User talk:Shubinator

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Did you know?
Introduction and rules
IntroductionWP:DYK
General discussionWT:DYK
GuidelinesWP:DYKCRIT
Reviewer instructionsWP:DYKRI
Nominations
Nominate an articleWP:DYKCNN
Awaiting approvalWP:DYKN
ApprovedWP:DYKNA
April 1 hooksWP:DYKAPRIL
Preparation
Preps and queuesT:DYK/Q
Prepper instructionsWP:DYKPBI
Admin instructionsWP:DYKAI
Main Page errorsWP:ERRORS
History
StatisticsWP:DYKSTATS
Archived setsWP:DYKA
Just for fun
Monthly wrapsWP:DYKW
AwardsWP:DYKAWARDS
UserboxesWP:DYKUBX
Hall of FameWP:DYK/HoF
List of users ...
... by nominationsWP:DYKNC
... by promotionsWP:DYKPC
Administrative
Scripts and botsWP:DYKSB
On the Main Page
To ping the DYK admins{{DYK admins}}

DYKHousekeepingBot down?[edit]

Shubinator, it seems early to be worrying, but December 16 was deleted by WugBot from the Approved page at 05:01, 21 January 2021 (UTC), and November 12 was deleted by me from the Nominations page at 05:14. DYKHousekeepingBot ran at 04:57 as per normal, and should have run again half an hour later (around 05:27) to update based on those deletions, plus an addition at 05:03. But there wasn't an update then, nor half an hour after that.

Can you please take a look and see whether the bot needs to be restarted, and as long as you're at it, check DYKUpdateBot as well just to be safe? Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:13, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It started up again at 07:58. I'm not sure why it didn't run again until then—perhaps there was server maintenance or the like—but I thought I'd let you know it was all set. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:24, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for letting me know! The nom page's HTML was confusing the bot, not entirely sure what the bug was though. When it broke, last good run 04:57 UTC, first errored run 05:28 UTC. Then when it recovered, last errored run 07:28 UTC, first good run 07:58 UTC. I thought it might be the empty date section at the bottom, but the bot is handling that correctly today, so probably something more nuanced. Shubinator (talk) 01:38, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

February untranscluded nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, it's been a while since the last one, so I was hoping you could make a new list for me. Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:39, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure :) Untranscluded noms:
Shubinator (talk) 01:13, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

AdminBot issue[edit]

Hello Shubinator, a discussion regarding your bot is currently open at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard#Compromised_sysop_account_-_DYKUpdateBot. You are likely being contacted by ArbCom as well. Follow up with Arbcom first. — xaosflux Talk 20:09, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting me know! Replied there, I haven't been contacted by Arbcom besides the bot below. Shubinator (talk) 06:37, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Following up from WP:BN everything should be in order now, you may need to restart your bot jobs. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 23:33, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Both back in action :) Shubinator (talk) 23:45, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Level 1 desysop of DYKUpdateBot[edit]

Under the Level 1 desysopping procedures, the administrator permissions of DYKUpdateBot (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) have been temporarily removed as a suspected compromised account.

Supporting: Barkeep49, Bradv, CaptainEek, Maxim, Worm That Turned

For the Arbitration Committee, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:24, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Level 1 desysop of DYKUpdateBot

Restoration of privileges to DYKUpdateBot[edit]

DYKUpdateBot (talk · contribs) is granted administrative permissions on the English Wikipedia following the securing of its passwords by the operator.

For the Arbitration Committee, – bradv🍁 23:18, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Restoration of privileges to DYKUpdateBot

March untranscluded list[edit]

Shubinator, with spring about to spring, I was hoping for a new list of untranscluded DYK nominations. I'm hoping it's low again this month, but one never knows. Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:20, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, here you go. Happy spring! Untranscluded noms:
Shubinator (talk) 00:27, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Happy spring to you, too! All six have been addressed. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:01, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Request / bug carryforward March 2021[edit]

Just archived 5 years of talk page conversations, this place looks a lot slimmer now! Noting a few feature requests / bugs that are still on my radar.

DYKcheck
  • Enable DYKcheck on nomination subpages, requested by User:Mandarax.
  • DYKcheck overcounting character count for lang-ug template, original bug report here.
  • Another instance of DYKcheck overcounting character count, original bug report here.
DYKUpdateBot
  • DYKUpdateBot crashes on a missing HooksEnd, bug reports here and here.
  • DYKUpdateBot should avoid crediting salted user talk pages, original bug report here.
  • Add DYK nomination link to DYK user talk credits, especially useful for multi-article hooks, requested by me :)

If I missed/forgot something, let me know! Shubinator (talk) 18:23, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My request, to enable DYKcheck on nom pages, was so that it could check hook lengths. But I'm almost ready with a script that takes care of that task. You had said that implementing my request was "not trivial"; and this is something that DYKcheck doesn't even do any more, ever since the change to individual nom templates long ago. So, as far as I'm concerned, you can mark my request "closed". MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 23:32, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the update! I'll keep it around as a "wishlist" item as I'd guess other DYK editors would also benefit. Shubinator (talk) 23:35, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think I didn't make it clear that the script I'm working on isn't just for my use; I intend it as a potential addition to the DYK toolbox for anybody to use (without having to install anything). MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 04:45, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nice! I'm guessing the new script is scoped to checking hook length? Whenever DYKcheck can be extended to support nom pages, it'll go through the full set of implemented checks. Shubinator (talk) 04:48, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).

Administrator changes

removed Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
  • Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Technical news

  • When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
  • Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DYKHousekeepingBot now in Python! technical details[edit]

Hi talk page stalkers! For years I've talked about rewriting DYKHousekeepingBot and DYKUpdateBot in Python and on top of the Pywikibot framework, this week we took a solid step forward - DYKHousekeepingBot is now running on Python! Details:

  • Which edits are in Python?
  • What's staying the same?
    • Pretty much all functionality is the same between DYKHousekeepingBot's Java and Python implementations
    • DYK hook count table output is character-for-character identical, see Java and Python
    • The bot's still hosted at Toolforge
  • What changed?
    • Bugfixes for highly uncommon edge cases
      • Notifying a nominator about multiple untranscluded DYK nominations - happens ~4x/year - example
        • Added a newline between templates so they don't run into each other
        • Tweaked the edit summary from "nomination" to "nominations"
      • Notifying a nominator of an untranscluded DYK nomination creates their talk page - happens ~4x/year - example
        • Removed extra whitespace at the top
      • Bot won't hang trying to edit protected / salted pages - rare
    • Code modernization
      • Running on the more maintained Pywikibot framework
      • Interacts with Wikipedia exclusively through API.php instead of the human interface index.php
      • Better security as it leverages OAuth for authentication

As with any new code, we'd expect one or two bugs to be lingering around. Please let me know if you see a bug! If all goes well, I'm thinking of "publishing" DYKHousekeepingBot's source code onwiki, and then start chipping away at DYKUpdateBot's Python migration. Shubinator (talk) 21:30, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Source code is now at User:DYKHousekeepingBot/Code. Shubinator (talk) 03:59, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you![edit]

The Original Barnstar
Hi ! Thank you for the 411 on the added " paintball studio " on the Tara Downs page I had started, I used to live in that factory warehouse and I know it was not a paintball studio. I wonder who would write that, it was in such bad taste hahaha ! Thanks again ! TayaCornett (talk) 01:12, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, I'm glad DYKUpdateBot is appreciated :) The bot works harder than I do, that's for sure! Congrats on the DYK, and we hope to see more in the future :) Shubinator (talk) 00:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).

Administrator changes

removed Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

removed Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DYKUpdateBot now in Python! technical details[edit]

The day we've all been waiting for has finally arrived! No, not Santa - DYKUpdateBot is now running on Pywikibot + Python! Details:

  • Which edits are in Python?
    • all DYKUpdateBot edits after 20:00 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  • What's staying the same?
    • For the most part, the functionality is very similar to Java DYKUpdateBot, and I'd guess most people won't notice a difference
    • The bot's still hosted at Toolforge
  • What changed?
    • For lead hooks, the {{DYK talk}} tag will include the set's image
    • Error output at /Errors is a bit prettier, and separates errors that block the bot (eg unmatched curly braces) from warnings (eg can't find hook for article)
    • DYKUpdateBot will no longer distribute DYK credits on user talk pages with a nobots template, unless DYKUpdateBot is excluded
    • Bugfixes for highly uncommon edge cases
      • Python DYKUpdateBot will place {{DYK talk}} tag above DYK nomination discussions, fixing bug demonstrated by example 1 & example 2
      • If the DYK credit template had a nompage parameter, Java DYKUpdateBot would drop the credit; Python DYKUpdateBot will ignore the nompage param and continue processing the credit - example
      • Once in a blue moon Java DYKUpdateBot would have trouble finding the hook for an article even though the hook was in the set, this should be even rarer now - example
      • Twice Java DYKUpdateBot has been tripped up by a thumbtime parameter on the DYK video, Python DYKUpdateBot should handle it correctly - example 1, example 2
      • If the credit template contains the old name of a user who's since been renamed, the bot will now credit the renamed user - rare
      • Bot won't hang trying to edit protected / salted pages - rare
    • Bot will no longer post to /Errors if it can't find the image / file in the outgoing set
    • Dropped support for {{m-cropped}} and {{c-uploaded}}, Java DYKUpdateBot would replace the set image with the original image in the DYK archives if one of these templates was detected on the file description page - these templates used to be common at DYK, seem to be rare these days
    • Dropped support for {{tall image}}, {{DYK Listen}}, and {{DYK Watch}} as it's been years since they were last used at DYK
    • Code modernization
      • ~100 automated tests to ensure the bot behaves correctly
      • Running on the more maintained Pywikibot framework
      • Interacts with Wikipedia exclusively through API.php instead of the human interface index.php
      • Better security as it leverages OAuth for authentication

As before, I'd expect one or two bugs to be lingering around as we put the new code through its paces. When we're confident it's stable I'll update the code at /Code. Please let me know if you see a bug! Shubinator (talk) 23:17, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Everything looks good so far, updated /Code as well as /Manual. Shubinator (talk) 05:10, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

May untranscluded nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I was busy and had to miss April; now that it's mid-May, I'd appreciate it if you could run the usual untranscluded nominations list.

