User talk:HouseBlaster

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• I am aware of all contentious topics which exist as of August 23, 2025. (If you don't know what this means, feel free to ignore this bullet point!)

Thank you!

This user is aware of the designation of the following as contentious topics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, or related conflicts the Arab–Israeli conflict abortion post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people articles about living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles complementary and alternative medicine climate change discussions about infoboxes, and edits adding, deleting, collapsing, or removing verifiable information from infoboxes COVID-19, broadly construed the Balkans or Eastern Europe Falun Gong governmental regulation of firearm ownership; the social, historical and political context of such regulation; and the people and organizations associated with these issues gender-related disputes or controversies or people associated with them genetically modified organisms, commercially produced agricultural chemicals and the companies that produce them, broadly construed the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes) post-1978 Iranian politics the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed article titles and capitalisation pseudoscience and fringe science the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour the results of any national or sub-national election 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 the Troubles Yasuke He should not be given alerts for those areas.

Archives

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Category:Redirects to The Completionist

I stumbled on this while patrolling redirects and figured I'd ask someone who understands categories better than I do whether this was a valid category. Strikes me as very weird but I'm not familiar with all the policies here. Rusalkii (talk) 19:16, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have never seen that sort of category before; I have nominated it for deletion. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 19:38, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Canadian female sprinters

I don't believe this was a good close. The proposal was changed without the original respondents being pinged/told of such and the BLP argument was just ridiculous. Traumnovelle (talk) 05:58, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I stand by my close. If you think the BLP argument is ridiculous, you need to explain why. There is no obligation to notify participants of a new idea being proposed. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 15:28, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, the idea that 'male' and 'female' are BLP violations have implications way beyond the scope of a single CFD and should not be decided based on a single user and a closer.

>There is no obligation to notify participants of a new idea being proposed

When the original nominator says 'OK, I will withdraw this nomination if the support !voters are OK with it to start a new one for the new terminology, which I will do some time this week when I can edit all of the category pages' I am not going to expect the nomination to then to be changed to a different one. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:07, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe an argument that specific competition categories are causing BLP issues is inappropriate/out of scope for CFD about competition categories. For your argument about notifications I can understand where you are coming from, even if I disagree (given the condition in the offer was not satisfied). You are welcome to take this to WP:DRV if you feel I erred as a closer. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 14:37, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If its a BLP issue in that category it'd be a BLP issue in every other category, and any other time the term male or female is used when a source uses man/woman instead. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:10, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your close @HouseBlaster, and my sincere apologies for not getting around to creating a clean CfD for the 'women'/'men' phrasing. I think the close was proper. I actually consulted with @Sillyfolkboy before I made that proposal, and I trusted their judgement that a CfD would be a good idea. One argument they brought up that I didn't mention in the CfD was that under current and historical World Athletics rules there are some prominent athletes who compete in "women's athletics" but are genetically male -- I'm not an expert in such topics so I didn't bother bringing it up.

I would tend to agree that it's inadvisable to use 'male' and 'female' terms when the context isn't explicitly biological -- maybe in the future that should be done with proper care on a case-by-case basis. I see at wikt:female#Usage notes there are concerns with using 'female' as a noun (I understand that in this case it was used as an adjective, but I think the usage note can still apply). --Habst (talk) 22:06, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since you helped with one ArbCom-related image licensing issue, would you like to help with another?

Thanks for helping with Template talk:Contentious topics#Licensing issue with File:Commons-emblem-hand.svg on Template:Contentious topics/page restriction editnotice base!

I found another similar case: Template:EV no threaded discussion and Template:Arbitration sectioned discussion both use File:Information black.svg without a link, which is also CC BY and so needs attribution. This one is complicated by the fact that these templates seem to usually be substed, so there are a few editnotices and a bunch of case pages that could use manual cleanup.

The options for fixing it are the same as for the other one: link the image, relicense the image, replace the image, or remove the image. In this case, (derived from , which we use in a lot of places instead of for similar licensing reasons) could be a replacement if you want to go that route. Anomie⚔ 15:09, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Replaced in the templates and did a JWB run with my alt to fix the arbspace substitutions. Thank you so much for noticing this :) HouseBlaster (he/they) 15:43, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Came across another one: File:Nuvola apps important blue.svg seems to be being used unlinked in a standard "this case is closed" notice substed onto case pages. File:Ambox warning blue.svg could be a good replacement if the not-linking is desired. Anomie⚔ 02:36, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear. Let me take a bit to investigate if there are any other changes to make at the same time, but obviously we need to comply with our legal obligations. Thank you for catching this. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 02:43, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done with that, too! HouseBlaster (he/they) 23:39, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help us decide the name of the new Abstract Wikipedia project

Copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Help us decide the name of the new Abstract Wikipedia project because this page is listed on Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Subscribe.

