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RfArb

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Pending Changes RfC close and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

Thanks,16:29, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

SA forgeries

Hi. Could you point me to diffs talking about these so-called IRC forgeries by SkepticalAnonymous. That would help me understand what you are taking about. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 19:40, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

The relevant diffs have been oversighted (not by me), actually, due to their potentially-libelous nature. It was essentially an unblock request alleging that I had I had said exceptionally horrible, abusive things to him on IRC, to the point where if such a thing were associated with my real name it could have had real-world consequences. Needless to say, that IRC exchange never actually happened. If this becomes an arbcom issue I can provide the diff in question, as well as refer arbcom to a number of other admins who have been treated similarly, but as far as discussing it on talk pages right now, that is all the information I'm able to provide. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:02, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
So you're not saying there exists any forgeries of any IRC logs, but rather that this user interpreted comments made in IRC differently than another user? Viriditas (talk) 00:19, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
No, I'm saying that he literally wrote an IRC log from scratch and proffered it as "real" in an unblock request. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:31, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
That's odd behavior. Did he add timestamps, server names, and all the other elements? Could anyone tell it was fake? Did it look real? What was his motivation? Viriditas (talk) 01:01, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
As I've already said, I'm not providing details of this behavior here. They're available to arbcom if necessary. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 01:04, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
Do you think SA and the IP are the same person based on the use of IRC logs in disputes? Is it your opinion that no such secret IRC channel exists? Viriditas (talk) 01:14, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
It is my opinion that checkuser-confirmed socks are usually socks. It is also my opinion that I am not a checkuser, nor do I have a crystal ball. I have no way of knowing whether the alleged channel exists, and I'm not sure I care all that much, considering I'm not involved with Wikiproject Conservatism. Now, I've provided you with all the detail I'm willing to about the "falsified logs" issue. I would suggest you pursue the matter of IRC/wikiproject conspiracies, etc, to a body that can actually do something about it if they exist. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 01:26, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
That's an odd response. I'm not pursuing any such thing nor all that interested. What I was asking for was your personal opinion on the matter, an opinion you already shared in part on ANI. Viriditas (talk) 01:34, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
Viriditas, I've just noted this on AN, but the logs ArbCom received were independently reviewed by myself and another arbitrator. We both very quickly came to the conclusion that the logs were very blatantly faked. In addition to the issues we noted, which I won't note here for the same reason we don't usually detail a sockpuppeteer's "tells" at SPI, Demiurge also noted further inconsistencies with the logs when he sent them to us. Some of these obvious errors are consistent with the faked log entry Fluffernutter refers to in the oversighted diff. Please stop this line of questioning, as it is not serving any useful purpose except to lend credence to these obviously false claims. Hersfold (t/a/c) 02:29, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
Only problem, Hersfold, is I have not, at any time, lent "credence" to these claims. I didn't even participate in the ANI discussion until I was drawn into it when Arthur Rubin threatened to block me as a proxy to a sock. As I said then, "there is no indication of authenticity". Thanks for proving I was correct. Viriditas (talk) 02:57, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 August 2012

Wikimedia editors have been debating a community proposal for the adoption of a new project to host free travel-guide content. The debate reached a new stage when a three-month request for comment on Meta came to an end, with a decision to set up the first new type of Wikimedia project in half a decade. The original proposal for the travel guide unfolded during April on Meta and the Wikimedia-l mailing lists, centring around the wish of volunteer contributors to the WikiTravel project to work in a non-commercial environment.
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee and republished as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
Developers were left one step closer to an understanding of the code review outlook this week after the creation of a graph plotting "number changesets awaiting review" over time. The chart, which also shows the number of new changesets created on a daily basis, reveals a peak in the number of unreviewed changesets in mid-July, followed by a short drop. The current figure stands at approximately 219 unreviewed changesets.
This week the Signpost interviews Mark Arsten, who has written or contributed significantly to ten featured articles; most have related to new religious movements, and some have touched on other controversial or quirky topics. Mark gives us a rundown on how he keeps neutral and what drives him to write featured content; he also gives some hints for aspiring writers.
This week, we hopped in a little blue box with a batch of companions from WikiProject Doctor Who. Started in April 2005, the project has grown to include about 4,000 pages about the world's longest-running science fiction television show, its spinoffs, and various related material. The project is the parent of the Torchwood Taskforce and a child of WikiProject British TV and WikiProject Science Fiction. With new Doctor Who episodes airing this week and a 50th anniversary celebration around the corner, we thought now would be a good time to inquire about the famed Time Lord.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia.

The Ken Sibanda thing

Hey there. Just to let you know, though you've probably already taken it as read, I don't consider you to be a sock!

It's very rare that I undo a salting protection on an article, but clearly the circumstances in this one were that it had been through AfC and so I considered that it was a reasonable request and that you would have done it yourself. I try to look for reasons why it was protected in the first place and might there be information that I wasn't aware of that means it should still be protected. In this case it seemed a cut-and-dried reason why you salted it in the first place, and that those concerns had been addressed by it having been through AfC.

Anyway, hope this addresses any concerns you had with my unprotection. GedUK  07:33, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I think this is actually a weakness inherent in AfC - that there's nowhere to really note the previous history of an article. If there had been information available to an admin who looked at the AfC regarding its persistent sneaky recreation over more than a year, or a way to note that I and other reviewers had already analysed the sources on the AfC submission and found them to be unreliable, or a way to note that I had previously declined to unsalt the article title for this AfC draft due to the sourcing/notability issues, etc, you would presumably have made a different decision. However, since AfC has no concrete guidelines, and no "note-taking" space, so to speak, you were sort of adrift - there's no realistic way to trawl through a combination of my contribs, the submitter's contribs, and other reviewers' contribs and come up with a coherent picture of what's gone on regarding the article. I personally feel that the poor sourcing and lack of asserted notability of the AfC draft ought to have been enough for any attentive reviewer to fail it, but everyone who does AfC does it differently, and we all pass and fail according to different mental criteria. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:10, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, that's a very valid point. Basically, with your knowledge you wouldn't have unprotected it, and I second guessed you (because, as you rightly said there's no sensible way to check through everything). Basically, it's a lesson learned for me to continue to refer people requesting unprotection to the protector even in AfC circumstances, as I do for just about every other request! GedUK  11:47, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

GOCE September activities

Reminders from the Guild of Copy Editors

A quick reminder of our current events:

  • The August 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is in the discussion and voting stage until midnight September 14 (UTC).
  • The September 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is in the submissions stage until midnight September 30 (UTC), when discussion and voting begin.
  • The September 2012 Backlog elimination drive is now underway! The event runs until midnight September 30 (UTC). The goal is to copy edit articles with the oldest tags and complete all requests placed before September. Barnstars will be awarded to anyone who participates, with special awards given to the top five in the following categories: "Total articles", "Total words", "Total articles over 5,000 words", "Total articles tagged longest ago", and "Longest article". – Your drive coordinators: Stfg, Allens, and Torchiest.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Message delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 04:15, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Fluffernutter. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 15:37, 1 September 2012 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Shirt58 (talk) 15:37, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Fluffernutter. Best outcome of the situation.--Shirt58 (talk) 13:30, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 September 2012

