User talk:DMacks
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Erich Clar page
[edit]I want to include a synthetic reaction that is known as Clar's reaction. It is of a certain class of cyclic ketones that condense with themselves when heated to 400 C in a mixture of zinc dust and zinc chloride.

I will add references and a description of what it is used for in synthesizing new polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Randomness WP:TRYUNPROT
[edit]It has been 15 years since Randomness has been indefinitely semi protected. Given its low pageview count of 150, I think it is about time for another trial unprotection. dualcerbtalk 13:45, 16 October 2026 (UTC)
- Let's do the experiment! Unprotected. DMacks (talk) 20:51, 16 October 2026 (UTC)
- Also found these 4 articles that also were protected over a decade ago and can be trial unprotected
- Just Dance 2016, Internet begging, First Flight High School, Central Board of Secondary Education, also Just Dance 2019 can get its PC removed. dualcerbtalk 21:23, 16 October 2026 (UTC)
- Just Dance 2016 done. Just Dance 2019 PC is by User:Samsara who seems to have left WP, so I'll do that one also. Although I had done several protections of First Flight High School over the years, the one currently in effect is by User:Kudpung. Let's get their thoughts. I don't support unprotecting Internet begging because Google tells me people still use this term related to WP, and especially the Foundation's annual fundraising banners trigger this sort of edit on several pages every year. DMacks (talk) 04:00, 17 October 2026 (UTC)
- First Flight High School was getting masses of junk edits at the time I protected it in 2013 and already had an impressive protiction log. I would be inclined to leave it protected but I will not argue if someone wans to unprotect it, but it is no longer on my watch list and I will not be be able to protect it again. As lead coord of the WP:WPSCH, we won't know either. It's not something we go looking for unless someone reports it to the project. Strictly speaking, First Flight High School wouldn't pass NPP under today's GNG for schools (a plethora of sources ≠ notability) and would probably not survive an AfD. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:30, 17 October 2026 (UTC)
- I stepped First Flight down to PC1. It's now got a {{notability}} tag (thanks User:Issac I Navarro!), so maybe someone will jump in and find some RS and notability claims. Or, I do agree that at least as it stands it does not meet current threshold for a standalone article. DMacks (talk) 11:32, 21 October 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ping, I wasn't aware of this thread. I will see if I can find a couple sources. Issac I Navarro (talk) 14:25, 21 October 2026 (UTC)
- I stepped First Flight down to PC1. It's now got a {{notability}} tag (thanks User:Issac I Navarro!), so maybe someone will jump in and find some RS and notability claims. Or, I do agree that at least as it stands it does not meet current threshold for a standalone article. DMacks (talk) 11:32, 21 October 2026 (UTC)
- Recent history at Begging and the talkpages of that and Internet begging support that protection of Internet begging is still warranted. DMacks (talk) 11:29, 21 October 2026 (UTC)
- First Flight High School was getting masses of junk edits at the time I protected it in 2013 and already had an impressive protiction log. I would be inclined to leave it protected but I will not argue if someone wans to unprotect it, but it is no longer on my watch list and I will not be be able to protect it again. As lead coord of the WP:WPSCH, we won't know either. It's not something we go looking for unless someone reports it to the project. Strictly speaking, First Flight High School wouldn't pass NPP under today's GNG for schools (a plethora of sources ≠ notability) and would probably not survive an AfD. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:30, 17 October 2026 (UTC)
- Just Dance 2016 done. Just Dance 2019 PC is by User:Samsara who seems to have left WP, so I'll do that one also. Although I had done several protections of First Flight High School over the years, the one currently in effect is by User:Kudpung. Let's get their thoughts. I don't support unprotecting Internet begging because Google tells me people still use this term related to WP, and especially the Foundation's annual fundraising banners trigger this sort of edit on several pages every year. DMacks (talk) 04:00, 17 October 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-43
[edit]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
- To measure the impact of incorporating some community-requested features on logged-out reader retention, a test for Image Carousel will be pushed to logged-out readers. With the Image Carousel feature, readers browse community-uploaded images, selected by editors as relevant to specific articles. The test starts on November 20.
- An experimental notice will be pushed to 0.5% of logged-out mobile readers who come to English Wikipedia from Google, asking them to add Wikipedia as a Google Preferred Source. The test is to see if this notice increases reader retention and encourages people who use Google Search to visit Wikipedia more often. It will run from October 15–29 and will be assessed for its impact on retention and referrals.
View all 26 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where Quarry returned an “Access denied” error when users tried to run SQL queries, preventing queries from running normally, has now been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
Due to a long-standing bug, applications that use the OAuth 2 client credentials flow to act on their owners’ behalf are treated as if they are logged out. This will be fixed for new applications registered on or after Monday, October 19. Some affected applications need to re-register.
