User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2021/December

Tech News: 2021-48
 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
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).

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21:14, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Tumbling Dice
Hello:

I meant to mention that the Critical reception and legacy section largely contains sentences with an "A says B" format. Many FA reviewers prefer that similar sentiments be included in one sentence with no mention of the reviewer or the publication. The feeling is that since they are cited a reader can go to the original if they feel the need to do so. Just a heads up.

Twofingered Typist (talk) 12:56, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I must admit that I find this form confusing haha. Is this closer to what you are thinking of form wise or equally far away? -- The SandDoctor Talk 15:32, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Getting there, I think. Leave out the word "critical" - "acclaim" will do. Have a look at this Copyediting reception sections. It might help. Twofingered Typist (talk) 18:47, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Done. Could you please take another look at the sandbox? I think I've moved the section more or less over to that format. I'd appreciate it if you could perhaps/please copyedit the draft section a bit in the sandbox if you think it needs it? I really feel like I don't know what I am doing here with this section and would appreciate any feedback/assistance. -- The SandDoctor Talk 22:12, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I have sad news. Unfortunately, Twofingered Typist died unexpectedly (see User talk:Twofingered Typist), and as such, will not be able to respond to your ping unless his version of the afterlife has better internet connectivity than we have been led to believe. I will be happy, as a GOCE coordinator, to help you with your article. I looked at your sandbox and compared it to the Reception section in the article. Overall, I think your sandbox is an improvement. I would want to change a few sentences here and there to make it flow better, but if the timing is appropriate, I think you should put the new section into the article. Once you have done so, let me know, and I will take a look at the whole article and make some copy edits. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Well crap. I didn't know that. That is a true shame. Thank you for letting me know and offering to take a look; I've copied & pasted it into the article. -- The SandDoctor Talk 02:11, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).



Administrator changes
 * Gnome-colors-list-remove.svg A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news
 * Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page.
 * The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse.

Arbitration
 * Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
 * The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.

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Archive Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Help! There’s so many socks editing Taiwan related articles
To whom may concern

As Sir Sputnik has not responded to his talk page in days, you're invited to his talk page to discuss this matter. The accounts could be possibly ran by this sockmaster from Singapore or not. Please check the IP addresses where did those new accounts originate. -184.146.39.97 (talk) 09:50, 5 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I’m not a CheckUser, so couldn’t be of assistance in that regard. I noticed that the talk page you link has had a reply to your post as of a couple days ago asking for more information. Please reply there. TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 17:52, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-49
 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
 * MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at  . It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), , will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module.
 * Octicons-tools.svg An old ResourceLoader module, , which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to  instead.

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

21:58, 6 December 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. 20:07, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Mick Jagger
Hello:

I've finished my copy edit of Mick Jagger.

A couple of things. I masked some more text that I think is unnecessary. I believe that everything else that is included in the article is significant and belongs in it.

I know there are many Stones' albums/singles not mentioned in the article. It's unnecessary for them to be noted unless something significant occurred to Jagger during their recording. I say this in response to suggestions that some sections are "light". I use IA Bot to add archive links to articles - https://iabot.toolforge.org/index.php?page=runbotqueue - but it is not working at the moment. I notice a number of citations (including those I added) are not archived. The Sources section should be in alphabetical order by author. Best of luck with the article moving forward. Regards, Twofingered Typist (talk) 19:34, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Do you think that it is ready for FA, in your opinion? I’ll work on alphabetizing the Sources section ASAP. TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 22:05, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I am grateful for you going above and beyond in this one and am very appreciative. TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 22:06, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. As to its chances as an FA it will depend greatly on the reviewer, of course. If you think it covers all the important events in Jagger's life I would either submit it for an FA Review first, which would increase uts chance of success, or just go for it. Good luck either way. Twofingered Typist (talk) 22:23, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * FA review as in a peer review or is this a process I haven't heard of? Legitimately asking. Also: AI bot is something I would run if it was working as well; that's one of my go-tos. -- The SandDoctor Talk 23:37, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I meant simply Peer Review. It could be helpful in the FA process ... as I say, it depends on the reviewer. Sorry for the confusion. I don't know what's going on with IABot. It worked fine forever and all of a sudden started randomly saying I was blocked from editing and kicking me (and others) out. Looks like they still hven't bot to the bottom of the issue. Twofingered Typist (talk) 12:42, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Question from Purple2257 (07:27, 12 December 2021)
I am a newbie setting up a wiki page using the Sandbox. I am marginally terrified im going to accidentally put this live before its finished, especially since other people editing this are less savvy than me. Any tips on avoiding disaster. e.g. Hit the brakes and steer left of that iceberg... --Purple2257 (talk) 07:27, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I see that your sandbox has been created. There is no risk of it "going live" accidentally as you'd have to move it to the mainspace for that to happen; if you are concerned about any indexing by search engines, you could add NOINDEX to the sandbox's code in the meantime. Overall though, nothing to worry about and probably no need to do so. Please let me know if you have any other questions, happy to help where I can . -- The SandDoctor Talk 02:24, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Question from Yuoog on IOS jailbreaking (02:30, 13 December 2021)
What does this mean --Yuoog (talk) 02:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I am not sure what you are asking exactly? If you are wondering what IOS jailbreaking is, you can read that article you just asked about and it would answer your question. -- The SandDoctor Talk 03:18, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-50
 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
 * There are now default short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis,  will go to the local language default for the  namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via the usual process.

