User talk:DMacks/Archive 47

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Interesting category

Here you created Category:Chemical articles having Jmol set/Hardcoded. I could not find its background. Could you describe wat it is for, and how it is populated. Thanks ;-) DePiep (talk) 00:03, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

The J(S)mol 3D model entry in the infobox uses the SMILES parameter. However, SMILES doesn't always represent the molecule correctly for various reasons, or even if it does, the JSmol webservice does not render it correctly. The goal is to provide a separate field for these situations. Sometimes it's possible to write an alternate SMILES that renders correctly, so it can be passed as an override field for the regular SMILES for purposes of the 3D model. And other times there's really just no way to do it (or at least nobody has figured out how yet), so there is a special token "none" to pass in the override field that just inhibits display of the 3D model infobox item altogether.

The goal for articles is to present an image that is correct, or no image at all, and the purpose of the cats is to track the cases where we have to play these games. There are several subclasses of overrides ("none" to inhibit vs some alternative hardcoded to render properly, and minerals as a class are hopeless), so I think I was aiming to have subcats of Category:Chemical articles having Jmol set for each. DMacks (talk) 00:37, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll chew on this. -DePiep (talk) 00:41, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Did you change any Chembox subtemplate code for this? -DePiep (talk) 00:43, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

DePiep I think that part of the issue is that there are several "flavours" of SMILES, some of which handle stereochemistry (especially chirality) better than others. Again, cyhalothrin is a good test case. I fiddled with the SMILES in its Chembox until the image generated in Jmol was correct in its absolute stereochemistry (i.e. gamma-cyhalothrin, the most active of the 16 isomers). So the category may be useful so that those interested (a vanishingly small group!) can do a similar fiddle. It would only be worthwhile to spend time on that for important cases such as thalidomide where the "wrong" enantiomer is the one that has all the adverse side-effects. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:43, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I am not involved with fiddling & solving, out of my league. I do know the category 'SMILES does not work in JSmol' is useful (I created it ;-). It's just I was surprised by the new subcategories and their rationale. -DePiep (talk) 12:59, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

It's not as simple as "some SMILES are more canonical than others" or including different levels of stereochemical detail. Those are important concerns for database keying and specificity. But the major class that bugs me is organometallics like ferrocene. Databases and automated SMILES generators seem to see ferrocene as a loose Fe²⁺ atom and two loose cyclopentadienyl rings where one carbon atom on each is anionic. The larger pathological class is things that SMILES sees as separate components but that chemists know have specific spacial positioning among those components, so it also includes catenanes and other interlocked strucures. A good example is olympiadane; SMILES sees it as simply "five rings" not interlocked and the Jmol renderer makes each ring entirely flat (carbons with four bonds have square–planar geometry and multiple cases of intersecting atomic nuclei. DMacks (talk) 13:57, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Ferrocene is an excellent example. The connection table, whether as SMILES, MDL molfile or InChI in one's underlying db of structures has to be capable of rendering back into something chemists would recognise as "correct". We solved this in about 2004 when we started using the Accord (Accelrys at that time) viewer, so I know that BIOVIA draw does all this well, as the direct descendent of that work. When, I hope soon, I can send you all copies of my Syngenta [Chemistry] Business rules you'll see more and it will become clear that one has to plan a) what you want b) how to store the information and c) how to retrieve and display it back to your chemistry users. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:25, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Category:Unclassified_Chemical_Structures

Hi! I just "found" an old deletion request about cleaning up in this category and it seems the only 2 files left is your files. Do you still need those files? And do you think the category is still needed? --MGA73 (talk) 19:58, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Those files are for local testing. They don't need to be in a public category based on...anything really. I removed them from that cat. I think that specific cat has obviously long outlived its usefulness. You want to CFD it or should I? DMacks (talk) 22:36, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

What about Category talk:Unclassified Chemical Structures? Does this talk page need to be archived? --Leyo 10:19, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

@DMacks and Leyo: Sorry for the late reply. I see you have fixed it! Thank you very much both of you. --MGA73 (talk) 19:08, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

11 foot 8 bridge

Thanks for the work you did on the copyright issue. I took me over a day to read and understand your analysis, but it was worth it. I learned a lot. A website can say everything has copyright restrictions, even though those restrictions have been lifted somewhere else. We depend upon editors like you to keep wikipedia honest. Comfr (talk) 21:42, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

This Month in Education: October 2020

This Month in Education Volume 9 • Issue 10 • October 2020 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issuse Collegiate Students Fight Historical Revisionism Through Online Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Digital skills using Wikimedia Art + Feminism Editathon “¡No se olvida!” (We don’t forget!) Education news bytes Featured education community member of October 2020 Teaching Wikipedia at University of Tromsø with support from the Sámi Parliament

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: Romaine 12:59, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-44

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [1]
• Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [2]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can. [3]
• There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits. [4]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized. [5]

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

17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Bring back User:Edgar181?