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- A proposal to hold the Wikimedia Hackathon every three years, with regional hackathons in between, has been shared. It explores making the event more accessible to technical communities in different regions. Share your feedback on the proposal’s talk page before November 6.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Degradation
[edit]I note your revert of my attempts to disambiguate the links to Degradation. Are any of the other links on the dab page a better fit?— Rod talk 15:10, 20 October 2026 (UTC)
Tech News: 2026-44
[edit]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
- An experiment launched on September 29 is testing article recommendations for new account holders who also identify as readers. By suggesting articles to read, similar to recommendations in the Wikipedia app for logged-in readers, the experiment aims to encourage new account holders to read and return to the website regularly, with the goal of increasing internal referrals by 1%. See the related Community Wishlist proposal.
- Several Wikimedia services were taken offline last week because of a security vulnerability in PHP. This is because they need to be updated before they are safe to put back online. This is not a problem just for the Wikimedia movement but affects a lot of websites. You can follow updates on Wikitech. Cloud VPS and Toolforge will take longer to bring back online. This is to make sure that applications which run on Cloud VPS or Toolforge are not affected. Tool developers can see updates and more information on the Cloud-announce mailing list.
- Last week we shared that to measure the impact of incorporating some community-requested features on logged-out reader retention, a test for the Image Carousel feature would be pushed to logged-out readers. Due to an issue, we will be restarting the test, but it will be live on October 26, not November 20 as initially announced.
Updates for editors
- A new bot detection system to better identify automated traffic that disguises itself as human visitors, is coming to the Wikimedia wikis. This might cause sudden changes to visitor statistics starting from 26 October, going back to 20 June 2026.
- The Score extension which renders musical notation inside wiki pages, has been temporarily disabled on all wikis due to a security issue. Affected pages will display a notice instead of musical scores, but the underlying code remains intact. No action is needed from editors, and a fix is in progress. A separate announcement will follow when the extension is re-enabled. Read more on Phabricator.
View all 18 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the issue where CodeMirror syntax highlighter appears to have been enabled in error for existing editors has been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday, October 28 2026 at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests, which happen twice a year. During the switchover, all Wikimedia website traffic is shifted from one primary data center to the backup data center to test availability and prevent service disruption even in emergencies.
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- Scholarship and sponsorship applications for the 2027 Wikimedia Hackathon will close on Friday, October 30th. Submit your application through Pretix before the deadline!
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Guidance requested against vandalism
[edit]Hello, hope your doing well! So Im a small time page editor and have edited the page sitara brooj akbar in the past (Im not the creator of the page, it was originally made in 2011, though I regularly maintain it), currently it is going under vandalism by a user bookishreader who I dont want to ping here, he has regularly removed the sources/sections of the page for no reason only to then propose for a decade old page to be deleted due to "lack of recognition" after removing the recognition himself, he then further went ahead to accuse me of having a COI to stop me from editing. I saw you were recently online and thought to get help from you on how to handle this situation. Thank you in advance! FestusBashara (talk) 18:42, 31 October 2026 (UTC)
- Hi FestusBashara,
- That sounds frustrating! Sometimes it can be hard to take the usual first step of talking directly to someone with whom you have a dispute. I see at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sitara Brooj Akbar at least both of you have made comments, so that's not a bad alternative to have both of your positions stated in a more neutral location.
- Now that the article is undergoing an AFD, that discussion is the place to make a case for notability of this person. Looking a the comments from various editors there, it's clear that they can easily see the specific changes bookishreader made and how the aricle has evolved over time. I agree that it looks poor to remove content and then AFD for lack of tha type of content. But they also did comment on the problem with the specific content, based on normal WP guidelines. Now whether they are correct about that action remains to be seen, and AFD will help decide it.
- Could you point me to the COI accusation? I am having trouble finding it. DMacks (talk) 19:11, 31 October 2026 (UTC)
- Hello, thank you for your response. He had accused me of the COI on my talk page, I honestly have no issues with the page being deleted, I just don't want him to first vandalize it to mislead reviewers. Thank you for your help! FestusBashara (talk) 19:17, 31 October 2026 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for November 1
[edit]An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Loch Raven Reservoir, a link pointing to the disambiguation page Lake Clifton was added.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 05:59, 1 November 2026 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – November 2026
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2026).

- Following an RfC, election to ArbCom now requires at least 60% support. Successful candidates normally serve two-year terms, with one-year terms retained for filling vacancies. Proposals to change the election rules may now be added throughout the year and discussed on the talk page; formal discussion remains in September.
- Following an RfC, first-time reviewers’ reviews require an experienced reviewer’s check, and GA requirements now include alt text and accessible tables. Featured articles may receive GA status during removal discussions if they meet GA criteria. Backlog drives will run every five months, with a points leaderboard and awards for the top five participants.
- Self-nominations for the Arbitration Committee are open until 11 November 2026.
- Ongoing backlog drives: Copy editing, Unreference articles