User talk:DatGuy/Archives/2017/April

Your GA nomination of Liechtenstein at the 2016 Summer Olympics

The article Liechtenstein at the 2016 Summer Olympics you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Liechtenstein at the 2016 Summer Olympics for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kees08 -- Kees08 (talk) 08:41, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Question

Tyler Hi DatGuy, why is wikipedia a unreliable source?

(I know I'm not DatGuy, but hopefully he doesn't mind me responding to your question, I'm a talkpage stalker)

Hello,
If you're looking for sources to use in a project or school assignment, I would recommend looking at the sources Wikipedia is citing. Thanks for asking! XboxGamer22408^{talk to me} 17:16, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Hello IP. I'm not sure if your question is intended regarding the warning I gave you, but I'll answer the question. A bit contradictory of XboxGamer's statement, but Wikipedia is not a reliable source. I can't think of a better way to describe it than the page does. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 17:34, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I wasn't aware that page existed. DatGuy's response is correct, I'm generally not very inclined with articles, as I'm just a recent changes patroller. Generally speaking though, Wikipedia is good to get some basic information, not to cite a project or assignment with. XboxGamer22408^{talk to me} 22:25, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Liechtenstein at the 2016 Summer Olympics

The article Liechtenstein at the 2016 Summer Olympics you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Liechtenstein at the 2016 Summer Olympics for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kees08 -- Kees08 (talk) 19:41, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-13

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

• When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [1]

Problems

• Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [2][3]

Changes this week

• New filters for Recent changes will be released on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias and MediaWikiwiki on March 28. Other wikis will get it progressively. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and, on certain wikis, user intent prediction.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 (calendar).

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

14:47, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

DatBot's strange sense of time

I have recently seen a number of reports by DatBot at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/TB2 with the comment "Tripped 5 abuse filters in the last 5 minutes" despite the fact that in every case the filter logs gave the last action as having taken place many hours earlier, in one case almost 28 hours before the bot reported to AIV. When I saw the first couple of these reports, I just thought it a little amusing, but when I realised it was happening frequently I no longer found it funny. The instructions at the top of Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism include "The warnings must have been given recently and the users must be active now" (emphasis in the original), and that applies as much to bot reports as to any others. Posting a large number of reports which have no chance at all of being acted on because they are totally stale takes up the time of administrators who check the reports, who could be spending the time on more useful work, such as dealing with valid vandalism reports. Can you adjust the bot's programming to stop it continuing to do this? The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 14:17, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

@JamesBWatson: This is the second time this has occurred, and frankly, I don't know how to stop it. Sometimes, the SQL service that the bot uses is overloaded, so it stops giving information until it 'cools down.' Then, it sends in all the information at once. If this happens, could you disable the bot? Apologies, and to any talk page stalker, do you know of any way to prevent this? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 14:24, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I blocked it momentarily as it was indeed getting quite disruptive. Widr (talk) 14:31, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thanks for getting back to me on this. It makes sense that it could happen if the SQL service is sending data late, but would it be possible to get the bot to check the time stamps of the filter log entries, or would it be too difficult to get the bot to check the logs itself, rather than just accepting what the SQL service sends? Obviously, since I have no idea how the bot works I have no idea whether that would be feasible. I was intending to keep an eye on AIV for a while, and disable the bot if the stale reports continued, but I see that Widr has blocked the bot for three hours. However, just disabling this one task would be a less drastic solution to the problem than completely blocking it. Judging by the editing history of User:DatBot/Filter reporter/Run that can be done by replacing the contents of that page by "Stop", so I have done that, and I shall unblock the bot's account. If either of you, DatGuy or Widr, know of a good reason why that is not a good way of dealing with the problem, then obviously the block can be reinstated. I am going offline now, so I don't try to get me to do it: ask either Widr or another administrator. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 14:42, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

My understanding of bots is close to nonexistent, that's why I just blocked it (as was done the last time it malfunctioned), so I'll gladly let more knowledgeable folks help you with this. Widr (talk) 14:51, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Tuvalu at the 2008 Summer Olympics

The article Tuvalu at the 2008 Summer Olympics you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Tuvalu at the 2008 Summer Olympics for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Kees08 -- Kees08 (talk) 06:01, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-14

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

• The Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [4]
• The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [5]
• English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [6]

Problems

• Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [7]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on 5 April at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech and Hebrew Wikipedia on 11 April. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and user intent prediction. User intent prediction means the filter tries to help editors determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [8]

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

17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter, Q1 2017

The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 10, No. 1 — 1st Quarter, 2017
Previous issue | Index | Next issue