Hello. Please help pick a name for the new Abstract Wikipedia wiki project. This project will be a wiki that will enable users to combine functions from Wikifunctions and data from Wikidata in order to generate natural language sentences in any supported languages. These sentences can then be used by any Wikipedia (or elsewhere).

There will be two rounds of voting, each followed by legal review of candidates, with votes beginning on 20 October and 17 November 2025. Our goal is to have a final project name selected on mid-December 2025. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at meta-wiki. Thank you!

-- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:42, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-43

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

• To optimize how user data is stored in our databases, the saved preferences of users who haven't logged in for over five years and have fewer than 100 edits will be cleared. When those users return, default settings will apply. [1]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a broken link from the GlobalContributions interface message to the XTools GlobalContributions page which has now been fixed. [2]

Updates for technical contributors

• The work to reroute all traffic to API endpoints under the rest.php route through a common API gateway is now complete. If any issues are observed, please file a phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
• Edits to Wikidata references or qualifiers will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. [3]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:32, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 20 October 2025

• News and notes: Board shuffles, LLM blocks increase, IPs are going away
  

And the "Global Resource Distribution Committee" emerges.

• Special report: The election that isn't
  

Two shortlisted WMF Board candidates removed from the ballot.

• Interview: The BoT bump
  

Who was bumped and why?

• In the media: An incident at WikiConference North America; WMF reports AI-related traffic drop and explains Wikipedia to US conservatives
  

...while Musk prepares to launch "Grokipedia".

• Traffic report: One click after another
  

Serial-killer miniseries, deceased scientist, government shutdowns and Sandalwood hit "Kantara" crowd the tubes.

• Humour: Wikipedia pay rates
  

Don't get too excited before you read this.

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:41, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
	With great humility, thanks HouseBlaster for your very generous and kind words at Wikipedia:Thank you to Fuzheado and Pharos. Pharos Fuzheado | Talk 16:38, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much! You both truly deserve the appreciation you are getting, and I mean every word I wrote on the letter :) HouseBlaster (he/they) 16:49, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is also worth mentioning Jake Orlowitz (en:user:Ocaasi), though I don't know if he would appreciate the limelight :-) Jake acted with deep compassion in a crisis by going up as the man was being restrained, kneeling by him, and talking to him calmly to help de-escalate the situation. I deeply thank Pharos Fuzheado and Jake for their timely actions. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 14:43, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Growth News #35

A quarterly update from the Growth team on our work to improve the new editor experience.

New releases

English Wikipedia gets "Add a Link" Structured Task

We released the "Add a Link" Structured Task to 100% of accounts at English Wikipedia on Tuesday, September 2nd (before then it was available to 20% of accounts).

Growth features for Wikidata

After examining if the Growth features and Mentorship could be adapted to Wikidata, we activated the Growth features on Beta Wikidata to allow for testing and discussion (T400937). Although some features, like Suggested Edits, are Wikipedia-specific, the Growth team designed most features to be more wiki-agnostic.

Work in progress

Revise Tone Structured Task

The Growth team is making progress on the technical architecture, onboarding design, and early user testing. We are targeting an A/B test before the end of this year, with constructive edits by newcomers as the primary success metric.

Add a link to more wikis

The machine learning team has been working on a new model that can suggest links to more languages, including Urdu, Chinese, and Japanese Wikipedias. We are starting to release the “Add a Link” feature to Wikipedias that weren’t supported by the previous model.

Add a link, which can be configured by the community locally, increases the chance that a new contributor will make their first edit and then continue to participate in Wikipedia.

Research

The Growth team is involved in several research initiatives to help guide our future work:

Progression System – We have published initial findings from interviews with 10 English and French Wikipedia newcomers. The research examined motivations, challenges, and feedback on a prototype system intended to help editors build confidence, develop skills, and contribute more constructively over time.

Mobile Web Editing Research – This project combines quantitative and qualitative data, community feedback, and user journey analysis to identify possible ways to enhance the mobile editing experience.

Newcomers Survey – This project surveys successful newcomers on English Wikipedia to understand their early editing experiences, tool use, and community interactions.

Community events

The Growth team participated in several community events to listen, share, and collaborate on improving newcomer experiences across Wikimedia projects.

Wikimania - Organizers as key partners to support newcomers' growth in our movement

This session invited organizers to share how they introduce newcomers to Growth features and the challenges they encounter. The discussion focused on common newcomer questions and opportunities to strengthen collaboration in supporting new editors.