Do you think there any chance of getting Edgar181 unblocked? He was very useful editor. I realize that sockpuppetry is a major infraction, especially for an admin, but as a sockpuppet he did not seem to do anything that was particularly bad (that I recall). And he was an outstanding helper. There is no reason for him to return as an admin (inconceivable).--Smokefoot (talk) 02:20, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I think there's zero chance. According to those who have more advanced permissions than I do, there was some bad stuff that wasn't specific to his being an admin. The sense I get among admins is that the deception, no matter how innocuous related to content and no matter how good his content was (and it was!), is that it would be a non-starter any time in the short-term future. DMacks (talk) 14:18, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

You're welcome: have one on me.... Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:10, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-45

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

Recent changes

• You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser uses very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It could lead to downgrade attacks. Since October 29, 2020, users who use old TLS versions will not be able to connect to Wikimedia projects. A list of browser recommendations is available. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [6]
• There is a new automatic tracking category available: Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments. It collects pages which use the {{formatnum}} parser function with invalid (non-numeric) input, e.g. {{formatnum:TECHNEWS}}. Note that {{formatnum:123,456}} is also invalid input: as described in the documentation, the argument should be unformatted so that it can be reliably and correctly localised. The tracking category will help identify problematic usage and double-formatting. The new tracking category's name can be translated at translatewiki. [7]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 4. It will be on all wikis from November 5 (calendar).
• Administrators and stewards will be able to use a special page (Special:CreateLocalAccount) to force local account creation for a global account. This is useful when account creation is blocked for that user (by a block or a filter). [8]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias on November 4. This change excludes the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, plus a few smaller Wikipedias with special circumstances. You can read the help page and the troubleshooting guide for more information. [9]

Future changes

• A discussion has been restarted about using a Unicode minus sign (− U+2212) in the output of {{formatnum}} when it is given a negative argument. [10]
• In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.

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16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Barnstar for thee!

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		Thank you for introducing me to Wikipedia! Besides helping others for factual information, you also helped introduce me to HTML and CSS coding, which would use in the future. Cheers! Ice bear johny meowy123 16:46, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

You're welcome on all counts! DMacks (talk) 03:21, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

please ban Sabbatino for a week.

please amd thank you. 1Luca2 (talk) 05:58, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

 Not done @1Luca2: you will need to provide a reason, such as specific edits they have made and the specific specific policy or guideline being violated by them. DMacks (talk) 06:11, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

BabuH007

Dear Dmacks,

We are sorry that you judged negative our scientific work but we are a recognized non profit foundation (BabuHawaii Foundation) and MDPI International peer-reviewed Journal advised us to published in Wikipedia to let the community know about our findings.

Just let us know how we can reference our work on the related pages regarding micro plastics and microorganism identification. Looking forward to hear from you soon.

Best Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by BaBuH007 (talk • contribs) 04:19, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46

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

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• You can see reference previews. This shows a preview of the footnote when you hover over it. This has been a beta feature. It will move out of beta and be enabled by default. There will be an option not to use it. The developers are looking for small or medium-sized wikis to be the first ones. You can let them know if your wiki is interested. [11]
• From November 16 the categories will not be sorted in order for a short time. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the internationalisation library. They will use a script to fix the existing categories. This can take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [12][13]

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

15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for tidying up my edit to Isoelectronicity

Thanks so much for improving my edit. I first edited that article in 2016 when I was in my first year of chemistry and just learned about it in depth, and I check up on the page every now and then.

