User talk:TheSandDoctor

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Question from Dorcas owendo on Talk:Non-governmental organization (08:24, 3 November 2025)

How can I apply for an job --Dorcas owendo (talk) 08:24, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

@Dorcas owendo: Wikipedia is not a job board. I would suggest google, LinkedIn that sort of thing. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:41, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from ProfessorJAOS (10:02, 3 November 2025)

Hello! I see that you have been assigned as my mentor! Could you please tell me how I can create a table? --Prof. J 10:02, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

@ProfessorJAOS: My apologies for the delay. Please see Help:Table. They are much easier to create in the Visual Editor than page source, in my opinion anyway. I hope that helps. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:42, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Prof. J 08:38, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Justinchamplain (15:54, 3 November 2025)

Hi, I just attempted to publish an article on Wikipedia about Champlain Financial Planning. This draft provides a neutral, encyclopedic overview of Champlain Financial Planning, an independent financial advisory firm founded in 2025 by Justin Champlain, CFP®, EA, in Merrimac, Massachusetts. It includes factual, non-promotional content with citations to the firm’s official website, its SEC-registered investment adviser (Alphastar Capital Management), and a Kiplinger article authored by the founder. Additional third-party coverage will be added as it becomes available. I'm not sure what the latest status is of my post or if more action is needed from me at this time. --Justinchamplain (talk) 15:54, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

@Justinchamplain: It was deleted as unambiguous advertising by @DragonflySixtyseven:. It contained no sources. Articles about corporations on Wikipedia must satisfy WP:NCORP and WP:CORPDEPTH. They need to be discussed--at some length--in multiple reliable sources that are independent of the subject and of each other, ideally over a sustained period of time. Articles/posts from primary sources do not count towards demonstrating notability in the slightest. I would recommend reviewing this guide to creating your first article as well as WP:PAID and WP:COI. If you are indeed Justin of Champlain Financial Planning, you most likely need to comply with WP:COIPAYDISCLOSE as well. If, after reviewing those, you have any questions, please let me know and I'll do what I can to explain any hangups. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:47, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-45

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

Updates for editors

• Administrators will now find that Special:MergeHistory is now significantly more flexible about what it can merge. It can now merge sections taken from the middle of the history of the source (rather than only the start) and insert revisions anywhere in the history of the destination page (rather than only the start). [1]
• For users with "Automatically subscribe to topics" enabled in their preferences, starting a new topic or adding a reply to an existing topic will now subscribe them to replies to that topic. Previously, this would only happen if the DiscussionTools "Add topic" or "Reply" widgets were used. When DiscussionTools was originally launched existing accounts were not opted in to automatic topic subscriptions, so this change should primarily affect newer accounts and users who have deliberately changed their preferences since that time. [2]
• Scribunto modules can now be used to generate SVG images. This can be used to build charts, graphics and other visualizations dynamically through Lua, reducing the need to compose them externally and upload them as files. [3]
• Wikimedia sites now provide all anonymous users with the option to enable a dark mode color scheme, featuring light-colored text on a dark background. This enhancement aims to deliver a more enjoyable reading experience, especially in dimly lit environments. [4]
• Users with large watchlists have long faced timeouts when editing Special:EditWatchlist. The page now loads entries in smaller sections instead of all at once due to a paging update, allowing everyone to edit their watchlists smoothly. As part of the database update, sorting by expiry has been removed because it was over 100× slower than sorting by title. A community wish has been created to explore alternative ways to restore sort-by-expiry. If this feature is important to you, please support the wish! [5]
• View all 31 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the fixing of the persisting highlighting when using VisualEditor find and replace during a query. [6]

Updates for technical contributors

• Since 2019 the Wikimedia URL Shortener at https://w.wiki is available for all Wikimedia wikis to create short links to articles, permalinks, diffs, etc. It is available in the sidebar as "Get shortened URL". There are 30 wikis that also install an older "ShortUrl" extension. The old extension will soon be removed. This means /s/ URLs will not be advertised under article titles via HTML class="title-shortlink". The /s/ URLs will keep working. [7]
• On Thursday, October 30, the MediaWiki Interfaces and SRE Service Operations teams began rerouting Action API traffic through a common API gateway. Individual wikis will be updated based on the standard release groups, with total traffic increased over time. This change is expected to be non-breaking and non-disruptive. If any issues are observed, please file a Phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
• MediaWiki Train deployments will pause for the final two weeks of 2025: 22 December and 29 December. Backport windows will also pause between Monday, 22 December 2025 and Thursday, 2 January 2026. A backport window is a scheduled time to add things like bug fixes and configuration changes. There are seven deployment trains remaining for 2025. [8]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• In 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation reported that AI systems and search engines increasingly use Wikipedia content without driving users to the site, contributing to an 8% drop in human pageviews compared to 2024. After detecting bots disguised as humans, Wikimedia updated its traffic data to reflect this shift. Read more about current user trends on Wikipedia in a Diff blog post.

