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Women in Red|September 2025, Vol 11, Issue 9, Nos. 326, 327, 347, 348, 349 Recognized as themost active, topic-based WikiProject by human changes. Online events: New:Alphabet run Q & R|Women writers & their works|Microstates Continuing, year-long initiatives:#1day1woman|Music Announcements: Wikipedia:Developing Countries WikiContest runs 1 July 2025 until 30 September 2025 Tip of the Month: Researching historical women writers who used pseudonyms requires careful investigation across multiple sources, as many women adopted pen names to avoid gender bias and judgment (e.g., being labeled a bluestocking) and, ultimately, to get published. Progress ("moving the needle"): TheWikiProject Women in Red homepage is usually updated weekly, using theHumaniki tool. Sadly, Humaniki has been out of action since 23 June. Other ways to participate: Becomea member. You can alwaysopt-out of notifications. Join the conversations onour talkpage. Help usplan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media:Instagram|Pinterest

--Rosiestep (talk)23:53, 31 August 2025 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

When will you finishthis list?Min968 (talk)03:29, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Min968 Soon, I hope. I can also take it offline if that makes you comfortable, but I thought you'd prefer I have it there then atWP:CCI. Or you could help. It would be quicker if you went back and removed articles as you fixed the attribution; you're clearly a very good editor so I'm pretty sure you could do it.GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋03:31, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is currently a discussion atWikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved.TheWeather Event Writer (Talk Page)19:03, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your hard work atCat Tales. Looks like a wonderful place that does good work for these beautiful animals. Cheers.Magnolia677 (talk)11:03, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Magnolia677 Thank you! Yeah, it seems like a really cool place, small though it is, and the people who run it seem so passionate about helping! It's so sad, sometimes, to think of these big cats, kept in people's living rooms, and it's great that they're trying to help with that! I need to go and add so much more.GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋20:28, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In brief, I'd like to say if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing well, so if I may be so bold, is there a list of mirror sites that I can obtain online @GreenLipstickLesbian?Tokeamour (talk)20:15, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Secondly, @GreenLipstickLesbian, it looks like you removed^{citation needed} on accident.Tokeamour (talk)20:23, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course! Hang on, known mirrors and forks are here:

• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/ABC
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/DEF
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/GHI
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/JKL
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/MNO
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/PQR
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/STU
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/VWXYZ

I don't know how often these are updated; I really need to be get better at recording my findings there, for example. New ones pop up a lot. Fortunately, most websites that copy Wikipedia articles tend to write somewhere (normally at the bottom, normally in small print) that they copied from Wikipedia. Sometimes they don't, though, and if you can't figure out which came first feel free to list it atWP:CPN or ask me, if I'm around!

And oh, shoot, did I really? Let me check that before my access to Wikipedia mainspace is taken away LOL.GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋20:26, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I will do my best to keep in eye on these next time!Tokeamour (talk)20:35, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tokeamour (talk) has given you a doggy!
Doggies promoteWikilove and hopefully this one has made your day much better.
SpreadWikiLove by placing a doggy on other user's talk pages by adding {{subst:Doggy}} to their talk page.
Happy editing!

Tokeamour (talk)20:48, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aww!! So precious!!! (Do I need to remove the electrical cords and shoes from the floor of my talkpage now? ahaha)GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋21:04, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Women in Red|October 2025, Vol 11, Issue 10, Nos. 326, 327, 350, 351, 352 Recognized as themost active topic-based WikiProject by human changes. Online events: New:Alphabet run S & T|Women in STEM|Halloween Continuing, year-long initiatives:#1day1woman|Music Announcements: Sister wikiprojectWomen in Green October 2025Good Article Edit-a-thon focuses onWhat Women Do Tip of the Month: Notable does not always mean admirable; you don't have to like an article's subject to make the article a useful contribution to Wikipedia. Progress ("moving the needle"):Statistics available via various tools: previously,Humaniki tool; currently, QLever. Thank you if you contributed one or more of the 6,283 articles during this period: 19 May 2025: 20.114% of EN-WP biographies are about women (2,066,280; 415,618 women) 24 September 2025: 20.20% of EN-WP biographies are about women (2,088,533 biographies; 421,901 women) Other ways to participate: Becomea member. You can alwaysopt-out of notifications. Join the conversations onour talkpage. Help usplan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media:Instagram|Pinterest

--Rosiestep (talk)18:30, 29 September 2025 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

No, I did not proxy for Drbogdan, please strike your good faith aspersion. Wondering why you even put that in a post without checking with me first. Thanks.Randy Kryn (talk)13:46, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your contributions to discussions consistently cut through the noise to offer useful insight, I know that I can always trust your judgement. You're always putting in amazing work to make this project the best that it can be. I'm delighted when your name appears in my watchlist or notifications, there needs to be more admins like you.

