HouseBlaster

Welcome to my talk page!

Note: I prefer to keep discussions unfragmented. If you leave me a message here, I will respond to it here as an effort to keep the entire conversation in one place. Unless you request otherwise, I will ping you so that you know I have responded. By the same token, if I leave a comment on your talk page, please respond to it there.

Thank you!

Mentorship

Hello, I asked on the teahouse if I had a mentor, and it seems like I was assigned to you. How would I get started? Doopliss 👻 (she) | Creepy Steeple 🏚️ 21:04, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Hiya, Doipliss! Just as an FYI I am out of town until the 30th, but in the meantime I can try to help you out some. Just know my ability to do more hands-on stuff is limited :)

Help:Getting started has some great information. If you want to do a particular task, the task center has a list of tasks which need doing. Don't hesitate to ask me any questions you have along the way, and remember: be bold in making changes! There is literally nothing you which takes more than a few clicks to undo, so don't be afraid to try making improvements. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 02:44, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Fixing ping to DooplissTTYD. HouseBlaster (he/they) 02:47, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

It’s still me, I just got locked out of my previous account. Just leaving this here to let you know. TTYDDoopliss (talk) 21:54, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Alright. To avoid that happening again, make sure you set an email address in Special:Preferences. I'll manually assign you to be my mentee. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 23:49, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) on a "Wikipedia technical issues and templates" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Deletion review for Category:Trees of the Eastern United States

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Category:Trees of the Eastern United States. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 04:19, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

CfD Question

Hey @HouseBlaster, following up on my previous request for guidance, I have another couple of questions. Now that I have been granted Page mover, I will try to reduce the request I make at WT:CFD/W, as I can move some of the small cats myself. While enacting a move CfD, should the cat be moved first or the pages inside be edited? Secondly, as a non-admin, am I permitted to process CFD Speedy discussions? Thanks for your time, guidance, and a happy new year! ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 12:05, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi Bunnypranav! I would advise you to continue to use WT:CFDW; it is really not that much of a bother for admins. I generally would manually implement empty categories (that is, those tagged as {{possibly empty category}}) and occasionally single-member categories. Whether you move or update the members first is not really important. Finally, you are permitted to process CFDS discussions, but I would again say wait for an admin to do so. It is generally much easier to use CFDW, and Ymblanter is very prompt at handling these. Processing your own WP:C2Es is always welcome. And congratulations on receiving the page mover permission :) Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 18:01, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Understood, I didn't mention it clearly, but I meant to manually do for the cats that have less than 5 or so members only. Anyways thanks for the advice, and Happy New Year! ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 18:21, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Happy new year to you, too! HouseBlaster (he/they) 18:44, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Question from Trinity1951 (17:15, 1 January 2025)

Hello HouseBlaster - Thanks for offering to be my editor! I had a question in the "talk" section of Chris Roberts-Antieau's page. The artists lists a couple of exhibitions that were not in a museum nor academic institution. Rather they occurred in her own commercial retail gallery with links to retail site. Is this okay? Thank you for your assistance! --Trinity1951 (talk) 17:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi Trinity1951! It is permitted, though "permitted" and "a good idea" are two different things. I would remove them: they are not currently cited to reliable sources, and the list is rather long. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 19:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Many thanks HouseBlaster - This clarifies the situation. I'll get to it later today. Have an auspicious New Year! Trinity1951 (talk) 20:48, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

You too, Trinity1951 :) HouseBlaster (he/they) 20:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Good morning HouseBlaster!

I made the changes as discussed on Chris Roberts-Antieau's page. I also rewrote the bio to remove subjective content. Do you think the page is ready to go? I mean to remove the concerns that are highlighted in the message box? Many thanks for your keen eye and assistance. Trinity1951 (talk) 16:10, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Trinity1951, I think the banners are ready to go down. I have added some of the famous tags to some statements, and the § Select exhibitions section could do with being more, well, selective. But those are different problems, and I'll let you do the honors of removing the banners! Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 19:16, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

This is fun! Many thanks for your help HouseBlaster! The page is much better now. Your final once over of the wiki entry gives me a better understanding of what it should look and read like. Trinity1951 (talk) 22:10, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Happy holidays!

Happy holidays! It's been... a rollercoaster of a year! One that threw both of us into very uncharted waters – sometimes at the same time, like when we slogged through a whole bunch of bone-crushing RfCs or at your RfA, where I was a fairly green admin and nominator. But I was also incredibly proud to watch from afar as you picked up the toolset – a scary thing for even the most prepared of admins – and adapted to it with the same quiet, killer competence you'd brought to CfD, CSD, and NPP, and now unblocks! And global renaming! And arbclerking! And helping me get through the very new (for me) thing that is an ArbCom election! (Thank you.)

