User talk:wbm1058

For discussion of RMCD bot edits, see User talk:RMCD bot. For Merge bot edits, see User talk:Merge bot. For Bot1058 edits, see User talk:Bot1058.

For help with getting started creating bots, see User talk:wbm1058/Creating bots.

Disambiguation link notifications

As these are generated by a bot, and I occasionally check or patrol the status of these, I moved them to a special archive: /Disambiguation link notifications. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:11, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

My content creator's to-do list has items so old they've grown mold

...so I moved them to the /Content to-do items subpage. Someday maybe I'll get to these... Wbm1058 (talk) 03:00, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia "Merge" like WP:RM or WP:AFD

There are a lot of tumbleweeds rolling over at Wikipedia:Proposed mergers... the last edit added a {{backlog}} template. Now that I'm an administrator, I've decided to focus on clearing the Wikipedia:WikiProject History Merge and Category:Possible cut-and-paste moves backlogs first. If Proposed mergers were busier, I'd make this a higher priority.

• Older discussions are at /Automating proposed mergers. Wbm1058 (talk) 03:40, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Proposed Mergers

Since you run MergeBot and RMCDBot, I was wondering, if it were possible to create an auto generated list like WP:RM has but for WP:PM, that links to the centralized discussion area, and lists the topics to be merged (from/to/with) ? As the current MergeBot already generates arrows indicated from/to/with, it would seem a modification of template:requested move/dated/multi would do to handle such an automated listing based on a standardized talk section header.

-- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:42, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

See § Wikipedia "Merge" like WP:RM or WP:AFD above. Still on my back-burner. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:37, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Adding permalinks to block log entries for 3RR

Discussions are consolidated at /Adding permalinks to block log entries. – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:44, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Generate automatic summary /* blah */ when I manually add a section heading

T22307: Consolidated discussions are at my subpage /Generate automatic summary /* blah */ when I manually add a section heading when editing. Hopefully solutions are on the way soon. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:37, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019/Phase 2 §Marking separate discussions – wbm1058 (talk) 12:16, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Module documentation and test cases

There's really no point to having test cases for data modules, since there's no code to test. Also, doc pages that contain a #invoke of the module itself exist so that TemplateSandbox can be used to preview changes of the module. It's fine to add "real" documentation, but the #invoke must not be disabled or removed when doing so. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:47, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Module:Syrian Civil War map is in Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded.

I edited Module:Syrian Civil War map/doc, and created Module:Syrian Civil War map/testcases.

Cities and towns during the Syrian Civil War used to transclude {{Syrian Civil War detailed map}}, until substituted.

Template:Syrian Civil War detailed map loads Module:Syrian Civil War detailed map.

Template:Syrian Civil War map (created 21 February 2015‎) . . . Wbm1058 (talk) 03:02, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Module:Syrian Civil War map/testcases

Module:Syrian Civil War map/testcases has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:33, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Accuracy

See User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 187 § How much should we trust Wikipedia? (again)

Your comments about the state of accuracy in the world on Jimbo's talk page are very interesting. I would like to explore this topic further. I'm particularly fond of your statement, "Society as a whole perhaps doesn't value accuracy as much as it should, and indeed Wikipedia editors should strive for a higher level of accuracy." Heck, I think some kind of variation on this should be our guiding principle. You've really nailed something here, and I think it's worth pursuing. One counterargument to pursuing accuracy, however, might attempt to appeal to the blind men and an elephant analogy. How would you respond to this? Viriditas (talk) 08:49, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

The best we can do is report the truth as best as we know it, and be open-minded to new information that can give us a better vision of the truth. As more "parts of the elephant" become known to us, the more accurate our "truth" becomes. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:28, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Timeline of DOS operating systems

I remember that you once intended to take your Timeline of DOS operating systems article to featured status, but did not take time to familiarize yourself with the process. Looking at that article, the only thing that is not compliant with the featured list criteria is the lead section. Basically, the only thing required to promote it to FL status would be to expand the lead section by adding an introduction to DOS operating systems. After that, you are good to go and can nominate it according to the instructions on WP:FLC. (Since this article is a list, the Good Article process does not apply.) Good luck! sst✈ 04:24, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

I see, apparently there is no "good list" equivalent to Good Article, so I can skip that step and go straight to becoming a member of Category:Featured lists, where around a couple dozen featured timelines can be found. Thanks! As I haven't made any significant updates to that since February, I suppose I'm due to get back to it and finish it off soon. Wbm1058 (talk) 11:40, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Race Against the Machine

Hi wbm, I see you mention this book on your user page. Does the main thesis have implications for how Wikipedia works, and if so, on what time scale? - Dank (push to talk) 15:57, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

A main thesis of the book is that accelerating technology improvements will reduce employment, and over time this will effect more higher-skilled occupations. We see this already with jobs coming back to the US from China... because they are replacing people with bots. Yes, a few more jobs for Americans who are skilled at bot development, operations and maintenance. But way fewer jobs than were displaced in China. Of course, at Wikipedia there are relatively few editors that work for money. We already have very intelligent bots such as ClueBot NG that help tremendously with tasks such as vandalism reversion. That one has over 4 million edits now! Bots also help with spelling corrections. There could be further enhancements to these tasks that could reduce the need for new page patrollers and spelling correctors. Time scale is dependent on volunteer contributions, or possible funding by the Wikimedia Foundation. wbm1058 (talk) 17:29, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. The future seems to be coming at us pretty fast. I try to stay informed-but-neutral. - Dank (push to talk) 17:50, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Templates for deletion for deletion

Implement multiple parameters to prefix: operator on fulltext searches

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T159403

See also: Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Archive 29 § Archive and search, and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 152 § Search prefix:

See also: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 152 § Search prefix revisited – search with multiple prefixes?, and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-ed § Discovery

{{Search deletion discussions}} and {{Search prefixes}} and all that authors other stuff should probably be deleted after emailing him. His {{Create parameter string}} is used but not well.

For now, I'd fix wp: Deletion process § Search all deletion discussions with a search link for each of the fullpagenames in wp:Deletion process § Step-by-step instructions (all discussion types).

I would. And I'd be glad for an invite to help you with any queries or discussions on this matter. — Cpiral§Cpiral 05:57, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 61 § is there a way to search several sections with one search? – June 10–17, 2009

And User talk:Rainman § modification to search several Wikipedian sections at one time – June 15–17, 2009

And User talk:Stmrlbs/Archive/001 § multiple prefixes – June 15–17, 2009

June 17, 2009 Help:Searching documentation update, alas documentation of this multiple-prefixes-separated-by-pipes feature was removed on October 11, 2009 when this was rewritten, to try to improve usability

"To search multiple sections of Wikipedia with different prefixes, enter the different prefixes with a pipe delimiter."

"This should be especially useful for archive searching in concert with inputbox or searchbox."

• MediaWiki search engine improved, 10 November 2008
  • en.wiki migrated to new search backend, June 2, 2009. Wikitech-l
• Initial import of rewritten Lucene-Search extension
  • History No commits between August 2007 and March 2010. So where is the June 2009 change to support this?

@Cpiral: so clearly prefix did at least briefly take pipes. Unfortunately, the volunteer developer of that, Rainman, isn't active any more either, and I haven't been able to locate his code changes that implemented that feature. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:48, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the history lesson. Interesting. Maybe useful.

Anyway, for now we have wp:deletion process#Search all deletion discussions. Hope that helps. — Cpiral§Cpiral 07:59, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Task to switch between new and old interface of "search for contributions"

This section is a followup to an earlier discussion I initiated at the village pump.

Hello. For notification, the task to switch between new and old interface of user contributions page was rejected. Izno suggested personal gadget/script or something. I would prefer that the switch between old and new be proposed at WP:village pump (proposals). Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 16:12, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

George, I wouldn't know how to write a script to change the interface, and I'm not keen on switching between two less-than-ideal interfaces. There should only need be one, fully-functional interface that's adequate for efficiently handling all use cases. What we have now is not such an interface, and we should focus on getting that one improved. I'm frustrated with the current means of interacting with the developers – there is a confusing array of different "phabricators" on this, I'm not keen on the phabricator editing interface, and I don't know whether I should add to an existing phab or start a new one, so I prefer using Village Pump where I can use Wikitext. As I need to use this interface to perform specific tasks, I may report issues I have with the current interface that make it more difficult to get the job done. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:55, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Hmm... How about Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab), where we can discuss the user contributions interface? --George Ho (talk) 16:03, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Maybe. But, per "defines a solution rather than a problem" I don't know if solutions developed in the idea lab would be welcomed by the developers. I'm not happy with the "handcuffs" placed on us with regard to modes of interaction with developers. Maybe if I just present problems to WP:VPT, and let them either tell me how to achieve my desired result, or make changes to the interface that allow me to achieve my desired result. wbm1058 (talk) 16:15, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

No offense, but IMO I don't think WP:VPT is a place for general feedback on any software or something. VPT is used for technical difficulties, bugs, glitches, and other tech issues that need immediate attention (not sure whether I phrased it correctly). One complaint describing none of these, and they'll either advise you to write a personal script/gadget or write one for you as they did before. But you're welcome to choose any appropriate venue. I still think the "idea lab" is best bet. --George Ho (talk) 16:33, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

