User talk:TheSandDoctor

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If you feel that I have reverted an edit or issued a warning in error, please let me know. I am human, and I do make mistakes. Please don't interpret an error on my part as a personal attack on you. It's not, I promise. I ask you to simply bring it to my attention; I am always open to civil discussion. Thank you. TheSandDoctor (talk) 04:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)]][reply]

If I see something such as a box, template, image, etc., on another user/user talk page that catches my eye, I will "borrow" it. More than likely without asking. ;) TheSandDoctor (talk) 04:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)]][reply]

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(replacing Yapperbot) SodiumBot (botop|talk|contribs) 12:30, 21 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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(replacing Yapperbot) SodiumBot (botop|talk|contribs) 05:30, 5 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Birthday!

I know I'm a day late, but happy birthday! LiamTera (talk) 14:45, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Not to worry. Thank you, LiamTera! TheSandDoctor ^Talk 16:17, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Tech News: 2026-16

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

Weekly highlight

Experienced editors are invited to test the Article guidance feature, designed to help less-experienced editors create well-structured, policy-compliant Wikipedia articles. Testing instructions are available. Also, after reviewing the outlines, please provide feedback on the project talk page. Based on your input, the feature will be refined and transferred to the pilot Wikipedias to translate and adapt. Check out the video explaining the feature.

Updates for editors

On most wikis, all autoconfirmed users can now use Special:ChangeContentModel page to create new pages with custom content models, such as mass message lists, making custom page formats more accessible. Check Special:ListGroupRights for the status of your wiki. [1]
The Growth team has launched an account creation experiment to evaluate whether adding an account creation button to the mobile web header increases new account registrations and encourages more mobile users to contribute to the wikis. The experiment is currently live on Hindi, Indonesian, Bengali, Thai, and Hebrew Wikipedia, and targets 10% of logged-out mobile web users.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where VisualEditor could get stuck loading on Windows devices with animations turned off, has now been fixed. [2]

Updates for technical contributors

Starting later this week, Edit filter managers who have the ⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽ beta feature enabled will have CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor as the editor at Special:AbuseFilter. This is part of the broader effort to make the user experience more consistent across all editors. [3][4]
Tools and bots that access the Notifications API (action=query&meta=notifications) will need to update their OAuth or BotPassword grants to also include access to private notifications. [5]
Due to a library upgrade, listings on category pages may be displayed out of order starting on Monday, 20th April. A migration script will be run to correct this, and will take hours to days depending on the size of the wiki (up to a week for English Wikipedia). [6]
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 15:17, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from The Rockstar Vicky (20:30, 13 April 2026)

Hi, I am a music producer from India and I want to contribute to music-related articles. --The Rockstar Vicky (talk) 20:30, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@The Rockstar Vicky: Welcome to Wikipedia! Do you have any thoughts of what articles you would like to contribute to? Are you thinking of making new articles or improving existing articles? Improving existing articles is a much easier place to get started and familiar with Wikipedia. Given the fact that you are a music producer interested in working on music-related articles, I will just draw your attention to a couple things real quick: the conflict of interest guideline and the paid editing policy.

Basically, we discourage editing articles on topics you might have a conflict of interest with (e.g., an album/song you produced etc.) and you are required to disclose if you edit any articles for pay. In both cases, it's discouraged, but can be done with disclosure. On the other hand, if you, say, (for example) want to edit about Taylor Swift or Sonu Nigam (and you have no involvement with them/don't work for them etc.) then there is nothing to disclose and you're welcome/encouraged to contribute.

I hope that makes sense. If you have any questions, please do let me know! I would recommend as a starting place completing this interactive tutorial to help you with the basics of contributing to Wikipedia. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:29, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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(replacing Yapperbot) SodiumBot (botop|talk|contribs) 08:30, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2026-17

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

Weekly highlight

After two years of development, ⧼codemirror-beta-feature-title⧽, also known as CodeMirror 6, is to be promoted out of beta on Tuesday, April 21. It brings better code and wikitext readability, reduction in typing errors, and other benefits to all users of the standard syntax highlighter. A huge thank you to volunteer Bhsd who developed many of the new features, including code folding, autocompletion, and linting. [7]
A major update to the Wikipedia app for iOS is now rolling out, redesigning the interface to align with Apple's latest "Liquid Glass" visual design. Download the latest version and explore the update.

