Wikipedia

User talk:RoySmith


Earth Day 2022 Edit-a-thon - April 22nd - 2PM EST

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You're invited! NYC Earth Day 2022 Edit-a-thon! April 22nd!

Sure We Can and the Environment of New York City Task Force invite you to join us for:

This Edit-a-Thon is part of a larger Earth Day celebration, hosted by Brooklyn based recycling and community center Sure We Can, that runs from 1PM-7PM and is open to the public! See this flyer for more information: https://www.instagram.com/p/CcGr4FyuqEa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

-- Environment of New York City Task Force

How adverse is DYK...

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Moved to Template:Did you know nominations/David Yong

Your nomination of Morris Park Aerodrome has passed

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Your good article nomination of the article Morris Park Aerodrome has passed; congratulations! See the review page for more information. If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of MSincccc -- MSincccc (talk) 09:44, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article was a fine read. Please feel free to leave behind feedback here at your convenience. Thank you. MSincccc (talk) 10:46, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Update on British Airways Data breach

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Hi Roy,

Last year you reviewed British_Airways_data_breach for GA and gave me a bunch of helpful things to work on. It's now a year later and the article has doubled in size and is considerably more detailed (and, embarrassingly, more accurate- a number of earlier sources repeated each other's inconsistencies). I'll be putting it back up for GA review shortly but I wanted to thank you for your help first. Joe (talk) 14:19, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping. I probably won't have time to be actively involved in the review, but I'll try to keep an eye on it. I feel your pain about sources which just repeat each other, mistakes and all; sometimes it takes a lot of detective work to figure out what really happened. RoySmith (talk) 14:29, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-48

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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

  • Last week, the Wikimedia Search Team recreated the "DWIM" (Do What I Mean) gadget functionality server-side, for Russian and Hebrew Wikipedias. This feature adds cross-keyboard suggestions to the standard search-box suggestions. For example, searching for cxfcnmt on Russian Wikipedia will now add suggestions for счастье ("happiness") that the user probably intended. They plan to enable this feature for other Russian and Hebrew wikis this week. [1]
  • Later this week, users of the "Improved Syntax Highlighting" beta feature will have syntax highlighting available in DiscussionTools. This requires that the "Enable editing tools in source mode" preference be set. [2]
  • Campaign events extension – the set of tools for coordinating events and other on-wiki collaborations has now been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. A new feature known as Collaborative contribution to help organizers and participants see the impact of activities has also been added. Join the upcoming learning session to see the new feature in action and share your feedback.
  • Recurrent item View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the bug which stopped CodeReviewBot from working, has now been fixed. [3]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Users of Wikimedia API can join a usability study to help validate the new design of Wikimedia REST API sandboxes. Interested participants should fill the recruitment survey. [4]
  • The MediaWiki Interfaces team is deprecating XSLT stylesheets within the Action API. Support for format=xml&xlst={stylesheet} will be removed from Wikimedia projects by the end of November, 2025. In addition, it will soon be disabled by default in MediaWiki release versions: v1.43 (LTS), v1.44, and v1.45. Support for XSLT stylesheets will be fully removed from MediaWiki v1.46 (expected to release between April and May 2026). [5]
  • The WDQS legacy endpoint (query-legacy-full.wikidata.org) will be decommissioned at the end of December 2025, and finally closed down on 7th January 2026. After this date, users should expect requests to query.wikidata.org that require the full graph to fail or return invalid results if they are not rewritten to use SPARQL federation. The team encourages users to ensure that tools and workflows use the supported WDQS endpoints (https://query.wikidata.org/ - Main graph or https://query-scholarly.wikidata.org/ - Scholarly graph). For support with migrating use cases, please review the Data Access and Request a Query pages for details and assistance on alternative access methods.
  • Recurrent item 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 15:54, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Re: James Cook

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James Cook is a very famous figure in Australia and New Zealand and well known outside there too, George Washington is also semi'd and he isn't particularly controversial to my knowledge, just a high-traffic page, which inevitably leads to there being a lot of vandalism.