I also wanted to say thank you for your work in rewriting both DYKHousekeepingBot and DYKUpdateBot—that must have taken a lot of time! I've noticed that DYKHousekeepingBot is much more efficient since the new version was released. The time drift has greatly lessened, from five to six minutes a day before to one minute every eighteen hours or so. (I've always assumed that the bot requeues itself to run 30 minutes from the moment of requeuing, in which case the drift would amount to the time it takes the bot to do a run and requeue.) So far, everything appears to be running smoothly. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:40, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing! Untranscluded noms:
Yeah I took a few days off from work + weeks of weekend and late-night programming to rewrite the bots - I'm glad the results look good! Interesting observation on the time drift (accurate assumption btw), I'd noticed the memory consumption of the Python bots is orders of magnitude lower than the Java bots - wonder if JavaWikiBotFramework had a memory leak. Shubinator (talk) 16:31, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the above noms are from the WikiEd program, and as the classes end, I'll finish them. Over half are closed already. I'd be interested in finding out what caused the Housekeeping bot to go off line this time. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:00, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DYKHousekeepingBot is down[edit]

Shubinator, DYKHousekeepingBot hasn't updated since late yesterday, at 23:12. It would naturally have updated shortly after midnight, since the new day is added at that time, but there were no other additions to the pages until 02:50. It is possible that an edit was made to one of the nominations that screwed things up, though the only such edit I can find in that timeframe is this one; I don't see any issues there, but I could be missing something. Also, the problematic edit might not have been signed and dated. Anyway, please restart the bot if you can. Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:27, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DYKHousekeepingBot back online! The bot's logs say pywikibot.exceptions.NoUsername: Failed OAuth authentication for wikipedia:en: The authorization headers in your request are not valid: Expired timestamp, yours 1621729065, ours 1621729615. Curious - usually the pywikibot framework magically makes OAuth authentication happen. Let's see if this shows up again.
While investigating the above I discovered a separate bug; DYKHousekeepingBot's untranscluded nom functionality was getting confused because User talk:Wrennragsdale didn't exist. Fixed this bug with Special:Diff/1024776516. Shubinator (talk) 01:43, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

New bot function request[edit]

Hi there Shubs, and thank you once again for your invaluable support over the years to the DYK project!

In a recent discussion at DYK talk, users expressed a desire to have a bot send out notifications to nominators when their hooks are promoted to the queue. My question to you is, would it be possible to add that functionality to the existing bot, or failing that, to add a new bot to do the job? And if so, would you be available to do the coding?

Please note that you don't have to do anything immediately, as details are still being worked out and the proposal has yet to be formally adopted. But I figured the next step would be to confirm things with you as there is no point taking this further if for some reason this is not technically possible. Thanks once again, Gatoclass (talk) 03:14, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes to both questions :) I'd lean towards adding this to DYKHousekeepingBot's to-do list as it's not directly tied to the Main Page updates and doesn't require an adminbot. We'd need to go through WP:BRFA again for the new task. There's a bit of discussion on WT:DYK on the wording; it's probably easiest for the DYK community to make a template that the bot will subst onto talk pages - as an example, DYKHousekeepingBot already does this for untranscluded noms by subst'ing Template:DYK nomination needs transcluded. Adding when the nom is scheduled to appear on the Main Page will be a bit tricky for whoever tackles the template, but I believe it's doable - the bot can tell the template which queue # the nom was promoted to, and based on that, template magic can take care of the rest. As for timing, there will be some delay between the nom being promoted into a queue, and the bot delivering talk page notices - I'm curious what's a "good enough" delay here - is within 24 hours good enough? Shubinator (talk) 06:59, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Shubs :)
Yes, I think within 24 hours would be acceptable - it would still give users 2 1/2 days plus to see the notification on the 12-hour cycle, which should be more than sufficient in most cases. And given that most hook edits in the queue probably occur within the first few hours after promotion, it might arguably be better to have a short delay before the notifications are distributed anyway.
Anyhow, as I said, you don't need to do anything right now as we still need to establish the wording and conduct an RFC or at least a comprehensive straw poll to ensure the idea has consensus. I'll let you know when we're ready to take the next step. Cheers, and thanks once again, Gatoclass (talk) 09:11, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good :) Another thought I had, for the talk page message wording, it would be good to include a way for the user to opt out of future "your nom has been promoted to the queue" messages. For example adding a specific opt-out template to their talk page, or adding their username to an opt-out list. Shubinator (talk) 00:17, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2021).

Administrator changes

added Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless
removed Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:46, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Category:DYK videos has been nominated for deletion[edit]

Category:DYK videos 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. Gonnym (talk) 09:06, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

July untranscluded nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I hope you're having a good summer so far and all is well with you. I was hoping you could generate a new list of untranscluded nominations. The last one on the mid-May list is still around, though I'm hoping to take care of it within the week; it would be useful to find out what others have joined it in an end-of-the-semester rush around the end of May. Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:36, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's been a blazing summer so far, hope you're doing well! Untranscluded noms:
In addition I found a new bucket, creating a new subsection to discuss those... Shubinator (talk) 20:29, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Malformed noms[edit]

As part of the discussions to move DYK nominations out of the Template namespace, I found a bunch of nominations in a bad state. Untranscluded noms are validly formatted nominations, which is how we can find them based on category. This new set is what I'm calling "malformed noms", and they've escaped our notice so far because they're not validly formatted and therefore aren't in Category:Pending DYK nominations. DYKHousekeepingBot doesn't alert nominators on these, though at a technical level it's doable. The list below is ~equivalent to this human search query: [1]. Without further ado, malformed noms:

Shubinator (talk) 20:29, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Shubinator, my goodness! It's going to take me a while to go through all of these malformed ones. I see what you mean by "malformed noms", too—I've checked the first three, the last, and one in the middle, and requested speedy deletion of the third, the last, and the middle one. Unless we find any from the last couple of months, I think we need to end up deleting most of them, though the first on the list was a combination DYK nomination and article; a different author properly created the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation article about a year later. Do you have any suggestion on what to do with the previous text? Is there a way to add it/merge it to the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation history, while retaining the later version of the article? BlueMoonset (talk) 04:49, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the list is a doozy! It looks like nearly every sentence in the Template:Did you know nominations/China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) also exists in the current article, so I'm not sure there's much to gain from trying to restore parts of it. And unfortunately I don't think it's possible to "merge" the two revision histories. Shubinator (talk) 21:11, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible for admins to merge page histories, although this specific situation is not a good candidate for it IMO * Pppery * it has begun... 22:54, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, right, thanks Pppery :) Yeah I'd lean towards deleting Template:Did you know nominations/China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF). Shubinator (talk) 00:23, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Shubinator, would you be willing to delete it, then, since you're an admin? That would be much easier than me putting in a G6, giving the history, and pointing back to this discussion with Pppery. Let me know if not. Many thanks. I've just put in for the remaining deletions aside from this one; you'll know everything has gone through when the only non-red link is the draftified Harpreet Singh Dhandwar... BlueMoonset (talk) 20:51, 10 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Done :) Shubinator (talk) 04:38, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
  • An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.

Technical news

  • IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:27, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

API error[edit]

Hi, attempting to use DYKcheck on History of the Jews in Odessa produces an API error. It highlights the prose and displays prose size and creation info, then stops, and the error message pops up. Everything works fine on various other articles I've tested. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 21:56, 29 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hm my hunch is this is due to the revision deletion in the history of that article. I can't repro the bug, which would make sense as DYKcheck can access the text of those revisions when executing on my account. Shubinator (talk) 00:55, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I tried it on some articles with revdels and didn't always get the error, but that's presumably because DYKcheck doesn't inspect every edit. I did see the problem on Galana Kulalu Project and American School Hong Kong. (The last one, unlike the other two, finishes up after I clear the error dialog.) So, I guess the question is... is it worth the effort (and a little slowdown) to check for this rare issue on every iteration? MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 05:29, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think I've addressed this with Special:Diff/1036357840, take it for a spin and let me know :) You may need to purge your browser cache to load the latest version of the script. Shubinator (talk) 02:03, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
All of my test cases work fine now. Thanks for the speedy fix! MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 02:36, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to help :) Thanks for the bug report! Shubinator (talk) 15:17, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.

