User talk:Jonesey95

This talk page is automatically archived by MiszaBot III. Any sections older than 90 days will be automatically archived to User talk:Jonesey95/Archive2026.

GOCE script trouble (again)

Sorry to bother you, but the script is hanging up on Itcouldbepossible (57 articles) and I don't know why; I removed a stray space from D4vd, but can't find anything else. Three of their articles have since been deleted; would that be a factor? Thanks for any help. In solidarity, Miniapolis 21:40, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't think the script knows or cares about deleted articles. It's been a long time since I have been able to run the script, but I recall a few tricks. I copied their list into a text editor and inspected it, and I don't see anything that catches my eye. Have you tried moving Itcouldbepossible's article list to the very end of the text input file? You could at least get output for everyone else, IIRC, and do that editor's counts using a spreadsheet or other means. Also, if you are handy a text editor, try replacing every article name with "XXX". Let me know if you would like me to calculate the table output for that editor; I am very handy with a text editor and a spreadsheet. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:56, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Many thanks for your prompt advice, and I was able to get everyone else's table output by moving Itcouldbepossible's article list to the end. If you could calculate that editor's output, that would be great; I'm always learning new stuff, but you're more knowledgeable than I am and we should get the barnstars out in a reasonable length of time. I wonder if the number of articles is an issue. Pinging @Dhtwiki:, who also hand-calculates this stuff. Thanks! In solidarity, Miniapolis 23:09, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Itcouldbepossible's entry should look like this:

|-

| Itcouldbepossible (talk)

| 151,481

| 75,740.5

| 0

| 227,221.5

| 127,221.5

| 57

| 33

| 35,429

| 16

| Caretaker

Dhtwiki (talk) 00:10, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

@Miniapolis @Dhtwiki Are my edits creating a problem, sir and madam? If so, then I would like to apologize! I know my massive submission list for this drive is a huge wall of text, and I am sorry if having so many entries is breaking the barnstar script or making things difficult to process. If it helps get things working again, please feel free to just ignore the three deleted articles I copyedited from the GOCE/R page. They ended up getting deleted at AfD over notability concerns anyway, and I honestly don't mind at all if you deduct those word counts from my total to keep the script from timing out or breaking. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 00:23, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

No worries. We have manual workarounds when our (somewhat fussy) script doesn't work for one editor's article list. Thanks for the copy edits! – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:38, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I wanted to let everyone know, I've put together a fair few fixes for the old GOCE script and have gone ahead and generated the table for the May drive. You can find it here. I had a bit of a dig through the talk page archives and managed to track down an older version of the script. I've given it a thorough redesign and sorted out the bugs, mainly by adding robust regex handling to automatically catch those tricky edge cases that we previously had to fix manually. I haven't popped the new table onto the main barnstar page just yet, as I wanted to hold off and get the nod from the senior guild coordinators first. Please do have a look at the generated table when you have a spare moment, and let me know if anything needs tweaking. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 01:46, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks all; I'll add Itcouldbepossible's entry to my output file with the totals and post it tomorrow. The GOCE script links to talk pages (very important when we're giving out the barnstars), and clearly distinguishes which rollover words to use and when. Itcouldbepossible, could you email your script to Dhtwiki or one of the other coords? I wonder if your entry may have had a non-printing character; Jonesey discovered one in another head-scratcher a while back, but I can't see them in Notepad. In solidarity, Miniapolis 02:38, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

@Miniapolis I am working on certain small fixes at this moment. I will email the same once I am done making the changes. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 03:00, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. You apparently came up with your script remarkably quickly. We don't include entries where the editors haven't done any work and thus haven't earned a barnstar; those possibly have in the past been manually edited out before the script is run. However, I question some of your numbers. For example, my 50% bonus should be 35,928 x .5 = 17,964, not 17,961; and your bonus should be (151,481 - 144) x .5 = 75,668.5, not 75,655. Dhtwiki (talk) 02:44, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

@DhtwikiThe issue came down to a rounding error that was slowly leaking half-points. The script calculates the 50% bonus line-by-line for every single article you logged. Because it was told to only output whole numbers, whenever it halved an odd-numbered word count (like your 10,561 words for Hell's Kitchen), it simply chopped off the .5 right then and there. Since you had exactly six articles with an odd number of words, the script ended up dropping exactly three points from your total. The exact same thing happened to me where I lost about thirteen points across my odd numbered entries. I have patched the script so it now matches our way of calculating things. Instead of applying the multiplier per article, it now tallies up all the bonus-eligible words into one aggregate total first, and only applies the 50% multiplier right at the very end. This completely stops any of those fractions from slipping through the cracks. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 02:59, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Please go through the modified version and let me know if the table should look somewhat like this. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 03:09, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

It now looks good to me, especially with your 27 odd-word-count articles comporting with your number being off. I would put "n/a", instead of "0", where there is no applicable grand total. Otherwise, I can't think of anything more, other than marking Miniapolis's barnstars as not needing to be handed out ({{y}}). What language is your script in, and would you be willing to share it? The current script is not one that I can run on my iMac, and I have not gotten around to fashioning one of my own. Dhtwiki (talk) 04:39, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done Script now uses "n/a" instead of "0". Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 04:48, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki The script has been written, or perhaps more accurately, rewritten, from an older version I happened to come across while digging through some archived talk page discussions. As it turns out, the trail led back to the very script you had in your very own userspace! The current version is written in Python 3.14, and from the little research I've done so far, it appears that iMac should support that version of Python without issue. I'd be more than happy to share the modified script, but I am yet to ascertain the means of sharing the same. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 04:53, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, Python is what I thought I would write my script in and I do have both the old script and a non-working attempt in Python in my userspace. If you can point to where in your userspace your script resides, then I would make a copy of it that I could document and edit. It would be wonderful to have something as a backup to Miniapolis's having to run the old script or my laborious hand calculations. Dhtwiki (talk) 05:15, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki This should be working fine. User:Itcouldbepossible/GOCE-script Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 06:08, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you so much. Dhtwiki (talk) 06:24, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

PS. My home for the GOCE scripts is here, in case anyone else is interested. Dhtwiki (talk) 06:27, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, Dhtwiki; that page has Torchiest's original instructions (Attachment #1), which I'd lost – Jonesey's later instructions flesh them out. I copypasted your table syntax for Itcouldbepossible to the bottom of my output-file table and pasted it on the barnstar page, but the drive totals didn't generate for some reason and I copypasted your Totals line. Since I'm barely keeping my head above water with this (not a programmer), it's better for the GOCE if more than one person can do this. In solidarity, Miniapolis 13:50, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

@Miniapolis  Done I have fixed the issue. In the older versions of the script, those columns were hardcoded to print "0", which I recently updated to print "n/a". The script was never actually told to calculate the math for those specific columns. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 15:41, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I have updated the code accordingly. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 15:43, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

@Miniapolis

The issue as I found out was not related to me (perhaps!).

I thought I'd share a quick rundown of why the old scoring script was causing so many headaches and how the new version sorts things out a bit. The old script basically had zero fault tolerance. The biggest flaw I noticed in it was how it searched for word counts. It would blindly grab whatever text was inside the very first set of parentheses it saw on a line. So, if someone logged an article like Hell's Kitchen (American TV series) season 12 with a word count of (10,561), the script grabbed the words "American TV series", tried to do maths on them, and immediately suffered a fatal crash. In the new script I fixed it by using regular expressions to scan the whole line and extract only the final set of brackets containing the actual numbers only. Another massive issue was with the punctuation. The old code simply couldn't cope with commas or tildes inside the numbers. If someone logged a cleanly formatted count like 35,928 or an estimate like ~20,000 (as was the case in the entries made by User:Lfstevens), the script would completely choke. Even worse, it had a hard coded technical limit, meaning if someone copyedited a massive article with more than 32,767 words, the script literally couldn't count that high and would trigger an overflow error. The new version, however, automatically purges commas before doing the maths and ignores all extra symbols. It has even happened in the past where participants often set up their sections early, leaving blank templates with empty brackets to fill in later. The old script would have either crashed trying to read these empty placeholders or would have forced a manual deletion of every single blank line before running the tool. The new code handles all of this automatically and skips over any empty placeholders without breaking the original calculations. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 05:03, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, Itcouldbepossible. When Torchiest wrote the script generating a barnstar table (no need for a leaderboard script), the drives were smaller but hand-calculating was becoming a problem; the other coords and I hand-edit the input file before running Torchiest's script. Can you generate a barnstar table with your script which removes the half-words and retains the header bolding? In solidarity, Miniapolis 13:50, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

