User talk:DMacks/Archive 70

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Tech News: 2025-46

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

Updates for editors

Screenshot of the visual improvements made on talk pages
Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.
  • Starting November 12, users will see a change in the appearance of talk pages on some Wikipedias. Almost all wikis have received this design change; English Wikipedia will get these changes later. You can read more on Diff. Users can opt out of these changes in their user preferences in "Show discussion activity".
  • MediaWiki can now display a page indicator automatically while a page is protected. This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled by community request.
  • Using the "Show preview" or "Show changes" buttons in the wikitext editor will now carry over certain URL parameters like 'useskin', 'uselang' and 'section'. This update also fixes an issue where, if the browser crashed while previewing an edit to a single section, saving this edit could overwrite the entire page with just that section’s content.
  • Wikivoyage wikis can use colored map markers in the article text. The text of these markers will now be shown in contrasting black or white color, instead of always being white. Local workarounds for the problem can be removed.
  • The Activity tab in the Wikipedia Android app is now available for all users. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.
  • The Reader Growth team is launching an experiment called "Image browsing" to test how to make it easier for readers to browse and discover images on Wikipedia articles. This experiment, a mobile-only A/B test, will go live on English Wikipedia in the week of November 17 and will run for four weeks, affecting 0.05% of users on English wiki. The test launched on November 3 on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese wikis, affecting up to 10% of users on those wikis.
  • Recurrent item View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example the inability to lock accounts on mobile sites has been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Nominations are open on Wikitech for new Toolforge standards committee members. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open through 2025-11-28.
  • The JWT issuer field in OAuth 2 access tokens for SUL wikis has been changed to https://meta.wikimedia.org. Old access tokens will still work.
  • The JWT subject field in OAuth 2 access tokens will soon change from <user id> to mw:<identity type>:<user id>, where <identity type> is typically CentralAuth: (for SUL wikis) or local:<wiki id> (for other wikis). This is to avoid conflicts between different user ID types, and to make OAuth 2 access tokens and the sessionJwt cookie more similar. Old access tokens will still work.
  • MediaWiki's block messages (blockedtext, blockedtext-partial, autoblockedtext, systemblockedtext, blockedtext-tempuser, autoblockedtext-tempuser) now support additional parameters indicating whether the user is blocked from editing their own user talk page $9 or emailing other users $10.
  • A REL1_45 branch for MediaWiki core and each of the extensions and skins in Wikimedia git has been created. This is the first step in the release process for MediaWiki 1.45.0, scheduled for late November 2025. If you are working on a critical bug fix or working on a new feature, you may need to take note of this change.
  • The process for generating CirrusSearch dumps has been updated due to slowing performance. If you encounter any issues migrating to the replacement dumps, please contact the Search Platform Team for support.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:36, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Half-life whitespace revert

DMacks, you reverted an edit on "Half-life".

You said:. 'br' is a line-break, does not also get a whitespace.

I do not disagree. However, this is how the "More information:" HEADING, NOT THE TABLE COLUMN HEADING, looks on my Android:

"More information: Number ofhalf-lives elapsed, Fraction remaining …"

The table construction is a mystery to me.

However, may I suggest the (correct use of the) line-break in the table somehow does not translate correctly when copied to the "More information:" line ?

I would appreciate finding out how this is resolved.

Is the following of any illumination:

Using `
` in a wikitext table can affect how content is displayed within table cells, potentially causing line breaks that may not be intended. It's important to use it carefully to maintain the desired layout and readability of the table. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%3Cbr%2F%3E+causing+different+behaviors+in+Wikitable+heading&atb=v472-1&ko=-1&t=ddg_android&ia=web&assist=true

Please know my edit was made in good faith.~~ SalineBrain (talk) 12:43, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-47

