User talk:Deor
|
Administrators' newsletter – July 2025
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2025).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following a talk page discussion, speedy deletion criterion G13 has been amended to remove "Userspace with no content except the article wizard placeholder text."
- WP:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts was upgraded to a guideline following a RfC discussion.
Miscellaneous
- The 2025 Developing Countries WikiContest will run from 1 July to 30 September. Sign up now!
- Administrator elections will take place this month. Administrator elections are an alternative to RFA that is a gentler process for candidates due to secret voting and multiple people running together. The call for candidates is July 9–15, the discussion phase is July 18–22, and the voting phase is July 23–29. Get ready to submit your candidacy, or (with their consent) to nominate a talented candidate!
Precious anniversary
[edit] | |
| Six years! |
|---|
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:03, 8 July 2025 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2025
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2025).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, a new speedy deletion criterion, G15, has been enacted. It applies to pages generated by a large language model (LLM) without human review.
- Following a request for comment, there is a new policy outlining the granting of permissions to view the IP addresses of temporary accounts. Temporary account deployment on the English Wikipedia is currently scheduled for September 2025, and editors can request access to the permission ahead of time. Admins are encouraged to keep an eye on the request page; there will likely be a flood of editors requesting the permission when they realize they can no longer see IP addresses.
Technical news
- Administrators can now restrict the "Add a Link" feature to newcomers. The "Add a Link" Structured Task helps new account holders get started with editing. Administrators can configure this setting in the Community Configuration page.
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Indian military history has been closed.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
All pages related to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups.
- The contentious topic designations for Sri Lanka (SL) and India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (IPA) are folded into this new contentious topic.
- The community-authorized general sanctions regarding South Asian social groups (GS/CASTE) are rescinded and folded into this new contentious topic.
- South Asia (WP:CT/SA) is designated a contentious topic. The topic area is specifically defined as
- The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case closed on 31 July.
- The arbitration case Transgender healthcare and people has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case will close on 11 August.
Miscellaneous
- Wikimania 2025 is happening in Nairobi, Kenya, and online from August 6 to August 9. This year marks 20 years of Wikimania. Interested users can join the online event. Registration for the virtual event is free and will remain open throughout Wikimania. You can register here now.
America Windows
[edit]Hi Deor, I'm confused about this revert where you removed coords and readded {{coord missing}}. Did you mean that the article shouldn't have coords at all (as implied by your edit summary), or that the coords I added were incorrect? Thanks, Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:42, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Pi.1415926535: I'm sorry, I should have removed the {{coord missing}} template, which I have done now. The article shouldn't have coordinates, since they're not used in articles for artworks inside museums ("works of art [other than permanent outdoor statues, installations or murals]"). The Anomebot2 frequently adds {{coord missing}} to such articles because it goes by the categories in the articles—I'm not sure whether it was Category:Landmarks in Chicago or Category:Public art in Chicago that triggered it in this case—and I routinely remove the template, but you had gotten in ahead of me with America Windows. Deor (talk) 22:08, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- Gotcha, thanks for that. I hadn't realized that even permanently installed indoor works shouldn't have coords. Best, Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:12, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
Correction for 3-D SPACE
[edit]Regarding the recent redirect to a lower case "Space" for 3-D SPACE attributed to your approval: The museum name is an acronym for 'stereoscopic photography, art, cinema, and education' and the correct punctuation is 3-D SPACE (all caps). All other information within the page is correct. The museum website lists this acronym at the top of the website 3-D SPACE. la3dspace.wixsite.com
Whatever citation attributing a lower case "Space" is a source that is incorrect. Boobopper (talk) 15:00, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Boobopper: I was going by the sources cited in the article (even the everymuseum.la one, which uses "3-D SPACE" in the headline, uses "3-D Space" in the descriptive text), and if they're all "a source that is incorrect", then the article has no reliable sources at all. I see that the museum's own Web site uses all caps, but such is common for organizations talking about themselves; and I see no explict statement that "space" is an acronym—though I did note the mention of the "Center for Stereoscopic Photography, Art, Cinema, and Education" on the "About" page.