Some of Wikimedia's most valuable photographs have been shot and uploaded under free licenses as a direct result of the annual Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) event each September. Last year, the project was conducted on a European level, resulting in the submission of an extraordinary 168,208 free images of cultural heritage sites ("monuments") from 18 countries, making it the world's largest photographic competition. Organising the 2012 event—which has just opened and will run for the full month of September—has required input from chapters and volunteers in 35 countries.
Developers are currently discussing the possibility of a MediaWiki Foundation to oversee those aspects of MediaWiki development that relate to non-Wikimedia wikis. The proposal was generated after a discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list about generalising Wikimedia's CentralAuth system.
Five featured pictures were promoted this week, including a video explaining the recent landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. NASA called the final minutes of the complicated landing procedure "the seven minutes of terror".
Since May 2012 I've been a Wikimedia Foundation community fellow with the task of researching and improving dispute resolution on English Wikipedia. Surveying members of the community has revealed much about their thoughts on and experiences with dispute resolution. I've analysed processes to determine their use and effectiveness, and have presented ideas that I hope will improve the future of dispute resolution.

The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)

Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.

Steven Zhang's Fellowship Slideshow

In this issue:

  • Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
  • Research: The most recent DR data
  • Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
  • Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
  • DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
  • Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
  • Proposal: It's time to close the Geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard. Agree or disagree?

--The Olive Branch 19:03, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

One question added after your vote

Thanks much for voting. When we put the RfC together, one thing we were all agreed on was that it should run a week, so that it didn't take too much time away from more central questions ... but we decided not to put that in the RfC, I think because we didn't want to force a cutoff in the middle of a good debate. At this point, I've added that question, if you'd like to vote on that one too. - Dank (push to talk) 15:12, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

So, let's talk about what we'd like to see happen in committee work and about "another argument", and other things if you like ... on-wiki, email and voice all work fine for me, whatever you like. - Dank (push to talk) 12:41, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Well, maybe that sounds ominous, I'll just start talking. I can't fault you too much ... your argument is similar to arguments I've made for years, typically at WT:RFA ... and btw, that's why I've been putting a lot of energy into PC. I know that that may be a little hard to swallow for the supporters at this point, because I'm definitely not neutral as long as the current version of PC/2 is on the table (though there are versions that are closer to PC/1 that I'd be fine with). Once that gets off the table, then I'm back to feeling strongly that it's mainly listening to the supporters (and to anyone else who has thoughts about what to to, as opposed to what dangers to avoid) that will get us where we need to go ... we've had about 5 years of "no, no, no" whenever the community tried to tackle big issues, and some of the PC supporters have kept hope alive that we might be able to break that cycle. (The opposers do however make good points about dangers which, at a minimum, will have to be monitored, and changes that may need to be made.)
Back to "another argument" ... I appreciate that it sounded like I was assuming the worst, and that's quite a persistent problem on Wikipedia ... our community is bright, but there's a tendency to have negative expectations that aren't always warranted. That was part of the reason I pushed to launch this RfC, btw (the main reason was that we simply needed a wider range of input) ... PC arguments have been a mess, and people had grown to assume the worst ... I thought there was a reasonable chance that people could do better now, and they have, and that's good for setting a tone and higher expectations, I think.
Having said that ... I don't understand where you're coming from. I run across Wikipedians pretty much every day who I know have a tendency to misbehave, and I don't even work the noticeboards; these guys must think there's some payoff to bad behavior, and they're smart people, so they're probably right ... maybe acting grouchy does succeed in driving away the people they'd rather not be dealing with ... but at the moment, I think they're mostly deluded, there's no consistent payoff for grouchiness that I can see. If grouchiness is going to lead to their opponents being demoted in some way on what their opponents regard as "their" articles, then we've just dramatically increased the payoff for being grouchy. (Of course, we haven't specified what PC/2 is or when it's applied yet ... so I'm assuming here that we're talking about a time when we have decided what triggers it, and what triggers it is some general misbehavior that's right up the alley of some of our more "determined" editors.) And that's just for good faith editors ... this is a tool intended as a defense against bad faith editors, so we have to consider them too. Other people have said they're aware of bad-faith editors deliberately trying to trigger protection ... I'm not, but I'm aware that it happens all the time that people deliberately act up knowing it will probably lead to some response, such as protection. And that's even when protection treats everyone the same ... anyone can edit a semi-protected page in 4 days (zero days in most cases), and no one can edit a full-protected page. If we start applying a form of protection that allows people to demote their non-reviewer "competition" (as they see it) at will ... well, I can't predict the future, but it sure does increase the payoff for bad behavior. - Dank (push to talk) 17:50, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I guess my point was that it's a very large leap with very little evidence to go from "Wikipedians are prone to misbehavior and grouchiness" to "Wikipedians, who are prone to grouchiness, will turn their grouchiness into a laser-target weapon and misuse a specific tool as a bloc in a specific way, in a manner that hasn't been observed previously." Yes, lots of Wikipedians are grouchy, and yes I suppose they do get something out of it (god knows what...). But I'm not onboard with us assuming that grouchiness is or leads directly to active, conspiratorial malice they way you seem to be assuming. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:28, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
I wasn't thinking about either malice or conspiracy (Yes, you'd need a conspiracy if it's hard for someone acting alone to escalate an ongoing conflict up to PC/2 ... but since we haven't decided yet what triggers PC/2, we don't know that. Certainly, some of the supporters are proposing PC/2 on pages with infrequent, intermittent problems. We'll have to see.) I'm content to drop the point for now, if it doesn't resonate for supporters; we've got more than enough to talk about. - Dank (push to talk) 18:30, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Alan Davey

Hi mate just noticed the Alan Davey page ongoings if you following this link you will see that Alan davey did infact claim to have become a muslim in 2001..... http://www.starfarer.net/adintv01.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by DANKO TUNESXX (talk • contribs) 17:23, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

The link you offer does not appear to be a reliable source. Even if it were, it does not support the accusations that were being made on the article until I protected it. Might I also ask if you're associated with any of the IPs or blocked users that have a history of inserting such content into that article? If so, you'll want to read our rules about multiple accounts. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:30, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation update

Hey all :). We've just deployed another set of features for Page Curation. They include flyouts from the icons in Special:NewPagesFeed, showing who reviewed an article and when, a listing of this in the "info" flyout, and a general re-jigging of the info flyout - we've also fixed the weird bug with page_titles_having_underscores_instead_of_spaces in messages sent to talkpages, and introduced CSD logging! As always, these features will need some work - but any feedback would be most welcome. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Okeyes (WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:07, September 10, 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 September 2012

