User talk:Primefac

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).

Administrator changes

A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news

• Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
• The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
• The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
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• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I think the light curve on the PDS 70 article is useful

I am dissapointed that you removed the light curve that I placed on the PDS 70 article. PDS 70 is a T Tauri star, a type of variable star - that's what the first sentence in the article says. To me, the most natural thing to want to know about a variable star is how its brightness varies in time. That's why I put a light curve on it. I made the plot myself using data from the data server at the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (https://mast.stsci.edu/portal/Mashup/Clients/Mast/Portal.html). So the image is my work, although the observations certainly are not. I'd be happy to move the image around on the page if you think it was placed in a way that harms the readability of the article. I'd be grateful to hear any suggewstion you might have about how the plot could be improoved. But I think your removal of the plot was unwarranted.PopePompus (talk) 21:04, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

My immediate thought upon seeing the image was "okay, this is neat", followed by the next thoughts of "what is this showing, why is it in the article, is there anything that supports this?" and similar thoughts.

I'm not opposed to the image, but there's just not enough in the article to support the image itself as you added it; I had zero idea of where you got the data, and there was nothing (other than that one mention in the lead) that would indicate why the image should be in the article. If anything, it might be better in the T Tauri star article, since it's a description of the variability of the light coming from that type of star; setting up an entire section on the fact that it's a T Tauri star purely to justify adding the image seems a bit excessive, since there isn't much to say that wouldn't already be covered there. Primefac (talk) 21:31, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I am currently in the process of putting a custom-made light curve on every Wikipedia article about a variable star, except for the very few variables (Mira, Algol, etc) that already have light curves. I've made 358 so far, I think. I started with the novae, like DQ Herculis. In every case I made the plots myself, so I don't think there can be a copyright issue with them. I've looked through the professional literature for each star, and have tried to use the best data. Right now is a good time for such a project, because there are now several years worth of data from all-sky or nearly all-sky surveys at high cadence like ASAS, TESS, Hipparcos, etc. Would you be OK with allowing the light curve to remain on the page if I expanded the caption to explain it more fully? In the comment you made when you deleted the plot, you asked "When?" but the time period covered by the plot is clearly shown on the plot's x-axis; it covers part of April and May of 2019, which is when TESS happened to be looking at the star.PopePompus (talk) 21:47, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't like the curve being smooshed into the lead of PDS, and to be honest I think the DQ image clutters an already short article with way too many images. Again, I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't do this, but please give some consideration for where you're placing these things (and why). I think unless there's a section about PDS 70 being a T Tauri (or a discussion of its light curve, or why that's even relevant) there shouldn't be an image, but that's just because I feel images should be supplemental to the text. Primefac (talk) 21:53, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick reply. I guess we have different feelings about what it is useful to put in an article. I agree with your removal of the Gallery image in the PDS 70 page. Left unattended, astronomy-related articles tend to fill up with "artist's conception" images from NASA press releases, and amateur photographs. But I'm surprised that you don't see the utility of a plot like the one I made for DQ Hercules. It shows that the fading from peak brightness was not even approximately monotonic. It's also interesting that the long decay after the dust dip is nearly linear, not an exponential decay. I'll try to add some text to the PDS 70, and repost the image. If you remove it again, I'll try to get a discussion going about the utility of such images on one of the main Wikipedia Astronomy discussion pages. If there is a consensus that articles about variable stars should not have plots showing how the star varies, I will with great sadness abandon my quest.PopePompus (talk) 22:11, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I Added the light curve to the article again, along with additional information about the star related to its identification as a T Tauri star and its variability.PopePompus (talk) 01:31, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Just in case you haven't seen them, there are some comments below that might be of interest. Primefac (talk) 15:00, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Seeing as the PDS 70 light curve doesn't have any error bars on the points, I'm assuming your other plots also don't? You shouldn't draw any conclusions from plots without uncertainties. Statements like "nearly linear, not an exponential decay" need actual quantitative analysis. Including plots without errors can potentially mislead more than improve. Also, you need to be more precise in your citations of where you got the data from: not "plotted from TESS satellite data", but "data downloaded from X archive on D date <reference to paper about that data>". - Parejkoj (talk) 17:52, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