If you think the article's title should be in all caps, you can follow the instructions at WP:RSPM, to post on the article's talk page a request that it be moved back to the all-caps version; and after other editors comment on the request, someone else will judge what the title should be. Deor (talk) 17:15, 14 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you, Deor. I appreciate the follow through and acknowledge that several sources have errors. To prevent further mistakes, The LA Times has been alerted about the error and acknowledged a request to correct the published online material, understanding that 3-D SPACE is correct, similar to SAG-AFTRA or TED Talk. I'll follow the instructions at WP:RSPM per your suggestion as well. Boobopper (talk) 02:48, 26 August 2025 (UTC)
Draft Doubts
[edit]Hey @Deor, I hope everything’s alright. I came here to seek your guidance on finding article topics. I found a topic on the Alaska Triangle, and during my research, I gathered quite a few sources, maybe even more than enough, so I created a draft here: Draft:Alaska Triangle. However, I later discovered that an article with a similar title had been deleted three times, which makes me unsure how to proceed. I have collected multiple sources that I consider reliable and in-depth, but I wanted to get your advice before moving forward. Jesus isGreat7 ☾⋆ | Ping Me 07:49, 15 August 2025 (UTC)
- @JesusisGreat7: Well, nothing is stopping you from submitting the draft via Wikipedia:Articles for creation and seeing whether or not it's accepted. However, the article that was deleted just last October following Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alaska Triangle (2nd nomination) was on the same topic (though somewhat shorter) and contained basically the same information, and no one in that AfD recommended keeping it, so I'd say that it's probably unwise to move it to article space. Take a look at the comments in that AfD; I'd agree that most of the sources in your draft do seem rather clickbaity rather than reliable.
On a different topic, the ☾⋆ and "Ping Me" in your signature are very hard for me to see; you may want to change the change the colors to something that stands out more, for accessibility reasons. Deor (talk) 23:50, 15 August 2025 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2025
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2025).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC is open on whether use of emojis with no encyclopedic value in mainspace and draftspace (e.g., at the start of paragraphs or in place of bullet points) should be added as a criterion under G15.
Technical news
- Administrators can now access the Special:BlockedExternalDomains page from the Special:CommunityConfiguration list page. This makes it easier to find. T393240
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Article titles and capitalisation 2 has been closed.
- An RfC is in progress to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
Geotagging bot
[edit]Hi Deor, as you are probably the single most prolific geocoder here, I wonder if you have any feedback you could give me about my geotagging bot. In particular, are there any things it is doing, or not doing, that could be improved? Best regards, — The Anome (talk) 13:34, 30 September 2025 (UTC)
- @The Anome: I can't offhand think of any improvements needed to The Anomebot2. It still slaps
{{Coord missing}}on a few articles that don't need coordinates, but that seems to be principally because the article creators have added vague or misleading categories; and editors have been doing a pretty good job of untagging these. If I think of anything else, I'll drop a post on your talk page.One unrelated matter: I wish someone would develop a bot that flags overprecise coordinates (more than five decimal places in decimal coordinates, say, or more than tenths of a second in d/m/s). There's a lot of these, many picked up from Wikidata, and it would be useful to identify articles containing them. I'm somewhat irked by coordinates given to ten decimal places for towns and other rather large locations. Deor (talk) 14:51, 30 September 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks! Short of using ML to make the decision, I don't think I can really do better at getting rid of false positives, although I still deal with bug reports on a case-by-case basis when I can find heuristics to help clean things up. The overprecise coordinates are a real pain. I think some of them are caused by round-tripping DMS, rounding, and back to decimal or vice versa - Wikidata really ought be keeping better track of whether decimal or DMS is being used for entry. "Geocoding the doorknob" really annoys me too. I'll see if I can add it to the bot's list of activities - I think there's now a table for coordniates in dumps, so it should be relatively easy to data-mine for candidate articles for processing. — The Anome (talk) 15:35, 30 September 2025 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – October 2025
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2025).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Arbitration
- After a motion, arbitration enforcement page protections no longer need to be logged in the AELOG. A bot now automatically posts protections at WP:AELOG/P. To facilitate this bot, protection summaries must include a link to the relevant CT page (e.g.
[[WP:CT/BLP]]), and you will receive talk page reminders if you forget to specify the contentious topic but otherwise indicate it is an AE action.
Decimal vs d/m/s coords
[edit]In peace, re this edit: is there a guideline or policy that specifies d/m/s as the preferred format for co-ordinates or is it just your personal preference? Personally, I find decimal simpler and easier to deal with, but I wouldn't change d/m/s to decimal because of my personal preferences. Dave.Dunford (talk) 10:03, 10 October 2025 (UTC)
- @Dave.Dunford: Well, WP:GEO#Precision guidelines says, "Cities must be specified with a precision of degrees, minutes and seconds to respect historical norms," which I suppose is open to interpretation, but I tend to use it to justify preferring d/m/s for settlements. (I was looking at the article because I had just watched Local Hero.) I do frequently use decimal coordinates for other kinds of features—lakes, valleys, railway stations and other buildings, etc.
As I recall, when I first started dealing with coordinates on Wikipedia, I used decimal coords for almost everything (for the same reason you prefer them), but I guess that over the years I have become rather fond of d/m/s. When I emend erroneous or inexact coordinates in articles, I usually preserve the existing format, though. Deor (talk) 12:33, 10 October 2025 (UTC)
- Makes sense – thanks. Dave.Dunford (talk) 12:46, 10 October 2025 (UTC)