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

Updates for editors

  • The Reader Experience team is experimenting with reading lists on mobile web, allowing logged-in readers with no edits to save private lists of articles for later. The experiment is running on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias since the week of 10 November, and will begin on English Wikipedia the week of 17 November.
  • Users who can’t receive their email verification code during login can now get help by submitting a form on a new special page. This update is part of the Account Security initiative. If your account has an email address, please make sure you still have access to it. When logging in from a new device or location without 2FA, you may be asked to enter a 6-digit code sent by email to finish logging in. Learn more.
  • One new wiki has been created: a Wikisource in Minangkabau (s:min:)
  • Recurrent item View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • As part of the Parser Unification project, the Content Transform Team rolled out Parsoid as the default parser to many low-traffic Wikipedias and is preparing the next step to high traffic ones. This message is an invitation for you to opt-in to Parsoid, as described in the Extension:ParserMigration documentation, and identify any issues you might encounter with your own workflow using bots, gadgets, or user scripts. Please, let us know through the "Report Visual Bug" link in the Tools sidebar or create a phab ticket and tag the Content Transform Team in Phabricator.
  • Unsupported Tools: Several issues with Video2Commons have been fixed, including filename-related upload failures, black-video imports, and retry handling. AV1 support has also been added. Ongoing work focuses on backend stability, ffmpeg errors, subtitle imports, metadata handling, and playlist uploads. To track specific tasks, check the Phabricator board.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

  • Save the date for the next Wikimedia Hackathon happening in Milan, Italy from May 1–3, 2026. Registration will open in January 2026. Scholarship applications are currently open, and will close on November 28, 2025. If you have any questions, please email hackathon@wikimedia.org.

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MediaWiki message delivery 17:24, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

ArbCom 2025 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2025 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 1 December 2025. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

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Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Wishing DMacks a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 10:24, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Request discussion

Hello. I would like to request discussion regarding the wording in the sentence about Henri Lammens.You asked that citation is needed "Henri Lammens is controversial source". Here the the most latest references.

• The Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences biography (confirms Lammens' controversial reputation)

https://www.kaowarsom.be/en/notices_Lammens_Henri

"His virulent criticism of both historical and contemporary Islam regularly exposes Lammens"

|"Around 1910, Lammens shifts his focus to the earliest period of Islamic history. In works like Fātima et les filles de Mahomet (1912)he attempts a re-evaluation of the life of the Prophet and other key figures of early Islam. In these studies, Lammens not only stresses the inherently political character he sees Islam as having, a sentiment also expressed by other contemporary scholars. Replacing the traditionally positive depictions of the Prophet’s life by exceedingly negative images, he also marks himself off as a vigorously Catholic Orientalist, severely criticising Islam and its protagonists. Indeed, he not only targets historical Islam. Throughout his career, he publishes polemical articles on the politico-religious situation of contemporary Islam".

• A peer-reviewed academic article providing modern scholarly criticism of Lammens hostile and polemical views.

https://agj.uobasrah.edu.iq/index.php/agj/article/view/354/312

"The study of the Prophetic biography (Seerah) and its branches has occupied a significant space in the research interests of Orientalists, as they have approached Islamic topics with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. However, their studies have varied in fairness some were objective, relying on authentic and credible sources while adhering to sound academic methodology. Others, however, were biased and hostile, basing their research on weak and fabricated sources and employing flawed methodologies.Among the Orientalists who exhibited hostility and a lack of impartiality was Henri Lammens, who harbored deep animosity toward Islam in general and the Prophet Muhammad and his household (peace be upon them) in particular. This is evident in his book Fatima and the Daughters of Muhammad, the subject of this study, in which he sought to malign the Prophet and his family in every possible way".

Can we please discuss. ~2025-31931-59 (talk) 15:02, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Take it to the article talk-page (I don't even know what article you are talking about, but this is a name with which I am not familiar). That will help attract the attention of other interested and knowlegeable editors as well. DMacks (talk) 16:30, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

DYK for Premethylenomycin C lactone

On 24 November 2025, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Premethylenomycin C lactone, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that researchers accidentally discovered a new antibiotic in soil bacteria? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Premethylenomycin C lactone. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Premethylenomycin C lactone), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to nominate it.

 — Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-48

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

Updates for editors

  • Last week, the Wikimedia Search Team recreated the "DWIM" (Do What I Mean) gadget functionality server-side, for Russian and Hebrew Wikipedias. This feature adds cross-keyboard suggestions to the standard search-box suggestions. For example, searching for cxfcnmt on Russian Wikipedia will now add suggestions for счастье ("happiness") that the user probably intended. They plan to enable this feature for other Russian and Hebrew wikis this week.
  • Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will have syntax highlighting available in DiscussionTools. This requires that the "Enable editing tools in source mode" preference be set.
  • Campaign events extension – the set of tools for coordinating events and other on-wiki collaborations has now been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. A new feature known as Collaborative contribution to help organizers and participants see the impact of activities has also been added. Join the upcoming learning session to see the new feature in action and share your feedback.
  • Recurrent item View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug which stopped CodeReviewBot from working, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Users of Wikimedia API can join a usability study to help validate the new design of Wikimedia REST API sandboxes. Interested participants should fill the recruitment survey.
  • The MediaWiki Interfaces team is deprecating XSLT stylesheets within the Action API. Support for format=xml&xlst={stylesheet} will be removed from Wikimedia projects by the end of November, 2025. In addition, it will soon be disabled by default in MediaWiki release versions: v1.43 (LTS), v1.44, and v1.45. Support for XSLT stylesheets will be fully removed from MediaWiki v1.46 (expected to release between April and May 2026).
  • The WDQS legacy endpoint (query-legacy-full.wikidata.org) will be decommissioned at the end of December 2025, and finally closed down on 7th January 2026. After this date, users should expect requests to query.wikidata.org that require the full graph to fail or return invalid results if they are not rewritten to use SPARQL federation. The team encourages users to ensure that tools and workflows use the supported WDQS endpoints (https://query.wikidata.org/ - Main graph or https://query-scholarly.wikidata.org/ - Scholarly graph). For support with migrating use cases, please review the Data Access and Request a Query pages for details and assistance on alternative access methods.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:54, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-49

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

Updates for editors

  • The Wikipedia Year in Review 2025 will be available on December 2 for users of iOS and Android Wikipedia apps, featuring new personalized insights, updated reading highlights, and refreshed designs. Learn more on the review's project page.
  • The Growth team is working on improving the text and presentation of the Verification Email sent to new users to make them more welcoming, useful and informative. Some new text have been drafted for A/B testing and you can help by translating them. See Phabricator.
  • Add a link will now be deployed at Japanese, Urdu and Chinese Wikipedias on December 2. Add a link is based on a prediction model that suggests links to be added to articles. While this feature has already been available on most Wikipedias, the prediction model could not support certain languages. A new model has now been developed to handle these languages, and it will be gradually rolled out to other Wikipedias over time. If you would like to know more, please contact Trizek (WMF).
  • Recurrent item View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where search boxes on some Commons pages showed no results due to switch from SpecialSearch to MediaSearch, has now been fixed.
  • Two new wikis have been created:

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • The Wikimedia Foundation is in the early stages of exploring approaches to Article guidance. The initiative aims to identify interventions that could help new editors easily understand and apply existing Wikipedia practices and policies when creating an article. The project is in the exploration and early experimental design phase. All community members are encouraged to learn more about the project, and share their thoughts on the talk page.

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MediaWiki message delivery 18:55, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

What Compels You?

Hello DMacks, this is ~2025-38896-51. I understand why you removed my edit on the page for Calico, as it was an obviously political statement. But it was also obviously true. Calico is just one of many large corporate biotech companies funded by billionaires and with the obvious goal of extending the lives of the wealthy. If they were interested in improving the health and extending the lifespan of the majority of people, we do not yet even need to come up with newfangled technology, as the causes of illness and premature death for most are well understood issues with extant solutions prevented by global political and economic structures. So what drove you to depoliticize the article in such a manner that covers the obvious intent of this research. What is your interest in presenting this information in inaccurate neutral terminology?

""Num conscientia daemonica corporata in carne intra cranium tuum an in crumena tua habitat?"

- 38896-51

WP:NPOV and WP:V are policies that require all statements, and especially opinions or analyses, to be supported by citing a reliable source. DMacks (talk) 00:12, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you!

You're right that that use of "light-water" was a compound adjective, and should indeed be hyphenated. I came back just a few minutes later to fix my mistake, and you had already reverted it! Wikipedia is incredible. ~2025-32080-25 (talk) 01:08, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Cheers! Welcome aboard. DMacks (talk) 02:53, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2025

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2025).