Taffer😊💬_(she/they)16:13, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, a goat! Thank you , I love them! And, yee gods, could you imagine if there wereany admins like me? WIkipedia would be broken, lol.GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋03:59, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh! Today is the day I learned that youre not an admin!^LaffyTaffer💬(she/they)04:45, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we both need to apply forWikipedia:WikiPrincess status. The next step after that isabsolute monarch, right?;-)WhatamIdoing (talk)02:48, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

!!!! Yes, absolute monarchy isexactly the job I'm going for! Fancy staging a coup at AN/I next week?GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋07:59, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm busy next week. Maybe after the holidays? It'sso hard to schedule things...WhatamIdoing (talk)17:29, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, GreenLipstickLesbian. This message concerns theArticles for Creation submission ordraft page you started, "French's Index of Differential Diagnosis".

Drafts that go unedited for six months are eligible for deletion, in accordance with ourdraftspace policy, and this one has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simplyedit the submission, and remove the{{db-afc}},{{db-draft}}, or{{db-g13}} code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you read this, you canrequest its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the draft so you can continue to work on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia!DreamRimmer bot II (talk)20:27, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, GreenLipstickLesbian. It has been over six months since you last edited theArticles for Creation submission ordraft page you started, "Key Topics in Otolaryngology".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material, the draft has been deleted. When you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you canrequest its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing.Liz^Read!Talk!03:51, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi GreenLipstickLesbian,N. D. Williams was created in 2006, the earliest version ofhttps://www.peepaltreepress.com/authors/nd-williams on the internet archive is2021 do you have a reason to think this was not copied from Wikipedia rather than copied from the source?KylieTastic (talk)13:03, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@KylieTastic Oh, I was wondering if anybody would ask me about these! NtheP (being their usual, brilliant self) looks like they've handled this page specifically, but for future reference, these Guyana revdels I'm requesting are forContributor copyright investigations/20210206. The editor copy pasted a lot of material from a variety of web (possible print, too) sources, especially author descriptions fromPeepal Tree Press; that in particular was documented here[1], back in 2011. Peepal Tree Press updated their website organization sometimes in the 20 years, which is why the URLs are all new, but I'm confident that the text is all older.[2] I hope that's a good enough answer!GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋18:43, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I do recognise your name and assumed you were correct - just always worth a check as none of us are immune to the odd error. Keep up the good work. CheersKylieTastic (talk)19:08, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@KylieTastic No worries, thanks you for making sure! Though if you see my name and assume correct, well, obviously you don't know me enough lol.GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋20:00, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'd love to chat with you privately since you said you knew Balin. The tools on my talk page include how to email me, but I don't see that I can email you. Is it possible?YoPienso (talk)19:59, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Love the fact that you don't take your self too seriously on here.Jp33442 (talk)12:04, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, trust me, I'll fully capable ofdonning a skintight superhero outfit and scaling German government buildings over the most minor issues ever. LOL. Thank you for the kind words, though!GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋06:41, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your welcome and GLL if that ever happens with german government buildings, hope it's on the BBC:)Jp33442 (talk)14:59, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi GreenLipstickLesbian,

Thank you for removing the Copyrighted material which I had added to those pages. I did not know that I was violating Wikipedia guidelines and policies. From now on I will paraphrase everything and quote only small sections.

Thank you again and have a Good Day.Oceanbed347 (talk)14:11, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

	The Resilient Barnstar
	I was reviewing for promotionAlex the Great (rabbit) when you promoted it. 👏Earth605talk06:28, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, thank you for putting in the effort to review AfC articles like this, and doing all the much too-overlooked stuff like dealing with incoming links[3] <3GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋06:40, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So stumbled across you while fixing unknown params onFalls City Sacred Heart Catholic School. Literally just wanted to say awesome username! Keep up the good work finding copyvios. --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing})17:57, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Haha, thank you! My high school self was much too pleased with the wordplay of it :)GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋06:01, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since you only wanna talk about one particular template it is probably best to do that here. The other discussion was allegedly about all Article message templates. What is on your mind?Polygnotus (talk)20:59, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Polygnotus Yay, I have no word limits on my talkpage! :) To answer the first point, I don't actually think the discussion was about all article templates in general- well, it's somewhat presented like that, but it is about the more aesthetic/technical templates; sorry if this isn't the most political way of saying it, the ones that many people find annoying.