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Ballerexpert2021 (03:53, 4 November 2025)

I edit and create articles about professional footballers around the world, how to i get the articles in particular i create to appear in my search engine. --Ballerexpert2021 (talk) 03:53, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@Ballerexpert2021: Hello there! I see that you created the article for James Bulkeley (footballer). At this stage, it is left to be reviewed by new page patrollers. There is generally quite the backlog but they will get around to it. I am not the most familiar with football but would suggest perhaps asking at WT:WikiProject Football. If I have time/remember, I will take a look at this later and see what I think after looking in more depth at the sources. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 06:58, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from KKattich (02:16, 7 November 2025)

I am looking for how to have a Wikipedia page of myself as a newly published author. Thank you. --KKattich (talk) 02:16, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

@KKattich: Please see the (short) essay An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing. If you wish to proceed further, we would need coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources independent of you/each other that cover you/your book in depth and non-trivially such as to satisfy either the general guideline or the WP:NAUTHOR notability guideline or, for your book, WP:NBOOK. It is usually a tough thing to demonstrate. I would suggest getting absolutely as much media attention as possible, ideally further afield than your local paper etc. as well. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 07:01, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Nomination for discussion of Template:Uw-softerblock/preload

Template:Uw-softerblock/preload has been nominated for discussion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 11:33, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-46

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

Updates for editors

Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.

• Starting November 12, users will see a change in the appearance of talk pages on some Wikipedias. Almost all wikis have received this design change; English Wikipedia will get these changes later. You can read more on Diff. Users can opt out of these changes in their user preferences in "Show discussion activity". [9]
• MediaWiki can now display a page indicator automatically while a page is protected. This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled by community request. [10]
• Using the "Show preview" or "Show changes" buttons in the wikitext editor will now carry over certain URL parameters like 'useskin', 'uselang' and 'section'. This update also fixes an issue where, if the browser crashed while previewing an edit to a single section, saving this edit could overwrite the entire page with just that section’s content. [11][12][13]
• Wikivoyage wikis can use colored map markers in the article text. The text of these markers will now be shown in contrasting black or white color, instead of always being white. Local workarounds for the problem can be removed. [14]
• The Activity tab in the Wikipedia Android app is now available for all users. The new tab offers personalized insights into reading, editing, and donation activity, while simplifying navigation and making app use more engaging. [15]
• The Reader Growth team is launching an experiment called "Image browsing" to test how to make it easier for readers to browse and discover images on Wikipedia articles. This experiment, a mobile-only A/B test, will go live on English Wikipedia in the week of November 17 and will run for four weeks, affecting 0.05% of users on English wiki. The test launched on November 3 on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese wikis, affecting up to 10% of users on those wikis. [16]
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example the inability to lock accounts on mobile sites has been fixed. [17]

Updates for technical contributors

• Nominations are open on Wikitech for new Toolforge standards committee members. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open through 2025-11-28.
• The JWT issuer field in OAuth 2 access tokens for SUL wikis has been changed to https://meta.wikimedia.org. Old access tokens will still work. [18]
• The JWT subject field in OAuth 2 access tokens will soon change from <user id> to mw:<identity type>:<user id>, where <identity type> is typically CentralAuth: (for SUL wikis) or local:<wiki id> (for other wikis). This is to avoid conflicts between different user ID types, and to make OAuth 2 access tokens and the sessionJwt cookie more similar. Old access tokens will still work. [19]
• MediaWiki's block messages (blockedtext, blockedtext-partial, autoblockedtext, systemblockedtext, blockedtext-tempuser, autoblockedtext-tempuser) now support additional parameters indicating whether the user is blocked from editing their own user talk page $9 or emailing other users $10. [20]
• A REL1_45 branch for MediaWiki core and each of the extensions and skins in Wikimedia git has been created. This is the first step in the release process for MediaWiki 1.45.0, scheduled for late November 2025. If you are working on a critical bug fix or working on a new feature, you may need to take note of this change. [21]
• The process for generating CirrusSearch dumps has been updated due to slowing performance. If you encounter any issues migrating to the replacement dumps, please contact the Search Platform Team for support. [22][23]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:36, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Atheistnfoxhole (06:44, 11 November 2025)