@Miniapolis Can you please clarify what you mean by script which removes the half-words and retains the header bolding? Did I misinterpret Dhtwiki when they told me about decimals in the word count, or am I misinterpreting you? Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 15:34, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

You mentioned above that you had fixed the half-word issue, but User:Itcouldbepossible/May-GOCE has the decimals and no "USE/DO NOT USE THIS NUMBER FOR JULY" emphasis; the latter minimizes confusion when editors sign up for the next drive. I checked your entry in Notepad++ for stray non-printing characters; there are none, so the issue may be the size of the entry itself. In solidarity, Miniapolis 17:00, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

@Miniapolis I think I’m still misunderstanding something here. In an earlier reply, Dhtwiki explained the calculations to me, including how bonus points are handled for odd-numbered words. I also checked some of the previous barnstar pages and noticed that the Bonus Total and other columns contained decimal values there as well, which is why I assumed the current output was correct. Could you point out where I’m going wrong or what I may have misunderstood? As for the column headings, I believe they would need to be adjusted manually after the table is generated. I don’t think it’s possible to generate those headings dynamically in the current setup. One possible work-around would be to have the script detect the month in which it is run and automatically display the previous month in the heading, since the script is generally expected to be run only after a drive has concluded and the next month has begun. Let me know if you would like me to go ahead with that optimization. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 14:01, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

(←) Dhtwiki, as lead coordinator, makes those decisions – not me. I'm a bit taken aback that you've come in from left field and kinda commandeered the drive in particular and the GOCE in general. I've seen this kind of behavior before, and it tends to be short-lived (and detrimental to the guild, which IMO benefits the encyclopedia). I've noticed that Dhtwiki and Jonesey95 (whose TP we seem to have hijacked :-) have taken a step back, and I have other things to do too. It wasn't good that running the script was entrusted to me; I found a problem with one entry, and asked for help. The script can be difficult, but I'm loath to change something that's been generally reliable transportation on the basis of one person new to the GOCE and its recordkeeping. Whatever we decide to do, more than one person has to be able to do. In solidarity, Miniapolis 20:28, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

@Miniapolis I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding here, so I will just clear the air. I only stepped in to help out of genuine concern because, at the very beginning, it really seemed like my massive list of entries was the exact thing causing the script to crash and hold up the barnstar distribution of the drive. Since I know a bit of coding, I just wanted to fix the bottleneck. It's a completely different story that later on we found out other things were breaking it too, like Lfstevens' entry and some other older bugs in the code, but yeah, that's the only reason I wanted to step in. It was never my intention to jump in from nowhere and take up the administrative side without permission. About the sudden enthusiasm and then stepping back, well, I've actually been on this project for around 5 years or so, but I was inactive for almost two years. Since it's my summer vacation right now, I could put in a lot of wiki time and edit a ton. But again, as things reopen I might not be able to put in as much time as I am right now, so you're definitely not wrong about that! Now on the math side, just to reiterate one point, I am keeping the calculation of the decimal points intact because that's exactly as per the latest instructions given by Dhtwiki, and it also matches what I saw looking back at the old drives. In the future if it is so required that rounding off needs to be done, then I will add that on request. At the end of the day, it's totally a personal wish. If you want to use my python script, you can use it, or you can just go back to the old methods and use the original script. I just stepped in to help fix what I thought was my mess! Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 13:56, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

I just want to say that I appreciate the new script, which seems to work well and is in a language that should run under just about any operating system, give the popularity of Python, unlike Torchiest's script, which runs under Windows, not but MacOS. I might eventually master enough of the Python script's workings to make modifications, such as having it calculate blitz barnstars or the drive leaderboard itself. Of course, no script will work unless the drive page is audited for malformed entries and the like. As I never really got my mind around what Torchiest's script was doing, I can't be of much use in diagnosing its hiccups. Also, thanks for the titanic amount of copy editing that you did recently. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:45, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Itcouldbepossible and Dhtwiki, thanks for your clarifications. I'm glad I'm no longer the only one who can generate a barnstar table with a script, although I think we're doing Torchiest a disservice (hence my GOCE backstory earlier). Jonesey, many thanks for the use of your TP :-). In solidarity, Miniapolis 23:18, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't want to do disservice to the old script or our ability to rely on you to run it and the number of times that you have done so through the years. However, there's an advantage in having more than one script, in more than one scripting language, and one that is better documented than either of these scripts currently are. Ideally, that should allow more than one coordinator to efficiently calculate drive barnstars (the blitz barnstars, which I usually calculate manually, are much less complicated, but even there a script could be applied, someday). Dhtwiki (talk) 00:02, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki Thanks again Dhtwiki! Well, I personally feel that Python is just way more versatile since it can run on literally any operating system, whether you're on a Mac or Windows, so nobody gets locked out of using it. Now I have something for everyone. To make sure the script us actually useful for the team, I'll have decided to put together some detailed documentation over in my userspace soon. I'll write out exactly how to run the script step-by-step so that any of the coordinators can just pick it up and calculate the tables without having to guess how it works. Hopefully, having that ready to go takes a bit of the pressure off you and as well as Miniapolis! Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 02:19, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

(←) Dhtwiki, I never liked being relied on to run the script and couldn't agree more that several coordinators (ideally all, but ... ) should be able to run whatever script we end up using. We need a script of some kind for the drives because of the number of participants and the selective 50-percent-bonus articles. In solidarity, Miniapolis 02:06, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

@Miniapolis Just touching on your point about the selective 50-percent-bonus articles. Well, honestly you don't need to worry about that part at all anymore. The script I've managed to rebuild is actually designed to handle all of that automatically. It specifically hunts down those *O and *R markers and calculates the extra bonus points on its own, so it takes that manual headache completely out of the calculation. As I already said above, to make sure everything is easy to follow, I'll be putting up a detailed documentation under my userspace soon. Hopefully, having that guide will clear up any lingering confusion, and ensure that any coordinator can jump in and run the numbers whenever they need to! Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 02:23, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks; the lead coordinator determines which script we use. Torchiest's script does almost everything yours does; its main Achilles' heel seems to be that it didn't anticipate very large entries. In solidarity, Miniapolis 13:22, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Just seeing this conversation. I wrote that script a long time ago as a convenience for myself originally. I was able to prep the information to work with the admittedly crude code, but then just passed it along for others to use. Didn't realize it was causing trouble. If there's a less buggy script, that's great. I'm sure I could write something better now, but it sounds like that's already been done. Cheers. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 04:53, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

@Torchiest You may find the latest script here. Itcouldbepossible ^Talk 15:18, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Lint errors

Hello Jonesey!

You've helped me a lot in the past to fix linter errors in my homewiki and the last time we talked we had only 1 category of errors to clean up. Recently, with all AI developments, I was able to build a supervised automatized pipeline and unleash Claude AI on that remaining category, thus greatly accelerating the clean up process. I'm happy to write down that finally, for the first time since creation, we have 0 errors!

Well, not really, since Duplicate IDs and Background color inline style rule exists without a corresponding text color errors still remain, quite a lot actually. Now obviously this begs the question: What is expected to be done with those kinds of errors? Am I to understand that they will be fixed further upstream and those no action at all is required by me for any of the cases? Is that assumption completely wrong? Something in-between? I've read a lot around about them, even asking different AIs, but they give no definitive answers about what to expect and how to handle them. - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:47, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Congratulations!

At en.WP, most of the duplicate ID errors are caused by our citation templates, and there is no movement to fix them. I have not seen any movement to fix these errors at all on this Wikipedia.