Project At a Glance
As of Q1 2017, the project has:

• 211 Featured Articles
• 70 Featured Lists
• 11 Featured Topics
• 1 Featured Portals

• 28 Featured Pictures
• 1,172 Good Articles
• 23 Good Topics

---

Content

• Changes to Featured and Good content
• News items and announcements

• Interview with Coin945 and Deltasim about the edutainment video gaming genre

---

Project Navigation

• VG Project Main pages

  • Main project – talk
  • Project category – talk
  • Portal – talk

  VG Project Departments

  • Assessment
  • Reference library – talk
  • Newsletter – talk

To receive future editions of this newsletter, click here to sign up on the distribution list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:39, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-15

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

• Tidy is going to be replaced with an HTML5 parsing algorithm. Bad HTML in wikitext would cause problems on a number of wikis. There is now a ParserMigration extension on all wikis that you can use to help clean this up. You can read more about how you can use it. [9]

Changes this week

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [10]
• New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [11]
• The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [12]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
• RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.

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

18:35, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, April 2017

Bots Newsletter, April 2017

Greetings! The BAG Newsletter is now the Bots Newsletter, per discussion. As such, we've subscribed all bot operators to the newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list. Highlights for this newsletter include: Arbcom Magioladitis ARBCOM case has closed. The remedies of the case include: Community encouraged to review common fixes Community encouraged to review policy on cosmetic edits Developers encouraged to improve AWB interface Bot approvals group encouraged to carefully review BRFA scope Reminders/Restrictions specific to Magioladitis BRFAs We currently have 27 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing! Discussions There are multiple ongoing discussions surrounding bot-related matters. In particular: RFC on COSMETICBOT Efforts at WP:CHECKWIKI to identify cosmetic fixes Requested move for the Bot Owners' Noticeboard A phabricator ticket T162685 has been made to have a "bots" tag, so issues related to bot frameworks can be tracked New things Several new things are around: A BAG Guide has been created (WP:BAGG, discussion). Users now have the option to hide AWB from their watchlists via a script (WP:HIDEAWB, discussion) The guidance on how to deal with bot issues has been overhauled (WP:BOTISSUE, discussion) The bot policy has been updated to clarify that bot operators are required to register accounts. (WP:BOTACCOUNT, discussion) Wikimania Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know! Thank you! edited by:Headbomb 11:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC) (You can unsubscribe from future newsletters by removing your name from this list.)

CVUA student

I want to get trained to fight vandalism with the CVU and the AVC. - ZLEA (talk) 21:49, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Sure. Just some questions. Is English your native language? Did you create an account with a specific target in mind, such as reverting vandalism? Or are you attempting to receive as many user flags? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 06:43, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry the answer took so long, yes, my native language is English, yes, my target was to improve aviation related articles, and no, the only user right I'm interested in is Rollback. Anything else? - ZLEA ^{(Talk,Contribs)} 13:26, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

@ZLEA: Sorry for the late response. I'm no longer offering service to CVUA trainees. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 10:26, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

April 2017

Thank you for making a report on Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Reporting and removing vandalism is vital to the functioning of Wikipedia and all users are encouraged to revert, warn, and report vandalism. However, it appears that the editor you reported may not have engaged in vandalism, or the user was not sufficiently or appropriately warned. Please note there is a difference between vandalism and unhelpful or misguided edits made in good faith. If the user continues to vandalise after a recent final warning, please re-report it. Thank you. RegalHawk^talk 21:06, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

@RegalHawk: My last AIV report was from February. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 21:08, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

@DatGuy: The AIV report I was referring to was made by your bot, and my notice was meant for it. I did not realize that DatBot redirected to DatGuy, so I apologize for that. RegalHawk^talk 21:12, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Why did you change the poster of wrestlemania 33?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeno4444 (talk • contribs) 23:24, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

@Jeno4444: It was too big, and such failed the non-free criteria. Therefore, it was resized. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 10:26, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

WP:UAA/Bot edits

Did DatBot break? It hasn't reported an usernames here since April 8. Just curious. Please {{ping}} me on any reply. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 02:25, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Nihonjoe: I'm not a sysop/EFM so I can't view the filter logs, but I found at least one report at [13]. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 10:26, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, that was from after I asked about it. It looks like it just didn't report anything for four days. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:00, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Atlas linguistique de la France ‎

Hi, DatGuy. The link to the online version of the linguistic atlas "Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz" seems to me appropriate just as the links to the "Linguistic Atlas of New England", "Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest", "Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States" which are also external links and follow immediately in the text.