Can I create an entry about myself or someone I know? --Atheistnfoxhole (talk) 06:44, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

@Atheistnfoxhole: You can provided you comply with WP:COI (or WP:PAID as relevant) and that person meets either WP:GNG or WP:NPERSON notability guidelines. The key here for demonstrating that the guidelines are met is, essentially, media coverage. Coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject and each other and cover the subject at some length, ideally over a period of time. A pseudo-standard is WP:3SOURCES. While not a hard and fast rule, it is a rule that there needs to be "multiple" sources. To quote 3SOURCES, "challenges to notability are more often successfully rebuffed when there are three good in-depth references in reliable, secondary sources that are independent of each other and of the subject". I would also recommend this guide to creating your first article, regardless of the topic. I hope that helps. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 07:11, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Anjukkanju777 (17:24, 11 November 2025)

Hi my first edit was declined saying the person has no egnition. i am a mass comunication researcher from India. and the persons profile i created having a distiction as he is the only one researcher from india who is included in the stanford list of top2% scientists. also he has many artciles and his contrubtions alos listed under the theory page of wiki " uses and gratifcation theory" .Please see and guide me: https://newsable.asianetnews.com/india/dr-devadas-menon-named-worlds-top-2-percent-scientists-stanford-university-articleshow-rw6aeh9 https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/techandscience/karnataka-scholar-dr-devadas-menon-named-among-world-s-top-2-scientists-by-stanford-university/ar-AA1PMiM8 https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ez64SpYAAAAJ&hl=en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_and_gratifications_theory --Anjukkanju777 (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

@Anjukkanju777: I can't find record anywhere of you editing Uses and gratifications theory or its talk page, at least with the account "Anjukkanju777". Did you edit it previously with another account? Which edit of yours was "rejected" that you are referring to? Once I have that hopefully I can take a look and help shed some light on it. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 07:16, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Hi. I have not edited Uses and gratifications theory. I am just talking about Dr Devadas Menon, Who is a communication Scholar and Social Scientist from India. Draft:Devadas Menon . If you see the Uses and gratifications theory references, most of the theories tenets are from this researcher from India. And he has got recognition as the sole communication scholar from India included in the Stanford top2% Scientist, and his affiliation with ISRO, and media coverages in news paper like The Indian Express, https://newsable.asianetnews.com/india/dr-devadas-menon-named-worlds-top-2-percent-scientists-stanford-university-articleshow-rw6aeh9. But profile creation is declined. where as I an see another scholar like TT Sreekumar with less references has wikipedia pages! I dont know the subject in peron. But as mass communication researcher from India, I understand very well that he is a prominent theorist from India in Uses and Gratifications. Similar Scholars on same thoery has a Wiiki Profile: Elihu Katz Jay Blumler Paul Lazarsfeld. Anjukkanju777 (talk) 05:43, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

you can see the wiki profile: T. T. Sreekumar. I couldn't find any reliable exclusive article coverage on him. where as the profile i created has 3 news news coverages exclusively on the subject. Anjukkanju777 (talk) 11:09, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

@Anjukkanju777: I see that you've submitted it for review. I don't know a ton about that area and prefer to review things where I have a bit more of a nuanced understanding. Someone will get to it.