The background color errors sometimes indicate a problem with how a page will look in dark mode. I recommend starting with templates. Find a page that uses the template, and switch to Vector 2022's dark mode to see if the template displays poorly. If so, figure out how to add a "color:" declaration where needed so that both light mode and dark mode work properly. I am not an expert at choosing these color options, but I have a set of notes for my use that I will copy below. One of these options usually works, but I don't always know which one it will be until I try them. There are definitely more sophisticated ways to fix the problems.

Colors in Wikipedia:
- default background color: #F8F9FA
- default background color in dark mode: #202122

Dark mode color fix: (this often makes explicitly chosen bg colors go away, so it's not great)
background-color: var(--background-color-base,#CEE0F2); 

Default color: 
color:var(--color-base,#202122);

To force black:
color:var(--color-base-fixed,#202122);

To force white:
color:var(--color-inverted-fixed,#ffffff);

I hope that helps. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:59, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you!

So they are fixable on a wiki level, right? My main question is: Can I fix them as a wiki user if I so want or are they actually expected to be fixed on the actual Mediawiki software (like maybe Parsoid or even further upstream) with different PHP patches and I can't/shouldn't do much on the wiki level? This is the question that I don't see anywhere answered plainly. From your reply I kinda get that they are actually actionable from the normal/wiki admin user perspective. - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:30, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

The background colors are all fixable on your wiki. Some example edits: , , , , , , , , . – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:13, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the insight! That was all I needed. I've already started fixing them. - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:10, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Hello Jonesey!

Coincidentally, today is exactly two months since our last conversation, and also the day I finally managed to clear all the background-color lint errors on my homewiki. So now, Duplicate IDs is quite literally the last category left.

Before I try to tackle that one myself, I wanted to check with you first. Do you happen to have any examples or information about it that might help me understand what exactly I should be looking for and how these errors can be addressed?

Thanks again for your help with the previous category! - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:03, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Many congratulations on your work! I am envious of your progress. We still have two million errors to fix.

I strongly recommend ignoring the duplicate id errors. We are ignoring them here at the English Wikipedia. I have seen no evidence that they cause any problems. That may change in the future. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:28, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! Artificial intelligence has accelerated our progress immensely. At the risk of sounding a little cornucopian, I'd actually suggest that you consider looking into it as a community as well.

As for the Duplicate IDs, the reason I was tempted to tackle them is that I believe we have fewer than 100 templates responsible for essentially all of our current errors — around 15,000 in total. With numbers like that, I thought it might be worth trying to eliminate them, even if they are getting somewhat close to the territory of purely cosmetic fixes. (Although, as far as I understand, having syntactically valid HTML still feels like a worthwhile goal in itself.) – Klein Muçi (talk) 01:59, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

As I understand it, a lot of the duplicate id lint errors at en.wiki are caused by cs1|2 templates that have same-name-same-date CITEREF ids. Parsoid may be doing summat to alleviate that. Take for example ref 102 at an older version of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. That recently added reference has a duplicate in §References. If you look at the html rendered by the legacy parser, you will see that both ref 102 (a {{cite book}} template) and its duplicate (a {{citation}} template) look like this:

• <cite id="CITEREFNelson2003" class="citation book cs1">
• <cite id="CITEREFNelson2003" class="citation cs2">

Switching to parsoid we get this:

• <cite id="CITEREFNelson2003" class="citation book cs1" about="#mwt236">
• <cite id="mwAA" class="citation cs2" data-x-id="CITEREFNelson2003">

Unique ids.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:04, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, hello! From what I’ve gathered, our current errors can be divided into two large batches.

About half of them appear to be HTML leftovers from VisualEditor or the Content Translation Tool, for which the fix is more or less simply removing them. This is what my bot, powered by Claude AI, is currently working on.

The other batch — actually, more than two-thirds of the remaining errors — was briefly suggested by Claude to be related to the SFN/Harvard templates. I'm not yet sure whether that is really the case, since I wouldn't expect our project to have enough articles using those templates to account for such a large number of errors. I had intended to let the bot finish the initial batch and then have Claude conduct a proper analysis of the remaining errors before drawing any conclusions. I thought it would be useful to mention that.

In fact, I was planning to write to you once that study was complete, because whatever the underlying cause turns out to be, it seems quite likely that fixing it may require changes to either the CS1 modules or the Footnotes module. I would appreciate your thoughts on how best to handle that part — whether I should fork the relevant changes for sqwiki, or whether any solution we arrive at could potentially be adopted by your community as well, if it proves useful here.

I was a little surprised to see you writing about it before me. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:14, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

The following is me talking about things that I do not fully understand. You have been warned. That said: My understanding is that Parsoid is not fully deployed across all parts of all MediaWiki sites. At en.WP, we had a condition recently where page rendering and categorization were being handled by different parsers, resulting in a page being in a category but not showing that category on the page. I don't know if that has been fixed yet by applying Parsoid to whatever process is not yet using it, or if that was a Parsoid bug, or something else. In any event, if what Trappist shows above is Parsoid de-duplicating id elements, and if that process is eventually applied to all pages, we may see a significant reduction in duplicate id errors once Parsoid is fully rolled out. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:29, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Sqwiki has 0 lint errors!

We managed to fix the last ones regarding duplicate IDs. Most of those were actually caused by Content Translation damage: CX doesn't preserve short footnotes, so where enwiki has one {{harvnb}} per footnote followed by a bibliography entry, the translated article ends up with the whole {{cite book}} pasted into every footnote. Restoring the short footnotes cleared most of the backlog by itself.

This is probably the first time since sqwiki was created that we've had 0 lint errors, so I'm really happy that we've finally reached this milestone.

It's been a long journey, and several users have contributed to getting us here. You were one of them, so thank you one final time for all the guidance you gave me throughout this process. It was very much appreciated and helped me push through the last mile with the background color and duplicate ID errors.

Hope to see enwiki reach 0 in most of its categories soon too! Cheers! - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:23, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Congratulations! You did a lot of work to get to this point. We are working slowly and steadily here. I just finished cleaning out one small list today by editing a few hundred pages, one by one (no possibility of bot or script edits). – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:26, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

July 2026 meetup in Portland (Online participation available!)

Northwest Library

Hey Jonesey95,

You're invited to the July 2026 meetup in Portland, Oregon! Join us either online or at the Northwest Library at 2:00 PM on Saturday, July 25.

Please RSVP at the link above, even if you might be interested, so we can know how many people to expect, and add your agenda items. Hope to see you there!

(To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list. Sent via MediaWiki message delivery.) —TechnoSquirrel69 (talk) 22:00, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

AIC article row

How could the notes portion of Template:AIC article row be adjusted to allow block entries (containing linebreaks/linefeeds) without breaking the italics? I ask as the usage of this template on Wikipedia:AI noticeboard/2026-07-10 TheRealBasti has linebreaks in two of the row templates causing the page to be reporting lint, and it seems more realistic to address it at the template than have this reoccur elsewhere. Thanks, Zinnober9 (talk) 11:41, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Fixed. I thought you were going to come to me with a difficult one! I replaced the inline i tags with block div tags, because the entire contents of the cell are wrapped, and we don't have to worry about span tags being put around the div tags. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:10, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Ah, of course. I keep forgetting we can italicize from div/span. Too used to them being separate. Thank you!

If you are really disappointed it wasn't a challenging question, I could come to you for the 36 stripped Wiki talk tags if you want... Zinnober9 (talk) 13:34, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Well played. Yeah, I've looked at that page before. The phantom start tab / end tab ones are pesky. I haven't been able to tell if they are false positives or something that I just haven't figured out yet. I have fixed a few that are not those. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:46, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

You got me motivated to figure out the talk header stripped double div tag issue. It turns out that {{start tab}} automatically inserts unclosed div tags, but not on any talk-space pages, which is very confusing. Fixes like these seem to do the trick. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:17, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Ah, that would explain why a verbatum copy of one of those pages to my sandbox is clean, and null editing the WT pages were still dirty. It was acting like there was a namespace conditional, but wasn't sure what and where to look for that. Very nice! Zinnober9 (talk) 14:26, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

EMPTY! Thanks for motivating me to figure this one out. I updated the {{start tab}} template documentation, which was confusing a lot of people, including me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:33, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Got another curious few. Why does Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Omni-index have every row stating 1. instead of functioning correctly? I know that # breaks when there's extra lines between rows, but there's no obvious breaks on this page, and nothing obvious on the row template, unless transclusion breaks that for some reason. I've reported the table not being closed to the bot's talk page.

