User talk:Rusty Cat

  1. Home
  2. Wiki

nest ~ den ~ patrol ~ litterbox ~ pawprint gallery🐾


Women in Red September 2025

[edit]
Women in Red | September 2025, Vol 11, Issue 9, Nos. 326, 327, 347, 348, 349
Recognized as the most active, topic-based WikiProject by human changes.


Online events:

Announcements:

Tip of the Month:

  • Researching historical women writers who used pseudonyms requires careful investigation across multiple sources, as many women adopted pen names to avoid gender bias and judgment (e.g., being labeled a bluestocking) and, ultimately, to get published.

Progress ("moving the needle"):

Other ways to participate:

--Rosiestep (talk) 23:55, 31 August 2025 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Tech News: 2025-36

[edit]

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 Editing team wants to compile a list of templates, jargon terms, and policies used in edit summaries when a copyright violation is removed. This will help them identify the number of edits reverted due to copyright issues. We invite community members from the following Wikis to list these terms in T402601, or to share their list with Trizek_(WMF): Arabic Wikipedia, Czech Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. This project is open until September 9th 2025.

Updates for editors

  • The CampaignEvents extension has been enabled for all Wikisources. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. The extension has three features: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation List. To request the extension for your wiki, visit the Deployment information page. [1]
  • The lists in the footer of the editing interface, such as "Templates used on this page," will now be organized into columns when there is enough space. This enhancement minimizes scrolling when editing lengthy articles on Wikipedia. [2]
  • On September 3rd, 2025 we will increase the sampling percentages of our group by toggle experiment of the Special:RecentChanges, Special:Watchlist, and Special:RelatedChanges pages on the Chinese, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias to 100 percent, allowing more editors to be part of this experiment. This adjustment is intended to ensure we have sufficient data to make informed decisions when evaluating the experiment results. [3][4]
  • Upon clicking an empty search bar, logged-out users will see suggestions of articles for further reading on English Wikipedia beginning the week of September 22. The feature will be available on both desktop and mobile. All non-English wikis received this change in June and July. The goal is to make it easier for users to find articles. Learn more.
  • Recurrent item View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • Wikifunctions now has a new capability called "lightweight enumeration types", an enumeration type is simply a fixed set of values that's in the type's definition. This capability makes it quick and easy to define such a type, and allows for the reuse of values that are already present in Wikidata. Here is a newsletter to learn more.
  • The latest Readers Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: the formation of two new teams — Reader Growth and Reader Experience; insights into declining pageviews and account creations; highlights from the Wikimania Nairobi panel on improving the reading experience; upcoming experiments to engage new and existing readers; and more.

Meetings and events

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:46, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from VenDei (17:57, 2 September 2025)

[edit]

Hello, I had a question regarding multiple accounts.

Before I created this account on my old device, I had a different account on which I edited often, but after I switched devices I lost access to that account and created this one. However, I'm still logged in on my computer with the old account, but I'm no longer interested in it and want to switch to this one. Would it be fine for me to log off and log in with the new account on my computer or what that be considered sockpuppetry?

Thanks in advance --VenDei (talk) 17:57, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@VenDei:
It's not considered sockpuppetry, no, but to make it absolutely clear, you may wish to place a notice on the user page of your previous account that it is no longer in use, and direct others to your new account.
Happy editing! ~ Rusty meow ~ 23:39, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Mary Nipper on User:Gnomingstuff (09:55, 3 September 2025)

[edit]

Hello --Mary Nipper (talk) 09:55, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure why I'm tagged here. Gnomingstuff (talk) 11:06, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think you were tagged because your userpage was linked in the section header. ~ Rusty meow ~ 22:09, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Mary Nipper: Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! Is there anything I can help you with? ~ Rusty meow ~ 22:08, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Red Bow Collection (21:47, 3 September 2025)

[edit]

Hello, I have a question: I need to adjust my user name. I need to apply my legal name, and than speak of a company I would like to mention on Google. Please advise, on how to compleat the task. Thank you --Red Bow Collection (talk) 21:47, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Red Bow Collection: To change your username, use the form at Special:GlobalRenameRequest.
Happy editing! ~ Rusty meow ~ 22:10, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Farkonas (19:05, 4 September 2025)

[edit]

Hey Rusty, nice to meet you! I am a veteran journalist and I'm just trying to create an article about myself to use as reference. The only option I see available to me right now is the user page, so I created an extremely simple one.