Speaking more broadly, pointing to other articles that exist that you believe don't meet notability criteria isn't justification for creating more low quality sourced entries. That argument will not get you far on Wikipedia and is best avoided (see WP:OTHERSTUFF). If you see an article with poor sourcing or typos etc., you can help fix it. If you believe that an article doesn't meet the relevant notability guidelines, then you can nominate it for deletion and, if other editors agree with you following their own reviews on the merits, then an administrator may enact consensus to delete a given article. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 07:47, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you.! Can you just tell me . How this article cleared afc review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._T._Sreekumar as I can see it is sourced mainly from own CV and no other reference that make notability. I'm still confused as what wikipedia follow for notability. As one of my page Sunil Ambekar recommended for deletion where tons of sources are available about the subject online from established sources. Anjukkanju777 (talk) 07:54, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

@Anjukkanju777: It never went through AfC review (you can tell since there is no AfC banner on its talk page) so I can't speak to that. Sometimes things slip through, particularly older articles (that one dates from 2018; some on here date to the early 2000s). But this is still very much WP:OTHERSTUFF territory. By pointing to others like that of lower quality you aren't making a case you are trying to, though I am not assessing that draft you submitted. There are far more articles (over 7 million) than active volunteers and undoubtedly quite a few who haven't seen human eyes in years or who no longer meet current notability standards. You are more than welcome to nominate Sreekumar at AfD. If you have Twinkle it's under the "TW" dropdown as "XFD". Otherwise, directions are here, though please read the "BEFORE" blurb and conduct the checks as sometimes sources exist, just aren't currently in the article and can be added. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 08:06, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you.! But as you said I am not citing the article of Sreekumar to justify what I have created. As you understand I am not getting any monetary or any other benefits to create pages and it's a voluntary act. I'm new to Wikipedia and try to understand what exactly notabilty as per wiki and other aspects. I don't know personally any of the subjects whose pages I created and I'm not going to getting anything for doing so. My intention is simple: I want to learn better about wiki rule so that I can create better articles. So bottom line is tht I don't want you to recommend or accept any pages created by me, let it pass though Afc criteria.

I just need your support in making good quality pages for the larger good of community. Anjukkanju777 (talk) 08:15, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Justdoit1990 (12:13, 13 November 2025)

Hello! I found an article that I feel it is fitting for my class assignment and would like to see if I could run my ideas with a mentor for the possible edits for it? --Justdoit1990 (talk) 12:13, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

@Justdoit1990: My apologies for the delayed response. Certainly, feel free to! Always happy to help where I can. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 07:13, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I would like to work on the AI flag that was added to the article. If I want to contribute to take that flagging part off or anything I can add to make the article better, to contrast the AI info. Additionally, I see that the attempt to add the logo of the institution was deleted. What is the best way to add a logo that can be accepted? ~2025-34374-17 (talk) 21:07, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

the response above is mine - I thought I was signed in when I posted it. I'll copy it here again to ensure you are able to read it. My apologies!

I would like to work on the AI flag that was added to the article. If I want to contribute to take that flagging part off or anything I can add to make the article better, to contrast the AI info. Additionally, I see that the attempt to add the logo of the institution was deleted. What is the best way to add a logo that can be accepted? Justdoit1990 (talk) 21:09, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

@Justdoit1990: What article are you referring to? Once I have that info I can dig into this a little further. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 07:49, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-47

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

Updates for editors

• The Reader Experience team is experimenting with reading lists on mobile web, allowing logged-in readers with no edits to save private lists of articles for later. The experiment is running on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias since the week of 10 November, and will begin on English Wikipedia the week of 17 November.
• Users who can’t receive their email verification code during login can now get help by submitting a form on a new special page. This update is part of the Account Security initiative. If your account has an email address, please make sure you still have access to it. When logging in from a new device or location without 2FA, you may be asked to enter a 6-digit code sent by email to finish logging in. Learn more.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikisource in Minangkabau (s:min:) [24]
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• As part of the Parser Unification project, the Content Transform Team rolled out Parsoid as the default parser to many low-traffic Wikipedias and is preparing the next step to high traffic ones. This message is an invitation for you to opt-in to Parsoid, as described in the Extension:ParserMigration documentation, and identify any issues you might encounter with your own workflow using bots, gadgets, or user scripts. Please, let us know through the "Report Visual Bug" link in the Tools sidebar or create a phab ticket and tag the Content Transform Team in Phabricator.
• Unsupported Tools: Several issues with Video2Commons have been fixed, including filename-related upload failures, black-video imports, and retry handling. AV1 support has also been added. Ongoing work focuses on backend stability, ffmpeg errors, subtitle imports, metadata handling, and playlist uploads. To track specific tasks, check the Phabricator board.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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• Save the date for the next Wikimedia Hackathon happening in Milan, Italy from May 1–3, 2026. Registration will open in January 2026. Scholarship applications are currently open, and will close on November 28, 2025. If you have any questions, please email hackathon@wikimedia.org.