At the top of WP:VPT there is a notice "Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator" but that's just redirecting us back to an interface I find less than ideal. I don't understand why they have such an aversion to Wikitext. I think that's easiest as all active editors are intimately familiar with it. Almost everything the developers in general try to pawn off as "easier" to use, I find to be more of a pain. But venue should be secondary to getting the issues raised, so if you want to start an idea lab thread, feel free. wbm1058 (talk) 16:45, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

On second thought, I just realized that you can go to meta:Tech and then post your concerns there. The developers changed the interface all over the wikis. --George Ho (talk) 17:04, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

I see, meta:Tech#"Search for contributions" date range. So, let's let the latest bug fix settle in before we try using it again. That page seems like a good place for reporting issues with the Special:Contributions interface, as I hate to go to the trouble to submit a new bug report, only to find that one's already been submitted. wbm1058 (talk) 17:25, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T172041

The major bug is fixed. George Ho (talk) 06:52, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Great! I complained about the new widget date-picking interface after futzing with it and not figuring out how to efficiently make it work to actually select a specific date range. I assumed that it was working as designed, and that I was just too dense to figure out the secret for making it work. So after this bug fix, which I see involves other developers than those designing the widgets (go figure, I don't exactly understand the bug report), I'm happy to report that the widget now works for me with minimal fuss. There's more than one way to skin this cat, so while this might not be my preferred way, I'm not going to fuss about it much if it works. wbm1058 (talk) 13:42, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T91148

 There is still an open task to consolidate the "date pickers".

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T183107

 @George Ho: FYI. After letting this settle in for several months, I'm still not satisfied with its behavior. I've entered a new Phabricator task. wbm1058 (talk) 19:37, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Awwww....

...please don't give up on us, yet. 😞 I know you're busy, and I'm not expecting you to devote a whole lot of time to this project, but your input is highly beneficial and I was hoping you would keep helping us work through some of the kinks when you can, especially regarding admin factors we know little to nothing about. What we're hoping to accomplish will focus primarily on clarification and consistency in our WP:Blocking policy with the ultimate goal being editor retention. ^{Atsme📞📧} 02:02, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I've had some ideas about this on my back burner. Posting some relevant links here. wbm1058 (talk) 01:20, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

• m:Community health initiative/Measuring the effectiveness of blocks
• User:JamesR/AdminStats (show Blocks)
• Daily counts of blocks and unblocks
• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Audit/Statistics (CheckUser and Oversight use)

Ha!! I forgot all about this, Wbm1058! ^Atsme _Talk 📧 01:21, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

@Atsme: It's still on my to-do list, as is replying to your email! Eventually... I keep a lot of burners going on my giant stove, alas some I have to keep down low for a long time. But I let other ppl cook my Thanksgiving dinner ;) wbm1058 (talk) 01:27, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Somewhat related to this, i.e. the area of community health and dealing with behavioral issues, is Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log. Something I haven't really paid much attention to.

There's a helpful search box at the top of that page. "Enter a username into this box to check if they have been sanctioned." e.g. Hmm. DUE, BALANCE, NPOV, RS talk. Followup. More followup. I'll try to help resolve this if I can. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:50, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Oh my. wbm1058 (talk) 14:27, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Bill of rights page

Thank you for the changes you made to the hatnote on the Bill of rights article. I think it looks perfect! Rockstonetalk to me! 18:59, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

How about a Wikipedia Editors' Bill of Rights? wbm1058 (talk) 19:00, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

With the current situation with Fram, that sounds like a great idea. . Rockstonetalk to me! 19:20, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Mass removal of cleanup tags

Articles needing cleanup

All articles

19,291

Hello. I noticed that you recently removed a large number of {{cleanup}} tags dating back over 10 years. As you noted, these tags were indeed stale, and didn't have reasons listed, but I would say that in most of those cases, the need for cleanup was completely obvious from a cursory glance at the rest of the article. As the blurb for the "Articles needing cleanup" category states: "If you're sure the article has been cleaned up, addressing any obvious flaws as well as any specific problems mentioned on the talk page, feel free to remove the tag. There's not much harm in leaving it on if you aren't certain what to do; the tag will alert someone else to come by later and check up on the article." I spend most of my time on wiki working through these articles trying to sort them out, and without those tags, the article are now "on the loose" in the wikipedia with no warning for readers of their poor quality or way of editors finding them to address their problems. Please bear in mind before deleting any more that editors do actually use these tags and categories. Cheers. Jdcooper (talk) 23:33, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi Jdcooper, OK. Here are my relevant 34 edits. I removed a total of 31 {{cleanup}} tags. I did notice that several had been proposed for deletion, and I suppose by removing the tags I'm keeping them from someone else noticing them and putting a PROD tag on the top. Not sure why anyone would want to spend much time to cleanup up a page that was proposed for deletion. I did make a few obvious fixes, but feel free to review them, and if you restore the template and add a reason to it, please also update the date to the current month, which will clear them out of the back end of the queue. I also noticed that in the talk archives the possibility of using a bot to remove these tags had been discussed. But, I'll move on for now to resume working on my more usual tasks, and maybe check back in on this later. – wbm1058 (talk) 00:19, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, but the problem is articles like Dick Brooks (magician) where the creator has now removed the PROD tag and a horrible mess of an article is left untagged. I've gone through and added more specific tags to the ones with obvious problems, but I feel like dumping them in the July 2019 cohort (though that is what I've done) will just leave them unloved for even longer. The reason I poke about in this area of the encyclopaedia is specifically to find the long-term worst articles. But there are always plenty more repositories of such articles, obviously! Have a nice day. Jdcooper (talk) 22:56, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

This backlog still seems to be growing faster than it's getting cleared. Category:Articles needing cleanup from December 2008, which is where I was working in July, was deleted in October 2019, and I just coincidentally found that Category:Articles needing cleanup from January 2009 was ready for deletion. So this has been getting cleared at a rate substantially slower than one per month. On to February 2009. wbm1058 (talk) 05:20, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Category:Redirects from incorrect disambiguation

Note to myself. On my back burner is to followup on the purpose for Category:Redirects from incorrect disambiguation. See the edit history of Assassin (movie)Assassin (movie). Also User talk:Anomie/linkclassifier#Some suggestions. Hopefully will follow up on this a few moons from now, after working through several higher-priority tasks. wbm1058 (talk) 21:28, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

LinkClassifier

I saw your complaints at User talk:IJBall#Please fix these links immediately, and I wanted to let you know that this should work for you:

mw.hook( 'LinkClassifier' ).add( function ( linkClassifier ) {
    // Delete the "incorrect-title" code
    delete linkClassifier.cats['incorrect-title'];

    // Add the "linked-misspellings" and "linked-miscapitalisations" codes, with appropriate categories.
    linkClassifier.cats['linked-misspellings'] = [
        'Category:Redirects from misspellings'
    ].sort();
    linkClassifier.cats['linked-miscapitalisations'] = [
        'Category:Redirects from miscapitalisations'
    ].sort();
} );
importScript('User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js'); // Linkback: [[User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js]]

Anomie⚔ 00:14, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Maybe one day in P.R.

	Biked in 50 states!
	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqdkqABDETY Hoping one day you make it to P.R. - Jose Valiente (radio MC) and bike shop owner's son- can hook you up- just need a translator. The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 18:08, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

List of GANs per nominator

Hi Wbm1058, I hope you are well. About this topic, did we get any further with this? I feel like it was a bit forgotten and archived, but I'd be very interested in continuing to find a full list of GANs by nominators. I'd love to help get something like this off the ground (I should be a little bit closer to the top 40 now, I've promoted another 30 or so since the discussion)! Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:00, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorry Lee I lost momentum on this and let it drift to my back burners. I'll keep it on my to-do list and try to get back to it. Juggling a lot of balls, as usual, and as you can see from the sections above, new requests for my time keep coming in, making it harder to stay focused on more time-intensive projects. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:50, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Not an issue. I thought about it earlier, and I didn't know if anyone was actively looking at it or not. I've also been busy, so haven't had much time for much! Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:56, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

GANs

Hi Wbm1058, you did some great work in listing GAs per user a while back. I wondered if you'd consider doing it again and/or doing it periodically? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 22:08, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski and The Rambling Man: – I'm running a new report now, using the last version of my PHP program from 26 July 2020. I started one last night, and it almost completed but died because the drive-by editor Sai5839448 put Category:Lists of good articles back into Category:Good articles, after I had previously removed it. A category is neither an article nor a Good Article. I removed the category and restarted my program from the beginning, and hopefully it will generate a report several hours from now. It will still have the inaccuracies I have yet to get around to addressing, but perhaps is "good enough" for your purposes. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:32, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, thank you. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 17:39, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Great work - it's certainly a start, and good for rough amounts. :) Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:44, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• @Lee Vilenski and The Rambling Man: Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#List of Wikipedians by number of Good articles, as of 17 November 2020 – wbm1058 (talk) 21:48, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

• This is some great work! I was wondering why this credits me with 88, but I credit myself with 96, but then I realised it isn't including articles that went through GA and later became FAs. This seems like a sensible conclusion, but worth mentioning.

For me, the next point would be how we go from here, to a full list similar to user:GA bot/Stats lists reviews done by user. This would be with the view to have a bot maintain a full list similar to how Legobot does now. At least with a full list, we can identify the GAs with issue nominators, and come to a conclusion as to whom should be credited; and get a pseudo-definative list.