If you prefer, I put the link in the References section (as it was some days ago and was removed!!!) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scheuermeier (talk • contribs) 14:47, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

@Scheuermeier: Per the external links policy, "Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia (external links), but they should not normally be placed in the body of an article." Your addition was in the body of the article. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 10:26, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-16

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 add ?safemode=1 to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature?safemode=1. This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them. [14]
• You can now see a list of all autoblocks on Special:AutoblockList. [15]
• The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from [[File:Wiki.png]]. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. [16]

Problems

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.

Changes this week

• There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• stats.wikimedia.org will be replaced. You can see the new prototype. You can leave feedback on this change.
• Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. [17]
• From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. [18][19]

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

19:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

DatBot at WP:UAA/BOT

Can you configure your bot to remove users who are blocked? DeltaQuadBot did that when it handled that task. The bots that remove reports on the main UAA page do not remove reports on the bot reports subpage. —MRD2014 📞 contribs 02:57, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

@MRD2014: DQBot previously did it, no idea if it's stopped now or if there isn't enough time for the bot to remove it. DeltaQuad, thoughts? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 12:58, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that when users were blocked, DeltaQuadBot would remove them. Your bot does not remove accounts automatically, which means that administrators have to remove them. —MRD2014 📞 contribs 13:59, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Just noticed that. According to User:HBC AIV helperbot/source, it doesn't remove UAA pages. Perhaps DQ could still incorporate DatBot into her source code. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 15:15, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

I've made a change to my code which should hopefully make DQBot archive it. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 16:46, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

an help for Sanna Englund

Good evening from Calabria, I'm writing to say hello, thank you and know how you are. I'm pretty good for now. I also write to you because I saw your timely intervention on Gerit Kling's page, I was wondering if you could intervene for the page I reported, would you kindly kindly improve the quality of the page? Right and not more than 10 minutes of your precious time, I have seen that you speak German much more than me. Well, in anticipation of your good and certain answer, I thank you in advance of true heart, and if I can do anything for you, I am at your complete disposal. A greeting from Coreca, Calabria--Luigi Salvatore Vadacchino (talk) 19:03, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-17

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

• New filters for recent changes are now available as a beta feature on most wikis. You can turn it on in your preferences. Remaining wikis will have the new filters on 9 May. [20]
• When administrators, bureaucrats and stewards make a user a member of a user group they can now set an expiry date. A user group is for example "administrators" or "bots". This means that they can give someone user rights for a limited time. This is similar to how blocks and page protections can be limited in time. Special:UserRights will have new options for this. You can read more about user groups. [21]

Problems

• Since the data centre test last week the content translation tool has been disabled. This is because of a database problem. It will be back as soon as the problem has been solved. [22]

Changes this week

• The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. [23]
• Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this. [24]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Reducing files

Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests contains thousands of files, but your bot seems to reduce very few of them:

• 24 April: no files
• 25 April: 6 files
• 26 April: 4 files

For example, File:A new day B 1984.jpg was tagged on 23 April, so it should have been reduced by now. Is there something wrong with your bot? --Stefan2 (talk) 21:11, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Stefan2: I'd bet it's my internet. It runs at 0:00 AM my time, and my internet is very on-and-off. Also, it doesn't reduce tiff files. I'll also run it manually if I see the backlog is getting big. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 13:45, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

If the bot doesn't handle TIF files, then those should be in Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests for manual processing instead of Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests. I've changed the template. Can you check if the list of file types which must be reduced manually is correct? For example, the previous bot didn't handle GIF files. Does your bot handle GIF files? --Stefan2 (talk) 18:34, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@Stefan2: It skips tiff, xcf, and gif files. Also, Codename Lisa, what was the issue with File:Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) screenshot.png? For screenshots and similar, {{Non-free reduce|type=screen}} should be used. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 15:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I've told the template to put XCF files in the other category.

The text is unreadable in the reduced version of File:Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) screenshot.png, so I guess that's why she reverted your bot. The thumbnail in the article actually has more readable text than your bot's thumbnail, even though the article thumbnail is smaller than your bot's thumbnail. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:56, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@DatGuy: The quality of DatBot output is generally worse than the quality of Paint.net or XnViewMP when the target resolution is the same. It isn't just I; others are complaining too. See User talk:Ronhjones § File:MSRT Screenshot.png for an example. Also, 640px is low resolution in my book. DatBot reduces image sizes to that a postage stamp. —Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 09:24, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

DatBot seems to have done a good work on File:TeraCopy screenshot.png. Well... I didn't way "always"; I said "generally". —Codename Lisa (talk) 09:29, 29 April 2017 (UTC)