User talk:Novem Linguae

About botclasses.php

I see you are interested in botclasses.php. Thank you. I recently added Pavel Malahov's functions, have you had a chance to look at them? Orfur (talk) 21:04, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Orfur. I saw the edits on my watchlist and made some formatting improvements, but haven't looked at the functions in depth. @Wbm1058 is the maintainer of that particular page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:52, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Orfur left a note on my talk as well. I just replied; see User talk:RMCD bot/botclasses.php

Followup on the discussion at User talk:wbm1058#That bug with moving pages. Can you open SpecialMovePage.php in your VS Code and let me know whether Intelephense works for you with that file? If it does, then I'll know its an issue with my local setup and not some more global problem caused by MediaWiki code complexities. On the suggestion of a friend over our Thanksgiving meal, I asked ChatGPT for help. It gave me quite a thorough list of things to try. I worked through most of them, but, so far without success. Thanks, wbm1058 (talk) 14:44, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

@Wbm1058. Yeap it's working. Screenshot. You can see the words "intelephense" in several spots (next to each "problem" in the left pane, in the tooltip on the top right), indicating it's working. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:17, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi again. I got tired of banging my head on solving this with my Windows machines, and decided to celebrate "Christmas in January" by buying an ASUS NUC#Fourteenth generation with Bluetooth keyboard, mouse and Bose speaker, and installing Ubuntu on it. My new machine is, initially, focused on MediaWiki development. This time I followed the mw:Local development quickstart instructions, and that went fairly smoothly. Now after opening SpecialMovePage.php in VS Code, I think I know why Intelephense wasn't working for me. This time I used the newly-free GitHub Copilot, which said "/fix Undefined type 'MediaWiki\SpecialPage\UnlistedSpecialPage' To fix the problem, you need to import the `UnlistedSpecialPage` class from the `MediaWiki\SpecialPage` namespace. The edit generation was not successful. Please try again." Then I noticed my "Explorer" sidebar panel. "You have not yet opened a folder. [Open Folder] Opening a folder will close all currently open editors. To keep them open, add a folder instead. You can clone a repository locally. [Clone Repository] To learn more about how to use Git and source control in VS Code read our docs. So my problem seems to be with trying to make changes by editing files in isolation, rather than from folders. I thought I already cloned the repository. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:34, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Yeap, that sounds right. I always use File -> Open Folder to open projects. VS Code uses that to figure out what files are within a project, not the git repo. Bummer I didn't think of this earlier but I'm glad you have it figured out now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:47, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm making progress. Intelephense is working and indicating there are "9+" problems in SpecialMovePage.php but I'm not seeing the nine PROBLEMS listed as shown in your screen shot. My current VS Code setup has Explorer, Search, Source Control, Run and Debug, and Extensions options installed in the left sidebar. How do I add Problems to the sidebar options? wbm1058 (talk) 15:22, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, my Problems Panel is running across the bottom of my screen, rather than on the left side. That must be the default location for it? wbm1058 (talk) 15:49, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

You can drag the tab from the bottom to the left to move it. It defaults to the bottom because that's wider and the warnings are often long. But I prefer it on the left. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:48, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

ANI about the above

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 20:57, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I have sent you a note about a page you started

Hi Novem Linguae. Thank you for your work on Human safari (terror campaign). Another editor, SunDawn, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:

Thank you for your contribution to Wikipedia by writing this article! Hopefully you have a blessed day today!

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|SunDawn}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 15:05, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Admin's Barnstar

I just noticed that you’ve created numerous scripts and gadgets that are incredibly useful for Wikimedia users. I've already installed most of them, and I must say, thank you so much for that! However, there’s something I’d like to apologize for. A while back, I copied and pasted one of your scripts from your user page onto my own without asking for your permission. I realize now that I should have sought your approval first, and for that, I sincerely apologize. Baqi:) (talk) 10:04, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Hey there @Jannatulbaqi. Thanks for the barnstar. No need to apologize. Everything on Wikipedia is released under an open source license, so you are free to copy, modify, fork, etc. Just make sure when you first do the copy paste, you give proper attribution (WP:CWW) using an edit summary such as copied content from User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/CiteHighlighter.js, please see that page's history for attribution. Happy patrolling :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:14, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

WP:ANI - User:CoastRedwood

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Jeraxmoira🐉 (talk) 13:29, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Bad sources

Hiya! Not sure if you are the right person to ask but since you are an admin and a nerd...

I have a list of good sources, but it could also be useful to have a list of bad sources. Specifically I'd be interested in the type of sources UPEs use.

So my idea was to create a list of succesful AfDs (that resulted in the article being deleted) that contain strings like "undisclosed paid " and "UPE " and "promotional ", and then scrape the refs from the deleted articles and sort them by how often they are used.