Updates for editors

Reading lists is a feature which allows readers to save articles to a list for reading later. This feature is now in beta on Arabic, French, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Chinese Wikipedias and by default for all new accounts on all Wikipedias.
An experiment which explores extending Page Previews to mobile web will be launched in the week of April 20 on Arabic, English, French, Italian, Polish, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. Page Previews are pop-ups that display a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and a link to open the full article of a blue link, thereby improving content discovery. The feature is already available on desktop and in the apps. Read more about this experiment and others.
On several wikis, logged-in editors who haven't confirmed their email addresses can now see a banner encouraging them to do so. Having the email address confirmed allows a user to restore access to the account if they lose it. Learn more. [8]
View all 15 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where editing very large wiki pages in the 2017 wikitext editor caused slow loading, preview and scrolling lag, and performance issues when selecting, cutting, or pasting content, has now been fixed. [9]

Updates for technical contributors

As part of the promotion of CodeMirror from a beta feature, all users will use CodeMirror instead of CodeEditor for syntax highlighting when editing JavaScript, CSS, JSON, Vue and Lua content pages. [10]
The mirrors.wikimedia.org service for Debian and Ubuntu users will sunset and stop working on May 15. The resources for the service will be replaced with new and better options. Some users may need to switch to a different server which should take about a minute. You can read more. [11]
The image and oldimage table will be removed from wikireplicas. If your tools or queries access image or oldimage directly, please update them to use the file and filerevision table before 28 May. [12]
Following the recent implementation of global API rate limits on unidentified traffic, the Wikimedia Foundation will continue efforts to ensure fair use of infrastructure by applying global limits to identified API traffic beginning the last week of April. These limits are intentionally set as high as possible to minimise impact on the community. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
The Attribution API is now available as a beta. The API fetches information for crediting Wikimedia articles and media files wherever they are used. Reference documentation is available through the REST Sandbox special page available on all Wikimedia wikis (such as the REST sandbox on English Wikipedia). Share your feedback on the project talk page.
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 14:59, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of administrators without tools

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TolBot (talk) 21:00, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of administrators without tools

	Greetings, TheSandDoctor. You are receiving this notification because you've agreed to consider endorsing prospective admin candidates identified by the process outlined at Administrators without tools. Recently, the following editor(s) received this distinction and the associated endearing title: Blue-Sonnet
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Notification of administrators without tools

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TolBot (talk) 21:00, 26 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Mohajilal (22:44, 26 April 2026)

Hello, I am Mohammed Jilal from Tana River County, Kenya Coast region. It's my pleasure to have you as my mentor. As a newcomer, I'm looking forward to making a great contribution to Wikipedia. How can I start a new Wikipedia article? How would I add a citation? Thank you! --Mohajilal (talk) 22:44, 26 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mohajilal! I would suggest starting by following along with this interactive tutorial which will show you the basics of editing, citations etc. After that, I would recommend getting familiar with Wikipedia by making improvements to existing articles. Writing an article from scratch can be rather tricky to pick up at first when it comes to the concept of notability, but this guide can help explain the process for creating your first article. I hope that helps! If you have any more questions, please do feel free to ask here or at the Teahouse. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:22, 30 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2026-18