Also curious about the pre tag issue from Bawolff's pages since I cleared off all but 7 on non-COI pages, all on pages Bawolff isn't transcluding. Briefly considered if it were a nested situation (since pre tags can't nest), but that does a stripped error not an unclosed error. Haven't seen any issues on the COI pages they are coming from, but was a brief look. Zinnober9 (talk) 00:33, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

You were right to suspect whitespace in the Omni report.

As for the Bawolff pages, my first guess, without looking too much, is a bug in Module:Sandbox/Bawolff/COIEdit that fails to process Talk:Jacques Louis Vidal on the page User:Bawolff/Edit COI Summary/14 as intended. User:Bawolff may be able to look at their code and figure something out. My naive guess is that the "nextOffset, nextOffsetHeader" code that looks for headers is getting confused when there are headers inside of <pre>...</pre> tags, something that happens quite a bit when people are proposing edits to large chunks of a page. Maybe the code could skip everything inside of pre tags. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:18, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Ah, the classic "I know what it is, I'm looking at it, and still not seeing it". *d'oh*. Thanks.

The larger pages are known to hit post expand sizes, and seemed to be the first pages to start appearing when I was nearing the end of my pre tag elimination last month, but the smaller pages didn't make sense with that, so had brushed it aside until now. I agree, The pages I've looked at do appear to all break at the pre sections that contain a header within. Will inquire. Zinnober9 (talk) 14:43, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-30

[trimmed by Jonesey95]

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

• Suggestion Mode offers edit suggestions within the VisualEditor for improving Wikipedia articles. All suggestions are community-configurable. The TextMatch feature is a way for volunteers to create custom local suggestions. The feature searches in articles for strings of text, and now includes support for regular expressions. This gives volunteers greater precision and flexibility over the kinds of local suggestions they can create. Note: Suggestions can be targeted based on the edit count of the person editing as well as other aspects of the page. You can find examples from other communities for inspiration, including TextMatches that detect: typos, grammar-errors, potential advertisements, clichés, incorrect dash or hyphen usage, non-specific time keywords, outdated names, and more. Any feedback is appreciated.

MediaWiki message delivery 05:44, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 26

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics, a link pointing to the disambiguation page Christian Sprenger was added.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 05:59, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-31

[trimmed by Jonesey95]

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

• DiscussionTools' source mode and the 2017 wikitext editor will now offer autocomplete for links ([[), templates ({{), HTML and parser tags (<), and magic words (__), making it quicker and easier to insert links, templates, and other wiki markup while editing.
• From now on, wikis can restrict editing in the "User" namespace to only the page owner and certain user groups. Read the configuration documentation to learn more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:47, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Rename all userbox categories

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Rename all userbox categories. —⁠andrybak (talk) 00:05, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

The CfD nomination is ready at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026 August 12#All categories for userboxes. Please join the discussion there. —⁠andrybak (talk) 22:13, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for cleaning up so many of my messes today! Re this, in my defense that has been broken since November 9th.... However my defense false apart because I was the dumba$$ who broke it back on November 9th. Le sigh... Constantly learning and improving. Adding another check to my list. Thanks again. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 23:14, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Fun edge cases today! You didn't make any boring errors. Thanks for keeping my day interesting. Also, this discussion might interest you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:16, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

And re the November 9 error, I found it in Category:Pages with broken maps. Yet another page you might want to monitor for garbage leaking out of automated edits. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:18, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Glad I could give you something fun! Also saw this post. Hoping we can get Category:Articles with broken maps created so that I can monitor that and no have to filter through all the User pages and Drafts. But will add it to the list. Appreciate your help as always. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 23:27, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Query

Hello, Jonesey95,

I just ran into Category:Pages using Module:Routemap with conflicting parameters on the Empty Categories list and first, I have no idea what it is for (which is okay) but I also think if it is going to be empty a lot, you might put an empty categories template (it's often goes by "possiblyempty") or you could get an annoying CSD C1 notice. Thanks for your knowledge and taking care of behind-the-scenes business. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:07, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

I always forget the magic combination of parameters to get a hidden possibly empty category. I think that I have fixed it. Thanks for the kind note. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:01, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Conditionals table closers removed

Got any idea why the bot removed the table closers here and here? I've removed the if statements from the tables outright on each so it doesn't repeat, but since they weren't one offs, I'm wondering why these were even set up this way. Seems unnecessary from the start. Zinnober9 (talk) 07:35, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Those both happened in January 2024. You could ask the bot operator whether this issue has been fixed. The presence of the #if code looks like incomplete substitution of a template (or a copy and paste of Wikipedia:Content assessment/B-Class criteria), but I don't know why the bot would remove some but not all of the table markup. If it has happened recently, that would be more interesting.

Some pages, including Talk:Fitness to dive, were left alone. You could check the rest. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:02, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

I've looked at about 40 the pages you linked (the first 20 and then all that have been last edited in 2026), and found no cases of it reoccurring. Cewbot behaved correctly in March of this year with the same setup, and there doesn't appear to be any section around that time on the operator's talk page discussing anything like this issue, so not looking like a repeating issue beyond these two with what I know currently. Will run it by the operator just to be sure it isn't an open issue. Thank you! Zinnober9 (talk) 16:33, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Known and resolved shortly after it occurred, not an open issue (thankfully). Have a great weekend, Zinnober9 (talk) 12:30, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Linter errors and Module use

Hi Jonesey95. Thank you for your edits to the Alfred Robert Grindlay infobox. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions on it if I may. Your updates now mean the 'Further government positions' and 'Further civic positions' sections now both appear to run into each other and sit below the family module. I had those two section sit at the top before the personal details, because they are additional formal offices, positions, etc. that were held therefore grouped them at the top as with other political info box, e.g. Clement Attlee (which is the structure I used). I want to set the box up correctly, but tit doesn't seem to make sense to have these elements moved to the bottom; would you agree? Secondly, how can the two boxes be stopped from running into each other after your edits? Any help on this would be much appreciated. Thank you.WidoWido (talk) 10:37, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

See the documentation for {{infobox officeholder}}. You can use |term_start4=, |term_start5=, etc. to list multiple positions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:38, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Undo

Can you please Stop to delete my new things. it is for the future Summer Olympics 2028. Vincent (talk) 17:27, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Please stop making useless templates. There is a lot of advice for you on your talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:54, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

July 2026 GOCE drive award

		The Modest Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Jonesey95 for copy edits totaling over 4,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE July 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 05:23, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Redirect listed at Redirects for discussion

Redirects you have created have been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 August 11 § Template:AccountUser0/Badges until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 06:15, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

<3

	The Hard Worker's Barnstar
	For tireless vigilance re English variety templates/redirects/etc and eeendless patience in engaging w/ diametrically opposed povs even when those editors fail to get the point, fs see and value the work even when it doesn't seem like it! (sorry for late barnstar, just learnt of these :) - Asdfjrjjj (talk) 01:07, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

(Ps also awarded to Dgp4004 but ifl that's ok b/c you've both been especially hard working and patient imo :) - Asdfjrjjj (talk) 01:16, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

2026 Wiknic in Portland, Oregon

Marquam Shelter

Hey Jonesey95,

You're invited to the 2026 Wiknic in Portland! Join us for a social potluck at 4:00 PM on Saturday, September 5.

Please RSVP at the link above, even if you might be interested, so we can know how many people to expect, or even add something to the menu. Hope to see you there!

