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Talkback

Hello, SpeedReader. You have new messages at Hadger's talk page.
Message added 03:13, 6 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hadger 03:13, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, SpeedReader. You have new messages at WT:AFC.
Message added 21:10, 13 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Nathan2055talk - contribs 21:10, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Articles for creation newsletter

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Talkback

Hello, SpeedReader. You have new messages at Steven Zhang's talk page.
Message added 23:39, 20 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 23:39, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas


AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

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Thank you! Jakob 16:20, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!


The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) [Merry Christmas!] is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

06:05, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Jakob 16:21, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!


Mediran (t • c) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

11:34, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Jakob 16:22, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!


Astros4477 (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

--Astros4477 (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! The only problem is, I've used up all my ornaments on the other trees! Jakob 15:52, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2012

As part of its new focus on core responsibilities, the Wikimedia Foundation is reforming its grant schemes so that they are more accessible to individual volunteers. The community is invited to look at proposals for a new scheme—for now called Individual engagement grants (IEGs)—which is due to kick off on January 15. On Meta, the community is once again debating the two new offline participation models—user groups (open membership groups designed to be easy to form) and thematic organizations (incorporated non-profits representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting work on a specific theme within or across countries). In a consultation process on Meta that will last until January 15, the community will be discussing WMF proposals for a new guideline on conflicts of interests concerning Wikimedia resources. The draft covers COI issues for both volunteers and organizations across the movement.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject A Song of Ice and Fire, which focuses on the eponymous series of high fantasy literature, the television series Game of Thrones, and related works by George R. R. Martin. The project was started in July 2006 and has grown to include 11 Good Articles maintained by a small yet enthusiastic band of editors.
Seven articles and two lists were promoted to 'featured' status this week, including List of battlecruisers. The article covers all of the battlecruisers—which were a type of warship similar in size to a battleship but with several defining characteristics—ever planned or constructed. The last British battlecruiser built, HMS Hood, is pictured at right.
Efforts were stepped up this week to sow a feeling of trust between the major parties with an interest in the future of the Toolserver. The tool- and bot-hosting server – more accurately servers – are currently operated by German chapter, Wikimedia Germany, with assistance from the Foundation and numerous volunteers, including long-time system administrator Daniel Baur (more commonly known by his pseudonym DaB). However, those parties have more recently failed to see eye-to-eye on the trajectory for the Toolserver, which is scheduled to be replaced by Wikimedia Labs in late 2013, with increasing concern about the tone of discussions.

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Happy New Year!


CURTAINTOAD! TALK! — is wishing you a Happy New Year! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

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Hey SpeedReader! Wishing you a very happy New Year :) CURTAINTOAD! TALK! 09:18, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, SpeedReader. You have new messages at The Anonymouse's talk page.
Message added 17:41, 31 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Just in case... The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 17:41, 31 December 2012 (UTC)


The Signpost: 31 December 2012

In the impersonal, detached Colosseum that is Wikipedia, people find it much easier to put their thumbs down. As such, many people active in the Wikimedia movement have witnessed a precipitous decline in civil discourse. This is far from a new trend, yet many people would agree that it all seemed somehow worse in 2012.
A recent, poorly researched and poorly written story in the Register highlighted the perceived "cash rich" status of the Wikimedia movement. ... The Telegraph and Daily Dot, among others, have alleged that there are multiple links between the WMF, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Kazakhstan's government, which is, for all intents and purposes, a one-party non-democratic state.
On 27 December the Wikimedia Foundation announced the conclusion of their ninth annual fundraiser, which attracted more than 1.2 million donors. The appeal reached its goal of US$25 million, even though fundraising banners ran for only nine days.
In the first of two features, the Signpost this week looks back on 2012, a year when developers finally made inroads into three issues that had been put off for far too long (the need for editors to learn wiki-markup, the lack of a proper template language and the centralisation of data) but left all three projects far from finished.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include ...
Brion Vibber has been a Wikipedia editor for nearly 11 years and was the first person officially hired to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. He was instrumental in early development of the MediaWiki software and is now the lead software architect for the foundation's mobile development team.
At the beginning of the year, we began a series of interviews with editors who have worked hard to combat systemic bias through the creation of featured content; although we haven't seen six installments yet, we've also had some delightful interviews with people who write articles on some of our most core topics. Now, as we close the year, I would like to present some of my own musings on the state of featured content—especially as it pertains to systemic bias and core topics.
This week, we're celebrating the New Year from Times Square by interviewing WikiProject New York City. Since December 2004, WikiProject NYC has had the difficult task of maintaining articles about the largest city in the United States, many of which are also among the the most viewed articles on Wikipedia. The project is home to 22 Featured Articles, 7 Featured Lists, 32 pieces of Featured Media, and a lengthy list of Did You Know? entries.
Northeastern University researcher Brian Keegan analyzed the gathering of hundreds of Wikipedians to cover the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. ... A First Monday article reviews several aspects of the Wikipedia participation in the 18 January 2012, protests against SOPA and PIPA legislation in the USA. The paper focuses on the question of legitimacy, looking at how the Wikipedia community arrived at the decision to participate in those protests.