Thanks to the initiative of Yuvi Panda and Notnarayan, the Signpost now has an Android app, free for download on Google Play. ... but would readers be interested in an iOS app for Apple devices?
Much like article content, the English Wikipedia's help pages have grown organically over the years. Although this has produced a great deal of useful documentation, with time many of the pages have become poorly maintained or have grown overwhelmingly complicated.
Philip Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, wrote an open letter in the New Yorker addressed to Wikipedia this week, alleging severe inaccuracies in the article on his The Human Stain (2000).
Three hip hop discographies were promoted this week, alongside seven other lists.
After a week's hiatus, the WikiProject Report returns with an interview featuring WikiProject Fungi. Started in March 2006, the project has grown to include over 9,000 pages, including 47 Featured Articles and 176 Good Articles. The project maintains a list of high priority missing articles and stubs that need expansion.
In dramatic events that came to light last week, two English Wikipedia volunteers—Doc James (James Heilman) and Wrh2 (Ryan Holliday)—are being sued in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Internet Brands, the owner of Wikitravel.com. Both Wikipedians have also been volunteer Wikitravel editors (and in Holliday's case, a volunteer administrator). IB's complaints focus on both editors' encouragement of their fellow Wikitravel volunteers to migrate to a proposed non-commercial travel guidance site that would be under the umbrella of the WMF.
In its September issue, the peer-reviewed journal First Monday published The readability of Wikipedia, reporting research which shows that the English Wikipedia is struggling to meet Flesch reading ease test criteria, while the Simple English Wikipedia has "lost its focus".
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for August 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project, phase 1 of which is edging its way towards its first deployment).
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia.

Deletion

The Obama quote that you deleted is around somewhere, because I read it, earlier. I think it needs including, rather than deleting. If you didn't like the source, or thought it was misquoted, how about you track down the quote, with a good reference?

Amandajm (talk) 18:57, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

According to the cited source, that quote came from either "the Romney campaign" or "the U.S. Embassy", depending on how you parse the document. In no reading is it attributed to Obama, so to attribute it to him in our article is indeed a factual error. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:01, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

WT:PC2012/RfC_1#Thanks, and Signpost

There will be a short story in this week's Signpost (and perhaps another next week, if there's a lot of feedback at that link and not much space in this week's "News and Notes"). Constructing the story will be a group effort, come join us! - Dank (push to talk) 15:30, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

P.S. I mention you in the section below that one. - Dank (push to talk) 16:28, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

GOCE mid-drive newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2012 backlog elimination drive mid-drive newsletter
  • Participation: Out of 37 people signed up for this drive so far, 19 have copy-edited at least one article, about the same as the last drive. If you've signed up but haven't yet copy-edited any articles, every bit helps; if you haven't signed up yet, it's not too late. Join us!
  • Progress report: We're almost on track to meet our targets for the drive. Great work, guys. We have reduced our target group of articles—August, September, and October 2011—by about 44%, and the overall backlog has been reduced by 58 articles so far, to around 2600 articles. The biggest difference between this drive and the previous one is a stronger focus on large articles, so total word counts are still comparable.
  • Don't forget about the Copy Edit of the Month contests! Voting for the August contest has been extended through the end of the month. You don't have to make a submission to vote!
>>> Sign up now <<<

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 21:59, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Question regarding reverts

Can I ask you a question regarding reverts? I'm not looking to make a report at the EW noticeboard, nor am I seeking any admin action (no blocks or warnings, please!) Instead, I'm seeking a technical interpretation on whether or not four particular edits constitute four reverts on a given article. Would that be copacetic, or would you rather not get involved in rendering such an opinion? Regards, AzureCitizen (talk) 00:06, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Azure. I'm pretty sure I know the case you're referring to, and since I have a definite opinion on that editor's habits, I'm not able to get involved in this. I'm going to see if I can get another admin to come by and help you out, stand by. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:10, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) I don't know what the case (non impediti ratione cogitationis), but keep in mind 3RR is only one form of edit warring. Certainly, four reverts in some fashion could be considered edit warring even if not passing the WP:3RR bar. tedder (talk) 00:15, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for popping in, tedder! Azure, tedder is also an admin and he should be able to give you some input if you want to give him the specifics of what's going on. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:25, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Roger that and thanks, Fluffernutter... Tedder, here are the four edits which I believe constitute four reverts: 1, 2, 3, and 4. This discussion is about clarifying that this really is four reverts instead of three, not an attempt to trigger some sort of admin action. Thanks and sorry for the trouble... Regards, AzureCitizen (talk) 00:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
That would qualify, barely, for 3RR. Specifically, this edit is certainly a revert no matter if titled as such, and this edit qualifies as wP:DUCK, if nothing else. Generally, it may be an indication of WP:TE/WP:OWN. tedder (talk) 00:44, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. So is it "barely 3RR" meaning three reverts total, or "barely 3RR" meaning it's four reverts total and hence "barely in excess" of the 3RR rule? AzureCitizen (talk)
"barely 3RR" meaning it's somewhere between 3 and 4 reverts, so "barely in excess". An argument could be made it's passing 3RR, but I wouldn't be surprised if a regular at the EW noticeboard rejected it. tedder (talk) 01:08, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Roger that... as mentioned above, no plans to take this to the EW noticeboard, the clarification has more to do with the editor asserting it's really three reverts (or that the fourth doesn't count, etc). I wanted to make sure I wasn't misconstruing the situation when I previously told him or her it was 4RR. Thanks for entertaining the discussion and rendering a candid outside opinion... Sincerely, AzureCitizen (talk) 01:17, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay, this is interesting. Just a few minutes ago, an IP editor did a drive-by revert of the text I inserted earlier today with the edit summary "Whatever happens doesn't matter because we're all dead in December. Mayans Rule!" I note that it's a word-for-word "undo" of my edit that appears several entries down in the list. Just a coincidence? AzureCitizen (talk) 01:30, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 September 2012

We now have a Facebook page at facebook.com/wikisignpost. We invite you to "like" the page and join the discussion there.
This week, we shine the spotlight on the Indian Cinema Task Force, a subproject that seeks to improve the quality and quantity of articles about Indian cinema. As a child of WikiProject Film and WikiProject India, the Indian Cinema Task Force shares a variety of templates, resources, and members with its parent projects. The task force works on a to-do list, maintains the Bollywood Portal, and ensures articles follow the film style guidelines. With Indian cinema celebrating its 100th year of existence in 2013, we asked Karthik Nadar (Karthikndr), Secret of success, Ankit Bhatt, Dwaipayan, and AnimeshKulkarni what is in store for the Indian Cinema Task Force.
Eight featured articles, six featured lists, ten featured pictures, and one featured topic were promoted this week.
The world's largest photo competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, is entering its final two weeks. The month-long event, of Dutch origin, is being held globally for the first time after the success of its European-level predecessor last year. During September 2011 more than 5000 volunteers from 18 countries took part and uploaded 168,208 free images. This year, volunteers and chapters from 35 countries around the world have organised the event. The best photographs will be determined by juries at the national and finally the global level.
1.20wmf12, the 12th release to Wikimedia wikis from the 1.20 branch, was deployed to its first wikis on September 17; if things go well, it will be deployed to all wikis by September 26. Its 200 or so changes – 111 to WMF-deployed extensions plus 98 to core MediaWiki code – include support for links with mixed-case protocols (e.g. Http://example.com) and the removal of the "No higher resolution available" message on the file description pages of SVG images.