That was kind of my point for the initial removal - there is zero way to actually check if the data is even remotely close, because we have no way of knowing where it came from. Primefac (talk) 19:49, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I include error bars on my plots when that information is available and when the error bars would be large enough to be seen when the data points have a reasonable size for visibility. Note that the plots of variability on the articles for the well known stars Mira, Algol, Delta Cephei, Chi Cygni, Epsilon Aurigae etc., which I did not make, also have no error bars. If you're going to remove all the variability plots that have no error bars, you'll be removing a lot more than just mine.PopePompus (talk) 16:29, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I followed a request on WT:AST for additional opinions here. The light curve is useful and informative to readers, but it absolutely must be backed up by a reference to the data source. The caption says only 'from TESS' which is insufficient, and the image description page says just 'own work' which again isn't enough. There needs to be an explicit citation to the data source e.g. journal paper, dataset DOI, exact MAST query etc. You also shouldn't add your own interpretation or classification of the light curve, per WP:OR. Just state what reliable sources have already concluded from it, with reference(s). Modest Genius ^talk 14:54, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

When the light curve comes from data in a paper, I always cite the paper in the figure caption. Many of my figures are produced from data provided by a server, such as MAST (Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes). The data from the server may not have ever been plotted as a graph or listed in a table in any paper. Wikipedia editors have been doing that with the AAVSO data server for a long time; that's where the plot on the Mira article, and many others, come from. I'm not the only editor plotting data provided by a server. I would be happy to add a citation to the server in the figure caption if people think that is appropriate, but I'll note that others have not been doing that in the case of the AAVSO server. All of my light curve plots have said where the data came from, but I have not been citing the servers, just the observatory or spacecraft.PopePompus (talk) 16:29, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

There needs to be a full reference to the exact query on the MAST or AAVSO websites, if that's where the data came from. That applies to anyone uploading plots of light curves - feel free to point others to this discussion. Simply stating the observatory or spacecraft is insufficient per WP:CITEWEB. Modest Genius ^talk 19:25, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

OK, I will add citations to the data server web sites. Thanks!PopePompus (talk) 21:43, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

The reference you've now added to the PDS 70 page is just a link to the MAST home page, not the TESS data on that particular star. You need the specific link to the search results e.g. [1] Modest Genius ^talk 12:55, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

On that I disagree, for two reasons. First, I fear that a link like the one you produced for PDS 70, which actually performs the database query, is apt to be more fragile than a link to the server's main web interface. If the MAST web server is modified a bit, so that the database query your link makes no longer works, then all the links will be broken. Of course the location of the MAST server itself could change, or the server could disappear entirely, which would break all the links I have made. But I think that possibility is less likely than a change to the server syntax. My second, much less important concern, is that a thousand character barely human readable link like the one you produced is apt to produce complaints from other editors. I was quite impressed when I saw what you had done with that link - I didn't even realize doing that was possible. But I'm not convinced it's a good idea.PopePompus (talk) 04:07, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Some template moves

Hi Primefac. Could you take a look at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 72#Di templates and suggest a possible next course of action? -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:38, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I would start an RM about the matter. As much as the "D" stands for "discussion", the two or three times I've seen someone attempt to use TFD as an actual venue for discussion they pretty much got shouted out of the room. Primefac (talk) 10:19, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look. -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi again Primefac. I made a request at WP:RM for these templates and they were moved accordingly; however, the wording in the templates and the corresponding notification templates weren't changed. I thought that would all be taken care of as part of the move, but it wasn't. The templates are protected and I can't edit them myself. Do I need to make another RM request for notification templates or can any admin just do the rest of the cleanup? — Marchjuly (talk) 14:22, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