Afc/Mike Glowacki

The article was created because musician has release an album and Wikipedia is a great source to find out more information. I have added the list of songs with references to the Copyright Encyclopedia for verification. Please re-review the article. Thanks and Happy New Year! Here is the link to the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Mike_Glowacki AnnamarieAnnamarie Blaha (talk) 16:18, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

AFCBuddy

78.26

Thanks for creating this script! A couple of questions. First, shouldn't anyone appearing in the "Running Total" list below the leaderboard automatically be included? Also, the script seems to have a bug. I haven't counted anyone else's, but I've reviewed 31 articles, not 21. The script changed the number on the leaderboard. All the best, 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 22:28, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Darn it, i didn't expect people to find my tampering with the scoring in my favor so quickly! ;). It seems i forgot to tell the script that capital letters don't matter (AFCH != afch unless you explicitly state it is.). The reviews it missed are now correctly being counted.
On the other hand, it is now assuming you have 40 reviews since it counts both the actual article and the redirect page that was created by moving the page. I'll iron that issue out in a bit. Hopefully the script will be quite stable in a couple of days. Oh, and thanks for mentioning the issue - much appreciated! Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 23:31, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

SpeedReader

Yes, Why am I not on the leader board? at the time that the script ran, I had 40 reviews. Thanks, Jakob 23:05, 4 January 2013 (UTC) P.S. Thanks for relieving me with the script! Before, I was the one who had to manually update the leaderboard

It seems that you aren't using the AFC helper script to review pages. AFCBuddy detects pages by the default summary's it places when accepting or moving a page. There are a few possible solutions i can think off:
  • If you could review pages using the AFC helper script it would detect edits as normal (Any reason why you are not using it?). Since updating the review list is manual copy-n-paste work i could leave any old reviews there. Equally i could adjust the review count of your username in the tool, so that it would offset the reviews it cannot detect itself.
  • If you cannot or don't want to use the AFC Helper script for reviewing i can simply use your review list as a basis for the scoreboard (A simple count of the diffs on that page). A side effect would be that you would need to keep updating that page manually, since AFCBuddy wouldn't be able to detect any reviews from you :/ Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 23:31, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Alright, since I cannot use the AFC Helper Script, see this, and this for more on that, I'll add myself manually. Thanks! --Jakob 23:45, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Quite unfortunate you can't use it - it is quite a handy script for reviewing. To at least reduce your workload a little bit i added a little tweak to AFCHelper. When it tries to check your accounts edits it will use an alternative procedure that counts the amount of reviews listed at January 2013 Backlog Elimination Drive/SpeedReader. The result of count that (Currently 56 links, just as listed) will be used when generating the scoreboard. It won't prevent you from having to keep that page up to date manually, but at the very least you shouldn't have to worry about keeping the scoreboard up to date anymore Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 01:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

AFC Script

Just wondering...When a user manually puts an article under review, can the AFC Helper Script overwrite that? This is what seems to have happened here; I put the article under review (manually, of course) looked over it. Finding that it was not written in English, I went to decline it, but found that you already had. Please don't get me wrong, I don't really care that I didn't get the point; just wondering. --Jakob 20:42, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it can indeed do that. As long as a page has an open AFC template (With "Open" being "Not declined or accepted") it will simply override any "In review" templates and place the decline template. If a review is no longer open when someone tries to review a page, the script will report an error stating there are no open templates. Eg:
  • (User1 loads page) => (User2 marks as Reviewing) => (User1 declines page) => Page Declined
  • (User1 loads page) => (User2 declines page) => Page Declined => (User1 declines page, not having seen the new revision) => User1 receives an error.
The behavior is actually more or less as intended. If someone would mark the page as "Reviewing" they wouldn't be able to use the script to accept or decline a page afterwards if it wouldn't override in review templates. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 20:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Unfair

Dear, SpeedReader.

I find your action to deny my submission absolutely preposterous. Please, take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Hyoryeong . They have submitted the same way, and they were able to submit their article and I cannot? Who sets the justice in Wikipedia? I find this unfair. There is a scarce amount of English information to quote from about Grand Prince Royal Jinan. If you guys want to raise the bar, then you guys need to start translating the works of Korean documents yourselves. Please, accept my article as many more of Korean Princes’ articles have been successfully submitted this way.