Talkback

Hello, Fluffernutter. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Requests for permissions.
Message added 03:12, 23 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

FYI Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:12, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I think there are some translation issues there..."where the thus created" (appears a couple of times) doesn't make any sense. Ditto "passive Sichterrechte". I'm not sure what kind of input you're looking for there from me or others, but you'll probably get more of it if the translation is fully comprehensible. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:50, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
Not looking for input at all really. It's just there as a reference to how another Wiki does it. Considering I'm bilingual, lets not split hairs over the minor cognates ;) Personally, for a user right where their threshold is relatively low, I found it unnecessary complicated. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:14, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions clarification

Thank you for explaining to me your reasoning behind the restrictions imposed. While I largely agree with what you said, one thing was incorrect. You stated that the restrictions were "also making it harder for people to remove content that has prior consensus." In fact, they only address future additions to the article and make no such encumbrances on content removal. If the restrictions had also applied to long-standing material in an equitable manner, I would accept and support these restrictions. But they don't - they only inhibit article expansion. In any event, I have sought clarification here. Ankh.Morpork 21:23, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I've commented a little there. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:51, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation newsletter

Hey Fluffernutter. This will be, if not our final newsletter, one of the final ones :). After months of churning away at this project, our final version (apart from a few tweaks and bugfixes) is now live. Changes between this and the last release include deletion tag logging, a centralised log, and fixes to things like edit summaries.

Hopefully you like what we've done with the place; suggestions for future work on it, complaints and bugs to the usual address :). We'll be holding a couple of office hours sessions, which I hope you'll all attend. Many thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:03, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 September 2012

Oliver Keyes' (User:Ironholds) defense of Wikipedia against the recent Philip Roth controversy has drawn a significant amount of attention over the last week. The problems between Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, and Wikipedia arose from an open letter he penned for the American magazine New Yorker, and were covered by the Signpost two weeks ago. Keyes—who wrote the piece as a prominent Wikipedian but is also a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation—wrote a blog post on the topic, lamenting the factual errors in Roth's letter and criticizing the media for not investigating his claims: "[they took] Roth’s explanation as the truth and launched into a lengthy discussion of how we [Wikipedia] handle primary sourcing."
A paper to appear in a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist (summarized in the research index) sheds new light on the English Wikipedia's declining editor growth and retention trends. The paper describes how "several changes that the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have lead to a more restrictive environment for newcomers". The number of active Wikipedia editors has been declining since 2007 and research examining data up to September 2009 has shown that the root of the problem has been the declining retention of new editors. The authors show this decline is mainly due to a decline among desirable, good-faith newcomers, and point to three factors contributing to the increasingly "restrictive environment" they face.
This week, we tinkered with WikiProject Robotics. From the project's inception in December 2007, it has served as Wikipedia's hub for building and improving articles about robots and robotics, accumulating two Featured Articles and seven Good Articles along the way. The project covers both fictitious and real-life robots, the technology that powers them, and many of the brains behind the robotics field
In the second controversy to engulf Wikimedia UK in two months, its immediate past chair Roger Bamkin has resigned from the board of the chapter. The resignation last Wednesday followed a growing furore over the conflict of interest between two of Roger's roles outside the chapter and his close involvement in the UK board's decision-making process, including the access to private mailing lists that board members in all chapters need. But the irony surrounding Roger's resignation is its connection with efforts by Wikimedians and collaborators to strengthen the reach of Wikimedia projects through technical innovation.
Late last month, the "Technology report" included a story using code review backlog figures – the only code review figures then available – to construct a rough narrative about the average experience of code contributors. This week, we hope to go one better, by looking directly at code review wait times, and, in particular, median code review times
Fourteen featured articles were promoted this week, including Dodo, along with six featured lists and five featured pictures.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...

Shawshank Redemption

Darkwarriorblake and a host of other editors such as the "OldJacobite" feel they own the film articles and continually revert any real progress to film plots etc. I saw your dicussion on his page, please go to the Shawshank film talk page and see if you can add anything to the discussion, I tried to argue to include "sexual assault" and other edits to the plot etc but they effectively tag-team edit.ing and reverting. Thanks --JTBX (talk) 17:23, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, there's an extremely unpleasant ownership atmosphere going on on that article. Unfortunately, today I'm not really up to sallying forth to discuss the stuff that should be there but isn't with the people who want to make sure it stays not-there. Hopefully I'll have some more energy to look at the article again next week, but in the meantime you should remember that DR options like a content RFC or the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard exist to help with stuff like this. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:36, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pizza cheese

Arg - I've written about thirty responses to your comment, none of which I'm terribly happy with. Closing an XfD involves weighing both the strength of arguments and the strength of numbers; in the former case, the factual accuracy of the premises of the arguments must be considered, and arguments based on wrong premises cannot be given any significant weight; they're bad arguments. That they would be good arguments, if they were true, is neither here nor there. It's not a supervote - it's just the consequence of AfD not being a vote, either. Facts, policy, precedent matter. WilyD 18:10, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I suppose my point is basically that your close statement reads as "There were links to things people called sources, therefore merge voters are wrong". That leaves it looking like you closed more based on "if someone links to something they call a source, all non-keep votes are invalid." A close that said something more like, I don't know, "While arguments exist that some of these new sources are not about the topic at hand, the bulk of them do support the notability of 'pizza cheese', as pointed out by these other commenters" would be an explanation of how you reached your conclusion, whereas a close that reads closer to "NA1k presented sources and everyone else was just guessing" sort of comes off as if you didn't consider all the arguments, but just judged the sources on your own and reached a conclusion. What I'm basically asking is for you to explain what arguments you found to be "factually incorrect", so it's easier for the reader to see why you closed the way you closed. Doesn't have to be in huge detail or anything, but something other than "No, you're all wrong!" or "there were factual inaccuracies...somewhere...but I'm not saying where" would make it a lot easier to both understand and address the close. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:26, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Deletion review for Pizza cheese

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Pizza cheese. 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.