Wikimania - Lightning Talk: Structured Tasks

This talk demonstrated how Structured Tasks help newcomers take their first successful steps on Wikipedia. It shared impact data, community configurations, and a demo of “Add a Link,” illustrating how these tasks make editing more accessible and sustainable, particularly for mobile contributors.

Wikimania - Building a Sustainable Future for Wikimedia Contributors

With active editor numbers declining, the Contributors Strategy aims to create a clearer, more engaging path for participation. This session, led by the WMF Contributors group with involvement from the Editing, Growth, Moderator Tools, and Connection (formerly Campaigns) teams, highlighted efforts to streamline contributor experiences, offer structured and mobile-friendly workflows, and foster meaningful engagement. Participants learned about ongoing initiatives and shared feedback to help shape a more inclusive and sustainable future for Wikimedia contributors.

CEE Meeting - Retaining beginners and improving content moderation: an inclusive and sustainable future for Wikipedia contributors

Many communities face a decline in volunteer engagement. Newcomers often leave soon after joining, while experienced editors struggle to manage increasingly complex workflows and overwhelming backlogs. We presented the Contributors Strategy and the different features and workflows that can help communities to address these challenges. We listened to the specific needs of the CEE communities to help guide the Contributors teams' work.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:23, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Your contributions on Wikipedia have changed this encylopedia. Thank you for your work and help here. ~Rafael (He, him) • talk • guestbook • projects 16:34, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Rafaelthegreat! HouseBlaster (he/they) 16:42, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from DavidGPace1961 (16:31, 24 October 2025)

How important is it to justify an edit with some form of citation? For example, in my father's page George W. Pace, a professor of religion at BYU, someone has written that a notorious public attack on him by a Mormon church authority was "presumably" connected to my father. I've changed it to "directly" connected to my father.

There is no doubt. In the attack that the church authority literally quoted my father's book, word-for-word.

Thanks --DavidGPace1961 (talk) 16:31, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi DavidGPace1961! There is never a bad time to supply an inline citation, but it is only required by policy in four cases:

1. When you are quoting something
2. When it is a contentious claim about a living person
3. When another Wikipedia editor challenges the claim
4. When the claim is "likely" to be challenged by another Wikipedia editor

If you are correcting information, it is almost certainly a case of number 4 (because the person who wrote the incorrect information obviously thought it was correct), so you should supply a citation. You can see the guide to adding citations. Now, because this is about your father, you have a conflict of interest regarding the article. We have a simple guide to conflict-of-interest editing, and we recommend you use the edit request process so a neutral third party can double-check what you want to add. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 22:17, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Shah Of Nowhere (02:18, 25 October 2025)

Please answer this [4]. --Shah Of Nowhere ^talk! 02:18, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Replied :) HouseBlaster (he/they) 02:21, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Leinyuy Jude Fonbah on User:Leinyuy Jude Fonbah (05:31, 27 October 2025)

Hello, This article I wrote for touristic and geographical reasons about a locality in Cameroon is not featuring in the search. I wish to know if I followed the right procedure, and why it's not online. Thanks --Leinyuy Jude Fonbah (talk) 05:31, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Leinyuy Jude Fonbah: you have not published your draft to the main article area yet. Add {{subst:submit}} (including the double curly braces) if you want a reviewer to check it out. Note that all places must satisfy our requirements for an article. It looks like your draft might satisfy the criteria, but it is not worded neutrally enough, and there are not enough citations to reliable sources. Check out Help:Your first article to get some advice for fixing this. Some specific lines which I feel are not neutral enough: describing the social life as attractive and listing sites [w]orthy of sight-seeing. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 12:33, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the directives. I will go back and check Leinyuy Jude Fonbah (talk) 14:14, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please find herewith attached a barnstar

		All-Around Amazing Barnstar
		I have realized that I have been grossly flouting the Wikipedia:Etiquette guideline by failing to, among other things, "Give praise when it's due" and "Request a list of other articles to work on, provided by SuggestBot". To cover my bases, and because there are many things you do that are praise-worthy, I would like to thank you for everything – and to hereby formally request that SuggestBot provide me a list of articles to work on. (And I wish to stress that this applies with regard to any contentious topic where it would be mandatory to "comply with all applicable policies and guidelines" such that my failure to give such praises or to request such lists might be sanctionable.) For illustration, I would like to thank you (1) for your incessant kindness and diligence and (2) for your endeavors in such fields as helping newcomers; managing the unbearable boringness (IMO) of category discussions; moving templates to titles with standard spelling, spacing, and (eek!) capitalization; improving and streamlining policies and guidelines; and otherwise making Wikipedia more accessible. The enumeration in this template, of certain virtues, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the recipient. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 09:16, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You are the best, Jenson. Thank you, thank you, thank you. HouseBlaster (he/they) 12:34, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Rima.Wikii (10:38, 27 October 2025)

Hi HouseBlaster! Thank you for your kind message and encouragement. I’ve been working hard on several articles that are currently in draft status. I’ve put a lot of effort into researching and writing them, and I would really appreciate it if you could take a look and consider moving them to the mainspace once you review them.