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MediaWiki message delivery 17:24, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

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Question from ElviraKamgut1 (14:55, 19 November 2025)

Hi, thanks for being my mentor

I have a question about citing publications of songs. I'm pretty sure it falls under 'don't cite that the sky is blue', the song was released by this artist on this album in this year. On the other hand, a citation does seem like a good idea in general.

My question would then be: do album releases etc. need a citation and if so, what is a reliable source? --ElviraKamgut1 (talk) 14:55, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@ElviraKamgut1: My apologies for the delayed response. That is a very good question! I am glad that you asked that. Could you point me to the article in question? Generally for anything to do with a song or album we would want a source as we need to be really careful that we aren't conducting original research (e.g., our own observations). News articles would be ideal for it if they exist, or other literature (e.g. books). For instance, there is a fairly authoritative book with a lot of details on every song that the Rolling Stones had ever released up until the point of that book's publication (~2013). It breaks down releases, the stories behind the tracks etc. Something like that is a perfect source, though we aren't always so lucky for all topics/acts. Albums can also be cited about themselves as primary sources, for things such as track listings or credits (though secondary sources are almost always preferred where sensible). TheSandDoctor ^Talk 07:57, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-48

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

Updates for editors

• Last week, the Wikimedia Search Team recreated the "DWIM" (Do What I Mean) gadget functionality server-side, for Russian and Hebrew Wikipedias. This feature adds cross-keyboard suggestions to the standard search-box suggestions. For example, searching for cxfcnmt on Russian Wikipedia will now add suggestions for счастье ("happiness") that the user probably intended. They plan to enable this feature for other Russian and Hebrew wikis this week. [25]
• Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will have syntax highlighting available in DiscussionTools. This requires that the "Enable editing tools in source mode" preference be set. [26]
• Campaign events extension – the set of tools for coordinating events and other on-wiki collaborations has now been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. A new feature known as Collaborative contribution to help organizers and participants see the impact of activities has also been added. Join the upcoming learning session to see the new feature in action and share your feedback.
• View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug which stopped CodeReviewBot from working, has now been fixed. [27]

Updates for technical contributors

• Users of Wikimedia API can join a usability study to help validate the new design of Wikimedia REST API sandboxes. Interested participants should fill the recruitment survey. [28]
• The MediaWiki Interfaces team is deprecating XSLT stylesheets within the Action API. Support for format=xml&xlst={stylesheet} will be removed from Wikimedia projects by the end of November, 2025. In addition, it will soon be disabled by default in MediaWiki release versions: v1.43 (LTS), v1.44, and v1.45. Support for XSLT stylesheets will be fully removed from MediaWiki v1.46 (expected to release between April and May 2026). [29]
• The WDQS legacy endpoint (query-legacy-full.wikidata.org) will be decommissioned at the end of December 2025, and finally closed down on 7th January 2026. After this date, users should expect requests to query.wikidata.org that require the full graph to fail or return invalid results if they are not rewritten to use SPARQL federation. The team encourages users to ensure that tools and workflows use the supported WDQS endpoints (https://query.wikidata.org/ - Main graph or https://query-scholarly.wikidata.org/ - Scholarly graph). For support with migrating use cases, please review the Data Access and Request a Query pages for details and assistance on alternative access methods.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:54, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Hussnain bajwa (12:48, 28 November 2025)

Hi . Im doctor Hussnain bajwa from Pakistan. Im new to wikipedia. I want to add my village ratta bajwa , its history so that people know about it . Can you help me to add ratta bajwa on wiki pedia?? --Hussnain bajwa (talk) 12:48, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Hussnain bajwa on User:Hussnain bajwa (13:29, 28 November 2025)

Hi --Hussnain bajwa (talk) 13:29, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Aldeas — A New Story

Hello, TheSandDoctor. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or draft page you started, "Aldeas — A New Story".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material, the draft has been deleted. When you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:56, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Question from Sadasxdn (09:22, 30 November 2025)