You are getting this notice because you commented on the result of the AfD at the closing admin's page pbp 19:44, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 October 2012

Does Wikipedia Pay? is a Signpost series seeking to illuminate paid editing, paid advocacy, for-profit Wikipedia consultants, editing public relations professionals, conflict of interest guidelines in practice, and the Wikipedians who work on these issues by speaking openly with the people involved. This week, a scandal centering around Roger Bamkin's work with Wikimedia UK and Gibraltarpedia erupted ... In light of these events, opinions on how to avoid future controversy are as important as ever. ... The Signpost spoke with Jimmy Wales to better understand how he views the paid editing environment and what he thinks is needed to improve it.
Following considerable online and media reportage on the Gibraltar controversy and a Signpost report last week, the Wikimedia UK chapter and the foundation published a joint statement on September 28: "To better understand the facts and details of these allegations and to ensure that governance arrangements commensurate with the standing of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia UK and the worldwide Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia UK's trustees and the Wikimedia Foundation will jointly appoint an independent expert advisor to objectively review both Wikimedia UK's governance arrangements and its handling of the conflict of interest."
Five articles, three lists, and nine images were promoted to "featured" this week.
The Toolserver is an external service hosting the hundreds of webpages and scripts (collectively known as "tools") that assist Wikimedia communities in dozens of mostly menial tasks. Few people think that it has been operating well recently; the problems, which include high database replication lag and periods of total downtime, have caused considerable disruption to the Toolserver's usual functions. Those functions are highly valued by many Wikimedia communities ... In 2011, the Foundation announced the creation of Wikimedia Labs, a much better funded project that among other things aimed to mimic the Toolserver's functionality by mid-2013. At the same time, Erik Möller, the WMF's director of engineering, announced that the Foundation would no longer be supporting the Toolserver financially, but would continue to provide the same in-kind support as it had done previously.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film series, we spent some time bonding with WikiProject James Bond. The project is in the unique position of having already pushed all of its primary content to Good and Featured status, including all of Ian Fleming's novels, short stories, and every film that has been released. Work has begun in earnest on the article Skyfall for the release of the new Bond film later this month. The project could still use help improving articles about Bond actors, characters, gadgets, music, video games, and related topics

GOCE September 2012 drive wrap-up

Guild of Copy Editors September 2012 backlog elimination drive wrap-up

Participation: Out of 41 people who signed up this drive, 28 copy-edited at least one article. Thanks to all who participated! Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Progress report: We achieved our primary goal of clearing July, August, September and October 2011 from the backlog. This means that, for the first time since the drives began, the backlog is less than a year. At least 677 tagged articles were copy edited, although 365 new ones were added during the month. The total backlog at the end of the month was 2341 articles, down from 8323 when we started out over two years ago. We completed all 54 requests outstanding before September 2012 as well as eight of those made in September.

Copy Edit of the Month: Voting is now over for the August 2012 competition, and prizes will be issued soon. The September 2012 contest is closed for submissions and open for voting. The October 2012 contest is now open for submissions. Everyone is welcome to submit entries and to vote.

– Your drive coordinators: Stfg, Allens, and Torchiest.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 23:36, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Are you coming to the meeting?

Are you coming to the meeting on the 15th? --Pine✉ 17:28, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

I plan to, why? A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:49, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
I was surprised that your name isn't on the signup sheet! Pine✉ 07:46, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's Collaborative

WikiWomen Unite!
Hi Fluffernutter! Women around the world who edit and contribute to Wikipedia are coming together to celebrate each other's work, support one another, and engage new women to also join in on the empowering experience of shaping the sum of all the world's knowledge - through the WikiWomen's Collaborative.

As a WikiWoman, we'd love to have you involved! You can do this by:

We can't wait to have you involved, and feel free to drop by our meta page (under construction) to see how else you can get involved!

Can't wait to have you involved! SarahStierch (talk) 00:59, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 October 2012

Wikipedia in education is far from a new idea: years of news stories, op-eds, and editorials have focused on the topic; and on Wikipedia itself, the Schools and universities projects page has existed in various forms since 2003. Over the next six years, the page was rarely developed, and when it did advance there was no clear goal in mind.
On this day five years ago, the WikiProject Report debuted as a new Signpost column with an overview of WikiProject Biography. Today, we're celebrating two milestone: five years of the WikiProject Report and the tenth birthday of our first featured project. WikiProject Biography is by far the largest WikiProject on Wikipedia, with over one million articles under the project's scope. As a comparison, WikiProject Biography is three times larger than Wikipedia's second largest project, and if WikiProject Biography were split into its 14 subprojects and work groups, it would still make the list of the 20 largest WikiProjects... four times.
This week the Signpost interviews Arsenikk, an editor of six years who has brought sixteen lists through our featured list process, mostly regarding transportation in Norway but also about the 1952 Winter Olympics and World Heritage Sites in Africa. Arsenikk tells us about why he joined the project, what moves him, and how editors can join the sometimes daunting world of featured lists.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for September 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project, phase 1 of which is edging its way towards its first deployment). Three of the seven headline items in the report have already been covered in the Signpost: problems with the corruption of several Gerrit (code) repositories, the introduction of widespread translation memory across Wikimedia wikis, and the launch of the "Page Curation" tool on the English Wikipedia, with development work on that project now winding down. The report also drew attention to the end of Google Summer of Code 2012, the deployment to the English Wikipedia of a new ePUB (electronic book) export feature, and improvements to the WLM app aimed at more serious photographers.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...

Pizza cheese merge discussion

There is a merge discussion in which you may wish to participate.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 21:40, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Burden analysis table

I don't know if you saw the link at the Signpost talk page, so I thought I'd let you know: Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Research/Spring 2012 burden analysis is the page where I'm building the burden analysis we discussed. Would you mind taking a look at some of the diffs I've posted there? I'd like to know if (a) the way I've set this up makes it easy for other to check my evaluation, and (b) if you agree with my evaluations so far. If I am not providing enough (or accurate enough) information, I'd like to fix that before I go much further.

I'll keep working on this as I have time. I plan to do as many as possible of the forty-one classes listed here. As you know, my own belief is that the burden, while not zero, is low enough that the quality of edits makes this a worthwhile trade, so I'll be interested to hear your thoughts as the analysis progresses on whether you see the data as supporting your view. I'd love to be able to change your mind! But let's wait and see what the data shows. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:37, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 October 2012

There is wide agreement among English Wikipedians that the administrator system is in some ways broken—but no consensus on how to fix it. Most suggestions have been relatively small in scope, and could at best produce small improvements. I would like to make a proposal to fundamentally restructure the administrator system, in a way that I believe would make it more effective and responsive. The proposal is to create an elected Administration Committee ("AdminCom") which would select, oversee, and deselect administrators.
This week saw a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal on editorial debates in Wikipedia. The story focused on the title-naming dispute surrounding the Beatles article, and specifically the RfC on whether the 'the' in the band's name should be capitalized or not.
On the English Wikipedia, five featured articles, ten featured lists, and four featured pictures were promoted, including USS Lexington, a ship built for the United States Navy that, although ordered in 1916 as a battlecruiser, was converted to an aircraft carrier. It was sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea during the Second World War.
The volunteer-led Wikimedia Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and interested community members are looking at Wikimedia organization applications worth about US$10.4 million out of the committee's first full year's operation, in just the inaugural round one of two that have been planned for the year with a planned budget of US$11.4M.
A trial of the first phase of Wikimedia Deutschland's "Wikidata" project–implementing the first ever interwiki repository—may soon get underway following the successful passage of much of its code through MediaWiki's review processes this week.
This week, we experimented with WikiProject Chemicals. Started in August 2004, WikiProject Chemicals has grown to include over 10,000 articles about chemical compounds. The project has a unique assessment system that omits C-class, Good, and Featured Articles. As a result, the project's 11 GAs and 9 FAs are treated as A-class articles. WikiProject Chemicals is a child of WikiProject Chemistry (interviewed in 2009) and a parent of WikiProject Polymers.