What I would like to do, though, is create an article like Molly's, i.e. like this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_White_(writer)

Is there something obvious I am missing? --Kostas Farkonas (talk) 19:05, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Farkonas: Per our guideline on autobiographies (WP:AUTO), it is strongly discouraged for editors to create an article on themselves, as this is conflict-of-interest editing (WP:COI).
White's article was not written by herself; in fact, her account has not edited the article even once, according to the page history.
Normally, if a subject meets out notability guidelines, an article will be written sooner or later.
I hope you understand.
Happy editing! ~ Rusty meow ~ 00:09, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – September 2025

[edit]

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

Administrator changes

readded Euryalus
removed

Interface administrator changes

readded Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

readded AmandaNP
removed SQL

Oversight changes

readded AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC is open on whether use of emojis with no encyclopedic value in mainspace and draftspace (e.g., at the start of paragraphs or in place of bullet points) should be added as a criterion under G15.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been closed.
  • An RfC is in progress to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:16, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Upcoming expiry of your ipblock-exempt right

[edit]

Hi, this is an automated reminder as part of Global reminder bot to let you know that your WP:IPBE right which gave you the ability to bypass IP address blocks will expire on 03:04, 13 September 2025 (UTC). If your IP is still blocked, please renew by following the instructions at the IPBE page; otherwise, you do not need to do anything. To opt out of user right expiry notifications, add yourself to m:Global reminder bot/Exclusion. Leaderbot (talk) 19:41, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 9 September 2025

[edit]
UK Online Safety Act remains undefeated.
Plus Wiki rules, Wiki Spin, and physicists get street cred!
The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance.
And other new research findings.
Tis true: there's magic in the web of it.
With the usual mix of war, death, super heroes, a belt, and Wednesday.
It's an easy one.
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:06, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-37

[edit]

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 Editing team is working on a new check: Paste check. This check informs newcomers who paste text into Wikipedia that the content might not be accepted. This check is an effort to increase the likelihood that the new content people are adding to Wikipedia is aligned with the Movement's commitment to offering information under a free content license. This check will soon be tested at a few wikis. If your community is interested in this test, please tell us in this task, or contact the team.

Updates for editors

  • Advanced item Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will be able to use a linting tool to see errors or other potential problems in wikitext in real time. See the help page for more information. [5]
  • Advanced item When browsing a wiki (like en.wikipedia.org), the software responds in one of two ways: a desktop page, or a redirect to a mobile version on an "m" domain (like en.m.wikipedia.org). Over the next three weeks, MediaWiki will start displaying the mobile version to mobile devices directly on the standard domain, without this redirect. This change does not affect existing m-dot URLs, or the "Desktop view" opt-out. Learn more. [6]
  • When an edit changes the categories of a page, the changes to the category membership counts are now happening asynchronously. This improves the speed of saving edits, especially when moving many pages to or from the same category, and reduces the risk of site outages, but it means that the counts can show outdated information for a few minutes. [7]
  • Edits on Wikidata to qualifiers (properties and values) and references (properties and values) in a Wikidata item statement will now not add entries to the RecentChanges or Watchlist pages on all other Wikis. This is a temporary change to improve performance while other solutions are created. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. Learn more. [8][9]
  • Japanese-language wikis have had a major upgrade to the way that search works. The new search should generally give more accurate and more relevant search results. [10]
  • Recurrent item View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item 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 01:11, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Eruditti& on Wikipedia:Contact us/Article subjects (17:47, 9 September 2025)

[edit]

Hi, I’m wondering why my Wikipedia article “Fred Bendheim” is still not listed on Google. It’s been over 90 days since it was published. Thank you. --Eruditti& (talk) 17:47, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Eruditti&: Wikipedia does not have control over external search engines, such as Google. It may be possible that Google just hasn't seen the page yet. However, as previously stated this is not in our control.
Thanks, ~ Rusty meow ~ 21:16, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your reply, but your response contradicts what I have been told by other sources. They said new articles are reviewed before allowing Google to include them, and this process can take up to 90 days.
Also Google apparently scans new web pages all the time, so not sure why they wouldn’t see this page.
Any other help would be appreciated 2600:4041:5BEE:6600:900F:CDD0:CE0C:6930 (talk) 23:00, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Eruditti&: The portion of the process that takes up to 90 days is the allowing of Google to index the pages. Otherwise, I unfortunately don't know why Google isn't indexing the page.
Thanks, ~ Rusty meow ~ 23:05, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from MostlySpellingErrors (22:54, 9 September 2025)