Once again though, fantastic work, I'm very happy to see this. I'll try my best to move up the order a bit! Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:09, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

List of Wikipedians by good article nominations

Hi! Remember our conversation at Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_nominations/Archive_24#List of Wikipedians by number of Good articles, as of 17 November 2020? I was wondering if any follow-up has happened after that? I see Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by good article nominations is still a red link. I recently wrote some code (using the Wikimedia Eventstreams API) to easily keep such lists up-to-date (by listening to additions/removals of {{good article}} from articles, so that there is no need to regenerate the whole thing on every run). So if you don't mind should I file a bot request to turn that link blue? Just wanted to make sure I haven't missed any further developments on this. – SD0001 (talk) 15:44, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

@SD0001: no, I haven't done any more work on this since November. Go ahead and file your bot request. Maybe some time I'll try to improve my code to make the look-ups more efficient as you suggested so I can double-check your results. But I still have more tasks on my to-do list than time to do them all. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:23, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

User:SDZeroBot, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SDZeroBot 11. Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by good article nominations looks nice! wbm1058 (talk) 15:50, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Log for Articles for creation?

...on potential improvements for WikiProject Articles for creation: What is missed? That's probably better answered by more-experienced AfCers, but one thing as an outsider admin I'd very much like is improved data on how drafts flow around the system. A log of all AfC submissions & reviews (accepts & declines); a log of individual reviewers' records (similar to the CSD log of NPPers); more clarity on the project's stats. ETA: I've just found Template:AFC statistics but it needs a proper historical log. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:08, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

As another "outsider admin", I'm interested in this too, and have the skills needed to create such a log. Adding this to my potential to-do list. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:14, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Nomination of Wikimedia movement for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Wikimedia movement, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.

The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikimedia movement until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:05, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Merchandise giveaway nomination

A token of thanks Hi Wbm1058! I've nominated you (along with all other active admins) to receive a solstice season gift from the WMF. Talk page stalkers are invited to comment at the nomination. Enjoy! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk ~~~~~

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:50, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users

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)

mw:Help:Temporary accounts – wbm1058 (talk) 15:34, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)#Temporary accounts rollout to English Wikipedia in about a month, preferably October 7th. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:45, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Cambridge Christian School

thanks on this note. I wasn't sure if it was the script or my error. Let me know if I should revert my manual tag of the new page. Happy to, I just wasn't sure how to best record the AfD where future editors would look. Star Mississippi 15:20, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Star Mississippi: Your manual placement of the template on the new page is what the script should have automatically done for you. Evad37 opened a discussion at Wikipedia talk:XFDcloser#Old afd templates placed on talk pages of redirects. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:39, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, and thanks for the pointer to the discussion. Will follow it as I seem to be more active in closing AfDs and wasn't aware of that page. Star Mississippi 16:11, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Status update. Special:Contributions/Evad37. Most recent edit 22 January 2022. Just ten days after opening RFC: Priorities for XFDcloser development in 2022. Any interface editors willing to help maintain this gadget? Sigh. I'd need to get around to taking a crash course in JavaScript, something I've had on my back-back-back-burner for a long time. Doing that would mean dropping other balls I carry, at least for a while. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

User:Merge bot

Hi Wbm1058, have you completed task 2 and no longer require +sysop to be set on this bot? — xaosflux ^Talk 09:25, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

My progress is documented at User talk:Merge bot/Task 2. While my most recent run was on 9 April 2021, this task is still on my to-do list and I expect to eventually get back to it. – wbm1058 (talk) 10:15, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

New pages patrol and the Curation Toolbar

Looking at NPP

I'm leaving two links here so that when you get time, you can look at possibly developing a BOT or a program that can provide the tools we need. WMF's development team created our curation tool but it took a long time. We are justifiably concerned about the backlog of unreviewed articles, and will probably never catch-up without some form of automation: NPP Feed, and ability to filter reviewed/unreviewed totals by category, date, etc. Atsme 💬 📧 13:31, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Naming languages

Hi. Thanks for your comment on Mammad Huseyn - it's an interesting quirk of the Page Curation Toolbar that it has a 'translate from other language tag' option but doesn't have a drop-down to specify the language. I'll go back and add it to pages in future. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 06:04, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining how that happened. See Wikipedia:Page Curation/Suggested improvements#Expand language. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:11, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

JJMC89 bot added me to the Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Newsletter list @ 00:14, 2 September 2023.

Apparently this 16:14, 1 September 2023 edit of mine triggered that bot? – wbm1058 (talk) 21:38, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

And now I'm off that list, at least until the next time I edit one of the project's pages. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:44, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I've moved the messages received during my brief subscription to /New pages patrol newsletter. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:08, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

New Page Patrol receives a much-needed software upgrade

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-06-08/Technology report

Sometime I'll look at the details of that, and see what's changed since my August 31–September 2, 2023, off-site analysis Scope creep of the autopatrolled usergroup – wbm1058 (talk) 13:55, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Monitored issues

• Template parameters: Infobox settlement – wbm1058 (talk) 20:54, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
• List of current NBA team rosters exceeds the node count limit – wbm1058 (talk) 19:39, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
• Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 78#Update on ONUS RFC  • Wikipedia:ONUSWikipedia:ONUS  • Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:ONUS – wbm1058 (talk) 20:09, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 78#Rewording the contentious "onus" sentence – wbm1058 (talk) 19:51, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

VisualEditor editing issues

Cursor

This linked to the redirect. It should happen less often because of some changes ~two years ago, but my experience is that there is a chance of it linking to whatever the cursor is pointing at when I hit Return, rather than the first item in the list, which is usually what I want. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:34, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

My Bot1058's task 9 is designed to address this issue. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:28, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Regular expression article

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T384749

 Courtesy link: Regular expression

You asked in an edit summary why I made a change to the article which was different to that described in my edit summary. The simple answer is that I didn't.

The changes I made to the article were as outlined in my edit summary and notified at Talk:Regular expression § "look-ahead" or "lookahead": that is, to address the inconsistencies in spelling "lookahead" and "lookbehind". I made no change to any other part of the article.

I made the change using Visual editor and, suspecting that this may be the culprit, have conducted a test to:

1. Use source editing to place <code>[ [[\t]][[\r]][[\n]][[\v]][[\f]]]</code> in a page.
2. Use the Visual Editor to add a new line underneath containing the word "Test".
3. Use source editing to display the page's contents.

This test confirmed my suspicions as the page's contents after (3) were now <code>[ [[/t|\t]][[/r|\r]][[/n|\n]][[/v|\v]][[/f|\f]]]</code> Test

Do you agree that this shows a fault with Visual Editor? If so, I will ask on the Help Desk where this should be reported.

Please note for the future that using edit summaries for discussion is not ideal, and that an article's talk page is a better forum. Bazza 7 (talk) 16:25, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Sorry Bazza 7, my bad, I didn't notice the Tag: Visual edit on your edit summary. I'm going to add this to my list at #VisualEditor editing issues. I just noticed that @WhatamIdoing: left the Foundation after September 2023, but she's still active as a volunteer. I just pinged her to ask whether she's aware of this issue or knows of any open Phabricator for it. I don't know who, if anyone, currently working for the Wikimedia Foundation supports VisualEditor. – wbm1058 (talk) 18:03, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Changing [[\ to [[/ in this diff is odd. I suspect that it's a case of 'normalization' (similar to prettyprinting the templates), so SSastry (WMF) and the mw:Content Transform Team team will want to look at it. @Trizek (WMF) would probably be willing to file the bug report for you, but since it's Friday night in his timezone, I wouldn't expect a quick response. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

@Wbm1058, @WhatamIdoing: Thanks for the quick responses! I agree it looks like one of those annoying escaping-backslash-character problems, of which my experiences sometimes led to never-ending rabbit holes and a lot of frustration. I'll assume that this is being dealt with in terms of reporting, but remain happy to describe or assist in whatever simple way I can. Regards, Bazza 7 (talk) 19:29, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping @WhatamIdoing. I filed T384749 for investigation. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I see my online friend Matma Rex is on the case with the concise steps to reproduce. My Wikimedia MVP! Pinging for the backstory, just FYI. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:18, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

My MediaWiki core developers thread

T12814: Consolidated discussions are at my subpage /My MediaWiki core developers thread. Still working on this. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Re Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations

For earlier related discussions, see /Linked misspellings and miscapitalizations, and alternatives.

