User talk:John of Reading

This is John of Reading's talk page, where you can send him messages and comments.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28: 21 days

Pakistan utility-bill sites

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)[reply]

@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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

@DMacks: Special:Diff/1274292426. Yet another domain. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:24, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@DMacks: An interesting development - these two edits spammed "pakbill.pk", one we've met already, and added links to two apparently genuine news items (Pakistan Observer, 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)[reply]

"c.f."

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)? 1234qwer 1234qwer 4 02:24, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@1234qwer1234qwer4: Yes, I'll put that on my to-do list. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:49, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@1234qwer1234qwer4: In progress. I'm searching for both uppercase and lowercase "c" and lowercase "f". There are plenty of false positives:

A few music articles use it as an abbreviation of cantus firmus (eg at Clavier-Übung III#Textual and musical plan)
In many Roman history articles it means "son/daughter of Gaius" (eg Horatia gens)
In dozens of biology articles it abbreviates the first two words of a three-part species name (eg Celeus flavescens)
As part of "loc. st. c. f.", it can turn up in articles about ~~Moldavia~~ Moldova (qv Communes of Moldova#Notes)

-- John of Reading (talk) 17:52, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Auto Archiving Again

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

Happy Birthday!

@Randompersonediting: Thank you! -- John of Reading (talk) 06:16, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Birthday!

Here's to you on your birthday, John of Reading! From the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day!--DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 16:50, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@DaniloDaysOfOurLives: Thank you! Yes, the day went well. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:09, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kelantan_FA

article has multiple grammar/styling errors and copypasting parts, try to fix please 93.143.100.30 (talk) 16:18, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I will read it through once the article history has stabilised. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:25, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]