Page Curation newsletter - closing up!

Hey all :).

We're (very shortly) closing down this development cycle for Page Curation. It's genuinely been a pleasure to talk with you all and build software that is so close to my own heart, and also so effective. The current backlog is 9 days, and I've never seen it that low before.

However! Closing up shop does not mean not making any improvements. First-off, this is your last chance to give us a poke about unresolved bugs or report new ones on the talkpage. If something's going wrong, we want to know about it :). Second, we'll hopefully be taking another pass over the software next year. If you've got ideas for features Page Curation doesn't currently have, stick them here.

Again, it's been an honour. Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

GOCE fall newsletter

Fall Events from the Guild of Copy Editors

The Guild of Copy Editors invites you to participate in its events:

  • The October 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is currently in the submissions stage. Submit your best October copy edit there before the end of the month. Submissions end, and discussion and voting begin, on November 1 at 00:00 (UTC).
  • Voting is in progress for the September 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest. Everyone is welcome to vote, whether they have entered the contest or not.
  • NEW!! In the week from Sunday 21 October to Saturday 27 October, we are holding a Project Blitz, in which we will copy edit articles tagged with {{copyedit}} belonging to selected project(s). For the first blitz, we'll start with WikiProject Olympics and WikiProject Albums and add more Projects to the blitz as we clear them. The blitz works much like our bimonthly drives, but a bit simpler. Everyone is welcome to take part, and barnstars will be awarded.
  • November 2012 Backlog elimination drive is a month-long effort to reduce the size of the copy edit backlog. The drive begins on November 1 at 00:00 (UTC) and ends on November 30 at 23:59 (UTC). Our goals are to copy edit all articles tagged in 2011 and to complete all requests placed before the end of October. Barnstars will be awarded to anyone who copy edits at least one article, and special awards will be given to the top five in the following categories: "Number of articles", "Number of words", "Number of articles of over 5,000 words", "Number of articles tagged in 2011", and "Longest article". We hope to see you there! – Your drive coordinators: Stfg, Allens, and Torchiest.
>>> Blitz sign-up <<<         >>> Drive sign-up <<<

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Message delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 19:12, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Burden metric done

The analysis we discussed is done; you can see the results here. I can see you're busy, but I'd be very interested in your feedback, if you get a moment. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:13, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I need your urgent assistance

The Shawshank Redemption (film) is once again in flames. I tried to edit the plot and wrote on the talk page to reopen the discussion as it wasn't finalised. I personally believe that people who have watched the film and would structure the plot correctly with details weighed in accordance with Wikipedia plot policy should edit it, but darkwarriorblake is once again not having it, he refused to actually look at the plot's problems and simply reverts and warns me, then placed an edit war template on my page, naturally. As an admin, can you please weigh in on the talk page? Its pointless to even discuss with others like OldJacobite because they are of the same ownership flock, they come along, they see something here and there and hit revert, and support other reverters who do the same. I feel like I'm talking to myself on the page, what is the point of the discussion? What is the point of Wikipedia anymore if things like this can happen? Any help at all? Thanks for your time. --JTBX (talk) 15:34, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Talk:The_Shawshank_Redemption#Plot, his exact edits were broken down and refuted by three editors then and he's just waited a period of time and restored the exact same changes that were unnecessary and explained why then. Then he tells me to discuss it. Jesus. And he tries to dismiss other editors. You are talking to yourself JTBX because people didn't support the changes you were making, not out of a grand conspiracy against you. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 15:43, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I refuse to be bullied. Sorry. I waited because I had no other choice, none of you responded when I said I was leaving it open. It is frank from your behaviour that you simply wish to do what you please and to be left alone. Where did Masem and Jacobite break down my edits again? A conspiracy against me? I was merely commenting on their behaviour, I reached out to Fluff because he seems helpful, more experienced as an admin, and went through the same thing with you. --JTBX (talk) 16:05, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry guys, I don't really have time to go in-depth on articles this week (busy in real life - see the banner up top), so I'm just going to throw out a few thoughts and I encourage you to all consider them and maybe run with them if any resonate:
  1. Dispute resolution. Learn it, live it, love it. It's clear that there's some pretty heavy disagreement between a few of the article's "old" editors and a number of "new" or "one-time" ones. Both sides are sure they're right, but every time the issue comes up things get heated. This is why we have dispute resolution processes to help us when we run into this sort of thing. An RfC or a WP:DRN thread may be necessary to hash out the issue of how tightly to restrict plot content, etc. You will need to be willing to compromise and discuss exactly what about the other side feels wrong to you for this to work, but the goal is then to kill the dispute and never have to worry about it again!
  2. Ownership. The fact that it's extremely obvious to me who the "old" editors of the article are concerns me. Darkwarriorblake, I know I've mentioned this to you before, but you need to keep in mind that this is a collaborative project. That means that you don't always get the final vote on things, and your getting upset over the fact that someone wants to make/discuss a change you don't like indicates that you may be sort of emotionally involved in the article in a way that's problematic. This may go for others, as well. Strive to not care quite so much. Caring about an article is good, caring about it so hard that it sends your blood pressure skyrocketing and you find yourself judging or insulting the other person is...less good.
  3. Humans are human. Everyone's upset and frustrated at this point. But please, please remember that you're speaking to other human beings. Human beings have feelings, and moods, and occasionally screw up or overreact, but that shouldn't mean you feel it's ok to treat them as anything less than human. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 02:20, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
I didn't get the final say, several editors got the consensus. He wasn't making additions he was restoring the version of the plot from before the existing version, which was not written solely by me and contained large portions of that previous plot that was not written by me, and making points that were not important no matter how much he may believe them to be that needed to be conveyed within the word limit. Myself and other editors agreed with that, I discussed your changes with you as well and explained why they were not appropriate. If I get emotional it's not out of OWN or a personal investment in the article at all, it's out of frustration at explaining the same thing literally a dozen times to the user only for him to come back at me with the same thing made differently in complete ignorance of the previously given explanation. In complete ignorance of the explanation given by 4-5 other editors. To this very moment he claims we are all wrong and all suffering from OWN which is ridiculous. He's also arguing with me that one edit should be made because it is the correct order of events and the current plot is not. So I turned on the film (already aware I was correct) and broke down the scenes order, which matches the current plot. Let's see how he tells me I'm still wrong somehow. JTBX likes to play the victim, but he is far from it. Ownership and making the right decision are not the same thing, and not every edit has merit by way of existing. If that were true this place would be a joke and all the "lol and they were gay" edits would still be in place across articles. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 22:50, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
Hello Fluffernutter. You are a long term editor and admin for whom I have a great deal of respect for, therefore, I feel the need to fill you in on a few things that have occurred in the last day or so. Yesterday I was contacted, out of the blue, by JTBX here [1]. You will note that the wording of the message violates WP:CANVASS. I then went and examined the situation, in depth, on the article and the talk page for The Godfather and posted my thoughts at this thread Talk:The Godfather#Updating the plot in accordance with Wikipedia guidelines. I was then made aware of this thread Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests#Next step.3F where "a group of editors" were being accused of "not looking at the proposals for plot changes" and "bullying" and "hypocrisy". Oh and we are also bringing "shame" to wikipedia. None of this is supported by proof and is certainly not true as far as I can tell. Normally, I would let things take their course but I felt the need to let you know that you seem to be mentioned in this sentence "Their hypocritical and WP:OWN violating behaviour has also been pointed out by other users who have come across them" as someone who has agreed of JTBX's assessment of the situation. Then you are definitely mentioned here User talk:MisterShiney#Wake up as a reason (among other things) that MisterShiney's comments should be discounted. You are perfectly free to disagree with any of my posts in this situation but I do not think that comments that you have made should be used to justify actions towards other editors without you knowing about it. Cheers and continued happy editing. MarnetteD | Talk 01:11, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