A {{TPER}} would be needed to change things in the template itself, otherwise just let me know specifically what needs fixing and I'll get to it. Primefac (talk) 14:28, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

There appears to be a dummy link in each template's "Usage" section that still refers to it by its old name. There's also a link in each template's "Notify" section to a notification template as well, but each corresponding notification template may need a separate move to reflect the parent template's name change. Basically, it looks like the only thing that needs to be changed is "fair use" to "non-free use". — Marchjuly (talk) 14:43, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The usage and notify sections are tied to the provided template's name, so the notification templates likely need to be changed before the usage can be fixed (though I will note that since it's a redirect technically it will still work as described/intended). Primefac (talk) 15:44, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for taking another look at these. I made a RM request for the for notification template so perhaps the in-body links can be updated once those pages are moved as well. If there's any other clean up that needs to be done that I can do, please let me know. There are a some short-cuts for a couple of these templates and mentions of them made on other pages like WP:CSD#Files, but those probably will redirect to the new page names, right? -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:08, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, assuming the moves are done "as usual" (as opposed to doing so with the redirect creation suppressed) everything will still work even if it's not fully up-to-date. Primefac (talk) 22:13, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The notification templates have been now been moved and the in-body links in each template now rediect to the new pages. I guess that's sufficient for the moment, but ideally it would probably be a good idea at some point to update the wording of each template as well. Is the best way to go about doing this via TPERs on each templates talk page? -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:41, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I've updated the template links, but if there's more that needs updating a TPER means you're not dependent on my seeing this and caring enough to make the edit (though I do patrol the cat so I might be the one that responds anyway!). Primefac (talk) 12:50, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help Primefac. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:04, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

For some reason, the last request related to these templates that I made at RMT got moved to WP:RMT#Administrator needed by another editor. I'm not sure why this was done because the other moves I requested were done fairly quickly as uncontroversial requests. Anyway, the request has gone unresponded to for almost a week; so, I'm wondering if you could take a look at it and see if there's a problem with it. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:23, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Not really sure why that needed an admin, but the page has been moved so you should be good to go. Primefac (talk) 10:20, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:25, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Marchjuly The templates were move protected so that only admins could move them --Megan B.... ^{It’s all coming to me} till the end of time 12:47, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Good to know, it's odd that move protection doesn't show up when you edit a page... Primefac (talk) 13:25, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying things Megan B..... I didn't notice the template was protected. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:45, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

user groups

Hi Primefac, since you put in the page mover group 3 months ago I've been helping at RM and I've been handling several requests every day, most days. There was a bit of a learning curve 3 months ago and I made a few mistakes to begin with, but then several people kindly gave me feedback and it's been really smooth for the last couple of months. It'd be good to have this on a permanent basis if you think that's fine - I've built this into my wiki-routine now and I don't mind carrying on. Thanks! Dr. Vogel (talk) 01:18, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

You're welcome to re-apply at the PERM page - I prefer to let other admins take a look at re-requests. Primefac (talk) 07:21, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Done, thank you :) Dr. Vogel (talk) 12:25, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, sorry to pester you about this again. I placed the request as you suggested. It's now been a week and it hasn't been reviewed yet, and now the right has expired, so I can no longer help with these :( Dr. Vogel (talk) 12:45, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

There aren't that many admins that patrol PGM requests, though a week seems a bit long. I'll get to it as soon as I can. Primefac (talk) 12:46, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

RFC closures/unclosures

Howdy. You could strip your gears doing that ;) GoodDay (talk) 08:59, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

No kidding. Primefac (talk) 10:24, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

I'm writing to you about this page after reading the option on Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents that lets editors skip the drama and contact a recently active administrator to help with a problem. This page has an ongoing edit war basically that's of a rather substantial nature. One editor is disputing that this person was ever a king and there's been a back and forth with him and another editor. However, this problem is not something that just manifested today. Someone from Bulgaria under the number 193.68.139.54 made a big edit of a similar nature on August 21 that has since been reverted. I suspect it's the same person but either way, this contention could go on indefinitely. I'm just watching on the sides so I'm wondering if some order could be imposed? I'm using this option because I figured it's the most appropriate one given the situation. --Killuminator (talk) 12:01, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

