User talk:John of Reading#Always precious

Feel free to ping me...I'm defaulting to prompt multi-week blocks for any IPs and insta-indef for any accounts spamming them (examples: User:John of Reading/Spam links). DMacks (talk) 08:56, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

:{{Re|DMacks}} Yes, this has been going on for too long. I wonder if we could add esco\w{0,5}bil{0,5}\.pk\b to the spam blacklist? That would block all domains containing "esco" then "bil" and ending with ".pk". I'd have to run a big scan first to see if there are false positives. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:04, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

::I'd support that. Could feed it to XLinkBot first, to help track what's being caught. DMacks (talk) 09:16, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

:::I don't see any false matches in the most recent database dump. I scanned for \bhttps?://[^ ]*esco.{0,5}bil.{0.5}\.pk\b -- John of Reading (talk) 09:35, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

::::Clever way to check! DMacks (talk) 10:05, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

:::::Several of the links have "epco" not "esco", so I did another scan for those. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:42, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

{{od}}

:{{Ping|DMacks}} Special:Diff/1274292426. Yet another domain. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

:{{Ping|DMacks}} An interesting development - these two edits spammed "pakbill.pk", one we've met already, and added links to two apparently genuine news items ([https://pakobserver.net/lesco-bill-online-check-electricity-bill-online-for-november-2024/ Pakistan Observer], [https://arynews.tv/heres-how-to-download-lesco-bill-for-august-2024-online/amp/ ARY News]). Those talk about bill-checking via www.lesco.gov.pk, the official LESCO site. I expect the competing sites aren't too happy about that! Unfortunately www.lesco.gov.uk doesn't load for me in the UK. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:18, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

File:Tournesol.png Thanks for helping me. That Twinkle thing has been driving me nuts!! Rodney Baggins .talk. 16:56, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi John of Reading. I noticed your edit summary at Wikipedia:Database reports/Unbelievable life spans re the Gittings family. I think John Sterett Gittings should be changed to a disambiguation page and redirects should be created for each of the John Sterett Gittingses, (e.g. John Sterett Gittings (born 1798)) and the relevant year of birth/death categories should be applied to each of the redirects (and current links to John Sterett Gittings should be updated appropriately). What do you think? DH85868993 (talk) 00:06, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

:{{Re|DH85868993}} That would work for me! I looked round the redirect and disambiguation help pages without seeing anything relevant. Let's ping {{User|GreenC}} before making any change, though. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:42, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Honestly I was confused what to do in this situation. I agree with the solution it's good. -- GreenC 17:56, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

:{{Re|GreenC}} Let's see if I can do this correctly. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:02, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

::Oh I just created the dab page and was going to ask what you thought. -- GreenC 18:04, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

:::Oh, yes, over to you then. No problem! -- John of Reading (talk) 18:07, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

::::Invariably I always get something wrong with dab pages. I notice User:DH85868993 has the dab "(born 1798)" whereas I used "(1798-1879)". Otherwise it would look like:

::::*John Sterett Gittings (born 1798) (1798-1879), Baltimore banker

::::Might use

::::*John Sterett Gittings (banker) (1798-1879), Baltimore banker

::::But his grandson of the same name is also a banker. So I settled on the full birth-death as the disambiguation.

::::* John Sterett Gittings (1798-1879), Baltimore banker

::::-- GreenC 18:36, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

:::::{{Re|GreenC}} I've created the three redirects that were red links on the new dab page, and, hopefully, have correctly fixed all the articles that linked there. I hope that's all we need to do for now? -- John of Reading (talk) 18:41, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

::::::Looks OK, thanks. I'll work on updating the backlinks. -- GreenC 18:43, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

:::::::Oh you got that also, thanks much. -- GreenC 18:44, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

::::::::Great work, team! DH85868993 (talk) 20:41, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Special:Search/insource:/c\. ?f\./ gives at least 697 results for me and (barring some exceptions I might not know about) should actually say "cf."; would that be something that you could fix (or at least add to some config that you are using for your unrelated corrections)? 1234qwer1234qwer4 02:24, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

:{{Re|1234qwer1234qwer4}} Yes, I'll put that on my to-do list. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:49, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but my auto-archiving code is still not working. I changed the minthreadsleft to: minthreadsleft = 0 Can you please take a look at it and see what's wrong? Thank you. Talk:Aesthetic_Realism 98.109.41.177 (talk) 00:10, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

:I've made yet another tweak to the archiving parameters, and will keep an eye on it. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:30, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

::Thank you. It worked! Lore E. Mariano (talk) 23:06, 15 March 2025 (UTC)