude, particular focus on kings of the same regions of Ireland and genealogical connections to these historical figures and regions. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 01:36, 4 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Hello. Since I was asked, I looked into it, and it's quacking loudly to me.
 * There are a lot of close similarities I could point to, but as an example, both have included petty trivia about "homosexuals" in the far-right, apparently based on first-party gossip: Compare this to this behemoth most recently, and others. Combine this with the very specific focus on the same obscure Irish history and genealogy articles and it's very unlikely this is a coincidence.
 * Based on this, I looked into edit history, and now think that Claíomh Solais was also a sock.
 * Edits overlap with Rí Lughaid who was blocked, appealed and then blocked again for "sneaky racist vandalism" in 2012, per Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive740 and Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive742. This is almost certainly the same editor based on behavior and article overlap. Claoimh Solais was created a few days later, and shares the same nasty attitude (slightly toned-down), extreme political agenda, and was editing many of the exact same obscure articles in similar ways.
 * One example I found which also includes Blight55 is Dalcassians, which these three editors are mostly responsible for. That's how I found Rí Lughaid, but specific diffs won't be too hard to find.
 * This older account would be irrelevant, but I think Blight55 was likely created as a backup in 2016, since the editor correctly predicted they would eventually be blocked again. If I'm right, this behavior has spanned years, and there are probably more, as well. As the old ANI discussions mention, Rí Lughaid came out swinging and was precocious, so it's probably not that editor's first account. Grayfell (talk) 23:04, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-45
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * At Special:Contributions you could see up to 5000 edits at the same time if you edited the URL. This has been lowered to 500. This is to stop requests which break the sites.

Changes later this week
 * can set the default length to block a user for your wiki. You will be able to use  to set a different default block length for IP editors.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 November. It will be on all wikis from 7 November (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 November at 15:00 (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.  16:48, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-46
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * MediaWiki2LaTeX can put different pages from a Wikimedia wiki into a PDF. It can now make a PDF with around 5000 pages. Previously this was 800 pages.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version 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 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Wikimedia will take part in Google Code-in. This is for young students who want to help with open source software. You can read more. Experienced technical Wikimedians can mentor students.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  22:04, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-47
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems
 * You will be able to read but not to edit some wikis for up to 30 minutes on 26 November at 06:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. It will probably last much shorter than 30 minutes. This will also affect the  database. This could for example affect changing passwords, logging in to new wikis, changing emails or global renames.

Changes later this week
 * You can soon vote on proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
 * There is no new MediaWiki version 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 20 November 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.  20:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!
Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-48
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * The mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the desktop improvements project. You can turn on advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a gadget or user script.
 * Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can report them.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (calendar). This is because of holidays.

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 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  16:52, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

SPI soft redirects
Hey TheSandDoctor, thanks for merging the SPI case Sockpuppet investigations/Ranjan Mistry. In the future, I would leave in place at the source page—in this case Sockpuppet investigations/ManishSharma14—because it generates a soft redirect to the new SPI page: you can see it now says, Please note that a case was originally opened under ManishSharma14 (talk · contribs) but has been moved to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Ranjan Mistry. This is especially useful in order to keep it a blue link when there are inbound links to the old SPI case page on Wikipedia; in this case, I had linked to the old title in the reason field when blocking the socks involved. Thanks, Mz7 (talk) 22:44, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Will do, ! Thanks for reaching out. -- The SandDoctor Talk 16:09, 29 November 2019 (UTC)