First thing to do is get a consensus about his monarchy - I don't actually see anything on the talk page indicating that "we all agree he used to be king" (or similar). If (and when) that is determined, it becomes much easier to enforce that status quo, either through WP:AN3 (if someone is edit warring) or WP:RFPP (for disruption by various non-autoconfirmed individuals). That is not to say that the article cannot be protected while the discussion is ongoing (I'll keep an eye on the page and potentially semi-protect if it keeps going) but a discussion is definitely the best first step. Primefac (talk) 12:23, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you.

Thank you there, I don't mean to be a pain or put a burden on you but can you please have a word with Deancarmeli, I am honestly feel his action were wrong and I feel somewhat wiki-bullied by him. :/ Govvy (talk) 12:55, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Him and the blocking admin, you should never have gotten blocked over that. Primefac (talk) 13:02, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled

A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

RfA proposals

Thanks for being willing to assess those. —valereee (talk) 20:35, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Always happy to help. Primefac (talk) 20:40, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

TfD question.

I often see you at TfD, when they say substitute, does that just mean transferring the information out of a template? I still feel confused by WP:SUBSTITUTE sometimes.

I also wondered what you make of this template; Template:2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup qualification (Europe) – Qualifiers matches. I was under the impression that you should avoid storing certain amounts of information in a template that belongs in an article. I have no idea what to do here as Basketball isn't really my project, I follow the sport a little bit. But at the moment feel at a loss. I was under the impression this shouldn't be done and is wrong, regards. Govvy (talk) 23:20, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

The short answer to your first question is "basically yes". Subst'ing just means replacing a template call with its content, for example going from {{Party color|Not-a-party}} → {{subst:party color|Not-a-party}} → #F8F9FA. Sometimes there is prep-work needed on the template-side of things, for example making a template substable, but the end result is almost always replacing a template call with the template's contents.

As for the basketball template, I couldn't rightly say. This template is used across almost 40 pages, which means that the information contained in it is standardised across those pages (you don't have the scores on Israel's page being different from the scores on Iceland's page, for example). Each individual call to {{basketballbox collapsible}} inside that template is almost 40 lines long, so if you look at somewhere like Israel men's national basketball team#2022 where there are 9 calls to this and a similar template, subst'ing that template would mean the addition of over 300 more lines of text. If anything, this is why the template space exists - to allow for the reuse of large chunks of not-really-text across multiple pages in order to save space and promote consistency. Now, recent precedent has shown that if you have a template like this that is either overly complicated or just used on a page or two, there's not a whole lot of harm in deleting it, but I can definitely see the argument in this particular case for keeping this template. Primefac (talk) 07:35, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for that reply, I actually found that very helpful in understanding what is going on with the templates, although I understand the concept of saving data, I actually feel certain templates used in that way takes away the editing ability from a lot of basic editors. Cheers again. Govvy (talk) 11:50, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

"If you don't understand the module, don't edit it"

This and this are incredibly rude and uncalled for statements. The edit came as a result of the module being actually broken at the time and depicting the wrong colour in the wrong place, which prompted me to (at least attempt) fix it, so maybe it's not the best call to accuse others of "breaking" things and, instead, to be more comprehensive in the fact that many of us are being rushed to adapt into this new situation. Indeed, you did not fully revert my edit, so it was not that wrong so as to merit that kind of response, right?