Technical news

  • Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:19, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

August untranscluded nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I hope you're well and having a good summer. I was wondering whether you could make new versions of both untranscluded and malformed nominations. There's one left over from the latter that I never did anything about (well, I tried, but the Speedy was rejected, so at some point I'm going to format it properly and then close it as too far out of date, not to mention never transcluded). Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:24, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's been a hot summer, that's for sure! Untranscluded noms:
Malformed noms:
Shubinator (talk) 00:42, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for both lists, and for pointing out the correctly formatted nom for the malformed one at the end. I've taken care of it, and finally taken care of the other malformed one, which is the one I mentioned as being left over. Oddly, the very first untranscluded nom was much the same thing and the first untranscluded nom: in that case, two nom pages had been created, and the other one had been reviewed and passsed, so I've put the one here up for speedy deletion, along with the malformed one and a couple of other untranscluded ones. These are all taken care of except for the one that just got their non-transclusion notice within the past day, and another where I've asked whether the nominator still wants to proceed and if they need help. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:56, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2021).

Administrator changes

readded Jake Wartenberg
removed Emperor • Viridian Bovary
renamed Ashleyyoursmile → Viridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the mediawiki page.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

September untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I trust all is well with you. It's hard to believe it's been over a month since I last made this request: I was hoping you could make new versions of both untranscluded and malformed nominations so I could do the usual checks and cleanup. Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:19, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing! Untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms :) Shubinator (talk) 18:49, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DYKHousekeepingBot appears to be down[edit]

Shubinator, the usual changes were made to the DYK nominations page at 00:00, but the bot did not update the page at 00:08 or 09, or indeed any time over the next two hours (and there have been other additions and changes since). I can't see anything that should cause an error (though they're easy to miss), and a couple of minor corrections don't appear to have stimulated the bot to run, so my tentative conclusion is that it's down. Next time you're around, please check to see whether it has run since I've posted this, and if not, try to restart it. The DYKUpdateBot ran at midnight as per usual, so whatever it is didn't affect both bots. Many thanks! BlueMoonset (talk) 02:12, 24 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, DYKHousekeepingBot was having trouble parsing the noms page due to a change in the HTML produced by Mediawiki. Fixed with Special:Diff/1046122443 :) Shubinator (talk) 02:28, 24 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
  • Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
  • The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

  • Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
  • The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:05, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bot edit conflict[edit]

Hi. This happened today. I know that anticipating every possible problem and deciding how to respond is very difficult. When the bot couldn't clear the Queue, shouldn't it have still gone on to increment the pointer, and annotate the image file (which I took care of in this case)? Also, shouldn't it have noted the issue on its Errors page? MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 02:28, 5 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah after the Python rewrite, DYKUpdateBot's handling of edit conflicts isn't as great. Currently, it should handle edit conflicts on the user talk credits and the rare post to WT:DYK. In pretty much all other situations, the bot will crash if it hits an edit conflict. It's been 5 months since the Python rewrite, these edit conflicts seem to be relatively rare. On the question about the bot continuing, if an adminbot is in an unknown state, I'd much rather it stop working until a human intervenes, rather than continue on. Therefore, ignoring the edit conflict and continuing isn't a great option, instead we'd choose to handle the edit conflict with the bot reloading the page and reapplying the edit. Shubinator (talk) 06:48, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DYK Bot did not update[edit]

@Shubinator, Mandarax, and BlueMoonset: I don't have time to deal with this myself, but the bot failed to update DYK. @Hog Farm: I see your note at WP:ERRORS. The instructions to do it manually are at Wikipedia:Did you know/Admin instructions#Manually_posting_the_new_update_(if_the_bot_is_down) if you want to give it a shot. — Maile (talk) 01:54, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Maile: - I've taken a crack at this. Would someone please check to make sure that I did #5 and #10 correctly? It's a work night for me, so I don't have the chance to do #11 myself, either. Hog Farm Talk 04:41, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
DYKUpdateBot is back online :) Thanks everyone for letting me know, and pulling together for the manual update! Shubinator (talk) 06:49, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DYKHousekeepingBot is giving flawed count[edit]

Shubinator, the table produced on the DYK hook count page is giving a flawed count: at the moment it's 5 Hooks and 5 Verified too high. It seems to give these extra five to the final date on the Approved page in the Approved section. Here's the difference between the 02:34 and 03:04 edits on the page, which shows the extra five to both being moved from October 17 to October 18. I doubt it's coincidence that at 03:00, the first October 18 approved hook moved from the nomination to the approved page. (I did check all of the other dates on the page, plus all changes from midnight to the present, and they match the table.)

Indeed, it seems likely that what's happening is that the bot is going past the end of the "Approved nominations" section and counting all the nominations in the Special occasion section (currently numbering five hooks, all approved), which it didn't used to do—it appears to do so now, and add them to the final date on the Approved page, even though they have nothing to do with that particular date.

Can you please update the bot so it stops counting on the Approved page as soon as it comes to the second-level "Special occasion holding area" header, which indicates that the second-level "Approved nominations" section has ended? That would fix things, and ensure our count is accurate. Once a nomination goes into the "Special occasion holding area" it's effectively off the books, since it's a nomination that we cannot promote whenever we want. (The same is also true of April Fools' Day hooks, which are kept on another page entirely once they've been approved.)

Thank you very much! Hope all is well with you. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:44, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed! Thanks for the precise bug report, made it very easy to pinpoint the bug. Bug was likely introduced on the same Mediawiki update that triggered #DYKHousekeepingBot appears to be down as it's also due to a change in the HTML produced by Mediawiki. Shubinator (talk) 00:46, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DYK Bot did not update[edit]

@Shubinator, Mandarax, and BlueMoonset: The update bot failed to update and seems to have not run for almost 12 hours. I don't see any error message from the bot. — Maile (talk) 00:19, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Shubinator, please note that a manual update was done shortly after midnight. Before you restart DYKUpdateBot, please be sure that Template:Did you know/Next update/Time is updated to be 2021-10-22T00:00:00Z. Otherwise, there's going to be an immediate update of the main page, and we don't want one until 12:00 UTC at the earliest. Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:30, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping, DYKUpdateBot is back online! Unclear what happened, the logs appear to indicate an internal state issue with pywikibot causing the bot to crash. Shubinator (talk) 05:40, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2021 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:21, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).

Administrator changes

removed 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. (T284642)
  • 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. (T293866)

Arbitration


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

Small function request[edit]

Hi! I was thinking that, since DYKHousekeepingBot keeps track of the number of approved hooks, that it could leave a message at WT:DYK whenever we drop below 60 or go above 120, using the DYK admins template to ping admins and ask them to change the DYKUpdateBot value between midnight and noon UTC. (It should also stipulate that a human should give the all-clear on special occasion hooks before an admin makes the change). I thought it'd be helpful—thanks in advance! theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/she?) 09:30, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi :) I'd prefer humans take the initiative for this kind of decision, instead of following judgment calls made by bot. For example, the current discussion about the adjusting the limits is great, and those kinds of conversations happen less frequently the more "baked in" a given policy is. And there's a case to be made DYK should go to 18 hours per set (or more generally, try to find a steady state that doesn't need frequent adjustment). Shubinator (talk) 00:49, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's fair, i see where you're coming from :) cheers! theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/she?) 03:14, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled[edit]

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)

Bots Newsletter, December 2021[edit]

Bots Newsletter, December 2021
BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

  • Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Green checkmarkY 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (Dark red X symbolN2 3 denied, Blue question mark? 3 withdrawn, and Expired 2 expired).

September 2019

Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!
  • Green checkmarkY Monkbot 16, DannyS712 bot 60, Ahechtbot 6, PearBOT 3, Qbugbot 3 · Dark red X symbolN2 DannyS712 bot 5, PkbwcgsBot 24 · Blue question mark? DannyS712 bot 61, TheSandBot 4
  • TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebrox noted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
  • Article-measuring contest resumed: The list of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected by GreenC following a bot request.

October 2019

November 2019

Now you're thinking with portals.