If we were to divide all the maintenance templates into a few categories, then I think we'd sort of end up going like

1. Disclaimer template: Ex:{{Close paraphrase}},{{COI}},{{NPOV}},{{AI}} - broad in scope, they serve much more as disclaimers as they do a maintenance template. Important; they let the reader know that the article likely has serious flaws (or is controversial), and get solved when somebody rewrites these
2. Notability/sigcov templates - Wikipedia insider template, sort of serve as indirect disclaimer to the reader that the article has issues, but mostly seem to be assigned as a way to let the author know that somebody thinks the article should be sent to AfD. They're very much not like the other categories.
3. Specific disclaimer:{{citation needed}} is the most well known one, but there's also stuff like{{unreliable source inline}} or{{Copyedit section}}. These serve equal parts as maintenance templates as they do warnings about specific claims. I think these are the ones that people tend to find by reading the article, and are possibly the best for new editorabduction recruitment. They're small, easy to fix (especially if you're reading the article because you know something about the subject), and the Wikipedia newcomer onboarding software sends newbies to them.
4. Gnoming templates/categories: stuff that I think people tend to fix by going through the maintinence categories.{{Undercat}},{{Duplicated references}} (sorry!) for template generated ones, thenCategory:Harv and Sfn no-target errors orCategory:CS1 errors: generic name for ones that don't have an associated, reader-facing template. Which isn't to say that other people don't trawl the maintinence categories given by other templates (See here!) or that people don't fix them as they see them on articles they're reading[4] - but if you're not somebody who likes doing that kind of maintenance, or knows how to, then tags like these can be very annoying to scroll past. (Again, sorry!) You're not on the article to fix it, you're on it to read it - and stuff like duplicated references in particular is very much an not an issue if you're on visual editor. And, even when you're in source editor... it's a bit annoying to have duplicated references, but it's a matter of reducing clutter, not "we will accidentally give people misinformation if this tag is not fixed".

The VP discussion is about the templates I'd personally put in the last category. They introduce a lot of visual clutter, you can't fix them if you're not "in the know", and I find that people who are "in the know" tend to go a littlexkcd:2501 on people who have no idea what <ref === : """ words {{{{{squiggles|maths?||a=mx+b|more squiggles{}ERRORS YOU BROKE WIKIPEDIA DEATH TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY <ref> means. (I say this with a certain degree of self-deprecation, being one of those people). That being said, I do understand that people do find value in those - so I genuinely still don't get why putting very non-critical templates in an area where the gnomers are already going to be looking (at the bottom of the page), where they're still fully visible to people, isn't preferable to not having them at all. The people interested in making references prettier shouldn't be deterred by scrolling down to look at the references; the people who want to read the article, not scroll past yet another banner are happy. Because, right now, putting a giant banner on the article that will stick around for months because there's two references to the same citation is like cordoning off an entire street because the grass on the sidewalk has died: do it occasionally and people will just ignore you, do it too often and people just start either ignoring the cordons or writing overly broad rules to stop cordoning the streets off for anything less than a sinkhole.

I know you think the other person isn't listening to you or thinking thinks through, but there's a lot more, objectively much more urgent issues likeCategory:Harv and Sfn no-target errors (which include articles that have citations which point to nothing!) that have been relegated to invisible categories that, not only do you have to log in to see, but you have to log in and install a script to see! If you don't go for the compromise solution, then that will happen to ones like duplicate citations, or incoming links. Maybe not today - but it will.Banner blindness is something that a lot of people care about, and as much as editor recruitment is important, the only argument I can find that you've made against moving the template to the bottom isHaving some problems that are relatively easy to fix mentioned near the top of the articles is often the only thing that can convert someone from a reader to an editor. Which, for this specific class of template, relies on a few assumptions:

1. that they're easy to fix (and yet highly read articles likeHouston keep the tag for months, and they're impossible to fix on Visual Editor)
2. that the readers interested in fixing that sort of issue won't scroll down far enough to see the tag (I disagree with this one)
3. that the number of editors we gain from these tags is high enough to justify the cost of having them (to which I've provided evidence that the people fixing these tags are, overall, not newbies).

GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋22:10, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I saw your comment about trying to make a script - how careful is that going to be about different access dates? Especially in breaking news stories, I've seen people cite the same article at different points, and because real life facts have changed, so has the article! Merging the refs means you need to manually check every single statement cited to the source is verified by the version cited. Similarly, if the tag gets too outdated, then the reference numbering system breaks - so if you say that ref 5 and ref 10 are identical in June, then by October ref 6 might be identical to ref 27. So it misleads newer editors.GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋22:38, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's impossible to react to so much without posting a giant wall of text so here we go:

So apparently there was a Duplicated citations template on the articleTurkey. Bogazicili did not have the DuplicatedReferences script installed which could've saved them some time but they manually fixed it.

Then there were a bunch of questions that were skipped like: Did I extrapolate from a single data point and create a problem in my head? Do I understand the scale of the alleged problem? Do I understand its impact and frequency relative to other problems? Do I understand the context and background and the reason(s) why things are the way they are?There's an ugly banner on a ugly website filled with unsourced claims, spam, and misinformation. Am I sure I understand the alleged problem well enough to be so sure that this is a problem that needs urgent attention? Am I wasting someone's time, or is addressing this issue actually a priority right now? Did I think of all possible fixes? For example, one could say "if the article has more than x pageviews in the last 30 days, do not add the template but explain to the user". Or if there is only a small amount of popular articles with the template, maybe just figure out what those are and deal with those?

Thing is, topics like these get complicated fast, and it is easy to get stuck in the weeds. Note that while I have made one or two edits, I am more a reader than an editor. I readfar more than I edit.

I think the first step is realizing what people areactually objecting to. The banners. What aspects are they objecting to? That they are big and that they are ugly. So why is it an ugly banner. Does it have to be? No, it is 2025 and we can make it look and act however we want, on a technical level. Does it have to be big? No, we can make it any size and make it collapse and expand on demand. Does it have to be ugly? No, some people just decided to make the article message boxes more uniform and this look was the result. Downside is that "design" in 2025 means using a lot of whitespace, which made the banners big.

I don't think the problem is this particular banner since its very rare and there are 354 templates inCategory:Article message templates. How many of those do you think we actually need? Some of those are in tens of thousands of articles. So while complaining about that one particular template may not really be in proportion to how big that alleged problem actually is, it is completely possible that the underlying complaint: "these banners are big and ugly" and even "these banners get shown to people who don't need to see them" is valid.

Compare this:

This articlecontains one or more duplicated citations. The reason given is: In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. It is recommended to usenamed references to consolidate citations that are used multiple times. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

with this:

This articlecontains one or more duplicated citations.Fix it now! The reason given is: In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

If you for example look at:Template:Armenian script needed

compared to

This section of abiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "GreenLipstickLesbian" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Do you prefer

This articlecites Wikipedia (or sources that take information from Wikipedia) in acircular manner. Please helpimprove this article byrepairing any insufficient attribution if necessary and adding citations toreliable sources. Unsourced or poorly sourced material may be challenged andremoved. Find sources: "GreenLipstickLesbian" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This articleusesbare URLs, which are uninformative and vulnerable tolink rot. Please consider converting them tofull citations to ensure the article remainsverifiable and maintains a consistent citation style.Several templates and tools are available to assist in formatting, such asreFill (documentation) andCitation bot (documentation). (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The examples and perspective in this articlemay not represent aworldwide view of the subject. You mayimprove this article, discuss the issue on thetalk page, orcreate a new article, as appropriate. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

or

I can't find the link but I swear I have seen a discussion where a small group of people decided "ok this is how we want them to look". That doesn't mean theyhave to look that way forever. Almost all problems exist because no one has fixed them yet. Very few problemshave to exist and will always exist.

I think it was newer thanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Article_message_boxes but I don't remember much about it.

We can easily halve the size of each of those 354 templates and their many thousands transclusions without losing important information. And we can combine multiple templates that are currently three lines each into a single-line template that can expand if you click on it.

