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

Administrator changes

• Arcticocean
• Wugapodes

Euryalus

CheckUser changes

• Firefly
• L235

Oversighter changes

• Firefly
• Guerillero
• L235
• Moneytrees

Technical news

• Administrators can now nuke pages created by a user or IP address from the last 90 days, up from the initial 30 days. T380846
• A 'Recreated' tag will now be added to pages that were created with the same title as a page which was previously deleted and it can be used as a filter in Special:RecentChanges and Special:NewPages. T56145

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Palestine-Israel articles 5 has been closed.

Resolved

 – BattyBot 2 bugs fixed.

Hi there! I see you recently updated Help:Transclusion, but now it's categorized in Category:Pages which use a template in place of a magic word because of one or more {{PAGENAME}} templates. Could you please tweak the code to prevent the categorization? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:52, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

: Busy doing it now thanks to you, thanks for the heads up! waddie96 ★ (talk) 11:02, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Needs discussion: I just reviewed all edits to Help:Transclusion going back to 16 August 2024, before my first edit, as seen in this diff. The only changes I left behind were minor cleanup of leftover HTML, which I have since removed. I couldn’t find anything that matches what you were referring to.

From what I can tell, it looks like BattyBot made incorrect 'corrections', mistakenly assuming that this {{Pagename}} (which as source code appears as: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline>{{Pagename}}</syntaxhighlight> ) is a template calling a parser function, rather than examples of transclusion which make use of placeholder text called Pagename surrounded in curly brackets but also nested in <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> so WikiMedia software does not treat it as an actual template call.

The placeholder text Pagename aligns with Wikipedia’s existing terminology, such as WP:Pagename, and it is the best fit for use in example source code since it represents where the actual pagename should be placed when the example source code is copied and used, or just when the page text like a help page is being learnt from. Additionally, Pagename has been used consistently as a placeholder to illustrate where a pagename would typically go in the syntax even as far back as in a random version in July 2016. Therefore, I do not think it needs to be changed or altered.

So this raises the question of why BattyBot only came to fix this incorrect assumption after my latest round of edits, when this has existed on this page since July 2016 and when it fixed the 'problems' it replaced all occurences and not just that which I inserted recently? In addition, it makes one wonder what trigerred its action now?

1. Is it a change in BattyBot's code that no longer or never did recognise this "erroneous use" per se as okay since it's nested in </syntaxhighlight> and therefore not executed (i.e., not parsing and ensuring to skip that which is correctly nested in </syntaxhighlight> or <nowiki>...</nowiki>); or,
2. Was there a change in the way articles are categorized into Category:Pages which use a template in place of a magic word and this was an erroneous addition to that category, and that was followed by BattyBot doing its usual job; or,
3. Were my edits carried out this time in a way that triggered either one of the previous behaviours through no fault of either, but a bug to be fixed still? or,
4. Am I missing something?

  Regardless of the cause of the 'incorrect correction', I still think there's a bug in BattyBot worth fixing: That which is nested in </syntaxhighlight> (no need for <nowiki>...</nowiki> with the former), or </nowiki> alone, will not be treated as an actual template call by MediaWiki software and does not need to be fixed. waddie96 ★ (talk) 12:51, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GoingBatty waddie96 ★ (talk) 12:53, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that BattyBot should not have edited the page, which is why I quickly reverted the edit before contacting you. It appears you kindly fixed the issue with this edit, so the page is no longer in Category:Pages which use a template in place of a magic word (while the previous version of the page does show that category). Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:04, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah so the reason for the page to be auto-categorised into Category:Pages which use a template in place of a magic word is because of that lonewolf misplaced wikitext I left behind and forgot to cleanup:

For example: <nowiki><syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext"></nowiki>{{Pagename|parameter1|parameter2|parameter3|named parameter1=parameter4}}<nowiki><syntaxhighlight> will work, but</nowiki>

which outputed:

For example: <syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">Parameter1<syntaxhighlight> will work, but

and actually did call for a magic word in a template, viz.: {{Pagename|parameter1|parameter2|parameter3|named parameter1=parameter4}}.

So rightly so it was placed in the Category:Pages which use a template in place of a magic word category.

But, I'm emphasising this on purpose, BattyBot did not go and fix the problem instance at all! It went and erroneously 'fixed' five instances in this diff of correctly used Pagename (as described in my previous comment in detail above) nested in syntaxhighlight tags so they do not execute, but not the actual problem one... So it did not function as it was supposed to.

So this to me says the issue is with BattyBot and further validates the existence of the bug as mentioned above in BattyBot, an additional bug, and that fixing both will be worth-while. The additional bug is somehow it didn't see the abovementioned template call of a magic word and correct it, I suspect because it has parameters and it's possible BattyBot doesn't parse for template calls of magic words containing parameters? This is now in addition to not parsing for template calls that are nested in </syntaxhighlight> or </nowiki>. waddie96 ★ (talk) 09:39, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To summarize BattyBot to-fix list (or bugs):

• When parsing for use of a template in place of a magic word, to exclude template calls of magic words which are nested in <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> or nested in <code><nowiki>...</nowiki></code> or <nowiki>...</nowiki>.
• Add ability to parse for template calls of magic words containing parameters.

