User talk:ToBeFree

Please click here to add a new message!

^{To add this button to your own talk page, you can use {{User new message large}}. It can easily be modified: Colorful examples are provided on the "Template:User new message large" page.}

Please note that you are currently not logged in.

This is not a general problem – you can leave a message anyway, but your IP address might change during the discussion, and I might end up talking to a wall. Creating an account does not require an e-mail address; all you need is a password and a name. You are not required to do this, but please consider creating an account before starting long-term interactions with other users. Thank you very much in advance.

Problematic editing from an apparent repeat offender...

Please see their talk page with blocks and their recent edits. And those edit summaries... Shearonink (talk) 13:09, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi Shearonink, thank you for the notification – 331dot was faster and has blocked for three months. 🙂 Please let me know if it continues. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:27, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Stop Vandalism in the Don Pramudwinai

Hello, I need some help with this. Due to the article Don Pramudwinai there is Vandalism by deleting the position of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs by IP. I tried to get him to stop making unconstructive edits. But there's no sign of stopping. Can you help with Protection? Preime TH (talk) 13:45, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello Preime TH, thanks for asking. This doesn't appear to be bad-faith editing / vandalism but instead a dispute with a long history of an IP-address-hopping editor edit warring against everyone else including other unregistered editors. I have semi-protected the page for a year now, but I'm surprised that the article's talk page is empty. Could you please create a discussion about whether "Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs" is a position that should be included in the infobox? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:23, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice. Preime TH (talk) 15:02, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I went to the discussion page for Don Pramudwinai article, but I can't post a thread. Preime TH (talk) 15:07, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Preime TH, simply click "Add topic" at the top of Talk:Don Pramudwinai. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:16, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I pressed into Talk:Don Pramudwinai, there were no buttons. There's only emptiness. Preime TH (talk) 15:23, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

OK, I found it because I edited it from my mobile phone. Preime TH (talk) 15:33, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:12, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-20

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [1]
• If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [2]
• Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [3]
• The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [4]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [5][6]
• The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [7]

Future changes

• In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [8]
• Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
  1. Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
  2. Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
  • See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [9][10]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Linux question

Hi ToBeFree!

I just wanted to ask you this question since you seem to be a Linux user, what distro do you use at home and what's your favourite?

Currently I'm on Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 22H2; however, I am growing frustrated and tired of modern-day Microsoft Windows and am looking to learn and switch to Linux as my main OS some time in the near distant future. I hope to start contributing to Wikipedia from there one day.

Note, this is not a request for help or anything, just wondering what distro you use, that's all! I'm probably going to start with using Linux Mint and go from there. — AP 499D25 (talk) 14:04, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi AP 499D25, that's cool, thanks for asking!

I assume Windows 11 is not an option and/or the desire to switch is because of Windows 11? I like my Kubuntu for being Windows-like and could normally recommend it to new Linux users for the same reason, but if you'd like to try something different, a regular Ubuntu installation may be interesting. I haven't tried Linux Mint, but the main reason for its existence, to my knowledge, is how different Ubuntu's (Gnome's) default design became from Windows. People unhappy about the design changes created a new environment named Cinnamon that, as far as I understand, remains more Windows-like by design.

All of these (Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Linux Mint) run from an USB stick without installation and can be tried before choosing. And if there's software bundled with one distribution that you would like to use on another, you can simply install the same package using apt on the command line or using synaptic as a universal graphical tool that works on all Debian-based distributions.

Best regards,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:26, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I see. Well, I kind of dislike present-day Windows 10 for a number of reasons (e.g. nagware popups, lack of control over updates), but as for Windows 11 I have never actually used it besides just a little bit on other PCs. Though I've heard about some pretty bad things about it such as bugs, slowdowns and apparently they are adding advertisements to the start menu. It's also not just that I don't like Windows but also that I am interested in and willing to learn another family of operating systems now after numerous years of having used various Windows as well as Mac OS X releases. I want to learn something new.

Though the main reason why I was looking into Linux as of late, was because my desktop's had a bit of a major slowdown issue with web browser programs; it was hurting my productivity quite a lot, with webpages taking several minutes to load instead of the seconds they would normally take. I couldn't easily determine what it was, as there weren't any unusual high resource usages when it happened. But funny enough, it seems to have resolved itself now after a windows update and restart.

Either way, I'm probably gonna move to Linux around when Windows 10 support ends. I do know about live boot and have actually tried out Linux Mint on live boot USB and in virtual machines many years ago before, it's pretty cool you can try it out before installing.

Much appreciated!

Kind regards, — AP 499D25 (talk) 10:42, 15 May 2024 (UTC)