(To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list. Sent via MediaWiki message delivery.) —TechnoSquirrel69 (talk) 04:43, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-34

[trimmed by Jonesey95]

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

• Special:ShortPages displays short pages by their size, but in many cases it gets filled with disambiguations and soft redirects, making it harder to find the short articles themselves. Starting this weekend, you will be able to choose not to include an article in the special page by adding the magic word __EXPECTSHORTPAGE__.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:01, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

Help at template Cite Q

Hi, I've been talking to Pigsonthewing about contributing to the Cite Q template/module, and I have a series of improvements I'd like to make starting with adding support for using Cite thesis, but there's a change in sandbox that needs to be deployed. I'm hoping to get it sorted and move on with some more testing, but don't want to clog up the sandbox with more changes. I'm using an offline git repository to mirror changes to the template and its sandbox, so I can keep it straight. I'd also like to get template edit rights at some point, which would make this a lot less tedious. Is there anything I can help with to move it onwards? — Jonathanischoice (talk) 11:41, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I stay away from Cite Q unless it is causing problems. It looks like other editors have been able to help advance some changes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:56, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Set index on epithet lists

I don't think that's an appropriate categorization. I think of epithets as similar in this respect to surnames or nicknames. I cite the most significant such list: List of people known as the Great. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:08, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

You're going to have to be more specific. I made 279 edits yesterday. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:22, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

Gboldmap curiosity

Got any idea why this edit moving the | from the end of lines to the typical beginning of lines placement is now reporting bolding errors? It shouldn't make a difference, and my test has no display difference, but errors on the leading and clean on the trailing. I don't see something that calls to me within the Template:GBoldmap that would be causing this, and other templates don't seem to care if it's a leading or trailing. Thanks, Zinnober9 (talk) 01:02, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Putting the template transclusion into Special:ExpandTemplates shows you the problem here. This edit is the fix, trimming whitespace before and after the parameter value, including newline characters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:01, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

That's one tool in the toolbox I just haven't gotten in the hang of using yet since deactivating the outer object of a nested set often reveals the culprit, or reviewing the last few edits leaves a telling breadcrumb trail. Neither was an option this time. Will make an effort to use it more often since it seems pretty powerful. I still wouldn't have gotten there on this one without you since I haven't used the trim template before and while I've seen the template, hadn't stop to think what it did/prevented. Very surprised GBoldmap lasted this long without it. Thanks again! Zinnober9 (talk) 22:49, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Leave it to Zackmann08 to make an edit that is both not needed and finds a weird edge case. That's talent! /s – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:06, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Wait, what did I do?! So confused. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 03:10, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

You moved some pipes for no apparent reason, and it caused an edge-case Linter error. I got to solve a problem, which makes me happy. Fun times. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:54, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Hey I am more than happy to help you find these edge cases... Sorry it caused a headache but glad it helped solve this? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 04:59, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) @Zinnober9: Generally speaking, leading and trailing whitespace (spaces, tabs, newlines) is significant for unnamed (positional) parameters, and only insignificant for named parameters and explicitly numbered parameters. Templates need to be specially coded to ignore leading and trailing whitespace for all params. If you had preceded the sixth parameter value with its number, thus:

{{GBoldmap|53.8499|-2.9974|SD|3448|3976| 6=Poulton Curve Halt
| NPE Maps=(1947)
| Vision of Britain=y
| Old OS Maps=(estimated 1925 to 1945)
| coord_type=railwaystation}}

it would have worked without needing to modify the code inside Template:GBoldmap. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:03, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Ugh, that is such inconsistent behavior. The more I see of unnamed parameters, the more I dislike them. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:17, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Positionals seem fine in cases where the data is going to be uniform in input and/or has three or fewer parameters, but something like this where the two styles start to mix or need to be flexible and things start to become particular and unnecessary complainy, not a fan.

Certainly an interesting work around with the |6= though, would not have thought of that in this situation. Zinnober9 (talk) 22:52, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Would a similar situation be occurring on Template:Script/Arabic? Since the addition of bdi tags to enwiki, I've disliked them for a perceived incompatibility issue with blocks of text (reporting missing and stripped bdi tag issues and disregarding block div format; ie behaving like a span in a div situation). but starting to wonder if it's not specifically the bdi tags, but how the templates have used them. I testing if this was a trim issue, I'm more confused. Added trim to Template:Script/Arabic/sandbox and compared the live template with the sandbox in my sandbox. They display the same (and both disregard break tags), and while trim did clear one case of an error, it was clean elsewhere in the same scenario without trim. Is this a bdi issue, or is this a trim/cleanup issue? Zinnober9 (talk) 19:43, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

It looks like {{trim}} works in that situation. bdi tags can't wrap block content, though, so the content containing multiple lines inside bid tags is invalid HTML, hence the Linter error. You might ask on the Linter help page what other editors have done to work around that issue. One fix would be to use br tags to put all of the text on a single line but render it as multiple lines. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:53, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Will do. br tags is what I've done in the past when there was an initial crop from pages that were archives or other unlikely to change pages. But I really don't like the idea of an inline tag being used for a template that will likely be used in blocks of text situations. Feels like leaving a door open. Zinnober9 (talk) 20:33, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

August 2026 GOCE blitz award

		The Modest Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Jonesey95 for copy edits totaling over 2,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE August 2026 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 05:39, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Speedy deletion contested: Wintergreen (band)

Hello Jonesey95. I am just letting you know that I contested the speedy deletion of Wintergreen (band), a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Article previously had a PROD denied. Thank you. BangJan1999 20:43, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-35

[trimmed by Jonesey95]

• User Info card is a feature that helps patrollers see information about user accounts. So far, it has been available only in places such as page history, logs and recent changes. Now, it's possible to place it in the page content as well, using the {{#uic:}} parser function. It can be particularly useful in templates like {{Userlinks}} (or their specialized variants), as it will make it easier to see the context about a user on various noticeboard pages. The card will be displayed only to users who have it enabled in their preferences.

MediaWiki message delivery 20:43, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you

For your efforts, in the article space, to strongly encourage all editors, including the seasoned of many years, to leave meaningful edit summaries. I cannot say how many battles have been enjoined by misunderstandings, either from an incoming editor failing to read the edit summary of another, or for the earlier editor failing to explain clearly the what and why of their work. Bravo/brava, cheers. [A retired editor of many years, who still looks in, in the oddest places.] ~2026-44957-28 (talk) 04:58, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't know why this policy is not enforced. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:18, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Template:Ben Roberts-Smith sidebar

Hi Jonesey, Thanks for letting me know that all templates are required to have categories and documentation per guidelines. I've now added some categories.
I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the relevent guideline/s that I should follow when drafting any documentation as well as any how-tos and any useful tools. While I may have the template editor perm this is the first template I've created myself. Almost all of my template editing has been for DYK.
Regards, TarnishedPath^talk 23:58, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

See the guideline at Wikipedia:Template namespace. Notably, Templates should be clearly documented as to their usage and scope. Also see Wikipedia:Categorization, which says Every Wikipedia page should belong to at least one category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:51, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

Cheers. TarnishedPath^talk 04:57, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

Template:Current Irish Air Corps Aircraft

I have reverted your blanket wiping of this template. This template was created because the author of Template:Active Irish Air Corps Aircraft refuses to allow ordered aircraft to be listed on it, which if you read the history and talk page of their template you will understand. Finestat (talk) 07:06, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Forking of an existing template to make something that is essentially identical, and then replacing the original template in the articles with the new template, is not how things are done. I see why you did it, but it's not the right resolution to a content dispute. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:19, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Kudos

This may sound sarcastic (tone is impossible via text) but know that I mean this genuinely. Wanted to say kudos to you for keeping a calmer tone at Template talk:Infobox UK place. This debates drive me nuts and I admire your ability to rise above the bull shit. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 02:38, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I have died on too many hills here on Wikipedia, eventually learning to moderate my reactions most of the time. One thing I have learned is that it doesn't matter how right I am if one or two (unreasonable) people (with bad arguments) disagree with my (amazing, brilliant, and supported by guidelines and policies) plan. The disagreement will mean that the plan will be stopped, either by those people or by a neutral third party who comes in, shrugs, and says "no consensus, status quo prevails". I got tired of getting zero results and learned to accept small improvements and try for subsequent improvements later. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:19, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

That was immensely well said. Thank you! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 04:21, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Linter