December 2019

In the next issue of Bots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

  • What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
  • What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
  • Will reFill ever get fixed?
  • What's up with ListeriaBot, anyway?
  • Python 3.4 deprecation? In my PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

DYK bot coordination[edit]

Hi Shub, saw your post on WT:DYK and wanted to just repost my reply. I plan to deploy WugBot's updates between Dec 20 and 22, but let me know if you need more time to make your changes. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:11, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me :) Shubinator (talk) 01:36, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Implemented DYKHousekeepingBot support for either top or bottom placement with Special:Diff/1059709544 :) Shubinator (talk) 03:02, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

December untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I hope you are well and looking forward to the New Year. It's been three months since I last requested this dual list, and was hoping you might be able to provide a new one when you get a chance. Many thanks! BlueMoonset (talk) 04:08, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, should be a fun New Year! Sure thing, untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms :) Happy Holidays! Shubinator (talk) 01:10, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Shubinator. First pass completed, with three pages deleted outright, a couple closed, a couple restored to the DYK approved page (and already promoted to prep), and queries made on the rest. Glad that we escaped malformed noms this time. Happy Holidays! BlueMoonset (talk) 02:58, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

EasyWikiDev[edit]

Hi! I'm User:Ed6767. I'm probably best known for founding and developing Wikipedia:RedWarn, which is now one of the most used user scripts on the English Wikipedia. I couldn't help but notice that you also develop user scripts, so I was wondering if I could ask you to try and give me feedback on my new tool called EasyWikiDev. It's a new way to develop user scripts quickly and easily using Visual Studio Code, and only takes a few minutes to set up and install on your computer, whilst saving you the headache of constantly having to save edits and reload the page for every single change to your script you'd like to test. EasyWikiDev makes it so you can develop your script locally, on your own computer, and only publish the changes to your users when you are ready to - and unlike other solutions, EasyWikiDev reloads the page right away when you make a change, so you always see the latest version of your script. Plus, by using Visual Studio Code, you have access to some of the most extensive and helpful extensions and tools available to developers right now.

If you're interested, you can find the GitHub repository here and a video tutorial that shows both how to set up EasyWikiDev and how to use it (which you should watch) here. When you have tried it and would like to give feedback, or just need help, please let me know by pinging me - you'd play a big part in my goal to make user script development easier for all Wikipedians. Thanks again for your consideration, ✨ Ed talk! ✨ 12:39, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The functionaries email list (functionaries-en@lists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:25, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How we will see unregistered users[edit]

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users[edit]

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:15, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Did DYKUpdateBot skip a credit?[edit]

Hi Shubinator, hope you're doing well. The DYK for Václav Jírů is currently on the Main Page – it was a draft created by User:Possibly that I nominated after learning that he passed away. Anyways, it looks like DYKUpdateBot only put a credit on my talk page and not his, though there were two DYKmake credits [2]. Reporting because it seems like a possible bug, do you know what might have caused this? Many thanks for all your DYK-related assistance. DanCherek (talk) 15:06, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, I see that someone put a {{nobots}} tag on his talk page after his death. That explains it! DanCherek (talk) 15:17, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

January untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I've finally closed the last of those on the December list, and was wondering whether you could do one for January. Thank you very much, and I hope all is well with you. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:03, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year, and sure! Untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms :) Shubinator (talk) 02:13, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Shubinator. I hope you're having a Happy New Year as well. I think this was the quickest I ever cleared a list: I saw this about ten minutes ago, and discovered that both of these were nominations pulled from prep: the first untranscluded nom could be closed because its AfD had been closed as "merge" with another article, and the second had been reapproved and repromoted to prep. Glad that we're still avoiding malformed noms. Look for me around the last week of February! BlueMoonset (talk) 22:01, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Shubinator, it's been another month. Any chance at another list soon? Hope all continues well. Thank you! BlueMoonset (talk) 16:37, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Of course :) Untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms :) Shubinator (talk) 01:05, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Shubinator. This makes two months in a row where there were only two untranscluded noms (and no malformed ones), and both were due to having been pulled from prep, reopened, but not added back to the Nominations page. It may have taken even less time to fix these two than the two last month. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:13, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bots Newsletter, January 2022[edit]

Bots Newsletter, January 2022
BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.

Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.

Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Green checkmarkY 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with Dark red X symbolN2 8 denied, Blue question mark? 2 withdrawn, and Expired 2 expired).

January 2020

A python
A python
A python
0.4 pythons
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.

February 2020

Speaking of WikiProject Molecular Biology, Listeria went wild in February

March 2020

April 2020

Listeria being examined

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots

June 2020

A partial block averted at the eleventh hour for the robot that makes Legos

Conclusion

  • What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?
  • Will Citation bot ever be set free to roam the project?
  • What's the deal with all those book links that InternetArchiveBot is adding to articles?
  • Should we keep using Gerrit for MediaWiki?
  • What if we had a day for bots to make cosmetic edits?

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the February 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
  • The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lycorma imperialis missed[edit]

@Shubinator: Looks like DYKBot missed one. Lycorma imperialis, a page that was on the DYK section of the front page on Feb 27th didn't have its talk page updated following the end of the day.

See Wikipedia:Recent additions, Cheer, Etriusus 00:22, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reaching out! DYKUpdateBot applies article talk and user talk templates based on the credit templates in each queue when it was promoted to the Main Page. Flipping back through the edits, queue 7 at the time did not contain a credit template for Lycorma imperialis, therefore DYKUpdateBot didn't apply templates for the DYK. Looks like the credit template didn't make it into the prep area when the nom was promoted into a set; tagging theleekycauldron as fyi :) Shubinator (talk) 01:58, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
my mistake, sorry! I've been wanting to get a bot of my own up and running forever, credit checks would be a good thing to have... theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 02:25, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Its all good, I'll manually add the template in on the talk page. If a bot can do it, my monkey brain can probably figure it out given the time. If nothing else, it'll be a fun application of the Infinite monkey theorem. Etriusus 03:29, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. And nothing broke, somehow. Etriusus 03:33, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

DYKUpdateBot missed an update[edit]

Shubinator, you've just been pinged from WT:DYK; the bot missed the midnight update. Here's hoping you see this and can get it fixed, since we're going to two-sets-a-day tonight, which means manual updates every 12 hours unless you can fix it tonight.

The good news is that DYKHousekeepingBot has continued running without any issues, so it's only a DYKUpdateBot issue.

Thanks for whatever you can do to get us back on track! BlueMoonset (talk) 01:31, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the talk page ping! Replied over at WT:DYK :) Shubinator (talk) 02:35, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

End-of-March untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, it's been over five weeks; I was hoping you could come up with a new list for me. Not that I'm expecting much in the way of malformed, since we haven't had any for a while, but I'm willing to be surprised on that score. Hope you are well. Thank you very much! BlueMoonset (talk) 18:09, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, that's a first - no untranscluded or malformed noms! I was so surprised I double-checked the code was still working :) Shubinator (talk) 01:03, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How odd! On the other hand, it's still relatively early in the spring semester for student DYK submissions to start, and those are the ones that most usually aren't transcribed. If an early May list has the same result, then I'll be flabbergasted. (I doubt it's a risk, though.) Thanks again for checking! BlueMoonset (talk) 03:56, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights. This means that those in the Researcher user group and Checkusers who are not administrators can now access Special:RevisionDelete. The users able to view the special page after this change are the 3 users in the Researcher group, as there are currently no checkusers who are not already administrators. (T301928)
  • When viewing deleted revisions or diffs on Special:Undelete a back link to the undelete page for the associated page is now present. (T284114)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:14, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New administrator activity requirement[edit]

The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.

Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:

  1. Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
  2. Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period

Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.

22:53, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Bots migrated to Toolforge Kubernetes[edit]

Toolforge is in the process of deprecating one version of their operating system (Debian 9.x Stretch) and upgrading to a newer version (Debian 10.x Buster), more details here. They're also signaling they'd like to deprecate the existing grid and move 100% to Kubernetes, so while I was tinkering around, I migrated both DYKUpdateBot and DYKHousekeepingBot over to Kubernetes. This shouldn't result in any noticeable differences for either bot. And it comes with a mini-feature: y'all can see if the bots are running by visiting the Toolforge Kubernetes status website. Normally it should look the way it does now, with two running jobs. Hopefully the status website will come in handy for troubleshooting :) Have a great weekend everyone! Shubinator (talk) 01:17, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page). Hello my friend, I need your help to edit offensive information or delete a negative page and work on a new correct page I am ready for anything you ask because the topic is very important. I wait for you reply all the respect. Ahmad alajlani (talk) 18:50, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

https://wiki.alquds.edu/?query=American_University_of_Malta?wprov=sfti1

Beginning of May untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, even though we struck out last month—neither an untranscluded nor malformed nomination to be found—I suspect there will be better pickings this month because we're getting closer to the end of the spring semester; we already have one DYK nominated and transcluded but abandoned and with the class having ended over the weekend. It seems likely that there are others that will have been nominated for a class that has already ended, but were never transcluded. Please let me know what you find, if anything. Many thanks! BlueMoonset (talk) 04:20, 2 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sure! Untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms :) Happy May! Shubinator (talk) 00:36, 3 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much! Oddly, both of the untranscluded ones this time were nominations that had been closed, deleted by the bot, and then reopened, but without being replaced at either the Nominations or Approved pages. No school-related noms at all, though maybe they'll be around next month. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:40, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:34, 9 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Did you know/DYK hook count[edit]