If we were going to reduce this to a "don't edit it because you'll break it" issue (which is a premise that would go against WP guidelines, btw), then I could argue, on the basis of WP:BROKE, that the sudden change from party meta/color templates (that could be easily edited by anyone) to a module that only a cherry-picked few seem able to edit and that may contain multiple flaws (faulty depiction of colours at times, missing some parties, etc.) shouldn't have been done in the first place because "that's how things get broken". There are more polite and constructive ways to explain things, and maybe the way to go here would be to get other users to learn on the correct steps for editing the module (specially considering that this change affects thousands of currently existing articles and many others to come in the future) rather than to rudely prevent anyone without a full expertise on module-editing from intervening. But hey, it's your call if you wish to attend to hundreds, if not thousands, of editing petitions each month because some issue appeared, some new party has been created requiring a new colour or whatever.

Cheers. Impru20^talk 11:37, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

You are right, and I apologise for my language. It was the third or fourth time I had to fix the same issue (and the second from you) in as many days; conflating that with the template editor request I was more annoyed than I should be about needing to fix things again. The proper course of action would have been to instruct rather than chastise, which is usually what I do and I am ashamed to say that it wasn't the first thing that popped into my head. Primefac (talk) 11:47, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Now that you say it, I did not notice that you also made a change to my edit at Module:Political party/A, though it also was a partial one. I think I'm beginning to become more aware of how this works, since both of your edits centered on the same issue, which was that I added an additional row for the parties in the above section of the module (which now I see is seemingly only meant for situations where the party's name is not the same as the party's article link). Nonetheless, since this is a new situation, it's surely a trial-and-error for everyone involved, and I commend you for quickly acknowledging the fault in your proceedings (I can understand that stressing situations may lead to a lack of patience at times, nothing wrong with that). As said, I think the best course of action (which is something also being hinted in the discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Template editor) would be to just make it clear what the best way for editing this module would be, so that the errors we find along the way are best dealt-with in the future. Cheers! Impru20^talk 12:33, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll add some more information to the main module documentation, which I just realised is severely lacking. Primefac (talk) 12:52, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Infobox country at games

Hey its me again lol. Is there a functionality for the Infobox country at games template that would automatically competitors_men and competitors_women totals to give an overall total? Right now we have to enter one for each, plus a total for it to show up. Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 03:13, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Do pages actually use the men/women split? Genuinely curious, as I just checked about 20 pages and none of them used anything other than |competitors=. I mean, it should be possible, I just want to see an example where all three values are used. Primefac (talk) 14:56, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

All the Beijing 2022 pages have them separated. Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 17:29, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

 Erledigt. Primefac (talk) 17:42, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 18:01, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Tagging User:18abruce for a FYI. Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 18:03, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I've reverted your edit, Primefac. Please see my message on the template's talk page. Deor (talk) 20:45, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed. I'm working on a fix. Primefac (talk) 20:47, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

• Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

September 2019

Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!

• Y Monkbot 16, DannyS712 bot 60, Ahechtbot 6, PearBOT 3, Qbugbot 3 · N2 DannyS712 bot 5, PkbwcgsBot 24 · ? DannyS712 bot 61, TheSandBot 4
• TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebrox noted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
• Article-measuring contest resumed: The list of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected by GreenC following a bot request.

October 2019

• Y OAbot 3, DannyS712 bot 47, Pathbot 2, PearBOT 2, DannyS712 bot 59, DannyS712 bot 62, HasteurBot 14, PearBOT 4, WOSlinkerBot 4, MilHistBot 5
• Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill: TAnthony pointed out that reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021, Curb Safe Charmer had taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"
  

November 2019

Now you're thinking with portals.

• Y BHGbot 4, YiFeiBot 2, DannyS712 bot III 64 · ? PearBOT
• Old bots do new tricks: DannyS712 bot III 64 prowled redirects, YiFeiBot 2 archived GoCE requests, and BHGbot 4 removed links to portals deleted at MfD (until its authorization was revoked in January at operator BrownHairedGirl's request).