REFUNDing all those articles to then scrape the refs would be very inefficient of course, but an admin could run a script that extracts the references. What do you think? This can be useful for CiteHighlighter and people working with drafts and NPP. For example for AfC one could create a list of submitted but unreviewed drafts containing only bad sources.

I am also thinking about scraping refs from declined drafts. Polygnotus (talk) 16:13, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Hey there. Thanks for the idea. If you can think of some websites that UPEs commonly use that aren't already highlighted red in User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/CiteHighlighter, I'd certainly be happy to consider adding them to CiteHighlighter. I would just need a list. I don't think I can commit to doing a mass refund or writing a script though. Might take too much time. But maybe you can get the data you need by patrolling Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as spam and viewing some pages before they're deleted? CiteHighlighter will also highlight URLs with certain spammy keywords orange. If you find some keywords that I don't have in there yet, let me know and I can look into adding them :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:39, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

The three queries I mentioned above plus "advert" return a combined 62k results (of course duplicates and unsuccesful AfDs would have to be filtered out). The downside of using EventStreams to detect when an article gets added to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as spam is that it would take a long time to build up a big enough dataset to draw conclusions.

I can parse the AfDs to determine which were succesful and generate the list of article titles. The admin would only run a script that dumps the content of those deleted articles in a textfile; shouldn't be too complicated. I can then filter out the refs, determine which domainnames they contain if any, and then sort those domainnames by frequency. So the admin would only need to read the code that reads a list of article titles and dumps the article content to a textfile to ensure it does nothing nefarious, and then run it and send me the output. Polygnotus (talk) 17:31, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Are you thinking of writing a script then asking me to run it? Although maybe not all 62k results... maybe like 500 or 1000 or something. What programming language and platform were you thinking for this?

If you can find a similar data source that isn't deleted pages, someone who isn't an admin can do a database dump and do something similar with AWB's database viewer. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:47, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

I am kinda using you as a sanity check to see if my idea makes sense. I could ask you or another admin; the only requirement is that they are able to read the code to confirm it does nothing nefarious (read from one textfile, write to another). Of course we don't need every single one of those deleted articles, I only mentioned that number in comparison to patrolling Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as spam. 1000 queries would take roughly 1.5 hours (with a 5 sec delay after each). I am not sure after which point you'd run into diminishing returns. I most often use Java, for reasons beyond my understanding, but I could probably also write something like that in Python or JS. I am on Linux and Windows (again, not by choice). Often these articles are terrible so they get deleted quickly so only a very small amount would end up in a dump (because dumps do not contain articles that were deleted at the time the dump was generated). So as far as I know there is no data source that can give me the same data without major disadvantages. Polygnotus (talk) 18:15, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

The technical solution you propose sounds like it'd do the job. Your edit count and activity also look really good, so don't forget you could probably go write a WP:GA and then run for WP:RFA and just become an admin yourself :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:37, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Mistake

Did you remove my !vote? [1] SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:11, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe. Oops. So sorry about that. I've restored it. Something like this happened to me yesterday too. Not sure why I am having so many weird edit conflicts :( Please feel free to double check my restoring and make sure everything looks good. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:22, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:35, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

hello

Hello, Novem Linguae. 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.

@Novem Linguae Thank you so much for your time, and have a great week! Phoebezz22 (talk) 18:23, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Twinkle deployment

Hey Novem. Would it be convenient for you to deploy the current version of Twinkle from Github? I don't know if that entails some process of double checking changes first. The most recent ones seem to have been on December 10. SilverLocust 💬 23:30, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Sure.  Done. No double checking needed. The double checking gets done before approving each PR. Deploying just consists of following the deployment checklist. Maybe someday Wikimedia will get GitHub continuous deployment. We almost had an intadmin bot get approved for that once, but it fell through. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:51, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

OWID

Wondering about activating our OWID visualization tool (way 3) on EN WP per this?[2]

We are still working on improving it as only functioning decently on desktop. But would like to begin testing here. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:46, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

@Doc James. Howdy. I un-archived your thread at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Next steps towards OWID visualization within MediaWiki and posted there. Let's try to centralize discussion there. I also notified WT:GADGET and WP:IANB. Let's keep an eye on the VPT thread and try to reply often enough that it doesn't get archived without a resolution, else we might have to un-archive it again. Hope that helps. Happy editing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:17, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Data usage

We have dropped data usage down to 2 MB per here.

Link to the page it is loading.[3].

But we still need to improve a bunch of other functionality, then maybe start the discussion again. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:51, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Invitation for Research Consultation

Hi Novem,

I hope all is well. My name is Matt and I'm a graduate student researcher at Northwestern. Recently I've posted to the BAG IRC chat and the User Bots/Scripts Noticeboard soliciting feedback on research cases that I have selected for a research project. You can find more information about our research on our meta page. We are looking at Wikipedia feature deployments and MediaWiki releases that have impacted user bots and scripts. Given your extensive background and experience around MediaWiki, user bots, and some of these feature deployments, I wanted to reach out and see if you had any thoughts that you would be willing to share on our characterizations of these events.