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

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

22:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Question from DaphneMPLS (17:51, 16 December 2021)
Hello, hello, TheSandDoctor! I am working on my first Wikipedia page about National Butter Day with a couple other folks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:National_Butter_Day

The submission was declined, so I've done a bunch of editing, and I'm hoping it's ready to go.

Here's my question: now that I've edited, can I submit it to someone for a pre-read so that we can fix stuff before it goes to an editor and itpotentially get declined or (gasp!) deleted? Or, is the best course just to submit it and see what happens?

Thanks! --DaphneMPLS (talk) 17:51, 16 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I took a cursory look (on mobile) and it doesn’t seem bad. You can go ahead and re-submit it for review. It won’t be deleted in its current state as a draft. TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 20:07, 16 December 2021 (UTC)


 * thank you so much for the encouraging words — and for getting back to me so quickly. Re-submitting! DaphneMPLS (talk) 23:57, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

TweetCiteBot
Hi TheSandDoctor Any chance you could do another run of TweetCiteBot? The bare URLs are starting to mount up again. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:14, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I am not sure what it is with me and code, but what worked perfectly fine before now fails on any page that it would normally work on when nothing (code wise) has changed (or I revert to last public version). It really doesn't like the save operation, even when I re-installed pywikibot. I will have to scratch my head on this some more. -- The SandDoctor Talk 21:51, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for trying it.
 * That's weird, and very frustrating. Commiserations.
 * In such situations, I find that it helps to leave it for a few days. by then, I often find that either the gremlins have moved on to disrupt something else, or I have gained insight into something blindingly obvious that I had missed 'cos it was too familiar.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Just a quick note to say that I have added Twitter to the list of sites which I tag with Bare URL inline in an occasional AWB run. I tag links to some sites where WP:Reflinks consistently cannot get a title or where it consistently gets a uselsss generic title (see User:BrownHairedGirl/No-reflinks websites) ... and in the case of Twitter, it gets the title "JavaScript is not available", e.g. in these edits:, , ,.

WP:Reflinks doesn't support the Bare URL inline tag, so the tagging keeps Reflinks from adding those junk titles. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 23:24, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Great to see that the bot is running again! I hope that you resolved the technical issues without too much pain. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 19:27, 7 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Ooops! Sorry, I just checked the diff I saw, and it was from September.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 19:30, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I am relieved to say that I just discovered I am not going crazy and that there is actually an issue...but not with my code. See T295238. We are waiting on that to be resolved. -- The SandDoctor  Talk 18:29, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the update, Sand Doctor!
 * It's very good news to know that you can stop worrying about whether there is some bizarre glitch in your code or wider setup. That sort of thing wastes hours and hours of time, and adds a lot of stress.  So I am much relieved to know that you are no longer wracking your brain.  Nobody needs that stress.
 * The bad news is that T295238 has been open for 6 weeks, and has still not even been triaged.  So there is no sigh of an imminent fix ... which means no ETA for the return of TweetCiteBot.  And meanwhile the number of untagged tweet cites is growing rapidly.  I am now systematically tagging them with Bare URL inline, and my bare-URL tweet search is finding new ones at a rate of over 30 per day ... plus my scan of the database dumps is pulling out hundreds more which the search doesn't find.
 * It's a great pity that your good work cannot resume while we wait for Godot.
 * Anyway, that will take as a long as it takes. Meanwhile, Beannachtaí Na Nollag!   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:37, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Haza! Special:Diff/1061151337. Turns out that the thing I linked was for someone else's bot, but T291202 was 100% the problem that I was running into. Updating pwb again resolved. -- The SandDoctor Talk 00:01, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Please see above. Forgot to complete the ping yesterday in all the excitement. -- The SandDoctor Talk 17:12, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * So, does this mean that TweetCiteBot can run again?  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. It was already running for a bit yesterday. Needs a bit of debugging to confirm the cause of why most tweet text seems to be truncating the text more than I think it should, but it is functional. The hiccup in that aspect is weird because it isn't my code truncating it from what I can tell. Twitter should return 140 characters and truncate, but isn't for some reason (returning random number less than 140 and truncating when the tweet is longer than that). Probably out of my control, but I will have to investigate a bit further. -- The SandDoctor Talk 17:21, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * That's great to know that it's back.  I wouldn't worry too much about a bit of truncation, 'cos the full 140 chars is a bit long for a headline anyway.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:26, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2021-51
 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
 * Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.

Recent changes
 * Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension ( ) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes
 * The developers of the Wikipedia iOS app are looking for testers who edit in multiple languages. You can read more and let them know if you are interested.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February.