[edit]

Hello. I've given money for years and did mild editing. Mostly spelling really. I only joined because I got a rude message for apparently misspelling someone's name and was accused of vandalism. Now I was on the verge of just leaving the site (and never giving another dollar) when I thought that maybe joining the site would lead to more civil responses to my own errors. I'm not giving any money until I see how this works out. (Of course, I have to wait until I make another error to find out). I'm sorry, but I am just in a foul mood after today's events and it's not the first time. Can't moderators be corrected for being unprofessional? --MostlySpellingErrors (talk) 22:54, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@MostlySpellingErrors:
Wikipedia is entirely volunteer-run; I do not receive any monetary compensation whatsoever for any of my contributions to Wikipedia. In fact, we have no knowledge of your donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, which help to maintain servers and fund the Foundation.
Regarding your edit: The user who warned your for vandalism was not necessarily a "moderator" as you say. Many ordinary users help out with anti-vandalism efforts on a daily basis. My recommendation is to reply to the user's message, asking them how that was vandalism.
Happy editing, ~ Rusty meow ~ 22:52, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from LRedPosion (14:46, 10 September 2025)

[edit]

Hi I wish to make an article for the deceased musician called Kai Wesener of Fremont, CA, USA. He died by suicide on October 30th 2023. Though not very popular I wish to put his name on the internet forever so new people can discover him and his music. --LRedPosion (talk) 14:46, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am willing to edit the whole page but I am new to editing here I am sorry could you make a page and also redirect his artist name back to him he was called bl4ck m4rket c4rt
he was only seventeen LRedPosion (talk) 15:36, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@LRedPosion: I gave his name a quick Google search. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there are enough reliable sources to establish notability.
Additionally, Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion.
I hope you understand.
Happy editing, ~ Rusty meow ~ 21:15, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi it makes sense. But I wanted to not do it necessarily for personal reasons. More that his tragic story is still relevant today as his album "Today I Laid Down" is posthumously pressed on vinyl. While not a celebrity in the true sense he did leave a mark on the younger community. The vinyl profits are handled by the parents and donated to Sweet Relief. All of whom has sources as well as where he is buried. I just wanted to give this young man a chance to reach a wider audience through the power of the Internet. It's all he ever wished for. Thanks for taking your time to read LRedPosion (talk) 21:34, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
it doesn't have to be much. Just a basic page with his picture and information. As now with the vinyl pressing his story came to a fitting resolution despite the sad situation. I already made a short summary for it. LRedPosion (talk) 22:26, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@LRedPosion: As I said previously, Wikipedia would not be the right place for this. We have articles on subjects because they are notable under our guidelines. You may wish to look towards other sites.
Thanks, ~ Rusty meow ~ 22:40, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Okay I'm sorry for asking but how popular does a person need to be in order to qualify for a Wikipedia page? That part is unclear as I sometimes see Wikipedia articles for artist and topics that are very obscure. I think his story is a good advocate for good mental health as the profits of his EP are donated to a charity doing that. I think it's an informative piece in that sense. I'm in a really bad place myself and I just want to honor the young bright man for saving my life. LRedPosion (talk) 22:58, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
additionally all his music is on major music platforms and on rate your music, album of the year among others. His death also has various sources. And his popularity was boosted by a popular YouTuber called Brad Taste In Music LRedPosion (talk) 23:11, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
so I hope you would reconsider your decision. thanks for reading LRedPosion (talk) 11:49, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@LRedPosion: It's not my decision, it's what Wikipedia's guidelines and policies dictate.
Even if you do decide to write the article, it will most likely be declined and/or nominated for deletion.
Thank you, ~ Rusty meow ~ 14:18, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I won't write the article as I respect your advice and the guidelines of Wikipedia. And besides I'm fairly new to editing. Thanks for clarifying. Are there any sites like Wikipedia where this kind of page is allowed?
I want to make a page with just the basic information of him alongside pictures of his debut album and his location where he is buried. And how the albums posthumous vinyl pressing makes the story complete. LRedPosion (talk) 16:42, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
maybe something like Fandom dot com? LRedPosion (talk) 16:45, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@LRedPosion: I'm not familiar with other sites, but you might want to look on the page Wikipedia:Alternative outlets.
Cheers, ~ Rusty meow ~ 23:54, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
thank you that page means alot to me I'll try Fandom you're right Kai wasn't famous enough to go on the site. I hope you understand my reason it's above all to put his life on the Internet for informational purposes. I hope to contribute to this site in the future thank you for taking your time to talk to me LRedPosion (talk) 00:05, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@LRedPosion: You're welcome! If you have any questions in the future, don't hesitate to ask! ~ Rusty meow ~ 01:22, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Ramyaamer77 (14:10, 11 September 2025)