I'm sure that you're quite busy, and I completely understand if you do not have the time. Any information you share will not be included in any research reports, I'm just curious to know your thoughts on how we are framing things.

Thank you! Ggonnemm (talk) 05:54, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

User statistics page

My stats, for this month and last, do not seem to reflect my postings. Admittedly, some of these are new articles, which have delayed registration. Others are simply major additions to existing pages; the latter should show up immediately. Can you detect anything that's amiss? Thank you in advance. 36hourblock (talk) 16:38, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

@36hourblock. Sure. Can you please reply with a URL of the page I should look at? And a description of what you expect to see and what you are actually seeing. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:07, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Not a problem. You can just go to Edit Statistics that is available on my Contrib. page:

https://xtools.wmcloud.org/ec/en.wikipedia.org/36hourblock

I just loaded over 30,000 in the last 24 hours or so. The red bar graph hasn't moved. --36hourblock (talk) 17:24, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

@36hourblock. Thanks. By the way, what does it mean to "load over 30,000"? Which part of the page should I take a look at? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:24, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

"Bytes" is what I meant: sorry for the imprecision. You are not responsible for reading my mind. 36hourblock (talk) 18:00, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Searching https://xtools.wmcloud.org/ec/en.wikipedia.org/36hourblock for the word "bytes", I see...

• Average edit size*: 598.1 bytes
• Small edits (<20 bytes)*: 1,079 · (38%)
• Large edits (>1000 bytes)*: 441 · (15.5%)
• <20 bytes* · 1,079 (38%)
• ≥ 20 bytes* · 1,760 (62%)
• < 1,000 bytes* · 2,398 (84.5%)
• ≥ 1,000 bytes* · 441 (15.5%)
• Taken 4.45 megabytes of memory to execute.

Can you give me some guidance as to what I should be looking at? These just look like numbers to me. I am not sure what the question is. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:58, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

The bar graph that provides a visual measure of the posting per byte: Hasn't budged. This has happened before. --36hourblock (talk) 18:03, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

The bar graphs I see are year edit count and month edit count. I don't see any bar graphs for bytes. Can you clarify? –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:47, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

It's been fun Nomen. Have a nice life.--36hourblock (talk) 16:20, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

@36hourblock. No need to be rude. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:31, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Second opinion AfC draft

Hi Novem Linguae. Would you mind giving a second opinion on Draft:Carl Thoma? I'm reaching out to you because I saw your activity at WT:AFC and you seem level-headed. I was confused by the reviewer's comment: "A puff piece built on manufactured and paid for PR non-references. No indication of significance." The draft relies on significant coverage in ARTnews, Crain's Chicago Business, Inside Philanthropy and other similarly reputable and independent sources. As for significance, the subject of the draft is described in RS as a "pioneer" and a "founding father" of the private equity industry, rather than a run-of-the-mill executive. Finally, upon removing the Philanthropy section, the reviewer dismissed it as "tax avoidance," which might be a cynical take on philanthropy in general, but doesn't seem like a reasonable approach when reviewing the biography of an actual philanthropist, and it gave me the sense that my draft may not have been given a fair shake. I am happy to discuss further with you - thanks in advance! JBarTB (talk) 15:11, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

@JBarTB. Hey there. Thanks for following our paid editor disclosure rules. So when checking if something on Wikipedia is notable (qualifies for an article), a reviewer will usually start clicking the references. Reviewers are looking for around 3 references that pass WP:GNG. A reference passes GNG if it is around 3 dense paragraphs of in-depth writing / analysis focusing on the topic. The "independence" part of GNG is failed if there are a lot of quotations, if it is clearly based on an interview, if it is clearly a press release from the company, etc.

Anyway, I clicked open the first couple references, and here's what my trained eye sees:

• https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018-3-21-meet-an-art-collecting-couple-committed-to-advancing-scholarship - The source's reliability looks OK. According to their about us page, they have staff writers, so aren't just a random person's blog. The specific article is borderline. The bottom half seems to be information supplied in an interview, so kind of calls into question the independence of the top part.
• https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20141213/ISSUE09/312139982/carl-thoma-of-thoma-bravo-mixes-private-equity-and-art-collecting - Their about us page says they have 20 journalists on staff, so that's good. But this article clearly fails GNG due to being almost entirely quotes from the article subject, so not independent.
• https://www.buyoutsinsider.com/personality-profile-past-downturns-inform-carl-thomas-strategy/ - Paywalled. I can't read it.
• https://www.artnews.com/art-collectors/top-200-profiles/carl-thoma-marilynn-thoma/ - This article heaps praise on the article subject, saying things like behemoth, top-performing, innovative, move the world forward, cutting edge, and pioneering. This is way too much praise, and is indeed a "puff piece", calling into question the independence of the journalist. Seems like this may be an advertorial.