Hello. I am a Wikipedia editor from India. How do I help. I have some minor edits --Sadasxdn (talk) 09:22, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Sadasxdn: Doing newcomer updates like you have been is definitely a good start and also how I got started. There are undoubtedly a lot of articles that could use a good proofread. You can also look for articles tagged with the {{Copyedit needed}} template, which are located here. That said, you could even hit the "random article" button a few times and see if articles that come up have any typos etc. that you can fix. Just please be mindful that the English Wikipedia hosts articles in different varieties of English that might have slightly different spellings (see MOS:ENGVAR); they aren't typos and it is disruptive to change them from, for example, British to American. Accidents may happen when introducing new content (I've certainly done that!) but just be mindful. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 18:29, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Question re: 404 Page Not Found error message

Yesterday I added a link to 'Nina Boyle' page - Reference 18. I have the page open before me, so I know it exists but when I click the link in Wikipedia I get '404 Page Not Found' error message. When I click the link in this message the page opens. Any suggestions?

https://map.mappingwomenssuffrage.org.uk/items/show/246

Doris Doom (talk) 12:36, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Doris Doom: There was an extra period at the end of that URL on the page. I've removed it. I will just add though that that reference already existed on the page in a more complete form, so I deduplicated it on both occasions. Please note how filled out reference 6 is. It is always worth double checking if the exact same reference you want to use is already on the page and can be re-used rather than re-added in its entirety. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 18:03, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Many thanks. I have only been doing this for a short time. So many things to take on board. I had a glance and didn't notice the reference was already there. I'll try to be more careful in future.

Thanks again.

~2025-37466-31 (talk) 18:24, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Doris Doom: You're welcome! You didn't do anything wrong and there are always a lot to learn. Wikipedia certainly does have its learning curve. Just something to be mindful of. Double checking will become second nature pretty quick. If you run into any other strangeness or have any questions, please feel free to reach out. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 18:31, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Nominations are now open for military historian of the year and newcomer of the year awards for 2025!

Nominations now open for the WikiProject Military History newcomer of the year and military historian of the year awards for 2025! The top editors will be awarded the coveted Gold Wiki. Nominations are open here and here respectively. The nomination period closes at 23:59 on 30 November 2025 when voting begins. On behalf of the coordinators, wishing you the very best for the festive season and the new year. MediaWiki message delivery via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:43, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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(replacing Yapperbot) SodiumBot (botop|talk) 20:39, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-49

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

Updates for editors

• The Wikipedia Year in Review 2025 will be available on December 2 for users of iOS and Android Wikipedia apps, featuring new personalized insights, updated reading highlights, and refreshed designs. Learn more on the review's project page.
• The Growth team is working on improving the text and presentation of the Verification Email sent to new users to make them more welcoming, useful and informative. Some new text have been drafted for A/B testing and you can help by translating them. See Phabricator.
• Add a link will now be deployed at Japanese, Urdu and Chinese Wikipedias on December 2. Add a link is based on a prediction model that suggests links to be added to articles. While this feature has already been available on most Wikipedias, the prediction model could not support certain languages. A new model has now been developed to handle these languages, and it will be gradually rolled out to other Wikipedias over time. If you would like to know more, please contact Trizek (WMF).
• View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where search boxes on some Commons pages showed no results due to switch from SpecialSearch to MediaSearch, has now been fixed. [30]
• Two new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Toki Pona (w:tok:) [31]
  • a Wikiquote in Nigerian Pidgin (q:pcm:) [32]

Updates for technical contributors

• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The Wikimedia Foundation is in the early stages of exploring approaches to Article guidance. The initiative aims to identify interventions that could help new editors easily understand and apply existing Wikipedia practices and policies when creating an article. The project is in the exploration and early experimental design phase. All community members are encouraged to learn more about the project, and share their thoughts on the talk page.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:56, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Nominations are now open for military historian of the year and newcomer of the year awards for 2025!

Correction: nominations are open until 23:59 (UTC) on 14 December 2025. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:21, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Question from Tynashki (16:02, 5 December 2025)

How can I join the club --Tynashki (talk) 16:02, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

@Tynashki: What club are you referring to? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 17:05, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Question from CustomCreatorOVi (15:26, 7 December 2025)

How Do I Create A Custom Page For Free? --CustomCreatorOVi (talk) 15:27, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) TheSandDoctor hasn't edited for a few days. What do you mean by a custom page? If you're talking about an article, WP:FIRST is a useful start. Girth Summit _(blether) 15:49, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2025

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

Administrator changes

• Chaotic Enby
• Rjjiii

Valereee

• Fathoms Below
• Tamzin

CheckUser changes

Spicy

Technical news

• Starting on November 4, the IP addresses of logged-out editors are no longer being publicly displayed. Instead, they will have a temporary account associated with their edits.
• Administrators will now find that Special:MergeHistory is now significantly more flexible about what it can merge. It can now merge sections taken from the middle of the history of the source (rather than only the start) and insert revisions anywhere in the history of the destination page (rather than only the start). T382958

Miscellaneous

• The December 2025 administrator elections are scheduled from Nov 25 – Dec 15.
• An Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in December 2025, with over 1,000 drafts awaiting review from the past two months. In addition to AfC participants, all administrators and new page patrollers can help review using the Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!