Lee, Jyong Chul.
Founder and CEO
The Korean Monarchy and the Korean Royal Armed Forces Korea Reunification Party
(22nd in line House of Grand Prince Royal Jinan)

Just a note: i got the same question from this user and replied to him here. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 18:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Teahouse talkback: you've got messages!

Hello, SpeedReader/Archive 1. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by JHUbal27 20:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template.

Your submission at Articles for creation

Thank you for your recent submission to Articles for Creation. Your article submission has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please view your submission to see the comments left by the reviewer. You are welcome to edit the submission to address the issues raised, and resubmit once you feel they have been resolved.
Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 20:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Working out the details at Wikipedia:Today's article for improvement

The RFC for TAFI is nearing it's conclusion, and it's time to hammer out the details over at the project's talk page. There are several details of the project that would do well with wider input and participation, such as the article nomination and selection process, the amount and type of articles displayed, the implementation on the main page and other things. I would like to invite you to comment there if you continue to be interested in TAFI's development. --NickPenguin(contribs) 02:35, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Tommy Seigler article

On January 1st, you declined an article about Tommy Seigler I had written because I mistakenly submitted it blank, but I immediately resubmitted it with revisions, cited sources, and photos. Can you please take a look at the page again for me and see if it is ready for approval? Thank you.

Brandon — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brandonseigler (talk • contribs) 01:55, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 January 2013

Meta is the wiki that has coordinated a wide range of cross-project Wikimedia activities, such as the activities of stewards, the archiving of chapter reports, and WMF trustee elections. The project has long been an out-of-the-way corner for technocratic working groups, unaccountable mandarins, and in-house bureaucratic proceedings. Largely ignored by the editing communities of projects such as Wikipedia and organizations that serve them, Meta has evolved into a huge and relatively disorganized repository, where the few archivists running it also happen to be the main authors of some of its key documents. While Meta is well-designed for supporting the librarians and mandarins who stride along its corridors, visitors tend to find the site impenetrable—or so many people have argued over the past decade. This impenetrability runs counter to Meta's increasingly central role in the Wikimedia movement.
The dawning of a new year offers both a fresh slate and an opportunity to revisit our previous adventures. 2012 marked the fifth anniversary of the WikiProject Report and was the column's most productive year with 52 articles published. In addition to sharing the experiences of Wikipedia's many active projects, we expanded our scope to highlight unique projects from other languages of Wikipedia, and tracked down all of the former editors-in-chief of the Signpost for an introspective interview ... While last year's "Summer Sports Series" may have drawn yawns from some readers, a special report on "Neglected Geography" elicited more comments than any previous issue of the Report. Following in the footsteps of our past three recaps, we'll spend this week looking back at the trials and tribulations of the WikiProjects we encountered in 2012. Where are they now?
The past 12 months have seen a multitude of issues and events in the Wikimedia foundation, the movement at large, and the English Wikipedia. The movement, now in its second decade, is growing apace in its international reach, cultural and linguistic diversity, technical development, and financial complexity; and many factors have combined to produce what has in many ways been the biggest, most dynamic year in the movement's history. Looking back at 2012, we faced a difficult task in doing justice to all of the notable events in a single article; so the Signpost has selected just a few examples from outside the anglosphere, from the English Wikipedia, and from the Wikimedia Foundation, rather than attempting to cover every detail that happened.
Over the past year, 963 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured article candidates (FAC), which promoted an average of 31 articles a month. This was followed by featured picture candidates (FPC; 28 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 20 a month). Featured topic and featured portal candidates remained sluggish, each promoting fewer than 20 items over the year.
Following on from last week's reflections on 2012, this week the Technology report looks ahead to 2013, a year that will almost certainly be dominated by the juggernauts of Wikidata, Lua and the Visual Editor.