Cook, although he didn't establish the colonial systems that are controversial today is seen as being involved in it by many people leading to more specific/targetted vandalism.

The page gets an average of 2.8k views a day so its probably a page that will require frequent semi protections. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:20, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 December 2025

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  • Comix: Madness
    It could happen to anyone.
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:14, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TFA

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story · music · places

Thank you today for Julio and Marisol, introduced: "'I love you, but not enough to die for you'; if you lived in New York in the 1990s, you know that line. If not, then this article will explain it to you. For 10 years, this young couple shared their most intimate details with millions of subway riders as they struggled to navigate a romantic relationship in the middle of a deadly epidemic."! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:34, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This was run today to coincide with World AIDS Day. Sadly, Trump Administration Will No Longer Commemorate World AIDS Day. RoySmith (talk) 12:12, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a shame. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:42, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-49

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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

  • The Wikipedia Year in Review 2025 will be available on December 2 for users of iOS and Android Wikipedia apps, featuring new personalized insights, updated reading highlights, and refreshed designs. Learn more on the review's project page.
  • The Growth team is working on improving the text and presentation of the Verification Email sent to new users to make them more welcoming, useful and informative. Some new text have been drafted for A/B testing and you can help by translating them. See Phabricator.
  • Add a link will now be deployed at Japanese, Urdu and Chinese Wikipedias on December 2. Add a link is based on a prediction model that suggests links to be added to articles. While this feature has already been available on most Wikipedias, the prediction model could not support certain languages. A new model has now been developed to handle these languages, and it will be gradually rolled out to other Wikipedias over time. If you would like to know more, please contact Trizek (WMF).
  • Recurrent item View all 34 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where search boxes on some Commons pages showed no results due to switch from SpecialSearch to MediaSearch, has now been fixed. [6]
  • Two new wikis have been created:

Updates for technical contributors

  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

  • The Wikimedia Foundation is in the early stages of exploring approaches to Article guidance. The initiative aims to identify interventions that could help new editors easily understand and apply existing Wikipedia practices and policies when creating an article. The project is in the exploration and early experimental design phase. All community members are encouraged to learn more about the project, and share their thoughts on the talk page.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:56, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dec 5: Foundation and Friends' Free Culture Friday

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December 5: Free Culture Friday

You are invited to Foundation and Friends' Free Culture Friday at Prime Produce on Friday, December 5. This event will be held upstairs in the Cybernetics Library and will feature a reception with Wikimedia Foundation staff in the afternoon, followed by a more informal gathering for editing and socializing into the evening. No experience of anything at all is required. All are welcome!

  • Friday, December 5, 2025
  • 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm (Wikimedia Foundation staff + community meet-and-greet)
  • 3:00 pm – 7:00 pm (Open salon, hacking, and board games)
    Prime Produce, 424 W 54th St

All attendees at Wikimedia NYC events are subject to the Wikimedia NYC Code of Conduct and Photography Policy.

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:30, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Louis Abramson scheduled for TFA

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This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for 15 January 2026. Please check that the article needs no amendments. Feel free to amend the draft blurb, which can be found at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 2026, or to make comments on other matters concerning the scheduling of this article at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/January 2026. Please keep an eye on that page, as notifications of copy edits to or queries about the draft blurb may be left there by those who assist the coordinators by reviewing the blurbs. I also suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from two days before it appears on the Main Page. Thanks, and congratulations on your work!

By the way, 15 January will be Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, so there may be increased interest in the main page and therefore the TFA - good luck with that! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 10:54, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Delete revision

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Hello @RoySmith! Could you please delete this revision to my user page? Thank you, Floating Orb Talk! my edits 00:54, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Floating Orb Done. RoySmith (talk) 01:09, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Floating Orb Talk! my edits 02:33, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]