[edit]

Hi, i need your help in creating a page for my Boss in both English and Arabic --Ramyaamer77 (talk) 14:10, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ramyaamer77: Creating an article for your boss is strongly discouraged and is a clear-cut example of conflict-of-interest editing (WP:COI). The article will most likely be deleted.
However, you are welcome to contribute to topics unrelated to your job, family, and any other connections you may have, including yourself. Thank you. ~ Rusty meow ~ 14:16, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
it seems i was not totally clear, i did read the COI and this the main reason for my ask, I'm doing it as part of his persona creation
he is a Egyptian public figure, Entrepreneur, our PR team suggested to have a Wiki page for him and i need to do it properly without compromising the Wiki rules and policies, i can share the source document of the article with you for verification and guidance Ramyaamer77 (talk) 14:51, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Ramyaamer77: I still strongly discourage you to create an article on your boss. If he really does meet our notability guidelines, some neutral, uninvolved editor should create an article, not someone with a conflict of interest. It is very hard for someone with a COI to write neutrally and adhere to our policies and guidelines. ~ Rusty meow ~ 23:52, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Hussientyfn (19:18, 14 September 2025)

[edit]

مرحبا اريد أن ابحث عن الميكانيكيه الكلاسيكية --Hussientyfn (talk) 19:18, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Hussientyfn: Sorry, I don't speak Arabic. Please send your message in English. IF you prefer to contribute in Arabic, you may wish to checkout the Arabic Wikipedia (ويكيبيديا العربية). ~ Rusty meow ~ 20:39, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-38

[edit]

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

  • References lists that are made using the <references/> tag will now automatically display with columns in Vector 2022 when readers are using its 'standard' settings for text-size and page-width. [11]
  • Starting in the week of October 6, on small wikis and medium wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled, all autoconfirmed users will be able to use Event Registration as an organizer. No changes will be made for large wikis unless requested in Phabricator. This change is being made to make it easier for more people to use Event Registration, especially on wikis that are less likely to have policies related to the Event Organizer right. Learn more.
  • Users that search using regular expressions (regex) can now use additional features including:
    • for the intitle: keyword: metacharacters for start-of-line (^) and end-of-line ($) anchors [12]
    • for both intitle: and insource: keywords: shorthand character classes for digits (\d), whitespace (\s), and word characters (\w); and escape codes for line feed (\r), newline (\n), tab (\t), and unicode (e.g. \uHHHH). [13]
  • When you search for text that looks like an IP, the system will now show search results. It used to take you to the contributions for that IP instead of showing search results. [14]
  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 24. This is planned at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests which happen twice a year. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog.
  • Recurrent item View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that affected users who used the page-tabs to switch from wikitext editing of a section into the visualeditor. [15]

Updates for technical contributors

  • The MediaWiki Interfaces team is redesigning the Wikimedia REST API Sandbox with Codex. If you have feedback on improvements for the API documentation or what makes developer experiences smooth (or frustrating), you’re invited to join an upcoming discovery interview, or leave feedback onwiki. Learn more.
  • Edits to Wikidata aliases (an alternative name for an item or a property) 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. Learn more. [16]
  • The new Unicode 17.0 version has been released. The datasets on Commons for the Module:Unicode data have been updated. Wikipedias that do not use the Commons datasets should either update their own data or switch to the Commons datasets.
  • Users of the Wikimedia Enterprise Structured Contents endpoints can now access Parsed Tables. The new Parsed Tables feature extracts and represents Wikipedia tables in structured JSON. This improves machine accessibility as part of the Structured Contents initiative. Structured Contents output is freely available through the On-demand API, or through Wikimedia Cloud Services.
  • A dataset of English Wikipedia biographical information from Wikimedia Enterprise has been published on Kaggle, for evaluation and research. This provides structured data from more than 1.5 million biographies, including birth and death dates, education, affiliations, careers, awards, and more (from a June 2024 snapshot).
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:03, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Limpre TheRealVillageBoy (20:54, 16 September 2025)