Thank you very much for catching my linter errors. I actually do have syntax highlighting turned on, but I missed it this time. —GoldRingChip 15:25, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for cleaning up that mistake. I can also tell you exactly how it happened. I accidentally hit ctrl-b instead of ctrl-c when copying some material per the instructions for a bundled AfD and then didn't notice. Simonm223 (talk) 11:09, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Double <s> tags

I was re-reading TenshiBot 4 and read this comment of yours about tag followed by without a following should be ignored by the bot, and when I asked about it, you said that it's "an inelegant fix" because it was doubled up. What about the bot removing the inner pair in Special:Diff/1310160738, thus it's not doubled up and is valid markup? — Tenshi! (Talk page) 22:44, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Forgot the closer after the signature, see below.If the bot removed the "inner" (second) , that double linebreak between paragraphs would strip the remaining (outer) ... pairing since it's an inline tag. This would leave it reporting two errors, the original misnested s tag and adding a new stripped s tag error. The simple and best solution in this specific case would be to add the closer after "place." in the first paragraph and leave the second paragraph's existing ... pair alone. Zinnober9 (talk) 00:41, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Tenshi's proposed fix might have been valid, but there is no way for the bot to know whether <s>...</s> was intended and someone forgot the / to close the pair in the second tag. Better to leave it for humans. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:04, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand, do you have any examples? Tenshi! (Talk page) 14:52, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Sure. I did a quick search and found some candidates (along with some doubled s tags that aren't causing Linter errors). Here's an example where removing the inner <s>...</s> tags would have been the wrong fix. Here's another example that needed human intervention. Maybe I misunderstand the question that you are asking. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:29, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

The first example I can imagine going horribly wrong but didn't really know how it'd handle it, so I put it to it and it disregarded the first tag, and refused after finding that there was an extra unclosed tag, which I guess is better than I thought? The second example I think can be avoided by the bot, but it's not what the bot can fix without breaking WP:CONTEXTBOT again. I see cases where there is doubled up markup but not lint errors, though I have found another example which I think could be reasonably done by the bot, Talk:Pink slime/GA2. Tenshi! (Talk page) 16:19, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

That GA2 page would be best fixed by a div tag solution. If that's not what the bot would do, I would skip it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:33, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

And how would the bot know that the div tag is best? Tenshi! (Talk page) 18:45, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

It wouldn't. That's what I am trying to communicate. Some patterns need to be left for human editors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:33, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Oh, I got too focused on the separation of paragraphs that could cause a stripped situation and the bot's edit of onioning the second paragraph's first struck sentence with a double s that I mostly forgot the after the signature and that exclusion renders my train of though above inaccurate since that would not strike anything between the struck sentence and the signature. Will strike my comment above. The bot's edit would have been a fine solution had the second sentence not also been struck. And while the bot's double s change reflects the likely progression of that conversation, the double s is inelegant where a divstrike for the outer set and leaving the struck sentence as is more elegant, but as you've stated, that's assuming the progression of striking (sentence, then both paragraphs) occurred, which is a human to verify type edit. Zinnober9 (talk) 20:36, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

So \n\n would strip the leading tag? Tenshi! (Talk page) 14:57, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) It may be intentional. There is nothing in the HTML syntax specs that say that you can't nest one <s>...</s> inside another. Consider boldface, which may be used anywhere that strikethrough is permitted (and vice versa): if you nest one <b>...</b> inside another, some browsers (e.g. Firefox 155) will double-bold any content enclosed by this markup - Bold once Bold twice Bold once. It may be that the person using <s> twice has a browser that will strike through with a double line (like this); Firefox 155 doesn't - Struck once Struck twice? Struck once. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:22, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure you can do that with , I know that you can strike-through with two lines, but using Your text here doesn't achieve the same effect. Tenshi! (Talk page) 14:42, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

If you are looking for work for your bot to do on Linter fixes, there are many bot-fixable patterns available at Wikipedia:Linter/Signature submissions. The AnimWIKISTAR-laurier-WT.gif block, for example, contains four easily fixable errors and occurs on over 3,000 pages. The TWA errors are on 17,000+ pages. The WelcomeMenu missing div tags are on tens of thousands of pages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:36, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

More so that I'm trying to iron out issues and potentially missed edits since I've ended up trying to avoid fixing a broken regex for 2-3 weeks now, though I'll have a look and see if there's anything my bot can fix. I'm not sure though about replacing specific issues, overall I've been trying to fix specific types of lint errors through generalised regexes rather than find and replace specific text. Tenshi! (Talk page) 20:03, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Qwerfjkl, would you be interested in doing another run of your bot's task 31? Tenshi! (Talk page) 21:36, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

Template:Bruh

This isn't a test page. It is a reaction template just like the one on Commons. Many other cases. Nutella lover • [ chat│supervise ] 06:39, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) @Nutella lover: Why is there no documentation? When would it be used? What on earth does it mean? Is it some street slang that has no place on Wikipedia, the serious encyclopedia that anyone can edit? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:43, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

@Redrose64 I would like to introduce WP:LOL, WP:3LA, WP:DF, WP:SILLY, WP:EY and templates like humourous essay to you. Humour and colloquial speech definitely belongs on this project, specifically outside articles for visitors. Nutella lover • [ chat│supervise ] 08:57, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Nutella lover, I hope you can understand why I thought that this new template-space page with no transclusions, no documentation, no categories, and no incoming links from recent discussions was a test, a prank, or a joke. If you want this page to stay on Wikipedia, please provide it with the first three of the above items, per the template guidelines. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:11, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2024_August_9#Template:Bruh the 2024 discussion where it was previously deleted here, and where the concerns of usage and intent of this template are still present. I'll also add that on Commons, no one besides the creator has used it in any discussions, and it's only been used by the creator a few times. Zinnober9 (talk) 13:21, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

@Zinnober9 I knew that. I figured that since it had been deleted, it could serve a new purpose as a reaction template similar to the one on Commons. By the way, we should continue this discussion on the template's talk page. Nutella lover • [ chat│supervise ] 14:33, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Last li tag error

Continuation of User_talk:Jonesey95#Invoke_statements_and_stripped_lists from a few months ago. The final li error remains, on Wikipedia:WikiProject Ghana/Tasks/Wikidata Missing Article Report, now that the many hundreds of India newsletters on user talk pages have been cleared. However, I can't seem to find the bot's control page for this specific report, and the other two reports 1/2 you took care of with the 00 trick. A "User:Reports bot/WikiProject Ghana/Tasks/Wikidata Missing Article Report" page doesn't appear to exist, so unsure where a correction needs to occur since the bot updates and purges any corrections to this page. Any ideas? Zinnober9 (talk) 17:12, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

I adjusted that page to use the "00" trick". It appears to have fixed the Linter issue without breaking anything. We'll see if it survives the next bot update. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:08, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

It won't survive. I tried the same trick June 27th, 29th, and June 30th after we talked and it was wiped in the following update each time. I'm almost tempted to ask if we can deactivate the updating of this list on basis of this Project appearing inactive, but that feels inappropriate since the page functions/displays correctly. Zinnober9 (talk) 18:41, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

I made an adjustment to a .json page that is apparently used by the bot to know which pages to edit. I don't know if it will work, since it is not documented very well, but let's give it a day or two and see what happens. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:00, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Looks and sounds good to me. Thank you! Zinnober9 (talk) 21:07, 6 September 2026 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors – September 2026 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors – September 2026 Newsletter Hello, and welcome to the September newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Election news: Project coordinators play an important role in our WikiProject. Following the mid-year Election of Coordinators, we welcomed TNM101 to the coordinator team. Dhtwiki remains as lead coordinator, and Miniapolis, Mox Eden and GoldRomean return as coordinators. We said goodbye to Wikieditor662 and thank them for their service. If you'd like to help out behind the scenes, please consider taking part in our December election – watchlist our ombox for updates. Information about the role of coordinators can be found here. Reviewing system: The Guild is adopting a new system of scoring copy edit reviews. A point will be given for each review, and barnstars for reviewing will be awarded. These changes will take effect from this month's drive, and we encourage experienced copy editors to sign up for reviewing. For more details, see here. June 2026 blitz: 18 of the 20 editors who signed up for the June 2026 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited a total of 69,606 words comprising 30 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. July 2026 drive: 30 of the 44 editors who signed up for the July 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive copy edited a total of 531,346 words comprising 252 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. August 2026 Blitz: 13 of the 16 editors who signed up for the August 2026 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited a total of 192,712 words comprising 64 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. September 2026 Drive: Sign up here to earn barnstars in our month-long, in-progress September Backlog Elimination Drive. Progress report: As of 23:47, 13 September 2026 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 207 requests since 1 January, and the backlog of tagged articles stands at 1,511 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we do without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:54, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Overuse of TfD