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

There is a change in how new users are autoconfirmed that will improve anti-vandalism protection. Currently, users who have had an account for a few days and made a few edits are automatically added to the Autoconfirmed users group. This configuration tends to be exploited by some vandals, who create accounts and start to use them only after some time. To mitigate this, the configuration will be updated next week so that – for the purpose of becoming autoconfirmed – the account age will be counted from their first edit, instead of registration date. The numeric value of the age threshold will remain the same. This change will be deployed only to wikis which require at least one edit as part of the autoconfirmation conditions. [13]
All Wikipedia users with new accounts and those who activated the "automatically enable most beta features" option in their preference can now use the reading lists beta feature to save articles for later reading. This helps organize reading interests in one place for convenient access.
View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where infobox images have huge padding in Firefox, has been fixed. [14]

Updates for technical contributors

As a reminder, the global API rate limits will be applied this week to identified API traffic. This is to help ensure fair use of infrastructure. Bots running in Toolforge/WMCS or with the bot user right on any wiki should not be affected for now. However, all developers are advised to follow updated best practices. For more information, including the actual rate limits, see Wikimedia APIs/Rate limits and Frequently Asked Questions.
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 18:05, 27 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

New pages patrol May 2026 Backlog drive

May 2026 Backlog Drive \| New pages patrol
On 1 May 2026, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each review will earn 1 point. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:24, 29 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from An Spideoigín (17:56, 2 May 2026)

Hi there, I've done a lot of research on the name Fiona recently and I think the Fiona page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona) could probably use a bit of an overhaul.

Currently it leaves out some important information (William Sharp / Fiona Macleod) and includes a lot of semi-incorrect / irrelevant information like talking about Fíona an unrelated Irish name, the etymology section talks about a lot of names/words that are unrelated.

Is this something I should look at doing? Or is it a bit uncooth to do large edits to a page like that without doing more minor ones to get more experience first? --An Spideoigín (talk) 17:56, 2 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@An Spideoigín: Do you have reliable sources that cover this? Do you have some examples? TheSandDoctor ^Talk 17:21, 3 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah! So here's the first paragraph currently

"Fiona is a feminine given name of Gaelic origins. It means white or fair, while the Irish name Fíona means 'of wine', being the genitive of fíon 'wine'. It was first used by the Scottish writer James Macpherson in his Ossianic poems. Initially, the name was confined to Scotland but later it gained popularity in other countries, such as Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Australia, Germany and Canada."

It brings up Fíona which is an unrelated name, gives the wrong definition of that name. (Per Ó Corráin & Maguire's Irish Names 1981 the name is unrelated to Fiona and is a modernisation of the word fíne meaning vine, they attribute Fiona to William Sharp, but Macpherson's usage predates him).

The entry in Hanks' Dictionary of First Names also gives a pretty clear outline of the origin of the name: "Latinate derivative of the Gaelic element fionn white, fair. It was first used by James Macpherson. It was subsequently used as a pen-name by William Sharp. It has since become extremely popular in England as well as Scotland and is sometimes used as an Anglicized form of the Irish name Fíona.

"Fiona originates from the Gaelic word fionn, meaning white or fair, being a Romantic Era Latinised form; or an Anglicisation of the Irish name Fíona (Scotland Fìona) meaning 'of wine', being the genitive of fíon (Scotland fìon) 'wine', from which is also derived the terms (Irish) fíniúin, (Irish, Scottish) crann fíona (crann 'tree'), and (Scottish) craobhfhìona (craobh 'tree, bush') 'grape-vine'. An alternative suggested by Hanks (2006) is that Fíona means vine. In ninth-century Welsh and Breton language Fion (today: ffion) referred to the foxglove species and is also a female given name as in Ffion Hague."

The first sentence here first claims that it's from fionn, then claims that it's from Fíona meaning 'of wine' (unsourced), then lists some other words related to fíon, which seems unnecessary. Then gives another etymology of the name Fíona, again an unrelated name, and doesn't mention Macpherson at all.

Worth noting is that Macpherson made up many names ("One cannot mention all the numberless personal names invented deliberately by Macpherson" Ludwig Christian Stern 1898).

Maybe some of the confusion comes from the fact that Hanks states that Fiona 'is sometimes used as an Anglicised form of the Irish name Fíona', but I don't think this is really to say that Fíona is the origin of the name. Similarly, Hanks is pretty precise in saying that the name is a derivative of fionn (which means white or fair), not that "the name means white or fair".