I hate JavaScript, but I am pretty sure basically all devices that visit Wikipedia run Javascript. So why are we using horrible workarounds like the{{multiple issues}} template? Because the community controls what is on the page, but the WMF controls the rest of the website.

People spend an insane amount of time adding and removing all these templates, and debating them and all that. But they could be simply a set of checkboxes. And they could expand and collapse on demand. And something like{{multiple issues}} could be fully automated. And we could have a system where we experiment and track (e.g. what if we make the banners smaller, what if we collapse em by default (how many people expand them? does it take longer to fix the problem?), we could A/B test the messages and see how our readers interpret them. But the main obstacle is is that all that requires the WMF.

We need new people, and giving them a simple task on a banner near the top of an article that is low stakes may be a good idea to convert them from reader to editor. Just like theWP:NEWCOMERTASKS. We don't have the numbers to prove or disprove that, because that again requires the WMF.

Category 1 from your list is insanely controversial and wars have been fought over it. I don't want to do a blow-by-blow here, but please look atWikipedia:No disclaimers. It might be worth consideringshowing a stable version or perhaps even hiding an article from view when it is tagged as AI/POV etc.

Category 2: if they are intended for the author of the article, then they should be sent to their talkpage. In my opinion they are not just for the author or authors but also for those who happen to stumble upon them.

Category 4:that I think people tend to fix by going through the maintinence categories...{{Duplicated references}} Ha! I wish! No that would truly be awesome but in reality no one does that.if you're not somebody who likes doing that kind of maintenance, or knows how to, then tags like these can be very annoying to scroll past. And that is the underlying problem, so why don't we fix that, for all article messages instead of just one? If it is annoying to scroll past such messages, or read them when you are not the intended audience, why don't we have a dedicated place for them, and a bit of JavaScript so that they can be expanded if someone wants to see them in their full glory?

The people interested in making references prettier The problem is usually not just duplicated citations. In my experience when you start looking at one thing you see three other more important problems.

The VP discussion is about the templates I'd personally put in the last category. Maybe, it got a bit confusing at some point.

so I genuinely still don't get why putting very non-critical templates in an area where the gnomers are already going to be looking (at the bottom of the page) Because that makes no sense? I put the table generated by the script under the References section header. If you want to put the message in the most relevant place it would be below the References section header. But again, some people decided that this is the way it should be, and we haven't figured out a new system since then.

What we must avoid doing is trying to figure out our preferences for a single template, and make an exception for it. It makes more sense to say: "these amboxes are relevant to the references section so we stick em under the References section header". But if we do that we are missing the opportunity to actually fix this problem in a far more definitive way. Some JavaScript nerd can easily write some code that displays those article message boxes based on preference, or if you are logged-in or not, or whatever else we want.

I know you think the other person isn't listening to you or thinking thinks through When I was young all problems were easy, but all my solutions were sledgehammers. Now that I am officially ossified I know that a quick fix is the source of a headache tomorrow.

more urgent issues like Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors (which include articles that have citations which point to nothing!) that have been relegated to invisible categories that, not only do you have to log in to see, but you have to log in and install a script to see! Yeah that is a great example of something we do NOT want. But you don'tnecessarily needa script, just some CSS is fine.Help:CS1_errors#Controlling_error_message_display

they're impossible to fix on Visual Editor Have you noticed that the VisualEditor... ehm.. you know... sucks? I do not understand why it is still such a mess in 2025.

The parameter|removalnotice= says (Learn how and when to remove this message) not "help fix this problem!". So of course newbies don't see it as an invitation to actually help fix the problem. There is no call to action.

The solution is not moving or removing an particular article message box, the solution is rewriting MediaWiki to differentiate between metadata and data, and since that won't happen, the solution is to use sub-referencing, have a bot that auto-deduplicates based on the dumps, have a script that autodeduplicates, and maybe have a bot that follows the eventstream.

Also, I saw your comment about trying to make a script - how careful is that going to be about different access dates? That is not necessarily relevant anymore once sub-referencing as a feature is introduced here, because you would be able to re-use the same ref with a new accessdate. InUser:Polygnotus/DuplicateReferences.js around line 280 you see that "live" pages get filtered out. If you look atUser:Polygnotus/GLL you'll see that we already have a form of sub-referencing (a hacky workaround, like everything else on this website).https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Sub-referencing#wikitext

You guys got me defending the status quo as if I like it. In reality that template was created before I was born, and article message amboxes styling was decided without me. But the ad hoc creation of a new bad idea to fix a old bad idea is not the way forward. The very worst thing we can do is slap a band-aid on it with another ad hoc work-around "solution" that causes more trouble down the line. Do you not see how the entirety of MediaWiki is created like that?