Seeing this TfD nomination, I have to be blunt, Jonesey: Your practice of TfDing any template without transclusions, even if its purpose is obvious, lowers my impression of your competence as an editor. This is an irresponsible practice that violates TFD#3 and is disruptive. It may satisfy a compulsion to clear out the unused template backlog but it is certainly not doing anything to help the encyclopedia. I wish you would spend your editing time finding productive ways to contribute. Sdkb ^talk 14:27, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Your assumption is that I nominate any unused template for deletion. That is an incorrect assumption. I look carefully for indications that a template is being used. I skip a ton a potential nominations for various reasons, which is the reason that reports like Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused templates (filtered) and User:Jonesey95/self-transcluded-templates have so many pages on them. If a template is intended to be substed, its creator should document it properly using {{subst only}} or a similar template. Editors create a lot of unused or disruptive junk in template space, and keeping the reports relatively tidy helps detect vandalism, spam, and other undesirable content in template space. Proper documentation and categorization keeps unused but useful templates off of the unused template reports. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:35, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Template documentation is always a work in progress. For typing-aid templates, the fact that they will generally be substituted should be obvious. If you want it to be spelled out, I would encourage you to boldly add the {{may be substituted}} or {{subst only}} to the documentation yourself rather than disruptively TfDing. Sdkb ^talk 15:58, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Respectfully, it is not my responsibility to provide complete documentation for templates that I do not create. A TfD for an unused template with no useful incoming links is hardly disruptive; if it motivates people who are watching the template to help it comply with our guidelines, it is the opposite of disruptive. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:13, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

The purpose of TfD is not to motivate editors to improve documentation. Using it that way is WP:POINTy behavior. Sdkb ^talk 20:28, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

We disagree on this one. In any event, I'll happily live with your criticism regarding one of the forty-four unused templates that I nominated for TfD today. I'm happy with a 98% success rate on edits that clean up template space and for which the 2% of objectionable edits caused no disruption via transclusions (since there aren't any). – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:36, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

My perspective aligns with the guidance at the TfD page: Templates should not be nominated if the issue can be fixed by normal editing. Instead, you should edit the template to fix its problems. ... If a template is being misused, consider clarifying its documentation to indicate the correct use, or informing those that misuse it, rather than nominating it for discussion. If you believe that the guidance should be changed, you should try to get consensus for that. Otherwise, you should follow the TfD rules as they're currently written. Sdkb ^talk 21:20, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

You can see from my contribution history in template space that I edit template documentation frequently when it is clear to me what needs to be done. I am not omniscient, however. There is no functional difference between a template that is unused and useless and a template that is unused and undocumented or incompletely documented. Hence, there is no way to tell them apart. That's what the "D" in TfD is for. When I can tell for sure that an unused page in template space is a test, error, or otherwise speedy-deleteable, I tag it as such instead of using TfD. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:38, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Freaking linter errors

Still don't understand them, but sorry for Special:Diff/prev/1374951966... Just FYI for some reason I did not get notified that you tagged me in the edit summary. I got the notification on ZackBot but not here... Not sure why though. Do you have the "Failed mention" notification turned on by chance? Just curious as to why it didn't notify me... Anyway thanks and sorry! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 01:18, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't know why it didn't ping you. Using User:Example in the edit summary should ping editor Example. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:12, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

I know that's why I'm so confused... Oh well. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 04:24, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

clean up your mess

if you would be so kind as to delete Template:trout inline temp now that it's done having been used (and has been for at least a few hours now) that would certainly be a help.
thanks in advance, User "Oreocooke" (speak of the sun and it shines) 20:22, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Tagged. Thanks for the note. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:28, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

ty User "Oreocooke" (speak of the sun and it shines) 05:37, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

October 2026 meetup in Portland, Oregon

Northwest Library

Hey Jonesey95,

You're invited to the October 2026 meetup in Portland, Oregon! This will be an editing workshop, teaching newcomers how to edit Wikipedia and improve Portland-related articles. (Experienced editors: you are also welcome! Share your expertise with the newbies or stick around for some chatting during the back half.)

Join us either online or at the Northwest Library at 2:00 PM on Saturday, October 3. Please RSVP at the link above, even if you might be interested, so we can know how many people to expect. Hope to see you there!

(To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list. Sent via MediaWiki message delivery.) —⁠TechnoSquirrel69 (talk) 01:19, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Template:Squared

Can you tell me what this template was? Having noticed it in some page history I find you nominated it for speedy deletion a few months ago, instead of discussing it with me. I can't find it on Wayback. It was probably not important, but since I can't see it I can't be sure. If, instead of G2ing it you had mentioned it on my talk page as possibly not needed, I would have either told you why it was needed or G2'd it myself. In either case there would have been documentation that would have enabled me to know whether this was something I still need. This is why we Don't template the regulars. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 14:38, 25 September 2026 (UTC).

I am not an administrator, so I can't see the contents of deleted pages. It was deleted twice under CSD G2 (test page). I recommend asking either of the deleting administrators. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:22, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

This from the 2 June 2025 12:18 creation edit:

<sup>2sup>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:00, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, Trappist. That does look like a test edit; no documentation, no categories, no explanation of why it was created as a template that takes longer to type than {{sup|2}}, to which it is clearly redundant. I'm not surprised that it was tagged as G2. It looks very much like someone experimenting in template space. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:06, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Wiki means quick. The intention, purpose and usage beyond obvious. If you want to you could spend your time adding documentation, categories and explanations for other peoples' work instead of breaking it. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 18:12, 25 September 2026 (UTC).

Someone even broke the header to this section, leaving me nothing to click. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 18:14, 25 September 2026 (UTC).

Thanks for the message. I changed the header to comply with the technical guidance at MOS:TEMPLATE. As for me doing work that other people should have done, that is what I spend nearly all of my time at Wikipedia doing, but I have to draw the line somewhere. If you are a regular and you don't want to receive a semi-automated message from me, I recommend that you re-read WP:TG, especially the part about documentation and redundancy. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:33, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

This Manual of Style (MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all English Wikipedia articles. Be careful not to walk funny for no reason (frame 4). I have spent many hours today working on the issues caused by your nominations, it's not a one way street. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 19:35, 25 September 2026 (UTC).

Code block not valid?

Genuinely curious, since when is a <code>...</code> block not valid? (referring specifically to Special:Diff/1376891242 if that's some sort of edge case). (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 21:37, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) It had broken ref tags () that reacted/intermingled with the next following HTML tags (the code closers) reporting unclosed code tags and needed to be nowikied/deactivated. Code is a fine tag, but it doesn't deactivate things. It's just monotext with a highlighter. Code with nowiki tags (order important), or syntax highlight as Jonesey95 used there fixes that. Zinnober9 (talk) 21:52, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Ah, forgot my nowiki, duh. That would do it. Thanks. Primefac (talk) 21:54, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Zinnober9 is correct, and nowiki tags would have done the trick, but syntaxhighlight is so pretty ... – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:18, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-40

[trimmed by Jonesey95]

• New magic words {{CATEGORYSORT:TIMESTAMP}} and {{CATEGORYSORT:RTIMESTAMP}} are now available for use. They are able to change the default sorting of categories to be based on timestamp of categorization.

MediaWiki message delivery 10:47, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	For your recent review, I present to you this Barnstar to you and other guild members. May you display it with honor. Cheers, In solidarity Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 20:05, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks from Lent

Thank for fixing my errors in my User page

If you get to New York, please let me treat you!