I’ve also edited some existing short or incomplete articles and added more accurate information with proper sources. Please take a look at those as well when you have time.

Thanks again for your time and help!

Best, (Rima.wikii) --Rima.Wikii (talk) 10:38, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rima.Wikii! To request that someone review a draft, please add {{subst:submit}} (including the double curly braces) to the draft. Your other edits look good; well done adding sources when you add information! Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 12:37, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Daxman2196 (11:05, 27 October 2025)

Hello, I can't seem to finish a CAPTCHA after editing a page. I will greatly appreciate your help! --Daxman2196 (talk) 11:05, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Daxman2196: I am also comically bad at CAPTCHAs, so I know where you are coming from. If you make ten edits and your account has existed for 96 hours (exactly four days), you will automatically be exempt from CAPTCHAs. In the meantime, only certain types of edits trigger the CAPTCHA (e.g. adding external links). If you are trying to make specific edits, please let me know and I can try making them on your behalf. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 12:45, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-44

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 iOS app has launched an A/B/C test of improvements made to the tabbed browsing feature for select regions and languages. The test, named “More dynamic tabs”, explores new tab experiences and includes “Did you know” and “Because you read” article recommendations. You can read more on the project page.
• Autoconfirmed users on small and medium wikis with the CampaignEvents extension can now use Event Registration without the Event Organizer right. This feature lets organizers enable registration, manage participants, and lets users register with one click instead of signing event pages.
• View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue of flashing colors when holding or pressing the arrow keys under the dark mode settings in Vector 2022 has been fixed. [5]

Updates for technical contributors

• The CampaignEvents extension will be deployed to all remaining wikis during the week of 17 November 2025. The extension currently includes three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. For this rollout, Invitation List will not be enabled on Wikifunctions and MediaWiki unless requested by those communities. Visit the deployment page to learn more.
• The SwaggerUI-based REST sandbox experience is now live on all wiki projects. The sandbox can be accessed through the Special:RestSandbox page. Please report any issues to the MediaWiki Interfaces team board, or join the discussion on the project launch page. [6]
• Transform endpoints with a trailing slash path in the MediaWiki REST API are now marked as deprecated. They will remain functional during this time, but removal is expected by the end of January 2026. All API users currently calling them are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. Both endpoint variations can be found and tested using the REST Sandbox. See the MediaWiki REST API Deprecation page for more detailed information about the API deprecation policies and procedures.
• A dedicated changelog now exists for the MediaWiki REST API. The changelog provides an overview of these changes, making it easier for developers to keep track of improvements and iterations. Announcements will also continue to flow through the standard communication channels, including Tech News and email distribution lists, but can now be more easily referenced from a central location. If you have feedback about the style, structure, or content of this changelog, please join the discussion.
• Administrators can delete the tracking category which was previously added by the JsonConfig extension, as it is no longer used. See the categories linked from Q130635582. It is OK if there are still pages listed in the category as that is just a caching issue, and they will be automatically cleared out the next time each page is edited. [7]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:28, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

empty citation

Hello,

Citation 1 at the top of the page is an empty citation and I have been unable to remove it. Can you help? Thank you. Daicar (talk) 18:35, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Fixed. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 19:37, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much! Daicar (talk) 19:42, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course! Welcome to Wikipedia, and let me know if you need anything else :) HouseBlaster (he/they) 19:44, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking volunteers to join several of the movement’s committees

Copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Seeking volunteers to join several of the movement’s committees because this page is listed on Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Subscribe.

Each year, typically from October through December, several of the movement’s committees seek new volunteers.

Read more about the committees on their Meta-wiki pages:

• Affiliations Committee (AffCom)
• Ombuds commission (OC)
• Case Review Committee (CRC)

Applications for the committees open on October 30, 2025. Applications for the Affiliations Committee, Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee close on December 11, 2025. Learn how to apply by visiting the appointment page on Meta-wiki. Post to the talk page or email cstwikimedia.org with any questions you may have.

For the Committee Support team,

- MKaur (WMF) 14:12, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]