My response is here [2] --JTBX (talk) 10:50, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 October 2012

Unlike the long-running disputes that have characterised attempts to reform the RfA process on the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia's tradition of making decisions not by consensus but knife-edged 50% + 1 votes has led to a fundamentally different outcome. In 2009, the project managed to largely settle the RfA mode issue in 2009 indirectly.
One clarification request concerns the civility enforcement case – specifically, Malleus Fatuorum's perceived circumvention of his topic ban. It has resulted in thousands of bytes spent in vitriolic discussions, multiple blocks, and "no confidence" motions against the Arbitration Committee and one arbitrator, among other ramifications.
Planning for Wikivoyage's migration into the WMF fold built up steam this week following a statement by WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller about what the technical side of the migration will involve. Wikivoyage, which split from sister site Wikitravel in 2006, is hoping to migrate its own not-inconsiderable user base to Wikimedia, as well as much of its content, presenting novel challenges for Wikimedia developers
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
It is well known that women are underrepresented in the sciences, and that high-achieving female scientists have often been excluded from authorship lists and passed over for awards and honours solely on the basis of gender. Also significant has been the underplaying in the academic literature, news reporting, and online, of women's current and historical contributions to science.
The WikiProject Report normally brings tidings from Wikipedia's most active, inventive, and unique WikiProjects. This week, we're trying something new by focusing on Wikipedia's dark side: the various regional and national WikiProjects that are dead or dying. How can some tiny municipalities and exclaves generate highly active, cross-language, multimedia platforms be successful while the projects representing many sovereign countries and entire continents wallow in obscurity? Today, we'll search for answers among geographic projects large and small, highly active and barely functioning, enthusiastic about the future and mired in past conflicts.
Eleven articles, including one on Franz Kafka, three lists, one image, and one portal were promoted to 'featured' status this week.

Freedom of speech = New WikiProject

Hi there, I'm notifying you as I noticed your impressive work on the GA Quality article, R v Baillie. If you're interested, here are some easy things you can do:

  1. List yourself as a participant in the WikiProject, by adding your username here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Freedom_of_speech#Participants.
  2. Add userbox {{User Freedom of speech}} to your userpage, which lists you as a member of the WikiProject.
  3. Tag relevant talk pages of articles and other relevant pages using {{WikiProject Freedom of speech}}.
  4. Join in discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Freedom of speech.
  5. Notify others you think might be interested in Freedom of speech to join the WikiProject.

Thank you for your interest in Freedom of speech, — Cirt (talk) 22:20, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Measured

I read your measured approach on DYK. We agree about a lot. The Government don't want these DYK placements, they have no commercial value as far as I can see - and there are assessments that conclude this. The problem is that we have enthusiastic editor who like doing DYK. The placement is intended to be via plaques in Gibraltar. Those people (local and visitors) will be interested in the history of a little church, an unusual gun or a local hero. My interest here is well known (and misunderstood), but in this debate I want to retain the editor enthusiasm. DYK exposure is not important to the Gibraltar project. Victuallers (talk) 07:54, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, there's not really a solution here that's entirely fair to both Wikipedia and the editors participating in GBP. Unfortunately, I think the enthusiastic editors who meant nothing but good are going to have to take the hit here of losing the fun of DYK. In theory, the prospect of prizes from Gibraltar should provide the excitement they wouldn't be able to get from DYK. In practice, I know that's not perfect, because it feels like being "othered" on Wikipedia...but I don't think that's something we can avoid at this stage. There's enough mass of community displeasure about these appearing on the mainpage that the authors are going to feel othered even if they get mainpage placement. Have you considered other ways to help the editors feel like their work is highlighted? Perhaps Gibraltar could, in their space (internet-y or real), maintain a list of "best new articles about Gibraltar"? Or a leaderboard? If, as you say, the main goal for these projects is for someone touring [city] to have easy access to Wikipedia articles about stuff they're seeing (rather than someone not touring [city] to see articles about it and want to tour it), then it shouldn't be much of an issue to set a restriction ahead of time for future projects that articles created for this sort of stuff don't get mainpaged. Since we're mid-run on Gibraltarpedia, it's obviously going to be more uncomfortable to do the switch on this one, but I think it's the sort of situation where you have to apologize to your participants and tell them than unforeseen issues arose and the game has changed slightly. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:38, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I've become almost evangelical about this tool, it saves masses of time in manual checking. It ignores the lead, captions and infoboxes, and because it just highlights, it gives you the option to keep a link if it's worth doing so, or if it's picked up a dup link in a reference. One current FAC had over 100 dup links, so having only two in a long article like yours showed really careful editing. To install the script, add: 

importScript('User:Ucucha/duplinks.js'); // [[User:Ucucha/duplinks]]

to Special:MyPage/common.js. Clear the cache (it will tell you to do that on the common.js anyway). There will now be a link "Highlight duplicate links" in the toolbox on the left on every mainspace article. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:10, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 October 2012