Lent (talk) 03:31, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

You're welcome! – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:43, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Belated (or forgotten) thanks

Hi, I'm currently having another go at my User:MinorProphet/Draft subpages/WW2 Maybach gearboxes and came across your minimal edit in the revision history. You are the only person to have done anything there apart from me. I certainly don't mind my user drafts being edited, the more the merrier as they say. I may have thanked you at the time, but here's another one. Y MinorProphet (talk) 20:29, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

I edit active User pages reluctantly, so thanks for the positive feedback. In this case, the page was the only invalid image option in all of Wikipedia; we cleared up tens of thousands of errors a few years ago and try to keep the error space empty so to make it easier to detect vandalism and invalid template edits. Thanks for the note. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:42, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

My view is that everything is editable by anyone, certainly a draft article. People can get very possessive, but I can't see how anyone can complain if an edit is constructive. There's no difference to editing a mainspace article as far as I'm concerned. Keep up the good work. MinorProphet (talk) 02:01, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

September drive bling

		The Minor Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Jonesey95 for copy edits totaling between 1 and 3,999 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE September 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! In solidarity, Miniapolis 18:15, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

Ref tags and cite templates

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_des_Peres

It sound like personal prefernces.

Bibliography section used those btw. Palm Er001 (talk) 12:44, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

No. You are introducing lots of typos ("tributariesare", "Next steam"), poor grammar ("This tributary is visible from bridge"), and {{sfn}} templates that do not link to a full citation. Go to this version, for example, and click on "Lake Sherwood" in the References section. It does not link to anything. You are also introducing unnecessary <p> tags; just use two line breaks to start a new paragraph.

And I don't know what you mean by "Bibliography section used those". The sources in the section whose name I changed to "Further reading" are not cited inline anywhere in the article. When sources are not cited, we put them in "Further reading". – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:18, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-41

[trimmed by Jonesey95]

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 process for this year’s Community Wishlist has been published, incorporating community feedback. The wish submission process will end on November 8. This year, a working group (open for volunteering) that includes community members familiar with the technical aspect of our wikis alongside Wikimedia Foundation staff, will take care of the triage process. The triage is expected to be completed by late November. Votes for wishes will start in January.

18:49, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Skydance Corporation template navbox.

I've tried to add adding the international versions of the networks originally owned by Warner Bros. Discovery on the Skydance Corporation template, but I ended up breaking up and now the template is broken, so can you please fix it? The table muat be upgraded and repaired. ~2026-53290-70 (talk) 20:59, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

You didn't reply, please respond to me, please! ~2026-53290-70 (talk) 20:16, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

I have reverted to the last working version. Please try again if you insist on creating this too-big navbox at {{Skydance Corporation}}. Use Preview before publishing. Pay attention to the syntax of the {} characters and the group/list numbers within each set. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:19, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

dead link on various Scottish baronage pages

Hi @Jonesey95, I saw you reverted a number of my recent edits, e.g. , . I'm aware of the polices around 404 pages, but I believe this is overwritten by WP:BLP in at least some of your reverts.

As examples, Dorothy Walker (journalist and writer), Baron of Bannockburn, and Baron of Ardgrain all assign a noble title (a Scottish barony) to a living person – in my understanding of BLP, that needs an up-to-date WP:RS, just like other honours or titles would. Scottish baronies can be freely bought and sold, so a static archived page doesn't cut it here, since titles can easily move between persons after the page was archived. If other editors have a RS for the title – such as Burke's Peerage, which I can't access – they could easily add the titleholder again.

I would thus request that you undo your reverts on pages where living persons are involved, or otherwise point me in the direction of the correct policy. Thanks! — Arcaist ^{(contr—talk)} 13:26, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

I posted earlier on your user talk page about this, but I will respond here. The best thing to do in a situation like this is to rewrite the text to say something like "As of 2024" (when the now-dead source was accessed) and add the archive link, add a template like {{Better source needed}} or {{Dead link}}, or both. In the case of Clan Hannay, I did some of that. Completely removing previously verified information, as you did, in lieu of attempting to tag or modify it, is the least good option. I recommend that you restore the information that you have summarily deleted, tagging it and adding archive links. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:32, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't agree with you here. BLP is unambiguous that "contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—must be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion".

As I said, supposedly having a Scottish baronial title is contentious, not least because these can be bought by those looking to elevate their perceived status. It's not a basic characteristic like a person's age. And an archived page which is no longer updated by its creator, and will thus inevitably fall several years out of date in the future, must qualify as "poorly sourced".

I'm generally not a deletionist, but there was a months-long saga around Scottish baronial titles across several pages and more than one ANI. I think the tenor was pretty clear that we should err on the side of caution, and not just assign titles to living people because we can. — Arcaist ^{(contr—talk)} 13:50, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Or, to make my point by way of analogy: If I edited a BLP to say "This person is on trial for fraud" with either or , I'm pretty certain it would immediately get deleted, and rightly so. It's contentious information lacking an up-to-date RS, and the way I understand the policy is that the only allowed course of action is to delete and then possibly add it again later with an RS. Granted, I don't have your experience, but I struggle to see how it could be read any other way. — Arcaist ^{(contr—talk)} 14:32, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Do you have any links to support your statements? I have a few. This discussion and the one above it seem to indicate that Debrett's and Burke's are reliable sources for information about peerage. Multiple discussions reinforce that point. I just don't see why you would remove a claim sourced to a consensus reliable source just because it is out of date. Just provide context (e.g. "As of 2024 ..."). – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:25, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Which statements do you mean? My claim is not that Debrett's is not an RS, is that's that particular page – which is the only thing I removed – is not an up-to-date RS. The problem is that Debrett's deprecated a particular page which used to be a continuously updated roster of Scots barons. But now it's now longer updated, even though baronages change hands every month. It would be like using an archived version of Premier League winners to source who's currently champion. My argument is that the archived version shouldn't be used when it comes to BLPs. — Arcaist ^{(contr—talk)} 17:07, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

The statements I was referring to were things like "there was a months-long saga around Scottish baronial titles across several pages and more than one ANI". That doesn't help me find the discussions. As for out-of-date sources, please link to a guideline that states that sources need to be up to date. We cite 100-year-old newspaper issues all the time. The important thing is to provide context for the claim, hence my suggested wording. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:31, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Sure thing, here are a few links to get you started:

• some Baronage discussions: , ,
• ANI: ,
• RS noticeboard:

Also, again, I'm not saying we can't use old sources, and I never said "sources need to be up to date". I said that specifically for persons covered by BLP, we shouldn't use an archived source which will not be updated, to decide whether or not a living person has a certain title at this moment. Scots baronies can be bought and sold and there is no central registry; they change hands all the time. The Debretts page I removed was last archived in February, and any of the people you reverted could have conceivably sold or lost their title in the last 8 months, or sell or lose it at any point in the next however-many years. It was never, and is not now, a static list of who's a Scots baron and who isn't. And the problem will be worse the longer we used the archived source. — Arcaist ^{(contr—talk)} 17:54, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

At this point, we are saying the same thing about making claims about the present, so I think the thing we disagree about is whether claims about the past should stay in the article. At Clan Hannay, I restored the citation, since it makes what appears to be a valid claim (not about a BLP), and I rearranged the words after checking what the sources actually say (to the extent that I can access them). That is what I am advocating rather than wholesale removal of verifiable statements about the past that are based on past sources. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:07, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm fine with the Clan pages, my main concern is about BLPs like Dorothy Walker, or the standalone pages for the titles (e.g. Bannockburn or Ardgrain, as I mentioned above). I guess the only technically correct way to reference the archived page would be "Up until at least February 2026, the holder of the title was John Smith", but that phrasing makes my skin crawl.

Also I think "wholesale removal" is a bit strong. The page is question is used in a grand total of seven articles. I'm not doing a large-scale hatchet job here. — Arcaist ^{(contr—talk)} 18:24, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

We use "As of" statements all the time on Wikipedia. And as for your search, it doesn't include the many articles for which I did not revert your edit. I don't think that continuing this conversation will get us anywhere more useful than we have already gotten to, but I appreciate your willingness to engage, and I am happy with the state of Clan Hannay, which is what drew my attention to your edits in the first place. Happy editing! – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:12, 9 October 2026 (UTC)