I imagine @Scope_creep followed this same process and decided that most of the citations did not meet the "independent" criteria of GNG.

Anyway, as for getting this article published, your best bet is to remove any citations (and their associated article text) that are clearly from non-independent sources, and focus on just a couple of really good references/sources, if they exist on this topic. Remember you only need about 3 really good ones. We want to base our articles on independent, non-biased sources so that the articles are high quality. Hope that makes sense. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Indeed many of them lack independence as they are interview based. Essentially, the sources are all manufactured PR to give the man a veneer of artificial notability that doesn't exist. Its starts with the "Meet..", which is puffed PR. By the fourth reference they are using the same photograph in many of the sources. By ref 6 is it press-release and/or mix of interview style PR along with profiles. By the second block, they are philanthropists based off of press-releases and in the third block, its the company which doesn't apply. It is a classic PR driven. There is not a single secondary source that here satisifies the WP:BLP requirements, nevermind WP:BIO or WP:SIGCOV. Most of it not independent at the least. scope_creep^Talk 17:52, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, Novem Linguae, for your explanation. I appreciate you taking a look at the draft and sending such detailed feedback. If I had to single out the three best independent, non-biased sources in the draft that qualify as WP:SIGCOV, I would point to: this article from ARTnews (not the "Top 200 Collectors" profile that you assessed above, which is not an advertorial, but still not the ARTnews piece I had in mind for SIGCOV); this article from art ltd. magazine; and this article from the Albuquerque Journal. I would be happy to sharpen the draft so it draws its content more from these stronger sources and less from weaker ones, if you think that's the right direction to take. Thanks, JBarTB (talk) 22:41, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Those 3 sources aren't bad. 2 magazines and a local newspaper. Likely makes them independent enough. If you rewrote the article to only use those 3 sources, I think it'd stand a chance at WP:AFD, where this is likely to end up if published. @Scope creep, thoughts on the 3 mentioned sources? Should this editor take the time to rewrite their draft around these 3 sources? –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:49, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

I think they would need to. They are certainly better than the last lot with proper bylines and don't smack of being PR. It still needs reviewed by an independent editor. scope_creep^Talk 14:45, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

@JBarTB. With scope_creep's advice in mind, I'd recommend going ahead with the rewrite, then resubmitting the draft to AFC. After being resubmitted, a fresh editor will be along to review the rewrite. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:56, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

WP:BLPPRIVACY

Hiya Novem Linguae, I hope you're fine. Well, I saw the revert comment you made on Amouranth's page, so I decided to address it on here. So it's been confirmed widely that her birthday is on 2nd December. The subject even made a BIRTHDAY PARTY IRL STREAM on Twitch, back in December. And on a popular online podcast this week, she clearly mentioned that she was aged 31. This would logically prove that her birthdate is 2nd December 1993, so she is not born in 1994 at all. Details on Wikipedia, are meant to be pedantic or accurate as possible, so I will revert your previous edit for now, but let me know your thoughts. Diademchild (talk) 13:10, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Diademchild. Thanks for the note. Perhaps you should repost this at Talk:Amouranth so that others can join the discussion. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:25, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Undelete

Hi. Could you undelete this user page for me User:Kudpung/New Page Patrol - a necessary evil . Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:10, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

@Kudpung. Sure.  Done. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:37, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:48, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Test wiki

Hi. I wondered if there was a test enwiki somewhere that I could use to exercise / practice with the Page Curation tools, without having to do that carefully on the live one as I review actual articles? Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 08:48, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

@SunloungerFrog. Yes. You can use https://test.wikipedia.org/. I am an admin there and I just made you a patroller, so you should be all set. Happy testing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:45, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in research

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of a group of Wikipedians to better understand their experiences! We are also looking to interview some survey respondents in more detail, and you will be eligible to receive a thank-you gift for the completion of an interview. The outcomes of this research will shape future work designed to improve on-wiki experiences.

We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this survey, which shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes. You may view its privacy statement here. Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns. Kind regards, Sam Walton (talk) 16:35, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

GAR script inquiry

Hi Novem Linguae, I wanted to bring your attention to Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Environmental impact of aviation in the United Kingdom/1, where it appears the script was confused and didn't catch the existing GAR page (I also have no option to close the reassessment with the script, which makes sense since it's already delisted). I think what happened is the reassessment page name wasn't following the normal format, but I'd appreciate if you could take a quick look and confirm my understanding. If this was a one off issue with the creation of that particular reassessment, no changes to the script should be necessary. Thanks. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 17:52, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'm pretty busy for a couple days but will try to look at this soon. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:12, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Howdy. I took a look at this one for a couple minutes tonight. Looks complicated to wrap my head around. Has this happened multiple times or is this a one off? If it's just a one off might just let this one slide. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:47, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't recall this happening in the past. Hopefully it was just one error. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:00, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

You should give it a rest, dude.