Template:Improve categories shouldnever be at the bottom of articles, and theidiot personresponsible for that idea should be sent to jail (sorry not sorry). Have some compassion with the nerds who have to deal withMOS:ORDERproblems! This is a great example of someone thinking they got a great solution, and inventing something horrible.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time" can be our unofficial motto. I have some things to do so consider this part 1 of 475.Polygnotus (talk)04:56, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note also that thereal problem is that this ispushed by the DEEP STATE to censor discourse. Where is your tinfoil hat at?Polygnotus (talk)12:04, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My tinfoil hat is in my room will wear it later:)Jp33442 (talk)12:25, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They know! THEY KNOW IT ALL!!! THEY CAN HEAR MY BRAIN TALK!!!1!!21!!Polygnotus (talk)12:27, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

shall respond to rest of this later, aka my brain is too tired to people rn, but first and most important things first - how's life working for the deep state? Can you censor anything you like or are you just limited to political stuff? Do they provide health insurance? asking for a friend. And even though I haven't yet responded to part 1, I anxiously await parts 2 through 475. Sincerely,GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋07:42, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't "work" for them; they control my every action! Make sure you usethis style, because theantennas amplify the beams!Polygnotus (talk)13:46, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Polygnotus but.... what if the antennas are fashionable? Look at my username - I've got to live up to it! And my heels and dresses won't go with anything too flat :(

Firstly, sorry for late response - I have social anxiety so people coming to my talkpage makes me scared, and for some reason I only remember that my talkpage exists late at night, when I should be sleeping, so I'll respond to this in bits and pieces.

Firstly, wall of text away! I consider "bludgeoning" to be a slur against those of us who explain our ideas thoroughly... or maybe I'm just recovering from my highschool Spanish teacher making us write a minimum of ten to twelve sentences per paragraph if we wanted a chance of passing LOL. (Seriously, I loved that man, but he made me write two essays a week. BLAME HIM NOT ME!)

Subreferencing: Okay, wow, I *love* that. I don't quite get what it is, but anything that allows me to stop caring about access dates is lovely, maybe it's all the CCI I do, but I've learnt to be incredibly careful about checking the source on the day it was accessed, preferably at the time.

Re - our templates saying "learn how to remove" instead of "when to remove" - genuinely, if we could make the change to link a help page saying how to fix the problem, that would be wonderful. Feel free to canvass me to any discussions re:implementing it. I remember being so terrified when I was a newbie, that I'd mess something up and it would break forever... we need to be much more encouraging of new editors coming into fix stuff - but I think some the hostility is by design. Actually, mild tangent alert -David Mitchell has this really good bit onWILTY where he says that, essentiallyin order to save the lives of reckless children, warnings are calibrated to their safety. The result of which is that the timurous live in a state of perpetual terror.[5] And I think this applies to all our newbie/reader facing stuff! We're so used to overenthusiastic newbies, or COI editors, or what have you, that we calibrate everything at them. But the average Wikipedian just needs to be told "click save, somebody will revert you if you break something" (and, in turn, quite a few people need to be told "let the babies make mistakes, revert if you have to but don't rush to block them!"... sometimes my internal monologue gets a bit more colourful than that, occasionally I write out one-womanL'esprit de l'escalier-esque plays but wait no I'm still on a tangent, back to the main point!

MOS:ORDER - but I'm scared of the MOS, can't I just go back to pretending it doesn't exist? I'll nerd out over plagiarism and the creative commons licensing requirements until the cows come home, but ahhh MOS - honestly though, I do have to admit I kind of like categories one being at the bottom. It's less scary for newbies! Big giant tags at the top are scary, small ones lower down feel friendly! I do see where you're coming from though - I mean, I disagree, but I do understand.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time" - yes, our official motto. I shall join you at the barricades tomorrow as we graffiti it over the current logo.

"If you want to put the message in the most relevant place it would be below the References section header" Yes, I would genuinely support this! I know that's not what I was meant to be taking from it but... I think we need more reference clutter tags. Because then maybe people might fix issues like "these two references are the same" or "these references merged because people thought they were the same actually might be of two different editions of the same book" or "these references are all not in English, but there's ample English referencing available - replace them" - basically, stuff that doesn't feel like it justifies the large scary tag, but stuff that I would like to track to maybe eventually get around to fixing someday.'