Something went wrong. —Kusma (talk) 10:00, 30 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's seem that it updates the nomination correctly as usual but it sets all the approved ones to zero. Should we temporary disable the bot to update manually as it would probably set to zero again? Thingofme (talk) 14:36, 30 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The bot also has the (imo more important) task of finding untranscluded noms, so I do not want to block it. —Kusma (talk) 15:50, 30 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Shubinator, the Special occasion holding area moved earlier today, which is doubtless causing problems with the bot. Can you please check to see why the fix you made to handle a Special occasion holding area at various spots on the page has not worked as expected. I'll see if there's something obvious in the move that has caused the problem, but it'll probably be up to you to figure out a fix. Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:54, 30 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Shubinator, DYKHousekeepingBot is fine. Sorry for the false alarm. Further investigation shows that the Approved page was corrupted over time by an updated WugBot, so that the "==Approved nominations==" was no longer on its own line, but tacked onto the final line of the Special occasion section. It took eight hours for the corruption to occur, and up until then, DYKHousekeepingBot worked just as it ought with the Special occasion section up top. For now, the SOHA section has been moved back to the bottom. I'm not sure how long it will take for WugBot to be fixed; if you can keep your eyes open, that will be great, but I think we'll be all set once Wugapodes perfects his update. Thanks for all you do for DYK! BlueMoonset (talk) 21:32, 30 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense, thanks for pinpointing the problem! Glad it's sorted out :) Shubinator (talk) 05:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
  • The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Beginning of June untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

It's been a whole month since last wrote about this list. Not that I'm expect any malformed noms, but there will likely be untranscluded ones with the semester only recently over. In any event, it would be good to see what needs attention, and attend to it. ;-) Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:53, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just the one untranscluded nom this go around: Template:Did you know nominations/Tenta, Cyprus :) Shubinator (talk) 01:22, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bielefelder Kinderchor[edit]

As explained in an edit summary, I made a mistake when I added a second nomination for Bielefelder Kinderchor to the nomination of Friedrich Oberschelp (where it began as a red link), forgetting the credit. Can my mistake be repaired? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:43, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused, what's to fix? Talk:Bielefelder Kinderchor shows a DYK credit for 3 June 2022, when the hook appeared on the Main Page. What's the problem we're trying to address? Shubinator (talk) 04:05, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

DYKHousekeepingBot needs an update[edit]

DYKHousekeepingBot's "Incomplete DYK nomination" links to Template talk:Did you know#How to post a new nomination and refers to step 3 of that section. However it seems like that section no longer exists, so the link doesn't direct you to the manual nomination instructions (which also don't seem to exist any more). This might warrant an update so that the link points to the correct destination. 5225C (talk • contributions) 14:49, 29 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the bug report! The content of the talk page message actually comes from Template:DYK nomination needs transcluded, feel free to edit the template directly :) Shubinator (talk) 04:10, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated it. Thanks again, 5225C for the report, and Shubinator for pointing out what needed updating. I just substituted a permalink to what the instructions used to say; anybody should, of course, feel free to otherwise edit it. But its usage should be rare these days, since the nomination script automatically posts the noms.  MANdARAX  XAЯAbИAM  04:46, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Shubinator, DYKHousekeepingBot has gone on strike. Its last update was at 11:17, 30 June 2022 (UTC), and there have been a number of new DYK nominations and approvals in the 13 hours since then, plus it's now 1 July 2022 with the new date section added to the Nominations page and that update isn't reflected yet either. I hope you can get the bot working again soon! Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:20, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Restarted the bot :) Shubinator (talk) 05:08, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. There seems to be something wrong with the results, however; the bot doesn't seem to be reading data from the Approved page. I can't see anything that would keep it from doing so, but it may be something not obvious. Thanks for taking a look. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:08, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed, should be working properly now :) Looks like a change to how Mediawiki software rendered the page confused the bot. Shubinator (talk) 05:01, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. I hope it wasn't a difficult fix to track down. Since it's the beginning of July, do you think you could post a new untranscluded/malformed nominations list? Thanks again. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:57, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, added a new section below :) Shubinator (talk) 21:04, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

July 2022 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Untranscluded noms:

No malformed noms :) Shubinator (talk) 21:04, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).

Technical news

  • user_global_editcount is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

DYKUpdateBot 22 July[edit]

Hi there, just to let you know that DYKUpdateBot is down. It gave all the credits 12 hours ago but didn't wake to do the update that was due 26 minutes ago. I've done everything manually. Hope you can revive that good bot! Schwede66 00:27, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Already revived :) Shubinator (talk) 00:30, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The bot only performed three steps of the update before apparently dying.  MANdARAX  XAЯAbИAM  15:42, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, in case you hadn't noticed, on the last update the bot performed before this one, it completed everything except image file tagging.  MANdARAX  XAЯAbИAM  17:16, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Replied over at Special:Permalink/1099829213#Incomplete update at noon today; thanks for dropping a note on my talk page, I wouldn't have noticed until a fair bit later otherwise :) Shubinator (talk) 20:16, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry to bother you, but I think the bot may be down yet again. I think the Toolforge status indicates that DYKUpdateBot is not active. I sincerely apologize for disturbing you if I've misinterpreted.  MANdARAX  XAЯAbИAM  21:51, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The bot didn't run at midnight, so it is likely hors de combat. Shubinator, it would be great if you could check on it around the times of the next runs if you're around: we're currently on a twice-a-day schedule, 00:00 and 12:00 UTC. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:32, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Started the bot again, it started the update, and crashed on the credits again :'( Troubleshooting, will add updates to the WT:DYK conversation. Shubinator (talk) 01:57, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for keeping this in your eye, and restarting the bot so quickly. Hope all's well with you, if not with pywikibot... BlueMoonset (talk) 02:31, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Haha this week's a quiet one for me, so it's a good time for this kind of thing to crop up :) Shubinator (talk) 18:03, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

August 2022 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, any chance of a new untranscluded/malformed list, even though it's likely to be only untranscluded ones based on the past several months? It would be nice to see what's out there. We're down to 127 transcluded nominations as I write this; it'll be interesting to see whether the untranscluded number is proportionately low or fairly normal. Thank you very much! BlueMoonset (talk) 03:05, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing :) Untranscluded noms:
Malformed noms:
Shubinator (talk) 05:22, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Shubinator. The odd thing about the three untranscluded noms is that they had originally been transcluded, but when they were closed the closure was done manually without subst-ing the DYKsubpage template, which is why they all showed up when you checked. I've reclosed them properly, after which I replaced my closure info with the name, date, and time of the original closure attempt, so all three should now be set. I just need to check with the original nominator of the malformed nom (which is a file with only a hook!) to see whether they're still interested, and pointing out an error in their proposed hook if they wish to continue. If they want, I'll put together a proper template and include the hook in it, and then transclude it. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:31, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).

Administrator changes

readded Valereee
removed Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
  • An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.

Technical news

  • The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
  • Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)

Arbitration

  • The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

  • You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
  • Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
  • Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).

Guideline and policy news

  • A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
  • An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
  • The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

  • The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
  • Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:13, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

archiving hooks[edit]

hello, Shubinator! there is currently a discussion here about a proposal for changing how DYKUpdateBot archives hooks. i thought i might leave you a message on your talk page about it, as your user page suggests that it is your preferred method of contact. dying (talk) 15:28, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Replied there. Shubinator (talk) 01:27, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
thanks, Shubinator! i have posted a response. apologies for the delay. my response was somewhat longer than usual. dying (talk) 22:40, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

About that edit conflict[edit]

Hi, thanks for cleaning up after the bot's edit conflict and saving me from having to explain what to do. For future reference, there's something I wasn't clear about after the last such issue. When you're not around, does the bot recover after such problems and complete the next update all on its own, or do you have to intervene?  MANdARAX  XAЯAbИAM  00:58, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Haha yeah DYKUpdateBot is built to handle edit conflicts on user talk pages, not so much in the queues. DYKUpdateBot generally doesn't recover after a crash like that, and I'm surprised the bot's process restarted - I'm guessing this has something to do with the switch to the Toolforge's Kubernetes implementation, and the bot may be incorrectly configured. On my to-do list to dig deeper. Shubinator (talk) 01:26, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

DYK check appears to not be working correctly[edit]

DYK check says that Reconstructing Womanhood is 4665 characters of prose size, but the page size tool says 2978 characters of prose. SL93 (talk) 23:01, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So no issue? I only have had a problem with this article. SL93 (talk) 00:45, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately I haven't had much time to devote to DYKcheck recently; my on-wiki attention has been focused on DYKHousekeepingBot and DYKUpdateBot. Will note this down for when I circle back to DYKcheck though! Shubinator (talk) 01:02, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

September 2022 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, it would be great if you could produce a new list now that September is a third gone. I have no idea how many you might find, but it's probably a good idea to get a list of what's out there and get things straightened out. Many thanks as always for your help. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:11, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just the one this time around :) Untranscluded noms:
Shubinator (talk) 02:24, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

DYKHousekeepingBot error for April Fools holding?[edit]

Greetings Shubinator,

I was just informed by DYKHousekeepingBot that this nomination was "incomplete". Theleekycauldron told me to inform you here, as it might have to do with her moving the nomination page to the Special holding area. –LordPeterII (talk) 20:58, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch! Yeah, looks like this bug is due to Special:Diff/1095410625 moving the page; I've fixed it with Special:Diff/1113544844 :) Shubinator (talk) 01:08, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Update on this: I've lowercased the "Did you know", so you may want to update the bot once more theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:36, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed up with Special:Diff/1137536235, thanks for letting me know! Shubinator (talk) 04:09, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:43, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:23, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

November 2022 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, it's been nearly two months since I last asked: please run the untranscluded/malformed nominations list when you get a chance. Thank you very much. Hope you're well! BlueMoonset (talk) 15:20, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sure! Untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms :) Shubinator (talk) 07:28, 11 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Shubinator, many thanks. Sorry this post is so long in coming—I've been busy IRL and forgot this was waiting for me until tonight. The nom is now properly transcluded. BlueMoonset (talk) 07:24, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No worries, thanks for diligently tending to these for years on end! Shubinator (talk) 05:41, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:39, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2022[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).