Just relax and let the process end in your favor. Accept the win. I politely asked our friend and close ally User:theleekycauldron to step back from this discussion (as an arb, I thought she should avoid the appearance of undue trophy collecting). I didn't ask you; the process still needed an advocate. You've gone something tremendous! Accept the victory! Why are still you nattering about, presenting yourself poorly now? It's making me nervous. BusterD (talk) 13:21, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I made my intentions clear weeks ago, yet I stayed out of the survey until a full two weeks into !voting. On the other hand, you created a snow thread on the talk page 18 hours in to the RFC. Some decorum, PLEASE! BusterD (talk) 13:29, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Hmm. Not sure how to reply to this. Will give it some thought. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:19, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Entirely fair. Don't feel I'm trying to disrupt or draw you out. Don't feel obligated even after the outcome is final. Please know I have immense respect for what you and others have accomplished here. BusterD (talk) 01:05, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

OK, I gave this some more thought. I wish you would have said something like "Hey Novem. I feel like you might be BLUDGEONING a little bit over at the AELECT RFC. Would you be willing to reply a little less?" That would be a way to frame your concerns without accusing me of trying to "win" the RFC, accusing Leeky of collecting trophies, accusing me of presenting myself poorly, and accusing me of being indecorous.

As for the SNOW thing, it was SNOWing when I posted it. Here's the old revision. As you can see it is something like 45 to 1 there. So I started a discussion on the talk page to figure out if people wanted to end it early or keep it going. Folks said keep it going, which I was fine with and didn't push back against. Then in a very interesting turn of events, it went from SNOW to not SNOW, and I even posted a reply to the SNOW thread later on saying it was no longer SNOW and should be treated like a normal RFC.

I think you have an incorrect assumption that I am biased towards AELECT. I feel strongly about small pieces of the process, such as the fact that the 2021 RFC was closed incorrectly, or that RFA is more toxic and AELECT is less toxic, but as for feeling a bias towards wanting AELECT, I actually feel neutral on that. If the trial had gone poorly and the community didn't want it, I would have let the process die a natural death and not lost an iota of sleep over it. I am not shepherding the AELECT process because I feel that it is a better process than RFA (I haven't decided yet), I am shepherding it because I feel the community wanted to try it, that it was doable, but that it was being held back by a lack of a project manager type person to do things like coordinate between various stakeholders (enwiki, WMF, stewards, Cyberpower), make small decisions to avoid decision paralysis, set a schedule and stick to it, create clear and organized RFCs, etc.

Anyway, hopefully this reply doesn't offend you and gets us a little more in sync on this topic. Thanks for reading. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:02, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I've already replied on the RFC discussion so I won't repeat myself too much, but as far as I can see Novem hasn't done anything out of line here, especially not anything worthy of this kind of message. It feels disproportionate and a bit melodramatic. Just my two cents. BugGhost 🦗👻 04:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Ditto. I weighed in at the RfC talk and don't really have anything else to add except that I don't understand BusterD's intent here. —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Seeking your advice

Hi Novem, I'm in a sticky situation in this discussion. I asked the closer of this RfC to weigh in on their intention regarding the outcome, but their response concerns me and I'm not sure how to respond without opening a can of worms. I am seeking your advice because you seem to be experienced in this topic on wikipedia. The void century 15:35, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Hey there. Thanks for the message. I'm sorry to hear that you're taking a year wikibreak due to this topic. Let me know if you return early and I'd be happy to give more advice, time permitting. Thanks. Be well. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

New User script?

Hi, Novem Linguae! Well, I need your help. I have started leaving Edit summaries on edits I make, but many times I accidentally click "Publish" twice. So, I was going through User scripts to help me. But, I did not find one. Can you please make 1, that prevents a user from publishing without leaving edit summaries? Please let me know. Xiphoid Vigour ⚔ 07:03, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@Xiphoid Vigour. Howdy! Have you tried Special:Preferences -> Editing -> "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary (or the default undo summary)"? –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:26, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae Thanks for the help! I was not informed about that. Xiphoid Vigour ⚔ 07:28, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

WatchlistAFD.js

Hello, I hope you are well. Just here to let you know that User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/WatchlistAFD.js, a script that I love to have, seems to have stopped working for me. Unfortunately I have a very limited knowledge of coding so I wouldn't know where to start, but I thought I'd let you know. Love your work! GMH Melbourne (talk) 00:41, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Will see if I can find some time to work on this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:01, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

RfA debrief (part 2)

Hi Novem, I have expanded my reference to you at my debrief. Again – as a matter of fairness – I wanted to let you know, though it wasn't anything (imo) negative; quite the opposite! Hope you are doing well, HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 04:24, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

CiteHighligher

You made reference to the CiteHighligher script in your !vote on the AFD for Barron Trump. Can you point me in the direction of the script. TarnishedPath^talk 01:45, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I probably should have linked it. User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/CiteHighlighter. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:00, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. TarnishedPath^talk 02:13, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Please restore my edits.

