Wikipedia talk:Reference desk

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Archiving for the next few weeks[edit]

scsbot, which archives these desks, has never been a fully-automated bot. I invoke it manually, and I eyeball its log messages for errors, which it still occasionally makes.

However! I'll be traveling for the next two weeks, with no internet access at all. So, unless there are objections, the bot will be going fully automatic, for pretty much the first time in its 16-year lifetime.

I don't expect too many problems — the bot has been pretty reliable lately — but if anything goes wrong, I won't be around to help it. If it makes a mistake, someone may have to notice and fix it. If it gets stuck and stops archiving a desk, someone may have to archive that desk manually. And if (this is super unlikely; I mention it only for completeness) the bot runs amok, someone may have to ask an admin to block it.

I'll be returning to the real world (or, at least, the Internet-connected world) on February 26, and I'll start picking up any pieces then.

This notice (that is, this change in the automaticity of archiving) also applies to the Help and Articles For Creation desks. —scs (talk) 22:30, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Village Pump thread[edit]

RefDesk contributors may wish to take part in this discussion on adding a new RefDesk. Matt Deres (talk) 20:37, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dave Bristol[edit]

Why doesn't Dave Bristol's biography list that he was also a teacher at Murphy, North Carolina, doesn't list his wife or if he had any children, is he is still alive? 2600:6C55:600:6B6A:6500:AF33:4D9C:3C19 (talk) 16:18, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This page is for discussing improvements to the Reference Desk; the correct place to discuss improvements to the article on Dave Bristol is on the associated talk page, here. Broadly speaking, articles are incomplete because YOU haven't fixed them. We are all volunteers here and the only reason anything gets done is that someone just like YOU decided to improve things. See here for steps on getting started. Matt Deres (talk) 16:50, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and as for whether he's still alive, this site does not provide a death date, so I assume he's still alive, but that kind of material may be less well maintained than the statistics. This shows he was still alive in 2020. Matt Deres (talk) 16:54, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Banned user showing up again[edit]

I believe that user IP 172.56.186.104 who has started asking convoluted questions on the Humanities desk, is banned user Futurist110. This is from the style of his questions, and from the fact he randomly left a question on my user talk page, just like Futurist110 used to do. Could someone look into this? Xuxl (talk) 12:44, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SPI has instructions on how to initiate an investigation, though there seems to be a substantial backlog. Matt Deres (talk) 22:15, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any admins who are notably familiar with the user in question? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:48, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]