CheckUser changes

removed TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

removed TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:44, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Holidays[edit]

Happy Holidays
Hello, I wish you the very best during the holidays. And I hope you have a very happy 2023! Bruxton (talk) 20:18, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, happy holidays 🦌 and best wishes for 2023 for you as well! Shubinator (talk) 05:20, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

December 2022 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I hope you've been having a very happy holiday season.

I was hoping you could generate a new untranscluded/malformed nominations list. It's been over a month since the last one, and all of the Fall classes will be over, so if there are any DYK noms untranscluded from them, plus any pulled from prep and then never restored to the noms page, now would be a great time to find out. Thank you very much! BlueMoonset (talk) 03:29, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing! Untranscluded noms:
Malformed noms:
Happy holidays, don't work too hard today 😉 Shubinator (talk) 05:22, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I waited until the next day UTC. 😉
Nice mix this time: the malformed nom was a duplicate DYK nom that was replaced by a line saying that it was a duplicate (the original nom had already been approved and moved to prep), so I put in a speedy deletion which has already gone through. Of the untranscluded ones, there was one where the nominator, in a WikiEd course asked for help on the DYK nom talk page, which I trust no one saw until I did today; one had been a previously closed nom that was reopened (but not retranscluded) when the underlying article passed at GA; one was pulled from prep due to a move discussion but not retranscluded; one was a completely ineligible nomination which I have marked with the "X" and will be closing in a day or two; and one is just a simple failure to transclude that I've queried on the nominator's talk page. Thank you for sending them along. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:19, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
  • Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
  • Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
  • Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:38, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

February 2023 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I was hoping you could make another of your special lists so I can try to pick up what has dropped out of site and see that it meets its proper destiny. Thank you very much, and I hope you're having a happy 2023. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:20, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing! Untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms. It's been a busy busy 2023 so far :) Shubinator (talk) 04:11, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. The first was transcluded to the Approved page and has already been promoted to prep; the second is once again on the Nominations page and will hopefully be seen by more people. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:22, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:20, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

March 2023 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, another month has passed, so I was hoping you could make another of your special lists for me to peruse and deal with as needed. Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:52, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Of course! Just ran the script, it says 0 untranscluded noms, 0 malformed noms. Shubinator (talk) 08:01, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Goodness! I think that's the first time that's happened. I almost feel bereft! Thank you very much for checking. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:22, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Both DYK bots are down[edit]

Shubinator, both DYKUpdateBot and DYKHousekeepingBot are down. The former failed to do an update at midnight, a little over five hours ago (we're doing one main page update per day at the moment); the latter was last heard from at 15:56, 28 March 2023 (UTC). According to one person posting at WT:DYK, There was some routine maintenance earlier today [Tuesday] which apparently had some unexpected consequences, but that would have been well before 15:56, so I don't know what it was that might have taken out your bots. A manual main-page update was done; you might want to make sure everything was set up properly for the bot, since this was a first-time manual updater.

I hope this is easy to fix and for you to get the bots back up and running. Thanks for whatever you can do! BlueMoonset (talk) 05:07, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Added an update over at WT:DYK :) Shubinator (talk) 11:31, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:11, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

April 2023 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I've given it an extra couple of weeks this time, since early March was such a bust, but I thought I should request a new untranscluded/malformed list before things get excessively busy for me IRL. Thank you very much! BlueMoonset (talk) 03:51, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Same as before, 0 untranscluded or malformed noms. I double-checked the logic and it looks good; it's correctly finding pending noms, and subtracting out the transcluded pages, leaving an empty set. Shubinator (talk) 04:22, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

HELP[edit]

@Shubinator Hi, we have DYK similar to enwiki on my wiki. I am sysop there. May you please add the DYKUpdateBot there? It will be helpful. My wiki is tumwiki. Thanks. Tumbuka Arch★★★ 10:00, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! At a glance it doesn't look like tumwiki's DYK section is being updated frequently? I would recommend doing manual updates to get the flywheel going. After there's a regular cadence of updates & engaged editors, feel free to snag the code over at User:DYKUpdateBot/Code to run an equivalent bot at tumwiki. Hope this helps! Shubinator (talk) 03:46, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – June 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
  • As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

  • Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

  • The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

June 2023 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, it's been two months since my last request—will this be three in a row for an empty list, or will you have any lost ones for me to resurrect? Hope all is well, and the weather is not too awful where you are. Thank you for whatever you turn up (or even if there's nothing for me once again). BlueMoonset (talk) 02:24, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yup the script says no untranscluded or malformed noms :) In case there's a bug, I double-checked the various nominations that DYKHousekeepingBot has flagged as untranscluded in May and June (by looking for the bot's "User talk" namespace edits), and sure enough, all 4 have been resolved one way or the other. Life's been busy on my end, but when isn't it? :) Hope you're doing well! Shubinator (talk) 04:18, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for checking, even if there was still nothing there. Come to think of it, I helped in resolving at least a couple of those untranscluded ones the bot noted after they were pointed out on the WT:DYK page, so I guess it's partly my own fault there isn't anything further to do at the moment. We don't seem to have had the usual glut of Wiki-ed untranscluded noms this year, which is a relief. All is well here; thanks for asking. Busy with me, too, but under control. I may ask you to check again in August, but not before then. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:16, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good, enjoy the rest of the summer! Shubinator (talk) 06:50, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

added Novem Linguae
removed

Bureaucrat changes

removed MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

DYKHousekeepingBot has lost all the approved noms[edit]

Shubinator, DYKHousekeepingBot is sudden registering zero approved nominations, though it hasn't lost track of the fact that they are nominations: in the 13:28, 10 July 2023 edit, all of the numbers in the "# Verified" column disappeared and the total became 0, while the "# of Hooks" column stayed at 272 from the previous edit at 12:28 that same day.

Please take a look and see what you can discover; I don't see any obvious edits to the Approved or regular nomination pages, which means it could be something within one of the transcluded templates, or a more subtle change to something that the bot uses to determine a final tick. Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:31, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like Mediawiki HTML changed again, the DYK approve / decline images are showing up a bit differently in HTML than they used to, and that was throwing off the bot. Fixed with Special:Diff/1164974073 :) Thanks for flagging! Shubinator (talk) 06:49, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, and shame on them. I thought it might have something to do with recognizing the actual tick symbols, but couldn't imagine what it might be. Good thing I stopped looking after checking the Approved page; I'd never have found it. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:40, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Pages with a missing DYK entry[edit]

Would there be a way for DYKUpdateBot to fetch the DYK's information for those articles? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:20, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

At a glance it doesn't look like DYKUpdateBot's existing code can easily extend to this use case. That said, for someone building a new bot, feel free to peruse populate_hooks_and_file, that code matches up DYK articles with their hooks. Shubinator (talk) 00:54, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
MajavahBot 4 was approved for this a couple of years back. That fixed the vast majority of pages in that category, and I could certainly re-visit that and see if the remaining ones can be fixed too. Taavi (talk!) 08:24, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Taavi: please do! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:41, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I got around 80 more pages fixed relatively easily. The rest are going to take some more effort, as it's just the edge cases remaining. (And for some of the articles, I'm not able to find any traces of a DYK appearance at all.) Taavi (talk!) 10:58, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

added Firefangledfeathers
removed

Interface administrator changes

added Novem Linguae

Technical news

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
  • A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

  • Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

September 2023 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, it's been over two months since my last request—will this be four in a row for an empty list, or will the summer have finally created lost ones for me to resurrect? Hope you had a good summer, and the weather has not been too scorching where you are. Thank you for whatever you find, even if it's again a complete lack of targets. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:36, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We're in luck, the long-lost treasure of orphaned noms has been rediscovered! Just the one though :P
It's been a decent summer; tiring as always with tons to do, but squeezed in a few vacations too :) Hope your summer was a fun & relaxing one! Shubinator (talk) 05:10, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to take care of even one; it makes a nice change. Thank you. Summer here was fun and had periods of relaxation, and I'm not sure I'm ready for the business of autumn, but I'm sure I'll make it work. BlueMoonset (talk) 12:25, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

DYKUpdate bot down?[edit]