You recently reverted my edits on edgelord, and you vaguely said that the citation “didn’t include edgelord”. even though the citation may not say “edgelord”, it very much implies it. I’m hoping that you’ll restore my works since i believe i violated no policy or guideline. If i did violate any guideline, then inform me with an elaborate explanation. 2A00:23C4:908:E101:2D08:FCD3:B4B6:8C5F (talk) 08:17, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Hey there. Thanks for your good faith contribution. However you need to be more careful that your citations support your statements. In this case, it is not appropriate to say that "X is an edgelord" and support it with a citation that doesn't even have the word edgelord in it. Besides failing WP:V and being WP:OR, there are also WP:BLP concerns. Hope this makes sense. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:58, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

UserHighlighterSimple

First I want to say thanks for anrfc-lister, makes listing a discussion so easy.
Second I have a question about UserHighlighterSimple. What I'm looking for is to highlight non-EC users in the most minimal way, similar to how blocked editors are effected by the "Strike out usernames that have been blocked" preference. I don't want to change the general signature format, or use any of the other functionality, but just give the user name some simple change that makes it easy to identify. Reading the documentation this seems like it should be possible using the common.css configuration, but I don't understand how. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:17, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying ANRFC-lister :)

UserHighlighterSimple's default is to put a box around users with less than 500 edits. Users with less than 500 edits are almost entirely non-EC users. Are you aware of the box and think it's not visible enough?

Have you checked out User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/UserHighlighterSimple#Config settings? If you follow those directions exactly, then edit the .UHS-no-permissions { border: 1px solid black !important; } part to something else, you can change the styling of users with less than 500 edits. For example, to do a strikethrough, you could change that to .UHS-no-permissions { text-decoration: line-through; } –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:00, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Having a box around user with less than 500 edits would be fine, but I don't seem to be able to get it to work. I thought that this .js[4] and this .css[5] would achieve that, but I've seem to have got something wrong as it's doesn't appear to be working. To clarify I just want to highlight the new users without changing other signatures. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:32, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

This line looks wrong: .window.userHighlighterSimpleNoColors = true;. Try removing the period at the beginning and see if that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:44, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for helping! It's working now, I'm going to go fiddle with the CSS. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:58, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Excellent. Enjoy your fiddling :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:00, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Review count and patrol-patrol

Hello. (Still about review count at XTools) Just making sure: patrol-patrol is globally considered to be part of the review count (even though technically speaking it's not pagetriage), right? (And so XTools should too.) That's the impression I gathered from some NPP ranking queries, but better be safe than sorry. Thanks and have a good day, — Alien  3
3 3 01:29, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Alien333. What's patrol-patrol? Can you give some additional context? I know what Special:UserGroupRights patroller and reviewer are by themselves but have never seen patrol-patrol combined like that. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:08, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

I meant patrol-patrol as in log_type = "patrol" AND log_action = "patrol" in the logging table. (internally in XTools we group the two with a dash, and I forgot that it's only us :)). So I meant the "default" MW patrol feature, which as you said is not often used anymore on ENWP. — Alien  3
3 3 18:38, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Ah OK. Well anyway, PageTriage is only installed on enwiki, so anything that's not enwiki can definitely keep using the old system. So the kind of decisions you'd need to make for the ticket we were talking about is 1) what to name the Page Curation count, and 2) whether to keep displaying Patrol and Page Curation side by side, or hide Patrol. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:04, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

I was wondering if Patrol shouldn't be counted as part of the Page Curation count, as some (the NPP hall of fame queries at any rate) have counted it in, but now that you say it keeping the two shouldn't hurt. Thanks for the help! — Alien  3
3 3 19:10, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

I think Page Curation should only query the Page Curation log, not the Patrol log. WP:PatrolVsReview talks a bit more about the differences. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:17, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Page deletion by non admin

Hi, Novem Linguae! I wanted to ask if there's a technical error. Here it's appearing that TomAlvor deleted that page. But, he only has 22 edits and obviously not an admin! I use minerva skin please tell what issue it was. _saluere, Ɔþʱʏɾɪʊs^⚔ 12:12, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Ophyrius. The software lets non-admins delete redirect pages with no other history, if it is done as part of a page move. Looks like that is what happened here. That is, TomAlvor moved a page. Hope that makes sense. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:35, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh, sorry! I didn't know about that.😅 _saluere, Ɔþʱʏɾɪʊs^⚔ 14:57, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Sure no worries :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:27, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

beat me to it!