Last night I had a second look and realised that the entire page really needed a rework and obsessively wrote it for 3 hours. Thanks for clearing the edit up and reformatting things so they better fit wikipedia. Means a lot :) Demonicnoobie (talk) 14:58, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to follow up about it (and pursuing your interest in chemistry). DMacks (talk) 15:01, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

User:Ulyvoei

Said editor is back adding unsourced information with the atypical edit summaries.[14]

Even edit warring unsourced information into an article.[15] --Kansas Bear (talk) 05:31, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

I gave them a level4 warning. Let me know if (I know, but I'm being optimistic) it happens again. DMacks (talk) 06:24, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

On his talk page User:Ulyvoei acknowledged an offer of help but did not acknowledge that Ulyvoei's edits needed to improve, instead claiming to be persecuted. Then at 14:11, 15 November 2020 UTC made this edit which removed "c." from a date without explanation or source, and which also created a contradiction between the info box and the lead of the article. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:46, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

I saw that edit and I agree it's a contradiction between the infobox and the first sentence of lead. Later the lead, however, is "His death was recorded by a former follower in the year 1415" (which exactly matches what the article later says). On its face, that could support actually (not approximately) that specific year. What is the Wikiproject Middle Ages or Wikiproject Biography standard for certainty and sourcing regarding this sort of information? This is not a topic-area with which I'm familiar (neither the actual topic nor wiki work). DMacks (talk) 17:06, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks User:Jr8825 for helping me to see how to read it. DMacks (talk) 17:39, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

No problem, I also left them a message on their talk page reaffirming what you'd just said. Cheers, Jr8825 • Talk 17:46, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Same type edits = Same user? "New user" KitchenScience has made 4 edits concerning date of birth. --Kansas Bear (talk) 22:26, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

@Kansas Bear: Almost certainly. Note (unsurprisingly) their age. WP:CIR? Jr8825 • Talk 22:45, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

The socking is obvious, so we'll block KitchenScience as the newer one. After the sock-warning, they have continued to make content edits as Ulyvoei but not as KitchenScience, so I'm on the fence about blocking that main one for the socking alone. Do content-edits continue to be problematic after several of us gave hand-written explanations on their talkpage? DMacks (talk) 23:51, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

CU confirmed the match, and also unconvered User:Anonimus305. I support their indef of the main. Enough of this time-sink. DMacks (talk) 00:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the note DMacks. Well, dang. I can perhaps understand setting up one additional account in certain circumstances but two??? Not so much. Time-sink for sure. S0091 (talk) 00:14, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-47

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

Recent changes

• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [16][17]

Changes later this week

• If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed. [18]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 November. It will be on all wikis from 19 November (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.

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

15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Unfortunately, my mop's bar mitzvah will have to wait until the pandemic subsides. DMacks (talk) 16:40, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48

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

Recent changes

• Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page. [19]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January. [20]

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

17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. 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. If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:21, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, DMacks. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.BunbunYU (talk) 00:42, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Short description for Resonance

Hello, i added that short description to Resonance because it is a concept in control theory, which is the study of "the control of dynamical systems in engineered processes or mechanisms". Though it sounds nothing like the concepts in the article, it is about oscillatory processes, as you can see by opening its article here. That page is clearly categorized in Category:Control theory, and that shortdesc has the added benefit of being under the recommended character limits at WP:WPSHORTDESC. I believe if the article does not mention control theory in the lead, then that is a problem we should fix in the article rather than keeping an unusable shortdesc as it currently stands. If you think that description is lousy, though, I'm open to discussing other alternatives to add to that field. Cheers, YuriNikolai (talk) 23:14, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

The problem I have is that it's not in keeping with how the article is written. Control theory defines itself (paraphrasing:) as maintaining an equilibrium via feedback whereas the resonance article talks about perpetual oscillation at a certain frequency. The cause might in some cases be a restoring force that pushes towards equilibrium, but that's not how the phenomenon is sometimes directly seen. For example, we know that a string vibrates because of the force of being stretched, but that doesn't provide a clean analogy to a standing wave in an organ pipe. The frequency is the key, not the perpetual restoring. And driving a system at its resonant frequency easily leads to it going out of control.

As our article says, the scope is "physics". The control theory article is so full of technical jargon in the intro, a lay reader really might not understand it even if resonance might technically be a subtopic of it. The goal as I see it is to help readers--even non-technically-advanced ones--tell at a glance what the topic is (for example, in a SEEALSO list). The Wikidata description is too long and wordy, but it's at a reasonable readability level and seems closer to the article.