Hi Shubinator, the bot did not perform the 12:00 UTC update today. If you are available, could you check and restart it if necessary so it can do the midnight UTC update? —Kusma (talk) 17:00, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Shubinator, it looks like DYKHousekeepingBot is also down: its last update was at 04:18 UTC, and there have been six additions to the Nominations page in the interim, starting at 07:14 UTC, with at least three nominations approved in that period. I hope you can get the bots back online soon. Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:03, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Both bots back online, sorry for the downtime! The logs don't indicate what went wrong, which makes me think Labs oddities. Thanks both for letting me know :) Shubinator (talk) 05:56, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Could it be related to this? —Kusma (talk) 14:54, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Probably! Does sound pretty similar to what happened to our bots. Shubinator (talk) 06:15, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Getting DYKUpdateBot to use the action parameter[edit]

Hi Shubinator! The default {{UpdatedDYK}} text currently uses which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. This feels rather non-personal, since a human would know which of those situations applies rather than having to use an "or" statement. UpdatedDYK has the |action= parameter that specifies which contribution an editor being thanked made, and I was wondering if it might be possible to get DYKUpdateBot to start using it. I think this would make the message read as warmer and more human. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:40, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! It's certainly possible; long story short, these 6 areas would need to support the new logic as well for everything to plumb through correctly:
Shubinator (talk) 05:55, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK! I think it's probably better if someone more familiar with DYK bots than me makes the changes, so that nothing accidentally explodes, but I'd love to see it! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:45, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC is open regarding amending the paid-contribution disclosure policy to add the following text: Any administrator soliciting clients for paid Wikipedia-related consulting or advising services not covered by other paid-contribution rules must disclose all clients on their userpage.

Technical news

  • Administrators can now choose to add the user's user page to their watchlist when changing the usergroups for a user. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. (T272294)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:41, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Our DYK hook is not contained in the DYK archive[edit]

Hi @Shubinator ! You control the bot DYKUpdateBot that adds changes to the DYK archive Wikipedia:Recent additions

Maybe you know why our hook "... that several dozen families who were deported to Siberia, spread across two thousand kilometers (1,200 mi) from the swamps of Western Siberia to the rivers of Eastern Siberia, created a new language?" is not contained in DYK archive? It should be in the section "00:00, 3 November 2023 (UTC)". This hook was on the main page of Wikipedia November 2 and received 12 356 views. Notification that the article was in DYK see: Talk:Siberian Ingrian Finnish Now there are no traces of this hook in the DYK archive. Now Wikipedia readers who have found Siberian Ingrian Finnish article through hook will not be able to find it if they do not remember the exact title of the article. Therefore, this hook needs to be returned to the DYK archive. Can I edit page Wikipedia:Recent additions myself and add our hook to the DYK archive page?

Ping to @Theleekycauldron: @Vaticidalprophet: @TSventon: @Soman: @Shubinator: Ubaleht (talk) 12:24, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have responded on the nominator's talk – the hook was pulled mid-run, and shouldn't be added to the archives. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 17:52, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Theleekycauldron: @Shubinator: !
I returned the hook to the archive manually. I’m very sorry if I shouldn't have done that, I’m still a new user on Wikipedia.
Reasons why I did this:
1. This hook was on the main page - that's a fact! I think this fact should be recorded in the archive.
2. The article to which the hook referred received a lot of views (more than the average for that day). This shows that Wikipedia readers are interested in this topic. If a link to an article is not in the archive, then users will not be able to find this article if they do not remember its exact title.
3. Removal from the main page was due to a minor error - there was an “citation needed” label in two places. This error was fixed the next day, links have already been added. The article has a lot of links and many sources. This article is high-quality was developed over the course of a year. It’s sad if, due to one mistake, it won’t be in the archive. Ubaleht (talk) 13:05, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Reverted. Per theleekycauldron, the hook shouldn't be added to the archives. Shubinator (talk) 05:36, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Shubinator: I read your comment "please do not add entries to the archives without consensus", I'm very sorry for my commit! But if there is a consensus about this hook in future, then please add the hook to the archive! :) Ubaleht (talk) 09:59, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I do appreciate the enthusiasm, Ubaleht :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 05:54, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Theleekycauldron: thanks for the compliment! :) Ubaleht (talk) 10:01, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

November 2023 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, it's been about eight weeks since my last request; I'm not sure whether there will be any this time, but after getting one in September, there's always a chance. I hope all is well with you. Thank you for whatever you find, even if we're back to a complete lack of targets, as was the case over the summer. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:00, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Got a few this time! Untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms. Hope you're doing well! Shubinator (talk) 05:39, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Shubinator, thank you so much for the above. I completely spaced on having asked you, since things got suddenly busy, only returning to take care of these a little over 24 hours ago. Should I ask for a new run, it being a month later already? BlueMoonset (talk) 00:21, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No worries! Latest untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms. Shubinator (talk) 05:00, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Shubinator, thank you very much. This time, I got to them much more quickly. It looks like the admins are getting more forgetful about retranscluded nominations that have been pulled from prep, so our lull during the spring and summer seems to be over... BlueMoonset (talk) 06:37, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Cassiobury park 1888.jpg[edit]

Hello Shubinator, I replaced the image in the Cassiobury House article by an older depiction. Just wanted to inform you. Hope that is okay with you? If not, feel free to undo my edit. Cheers. Lotje (talk) 09:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

added 0xDeadbeef
readded Tamzin
removed Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

added Pppery
removed

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
  • Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
  • Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
  • Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
  • Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
  • Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
  • An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:35, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Talk page order[edit]

When User:DYKUpdateBot updated Talk:Femke Bol, it inserted the DYK talk template below the WikiProject banner shell, but according to WP:TALKORDER it should have been inserted above it. This probably happens all the time. Could it be fixed? – Editør (talk) 12:55, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! WP:TALKORDER indicates it's not a prescriptive list, which implies other orderings are not necessarily wrong. DYKUpdateBot is built on pywikibot and mwparserfromhell, if those libraries can easily inject a talk page template in the order suggested, I'd be happy to integrate with DYKUpdateBot. Shubinator (talk) 05:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that your bot inserts the template below the last template of the talk page content before the first section. If you want to follow WP:TALKORDER, you could check for the existence of the various talk page banners (and their redirects) that you want to consider and then insert the DYK talk template relative to those. If "{{WikiProject banner shell" occurs, then insert right above that; else if "{{GA|" occurs, then insert right below the next "}}"; etc. And you can use your current insertion as default fallback. – Editør (talk) 11:49, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – December 2023[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

  • Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
  • The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
  • Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Marceli Godlewski[edit]

The article Marceli Godlewski'' appeared on 10 December 2023. I was a belated added listed contributor. Z1720 posted the awards. I didn't get it. Could have been a bot error? Cheers. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 11:39, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, it was not a bot error. About five days after the nomination was promoted, Marcelus added you to the "Created by" text line in the nomination, and did not add a {{DYKmake}} for you. At the time the Queue containing the hook was used to update the Main Page, there was no credit template for you. What needed to done was to either add the properly formatted credit template to the nomination before promotion, or afterwards to request at WT:DYK that it be added to the relevant Prep or Queue. And when I say "properly formatted", remember that it's different for you than for others: it would have to be {{DYKmake|Marceli Godlewski|2=7&6=thirteen|subpage=Marceli Godlewski}} or {{DYKmake|Marceli Godlewski|7&6{{=}}thirteen|subpage=Marceli Godlewski}}. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 17:19, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I was not trying to fix the blame. Is it too late to fix the problem? 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:59, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Anybody can issue DYK credits, and I've just done so for you. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:29, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:48, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can DYKUpdateBot use 'article history' instead of 'dyk talk' template?[edit]

For any article which is FA/GA/etc., it would be better to put the notice that an article was in DYK into the talk page using the {{Article history}} rather than the {{DYK talk}} template. The latter takes a large amount of space, and is a distraction to readers going to the talk page for discussion rather than miscellaneous article metadata. The (collapsed) history template turns DYK into just a little icon, but when expanded shows the same information as the DYK full template. For example, compare Special:PermanentLink/1195704027 to Special:PermanentLink/1195907139. –jacobolus (t) 19:52, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The question of 'dyk talk' vs 'article history' comes up somewhat regularly - feel free to ask Wikipedia talk:Did you know on what the DYK community feels is best. Currently, DYKUpdateBot will add to 'article history' (and avoid adding 'dyk talk') if 'article history' already exists on the page - which then shifts the question, to why don't these articles already have the template? Shubinator (talk) 05:39, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I'd rather get rid of the {{GA}} etc. templates, and just have one unified one where all of this metadata cruft could accumulate as unobtrusively as possible, if it really seems necessary to have it at all. But it seems like the 'article history' template only ever gets used when there is more than one relevant event to report. –jacobolus (t) 07:01, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DYKUpdateBot down?[edit]

Not sure if anything else is wrong, but I just had to do a manual update, so wanted to let you know. —Kusma (talk) 15:17, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Last post by DYKUpdateBot was at 00:03 UTC this morning, so it's probably down. DYKHousekeepingBot, on the other hand, remains active. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:25, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just nudged DYKUpdateBot so it's back up and running, thank you for letting me know! I'm not entirely sure why it went down (there's a cryptic "503 Server Error: Service Unavailable" message in the logs), fingers crossed it won't crop up again. Sorry for the delay, I'm traveling so more sporadic than usual. Shubinator (talk) 17:49, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

January 2024 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, I realize you're traveling at the moment, but in case you have a chance (or return home), it would be great to see another list in the near future in case some clean up is needed. Many thanks, and I hope you're enjoying your travels! BlueMoonset (talk) 18:39, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Travels are going pretty well so far, not as many hijinks as I expected! Untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms. Hope you're doing well :) Shubinator (talk) 18:34, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All's well here. Thanks for the above four: three have been closed as unsuccessful, and one has been approved and is waiting for promotion. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:22, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).