It sounds like you haven't appreciated, or perhaps not noticed, the huge amount of work I've been taking on from this report for the last year or so. When I had JWB rights, I handled entries with hundreds of incoming links, probably fixing more than a million over-capped places, and a fair number of under-capped ones as well. And I identified, reported, and asked for a fix to the Visual editor UI problem that causes so many of the pipings through under-capitalized redirects. Of course, seeing how useful this report is for tracking things that ought to be addressed, I also added a whole lot of R from miscapitalion label to redirects that came from consensus moves to lowercase, so sometimes the list grew more than it shrunk. Since losing JWB, I've concentrated on the entries with more than 1 but fewer than a dozen incoming links, which is why you see a bit of an odd distribution in that neighborhood, and an ever-growing list of ones with just 1 incoming link. There's just a bit of overhead on each line I take on, so it's not efficient to work on the singles. And the big multiples will be more efficiently worked with JWB, if/when I get that back or someone else wants to help. Sometimes it becomes clear that the best resolution is to change the tag back to R from other capitalization. Anyway, glad to hear you're not anti-me or anti-lowercase. Back to it... Dicklyon (talk) 00:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Fixed another raft of these today. Dicklyon (talk) 03:48, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

By the way, if you see some where you think the R from miscapitalization tag is not quite right, feel free to change them. And if you let me know, I might work on trying to sort out which links really are wrongly capped and which are OK. Dicklyon (talk) 04:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, note that I had gotten the report down from 26 kB (or a peak of 34 kB in July) to about 6 kB in September, in the leadup to my Sept. 15 JWB restriction. Since then, it's been pretty flat, as I work more on lots of little items. I did about 134,000 edits in 2023, mostly working on items on this report. Dicklyon (talk) 04:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

wmb1058 and Dicklyon, Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations is either broken or the coding is incomplete. The past several months I've been uppercasing linked proper names of wars and revolutions, thousands of edits, and none were listed in this database. A few have some left (I visually scan and don't use a tool for finding the links or words on pages), such as French revolution which has about a dozen left to do, but some still have many hundreds. The next two incorrect casings I'm going to work on are Scientific revolution and Industrial revolution, neither of which is included in that database, and things such as the Age of enlightenment which only has a few dozen to uppercase. If you want to jump in please do so. Bottom line (literally), do either of you know how the database decides what to list or not to list? Randy Kryn (talk) 13:06, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for helping, Randy Kryn. The trick is to edit the redirect change the {{R from other capitalisation}} to {{R from miscapitalisation}}. Maybe you can bring some balance to the area, if you and Dick can avoid fighting over what's Very Important and what's merely important. Wars and Revolutions in first-world countries tend to be Important, so they are capitalized, and we have many reliable sources backing that up. Whereas wars and revolutions in third–world hellholes, these unfortunately tend to be under-reported by the first-world press and are not considered to be as important. This can be a problem for Wikipedia, which endeavors for worldwide neutral coverage. I'd guess that the people living in those hellholes think their wars are Damn Important, the hell with what the first-world "mainstream press" thinks. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:50, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I've only been uppercasing what's already Wikipedia-uppercased in the wars, revolution, ages, etc. (been chipping away at what's left of Age of Enlightenment lowercasings since leaving the above message). Dick and I fight (Corn Pop was a bad dude)? Never, we politely disagree. If we fought we'd have more than one mutual ban. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

We fight politely, thank you, Randy. Most of the items marked R from miscapitalization are because someone decided, e.g. me after a move discussion, to mark them. I don't know why there are so many inappropriately lowercase redirects, but there are a ton, and mostly not marked. The trouble with their existence is that the visual editor provokes people to use them when linking, due to its stupid UI. So they show up in the report at a steady clip as that interface keeps tempting editors to pipe through them. There ought to be a way to automatically, via bot, fix all those that are just inappropriate lowercasings of proper names; that's a lot simpler than the other direction, deciding what needs to be capped more generally (e.g. the first letter of a descriptive-name link depending on whether it starts a sentence, heading, or list item vs. otherwise). Maybe we should put in a bot request; or you could easily learn to do them with JWB (with probably no chance of errors). We could maintain of whitelist of miscapitalized redirects to fix automatically, and/or define a class of things for a bot to figure out for itself. Let me know if you encounter complications that would make that harder. Dicklyon (talk) 15:42, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

non-preferred

Regarding Template:R from non-preferred capitalisation

I'm holding off using the R from non-preferred capitalization tag after advice at the TfD. And the Talk:NFL Kickoff close didn't really say which capitalization of game was preferred, but there was support for both NFL Kickoff game and NFL kickoff game. Based on news sources, I'd say NFL kickoff game is preferred by MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 02:09, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Editor experience invitation

Hi wbm1058 :) I'm looking for experienced editors to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 11:10, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: I appreciate the work you're doing on that. I may eventually get around to responding to your survey; my time is oversubscribed. wbm1058 (talk) 12:03, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

That's fine, there's no rush. Feel free to participate whenever you want, I don't have a deadline or anything. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:56, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Bot frozen?

Further information: User talk:wbm1058/Creating bots § About the bots

Hey, I think RMCD bot is frozen, want to give it a nudge or take a look and see if there's an issue? Cheers, microbiologyMarcus ^{[petri dish·growths]} 19:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Wbm1058, I have requested my bot to run your script as a stand-in while you are away (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/The Sky Bot 2). Ping me when you are back so that I can turn my bot off and you can continue to run yours. Cheers! – robertsky (talk) 18:13, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

User:Bot1058 likewise hasn't been updating Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests/Permalink since 16 July. (So WP:RM/TR edit summaries use incorrect permalinks in the "Requested" link.) cc: Robertsky. -- SilverLocust 💬 09:03, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

@SilverLocust will bring that up later. thanks for the ping. – robertsky (talk) 09:36, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

bring that up => Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/The Sky Bot 3. – robertsky (talk) 09:51, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Redirects to former names

I removed Fort Nelson Park from Category:Redirects to former names @19:52, 30 August 2024. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:24, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Category:Redirects from former names currently has 26,477 members. Redirecting from a former to a current name is the standard and normal process on Wikipedia.

Category:Redirects to former names currently has 315 members. These are outliers; they represent deviations from standard and normal Wikipedia process. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:42, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Several redirects were mis-categorized. I cleaned up Category:Redirects to former names over a week or two by correcting them, e.g. Stanford Research Institute on 12 September 2024.

This activity was prompted by my running into Fort Nelson Park just a week after closing the Twitter under Elon Musk discussion. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:31, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Wow

Thanks very much for your well-reasoned close and sage advice at the Twitter under Elon Musk discussion. I've rarely seen such a crazy timesink as that one... And it's also rare to see so many respected Wikipedians taking a position that seems divorced from reality and digging in on it. We'll see if your suggestion for a move of Twitter gains any traction. It would seem advisable per the age-old policy of WP:NAMECHANGES, but it seems some can't let go of the old name. If we can make it with old favourites such as Sears Tower and Hotmail we can probably do so with Twitter too!  — Amakuru (talk) 16:35, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Came here to say the same thing. Thank you so much for the detailed and thoughtful close. Hopefully this will settle things once and for all, at least for the time being. Not keen on the prospect of a 10th RM, as you suggested (I think you missed a couple: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and now 9; these are listed atTalk:Twitter#Old moves). InfiniteNexus (talk) 16:51, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Third-ing the thanks here; I was getting worried there weren't any uninvolved editors with both the experience and time/patience to take it on, and that it would just sit open forever. Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 20:16, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

+1. I considered tackling it myself, but had an unexpectedly busy week so was not doing much CR work at all. Thank you Wbm, this was quite needed and helpful. I appreciate the difficult closes. Soni (talk) 06:36, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

		The Closer's Barnstar
		I wish to echo others' sentiments regarding the close; that needed to be done months ago, as you said. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 21:04, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

can you give me the star Amogelang22 (talk) 15:53, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree with everything above. Thank you for the detailed close. Svampesky (talk) 22:00, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! A barnstar feels a lot nicer than accusations of "supervoting"! I also neglected "Twitter marks the spot" when I reviewed this, as somehow it had entirely slipped my mind. Though reading it again felt like I was reading it for the first time, I did recall having at least given it a glance because I remembered chuckling at "ex-CEO Musk"! wbm1058 (talk) 20:41, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Just an observation, ha! Another well-known company, besides X, still better known by its former name, is Constellis. What's that, you ask? Just click the link :0 wbm1058 (talk) 15:54, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Fort Nelson Park

Just popping in to note this wasn't redirecting from a former name but to a former name. But to a historic name is more applicable anyway, so I recorrected. Stefen 𝕋ower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 20:04, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@StefenTower: You just changed {{R to former name}} to {{R to historic name}}. Since the latter template name just redirects to the former template name, you really didn't change anything, and effectively just reverted me. Again, a fort is not a park, and a park is not a fort. They are two different things. "Park" would never be part of the name of a fort. This is simply about a less-notable park located on the site of a more-notable fort. See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 May 3#Template:R to historic name and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 April 25#Category:Redirects to historic names, which your revert just led me to look at now. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:19, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I never said a fort was a park and vice-versa. But since it's on the site of the former fort, it is redirecting to a historic name of the location. Stefen 𝕋ower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 20:26, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

This is indeed something of an edge case. The park is the only member of Category:Pocket parks which is a redirect. The fort was long gone by the time this park was created. It's on the site of an 1800s building, which was torn down to make a vacant lot. The fort presumably had a larger footprint than the pocket park commemorating it. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:50, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi hello, WCNA, thanks!