Your submission at Articles for creation

Thank you for your recent submission to Articles for Creation. Your article submission has been reviewed. Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. Please view your submission to see the comments left by the reviewer. You are welcome to edit the submission to address the issues raised, and resubmit once you feel they have been resolved.
Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:38, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

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Friendship Request..! :P

Hii There..I would really like to know you a bit more..I mean lets get to know each other..I am from India and i am new to wikipedia..It would be great help to hear from you..Snehild Thank You..! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Snehild (talk • contribs) 13:17, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 January 2013

After six years without creating a new class of content projects, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has finally expanded into a new area: travel. Wikivoyage was formally launched—though without a traditional ship's christening—on 15 January, having started as a beta trial on 10 November. Wikivoyage has been taken under the WMF's umbrella on the argument that information resources that help with travel are educational and therefore within the scope of the foundation's mission.g
On January 16, voting for the first round of the 2012 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest will begin. Wikimedia editors with 75 edits or one project are eligible to vote to select their favorite image featured in 2012. ... On January 15, the foundation launched its latest grant scheme, called Individual Engagement Grants (IEG).
This week, we set off for the final frontier with WikiProject Astronomy. The project was started in August 2006 using the now-defunct WikiProject Space as inspiration. WikiProject Astronomy is home to 101 pieces of Featured material and 148 Good Articles maintained by a band of 186 members. The project maintains a portal, works on an assortment of vital astronomy articles, and provides resources for editors adding or requesting astronomy images.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
Comforting those grieving after the loss of a loved one is an impossible task. How then, can an entire community be comforted? The Internet struggled to answer that question this week after the suicide of Aaron Swartz, a celebrated free-culture activist, programmer, and Wikipedian at the age of 26.
Continuing our recap of the featured content promoted in 2012, this week the Signpost interviewed three editors, asking them about featured articles which stuck out in their minds. Two, Ian Rose and Graham Colm, are current featured article candidates (FAC) delegates, while Brian Boulton is an active featured article writer and reviewer.
The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
The Wikidata client extension was successfully deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia on 14 January, its team reports. The interwiki language links can now come from wikidata.org, though "manual" interwiki links remain functional, overriding those from the central repository.

The Signpost: 21 January 2013

The English Wikipedia's requests for adminship (RfA) process has entered another cycle of proposed reforms. Over the last three weeks, various proposals, ranging from as large as a transition to a representative democracy to as small as a required edit count and service length, have been debated on the RfA talk page. The total number of new administrators for 2012 was just 28, barely more than half of 2011's total and less than a quarter of 2009's total. The total number of unsuccessful RfAs has fallen as well. These declining numbers, which were described in what would now be considered a successful year (2010) as an emerging "wikigeneration gulf", have been coupled with a sharp decline in the number of active administrators since February 2008 (1,021), reaching a low of 653 in November 2012.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Linguistics. Started in January 2004, the project has grown to include 7 Featured Articles, 4 Featured Lists, 2 A-class Articles, and 15 Good Articles maintained by 43 members. The project's members keep an eye on several watchlists, maintain the linguistics category, and continue to build a collection of Did You Know? entries. The project is home to six task forces and works with WikiProject Languages and WikiProject Writing Systems.
This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured topics. We interviewed Grapple X and GamerPro64, who are delegates at the featured topic candidates.
The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
On 22 January, WMF staff and contractors switched incoming, non-cached requests (including edits) to the Foundation's newer data centre in Ashburn, Virginia, making it responsible for handling almost all regular traffic. For the first time since 2004, virtually no traffic will be handled by the WMF's other facility in Tampa, Florida.


A barnstar for you!

The Barnstar of Good Humor!
Hello SpeedReader. You have signed my guestbook! Thank you very much.--Pratyya (Hello!) 18:19, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

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SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

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Readership: High Quality: Low Burgwedel   Readership: High Quality: High Psylocke
Readership: High Quality: Low Laatzen   Readership: High Quality: Medium The Transformers (TV series)
Readership: Low Quality: Low Cuba–Jamaica Maritime Boundary Agreement   Expand
Readership: High Quality: Low Transformers Universe (video game)   Readership: High Quality: High Duel Masters
Readership: Low Quality: Low Cuba–Haiti Maritime Boundary Agreement   Readership: High Quality: High List of states with nuclear weapons
Readership: Medium Quality: Low Uetze   Readership: High Quality: High International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 02:10, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 January 2013