How about how resonance (disambiguation) defines it: "Resonance is the tendency of a physical system to oscillate at great amplitude at certain frequencies."? DMacks (talk) 10:54, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I quite like that definition, though it is too long (over 40-ish characters) even if we reduce it to "Tendency of a physical system to oscillate at great amplitude at certain frequencies" (84 chars). I propose "Tendency in physical systems" as a shortdesc, it's a bit basic but taking out "at certain frequencies" or other parts of the first phrase would make the description somewhat inaccurate, and the main goal of a shortdesc is to show up in the preview menu when creating links, where an overly long text will be cut. What do you think? YuriNikolai (talk) 23:24, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree that if we mention "oscillate" we have to mention "frequency". Is it necessary to include "physical" and/or "systems"? I think a key idea is the oscillation, as a distinguishing characteristic (vs for example any of the Conservation of ___ laws). What about "Tendency to oscillate at certain frequencies" (45 chars)? DMacks (talk) 04:11, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

That seems like the best synthesis of the idea so far! I'll add it to the page. Thanks for the help in brainstorming this one! YuriNikolai (talk) 00:27, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Pleasure working with you, YuriNikolai. Cheers! DMacks (talk) 10:26, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Chemistry

Under the topic named chemistry , it is written that atoms retains chemical properties of the element it corresponds to. I want to that does atom show "all" the chemical properties shows by the element? Also want to know does atom not retain physical properties of its element? Vanshita poddar (talk) 19:59, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi Vanshita poddar! Many physical properties require a sample containing many of the atom because they involve forces between the atoms rather than just properties of an atom itself. For example, melting point does not make sense if you don't have enough atoms to form a crystal lattice of a solid. Censity does not make sense because there need to be lots of atoms to be spread out to various distances. Conductivity of metals requires metallic bonding and electrons delocalized among the many atoms. But chemical properties usually make sense for single atoms. If you have some particular properties in mind, we can talk about them in more detail. It would also help to know what level you are in school, so I can try to explain in an understandable level of detail. DMacks (talk) 10:34, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 December. It will be on all wikis from 3 December (calendar).

Future changes

• The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test. [21][22]
• The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. [23]

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17:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Tigrayans

Hello sir. I'm a pending changes reviewer. I notice you edit protected the article Tigrayans. Are you knowledgeable on this topic? I find this edit suspicious (SPA, major re-defining of the ethnicity, in his edit history he reverted some sysop edits, he's not using the talk page, on the talk page Tigrinyas vs Tigrayans appears to be controversial and un-decided, his edit replaces some local script with English, talk page mentions a sockpuppet), but I do not feel comfortable enough with the topic to revert him again. Looking for a 2nd opinion. Thank you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:19, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Hello again. I since did a lot more research on the subject, and I did find an entry for Tigray in CIA's world factbook. I assume the original editor/diff I mentioned is acting in good faith now, although he was a bit quick to re-write the article. I will try to get a discussion going on the article's talk page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:24, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for doing some good research and getting a discussion going! Sorry I didn't notice your original message until this late update to it:( I know there is a lot of good-faith dispute and potential bad-faith ethnic POV in this topic area, but I do not actually know anything about the topic itself. Let me know if I can be of further admin assisance. DMacks (talk) 09:27, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Regarding your revert at radon

I think I fixed the problem by moving the cite to Dorn to its appropriate location: Rutherford and Owens actually published in 1899 the year they discovered it. But I thought you might like to know a very annoying fact about how this element is treated in sources that is probably partly responsible for the whole mess: there is a problem because "radon" is sometimes used to mean the element Rn with atomic number 86 (thus any isotope of it counts), but sometimes it is used to mean only ²²²Rn that is the one produced when natural radium decays. This is one of the last holdouts of the old tradition to name isotopes in decay chains (radium F, radium G, and all that).

Therefore, if you look it up in books or articles, you are going to find some disagreement between the 1899 and 1900 dates of discovery. Because radon the element was first discovered in 1899 by Rutherford and Owens, and they published their paper in 1899. But the isotope they discovered was ²²⁰Rn (sometimes still today called "thoron" as it is the one produced when natural thorium decays.) Radon the isotope was first discovered only the next year (1900) by Dorn, and he published his paper in 1900. So nowadays, sources who don't do their research properly will credit Dorn as the discoverer and give the date 1900, because he discovered radon the isotope; just not radon the element. Which is particularly anti-historical because Dorn actually cited Rutherford and Owens when he reported his discovery, but there it is. The culprit is the old tradition that said that the most stable isotope becomes the name of the element, which is why not just element 86 but also element 91 has this discovery muddle. For both of them, the first discovered isotope was not the most stable, and the first discoverers got unfairly forgotten.