CheckUser changes

removed Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

removed

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.

Technical news

  • Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)

Arbitration

  • Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
  • Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DYKUpdateBot is down again.[edit]

No updates since yesterday. Please fix at your earliest convience. Thanks! NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 15:07, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Shubinator, to clarify, DYKUpdateBot did the midnight update, with its last post at 00:03 on 6 February; it did not perform the 12:00 update today. It looks like whatever took out DYKUpdateBot also affected DYKHousekeepingBot, which was working through 06:03 today, but then stopped. There were new noms added at 07:26, 14:38, and 16:29, and one closed at 11:04, all of which should have caused a new run by the bot, so I have to conclude that it was offline before it would have run at 07:33 or :34. Thank you very much; hope your travels are still going well. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:14, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just nudged both DYKUpdateBot and DYKHousekeepingBot back online! The logs are consistent with Labs computers getting rebooted, though it could be something else instead. Thanks both for letting me know! Shubinator (talk) 02:18, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Odd DYKHousekeepingBot issue: isn't including main nominations page[edit]

Shubinator, in its run today at 19:37 (UTC), the bot failed to count any of the nominations on the main Template talk:Did you know page. It also only counted one nomination per active date on the Approved page, regardless of how many were there (even though the # of Hooks column is blank); for example, February 10 has eight nominations, but the bot says "1".

This was a huge change from the 19:07 run, where all nominations were counted on both pages. There weren't any edits to either the regular Nominations page or the Approved page in that time period, and a subsequent edit adding a new nomination to the Nominations page at 20:12 has not caused the bot to update.

I did check the Nominations page, and none of the edits to the transcluded noms on 29 February would have caused this issue; as expected, there weren't any edits between 19:03 and 20:12; the same with Approved, which hadn't had any edits prior to an 18:37 WugBot run. I also didn't see any obvious transclusion issues on the Nominations of Approved pages, like a nomination having been closed while leaving some text outside of the template braces.

I've just now made edits to both pages, but it's mostly moving no-longer-approved noms back from Approved to Nominations, plus fixing the transclusion of a promoted rep on the Approved page (the template page was moved at some point); as the promotion occurred four days ago, I can't imagine this is involved in the issue at hand.

I hope you can figure out what's gone amiss! Thank you very much. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:24, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

New data point: I subsequently moved nominations on February 2, 4, and 7 from the Approved page to the Nominations page; in all three cases, the nominations were the final ones within that date. After the move, all three dates, which had been registering nothing in the # Verified column, was now showing 1 there. The obvious suspicion: that it's somehow only counting the final entry for that date, and only for the Verified column, so that when those final non-approved noms were removed, it was now counting an approved nomination at the end rather than an unapproved one. I'm sure you'll spot what's wrong when you see this issue. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:01, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the detail! Helped narrow down the troubleshooting to the problem: due to a routine Mediawiki upgrade, the HTML of the nominations pages changed subtly; before, each nomination had an <h4> tag, and now, it's <h4 instead. The tag change meant the bot could no longer "see" each nomination as separate, and was lumping them all together. I think I've fixed it with Special:Diff/1211345859, take a look and let me know if it's still buggy! If it's inaccurate, it's likely overcounting now, instead of undercounting. Shubinator (talk) 02:08, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DYKHousekeepingBot appears to be down[edit]

Shubinator, I was just checking to see if the bot was counting properly—I've checked everything through the end of January, and the counts align—but I noticed that it hasn't run since 10:35 UTC today, and there have been any number of changes to the Nominations page since then: the one at 10:46, adding a new nomination, should have caused an update at around 11:05. Can you please check this bot and also DYKUpdateBot, just to be on the safe side? Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:14, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: DYKUpdateBot is up; it just ran to update the main page at midnight. However, DYKHousekeepingBot remains down. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:14, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
DYKHousekeepingBot is back up and running! The logs say the bot was terminated, but no clues as to why. Shubinator (talk) 02:29, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Terminated? Sounds so...fatal. Oh dear.
While I have you here, any chance at a new untranscluded/malformed nominations list? It's been a while since the last one. Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:49, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure! Untranscluded noms:
No malformed noms. Shubinator (talk) 04:47, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for all of these. An interesting batch, this time—Template:Did you know nominations/Gebhard Schädler had seemingly been closed, but it was by a nominator who meant to withdraw their nomination and pasted in some text at the start rather than substituting the DYKsubpage template (or, better, letting someone handle the withdrawal properly), leaving it to be found by you as untranscluded yet active. I reclosed it properly, so it shouldn't show up again. Of the others, Cecelia Hall had been pulled from prep but not retranscluded, so I've taken care of that, Small hive beetle has been marked with the X icon and will be closed in a day or two, Battle of Natural Bridge was ineligible for DYK and has been closed, Belle Baker is insufficiently expanded as well as not being transcluded, and I very much doubt either will be addressed, and Real Kakamora F.C. may have COI issues, though it does appear to have been expanded sufficiently, so I'm going to see whether the nominator eventually transcludes this or not. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for diligently investigating each one! Shubinator (talk) 00:05, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DYKUpdateBot didn't run at midnight[edit]

Shubinator, I just noticed that DYKUpdateBot didn't run at 00:00, 13 March 2024 (UTC). I'm about to post that a manual update needs to be done, but in case you happen to see this before then, perhaps you can get the bot running again. DYKHousekeepingBot, on the other hand, has continued running into today, most recently at 02:49, 13 March 2024‎ (UTC), so this seems to be just a DYKUpdateBot issues. Thanks for whatever you find and can fix. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:39, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DYKUpdateBot back up and running! Looks like it hit a "503 Server Error: Service Unavailable". Thanks for letting me know! Shubinator (talk) 06:15, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to mention it. Thank you for getting things started again! It looks like almost all of the jobs were done manually, per the WT:DYK page. Is there any way you can automatically do what's left, or is it better if it's done manually by someone? BlueMoonset (talk) 06:26, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea, just nudged DYKUpdateBot to polish off the article talk tags! Shubinator (talk) 06:41, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024[edit]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).

Administrator changes

removed

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can safely turn DYKUpdateBot on again[edit]

Shubinator, they say they've removed the weird thing that was allowing alternate lead hooks. It would be great if you could restart DYKUpdateBot as soon as possible, since we were supposed to go back to two sets a day at midnight, and the current set is an April Fools' one, which really shouldn't stay on the main page any longer than absolutely necessary. I'm so sorry they didn't take care of it as they should, or think to consult you on whether this would cause problems. Thanks for whatever you can do. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:38, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for acknowledging the set of events that led us here; if we want automated DYK updates, that means less flexibility with custom-formatted sets. We can't have our cake and eat it too.
It looks like the most recent manual update hasn't completed so the tooling is in an inconsistent state, specifically with the old queue not cleared. I'll hold off on starting up the bot again until that's resolved. Shubinator (talk) 14:56, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Shubinator, apologies for the trouble. Is everything stable enough to restart the bot? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:33, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good now! Starting the bot up again... Shubinator (talk) 06:15, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

April 2024 untranscluded/malformed nominations list[edit]

Shubinator, it's a month since my last request, and there are at least some active WikiEdu classes ongoing, so it seems like a good time to ask after untranscluded nominations, and as long as I'm doing that, ask if a malformed nom might have slipped in while no one was looking. Thanks as always for checking, and for your (increasingly active of late) help with your DYK bots. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:44, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing! We've got a rare malformed nom this time!
Untranscluded noms:
Malformed noms:
Shubinator (talk) 05:02, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much! The untranscluded nom was pulled from prep right after our last batch but never retranscluded, so it's good that I asked! (It's on the Approved page.)
As for the Malformed nom, the page was blanked three minutes after the nomination was created—the nominator realized the article wasn't eligible. Could you delete the file? If there's some reason for you not to, I'll add a {{db-blanked}} to the (empty) page and get it taken care of that way. Thanks again for the list—I was actually expecting more untranscluded ones. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:30, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, just went ahead and deleted the malformed nom :) Shubinator (talk) 07:34, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for deleting that malformed nom page! The previously untranscluded nom was promoted to prep shortly after its transclusion at Approved, so this month's batch has been settled. I'll be back sometime in May. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:51, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Shubinator&oldid=1217988528"