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

22:04, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!
Happy Holidays text.png Hello TheSandDoctor: Enjoy the holiday season&#32;and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 08:25, 22 December 2021 (UTC) Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Question from Tnatsnok (07:38, 23 December 2021)
Hi. I'd like to post an article draft, but I'm unclear how to find a namespace in spite of researching it. Could you help? --Tnatsnok (talk) 07:38, 23 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi ! Help:Drafts has a handy link for creating new drafts (see "Create a new draft"). -- The SandDoctor Talk 18:28, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Sockpuppet investigations/Slowking4
I saw this. Could you point me to that discussion please? Hard to believe that an sockmaster with north of 170 socks could be given any quarter anywhere. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:21, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree, but I keep almost requesting locks and get pointed to this. Figured I'd save myself the embarrassment for whenever I archive in future. -- The SandDoctor Talk 18:23, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
 * the discussion appears to be Requests for comment/Slowking4. Sdrqaz (talk) 22:19, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

 * Thank you!! Wishing you and your family likewise. -- The SandDoctor Talk 05:20, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!!
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:#FF4646; background-color:#F7FfF7; border-width:2px; text-align:left; padding:0.5em 0.5em 0 0.5em; border-radius: 1em; box-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba(0,0,0,0.75);;" class="plainlinks">Happy Holidays text.png I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas. Lots of love, fortune and specially health. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 10:42, 24 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much! I've never heard a card with sound like that before...very cool! I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year as well. All the best, The SandDoctor  Talk 05:21, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much. I am very glad you liked it. Enjoy this special days. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 09:32, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Yo Ho Ho
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:blue; background-color:AliceBlue; border-width:1px; text-align:left; padding:8px;" class="plainlinks">

 Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  is wishing you a griffin's claw full of Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding to your friends' talk pages.

Nomination for deletion of Template:Thai name sort
Template:Thai name sort has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 07:41, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Tweet using cite web with generic titles
Hi SandDoctor. Hope you have been having a fine Christmas.

Whenever you return to editing, you may be interested in a scope extension for : tweet refs formatted using cite web with a generic tite.

I came across this on 2018 New York gubernatorial election, which has. It seemed to me that this could safely be replaced with a cite tweet filled by the bot.

I did a search for, but it timed out with only 81 hits. So I fired up a database scanner to scan the latest dump for, and that gave me 943 hits.

So lots of useful work for the bot to do, if you feel like it. And there are probably other generic titles which could safely be overwritten. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:49, 27 December 2021 (UTC)


 * given the discussion on ’s talk page, is this modification still required in your view or does it potentially bring the number low enough to be human doable? I will start TCB up a bit later today and let it run for a few hours with current configuration, if that’s okay. TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 19:36, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
 * @TheSandDoctor: I am not sure how many of the 943 instances were done by @, but unless it's 100%, then there is work for TweetCiteBot to do on that set ... and I am pretty sure that Rlink2 did not do all of them. For example, I don't think that the refs using a title of "Tweet" were done by Rlink2.
 * I don't see any reason why tackling one set would impede tackling the other, so no prob running TCB under its current config. Great to see TCB back at work again.
 * When Rlink2 has finished their reverts, I will do a scan of the 20220101 database dump to see what remains.  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:40, 28 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I’ve run into quite a few instances where, rather than a tweet being cited, a Twitter support page or literally a user’s entire profile is cited. I am thinking that there needs to be a way to process these as the bot obviously can’t convert them as it stands currently and these instances pollute the search. I wonder if we should create a template for citing a profile? I don’t think that this would need a large community discussion (creating a new template) unless someone objected (also probably covered by WP:BOLD). What are your thoughts? TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 04:01, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * @TheSandDoctor: yes, I have seen those uses too: e.g. a ref to https://twitter.com/MichealMartinTD rather than to one of his tweets such as https://twitter.com/MichealMartinTD/status/1475039121957691402
 * I agree that a template to handle those would be the best way to proceed. Something like Cite Twitter profile.
 * So a bare ref  would be converted to
 * ... and that would display as something like:
 * MichealMartinTD (Micheál Martin) on Twitter
 * How does that sound?  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 04:19, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * How does that sound?  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 04:19, 28 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree with that approach. Do you want to create it or shall I? I wonder what we should do with the cases where a ref links to a generic Twitter page, I believe Twitter is an example. These are probably rarer than the profile link scenario, but I don’t have any hard numbers to back that assumption up. TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 05:03, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * @TheSandDoctor: OK, I have created a draft of Cite Twitter profile.
 * Whaddaya think? Any use?   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:14, 28 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Looks good to me! Let’s start converting those when we spot them. Doing it as TCB will need some testing and coding on my part. It’s probably enough of a change I’d want to get the BRFA amended to add it if we are going to add it automated. TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 18:56, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, @TheSandDoctor. That looks like a good plan.   Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 19:01, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!
Many thanks, same to you! GiantSnowman 11:20, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
 * My apologies that I missed this. Thank you! -- The SandDoctor  Talk 15:29, 2 February 2022 (UTC)