I just realized you were at WCNA! I didn't get the chance to say hi but I wish I had because I see your name popping up all over the pedia doing maintenance stuff and it would have been nice to put a face to it. I was the one who did that talk at the state library with an abbreviations quiz. I remember there were only a few people who knew WP:CPMV... I'm now realizing that you were probably one of them. Anyway, hope you had nice travels back home. If you are ever looking for a recipient for odd tidbits or exchanges, or tales of your onwiki and offwiki lives colliding in interesting ways, I'll always accept a good story. Thanks for doing so much for Wikipedia, CPMVing and discussion closing and categorizing and all that. Annierau (talk) 19:22, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Annierau! Indeed I was at your fast-paced, entertaining evening "lightning talk" in the state library! You sat next to me during the in-progress Working for representation on Wiki but I didn't introduce myself because, well... session in progress. The three women at the front were great, I especially enjoyed hearing the middle one sing! I was actually in the room for the following Turning points in Wikipedia disputes: Research and discussion of resolution efforts but the preceeding session ran into overtime. Indeed I'm among the most active administrators doing history merges, and my User:Merge bot has merged 69,750 pages! – wbm1058 (talk) 19:48, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

That bug with moving pages

This is the continuation of /My MediaWiki core developers thread

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T12814

Is it still a problem? I noticed you mentioned me in an edit summary. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 12:37, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: Yes, indeed, still a problem. I'm committed to solving this eventually, before discussion about it overruns my talk (I'm about to resort to creating a talk sub-page to consolidate all three sections). I have several long-term projects; I just recently finally got to one of them after over a decade, and recently archived it. I still want to finish filling out my User:Wbm1058/Cross-namespace redirects table, and clearing my most important work queues, and then I'll take a big chunk of time to focus on solving this. I did get some help from a Canadian volunteer developer while we were in Indianapolis, so have a general idea about what I need to do next. I've given up on the idea of convincing WMF management to assign an employee to work on it. My motto: if ya want something done around here, ya gotta do it yourself. In the meantime I still ping editors as a gentle reminder to tend to talk pages separately, until I finally install a fix. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:59, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Hey MMiller (WMF), do you think you'd know someone who could fix this? Because this guy has spent countless hours cleaning up after this bug and I'd like to make his life easier. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:22, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Clovermoss and @Wbm1058 -- thanks for pinging me. Do you have a link to something that describes the bug? I'm sort of getting the gist from clicking around, but wondering if you know whether it's filed in Phabricator or described on a wiki page somewhere. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): Start with #My MediaWiki core developers thread above. There you'll find a link to T12814. Where I'm at with this: there have been previous efforts to make a "move-page factory" by breaking out functions from SpecialMovePage.php but that file is still a difficult monster to work with. Maybe break out the "show form" piece to separate unit? – wbm1058 (talk) 15:34, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers, @Wbm1058. I see that you were working with Catrope on this a bit this year. Just so I know your status -- do you want to keep working on it, with help from another developer (Catrope or otherwise)? Or are you putting this down for now and you would be happy to see it get solved by someone else? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in responding. I should pick up this dropped ball again, and see how far I can get with it this time. Though I wouldn't be upset if someone beat me to a good solution, there would potentially be great satisfaction in solving this in a way that I like, rather than taking a chance on someone else's solution that may not be my preferred way to do it. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:02, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Courtesy ping to MMiller (WMF) to make sure he sees this. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 15:07, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, @Clovermoss and @Wbm1058. A few people who I'd like to talk to about this aren't around next week, so I'll get back to you the week after! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 14:09, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks MMiller (WMF). I see your user page says I am now the Senior Director of Product for the Core Experiences group but the mw:Core Experiences page is obsolete. Is your group connected with the mw:MediaWiki Platform Team which is one of three components of the mw:MediaWiki Engineering Group? Also I see that mw:User:Roan Kattouw (WMF) is leading the mw:Design System Team to "design and build front ends on Wikimedia platforms". As I perceive the page-moving software as a front end, I'm not sure whether my task is more relevant to design-system or platform. Bartosz (Matma Rex) from Platform, among others, was most helpful with getting me started with my first commit, six months ago. I've also been helped (at North American conferences) by Bawolff. Noting his comments at m:Talk:Campaigns#Campaign proposal: tech development campaign "I don't think gamification matters when volunteers leave due to long code review waits" I want to do whatever I can to avoid that. I think my strategy may be to push small, incremental, more easily reviewable changes, like my first commit, rather than do it all at once.

I've reviewed my progress from May, and feel I better understand the set of git commands now. As advised above I'm working on installing either the Intelephense or Phpactor extensions into my VS Code. Now I'm running into errors running my localhost: Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in C:\php\mediawiki\core\vendor\composer\ClassLoader.php on line 429. Need to figure out what's happening there. My localhost was slow in May but at least it worked. Now it's so slow it's timing out, or giving errors as above. I'm thankful that wikitech:MediaWiki Engineering/Runbook/Daily duties#Rotating includes "Every couple of days, check w:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) for issues related to our team's work and respond if you feel comfortable, or mention the discussion in our team channel if appropriate." I'm also on Telegram, but don't know whether Telegram can port to the appropriate IRC channel. Village Pump may still work best for me. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:07, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Given that your install is only for development so performance doesn't matter too much, the easiest fix for this is to just increase the time limit. You can do this by adjusting the max_execution_time configuration in php.ini, or just setting set_time_limit(100); in LocalSettings.php. (the underlying issue is probably something related to cache config, but hard to be certain). If you are not a fan of irc, you might want to check out the mediawiki discord which is pretty active. Bawolff (talk) 21:01, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Right, I just bumped the max_execution_time configuration in php.ini from 30 to 60. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:56, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

P.s. regarding my comment about patches languishing. I perhaps got a bit frustrated a few years ago at how code review works. However please don't let that discourage you. Mediawiki core platform (or whatever they are called now) has made a big effort to be more responsive to patches. Especially for the type of thing you are working on (mediawiki core self contained business logic fixing a very well defined bug) i suspect the patch would be reviewed in a reasonable time frame. If for whatever reason it isn't, ping me and i'll make sure it gets looked at. Bawolff (talk) 21:13, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

mw:Developers/Maintainers#MediaWiki core lists components which have stewards and individual maintainers. I see that one is Merge history. There is a discussion about that at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 216#RfC: Log the use of the HistMerge tool at both the merge target and merge source, which is basically just an appeal to the maintainers to get to work on one or two open tasks. There is nothing specific on that maintainers list for moving pages, but I suppose this falls under component Special pages, which is listed as Unassigned. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:56, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

@Matma Rex: My machine was showing the message "PHPactor is not supported on windows". I Googled that, and found Getting Phpactor running on Windows – it almost works! Is that you? Seems like a lot of hacks to jump through to (maybe) make it work. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:45, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah… It doesn't quite work. If you're using Windows, I wouldn't bother with it. Matma Rex talk 03:00, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: After installing Intelephense, I'm getting errors: Undefined method 'getAuthority'. intelephense(P1013)
No quick fixes available No kidding. No quick fixes for Task T12814. – wbm1058 (talk) 03:07, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

What are you scanning with Intelephense? One of the MediaWiki core files? By the way, lots of files in MediaWiki core have Intelephense false errors for various reasons. For example if the file is missing a `use MyClass;` type statement at the top because the conversion to PSR-4 is still in progress. I think WMF devs often use JetBrains IDE so don't see or fix the Intelephense errors in VS Code. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:43, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: SpecialMovePage.php (master branch). This is the third section on my talk relating to #My MediaWiki core developers thread. My ping is followup to your advice in User talk:Wbm1058/My MediaWiki core developers thread#Thank you. Right, my search for "use MyClass" doesn't find any. – wbm1058 (talk) 09:35, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

There is a big block of use statements in that file. There are seven instances of getAuthority. I don't see a use for it; not clear whether there is a missing use. All seven are $this->getAuthority() – I'm still needing to get the hang of how to quickly figure out what this $this is. When I hover over $this I see "Refers to the current object $this". Gee, that's helpful (not), what's the current object? That's without Intelephense. With Intelephense installed, it says @var $this $this – still not helpful. It should tell me what that is when I hover. Also need to familiarize myself with the namespace statement; presumably a PHP namespace is an entirely different concept than a Wikipedia namespace.– wbm1058 (talk) 13:49, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

OK, big picture. This entire huge file is a class:

class SpecialMovePage extends UnlistedSpecialPage {

Hovering shows: Undefined type 'MediaWiki\SpecialPage\UnlistedSpecialPage'. intelephense(P1009) No quick fixes available

Stop, do not pass go. If intelephense can't even find the "template" class that this class "extends", it's not going to be helpful at all. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:55, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I asked for help at User talk:Novem Linguae#About botclasses.php – I was unable to get Intelephense to show me this screenshot on my laptop. A bit disheartening to see messages still saying that stuff in that file is deprecated. Sigh, I wish volunteer developers would put a higher priority on fixing reported bugs than on deprecating code. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:38, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I finally solved this puzzle. There should be a VS Code "quickstart" page that advises, "don't open files directly, open the "mediawiki" folder, and then open files from that folder. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:40, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Documenting the class structure

• class SpecialMovePage extends UnlistedSpecialPage (mw:Manual:SpecialMovePage.php)
• class UnlistedSpecialPage extends SpecialPage (mw:Manual:UnlistedSpecialPage.php)
  • Definition and Usage: The extends keyword is used to derive a class from another class. This is called inheritance. A derived class has all of the public and protected properties of the class that it is derived from.
• class SpecialPage implements MessageLocalizer (mw:Manual:SpecialPage.php) — Entry point.
  • Definition and Usage: The implements keyword is used to declare that a class must have the methods described in the specified interface. This is called polymorphism. Polymorphism makes it easy to use a variety of different objects in the same way.
• interface MessageLocalizer is the method for getting translated interface messages. (mw:Manual:Messages API, mw:Manual:MessageLocalizer.php)

Welcome to the MediaWiki autogenerated documentation system!