The first round of the Wikimedia Foundation's new financial arrangements has proceeded as planned, with the publication of scores and feedback by Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) staff on applications for funding by 11 entities—10 chapters, independent membership organisations supporting the WMF's mission in different countries, and the foundation itself. The results are preliminary assessments that will soon be put to the FDC's seven voting members and two non-voting board representatives. The FDC in turn will send its recommendations to the board of trustees on 15 November, which will announce its decision by 15 December. Funding applications have been on-wiki since 1 October, and the talk pages of applications were open for community comment and discussion from 2 to 22 October, though apart from queries by FDC staff, there was little activity.
This week, we're checking out ways to motivate editors and recognize valuable contributions by focusing on the awards and rewards of WikiProject Military History. Anyone unfamiliar with WikiProject Military History is encouraged to start at the report's first article about the project and make your way forward. While many WikiProjects provide a barnstar that can be awarded to helpful contributors, WikiProject Military History has gone a step further by creating a variety of awards with different criteria ranging from the all-purpose WikiChevrons to rewards for participating in drives and improving special topics to medals for improving articles up to A-class status to the coveted "Military Historian of the Year" award.
The TimedMediaHandler extension (TMH), which brings dramatic improvements to MediaWiki's video handling capabilities, will go live to the English Wikipedia this week following a long and turbulent development, WMF Director of Platform Engineering Rob Lanphier announced on Monday ... Wikidata.org, a new repository designed to host interwiki links, launched this week and will begin accepting links shortly. The site, which is one half of the forthcoming Wikidata trial (the other half being the Wikidata client, which will be deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia shortly) will also act as a testing area for phase 2 of Wikidata (centralised data storage). The longer term plan is for Wikidata.org to become a "Wikimedia Commons for data" as phases 2 and 3 (dynamic lists) are developed, project managers say.
Thirteen articles, ten lists, nine images, one topic, and one portal were promoted to featured after peer reviews.
A paper in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, coming from the social control perspective and employing the repertory grid technique, has contributed interesting observations about the governance of Wikipedia.

Wiki Medicine

Hi

I'm contacting you because, as a participant at Wikiproject Medicine, you may be interested in a new multinational non-profit organization we're forming at m:Wikimedia Medicine. Even if you don't want to be actively involved, any ideas you may have about our structure and aims would be very welcome on the project's talk page.

Our purpose is to help improve the range and quality of free online medical content, and we'll be working with like-minded organizations, such as the World Health Organization, professional and scholarly societies, medical schools, governments and NGOs - including Translators Without Borders.

Hope to see you there! --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:53, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

The RfC close reminded me

I asked you to look at some data I put together about the education program outcomes a couple of weeks ago, but I think you were busy at the time and weren't on wiki much. Are you still interested in that? If so I'll find the link for you; I'd still like your take on the data. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:06, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thank you! I had a move, and then a hurricane, and I'm just now trying to regroup and pick back up all the tasks/discussions I had going a month or so ago. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:19, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I'm post-hurricane myself -- just got power back last night (I'm in central Long Island). The analysis I did is here. Let me know what you think -- I tried to structure it with diffs so you can spot check my assessments of the quality of each edit. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:28, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 November 2012

J Milburn is a British editor who has been on the site since 2006. He is one of two judges of the WikiCup. Here, he uses an op-ed to explain the way the WikiCup works and to review this year's competition, which ended recently.
The results of most of the national heats for Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) have been published on Commons. A maximum of 10 images have been submitted by all but eight of the 34 participating countries, and the international jury for what is the largest competition of its type in the world is set to announce the global winner in four weeks' time.
Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record and has caused millions of dollars in damage. Naturally, Wikipedia covered it. But was Wikipedia's coverage unbiased?
The Signpost's weekly roundup of topics for discussion on the English Wikipedia.
This week, the Signpost interviewed two editors. The first, PumpkinSky, collaborated with Gerda Arendt in writing the recently featured article on Franz Kafka and won second prize in the Core contest last August. The second, Cwmhiraeth, collaborated with Thompsma in promoting the article Frog, which was featured last week. We asked them about the special challenges faced while writing Core content and things to watch out for.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for October 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. TimedMediaHandler also went live.
This week, The Signpost sings along with WikiProject Songs which focuses on articles about songs of every generation and genre. The project initially began as a rough outline in October 2002 and was reimagined in March 2004 using its parent WikiProject Albums as a template.

This is not a newsletter

This is just a tribute.

Anyway. You're getting this note because you've participated in discussion and/or asked for updates to either the Article Feedback Tool or Page Curation. This isn't about either of those things, I'm afraid ;p. We've recently started working on yet another project: Echo, a notifications system to augment the watchlist. There's not much information at the moment, because we're still working out the scope and the concepts, but if you're interested in further updates you can sign up here.

In addition, we'll be holding an office hours session at 21:00 UTC on Wednesday, 14 November in #wikimedia-office - hope to see you all there :). I appreciate it's an annoying time for non-Europeans: if you're interested in chatting about the project but can't make it, give me a shout and I can set up another session if there's enough interest in one particular timezone or a skype call if there isn't. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:57, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 November 2012

Last week, media outlets reported a ruling by a German court on the problem of businesses using Wikipedia for marketing purposes. The issue goes beyond the direct management of marketing-related edits by Wikipedians; it involves cross-monitoring and interacting among market competitors themselves on Wikipedia. A company that sells dietary supplements made from frankincense had taken a competitor to court. The recently published judgment by the Higher Regional Court of Munich, in dealing with the German Wikipedia article on frankincense products, was handed down in May and is based on European competition law.
Thirteen articles, six lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status last week.
In late September, the Technology report published its findings about (particularly median) code review times. To the 23,900 changesets analysed the first time (the data for which has been updated), the Signpost added data from the 9,000 or so changesets contributed between September 17 and November 9 to a total of 93,000 reviews across 45,000 patchsets. Bots and self-reviews were also discarded, but reviews made by a different user in the form of a superseding patch were retained. Finally, users were categorised by hand according to whether they would be best regarded as staff or volunteers. The new analyses were consistent with the predictions of the previous analysis.
As promised, we're expanding our horizons by featuring projects that cover underrepresented areas of the globe. This week, we headed to WikiProject Brazil which keeps track of articles about the world's largest Portuguese-speaking country. The project has shown spurts of activity and continues to serve as a hub for discussions, despite the project's collaborations, peer reviews, and outreach activities being largely inactive.

GOCE November 2012 copy edit drive update

Guild of Copy Editors November 2012 backlog elimination drive mid-drive newsletter
  • Participation: Out of 31 people signed up for this drive so far, 22 have copy-edited at least one article. If you've signed up but haven't yet copy-edited any articles, every bit helps; if you haven't signed up yet, it's not too late. Join us!
  • Progress report: We're on track to meet our targets for the drive. We have reduced our target group of articles—November and December 2011—by over 50%, and 34 of the the 56 requests made in September and October this year have already been fulfilled. However, the rate of tagging for copy edit has increased, and this month we are just keeping the size of the backlog stable. So, all you copy editors, please do come along and help us!
  • The September 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest was won by Baffle gab1978 for his copy edit of Expulsion of the Acadians. Runner up was Gareth Griffith-Jones for his edit of I Could Fall in Love. Congratulations to both.
  • The October 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is in the discussion and voting stage until midnight November 30 (UTC). You don't have to make a submission to vote!
  • November 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is in the submissions stage until midnight November 30 (UTC), when discussion and voting begin.
  • Seasonal oversight: We had a slight fall from grace in the title of our last newletter, which mentioned the season in the northern hemisphere and thus got it wrong for the southern. Fortunately an observant GOCE member was ready to spring into action to advise us. Thanks! In future we'll stay meteorologically neutral.
>>> Sign up now <<<

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 19:41, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

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