[edit]

Hi would like to start adding information into my Wikipedia how can i do that --Limpre TheRealVillageBoy (talk) 20:54, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Limpre TheRealVillageBoy: It is strongly discouraged to write about yourself on Wikipedia, period. If you want to an improve an already existing article about yourself, please make an edit request. The following page may be helpful: Wikipedia:Edit Request Wizard ~ Rusty meow ~ 23:18, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok i get it . How about upload photo Limpre TheRealVillageBoy (talk) 01:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from CyberOdinn (18:56, 17 September 2025)

[edit]

Hello, I saw a community and I wanted to make an entry about them. How many members does a community need to have in order to create an entry? --CyberOdinn (talk) 18:56, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@CyberOdinn: Do you mean an online or real-world community? ~ Rusty meow ~ 21:50, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Discord Community CyberOdinn (talk) 21:01, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from CyberOdinn (19:15, 17 September 2025)

[edit]

Ive made an Translation but i cant publish it, could you review it? "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CyberOdinn/sandbox?sx-source-page-title=Hövelhof&sx-published-section=Kultur+und+Sehenswürdigkeiten&sx-source-language=de&sx-target-language=en" --CyberOdinn (talk) 19:15, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Translation Request

[edit]

Hello, i translated a site but i cant publish it, could you review my translation? "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CyberOdinn/sandbox?sx-source-page-title=Hövelhof&sx-published-section=Kultur+und+Sehenswürdigkeiten&sx-source-language=de&sx-target-language=en" CyberOdinn (talk) 19:16, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@CyberOdinn: You may wish to add some citations to the section, then you can directly add it to the Hövelhof page on the English Wikipedia, since it is only a section of the associated German Wikipedia page. ~ Rusty meow ~ 21:52, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Burkina Faso01 (06:05, 18 September 2025)

[edit]

Hello, I am Burkina Faso01. What is the minor edits? --Burkina Faso01 (talk) 06:05, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Burkina Faso01: Minor edits are edits that do not change the meaning of an article's content, such as fixing typos and formatting errors.
Happy editing, ~ Rusty meow ~ 14:00, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much! Burkina Faso01 (talk) 11:05, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Burkina Faso01: Glad to help! ~ Rusty meow ~ 15:14, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Books & Bytes – Issue 70

[edit]
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 70, July–August 2025
  • New collections:
    • Times of Malta
    • Africa Intelligence
    • Intelligence Online
    • La Lettre
    • Glitz
  • Spotlight: Wikimania
Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team – 13:16, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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

Question from Shamanimals on User talk:Rusty Cat (15:00, 21 September 2025)

[edit]
Note: Shamanimals's mentor I dream of horses is away.

Hello and thank you in advance. Some months ago, I made major improvements to the Climate of Albania page. It became one of the most detailed climate articles I’ve seen, which fits my area of specialty. I was away for health reasons and hadn’t yet finished my work, which I planned as part of a series for every country, starting alphabetically with Albania.

Climate articles on Wikipedia are often extremely limited, especially for less well-known countries like Albania some are just one sentence (e.g“It has a tropical climate.”). My goal has been to change that with comprehensive, sourced coverage.

Today I found that user Gnomingstuff removed about 18,300 words from the article, with the edit summary “rv to pre-AI version.” This was done 4 days ago. While I did sparingly use AI tools, it was only to improve readability and style. The content and sources were entirely my own work, and I painstakingly reviewed not only every single claim but every single word hundreds of times. At no point did I copy-paste original AI output everything was checked, rewritten, and verified for accuracy. I understand why it may have looked AI generated I am still new, and all of my work has been done from mobile since my PC was out of service. I barely know how to format, add links, or pictures (mobile tutorials are almost non-existent), so I may have made mistakes that gave the wrong impression.

If you have time, could you please look at my version? I believe it is far more detailed and engaging than the current, much drier version. I would greatly appreciate your advice on how to restore my contributions without them being reverted, and how best to present this on the Talk page.