Administrator changes

added
readded Valereee
removed

CheckUser changes

removed Spicy

Technical news

  • Starting on November 4, the IP addresses of logged-out editors are no longer being publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account associated with their edits.
  • Administrators will now find that Special:MergeHistory is now significantly more flexible about what it can merge. It can now merge sections taken from the middle of the history of the source (rather than only the start) and insert revisions anywhere in the history of the destination page (rather than only the start). T382958

Miscellaneous

Sent byMediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-50

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

Weekly highlight

  • Anybody who wishes to secure their user account can now use two-factor authentication (2FA). This is available to all registered users of all Wikimedia projects. This is part of the Account Security initiative. Later, 2FA will be required for all users who can take security- or privacy-sensitive actions.

Updates for editors

  • Following last week's deployments, the Add a link feature, which allows editors to add suggested links during editing, will be available to an additional 33 Wikipedias starting on 9 December. This expansion is possible thanks to the new prediction model that now supports all languages, including those that were previously not covered. While the feature has been available on most Wikipedias for some time, this rollout brings us closer to using the improved model everywhere. If you have any questions or would like more details please contact Trizek (WMF).
  • Last week, the Search Platform team added transliterated as-you-type search suggestions to Georgian wikis. If there are only a few regular search suggestions, then queries in Latin or Cyrillic script are now rewritten into Georgian script to look for more matches. For example, searching for either bedniereba or бедниереба will now suggest the existing article about ბედნიერება ("happiness"). You can recommend other languages where transliterated suggestions would be useful on Phabricator for future development.
  • Later this week, a controlled experiment will begin for editors on the 100 largest Wikipedias who are editing a section in the mobile web visual editor. 50% of these editors will notice a new "Edit full page" button that will enable them to expand their editing session to the whole page. This feature is intended to make it easier for people on mobile web to edit any article section, regardless of which section-edit icon they tapped to begin. The experiment will last ~4 weeks. You can find more details about the project.
  • Later this week, the Reader Growth team will launch a mobile web experiment to expand all article sections by default (currently they are collapsed by default) and pin the section header the user is currently reading to the top of the page. The experiment will affect 10% of users on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
  • The Wikipedia Year in Review 2025, a feature in the Wikipedia mobile apps (iOS and Android) that provides users with a personalised summary of their engagement with Wikipedia over the year, is now available on the iOS and Android apps. This edition includes expanded personalised insights, improved reading highlights, new donor messaging, and updated designs. Open the app to view your Year in Review and explore your reading journey from 2025.
  • A recent software bug caused edits made with VisualEditor to make unintended changes to wikitext, including removing whitespace and replacing spaces with underscores in wikilinks inside citations. This was partially fixed last week, and further fixes are in progress. Editors who used VisualEditor between November 28 and December 2 should review their edits for unexpected modifications.
  • Recurrent item View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the incorrect handling of URLs copied from the address bar of Microsoft Edge users, has been resolved.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Starting this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will have CodeMirror as the editor for Lua, JavaScript, CSS, JSON and Vue content models, instead of CodeEditor. With this, the linters will be upgraded. This is part of a larger effort to eventually replace CodeEditor and provide a consistent code editing experience.
  • Developers are encouraged to take the 2025 Developer Satisfaction Survey, which remains open until 5 January 2026. If you build software for the Wikimedia ecosystem and would like to share your experiences or feedback, your participation is greatly appreciated.
  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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MediaWiki message delivery 17:42, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

ANI

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Harold Foppele (talk) 19:00, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

Block evading IP

96.33.107.226 (talk+ · tag · contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RBLs · proxy check · block user · block log · cross-wiki contribs · CheckUser (log)) is probably a block evading IP of User:Jiwood23… look at contribs - WP:ENGVAR trolling - Uw-ipevadeblock for 6 months - it should look like this:

Stop icon with clock
Anonymous users from this IP address have been blocked from editing for a period of 6 months for block evasion.
If you believe that there are good reasons for being unblocked, please review Wikipedia's guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text to the bottom of your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.
If this is a shared IP address and you are an uninvolved editor with a registered account, you may continue to edit by logging in.
or to remove tpa use
Stop icon with clock
Anonymous users from this IP address have been blocked from editing for a period of 6 months for block evasion. In addition, your ability to edit your talk page has also been revoked.
If you believe that there are good reasons for being unblocked, please review Wikipedia's guide to appealing blocks, then submit a request to the Unblock Ticket Request System.
If this is a shared IP address and you are an uninvolved editor with a registered account, you may continue to edit by logging in.