Later on the article says "Additionally, the Ossianic poems of James Macpherson helped to familiarize the name in the English-speaking world." This kind of contradicts the initial statement that it was first used by him.

I don't want it to seem like I'm complaining, but I hope this helps get across what I mean about my issues with the article. An Spideoigín (talk) 21:59, 3 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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(replacing Yapperbot) SodiumBot (botop|talk|contribs) 16:30, 3 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – May 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2026).

Administrator changes

Deepfriedokra

Interface administrator changes

L235

Chaotic Enby

CheckUser changes

Oversight changes

Moneytrees

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Changes to user permissions made from Meta are now included in the local user permissions log (T6055).
The autoconfirmed user group will soon be modified such that the four-day account age requirement begins when an account makes its first edit (T418484).

Arbitration

The arbitration case SchroCat has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case closed on 15 April.
Per a recent motion, appeals of blocks from the conflict-of-interest VRT queue are, by default, appealed on-wiki through the normal unblock process. However, they may be heard by the Committee if COIVRTers disagree on the interpretation of the evidence or believe ArbCom would be better suited to hear the appeal. Administrators are also advised that loosening or lifting such blocks without the consent of someone with access to the queue or ArbCom can be grounds for desysopping.
Per a recent motion, restrictions issued directly by the Committee may now be enforced with blocks which work exactly like contentious topic blocks.
The arbitration case Maghreb has been closed.

Miscellaneous

The May 2026 administrator elections are scheduled to run from April 29 to May 19. The call for candidates ends May 5.
The 2026 Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is scheduled to run from April 25 to June 1. Candidacy submissions close on May 10.
A new noticeboard for non-urgent, batch page protection requests has been created, primarily for the enforcement of contentious topic restrictions.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:30, 3 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Tech News: 2026-19

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

The Article guidance team invites experienced editors of pilot Wikipedias—Arabic, Bangla, Japanese, Portuguese, Persian, Turkish, Simple English, Spanish, and French—to help translate and adapt sample outlines. These outlines will guide editors in creating clear, well-structured, and policy-compliant articles when using the feature once it is launched in May 2026. Simple instructions on how to translate and adapt the outlines are available.

Updates for editors

The Product and Technology Advisory Council has published draft recommendations on a model that affiliates can follow when contributing to the technical space. Community members are invited to provide feedback on the recommendation until May 8th on the talk page.
The number of available thumbnail size preferences in MediaWiki is being reduced to three standardized options—Small (180px), Regular (250px), and Large (400px), as part of ongoing efforts to improve performance and reduce strain on thumbnail services. As a result, existing preferences will be mapped to the nearest new size (for example, smaller selections like 120px or 150px will render at 180px, while larger ones like 300px or 360px will render at 400px). The preferences interface will soon be updated to reflect these changes, and users who wish to opt out or provide feedback can do so. [15]
From now on, even when a permission expires automatically, users will receive an Echo notification similar to the standard notification for permission changes. There is a difference between this and Global reminder bot in that the latter reminds users a week before the rights are due to expire, so that they can renew the rights.
View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the problem where the ULS language selector in Special:Translate would scroll vertically when it shouldn't, has been resolved. Previously, when users opened the "Translate to English" dropdown and typed certain inputs, the dialog would scroll vertically by a few pixels even when there was enough space to display all results. The dropdown no longer shifts unnecessarily when filtering languages. [16]
The Global Watchlist, which lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on a single page, continues to improve. For example, watchlists for Wikibase sites such as Wikidata now support EntitySchema elements for better tracking. The Live Updates mode now refreshes the special page every 60 seconds to comply with the updated global API rate limits for improved real-time responsiveness. Additionally, a directionality bug that displayed links as "changes 3" instead of "3 changes" in mixed-direction lists has been fixed. [17][18][19]