On New Year's Day, the Daily Dot reported that a "massive Wikipedia hoax" had been exposed after more than five years. The article on the Bicholim conflict had been listed as a "Good Article" for the past half-decade, yet turned out to be an ingenious hoax. Created in July 2007 by User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a, the meticulously detailed piece was approved as a GA in October 2007. A subsequent submission for FA was unsuccessful, but failed to discover that the article's key sources were made up. While the User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a account then stopped editing, the hoax remained listed as a Good Article for five years, receiving in the region of 150 to 250 page views a month in 2012. It was finally nominated for deletion on 29 December 2012 by ShelfSkewed—who had discovered the hoax while doing work on Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs—and deleted the same day.
A special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist is devoted to "open collaboration".
When we challenged the masters of WikiProject Chess to an interview, Sjakkalle answered our call. WikiProject Chess dates back to December 2003 and has grown to include 4 Featured Articles and 15 Good Articles maintained by over 100 members. The project typically operates independently of other WikiProjects, although the project would theoretically be a child of WikiProject Board and Table Games (interviewed in 2011). WikiProject Chess provides a collection of resources, seeks missing photographs of chess players, and helps determine ways that Wikipedia's coverage of chess can be expanded.
New discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
To many Wikimedians, the Khan Academy would seem like a close cousin: the academy is a non-profit educational website and a development of the massive open online course concept that has delivered over 227 million lessons in 22 different languages. Its mission is to give "a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere." This complements Wikipedia's stated goal to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge", then go and create that world. It should come as no surprise, then, that the highly successful GLAM-Wiki (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) initiative has partnered with the Khan Academy's Smarthistory project to further both its and Wikipedia's goals.
This week, the Signpost featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured lists. We interviewed FLC directors Giants2008 and The Rambling Man as well as active reviewer and writer PresN.
The Doncram case has continued into its third week.
As reported in last week's "Technology Report", the WMF's data centre in Ashburn, Virginia took over responsibility for almost all of the remaining functions that had previously been handled by their old facility in Tampa, Florida on 22 January. The Signpost reported then that few problems had arisen since handover. Unfortunately that was not to remain the case, with reports of caching problems (which typically only affect anonymous users) starting to come in.

WikiCup 2013 January newsletter

Signups are now closed; we have our final 127 contestants for this year's competition. 64 contestants will make it to the next round at the end of February, but we're already seeing strong scoring compared to previous years. Colorado Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) currently leads, with 358 points. At this stage in 2012, the leader (Irish Citizen Army Grapple X (submissions)) had 342 points, while in 2011, the leader had 228 points. We also have a large number of scorers when compared with this stage in previous years. Florida 12george1 (submissions) was the first competitor to score this year, as he was last year, with a detailed good article review. Some other firsts:

Featured articles, portals and topics, as well as good topics, are yet to feature in the competition.

This year, the bonus points system has been reworked, with bonus points on offer for old articles prepared for did you know, and "multiplier" points reworked to become more linear. For details, please see Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring. There have been some teething problems as the bot has worked its way around the new system, but issues should mostly be ironed out- please report any problems to the WikiCup talk page. Here are some participants worthy of note with regards to the bonus points:

  • United States Ed! (submissions) was the first to score bonus points, with Portland-class cruiser, a good article.
  • Australia Hawkeye7 (submissions) has the highest overall bonus points, as well as the highest scoring article, thanks to his work on Enrico Fermi, now a good article. The biography of such a significant figure to the history of science warrants nearly five times the normal score.
  • Chicago HueSatLum (submissions) claimed bonus points for René Vautier and Nicolas de Fer, articles that did not exist on the English Wikipedia at the start of the year; a first for the WikiCup. The articles were eligible for bonus points because of fact they were both covered on a number of other Wikipedias.

Also, a quick mention of British Empire The C of E (submissions), who may well have already written the oddest article of the WikiCup this year: did you know that the Fucking mayor objected to Fucking Hell on the grounds that there was no Fucking brewery? The gauntlet has been thrown down; can anyone beat it?

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 00:51, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 February 2013

On February 12, 2012, news of Whitney Houston's death brought 425 hits per second to her Wikipedia article, the highest peak traffic on any article since at least January 2010. It is broadly known that Wikipedia is the sixth most popular website on the Internet, but the English Wikipedia now has over 4 million articles and 29 million total pages. Much less attention has been given to traffic patterns and trends in content viewed.
Article feedback, at least through talk pages, has been a part of Wikipedia since its inception in 2001. The use of these pages, though, has typically been limited to experienced editors who know how to use them.
This week, we took a trip to WikiProject Norway. Started in February 2005, WikiProject Norway has become the home for almost 34,000 articles about the world's best place to live, including 16 Featured Articles, 19 Featured Lists, and nearly 250 Good Articles. The project works on a to do list, maintains a categorization system, watches article alerts, and serves as a discussion forum.
This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured portals, a small yet active part of the project. We interviewed FPOC directors Cirt and OhanaUnited.
On 30 January 2013, Kevin Morris in the Daily Dot summarised the bitter debates in Wikipedia around capitalisation or non-capitalisation of the word "into" in the title of the upcoming Star Trek film, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Following the deployment of the Wikidata client to the Hungarian Wikipedia last month, the client was also deployed to the Italian and Hebrew Wikipedias on Wednesday. The next target for the client, which automatically provides phase 1 functionality, is the English Wikipedia, with a deployment date of 11 February already set.
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