I've been aware for some time that there were two distinct online platforms where the MediaWiki source code was stored, but I had trouble with getting a handle on the difference between them and remembering how I managed to stumble upon each.

But now I've figured it out! The two platforms for the code are:

1. Gerrit
2. Phabricator

Light bulbs have been turning on for me today like a Christmas tree! I feel like I'm getting closer. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:05, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

MediaWiki\Specials\SpecialMovePage Class Reference __construct

• Constructor A constructor (object-oriented programming) allows you to initialize an object's properties upon creation of the object.
  If you create a __construct() function, PHP will automatically call this function when you create an object from a class.

• Per ChatGPT-4o mini, in PHP, a factory function is a method that is used to create and return an object of a particular class. Instead of directly instantiating a class using new, a factory function encapsulates the object creation logic. This approach provides more flexibility, as it allows you to control how the object is created (e.g., deciding which class to instantiate, managing dependencies, etc.).
• MovePageFactory $movePageFactory (mw:Manual:MovePageFactory.php)

public function __construct( MovePageFactory $movePageFactory )

interface MovePageFactory {
	/**
	 * @param Title $from
	 * @param Title $to
	 * @return MovePage
	 */
	public function newMovePage( Title $from, Title $to ): MovePage;
}

• class PageCommandFactory implements MovePageFactory (mw:Manual:PageCommandFactory.php)
  • public function newMovePage

	/**
	 * @param Title $from
	 * @param Title $to
	 * @return MovePage
	 */
	public function newMovePage( Title $from, Title $to ): MovePage {
		return new MovePage(
			$from,
			$to,
			new ServiceOptions( MovePage::CONSTRUCTOR_OPTIONS, $this->config ),
			$this->lbFactory,
			$this->namespaceInfo,
			$this->watchedItemStore,
			$this->repoGroup,
			$this->contentHandlerFactory,
			$this->revisionStoreFactory->getRevisionStore(),
			$this->spamChecker,
			$this->hookContainer,
			$this->wikiPageFactory,
			$this->userFactory,
			$this->userEditTracker,
			$this,
			$this->collationFactory,
			$this->pageUpdaterFactory,
			$this->restrictionStore,
			$this,
			$this->logFormatterFactory
		);
	}

• class MovePage (mw:Manual:MovePage.php)
• SpecialMovePageTest (SpecialMovePageTest)
• SpecialPageExecutor (SpecialPageExecutor)

— wbm1058 (talk) 19:15, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

showForm

Regarding Maybe break out the "show form" piece to separate unit? – wbm1058 (talk) 15:34, 30 October 2024 (UTC) (see above), I actually linked to an older version of the code there. The protected function became a private function. Before that change, I was stuck on understanding how $err worked; now I need to understand StatusValue

protected function showForm( $err, $isPermError = false ) {}
private function showForm( ?StatusValue $status = null ) {}

ChatGPT sez: "The code you provided is actually valid in PHP and uses nullable types introduced in PHP 7.1."

• ?StatusValue indicates that the $status parameter can either be an instance of the StatusValue class or null. This is known as a nullable type.
• The = null part means that if no argument is passed for the $status parameter, it will default to null.
• class StatusValue implements Stringable (mw:Manual:StatusValue.php)
• class Status extends StatusValue (mw:Manual:Status.php)

— wbm1058 (talk) 21:07, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Helpful documents

Hey Wbm1058. I think we know each other from a WCNA conference in Toronto a while ago. This is just a note that I appreciate your very detailed writeups on getting started with MediaWiki programming. The pages I noticed were Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 212#Configuring Git for Gerrit and User talk:Wbm1058/My MediaWiki core developers thread. EdJohnston (talk) 17:15, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Ed! My bad for not pinging you earlier. You were missed at Indy this year. Hopefully we can meetup at WCNA in New York City 2025. I've restarted my push to solve this, you can monitor my progress at #That bug with moving pages above, where I'm in progress with putting more of the puzzle pieces together! Right, It's a travesty that it's taken me so long to solve this; my hope is that my documentation trail will make it easier for those that follow me. wbm1058 (talk) 18:01, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

To actually do any MediaWiki programming it sounds like it helps to have a Windows machine. My faithful Macintosh might not do the job. EdJohnston (talk) 19:38, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Ed, my path won't be as helpful, but you probably can do it. I've found ChatGPT helpful with stuff like this:

Does PHP run on Mac?

Yes, PHP runs on macOS. macOS comes with a version of PHP pre-installed, though it may not always be the latest version. However, you can easily install or upgrade PHP on a Mac using various methods, such as through the Homebrew package manager.

Check if PHP is installed: Open the Terminal and type: php -v

Does VS Code run on Mac?

Yes, Visual Studio Code (VS Code) runs on macOS. It is a cross-platform code editor developed by Microsoft, and it supports macOS, Windows, and Linux. You can download and install VS Code for macOS from the official website:

https://code.visualstudio.com/

Once installed, you can use it for a wide range of programming languages and tasks, including coding, debugging, version control, and extensions for added functionality. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

@EdJohnston: I just noticed mw:Hackathons/Laptop setup, which certainly has application beyond hackathons, and covers all three major operating systems. – I may yet try to set up MediaWiki Docker and JetBrains PhpStorm as they're the preferred tools for MediaWiki development, though I'm dubious of the idea those can both be setup within an hour (well, maybe). Merry Christmas! – wbm1058 (talk) 15:04, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

mw:Wikimedia Hackathon 2025. And mw:Project:Development environments coordinates the documentation of MediaWiki development environments on MediaWiki.org. That says that Local installation (quickstart) should take about half the setup time as MediaWiki Docker. I was first introduced to this "local quickstart" back on 20 May 2024. I see that this stuff is the work of technical writer APaskulin (WMF) of the mw:Wikimedia Technical Documentation Team on tasks T348899 and T347347. – wbm1058 (talk) 04:01, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

mw:MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, unlike the Wikimedia Hackathon whose events are almost always in Eurasia, has two annual events, one in Europe and one in North America. mw:MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Spring 2025 will be in Ohio, which is much more convenient for me than traveling to Turkey. What was up with the demise of the mw:Wikimedia Developer Summit in San Francisco? – wbm1058 (talk) 14:05, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I see, in 2019 it became the mw:Wikimedia Technical Conference and was held in Atlanta. Soon after that, COVID-19 hit. Seems it's beyond time to revive this, post-pandemic? wbm1058 (talk) 14:37, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

In hindsight, looking at my path to MediaWiki development, and where I may have taken the wrong fork in the road. I first started down the path around November 2019, at the Boston Wiki conference. At that time, "How to become a MediaWiki hacker" conflated instructions for users and developers. Set up your development environment – Manual installation was my way of tiptoeing in without getting into trying to install a complex development environment. The installation guide redundantly said to download the MediaWiki tar file from the official download page. That sounded a lot easier than the previous instruction "Download from Git", and not understanding the difference (which the documentation didn't bother to adequately explain) I just took the easier path. I didn't realize that "Quickstart" MW install wasn't a thing yet—that's what I thought I was doing. – wbm1058 (talk) 18:58, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I decided not to go to the Spring 2025 Developers Workshop, as I was unsure about how their agenda would fit my needs and didn't see any familiar names on the signup list, as I'd seen attending past versions of this conference. But, I can still watch the talks remotely, which is nice. The second talk (the first talk after the "welcome and opening remarks") covered mw:Extension:ArrayFunctions (an extension written by the presenters), and that extension is not listed as one of the installed extensions on the current version of MediaWiki that's running the English Wikipedia. So, while a bit interesting, not really of any direct impact for my needs. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:41, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Talk page gnoming

Thank you for moving all these talk pages that I missed. Not sure what I'm doing wrong in these instances, but I appreciate the attention to detail. 162 etc. (talk) 19:28, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

@162 etc.: thanks for the thanks. You're far from the first page mover to leave the talk out of sync. See #That bug with moving pages above. After I finish clearing User:Wbm1058/Articles with talk page redirects, which ballooned back up after I neglected it for a year (clearing that takes a lot of work), I really, really plan to double-down again on my efforts to become a real MediaWiki Core developer, and finally fix that. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:40, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Excessive usage of high-level navigation templates on local articles which aren't actually directly linked from the template

Adding to my to-do list. Template talk:New York (state)#Excessive usage on local articles. wbm1058 (talk) 17:48, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

incorrect/notbroken

Here you interpreted notbroken as not incorrect. I put {{R from incomplete name}}. But I guess there are other redirects that are both incorrect yet could be used in other articles as not broken, right? Ninixed (talk) 09:26, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand why "History of x" would be anything other than an alternative form of "X history". The Transgender history article even uses that form in its hatnote: This article is about the history of transgender people worldwide. Oh, by incomplete, you mean it should be History of transgender people? Special:WhatLinksHere/History of transgender, just 2 items. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:54, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I just created User:Wbm1058/Reports/Linked incomplete names, and then this edit fixed the broken link, and removed that page from the report.

As the templates explain, if this is actually notbroken, then tag the redirect with {{R from short name}} rather than {{R from incomplete name}}. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:17, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Could you please provide an edit summary next time?