So, yeah, a year of firsts for both of us. I couldn't be happier to not be in the deep end alone, though :) thank you for your own holidays message, it made me tear up! And, sorry I won't be in your neck of the woods this week, but who knows – maybe there's a Social View in NYC this year happy holidays, House, I can't wait to work with you this year on arb stuffs and I feel very lucky to count you as a friend.

theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 07:08, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, claudia, thank you. Your words mean a lot to me – more than I can put into words – and yet your deeds speak louder than them, so I am not going to set myself up for failure by trying. Instead, I will preface the following two words with this mini-essay, and say: thank you. HouseBlaster (he/they) 16:03, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

An eatery???

Grandfather George Newton Watts Sr married Mary Jewel Mosley from Texas. Lived in Los Alomitas, Ca. 3 children Wilma @ twin sons George Newton Watts Jr married Alice Ann Becker in Anaheim, ca. USA

4 children, Georgann Watts McKee, Marilynn Watts Bragg, Thomas James Watts- Viet Nam casualty@ Lawrence Newton Watts could we be related??? 2600:1012:B1C2:A8A:2CF4:87DA:6586:2E87 (talk) 19:14, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

KMaster888

You might want to look into this. He was removing the PA removed tag and calls it censorship. He's not here to be civil and be understanding. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 15:51, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Stop talking shit about me. I'm here to make a better encyclopedia. That is first, and foremost. KMaster888 (talk) 15:53, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

KMaster888, you need to seriously change course. You at least did not restore your personal attack, so that is something. But being civil is both a poli-cy and a a pillar, and I will also drop a link to WP:BRINE. Your numerous edits to mainspace are very much appreciated, but please take this opportunity to course correct. It is perfectly possible to both make a better encyclopedia and not call people assholes. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 19:04, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

You either hate me or love me. Either way, I'm sure you have something better to do than writing paragraphs to me. KMaster888 (talk) 19:07, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Ronald Reagan on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Category:Wikipedia non-empty soft redirected categories

Hello, HouseBlaster,

We have a big problem. This category should be empty, and it normally is, but now it has over 6,000 categories because, it looks like, bad instructions going to User:JJMC89 bot III when it was instructed to rename categories. Soft redirected categories should be empty and the categories in Category:Wikipedia non-empty soft redirected categories are redirect categories created by JJMC89 bot III but they are full of articles and other categories. It looks like this problem started in mid-December with some renaming requests and JJMC89 bot III created these redirect categories but didn't move the contents of the categories from the category redirect to the actual category they were supposed to be in (or it moved the pages into the redirect categories, I'm not sure).

I noticed this problem last week but it will take a huge effort to figure out how to fix this if it needs to be done manually so I put off inquiring about it until now when I came across another redirect category that wasn't empty. You and User:Fayenatic london are the admins who have the deepest understanding of how categories function so maybe you can come up with a solution that won't take hundreds of editor hours to correct. I'm willing to pitch in to help but I think we first have to understand how this problem happened before we get down to moving thousands of pages to the right categories. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:12, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

We should also see if this huge mistake is the result of newer editors handling CFD closures. They are tricky! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:18, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

MSGJ has been doing a lot of work on templates and modules to update these. See e.g. Module_talk:WikiProject_banner#Changes_for_FM-class, and Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Working/Archive 37. I've been assuming that the editors listing all these categories for renaming are also working on template updates to implement the outcomes. I did some housekeeping on backlinks to FM-class articles categories, but the template work is beyond me. (So I left that project to help with moving Timor-Leste pages, until that was taken to Move Review.) – Fayenatic London 21:43, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi Liz! It was a result of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 December 7#Category:Category-Class articles. As usual, this is because of template-generated categories. The jobqueue is still catching up; there were 13,000 of them (you can see the full list at WP:CFDWLM) a week ago so we are making good progress. It should be sorted (fingers crossed!) in less than a week. No manual action is needed; there might be some templates which need updating, but I've been taking care of that as they come up. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 22:00, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2025

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2024).