December 2019

• Y DemonDays64 Bot, DannyS712 bot III 66, Bot1058 6, Monkbot 15, MilHistBot 6, PearBOT 5, DannyS712 bot IV 65 · N2 SportsStatsBot · Xinbenlv bot, SteveBot 8
• Redirects to be autopatrolled: A RfC took place at WP:NPP, closing with unanimous consensus that new redirects should be automatically marked as patrolled by bot. DannyS712 wasted no time, and submitted DannyS712 bot III 66 the next day; it passed two days after that.
• 200,000 bios get short descs: Along a similar vein, Bot1058 6 was approved to remove disambiguation pages from Category:Monitored short pages and a new bot (DemonDays64 Bot) changed lots of http links to https using JavaScript Wiki Browser. One particularly neat task, PearBOT 5, automatically generated short descriptions for more than 200,000 biographies.

In the next issue of Bots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

• What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
• What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
• Will reFill ever get fixed?
• What's up with ListeriaBot, anyway?
• Python 3.4 deprecation? In my PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

---

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Infobox

What the hell, why are playing with party modules when it worked perfectly fine for years? You destroyed syntax and now its making dozens of syntax errors. You should have never did that in the first place. --ThecentreCZ (talk) 01:43, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) ThecentreCZ, please link to one or more articles where error messages are being displayed. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:40, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Indeed; I can't fix things if I don't know what needs fixing. As far as the grumbling part of your post - it was decided after a rather lengthy discussion that the /meta/X subtemplates should all be deleted; even though they've worked for years (which I am not contesting) this is a new and hopefully easier-to-maintain system. Primefac (talk) 08:45, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	Wanted to thank you for all you do around here, and especially your work with Module:Political party, before you got involved I was dreading trying to deal with all of those templates and move them into a more manageable form. What you've done there is quite useful and I really appreciate it. Elli (talk | contribs) 22:48, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

A hearty second. Well done. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:29, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Agree! Good job! Gonnym (talk) 01:32, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks all! I might have been the driving force, but I'm by far the only one that made it actually happen. Primefac (talk) 08:19, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Module:Political party

Hi, how can i change the party colors of ukrainian parties? All of them that I have seen are incorrect if you check them, many of them are incorrect. I'm interested in {party color | ***}}. If you explain to me, I will change everything to the correct and correct colors, because now there is a certain mess with them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Block baby (talk • contribs) 14:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Information about updating and fixing content in the module is at Module:Political_party#Updating_the_module. If you cannot edit a data module yourself, then you should place an edit request on the module's talk page along with the requested change (for example, "The colour for XYZ party is incorrect, it should be _____"). Primefac (talk) 14:29, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, mate! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Block baby (talk • contribs) 15:36, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The revert of your edit was unintentional

I clicked the "vandalism" button, thinking it would take me to a page about vandalism but it reverted your edit instead. Anonymous from Stack Overflow (talk) 20:58, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, now you know. Primefac (talk) 20:59, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Why did you change Kashyap (caste)

Haraamkhor, kyun baar baar kashyap caste change karta hai. Paagal hai kya tu Jayant D. Kashyap (talk) 09:36, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

You added unsourced changes. I reverted them. Unfortunately I do not speak your language, so please use English in the future (I am answering only the question you gave in the header). Primefac (talk) 09:44, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

NovemBot AWB

Hey Primefac. Thanks for processing my BRFA. I appreciate it. So I am missing the Bots tab in AWB. Is this possibly because NovemBot needs to be moved to the bots section of the CheckPage? Thanks in advance. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:21, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Same problem with Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheCowBot. --TheImaCow (talk) 11:48, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Weird. Fixed. Primefac (talk) 11:51, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps premature closing of ANI.