Thank you very much for your guidance --Shamanimals (talk) 15:00, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Shamanimals: To me, some of the content that you have added shows signs of AI writing.
One strong example is the sentence "The breadth and continuity of the Cfb climate across Albania’s upland terrain underscore the intricate interplay of topography, moisture transport, and atmospheric circulation, which together contribute to the country’s unusually diverse climatic and ecological landscape." in this edit.
I'm also finding that a lot of your additions seem to be unsourced.
If you'd like to learn the basics of editing Wikipedia, you're welcome to do so; see Help:Introduction. However, I'd like to say that it's still the text that's giving me the impression of AI writing, not any of the formatting mistakes or other mistakes you may have made.
Thanks, ~ Rusty meow ~ 21:18, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Making a big edit

[edit]

Hello, I've been planning on making a big edit to the page "Humility". Basically I want to take the last subsection "Humility and leadership" and expand it to something like "Humility as a character trait". I was wondering how I can make a sort of "draft" that I can "edit" wikipedia without really editing it so I can see how edits will look before they publish. Can I do something like that or should I just edit it directly since not a lot of people really edit the article. Thank you and sorry if my question is a little confusing

Humility Pistonsforlife (talk) 14:35, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Pistonsforlife: Just go ahead and edit it directly; when you edit, you'll be able to see what the article will look like when you publish the changes.
Happy editing, ~ Rusty meow ~ 22:45, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-39

[edit]

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

  • On September 24th at 15:00 UTC, all Wikimedia sites users will experience a brief read-only period due to a scheduled datacenter server switchover. The Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team will redirect all traffic from one primary server to its backup. You can listen to the switchover using the "Listen to Wikipedia" tool, where you will hear edits stop for a few minutes during the read-only phase, then resume. This twice-yearly datacenter server switchover ensures reliability by testing the backup datacenter, so that our sites can stay online even if the primary datacenter fails. You can read more about the process on the Diff blog.

Updates for editors

  • Editors of 60 more Wiktionaries will soon be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them into their pages. A function takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, like adding numbers, converting miles to meters, calculating elapsed time, or declining a word into a case. They will join the other 65 Wiktionary language editions, which already have access to embedded Wikifunctions calls. Later this year, plans are in place to expand to more Wiktionaries and the Incubator.
  • A new parser function has been added: {{#contentmodel}}. Template editors and admins can use it to get the localized or canonical name of the content model of a specific page. The function makes it easier to create and edit system messages, such as MediaWiki:editinginterface, even when you switch types of pages, like wiki, JavaScript, CSS or JSON page. [17]
  • Adding or editing a DISPLAYTITLE for an article using VisualEditor will no longer be broken. Editors who use VisualEditor mode to modify the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} would no longer have the literal text "DISPLAYTITLE" or its localized variant added to their articles. A list of pages that may have been affected and might need cleanup is documented in this ticket.
  • Beta users of the Wikipedia Android app can now try the redesigned Activity tab, which replaces the Edits tab. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging.
  • Recurrent item View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • Wikifunctions users can now import many essential facts involving geo-coordinates, quantities and time values from Wikidata. This is made possible by the creation of Wikifunctions types for these values, which makes them available for use by functions in Wikifunctions. Learn more about how this works in this video and Wikifunctions' August 1 newsletter (for quantities) and August 22 newsletter (for geo-coordinates).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:52, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Lirress 3 (17:46, 23 September 2025)

[edit]
Note: Lirress 3's mentor Actualcpscm is away.

Hi Rusty Cat when can I reach 500 edit counts where I become Extended Confirmed User and I decided to change my name to just Yetneberk Hailu and help me? --Lirress 3 (talk) 17:46, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Lirress 3:
I don't know when you will reach 500 edits. That depends on how much you edit Wikipedia.
You can change your username using the form at Special:GlobalRenameRequest. ~ Rusty meow ~ 00:37, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Taelo Moletsane on Wikipedia:Citing sources (13:46, 25 September 2025)

[edit]

Hello I want to edit --Taelo Moletsane (talk) 13:46, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Taelo Moletsane: If you want to edit a page, just click the edit button! Do you have any questions about editing Wikipedia? ~ Rusty meow ~ 23:20, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Zkahsan7 on Fly Jinnah (16:56, 26 September 2025)

[edit]

Hello, I want to book a flight? Please help me? --Zkahsan7 (talk) 16:56, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Zkahsan7: Sorry, but I am unable to help you with booking a flight with Fly Jinnah, as that is a query unrelated to Wikipedia.
Do you have a question about editing or using Wikipedia? ~ Rusty meow ~ 23:14, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red | October 2025, Vol 11, Issue 10

[edit]
Women in Red | October 2025, Vol 11, Issue 10, Nos. 326, 327, 350, 351, 352
Recognized as the most active topic-based WikiProject by human changes.