Source explaining this muddle: Nature. I did try to explain it at the section concerned by writing after describing the old isotope names "...which caused some confusion in the literature regarding the element's discovery as while Dorn had discovered radon the isotope, he had not been the first to discover radon the element." But given this, I think perhaps I should have tried to do more. I'm not sure how to deal with it without it becoming a long digression over the history of isotope naming, though. Double sharp (talk) 03:51, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for all the details! I've been reading Marco Fontani's The Lost Elements between semesters, looking forward to picking it up again in a few weeks. DMacks (talk) 04:06, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I love that book! One day I must pick it up again too. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 04:08, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-50

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

Recent changes

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function. [24][25]

Changes later this week

• Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki. [26][27]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all wikis from 10 December (calendar).

Future changes

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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

16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

user:Ulyvoei?

I noticed a very similar editing pattern with a "new user". Changing dates of birth, etc. User:Toaster9 has a very recognizable editing pattern that oddly matches user:Ulyvoei and user:KitchenScience. Your thoughts? --Kansas Bear (talk) 01:20, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Edit to 6PPD

Hello, I made a minor edit to 6PPD. I am not much familiar with chemistry, so just dropping by this message so that you can check the line is still accurate. Thanks. extra999 (talk) 15:08, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Looks good. Thanks for your edits! DMacks (talk) 15:46, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Other names in Chem infobox

There is an ongoing discussion at the 1-Butanol talk page that may be of interest to you and other knowledgeable chemistry editors. The inclusiveness of Other names in the Chem infobox is the topic. Should obsolete names or names not in common usage be included? As this question is applicable to many other chemical compounds, another forum for this discussion may be appropriate unless this issue has already been resolved. Sandcherry (talk)

The above user and another have reverted every single one of my recent edits. I removed, from the infobox, all the names except those in common use. For example, "n-Butyl hydroxide" is clearly not an acceptable name for an alcohol. They have not provided any citations to verify the current use of the terms, other than a "dictionary". It is impossible to obtain a proper consensus regarding these edits are there are in total only 3 editors involved. Please have a look at 1-Butanol and its talk page and remove each questionable name from the infobox unless you think that its inclusion serves a useful purpose..

N.b. The name "methylolpropane" was not found in a web-search but the related compound Trimethylolpropane is sold under that name. Petergans (talk) 12:03, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Current Caliph of Islam

The Information that was provided on Wikipedia about current caliph of Islam was totally wrong it has to be removed because it was against the act of Islam and as a Muslim we didn't accept this AHamzaTanoli (talk) 20:06, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely.Kindly check this and remove this disgusting thing from wiki page Ahad Saleem (talk) 20:53, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely not. You (or anyone else) has exactly zero privlege to declare for all Islam how things are. Instead, it's up to each sect itself to have its own interpretation. None is better or more correct, and importantly, none can tell the others. We are an encyclopedia built on a policy of neutrality not religious hierarchy. DMacks (talk) 21:47, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Google and the Ahmadiyya caliphate

Hello DMacks,

All these people have a legitimate complaint of sorts, although their complaint ought to be directed to Google since it is their incompetent algorithms are displaying these utterly false search results. I suggest that instead of slapping them down and deleting their complaints, we reply, telling them to take up the matter with Google. Just my opinion. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:30, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Many contain serious ethnic slurs, such as normative use of "qadiani" and "kafir"--that's a non-starter in my book (demonstrates they're not coming from a position of any sort of acceptance to discuss further) that really cannot be kept IMO. And their comments even beyond that often suggest they will not be molified by the current article wordings that clarify the scope of the belief (who is whose caliph, for example). That all said, feel free to reduce the prot (citing this comment here) while taking up patrolling for the abuse in the comments themselves. DMacks (talk) 05:44, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

How did you feel harassments in my explanations?

I explained everything well in manners and I do not think that I harassed a Wikipedian Fellow. Can you point me to the words that are assumed as harrasment. If replying to a Fellow is harassment then I think you should think over it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MatiUlHassanChattha (talk • contribs) 08:31, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Qadiyani is an offensive term. DMacks (talk) 09:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-51

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

Recent changes

• There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too. [28]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all wikis from 17 December (calendar).