I just saw that you closed my Outing ANI [2] after the offending editor deleted their problematic text, and even thanked them from doing so. I must note that it took significant push-back from another editor (and me opening an ANI) before they made the revert. Before that, they wrote several times to justify what they did. Additionally, this is part of a pattern of behavior on their part, including harassments of editors, as I noted on the article's Talk page: "First you initiated a project to out editors who you felt were part of an off-Wiki editing team, even trying to get like minded editors to help, and now this. For some reason I am laughing at your "unintentional" claim. I am done with you." The issue there was an ANI brought against me and others by this editor because they were not getting their way editing a page - which led to a ridiculously long discussion wasting everyone's time. I believe the editor was temporarily blocked. (check this?) There was talk about initiating a topic ban as well. (?) So I think - this being on the same topic that they will not let go of (Skeptical articles and editors) perhaps that issue needs a reevaluation. Rp2006 (talk) 21:46, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough. Reopened for more discussion. Primefac (talk) 21:48, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

How? Rp2006 (talk) 21:51, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the question. Primefac (talk) 21:52, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry... How do I reopen the ANI? Rp2006 (talk) 21:56, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

I already did it. Primefac (talk) 21:57, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh. Thanks. This has badly escalated. Some of the remaining text can be followed, without too much detective skills, to ascertain the original outing details, as another editor (someone who has been sympathetic to the problematic one) just did in the ANI. Rp2006 (talk) 22:01, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

As ScottishFinnishRadish just did! Rp2006 (talk) 22:29, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

RFO

Hello. Could you please consider the edits that I recently reverted at Ashley Biden as candidates for REVDEL under RD2? Thanks! AlexEng^(TALK) 09:49, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the swift response. AlexEng^(TALK) 09:54, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

For that sort of content, absolutely. Primefac (talk) 09:55, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

We may have a UPE Reviewer

Please see This AN thread and their user contributions. I am not sure whether it is proven, but it is worrying. Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 16:28, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw the initial posting. Will keep an eye on the thread. Primefac (talk) 13:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Luciapop has an interesting contribution, where it may be that this is a further iteration of prior behaviour Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 21:23, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Need help with potential TfDs

Hi, i just learnt that most Political shortname and color templates are deleted in favor of a centralised Module as per the outcome of this TfD initiated by you. So, can you consider to add the templates under Template:Party shading in this module, and initiate appropriate TfDs, unless one is already in process. Thanks! ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 17:17, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about the shading templates, and by extension what to do with them. On the one hand, they do fall into that /meta/shading system that saw /color etc to be deleted, but since there are generally ACCESS concerns coming along with (what some view as) unnecessary shading, I'm not sure if it would make more sense to delete them outright or merge them into the module (which wouldn't be a huge burden to merge them in). I do note (if my quarry is right) that there are only about 200, so I think the case could be made to just get rid of them since they clearly aren't as heavily-used as say the /color options. I'd want to see a bit more discussion, especially since there are some folks who really want them kept. Primefac (talk) 13:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

meta/shading templates are generally unused but for US Democratic & Republican parties it exceeds 26,700 transclusions total (Republican, Democratic), which is pretty high usage. Some editors also seem to have a thing for shading up cells with party colors if shading colors are not available, and party colors are generally darker than corresponding shading colors making it unreadable. ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 14:42, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I've been working on post-module cleanup of templates and categories and have been looking at these more closely. Of the valid /shading templates (templates used to color a cell with text in it, and not those that are used in the exact same manner as the {{Party color}} family) most (all?) don't take into account color contrast accessibility (MOS:CONTRAST) and a lot use the colors without any real reader value and some even impact the article in a negative way. A few random examples of bad usage of colors:

• Alaska#State politics - the coloring of the Democratic and Republican columns is pretty much pointless as the colors don't add anything that the column header didn't already say but they do make the table much more "noisy" and harder to read. The only columns which have colors that have any meaning are the "year" and "others" columns, however they aren't accompanied by any text explaining what they mean. So vision impaired readers won't know there is any significane in either cell while everyone except a small group of editors don't know what the colors purple and grey mean in the "other" column.
• Austin, Texas#City government - the coloring of the entire table here also serves very little value. The "Party (officially nonpartisan)" column already has this info better explained.