Re- idealism about clearing maintience categories - oh goodness, don't speak to me about overlarge maintience categories that need more love! My most edited template isTemplate:CCIlist. There's stuff from 2011 we need to get through! 2011! That's older thanTemplate:Duplicated citations! More seriously, no I completely get what you're going for there - our maintinence cats do not get enough love. I think that's because it's easier to tag an issue than it is to solve it... which, to a certain extent, I'm okay with. I likeWP:SOLVE, I think it's got a good perspective - but, conversely, too many tags and they become a)demoralizing to some people ("urgh, if everything is broken why should i even bother fixing this one thing..." or we accidentallyProp 65 our articles. (The rice noodles I ate today are known to cause cancer in the state of California! After a lifetime of seeing that label though, do I bother to get different rice noodles? No! So, similarly, if all our articles have multiple tags on top, do I, as a reader, read all of them to see what the matter is? No, I just skip them! Should I? No!)

I'm tired and feeling myself grow more and more squirrel like, don't know how much you've picked up on that. Further response incoming, within the next two business weeks, so now's a wonderful time toWP:RTV and save yourself from me and/or the deepstate. (joke!! You're not allowed to run away, muah ha ha ha )GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋06:40, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, you can usetoolforge:yabbr to fix these. — Qwerfjkltalk11:48, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Two weeks ago, the 2025Developing Countries WikiContest came to a close! After three months of stiff competition at the top of the leaderboard, we have our winners.vigilantcosmicpenguin (submissions), continuing his work on coveringabortion in Africa, comes in third with 692 points.simongraham (submissions) comes in second with 763 points, largely from a slew of good articles aboutjumping spiders. And returning to the podium for the second year in a row,BeanieFan11 (submissions) takes the Gold Belt Buckle with a mind-boggling 946 points from his series of articles on sportpersons. Congratulations to our winners!

Amazingly, the award for the most countries covered goes to bothBeanieFan11 (submissions) andsimongraham (submissions), who each submitted articles under 30 flags!BeanieFan11 (submissions) also wins for writing the most quality articles (16 good articles). For submitting 16 articles related to El Salvador,PizzaKing13 (submissions) wins the award for most submissions under one country. The award for most submissions related to women goes to bothSpookyaki (submissions) (7 biographies about women) andvigilantcosmicpenguin (submissions) (21 related articles). And for the second year,simongraham (submissions) wins for the most reviews, having submitted 21!

Among the participants' contributions were 2 FAs, 5 FLs, 124 GAs, and an uncounted number of DYKs, ITNs, and reviews of every kind! Regardless of your level of participation, every contestant can be proud to have contributed towards a major step in countering thesystemic bias on Wikipedia. Every year, millions of readers and editors around the globe use Wikipedia to educate themselves and communicate with others about parts of the world that often receive less attention than they deserve. Thank you for participating with us in the contest and contributing to this effort. The DCWC will return next year, and we look forward to seeing you contribute again! However, before that...

We need your feedback! Join the conversation onthe talk page to discuss your reflections on the contest (even if you didn't participate!) and help us make it better.

If you have any questions, please leave a message on thecontest talk page or ask one of the coordinators:Arconning (talk ·contribs),sawyer777 (talk ·contribs), orTechnoSquirrel69 (talk ·contribs).(To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself fromthis list.) Sent viaMediaWiki message delivery (talk)—TechnoSquirrel69(sigh)16:43, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Totally idle curiosity - what were theafter school specials? Am assuming this is a TV soapie reference but am wondering what the relevant moral was that relates to this situation. In passing, it was always amazing how TV soaps could fit a couple of character arcs and a heart-warming lesson into 22 minutes. --Euryalus (talk)|

Hi GLL, I've just given youpagemover so that we don't have to clean up after your draftifications. Hope you don't mind, and please don't break anything too hard.Toadspike[Talk]19:49, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Toadspike Got it, so now's my chance to moveBull to andChina shop... (orChina Shop?) More seriously, thank you! I promise to only use this right for draftifications and moving pages in my own userspace. If any admin thinks I've broken that rule or broken anything, they're free to pull the right and know I won't complain. :)GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋20:22, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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