Online events:

Announcements:

Tip of the Month:

  • Notable does not always mean admirable; you don't have to like an article's subject to make the article a useful contribution to Wikipedia.

Progress ("moving the needle"): Statistics available via various tools: previously, Humaniki tool; currently, QLever.
Thank you if you contributed one or more of the 6,283 articles during this period:

  • 19 May 2025: 20.114% of EN-WP biographies are about women (2,066,280; 415,618 women)
  • 24 September 2025: 20.20% of EN-WP biographies are about women (2,088,533 biographies; 421,901 women)

Other ways to participate:

--Rosiestep (talk) 18:32, 29 September 2025 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Tech News: 2025-40

[edit]

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

  • A major software upgrade has been made to Phabricator. The update introduces performance improvements, a refreshed search interface, enhancements to Maniphest task search, updates to user profile pages and project workboards, new Herald automation features, as well as general text input, mobile experience improvements and more. [18]

Updates for editors

  • The Community Tech team will release the new Community Wishlist extension on October 1, that will improve the way wishes will be submitted. The new extension will allow users to add tags to their wishes to better categorise them, and (in a future iteration) to filter them by status, tags and focus areas. It will also be possible to support individual wishes again, as requested by the community in many instances. The old system will be retired. There will be a brief period of downtime while the extension is deployed and wishes are migrated to the new system. You can read more about this in the latest update or you can consult the current documentation on MediaWiki.
  • As announced on Diff blog, the production trial of the hCaptcha service for bot detection has begun. The trial is currently using hCaptcha to protect account creation on Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Turkish Wikipedias, where it will replace our existing CAPTCHA (FancyCaptcha). The goal with the trial is to better block bots while also improving usability and accessibility for users who encounter CAPTCHA challenges.
  • The CampaignEvents extension has been deployed to Wikimedia Commons. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. On Commons, anyone who is a registered user can use it as an event participant. To use it as an organizer, someone needs to have the event organizer right.
  • Sub-referencing, a new feature to re-use references with different details has been released to German Wikipedia. You can test the feature on testwiki or on betawiki as well. Please share your thoughts on using templates in sub-references or volunteer to become a pilot wiki.
  • On wikis using the Mentorship system, communities can now opt experienced editors out of Mentorship through Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship. Within this setting, communities may define thresholds, based on edit count and account age, to decide when an editor is considered experienced enough to no longer receive Mentorship. [19]
  • The Editing Team and the Machine Learning Team are working on a new check for newcomers: Tone check. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits, using artificial intelligence. We invite volunteers to review the first version of the Tone language model for the following languages: Arabic, Czech, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Farsi, Italian, Norwegian, Romanian and Latvian. Users from these wikis interested in reviewing this model are invited to sign up at MediaWiki.org. The deadline to sign up is on October 3, which will be the start date of the test.
  • The rollout of multiblocks had the side effect that non-active block logs may have been shown on Special:Contributions and on blocked users' user and user_talk pages. This issue will be fully resolved in a few days. As part of the fix, messages prefixed with sp-contributions-blocked-notice will be removed and replaced with those prefixed with blocked-notice-logextract in a few weeks. Please help translate the new messages and update any local overrides if needed.
  • There was a bug with links added using visual editor if they included characters such as [ ] | after the fragment identifier (#). They were not encoded properly creating an incorrect link. This has been fixed. [20]
  • One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote in Malay (q:ms:) [21]
  • Recurrent item View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the User Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks. [22]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Later this week, editors using Lua modules will be able to use the mw.title.newBatch function to look up the existence of up to 25 pages at once, in a way that only increases the expensive function count once.
  • A new Unsupported Tools Working Group has been formed as part of ongoing efforts to collectively determine technical work priorities, similar to the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). The working group will help prioritize and review requests for support of unmaintained extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. For the first cycle, the group will be prioritizing an unsupported Wikimedia Commons tool.
  • Recurrent item 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 20:48, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]