saw you fixed the watchlist, thanks :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 22:53, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Appreciate the instantaneous fix

One time I get woozy... but really appreciate it. qedk (t 愛 c) 22:54, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Regarding the move-subpages to template editor close

Hi, I think that the close was a bit too early. It's been only 9 days since the discussion was move to VPP, and my concerns were raised only yesterday. While, I do see a consensus so far, I don't think that people have thought this proposal through, as I fail to see any advantage that granting move-subpages alone would give. It should either be as give them everything that page movers already have (except maybe move-category) like BD2412 says or make no changes and grant extended-mover on a case-by-case basis like Aaron Liu says. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 12:55, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the message. I've started Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Revert close? to see if others feel the same way. If someone else also thinks it was too soon, I'll probably revert. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:50, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Sure, thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 16:06, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

User:Sinicasyaycami

• Sinicasyaycami (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Hi there, can we do anything about this user? Thanks. Tony Holkham (Talk) 22:21, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Sure.  Done. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:23, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Can we also delete the AI-generated vandalism image they used? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sinicasyaycami.jpg I don't wanna use any markup so it doesn't show up as an image on your talk page. It was uploaded to Commons first so it may need to be pointed to the admins there Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 22:27, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Looks like someone started the process at c:Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Sinicasyaycami.jpg –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:29, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

It's been nominated for deletion on Commons. Tony Holkham (Talk) 22:31, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

YAY! I'd also suggest a revdel of their edit summaries, this is a LTA and would be nice to WP:DENY them from having trophies in the page histories. Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 22:54, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Sounds time consuming since it is spread across multiple pages. Another volunteer is free to revdel those if they want. But in the spirit of WP:DENY perhaps it'd make sense to not spend too much more time on this :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:57, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Let's hope they enjoyed it while it lasted... Cheers, T. Tony Holkham (Talk) 22:27, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

OWID

We have done a lot of updates so are posting again for feedback and potential approval.Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#OWID_visualization_within_MediaWiki_(Part_2) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:03, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Nice. Subscribed. Let's see what folks say now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:06, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Only minor concerns raised but not much engagement.[6] Thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:11, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Looks like the only comment was an objection to deploying. Unfortunately that is not a great outcome. Maybe fix the concern there, then make yet another VPT thread in a couple weeks, and ping everyone that participated in the second to last discussion (since that one was well attended). –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:15, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Apologies

Greetings. Apologies to both you and older ≠ wiser for accidentally amnending the older ≠ wiser signature. Lapsus manus. The bolding was intended to assist the closer's work but I guess it's not needed. Thanks. -The Gnome (talk) 06:49, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

@The Gnome. No worries. A couple years ago when I was newer I tried adding bold to an AFD and got reverted, so I get the impression that people like to control their !vote and how intense it is. I've also been reverted for fixing comment typos. Nowadays I leave comment content alone and pretty much only change bullets, indent, and headings. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:24, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

"Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 June 9 § Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information until a consensus is reached. Grnrchst (talk) 15:49, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	Thank you for all your work at phab:T378287. You deserve a ton of appreciation :) – DreamRimmer ■ 13:45, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks buddy. I'm glad you got to play a part in that too :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:09, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

I'd extend that appreciation for wrangling Extension:SecurePoll through the process and getting WP:AELECT off the ground and into the running! Sohom (talk) 14:00, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Two years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:49, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Unblock-review

Seems to have stopped working entirely. I still haven't learned how to debug these things, but now nothing is appearing at all. Yes, I know, bugs, github, etc...but I want to verify it's happening to someone else too. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 14:25, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

@Jpgordon. Looks like Special:Diff/1296857619 broke it. I updated some code. Try it now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:02, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

yay thanks. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 13:46, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

...and then it stopped working again. Hm. Strange magic. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 14:04, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Works here: User talk:Datawikiperson. Fails here: User talk:Digital Disruptors. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 14:08, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

@Jpgordon. Looks like some of the old templates are still using the "old way" that I had just removed in favor of the "new way". Just now I wrote a patch to support both. Try it now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:59, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Both work now, thanks! --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 00:18, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Aah, sorry my edit led to this. I did think about scripts relying on the unblock template but not expect the style attributes to cause issues :( Sohom (talk) 00:39, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

No worries. HTML is not a stable interface. I think you approving the edit request was fine. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:46, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

anrfc-lister.js

Hi,

Your script at present has options to list requests for closer to the Admin, RFC, Deletion and other sections of WP:CR. I don't know when it happened but someone added sections for Merges and Requested Moves. Any chance of an update to your script? TarnishedPath^talk 14:55, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

@TarnishedPath. Done. [7]. Thanks for reporting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:05, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Minor issue, a few questions, possible script need

Hello Novem - you gave me a useful solution for a .js script previously, and I have seen your script contributions, so am seeking your interpretation again (and assistance to fix, if possible, please) of a user template test I'm running on both my user page and sandbox. It is {{User Wikipedian For|year=2005|month=04|day=17|sc=y}}

Questions: 1. On my sandbox page, the counter advances automatically each 24 hr. What triggers it to read the date and update the function precisely at GMT 00:00:01?