I noticed that you reverted my edit to the hatnote on John Doe. I initially thought it was for no reason because you didn't provide any edit summary (you only used the default Undo message), until I found out it was because of reverting an undiscussed move to John/Jane Doe. Next time, please provide an edit summary explaining why to avoid any confusion. Thank you! 1isall (talk/contribs) 23:58, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought it would be obvious after CambridgeBayWeather moved John/Jane DoeJohn/Jane Doe to John Doe over redirect: Revert undiscussed move (WP:RMUM): Violates Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Slashes (strokes). – wbm1058 (talk) 00:46, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

I didn't read that edit summary, which was like, 5 edits before your revert. So it's also kind of my fault, too. 1isall (talk/contribs) 00:55, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Moving forward, remember that explanations should be provided when reverting edits that are not vandalism, okay? 1isall (talk/contribs) 00:57, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Also, just wanted to ask about the move itself. I know how it violates MOS:SLASH, but how does it violate WP:QUALIFIER? Does that mean it would be inappropriate to include both John and Jane in the title, no matter how it's written? 1isall (talk/contribs) 01:03, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

MOS:THIS and WP:THAT shouldn't be so prescriptive. The page title briefly was John and Jane Doe, which seems like a perfectly OK alternative title to me. You should consider any more moves of this page to be potentially controversial, and open a WP:RM discussion on the talk page if you want to get more opinions on the matter. Looking at this earlier, I peeked at the Doe (surname) page, and mused at the thought of someone with that surname actually naming their child John or Jane. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:21, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Okay, then. Thanks. 1isall (talk/contribs) 01:30, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Reporting old policy/guideline violations?

Got a question about conduct that I thought would be best to ask an admin like you. If I notice something like a comment made by or editing behavior of a user, and easily connect it to certain policies or guidelines, but it was more than a month ago that it happened, is it too late to report it? 1isall (talk/contribs) 13:03, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

This feels like a grey area, where some judgement should be used. How much more than a month ago? How bad was the behavior? If you have concerns, your best way to address them is to first bring them up directly with the user in question, either on their talk page, or via an email (if they've enable email on their account, and you feel some discretion is merited). Many or most concerns should be resolved individually, and only brought to the community's attention on noticeboards as a last resort. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:14, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

To answer those questions:

1. It was a comment by one user on another user's talk page that was posted about 2 months ago.

2. I found that it most likely represents gaming the system of sanctions, specifically the example of playing victim/hypocrisy, where the commenter claims that the other user is trying to start an edit war, despite being the one violating the three-revert rule. It also represents Action 5 as described in WP:OWNBEHAVIOR, as the commenter discouraged the other user from continuing to contribute, because the commenter told them that the edits they were making should be presented elsewhere. It would probably merit a level 1 or 2 warning.

I'll definitely ask the user about it through their talk page. 1isall (talk/contribs) 13:41, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

If the user were to exhibit similar behavior in the future, I could definitely cite the situation described above when reporting them somewhere. 1isall (talk/contribs) 14:39, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Move review for Doctor Who series 15

An editor has asked for a Move review of Doctor Who series 15. Because you closed the move discussion for this page, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the move review. -- Alex_21 _TALK 23:47, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Closed and endorsed. Followup at Talk:Doctor Who season 1#Requested move 22 July 2025. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:15, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

"In–transit mixer" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect In–transit mixer has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 July 30 § In–transit mixer until a consensus is reached. Dicklyon (talk) 02:30, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

@Dicklyon:  Done. Please see my comments at the RfD. I'm happy to see you working on uncontroversial stuff like this, while Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation 2 rolls on, and hope you can keep busy on more of these kinds of things, rather than persisting in pushing the envelope on capitalization edge cases so hard that you end up sitting in front of the Arbitration Committee. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:14, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

In reponse to your comment at RfD

Following up from your comment, I don't see any errors when looking at older versions of the pages you edited; for example, Talk:Mr. Burns (permalink). Please let me know if I'm missing something, because if they are actually causing errors, then the {{Redirect for discussion}} template may need to be fixed. You're not wrong to say that no one is going to be looking at old talk pages for RfD notices, but I would still ask you to self-revert on {{Infobox holiday}}, since that one is being transcluded in mainspace. Let me know your thoughts on these. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 19:06, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

@TechnoSquirrel69: there you go: {{error}}s in talk namespace – please fix the template, so that it doesn't cause Talk:Guy Fawkes Night/Archive 5 to appear on that list. Thanks, wbm1058 (talk) 19:37, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Again, I don't see a visible error or tracking category on that page, even though {{Error}} is ostensibly being transcluded there. Maybe it's worth looking into the logic of Module:RfD to see why it's using that template here? For what it's worth, I didn't do anything out of the ordinary when tagging the redirects for discussion; I followed the nomination instructions and made an edit request to make sure they were complete. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 23:59, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Out of Process?

Question. You reverted my removal of Tanga Loa from the Hikuleo move application claiming it was out of process. How was it out of process, when as I said in the edit summary that the Tanga Loa move should have been on his page and not Hikuleo's? Surely adding Tanga Loa was what was out of process? Addicted4517 (talk) 10:46, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

A notice was posted at Talk:Tanga Loa#Move discussion in progress, notifying that page about the discussion on the other page. Per WP:TPO, the basic rule is not to edit or remove others' posts without their permission. Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:31, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

On the matter of T: titles

Hi wbm. I just wanted to follow up with my stance on the T: titles. We've been in many discussions on the matter, so thank you for your patience in this.

Now that we have a TM: prefix, in a perfect world, there would be no T: titles, as it is wholly redundant to the alias. However, we're not in a perfect world, so I've been doing my best to take it slow, giving plenty of time between discussions as to not overwhelm people with this repair, hopefully giving people time to get used to TM: as it becomes a mainstay. Deleting any of them too hastily could have repercussions and create redlinks, hence why I've been looking at these 1-2 at a time going in an order of perceived lowest impact, to perceived highest impact.

A 2014 RfC indicated that the set of T: titles should not be nominated at RfD en-masse, and each should be looked at on a case by case basis, per Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 112#RFC: On the controversy of the pseudo-namespace shortcuts. I've been doing my best to evaluate the impacts that each page has, so I wanted to give you total foresight about the types of T: titles that I was intending to nominate at some point down the line. I have no plans to do any more T: nominating though, upon the closure of my latest two as keep, but you said within your !vote that it hinged on me potentially nominating more in the set, so I wanted to walk you through my thought process.

Going to collapse the following, but this is my personal perspective on the least impactful to most impactful T: titles. I would be inclined to nominate pages in order of their impact, perhaps with some slight variation if certain pages are more or less related to each other.

Extended content

The full list is as follows:

• T:AC
• T:ACOT
• T:AD
• T:AH
• T:AIV
• T:CENT
• T:DSA
• T:DYK
• T:DYK/C
• T:DYK/P
• T:DYK/P1
• T:DYK/P2
• T:DYK/P3
• T:DYK/P4
• T:DYK/P5
• T:DYK/P6
• T:DYK/P7
• T:DYK/Q
• T:DYK/Q1
• T:DYK/Q2
• T:DYK/Q3
• T:DYK/Q4
• T:DYK/Q5
• T:DYK/Q6
• T:DYK/Q7
• T:DYKQ
• T:DYKT
• T:ITN
• T:R from
• T:TDYK
• T:TDYKA
• T:UAA
• T:dyk/q
• T:tdyk

I have no intention on nominating any of the DYK T: titles any time soon. This is a bundle that is of high use to the DYK side of things, and if I were going to nominate these, it would be with advanced notice, to hopefully encourage the DYK group to move to TM: if they haven't already. This would leave us with:

• T:AC
• T:ACOT
• T:AD
• T:AH
• T:AIV
• T:CENT
• T:DSA
• T:ITN
• T:R from
• T:UAA

These are the 10 non-DYK T: titles, and all of them vary in impact. I'm going to further categorize them, and list them in the order that I would have theoretically nominated them.

1. R from, UAA - Negligible links and ready to be deleted, from my check.
2. AC, ACOT, AD, AIV - Less than 5 links after subtracting RfD and deletion-adjacent discussions, negligible.
3. DSA - The most confusing T: title remaining, Template:DSA does not exist, but contains some links (35 in total which includes RfD and other shortcut reports).
4. AH - A mismatched template, Template:AH is different, but contains some links (50 in total which includes RfD and other shortcut reports).