In both situations, if the color is really needed, it can be used like it is done in non-shading tables (such as the one at Alaska#Voter registration) by using another small column at the start (however, as noted above, this should not be the only way that a piece of information is presented in a table). Gonnym (talk) 15:57, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Basically what I'm hearing is that for 99% of situations where there is shading, it can either be removed as redundant or replaced by a {{party colour cell}} that adds an extra colour box (for those "visual representation of the party changes" needs). Primefac (talk) 16:28, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Haven't checked each shading usage so there might be some other use-cases, but in general those are my findings so far. Gonnym (talk) 16:35, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Another example of bad usage is at KwaZulu-Natal (National Assembly of South Africa constituency)#Summary (which is a common type of a table, see also Courland (Saeima constituency)). The entire row is colored with a party color which I'm assuming is meant to represent the party with the most seats, yet it isn't explained anywhere and makes completely no sense that a column for "United Democratic Movement", which is yellow, has green and red colors in its cell. Better methods of presenting this information would be for example to add a color cell at the start of the row, or a column for "Party with most seats", or a note explaining that the bold values represent the party with the most seats that year. Gonnym (talk) 16:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

In articles like 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia#Polling and Opinion polling for the 2019 Indian general election, I believe, that shading remains the best way to highlight the data (party colors have been used in latter due to absence of shading templates). In articles like the above examples of Kwa-Zulu and Courland, shading would be a better visualisation if done correctly as in 2021 London Assembly election#Constituency candidates. In my opinion, party colors can't completely replace shading (and thus they be kept). But in articles like List of members of the 17th Lok Sabha, where colored cells can obviously replace shading, they should be carried out. ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 22:16, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I also think shading templates can often be useful, such as at 1996 United States presidential election in Georgia#Results by county to pick an example. I don't see how removing the shading there would improve the situation, and regardless, I think that should be a separate discussion from the merging of these templates into the module (which already has consensus). Elli (talk | contribs) 22:19, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Template:Flag question

Hi Primefac. Do you have any idea why the non-free file File:Flag of the Torres Strait Islanders.svg is showing up when Torres Strait Islands is used in combination with Template:Flag. The combination was being used in Australian Aboriginal languages, which probably means that the non-free file is being taken from some documentation page like Template:Country data Torres Strait Islands. The exact syntax was {{flag|Torres Strait Islands|local}} and it seems that the "local" argument is what's calling up the non-free file. I think it might have something to do with this IP edit made to the country data page, but I'm not sure. It's not really a good idea for a non-free file to be able to be added to pages via templates like this because it could cause the file to be used in non-policy compliant ways, but I'm not sure whether this was intentionally done or is just a template qwirk. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:57, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Your reasoning is pretty much spot on. fixed. Primefac (talk) 12:50, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for checking on this. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:57, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Recent reverts

Please provide details pertaining to your recent reverts and copyright violations RE: Troy Lyndon — Preceding unsigned comment added by Christophergraham (talk • contribs) 20:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Nothing much to explain, I suppose - the added text was taken from his own website, which is under copyright and thus cannot be put directly on our article. Primefac (talk) 20:36, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Holiday greetings (2021)

Primefac,
I sincerely hope your holiday season goes well this year especially with what we went through last year. I'm optimistic that 2022 will be a better year for all of us: both in real life and on Wikipedia. Wishing you the best from, Interstellarity (talk) 19:02, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Primefac (talk) 00:52, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Your approval of AJDaGuru

FYI, I've just taken a chainsaw to the article. Its sourcing is woeful, and I'm wondering if you would be willing to draftify the page in lieu of me taking it to AfD. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Jéské Couriano} 23:18, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Send it to AFD please; draftifying it will only kick the can down the road. I accepted it as a borderline case but I know that if it's sent back to draft the author will just beat their head against the wall attempting to get it accepted again (I wouldn't wish the hour I spent with them on IRC to be repeated for anyone else). Primefac (talk) 00:54, 22 December 2021 (UTC)