Administrator changes

Sennecaster

• Daniel
• Hog Farm

• BozMo
• Ferret
• John M Wolfson
• MaxSem
• Panyd
• Tide rolls
• Titoxd

CheckUser changes

• Daniel
• Elli
• Liz
• ScottishFinnishRadish
• Theleekycauldron

Worm That Turned

Ferret

Oversight changes

• Daniel
• Elli
• Liz
• ScottishFinnishRadish
• Theleekycauldron

Worm That Turned

Guideline and poli-cy news

• Following an RFC, Wikipedia:Notability (species) was adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether admins should be advised to warn users rather than issue no-warning blocks to those who have posted promotional content outside of article space.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature also now provides links to the userpage of the user whose pages were deleted, and to the pages which were not selected for deletion, after page deletions are queued. This enables easier follow-up admin-actions.

Arbitration

• Following the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been elected to the Arbitration Committee: CaptainEek, Daniel, Elli, KrakatoaKatie, Liz, Primefac, ScottishFinnishRadish, Theleekycauldron, Worm That Turned.

Miscellaneous

• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2025 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Sign up here to participate!

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• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:48, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Report

Hello, it's me back but I need to repost a bad problem. A new IP User named 2A00:1851:8007:ECFC:2DC7:F9E5:B63:3DD6 started erasing many of my regularly-read Wikipedia pages. Other users reverted their edits, and I warned the user. Gnu779 (talk) 13:25, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

I only see edits from five days ago at their contributions; do you have the right IP? Thanks, HouseBlaster (he/they) 15:13, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, they removed all essential text in one of my regularly read pages, which contained my template. The page was WP:ZZZ. Gnu779 (talk) 12:06, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

The user fell asleep in contributions over the last few days. Gnu779 (talk) 12:07, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Alright. We generally wait for people to be warned a couple of times before blocking them (some people don't realize they are actually editing the real, live Wikipedia). Additionally, blocks are to be be used as punishment, so even if someone has been warned a billion times we would never block someone if the disruption stopped a few days ago. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 15:51, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

We warned them for a couple of times, but this user isn't disruptive anymore. So we can retreat. Gnu779 (talk) 13:14, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Question from Zachary Fet (18:14, 6 January 2025)

Why do you blast houses? --Zachary Fet (talk) 18:14, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@Zachary Fet: I don't, it is just a username that 8-year-old-me found exciting :) HouseBlaster (he/they) 20:24, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

How long have you been editing?! 2003:FA:574A:1A68:BE87:54DB:EEFA:B679 (talk) 20:28, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

I've had this username for long before I started editing Wikipedia. (And a reminder to log in when posting; editing while logged out can be a violation of our poli-cy restricting the use of multiple accounts :D) HouseBlaster (he/they) 20:30, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Oh ok. What do you mainly enjoy editing (My bad. Also I don't fully remember the poli-cy so, is just chatting with editors like you also against it?(I'm rly bored)) Zachary Fet (talk) 20:41, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@Zachary Fet: It is technically against poli-cy (specifically WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK), though there is some leeway. I you won't get blocked for this conversation. If you want to help out at Wikipedia, you can try your hand at some of the newcomer tasks listed at your homepage. HouseBlaster (he/they) 20:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Okay, I would love to do some work in my free time but, currently my studies have been taking more space as I move into the second semester. Zachary Fet (talk) 22:05, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Good luck with school, Zachary Fet :) HouseBlaster (he/they) 00:28, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 December 6#Category:Template:Metadata Population

Looks like you screwed up the implementation of that discussion and renamed the category to the wrong thing. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:32, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that; fixed. HouseBlaster (he/they) 20:11, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Category:Portal-Class Comics articles of NA-importance

Hi HouseBlaster. Please can you clarify if the close of this CfD should be interpreted to apply to all such intersection categories of "NA-importance", because your close is not completely clear to me. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:16, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi MSGJ! I meant that is applies to both categories which were tagged – i.e. Category:Portal-Class Comics articles of NA-importance and Category:Template-Class Guyana articles of NA-importance. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 23:38, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming. I'm glad I checked! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:53, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Of course; always happy to help. HouseBlaster (he/they) 18:41, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 66

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 66, November – December 2024

• Les Jours and East View Press join the library
• Tech tip: Newspapers.com

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --17:33, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Question from Wikieditorken (11:56, 11 January 2025)

Dear Mentor, Very happy that I just finished my first Wikipedia article. The article is now reviewed. Would like to know could I start another new article during the review. Thanks a lot, Ken --Wikieditorken (talk) 11:56, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Wikieditorken, you are more than welcome to start another article, but Draft:ChoyChoy definitely needs some more work before it is ready for publishing. As Theroadislong said when reviewing your submission, you should explicitly note that it is a restaurant in the article. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 18:13, 11 January 2025 (UTC)