The above categorization of 8 titles is the entire list of pages that I had previously intended to take to RfD within the next 6-24 months (I have no such plan at this time now that the two I nominated have closed as keep). I would ensure that any existing links are fully repaired before nominating any of them. As for the other two non-DYK titles, I do not intend to nominate them any time soon, and advance notice would be required before initiating such a discussion. Those being:

• CENT - TM:CENT should be sufficient in 2025, but contains links (100 or so)
• ITN - TM:ITN should be sufficient in 2025, but contains links (300 or so)

Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 21:28, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

Just for my reference: Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 August 8. I really don't want to think about this any more. There are too many more important things on my plate. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:49, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you then. I'd love to get back to building the encyclopedia as well, this has just been a very long cleanup that once spanned 100+ of T: titles, and has been slimmed down to the ones that target high-traffic templates. The last few have seemed to have staunch defenders, and it has not proven to be an easy road. I didn't expect you to comment on the RfD to begin with, but just wanted to at least have my internal path written down somewhere for transparency about my intentions. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 21:58, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

Talk page reflist size

Greetings! Thank you for pointing out the technical error I made.[1] I come to ask if you happen to know a better way I could reduce the size of {{Reflist-talk}} to make it less overbearing on a discussion? Without hiding it in a collapsible, of course. — AFC Vixen 🦊 03:51, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

Maybe just cite fewer references? You have raised a legitimate issue, where {{Reflist-talk}} is breaking the bullet lists of multi-page requested moves. I'm still working on finding a solution. – wbm1058 (talk) 07:35, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

I don't have an easy solution for the problem reported here. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:21, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Wishing Wbm1058 a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Birthday Committee! Best wishes! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 02:02, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Wishing Wbm1058 a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 21:08, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

10 years – wbm1058 (talk) 00:04, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Computer code

The article Computer code has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No real content

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 07:15, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Rebecca Hawkins (disambiguation)

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Rebecca Hawkins (disambiguation) requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G14 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is:

• a disambiguation page with a title ending in "(disambiguation)" which lists only one extant Wikipedia page (i.e., there is a primary topic);
• a disambiguation page that lists zero extant Wikipedia pages, regardless of its title; or
• a redirect with a title ending in "(disambiguation)" whose target is neither a disambiguation page nor page that has a disambiguation-like function.

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time. Please see the disambiguation page guidelines for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and removing the speedy deletion tag. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 15:36, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

EEng was trying to fix the broken archivals

You should rescind your ban. Another user had somehow broken them; we tried to fix it and failed, then they were trying. There was nothing whatsoever disruptive. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 23:43, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, VPP, but don't hold your breath. This species of admin never looks back. (And yes, he's been editing since you left this message.) EEng 00:50, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

I did not ban him. I just blocked him from the action Creating new pages and uploading new files, with an expiration time of only 3 hours. Which is the time I needed to clean up the archives of this talk page, without him interfering with my work again. A task requiring admin privileges to perform properly, which he does not have. That was just the latest entry to his lengthy block log. After seeing this uncivil discussion, I have no regrets. He claims to be a software engineer, with a career stretching back not only to before that 21-yr old student was born, but to well before their parents were born. His career does not stretch back to before I was born. I learned BASIC coding on a GE time-sharing system at about the same time Bill Gates did, on the same system. I just wanna know, if that's so, Where are his Wikipedia bots? – wbm1058 (talk) 13:30, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Help with redirect

I would appreciate your help in creating a redirect for Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan (national security advisor)... to Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan (national security advisor) which I clumsily was unable to make- you reverted it here. I had also make a proposal on teh talk page which I am sure you ddidnt see. There are several Tahnouns and to distinguish them some papers use the different spellling for him. At present when you search Tahnoon you wont find this page. Thank you. Wuerzele (talk) 05:03, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

See Help:Creating a redirect. I should have created that redirect a long time ago, not just now! – wbm1058 (talk) 09:39, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	For your remarkable thoroughness in cleaning up other people's technical errors. I don't mean to step on your toes, but I appreciate the few times you've fixed whatever I've broken. One only has to look at your contributions to see you doing the same thing everywhere. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 09:57, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

"Redirect bypass"

I notice that you have been "bypassing" redirects. Please do not do this. See WP:NOTBROKEN. Redirects are not broken and do not need to be "fixed". The linked page explains why. -- Srleffler (talk) 06:01, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

@Srleffler: I see that you reverted my edits on Optical fiber and Optical fiber connector. I've been working to clear out User:Wbm1058/Reports/Linked incomplete names and those two pages were on that report because Polarization-maintaining fiberPolarization-maintaining fiber was marked as an "incomplete name". I just made this edit which resolved the issue. {{R from incomplete name}} is a rather ambiguous template. See Template talk:R from incomplete name, and in particular, Template talk:R from incomplete name#Merge/Redirect proposal. I'm thinking about just making it a disambiguation, as there may be at least a few cases where an incomplete name is actually incorrect ({{R from incorrect name}}) rather than just a valid {{R from short name}}. Regards, wbm1058 (talk) 11:57, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

That's very interesting. Thanks so much for explaining, and for fixing the problem at the root.--Srleffler (talk) 05:03, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Your bot is persistently removing a move template

Hi, even after I added {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}} to an article, your bot keeps removing the notice of an ongoing move discussion. Could you kindly make it stop? See Class president's history. FaviFake (talk) 19:51, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

@FaviFake: you haven't followed proper procedure, submitting a correctly formatted requested move by following the instructions at Template:Requested move or Wikipedia:Requested moves#Requesting controversial and potentially controversial moves. Once you do that, the bot will place that notice for you; you don't need to post that notice. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:48, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
	You’re a good person. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 20:59, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate all of you doing your best to try and help me in the moment, too. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 22:37, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Hm?

[1] Was that intentional? Polygnotus (talk) 12:20, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

No, obviously an edit conflict not handled by the MediaWiki software. I started my edit last night, and finished it this morning. The long time between when I started and finished probably has something to do with that glitch. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:22, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Yeah the way mediawiki deals with editconflicts is...not great in my opinion. Polygnotus (talk) 12:28, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

That edit was made using Firefox on my nine-month-old Ubuntu Linux machine, so there's another possible reason for the glitch. This edit, I'm back on Chrome on my 15-year-old Windows 7 machine, which is still chugging along. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:40, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Party like its 2009! Polygnotus (talk) 12:55, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

2010, actually. I think the secret to its longevity is that I built it with Intel's first-generation solid-state drive, which was just 40 GB. I later upgraded to a 240 GB drive, which is only now getting close to full (I have a larger conventional E: drive I use for Media Center). – wbm1058 (talk) 13:16, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I think the secret to its longevity is that you don't smoke, keep your house relatively dust-free, and don't often buy new electronics when the old one still does its job. This prediction was inspired by Prince who was inspired by Nostradamus so it must be true. Polygnotus (talk) 13:28, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 30

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Self-Portrait with Two Circles, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Aristotelian.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 19:58, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Guide to temporary accounts

Hello, Wbm1058. This message is being sent to remind you of significant upcoming changes regarding logged-out editing.

Starting 4 November, logged-out editors will no longer have their IP address publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account (TA) associated with their edits. Users with some extended rights like administrators and CheckUsers, as well as users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will still be able to reveal temporary users' IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range.

How do temporary accounts work?

Editing from a temporary account

• When a logged-out user completes an edit or a logged action for the first time, a cookie will be set in this user's browser and a temporary account tied with this cookie will be automatically created for them. This account's name will follow the pattern: ~2025-12345-67 (a tilde, year of creation, a number split into units of 5).
• All subsequent actions by the temporary account user will be attributed to this username. The cookie will expire 90 days after its creation. As long as it exists, all edits made from this device will be attributed to this temporary account. It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their cookies or uses a different device or web browser.
• A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Users with the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right will be able to see the underlying IP addresses.
• As a measure against vandalism, there are two limitations on the creation of temporary accounts:
  • There has to be a minimum of 10 minutes between subsequent temporary account creations from the same IP (or /64 range in case of IPv6).
  • There can be a maximum of 6 temporary accounts created from an IP (or /64 range) within a period of 24 hours.

Temporary account IP viewer user right

How to enable IP Reveal

• Administrators may grant the temporary account IP viewer (TAIV) user right to non-administrators who meet the criteria for granting. Importantly, an editor must make an explicit request for the permission (e.g. at WP:PERM/TAIV)—administrators are not permitted to assign the right without a request.
• Administrators will automatically be able to see temporary account IP information once they have accepted the Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy via Special:Preferences or via the onboarding dialog which comes up after temporary accounts are deployed.

Impact for administrators

• It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won't be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
• It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
• Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, you should use Special:IPContributions for this (see a video about IPContributions in a gallery below).

Rules about IP information disclosure

• Publicizing an IP address gained through TAIV access is generally not allowed (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 previously edited as 192.0.2.1 or ~2025-12345-67's IP address is 192.0.2.1).
• Publicly linking a TA to another TA is allowed if "reasonably believed to be necessary". (e.g. ~2025-12345-67 and ~2025-12345-68 are likely the same person, so I am counting their reverts together toward 3RR, but not Hey ~2025-12345-68, you did some good editing as ~2025-12345-67)
• See Wikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer § What can and can't be said for more detailed guidelines.

Useful tools for patrollers

• It is possible to view if a user has opted-in to view temporary account IPs via the User Info card, available in Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options → Enable the user info card
  • This feature also makes it possible for anyone to see the approximate count of temporary accounts active on the same IP address range.
• Special:IPContributions allows viewing all edits and temporary accounts connected to a specific IP address or IP range.
• Similarly, Special:GlobalContributions supports global search for a given temporary account's activity.
• The auto-reveal feature (see video below) allows users with the right permissions to automatically reveal all IP addresses for a limited time window.

Videos

• How to use Special:IPContributions
• How automatic IP reveal works
• How to use IP Info
• How to use User Info

Further information and discussion

• For more information and discussion regarding this change, please see the announcement from the Wikimedia Foundation at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) § Temporary accounts rollout.

Most of this message was written by Mz7 (source). Thanks, 🎃 SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:47, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

"HIPPA" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect HIPPA has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 November 1 § HIPPA until a consensus is reached. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 03:58, 1 November 2025 (UTC)