waddie96 ★ (talk) 09:46, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GoingBatty waddie96 ★ (talk) 10:06, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that I just shouldn't run the bot on Help pages, but instead fix the page manually or contact the person who last edited it. GoingBatty (talk) 15:12, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I believe I've fixed it. I ran the bot against Help:Transclusion and noticed it wanted to make the same incorrect "fix", and I did NOT save the change. I then checked the box in AWB that says "Ignore external/Interwiki links, images, nowiki, math, <!-- -->" in the find/replace rules and ran the bot against Help:Transclusion, and the bot no longer makes the incorrect change. So NOT running the bot against Help pages combined with the new configuration should prevent my bot from making incorrect changes in the future. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:29, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome! I'm glad to hear I could have helped sort it out. waddie96 ★ (talk) 00:03, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Table Mountain Sandstone, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Clanwilliam.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 07:56, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have plans to use {{ContentGrid}} or {{InfoCard}} somewhere? We don't usually keep unused pages in template space. You are welcome to move it to your User space if you are experimenting with it. Please don't create any more unused templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, was experimenting, not useful for now, will tag for deletion. waddie96 ★ (talk) 23:33, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95  Marked for deletion waddie96 ★ (talk) 23:39, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1. Copy the live template code to the sandbox. 2. Make the desired changes to the sandbox. 3. Add or adjust a relevant test case on the testcases page. You can also use Special:ExpandTemplates to check your work. 4. When you think that the new code is ready, post an edit request on the template talk page with an explanation of why the change should be made. If the change could be controversial or may not have consensus, do not use the edit request template; just start a new discussion topic on the template talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:19, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95 Thank you, duly noted for future. This is with regards to which edit request? waddie96 ★ (talk) 04:28, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This one and at least one other. Look in your Contributions for edits to template talk space. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:23, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm totally ignorant of Arabic and its transliteration into Latin script, so feel free to reply with "yes, ayn is correct" and not waste any time on it.

But I was intrigued by your choice of {{ayn}} (which redirects to {{okina}}, the Hawaiian mark) to correct the inappropriate apostrophe mark, rather than {{Hamza}}. Was that intentional? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:43, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@JMF Hmmmmm, I had to read template doc of {{ayn}} and {{ayin}} to see why their usage changes, but the appearance is fundamentally the same. I'm familiar with Arabic (CEFR B2/C1) and its transliteration, and ʻ and ʽ ({{ayn}} and {{ayin}}, respectively) are used by different translit systems: Hans Wehr, SES, and ALA-LC.

But in technical terms, per WP:MOSAR, @Kwamikagami revert here of {{ayn}} redirect from {{ayin}} to {{okina}} is incorrect. I have returned it to redirect to {{ayin}} as the terms are used interchangeably, but I'm unsure if that may be controversial and need wider discussion.

But it's just confusing technicalities to be frank. Sometimes it's best to apply the principle "Are we solving the right problem?", and this may be one of those. Since when I put {{ayn}} despite the redirect (error from my opinion, but through socratic questioning I could be wrong) it gave the visual rendered output desired. I'm open for discussion :-) waddie96 ★ (talk) 20:23, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Kaaba is كعبة‎ which translits to kaʕ.ba where . is a 'pause', and ʕ represents the ayin ع‎ in the second Arabic letter of the word. waddie96 ★ (talk) 20:35, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you're going to change the rd, then you need to change the documentation as well.

The period is not a 'pause'. Best to delete if that's what people think it is. — kwami (talk) 20:39, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In any case they're typographical alternates, with the Arabic having a more proper version anyway:

• U+02BD ʽ MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA for okina ʽ
• U+02BB ʻ MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA for ALA-LC transliteration of Arabic ayn Ayin#Arabic ʿayn ʻ
• U+02BF ʿ MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING for the proper as established by The Encyclopedia of Islam

But regarding {{ayn}} and {{ayin}}: Rough breathing: "In Latin transcription of Semitic languages, especially Arabic and Hebrew, either U+02BD ʽ MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA or a symbol similar to it, U+02BF ◌ʿ MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING, is used to represent the letter ayin. This left half ring may also be used for the Latin transcription of Armenian (though the Armenian aspiration is phonetically nearer to the Greek dasia than the Semitic ayin)."

I've done too much reading, and it appears {{ayin}} uses the wrong Unicode character at first glance, but that's just how it appears as it's for the good reason as stated in doc for Hans Wehr transliteration of Arabic and the Survey of Egypt System (SES) but that is not the most common way...

So actually when using {{ayin}} the assumption the user may make is they're writing ʻayn, but they're writing ʽayn unexpectedly because they're likely looking for {{ayn}} as in , but, hopefully people read doc carefully before use. waddie96 ★ (talk) 21:18, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's why [ayn] was a rd to the other convention. But whatever. — kwami (talk) 21:27, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Kwamikagami You're correct, thanks for discussion, this confuses me every couple months and I do all this research to clarify and never write a summary in the Arabic IPA or Arabic MOS to make it clear to me and others the confusion, or at least a table or something. But at least I have this talk to refer back to. I've r/v my r/v. waddie96 ★ (talk) 21:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hence the translit uses ʻ because it's used in a different, more commonly used, translit system that is easier to read phonetically for English readers than the glottal stop IPA standard of ʕ for ayn/ayin in this context (relating to the surrounding letters though, there are other contexts where this does not apply – Arabic phonology is a bit complicated to an English native because the letters are abjads i.e. phonetic, without vowels but just consonents, like other Semitics languages such as Hebrew; vowels came with diacretics that were invented later in the history of the written Arabic language). waddie96 ★ (talk) 20:42, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As for JMF's original question, the symbols generated by the ayin and okina templates are both used to transliterate the Aribic ayin. The symbol generated by the hamza template is used for the Arabic hamza. These are different consonants in Arabic, as distinct as t and k in English. — kwami (talk) 20:48, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]