User talk:CFA

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CFA is busy and is going to be on Wikipedia in off-and-on doses, and may not respond swiftly to queries.

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CFA is busy in real life and may not respond swiftly to queries. This user is a regular and doesn't mind if you template him. This user is aware of the designation of the following as contentious topics: post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people pseudoscience and fringe science the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups gender-related disputes or controversies or people associated with them governmental regulation of firearm ownership; the social, historical and political context of such regulation; and the people and organizations associated with these issues COVID-19, broadly construed climate change complementary and alternative medicine articles about living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles abortion the Arab–Israeli conflict He should not be given alerts for those areas.

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #224 is out: Round 1 of “abstract content wiki” naming vote ending Monday; An example of short descriptions

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we update you on our naming contest for Abstract Wikipedia, we announce our first experimentation with short descriptions on Wikidata, we talk about our presentations at the upcoming WikidataCon 2025, and we take a look at the latest Type and software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Also, we remind you that if you have questions or ideas to discuss, the next Volunteers' Corner will be held on November 3, at 18:30 UTC (link to the meeting).

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 13:48, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This week's article for improvement (week 45, 2025)

Hello, CFA. The article for improvement of the week is: Performance Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: 99-year lease • Criticism of monarchy Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot ^talk 00:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • Opt-out instructions[reply]

Tech News: 2025-45

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

Updates for editors

• 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). [1]
• For users with "Automatically subscribe to topics" enabled in their preferences, starting a new topic or adding a reply to an existing topic will now subscribe them to replies to that topic. Previously, this would only happen if the DiscussionTools "Add topic" or "Reply" widgets were used. When DiscussionTools was originally launched existing accounts were not opted in to automatic topic subscriptions, so this change should primarily affect newer accounts and users who have deliberately changed their preferences since that time. [2]
• Scribunto modules can now be used to generate SVG images. This can be used to build charts, graphics and other visualizations dynamically through Lua, reducing the need to compose them externally and upload them as files. [3]
• Wikimedia sites now provide all anonymous users with the option to enable a dark mode color scheme, featuring light-colored text on a dark background. This enhancement aims to deliver a more enjoyable reading experience, especially in dimly lit environments. [4]
• Users with large watchlists have long faced timeouts when editing Special:EditWatchlist. The page now loads entries in smaller sections instead of all at once due to a paging update, allowing everyone to edit their watchlists smoothly. As part of the database update, sorting by expiry has been removed because it was over 100× slower than sorting by title. A community wish has been created to explore alternative ways to restore sort-by-expiry. If this feature is important to you, please support the wish! [5]
• View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the fixing of the persisting highlighting when using VisualEditor find and replace during a query. [6]

Updates for technical contributors

• Since 2019 the Wikimedia URL Shortener at https://w.wiki is available for all Wikimedia wikis to create short links to articles, permalinks, diffs, etc. It is available in the sidebar as "Get shortened URL". There are 30 wikis that also install an older "ShortUrl" extension. The old extension will soon be removed. This means /s/ URLs will not be advertised under article titles via HTML class="title-shortlink". The /s/ URLs will keep working. [7]
• On Thursday, October 30, the MediaWiki Interfaces and SRE Service Operations teams began rerouting Action API traffic through a common API gateway. Individual wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
• MediaWiki Train deployments will pause for the final two weeks of 2025: 22 December and 29 December. Backport windows will also pause between Monday, 22 December 2025 and Thursday, 2 January 2026. A backport window is a scheduled time to add things like bug fixes and configuration changes. There are seven deployment trains remaining for 2025. [8]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• In 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation reported that AI systems and search engines increasingly use Wikipedia content without driving users to the site, contributing to an 8% drop in human pageviews compared to 2024. After detecting bots disguised as humans, Wikimedia updated its traffic data to reflect this shift. Read more about current user trends on Wikipedia in a Diff blog post.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:30, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(This message was sent to User talk:Clearfrienda and is being posted here due to a redirect.)

Temporary account IP viewer granted

Hello, CFA. Per your request, your account has been granted temporary-account-viewer rights. You are now able to reveal the IP addresses of individuals using temporary accounts that are not visible to the general public. This is very sensitive information that is only to be used to aid in anti-abuse workflows. Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Temporary account IP viewer for more information on this user right. It is important to remember:

• You must not share IP address data with someone who does not have the same access permissions unless disclosure is permissible as per guidelines listed at Foundation:Policy:Wikimedia Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy.
• Access must not be used for political control, to apply pressure on editors, or as a threat against another editor in a content dispute. There must be a valid reason to investigate a temporary user. Note that using multiple temporary accounts is not forbidden, so long as they are not used in violation of policies (for example, block or ban evasion).

It is also important to note that the following actions are logged for others to see:

• When a user accepts the preference that enables or disables IP reveal for their account.
• Revealing an IP address of a temporary account.
• Listing the temporary accounts that are associated with one or more IP addresses (using the CIDR notation format).

Remember, even if a user is violating policy, avoid revealing personal information if possible. Use temporary account usernames rather than disclosing IP addresses directly, or give information such as same network/not same network or similar. If you do not want the user right anymore then please ask me or another administrator and it will be removed for you. You may also voluntarily give up access at any time by visiting Special:Preferences. Happy editing! Sohom (talk) 12:43, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2025

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

Administrator changes

Toadspike

• Elahrairah
• Juliancolton
• Magnus Manske

CheckUser changes

asilvering

Guideline and policy news

• The speedy deletion criteria U5 has been repealed, with U6 and U7 replacing it. See the FAQ for more clarifications.
• Community-designated contentious topics may now be enforced and appealed at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard (AE) as a result of an RfC.

Technical news

• You can enable a handy user info card next to usernames, which when clicked displays edit count, blocks, thanks, and other information. To enable this feature, visit Preferences → Appearance → Advanced options → Enable the user info card

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Transgender healthcare and people has been closed
  • Uninvolved administrators may impose an AE participation restriction on any thread at the Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

• An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2025 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Clayton Kershaw on a "Biographies" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

(replacing Yapperbot) SodiumBot (botop|talk) 20:30, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to let you know that CFA (bot)'s edits aren't getting filtered as bot contributions (from the watchlist filter at least)

That's it, as the title says so. CheckNineEight (talk) 11:14, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Make technical articles understandable on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

(replacing Yapperbot) SodiumBot (botop|talk) 20:31, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #225 is out: First round of voting for naming the wiki for abstract content closed; Calling for Wiktionary functions; Embedded Wikifunctions on Bengali Wikipedia and seven more Wiktionaries

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we update you on the closing of the first phase of the naming contest for Abstract Wikipedia, we introduce a possible implementation of Wikifunctions for Wiktionaries, we talk about our latest outreach events, and we take a look at the latest Type and software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:06, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]