User talk:DMacks

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Erich Clar page

I want to include a synthetic reaction that is known as Clar's reaction. It is of a certain class of cyclic ketones that condense with themselves when heated to 400 C in a mixture of zinc dust and zinc chloride.

I will add references and a description of what it is used for in synthesizing new polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Unrecognized in Page protection

I was asking why does wikipedia puts page protection for false information. Does wikipedia follow International law or protocols Dalahow (talk) 17:42, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:PROT is the page-protection policy. DMacks (talk) 17:30, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This Month in Education: September 2025

This Month in Education

Volume 14 • Issue 9 • September 2025

Contents • Headlines • Subscribe

In This Issue

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: ZI Jony 15:09, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your revert on "Lena"

The author is quite well known, has his own wiki page under his pen name qntm. Please restore the link I provided SnoTraveller (talk) 20:57, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added an additional note in my subsequent edit, once I figured out who it was. I stand by my position that it should not be included (that was just one of my concerns). If you have additional details, I'd be happy to look at them and see if I would support inclusion. DMacks (talk) 21:06, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. All I can suggest is that "... in popular culture" sections are common on all sorts of pages. Here a single mention in a short story (one written in the style of WP) obviously doesn't merit a full section, but a mention somewhere is nevertheless apt. I leave it to your judgement, probably much better than mine, as I am not a heavy editor. SnoTraveller (talk) 21:55, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-41

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

Paste Check is a new Edit Check feature to help avoid and fight copyright violations. When editors paste text into an article, Paste Check prompts them to confirm the origin and licensing of the content. Starting Wednesday, 8 October, 22 wikis will test Paste Check. Paste Check will help new volunteers understand and follow the policies and guidelines necessary to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia projects.

Updates for editors

Mobile devices will receive mobile articles directly on the standard domain (like en.wikipedia.org), instead of via a redirect to an "m" domain (like en.m.wikipedia.org). This change improves performance. This week it will be enabled on Wikipedias. The existing mobile URLs and the "Desktop view" opt-out remain available. Learn more. [1]
New date filters, creationdate: and lasteditdate:, are now available in the wiki search engine. This allows users to filter search results by a page's first or last revision date. The filters support comparison operators (e.g. >2024) and relative dates (e.g. today-1d), making it easier to find recently updated content or pages within specific age ranges. [2]
Wikifunctions now supports rich text in embedded calls across the 150 wikis where it's enabled. To showcase this, the team created a Latin declination table that Wiktionary editors can use to automatically generate noun forms, producing clear, formatted results — see an example output. If you need any help or have any feedback, please contact the Wikifunctions Team. [3]
An edit link will now appear inside the categories box on article pages for logged in users, which will directly launch the VisualEditor category dialog. [4]
View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a problem downloading pdf files last week and that has been resolved. [5]

Updates for technical contributors

The field rev_sha1 in the revision database table is being removed in favor of content_sha1 in the content database table. See the announcement for more information.
The Reader Experience team will roll out Dark Mode user interface on all Wikimedia sites on October 29, 2025. All anonymous users of Wikimedia sites will have the option to activate a color scheme that features light-colored text on a dark background. This is designed to provide a more comfortable reading experience, especially in low-light situations. Template authors and technical contributors are encouraged to learn how to make pages ready for Dark mode and address any compatibility issues found in templates in their wiki before the enablement. Please contact the Web team for questions or any support on this talk page before the enablement. [6]
Starting on Monday, October 6, API endpoints under the rest.php path will be rerouted through a new internal 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. [7]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:19, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – October 2025

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

Administrator changes

CheckUser changes

Vanamonde93

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.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:56, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for October 9

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Threose nucleic acid, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Prebiotic.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 19:55, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bitey?

Is there something going on with the user that I didn't see, that explains this warning? It's not clear to me that this user is being intentionally disruptive. His edits seem like an attempt to improve articles. We aren't supposed to dump on new users who are struggling to learn how to edit. -- Srleffler (talk) 21:16, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Warned at the 1 or 2 level, a mile of undone edits, a comment from the editor indicating that they recognized the concerns and would improve. Then they did not, and continued through several more sets of edits that were undone as well ("edit undo, edit undo" is a greater problem than "edit edit, undo undo"). In my experience, that typically means either a substantive language barrier or a failure to be serious about (or actually able to) make a course-correction. Either way, it's multiple failures to change after several different types of alerts about it, so while I'm not 100% sure it's bad-faith, I wanted a stronger hint of consequence than just another neutral request. DMacks (talk) 04:05, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

With a new editor who appears to be trying to contribute, it is often more effective to provide guidance rather than warnings.--Srleffler (talk) 15:11, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed that's why I did that, and including specific explanation in response to their request for more info about my concern. And they responded that those additional comments were helpful and that they would adjust their edits based on them (specifically labeleing my comments as "guidance"). They then made several rounds of edits identical in form to their previous and not in keeping with that. Then you provided even more detailed explanation of some of their specific edits, why they were a problem, and a clear warning not to continue to do that. Then they continued to do that. Clearly you have higher tolerance for this either in general or in this specific instance. DMacks (talk) 15:20, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I do have patience with new users who seem to be trying. I've noticed that some people are eager to help, but are slower to pick up Wikipedia's customs, style, and Wikitext formatting. We don't want to start out by pushing people away just because they take a little longer to get the hang of it. (And yes, I'm aware of and agree with WP:COMPETENCE.)--Srleffler (talk) 15:41, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. DMacks (talk) 16:54, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-42

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

Last week, improvements to account security and two-factor authentication (2FA) features were enabled across all wikis. These changes include user interface improvements for Special:AccountSecurity, the support of multiple 2FA methods via authenticator apps and portable security keys (previously users could only enable one method), and a new Recovery Codes module which facilitates fewer account lockouts due to lost two-factor apps and devices. As part of the Account Security project, work is continuing through the rest of 2025 on further user experience improvements, and support for passkeys as an alternate second factor.

Updates for editors

Another part of the Account security project is making 2FA generally available to all users. Along with editors with advanced privileges, such as administrators and bureaucrats, 40% of editors now have access to 2FA. You can check if you have access at Special:AccountSecurity. Instructions for activation are on the linked page. The plan is to continue increasing availability if it is determined that the user support capabilities are able to support global usage. [8]
This week, users at wikis where talk page Usability Improvements are already available by default (everywhere except the 12 wikis listed in T379264) will gain the ability to Thank a comment directly from the talk page it appears on. Before this change, Thanking could only be done by visiting the revision history of the talk page. You can learn more about this change. [9]
Users who have not verified their email address will soon be receiving monthly Notification reminders to do so. This is because users who have verified their email can more easily recover their account. These reminders will not be sent if the user is inactive or removes the unverified email from their account. [10][11]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a fix was made for an occasional error with saving translated paragraphs in the Content Translation tool, and the related error messages are now easier to see. [12]

Updates for technical contributors

The Unsupported Tools Working Group has chosen Video2Commons as the first tool for its pilot cycle. The group will explore ways to improve and sustain the tool over the coming months. Learn more on Meta.
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:55, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]