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• Discuss this newsletter
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Sent byMediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-50

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

Weekly highlight

• Anybody who wishes to secure their user account can now use two-factor authentication (2FA). This is available to all registered users of all Wikimedia projects. This is part of the Account Security initiative. Later, 2FA will be required for all users who can take security- or privacy-sensitive actions.

Updates for editors

• Following last week's deployments, the Add a link feature, which allows editors to add suggested links during editing, will be available to an additional 33 Wikipedias starting on 9 December. This expansion is possible thanks to the new prediction model that now supports all languages, including those that were previously not covered. While the feature has been available on most Wikipedias for some time, this rollout brings us closer to using the improved model everywhere. If you have any questions or would like more details please contact Trizek (WMF).
• Last week, the Search Platform team added transliterated as-you-type search suggestions to Georgian wikis. If there are only a few regular search suggestions, then queries in Latin or Cyrillic script are now rewritten into Georgian script to look for more matches. For example, searching for either bedniereba or бедниереба will now suggest the existing article about ბედნიერება ("happiness"). You can recommend other languages where transliterated suggestions would be useful on Phabricator for future development.
• Later this week, a controlled experiment will begin for editors on the 100 largest Wikipedias who are editing a section in the mobile web visual editor. 50% of these editors will notice a new "Edit full page" button that will enable them to expand their editing session to the whole page. This feature is intended to make it easier for people on mobile web to edit any article section, regardless of which section-edit icon they tapped to begin. The experiment will last ~4 weeks. You can find more details about the project.
• Later this week, the Reader Growth team will launch a mobile web experiment to expand all article sections by default (currently they are collapsed by default) and pin the section header the user is currently reading to the top of the page. The experiment will affect 10% of users on Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [33]
• The Wikipedia Year in Review 2025, a feature in the Wikipedia mobile apps (iOS and Android) that provides users with a personalised summary of their engagement with Wikipedia over the year, is now available on the iOS and Android apps. This edition includes expanded personalised insights, improved reading highlights, new donor messaging, and updated designs. Open the app to view your Year in Review and explore your reading journey from 2025.
• A recent software bug caused edits made with VisualEditor to make unintended changes to wikitext, including removing whitespace and replacing spaces with underscores in wikilinks inside citations. This was partially fixed last week, and further fixes are in progress. Editors who used VisualEditor between November 28 and December 2 should review their edits for unexpected modifications. [34]
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the incorrect handling of URLs copied from the address bar of Microsoft Edge users, has been resolved. [35]

Updates for technical contributors

• Starting this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will have CodeMirror as the editor for Lua, JavaScript, CSS, JSON and Vue content models, instead of CodeEditor. With this, the linters will be upgraded. This is part of a larger effort to eventually replace CodeEditor and provide a consistent code editing experience. [36]
• Developers are encouraged to take the 2025 Developer Satisfaction Survey, which remains open until 5 January 2026. If you build software for the Wikimedia ecosystem and would like to share your experiences or feedback, your participation is greatly appreciated. [37]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:43, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Question from Curejm (02:34, 9 December 2025)

can you please help me create a wiki page? --Curejm (talk) 02:34, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

@Curejm: Are you referring to Draft:Cure JM Foundation? If so, would recommend following the advice left by QEnigma. Please also identify a new username that you would like to use for your account. Based on that draft, your current username is not permissible under our username policy. I can help you fix that, though! I just need you to reply here with your choice of a new username (one with no results if you search here) and I can fix that for you. The username needs to represent you as an individual person (though pseudonyms are allowed/encouraged); it can't be a username that implies shared use. For example, "Mark at Curejm" would be an example of an acceptable username, as would FacebookFanatic87, etc.

Happy to answer any questions you might have! TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:55, 9 December 2025 (UTC)