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21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

This Month in Education: November 2020

This Month in Education Volume 9 • Issue 11 • November 2020 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issuse Celebrating 10 years of student editing in the United States and Canada Cooperation in digital education – Wikimedia Polska conference Education Team 2020 Year End Review Featured education community members of 2020 Fifteen years of implementation of the Wikipedia Education Program in Serbia Hablon User Group and UP Internet Freedom Network Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Online trainings on Wikipedia with high school students of Kosova Photographics and free culture training in Cameroon and Switzerland The article about Wiki-education in the science magazine The first Online EduWiki Camp in Serbia Wikimedia Mexico’s Education Program celebrates Open Access Week 2020 Wikipedia as a Tool to Educate and to Be Educated

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: Romaine 07:14, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Defining traits of Bart Simpson

OK, so I understand that “fictional cross-dressers” was deemed not to be a defining trait of Bart Simpson. Personally, I would disagree with this, given that Bart cross-dressing is a running gag that has been rather often noted by fans. But, I didn’t come here to defend the point, I don’t really care enough about the cross-dressing habits of cartoon 10 year olds for that, so I’ll just let it go. What I came here to do is to note one thing, and also ask one thing. I would like to note that although I shortly afterwards removed “fictional characters who have made pacts with the Devil” as not a defining trait, and am aware how that looks, I was not in fact trying to make a WP:POINT, but rather genuinely don’t see that as a defining trait regardless of what else may or may not be. I merely noticed it by being on the page and couldn’t recall it ever being a major part of his character except maybe three or four throwaway gags, one of which was a deleted scene from a Halloween episode. And what I want to ask is, you linked to WP:P, calling it a “policy”. But that page actually starts with a disclaimer that it is NOT a policy. So, I assume you didn’t intend to link to that. But, just so I know, what were you attempting to link to? --StrexcorpEmployee (talk) 21:06, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-52

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.

Recent changes

• The {{citation needed}} template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [29]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

• You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
• Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a <langconvert> tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [30]
• Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [31]

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20:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Yo Ho Ho

Donner60 (talk) is wishing a foaming mug of Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec20}} to your friends' talk pages.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Donner60 (talk • contribs) 05:31, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Re: 300

I always have done that. 300px renders better in infoboxes on bridges, railroad stations, etc because they take up more unused space and most things are visible. Have done it for many years. Mitch32^{(sail away with me to another world.)} 00:40, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Reply to user talkpage message

You really have an college degrees and u are worrying about Dixie D’amelios songs wikipedia. Get a life. I was just saying the truth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Asiallinenvirheenkorjaaja (talk • contribs) 01:01, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).

Administrator changes

Hammersoft

Andres • Brion VIBBER • Rkitko • Thatcher

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek • Primefac

Oversight changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek

Joe Roe

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.

Technical news

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.

Arbitration

• By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes). The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason).
• Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02

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

Recent changes

• You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [32]
• You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [33]
• Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
  • The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [34]
  • Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [35]
  • When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
• There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [36]
• Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the watchlist to watch will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [37]
• Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [38]
• CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [39]
• There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 January. It will be on all wikis from 14 January (calendar).

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15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Christian Service University College logo.jpg

⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Christian Service University College logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 18:32, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User talk:DMacks

 You are invited to join the discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User talk:DMacks. Is it possible for me to have an archive page as well, if I may add? DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) 21:14, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi DarkMatterMan4500,

What page are you trying to archive? For example, are you talking about User talk:DarkMatterMan4500, or the talkpage of a certain article? DMacks (talk) 03:17, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Camille Rowe article edits

Hi! I'm sorry, I just wanted to clarify that those disruptive edits might've shown up due to the fact that it was me on two different pages, haha! I'm still fairly new to this wiki editing business so I'm still learning through trial and error :D I was consulting multiple pages to fact check and I probably finished the edit on another page (which wasn't the one I originally worked on) so maybe that's why!

Apologies for the inconvenience and for appearing as disruptive. I know that her page is semi-protected because of vandalism from fans of one of her exez, so I get it!

Best wishes x

Coattails (talk) 22:20, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

No worries. As you correctly noted, certain specific articles just get higher scrutiny, beyond the usual "make sure you include a reference when you add a detail." It's often hard to know ahead-of-time when you find yourself on such a page. DMacks (talk) 22:36, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-03

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).

Future changes

• The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [40]
• MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.

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16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	OK Doostihair (talk) 14:16, 19 January 2021 (UTC)