. Thanks. ~2025-38650-35 (talk) 23:59, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Obviously is. But no activity on that IP since April, so I don't see a reason to block that one now. DMacks (talk) 05:31, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
@DMacks, this user has been going around trolling admins (here and on meta) to do nonsense things like this for them. They're also socking: the reports I've investigated have turned out to be one user making disruptive edits, logging out and generating a new TA, then reporting their own disruptive editing. I have blocked them as well as I can but please feel free to ping me or another checkuser if you get more requests like this. Cheers. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:21, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the information. That was good-hand/bad-hand troll was not one of the abusers with which I was familiar. DMacks (talk) 15:51, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you Harold Foppele (talk) 13:13, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

References

Allow a question please: Do you have access to ref sources? I have an article with 64 refs and I cannot access some of them. Do you or anyone you know have access? Also, am I allowed to use a figure out of a publkic paper inside an article with source quotation ? Thanks Harold Foppele (talk) 17:10, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

I can usually get access to materials from a university research library near me. But they do not have everything...hard to predict without seeing the specific journal reference. Copying diagrams or other images from a published source depends on the source. Copyright law is very complicated. DMacks (talk) 06:19, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

I found Perlego.com if you need to look up references :) Harold Foppele (talk) 21:57, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

That's an interesting resource I had not heard of before. DMacks (talk) 06:19, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
I have a subscription now, so if you need any refs, ping or email me, Cheers Harold Foppele (talk) 10:55, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! DMacks (talk) 13:10, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

About my speedy deletion nomination

Okay, I haven't realized that I nominated a user talk page earlier today (Eastern Standard Time) until now. I was too busy notice my mistake. This is the second unintentional time this month. I own up to it. I never saw the page say User Talk, thus my mistake. Felicia (talk) 22:23, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

No worries:) DMacks (talk) 06:02, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Draft for Maria Dorota Czajkowska-Majewska

Sorry about the missing BLP references, my fault. I have added three of them. One is a reference about the author (M.D. Czajkowska-Majewska) from the Archive of the Science of Poland, with information about her education (Early life and education section). The second one is  the author’s CV from the webpage of the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Warsaw, Poland (Academic career section). The last one is a listing of the author’s popular publications from the website of the National Library of Poland (Science outreach  section). Her research publications can all be found on her included profiles from the open sources: Google Scholar, PubMed, Semantic Scholar, Dimensions. Thank you! Walerus (talk) 20:11, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-51

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

Updates for editors

  • Recurrent item View all 18 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, one of the fixes addressed an issue for temporary accounts adding an external URL, which triggered an hCaptcha request in more cases than intended, and did not display the required popup on the first attempt to publish the edit.

Updates for technical contributors

  • To improve database and site performance, external links to Wikimedia projects will no longer be stored in the database. This means they will not be searchable in Special:LinkSearch, will not be checked by the Spam Blacklist or AbuseFilter as new links, and will not be in the externallinks table on database replicas. In the future this may be extended to other highly-linked trusted websites on a per-wiki basis, such as Creative Commons links on Wikimedia Commons.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:00, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Will I get banned if I put on my Userpage that I post on Soyjak.party?

Yes or no. I’m not a Nazi. I just browse the Sharty cuz I like their memes. Will I be banned for this? Sammywonbor or whatever the user is called (talk) 21:32, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

I have no idea. DMacks (talk) 21:38, 17 December 2025 (UTC)
This is in response to them being pinged at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents § Users associated with hugely problematic imageboard Soyjak Party. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 22:27, 17 December 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the context. My answer stands. But now I can also direct to read that thread and ask there for clarification as necessary. I am going to decline to speak on behalf of the participants there. DMacks (talk) 03:10, 18 December 2025 (UTC)
On a personal level, I would suggest you break off your ties with an imageboard full of no-life bigots who dox and troll for fun. Athanelar (talk) 03:38, 18 December 2025 (UTC)
Will I get banned for it doe? Sammywonbor or whatever the user is called (talk) 11:38, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-52