The counter has never worked automatically on my user page. I tried placing it inside or outside a wikitable or style template (no effect), and have updated it manually by clicking on the GMT clock displayed on the upper right of my screen (this works). Using {{purge}} manually also works on my user page.

I've sensed that some format on my user page obstructs an autopurge at 1 second past 00:00 GMT, because the sandbox counter always works well. I've checked other user pages where this function is used (usually, outside of a table), and they update automatically daily.

2. For some of your work, I've seen what may be automatic "purge" functions. Is there a way to install a script that refreshes a page on the 24 hr clock, and therefore would not require manual attention?

3. If a script for a page purge at 00:00:01 GMT doesn't exist, could one be created?

Apologies for introducing such a minor issue, but curiosity about how it happens and how to fix it steers me to seek your thoughts and solution. Thanks. Zefr (talk) 15:10, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Pages are cached as much as possible to reduce server load, and it is not possible to autopurge them at a fixed time using a user script, since that requires you to be online. There are some approved bots for automatic purging, but they are not currently active. You can use the following script, and once installed, it will automatically purge your user page when you visit it. Please do not visit too often, as frequent purging will not be helpful due to how MediaWiki handles caching. A few visits a day should be enough.

$(document).ready(function() {
    if (mw.config.get('wgPageName') === 'User:Zefr') {
        $.post(mw.util.wikiScript('api'), {
            action: 'purge',
            titles: mw.config.get('wgPageName'),
            format: 'json'
        }).done(function() {
            mw.notify('Page purged successfully!', { type: 'success' });
        });
    }
});

DreamRimmer (talk) 09:48, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, DreamRimmer, but the main query remains: the sandbox counter updates automatically - how? - and having a script purge for the user page requiring a page visit is not different than going to the page and clicking on the clock (I do not want to visit my user page very often). Other users, and possibly other autopage functions on Wikipedia, have counters or autopurges that require no page visit.

How does an autopurge bot get activated?

Except for clearing my own cache manually, I am always logged-in and online (sandbox recognizes this; user page doesn't).

What page factors are different between the sandbox and user page that allow auto-updating on the sandbox page while blocking it on the user page? Zefr (talk) 17:14, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Hey there. In general if a template makes a calculation, the page will need to be purged or you will need to make an edit to the page before that calculation updates. Are you perhaps editing your sandbox frequently, causing an update? I do not use automatic purging in any of my user scripts. If me and DR end up stumped, a good place to crowdsource technical questions and answers is WP:VPT. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:38, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I rarely use my sandbox, but the counter there ticks along on its own each day at GMT 00:00:01, or seems to. Simply by looking at my sandbox page, would the counter be triggered to update? If so, why doesn't looking at my user page autotrigger the counter?

I know and have high regard for VPT, but feel this counter issue is not a community-value topic to bring there. Just an itch I can't scratch...

Have been reviewing and enjoying CiteHighlighter.js in my article editing, with thanks. Zefr (talk) 23:06, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps because there are other counters on my sandbox page, the user counter gets triggered by the page refresh to keep the date and article count constant. For example, I've kept this one as info.

Today is Monday, July 7, 2025. Currently, there are 7,019,252 articles on the English Wikipedia.

I'll add it to my user page as a test, and see what happens tomorrow. Zefr (talk) 01:15, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

AfC reviews

Tracked in github.com
Issue #25
Resolved

Hi Novem Linguae. Hope you're doing well. I just noticed that [8] is not updating recent reviewed draft. Can you please address the issue? Thank You! Fade258 (talk) 14:47, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

@Fade258. Fixed. Do a Ctrl-F5 to hard reload the page, which will update the JavaScript files and fix the bug. Thanks for reporting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:29, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae, Still not working. Can you look again? Fade258 (talk) 00:21, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

@Fade258. When I visit https://apersonbot.toolforge.org/afchistory/?user=Fade258, I see some entries from July 4, which should indicate the bug is fixed, since the bug involved the last couple days of entries not being detected. Can you please go into more detail about what's broken? –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:30, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae. Since, I am a mobile user, I even didn't see any entries from June 30. How it happens? Fade258 (talk) 06:04, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

Did you try closing and reopening the tab? Did you try closing and reopening the browser app? (The idea being to clear your caches so that the .js file with the new code loads instead of grabbing an old cached version of the .js file.)

Can you please paste the URL you are visiting, and provide a screenshot? –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:46, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae, Now it is working after clearing my browser cache. Thank You for your help. Fade258 (talk) 07:20, 4 July 2025 (UTC)