Updates for technical contributors

The second phase of global API rate limits has been rolled out to reduce the impact of AI crawlers and ensure fair, sustainable access to Wikimedia resources, prioritising human and mission-aligned traffic. Limits have been shifted from per-hour to per-minute, producing smoother traffic patterns and more predictable API load. Community users are not expected to be affected, and no action is required. Early indications show some User-Agent-based requestors are adjusting behaviour, and around 64% of automated API traffic has been identified. Monitoring continues, and Wikimedia Enterprise remains available for commercial support.
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 20:42, 4 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Pr8ctical (22:40, 4 May 2026)

Hi, I recently added an image to the infobox on the G. V. Prakash Kumar Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._V._Prakash_Kumar ) using a file from Wikimedia Commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:G.V._PRAKASH_KUMAR.jpg ). I tried to follow the licensing requirements, and I included the uploader’s username in the caption for attribution. However, I’m not sure if I did everything correctly.

I’m a bit concerned about whether I followed the licensing rules properly and want to make sure I didn’t make a mistake. Could you please review my edit and let me know if it meets Wikipedia’s guidelines?

Thank you for your time, and I appreciate any help! --Pr8ctical (talk) 22:40, 4 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from RunwayChief (05:59, 5 May 2026)

Hello,

I hope you are doing well. I wanted to respectfully ask for guidance regarding two possible Wikipedia matters related to Runway Magazine.

First, I noticed that there is a professionally published cover feature of Denise Richards published by Runway Magazine on runwaylive.com. I was wondering whether this publication could be considered an appropriate source or external reference for inclusion within her article, if it meets Wikipedia’s sourcing and relevance standards.

Second, I would also appreciate guidance regarding whether Runway Magazine may qualify for its own Wikipedia page, or whether it would be more appropriate to request review by an experienced editor or administrator instead of attempting to create the page directly myself.

Runway Magazine is an independent fashion and media publication established in 1989 with ongoing coverage across fashion, entertainment, beauty, and culture. I understand Wikipedia has strict standards regarding notability, reliable sourcing, neutrality, and conflict-of-interest editing, so I wanted to ask for advice before taking any action.

If appropriate, I would be happy to provide independent third-party sources, publication references, interviews, or media coverage that may help establish notability and compliance with Wikipedia guidelines.

Thank you very much for your time and for all the work you do maintaining Wikipedia.

Kind regards,

Vera --RunwayChief (talk) 05:59, 5 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question from ApolloAfricanus (09:45, 7 May 2026)

Where do I find the sandbox to create a new article? --ApolloAfricanus (talk) 09:45, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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(replacing Yapperbot) SodiumBot (botop|talk|contribs) 01:31, 9 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2026-20

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

Community Tech has published new guidance explaining how wishes on Community Wishlist are triaged and prioritized. The documentation is intended to help contributors write stronger proposals by clarifying the factors that influence prioritization decisions. Beyond vote counts, the guidance highlights considerations such as potential impact on the community when determining which wishes move forward.

Updates for editors

The Reader Growth team is launching an experiment to test a new Share Card feature that allows readers to create visually engaging cards from Wikipedia articles or selected article sections and share them online, with each card linking back to the original article to help expand readership and article discovery. The mobile-only A/B test will be available to a portion of readers on Arabic, Chinese, French, Vietnamese, and English Wikipedia to better understand reading and sharing habits, and is scheduled to begin the week of May 18 and run for four weeks.
The Android and iOS Wikipedia apps recently released the 25-day reading challenge into Beta, as part of efforts to drive reader engagement by encouraging users to complete reading milestones. To track their reading streak during the challenge, App users can add a widget featuring Baby Globe to their home screen. The challenge officially begins May 11.
View all 17 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the global preference for enabling syntax highlighting in wikitext could unexpectedly disable itself after being turned on, has now been fixed. [20]

Updates for technical contributors

The ResourceLoader module mediawiki.ui.input, deprecated since September 2023, will be removed this week. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. [21]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:19, 11 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]