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

Updates for editors

  • From January, edit filters can be set to automatically suppress their details such as rules and list of attempted edits and actions. This will help oversighters use edit filters to prevent doxxing or other suppressible material.
  • The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 12 January 2026 because of the end of year holidays. Thank you to all of the translators, and people who submitted content or feedback, this year.
  • Recurrent item View all 16 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the crash that occurred when tapping "First Steps" in the Wikipedia Android Year in Review has now been fixed, and the feature opens as expected.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Interface elements such as diffs and categories generated by MediaWiki used to have the attribute data-mw="interface" to distinguish from wiki content. The attribute has been replaced with data-mw-interface="", to avoid potential conflicts with other data-mw attributes, which are generated by Parsoid.
  • Recurrent item There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Meetings and events

  • The Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026 will take place on 13-14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Applications just opened mid-December and will close in mid-January or earlier if capacity is reached. With space for approximately 100 participants, early application is encouraged.

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:43, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 23

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Bicyclohexyl, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Conformation.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 19:52, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

Fluorescence and Photochemistry

Dear Dmack, I noticed you reverted the categories for the Intrinsic DNA Fluorescence article. You mentioned that "photochemistry" is not simply the intersection of "anything chemistry" and "anything involving light." While I understand that distinction, I believe this specific category is highly appropriate here. Fluorescence is a fundamental pillar of photochemistry (as seen in any standard textbook on the subject). Furthermore, DNA fluorescence is a staple topic at international photochemistry conferences, and many of the references cited in the article are from dedicated photochemistry journals. Given that the scientific community treats this as a core part of the discipline, I think the category should be reinstated. Many thanks Serbacc (talk) 10:18, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

I don't see substantive article content to support that there is much "chemical" happening with the photo process, other than that it fluoresces. While it may have applications to chemistry, and obviously fluorescence is widely used in and benefits from chemistry, this article as it stands does not demonstrate that this specific topic does. The closest I see is the lead-section statement "contribute to understanding the very first steps of a complex series of events triggered by UV radiation, ultimately leading to DNA damage.". But that's too weak a connection to my eye (appears to be only using it as a reporter for the chemistry, not actually involved in the chemistry?). DMacks (talk) 15:47, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2026!

Hello DMacks, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2026.
Happy editing,
Abishe (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

Our Rangpur friend

I saw you blocked a prbable LOUTSOCK of the person doing the disruptive page moves at Rangpur. Should this go to SPI if they do it again or would that be WP:QUACKing loud enough to skip that step? TornadoLGS (talk) 20:19, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

I'd say SPI if it happens again so we can keep a central record (plus more eyes means faster catching in the future). Looking at some deleted histories, I see an article-overlap with a much older sock-pile, but the material they each added seem different enough I think it's unrelated. DMacks (talk) 21:32, 19 December 2025 (UTC)
I'm a bit surprised the main account wasn't indeffed tbh. Or is it stale since the main account hasn't edited in a bit? TornadoLGS (talk) 22:23, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

AfD

And this is still happening. Not sure how to address it or if its even worth it. CNMall41 (talk) 04:22, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Happy New Year, DMacks!

Happy New Year!

DMacks,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Volten001 ☎ 10:33, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Volten001 ☎ 10:33, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

Re: Chembox

I used the automatic generator here...didn't know that there would be errors :( Dryrace (talk) 06:18, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

And as for the "Autoignition" error, I got it from Template:Chembox#Full_form, in the "Section7 = {{Chembox Hazards" part.--Dryrace (talk)
I would not be surprised that a tool last updated over two years ago (and deleted by its author since then) might not know about later changes to the Chembox. But for Autoignition, it's pretty simple to see what's wrong: the documentation actually says the field is "AutoignitionPt" not "Autoignition". DMacks (talk) 08:26, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
Most of the documentation is correct except the "full form" part Template:Chembox#Full form (in "Long parameter list for {{Chembox}}" which I copied from). In this part it says "Autoignition". Dryrace (talk) 09:00, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
Good catch! I updated the doc (which is a mess in many many other ways too:( DMacks (talk) 09:23, 7 January 2026 (UTC)
No worries! Glad they're fixed :) Dryrace (talk) 02:53, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Removal of contributions

Hello, I woke up to a flurry of emails that you had deleted contributions I made to a number of different pages many years ago, in my areas of interest. These are labelled 'spam' and 'self promotion'. I am not an expert in Wikipedia regulations, but the specific areas I have contributed on (youth crime in the UK/ substance use in Kenya) are under-researched and I had thought my contributions were relevant and would be helpful to others. I'm also a little confused as to why some sections I contributed have been left intact, with just my own references deleted? If the references are out of date as you say, then I would understand you deleting to update, but deleting without replacing seems a shame. I'm a clinician not an academic, so have no real reason to self-promote, but added contributions in good faith thinking they would be helpful. And as you can see I added whole sections, not just my own work. Would appreciate your feedback. JCBoyce85 (talk) 16:00, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

See WP:REFSPAM. This particular set did not come to my attention until the past few days, having been present for years as you know. I would have removed them back then if I were to have been aware of them at that time. The fact that some is also out-dated, or redundant to other refs, or a ref for something seemingly simple that is discussed elsewhere in an article, is an additional concern. And finally, WP:SECONDARY means original published analysis is generally considered a weak source. DMacks (talk) 04:11, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2025).

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:29, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-03

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

Weekly highlight

  • The Wikimedia Foundation has shared some guiding questions for the July 2026–June 2027 Annual Plan on Meta and Diff. These focus on global trends, faster and healthier experimentation, better support for newcomers, strengthening editors and advanced users, improving collaboration across projects, and growing and retaining readership. Feedback and ideas are welcome on the talk page.

Updates for editors

  • As part of the current work of Community Tech team on the Multiple watchlists project, the display of EditWatchlist will be updated as a first step towards multiple watchlists. Additionally, the pagination on Search will be updated too, as a part of the work on the Revamp pagination / page navigation wish.
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  • Recurrent item View all 28 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where global blocks did not have the option to disable sending emails, has now been fixed, and will be available for use in the week of January 13.

Updates for technical contributors

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

Hey, DMacks. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee!
Have a great day! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 01:14, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 18

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Allotropes of oxygen, a link pointing to the disambiguation page was Conformationadded.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 07:54, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Baking powder

I did some work on Baking powder, I am not a chemist. If you are chemist, could you verify the changes I made? I found errors that I corrected.

Piñanana (talk) 05:42, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-04

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

Updates for editors

  • The tray shown on Special:Diff in mobile view has been redesigned. It is now collapsed by default, and incorporates a link to undo the edit being viewed, making it easier for mobile editors and reviewers to take action while keeping the interface uncluttered.
  • The Global Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. The extension continues to improve — it now automatically determines the text direction (ensuring correct display of sites with unusual domain names) and shows detailed descriptions for log actions. Later this week, a new permanent link for page creations and CSS classes for each entry element will be added.
  • Recurrent item View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the previously observed issue in Vector 2022, where anchor link targets were obscured by the sticky header, has now been addressed.

Updates for technical contributors

  • As mentioned in the October 2025 deprecation announcement, MediaWiki Interfaces team will begin sunsetting all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from the MediaWiki REST API the week of January 26. Changes are expected to roll out to all wikis on or before January 30th. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found, compared, and tested using the REST Sandbox. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in Phabricator to the #MW-Interfaces-Team board.
  • Interactive reference documentation for the Wikimedia REST API has moved. Requests to API docs previously hosted through RESTBase (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/) are now redirected to the REST Sandbox.
  • The WMF Wikidata Platform team (WDP) has published its January 2026 newsletter. It includes updates on the legacy full-graph endpoint decommissioning, the User-Agent policy change, the monthly Blazegraph migration office hours, and efforts to reduce regressions caused by the legacy endpoint shutdown. As a reminder, you can subscribe to the WDP newsletter!
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

  • The Wikimedia Hackathon Northwestern Europe 2026 will take place on 13-14 March 2026 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Applications opened mid-December and will close soon or when capacity is reached. It's a two-day, technically oriented hackathon bringing together Wikimedians from the region. Hope to see you there!

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:27, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

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